Gingerbread Man (45 page)

“I’m his brother.”

“I’d better take you in. Your brother
is—”

“I was there when he pulled the trigger. You
don’t need to prepare me. Just point me to the room, okay?”

The chubby Justin Bieber-haired blond came
around the desk anyway. “It’s right over here. He’s on a
ventilator, but—”

Mason walked into the room, right up to the
bed. Eric lay there. His entire head was bandaged and padded
underneath, so it wasn’t as obvious that a lot of it was missing.
Someone had washed most of the blood away and put him in a hospital
gown. His eyes were closed, sunken unnaturally back into his
head.

“Have you called his—your—family?” the nurse
asked.

“I was just about to.”

“Good. The doctor will want to talk to them
as soon as possible.”

“Why?” Mason took his eyes off his brother to
look at the nurse.

“I really have to let the doctor be the
one—”

“Come on, kid. Do you really think it matters
who tells it? Cut me some slack here. I just watched my brother
blow his own head off. Just tell me what you have to say
already.”

The nurse lowered his head. “He’s brain dead.
The machine is pumping air through his lungs, and forcing his heart
to keep pushing oxygenated blood through his body. But he’s not
coming back.”

Mason nodded and exhaled long and slow. No
vegetable brother wasting away slow for the next twenty years. No
recovering murderer brother having to face the consequences of his
crimes. No being forced to testify against his own sibling or
reveal the nightmare to his mother or sister-in-law or nephews. No
being driven out of the job he loved.

It was better this way. Was that selfish?
Okay, yeah, a little, but not entirely. It was better for
everyone
this way.

“So the doctor wants us all here to tell him
to pull the plug.” It wasn’t a question.

“And to ask you about organ donation, though
technically his wife has to make those decisions,” the nurse said
with a nod in the direction of Eric’s left hand. “Most families
make it together.”

Organ donation. That hadn’t even occurred to
him. He let his eyes travel up and down his brother’s body,
completely intact except for his head.

“The ventilator keeps the organs oxygenated
until the decision is made,” Nurse Bieber went on.

“I see. So he’s…”

“He’s already gone, Detective Brown. I’m
really sorry.”

Mason nodded. “Seems like it would be a shame
to just waste them, doesn’t it?” he asked. “The way he wasted the
rest of himself.”

“Yeah. It does. There’s someone right now
praying they’ll stay alive long enough to get a heart, a liver, a
kidney, a lung. Even his corneas are still good. He could make a
blind person see again. Maybe for the first time.”

A blind person see again.

Maybe this accident happened for a
reason.

Mason turned and looked at the nurse,
revising his opinion of him. “They should have you talk to all the
families in this situation. You’re good at it.”

“Does that mean you’re going to…?”

“Yeah, I’ll convince the family. Marie…she
listens to me. But don’t worry, I’ll let the doctor think he talked
me into it. Now, about those corneas—can we pick someone to get
those? A specific person? If they’re the same tissue type or
whatever?”

“Of course you can. Tissue typing isn’t even
necessary for corneas anymore. The latest studies, blah blah
blah.”

The nurse’s words faded into the background
noise inside Mason’s head, where the gunshot was ringing and
echoing endlessly. He was staring at his brother, remembering when
they were kids, playing on the tire swing that hung from the giant
maple up at the lake, seeing who could swing out further, dropping
into the icy cold water.

How do you go from a laughing ten-year-old to
a cold-blooded killer?

“Detective Brown?”

He nodded to let the nurse know he hadn’t
lost him. “Can you, uh, give me a minute alone with him?”

“Sure. And then you’ll call the family?”

Mason nodded.

The kid left and closed the door behind him,
leaving Mason alone with Eric. He moved closer to the bed. “I don’t
know what to say to you, brother.” He swallowed to loosen up the
constriction in his throat. “Hell, I don’t even know if you can
hear me, but…what the
fuck
, Eric? What were you thinking?
You—” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You
killed
all
those boys, you sonofabitch. And then dumped it all on me? What the
fuck
, man?”

He sighed, backed away. “Okay, so you win.
You’re badass. You make the messes, and I clean `em up. Just like
always, big bro. And now I’ve gotta go call Mother and Marie, and
break their hearts. And they’re gonna cry and mourn for a piece of
shit who never deserved either of them. Much less the boys. Damn
you, Eric, how could you do this to your family?”

He got up, started to leave, then turned
back. “Why the fuck did you have to wait for me to get there, make
me watch you do that? That’s never gonna get out of my head, you
know.”

He left the room, closed the door, lowered
his head way down because his eyes were burning with tears, and
then, finally, he called his sister-in-law.

* * *

BY NOON MY room was full of balloons, flowers
and various idiotic stuffed animals. And
people
, let’s not
forget people. My BBF—-best blind friend—Mott Killian was at my
bedside, strumming his guitar, and singing away, doing his usual
half-a-song-then-switch thing. Mott taught American History over at
Cortland State. Amy, my irritatingly twenty-something personal
assistant, had confiscated my tray table for her laptop. She was
clicking away, tweeting and posting hourly updates to my
fifty-thousand-and-some-odd followers, and manning her ever-present
iPhone to tell reporters no to every interview request. I have no
idea about social media. She does it all for me. My agent,
Barracuda Woman, was keeping tabs via Skype from her Manhattan
office. And my sister was riding herd on the hospital staff and
ordering takeout. Her twins were texting nonstop—I could hear the
tapping, soft as it was—and sucking down vitamin water. I could
smell it. Misty had Berry Blast, and Christy had Mango Peach. They
were trying not to let me know that their social lives were
positively wasting away while they were doing time at their blind
aunt’s bedside, but their frequent sighs were audible, and their
impatience wafted from their pores like B.O.

When a nurse tried to object to all the
activity in the room, Sandra laid down the law. “Do you know how
many times my sister has been on TV?” she asked. “She’s
important.
She needs her people around her.”

My people. My entourage. And every one of
them so devoted they would take a bullet for me. Well, except for
Misty and Christy, who would take a slap for me, max. Maybe. As
long as it wasn’t in the face.

Moreover, the people in this room were the
only people who knew that the real me was
not
the feel-good
guru who showed up in my books and on talk shows. And they not only
loved me anyway, they loved me enough to
not
sell the truth
to the tabloids. That was devotion right there, because that
information would’ve been worth a significant bundle.

There was a tap on the door before someone
came in. I smelled her and heard her signature footsteps, soft and
close together, and I knew her instantly. “Hold up, hold up.” I
tapped Mott’s knee as I spoke, and he stopped strumming.

“Doc Fenway?”

“You amaze me every time, you know that?” she
said with a smile in her voice.

“I do it on purpose,” I confessed. “So are
you here to visit, or did this little accident have some kind of
impact on my eyesight? Please don’t tell me I’m going blind!”

Obediently, my entourage laughed. But only a
little. There was still noise all around me. Amy’s clicking keys,
Sandra talking on the phone—“Ham and pineapple, extra blue cheese,
and the hottest wings you’ve got”
—
Mott still picking a
string over and over as he tuned the guitar, because apparently he
thought as long as he wasn’t playing an actual song he was in
compliance with my “hold up” order of a moment ago.

And then Doc Fenway went on. “Actually, I
came with some good news for you.” And then she said it. One
sentence that changed everything. “You’re going to see again,
Rachel.”

The room went silent. I flinched as the words
exploded inside my brain. “I…um…how?”

“We have a brand-new healthy set of corneas
for you. Private donor. Wishes to remain anonymous, and—”

“No.” I shook my head and kept on talking
before the arguments could begin. “I’m not putting myself through
it again, Doc. You know I reject every set I get. It’s too much
to—”

“Just hear me out, Rachel. Let me explain why
it’s different this time. Then make whatever decision you
want.”

I bit my lip. I didn’t want to let my hopes
start to climb. So far, they hadn’t, but if I let her talk they
might, and I didn’t like the crushing disappointment of failure.
I’d had transplants before. My body rejected them. Violently. I was
sick all over. I know, another one of my endearing quirks. I’m a
unique individual.

“If everyone could leave us for a few
minutes…?”

“They can stay,” I said. “They’re just going
to torture it out of me later anyway. Go ahead, Doc, give it your
best shot, but you know how I feel about beating this particular
dead horse.”

“Okay.” She cleared her throat. “It’s been
several years since we’ve tried. There’s a new procedure.
Descemet’s Stripping Endothelial Keratoplasty.”

“Oh, well in
that
case, let’s go for
it. Anything with such an impressive sounding name is bound to
work.” I loaded on enough sarcasm to clog up a black hole.

Doc Fenway sighed, then repeated herself, but
in English this time. “We transplant a thin layer of the graft, not
the entire cornea. The risk of rejection is minimal. Recovery time
is faster. It’s light-years beyond what we’ve been able to do
before. And I think it just might be your answer.”

My heart gave a ridiculously hopeful leap. I
told it to lie back down and shut the fuck up.

“The donor chose you specifically, Rachel.
And we can do it today.”

“Oh my God.” That was Sandra, and the words
were damn near swimming in tears. “Oh my God, ohmyGod,
ohmyGod
!”

I wasn’t quite as impressed. “Today? You want
me to decide this today? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Meanwhile Sandra was still going on, “You’re
going to see! You’re going to see, ohmyGod!”

The twins started with the teenage girl
squealing thing that sounds like giant mice having their tails
stepped on. Really, someone ought to be researching a cure for
that. Screw Descemet’s Stripping-whatever.

“This is a miracle!” Amy cried. And then she
and Sandra were hugging and hopping around in what sounded like a
circle. I don’t know.
Blind
, remember? Everyone was talking
and crying and laughing—and squealing, let’s not forget the
squealing—at the same time.

I held up my hands. “Stop. Just stop.” I had
to speak very loudly.

They all stopped, and I felt their eyes on
me. “Okay. Okay.” I took a deep breath, but I wasn’t processing
this. This wasn’t real yet. I didn’t get it. “I
do
need
everybody to get out, okay? Except you, Doc. Everybody else,
just…just go get a coffee or something. Give me a minute here.”

I heard a keystroke and whipped my finger
toward Amy. “Don’t you even
think
about tweeting anything
about this. Understand?”

“Yeah. No, I wasn’t—”

“Close the lid, Amy.”

I heard the laptop close.

“Come on, everyone, let’s give her some
space,” Sandra instructed. She was a little hurt that I’d asked. I
could tell by the texture of her voice.

“Yeah. I need space.”

Mott leaned in close. “You don’t have to do
it if you don’t want to, you know.”

“Right. Like
you
wouldn’t?”

“No. I wouldn’t.” Petulant, maybe a little
combative? What the fuck?

I frowned. I mean, I knew he thought of the
blind as a minority group and himself as our Malcolm X, but I
didn’t think he’d want to stay sightless if he had a choice. Then
again, he’d been born blind. I hadn’t. I’d had twelve years of
vision. Eleven of them twenty-twenty. And I’d had blurry,
half-assed eyesight three times, after the last three transplants,
a few days each time before my body threw a full-on,
no-holds-barred revolt. I
knew
what I was missing.

Mott kissed my cheek, and everyone left the
room. Shuffling steps, grumbling complaints, whispers, and finally
the door closing behind them. I lay there in the bed, listening to
Doc Fenway come over, sit in Mott’s former place, clear her
throat.

“What do you need to know?” she asked.

I thought for a long time, and then I said,
“Is this for real?”

“Yes.”

“Will it work?”

“Almost certainly. I wouldn’t be here if I
didn’t believe it, Rachel. This might be the miracle you didn’t
think you’d ever get.”

She was telling the absolute truth, as she
saw it. Lies were one of the easiest things to hear in people’s
voices. I felt tears brimming in my stupid sightless eyes. Damn, I
did not cry. Not ever. And if I ever did, it sure as hell wouldn’t
be in front of anyone. Thank God I was still wearing my sunglasses.
“I don’t want to believe it just to have it go bad again, Doc. Not
this time. It would be more than I can take.”

Revealing my soft underbelly was not
something I did often. But she wasn’t allowed to tell, right? She
was a doctor.

“But you
have to
believe if you ever
want anything to change. Isn’t that what you’re always writing
about? How it’s the belief that creates the reality, and not the
other way around.”