Little Mercies (8 page)

“I like it, too,” Maudene said with a smile. “Would you like to rest for a little bit?”

“I’m kind of tired,” Jenny said, unable to stifle a yawn.

“Well, you are welcome to take a nap.”

Jenny slowly spun in a circle, taking in the crisp cleanliness of the room.

“You make yourself at home and I’ll be right downstairs.” Maudene turned to leave but hesitated. “We’ll have to talk, you know, when you’re ready.” Jenny remained silent. “I know someone we can call and talk to about your situation. A social worker.”

Jenny froze. An icy claw of fear scraped against the back of her neck.

“But not until you’re ready,” Maudene said and quietly closed the bedroom door behind her.

Jenny untied her father’s t-shirt that was wrapped around her waist, neatly folded it and set it on the bedside table. Wearily, Jenny sat down on the very edge of the bed, being careful to not let her grubby fingers touch the petal-pink blanket. Her eyes scanned the beautiful room and exhaustion and disappointment pricked at the tender spot behind her eyes causing tears to puddle. Social workers meant trouble and she knew that it was already time to move on, to try and find her grandmother on her own, but fatigue pinned her to her spot and she closed her eyes.
Just for a minute,
Jenny thought.
Then I’ll go.

When Jenny awoke, she felt a warm, moist breeze on her neck and pulled the sheet up to her nose. She wondered if someone had come into the room and opened the window. Jenny did not like to sleep with the windows open. Images of rabid dogs and free-floating vampires climbing through her window made her heart hammer in terror. She blamed her father. One weekend he insisted on watching a marathon of horror movies based on the novels of some writer who he said made a bazillion dollars scaring the shit out of people. Jenny tried not to watch. Turned her back to the television and busied herself with painting her toenails with the bright pink polish that she picked from the prize box in her classroom. It didn’t matter, though; cemeteries for pets and men with axes kept crowding into her brain.

She looked toward the windows and found the curtains lying still against the panes. Then her bleary eyes fell to the side of the bed, where Dolly, breathing heavily, stood looking hopefully up at her. She sat up with a start, realizing where she was and a renewed sense of urgency to leave pawed at her chest and she swept her legs over the side of the bed. At least there wasn’t any white foam dripping from the corners of the dog’s mouth, Jenny thought to herself. “Go away,” she whispered at the dog, whose mournful eyes regarded her solemnly. Despite herself, she reached out and patted Dolly’s head, so dark brown it was nearly black. She ran her fingers beneath Dolly’s chin where a crop of white whiskers framed the old dog’s muzzle, and the dog raised her chin and closed her eyes in bliss.

“Ah,” came Maudene’s voice from the open doorway. “I see that Dolly found you. You’ve been asleep for a few hours. You must have been tired.” Jenny wiggled her toes and closed her eyes, suddenly shy in the older woman’s presence. “When you’re ready to get up, come on downstairs and I’ll fix you something to eat. A sandwich, or I have some leftover meat loaf in the refrigerator.”

Jenny, not used to being given any options for meals, except when they went to the Happy Pancake, where she swore she would never, ever eat again, usually could only find cereal or peanut butter and crackers, the meager provisions her father scraped together. Maudene, to Jenny’s surprise, was not wearing her blue-and-yellow waitress uniform, but was dressed in a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved t-shirt. “Thanks,” she said shyly.

Maudene smiled. “You’re welcome. I’ll see you downstairs.”

Jenny rummaged through her backpack hoping to find, by some miracle, a brand-new outfit inside. She didn’t want to go and meet her grandmother for the first time wearing her denim shorts with the hole in the pocket, and her favorite pink polo and skirt now looked faded and frayed. She thought of the envelope filled with money—maybe Maudene would take her to Walmart for new clothes for the occasion—but then she thought twice. Maudene said she was going to call a social worker and the last thing Jenny wanted was to find herself in some office with a stack of drawing paper and markers in front of her with a strange lady asking her about how she felt and if anyone had hurt her lately. Instead, she would use the money to take a bus or a cab to Hickory Street where her grandmother hopefully still lived.

She changed quickly, turning her back to Dolly who was watching her intently, and ran her father’s comb through her matted hair. She padded through the hallway to the bathroom with Dolly close at her heels and brushed her teeth, being careful to rinse out the sink. She had never seen such a clean bathroom, and Jenny had to wonder if anyone actually ever used it. She returned to the bedroom, made the bed, folded her dirty clothes and returned them to her backpack. Jenny wanted to bring her backpack downstairs with her but thought that Maudene might think it was weird that she carried it around with her everywhere. She looked around the room trying to decide where she could hide it. She couldn’t bring herself to look beneath the bed and the closet was too obvious, so in the end she decided to bring it downstairs with her.

The walls that led down the stairs were filled with framed photos that Jenny hadn’t noticed earlier. There were dozens of them in various sizes. School pictures and family portraits, team pictures and wedding photos. Jenny thought back to the few pictures hidden in her backpack. Her father never had enough money to buy any of her school photos. Not even the package that had the words
Best Buy!
written next to it.

As she came down the steps she heard the murmur of a television. A slightly sweet smell greeted her when she entered the kitchen and Jenny was surprised to find that she was hungry. After being so sick a few hours before, she thought she would never want to eat again. A small portable television was positioned beneath a set of kitchen cabinets made of the same dark wood that was found throughout the rest of the house and was set to a news channel. “I made corn muffins—how does that sound?” Maudene asked.

“I’ve never had them,” Jenny said honestly. “They sound gross.” And after a beat she added, “But they smell good.” Jenny looked at the table, set just as it was at the restaurant with plates and napkin-wrapped silverware and small glasses filled with milk. She and her father usually ate standing up or sitting on the edge of the bed while they watched television. Maudene set the golden muffins, steam rising in curls from the basket that held them, on the table.

“They’re delicious with butter and strawberry preserves, if I do say so myself,” Maudene said, nodding toward a small covered dish and a bowl of quivering red jelly. “Help yourself.”

Jenny sat down at the table and reached for a muffin, singeing her fingers and hastily dropping it to her plate where it bounced and tumbled to the floor. Jenny quickly bent over and retrieved it before an ever-present Dolly could snatch it away. “Sorry,” she said, righting herself and carefully setting the muffin on her plate. Maudene hadn’t even noticed. She was staring intently at the television, where a woman reporter was standing in front of a hospital saying something about the heat and a baby. Maudene stood, walked toward the television and bent down close until her nose almost touched the screen.

“Oh, no,” Maudene murmured. “Oh, dear God, no.”

Chapter 13

A
dam rushes into the emergency room just as Dr. Nickerson steps into the waiting area. She reaches out to shake Adam’s hand and introduces herself. “We have Avery stabilized and her core temperature is down to one hundred and two degrees. We will have to watch her very carefully. More seizures are a real possibility. We are moving her to the pediatric intensive care unit. The biggest concern now is if any organ damage occurred. Being subjected to such intense temperatures can be especially dangerous for the kidneys. We’ll do further blood tests as well as check Avery’s urine to look for muscle breakdown, infection and electrolyte abnormalities. Avery is in and out of consciousness right now and when she opens her eyes she appears to be quite confused.”

Adam looks bewildered and keeps looking back and forth between Dr. Nickerson and me. I squeeze his hand trying to convey through my touch to be patient, that I will explain everything after Dr. Nickerson leaves. “This is a critical time for your daughter right now. We have her on an IV of cool liquids and oxygen as a precaution in case she stops breathing again.” I bite back a gasp and Adam lightly shakes his hand from mine. “We don’t know the long-term effects, if any, that this will have on her. Time will tell.” Adam has stopped looking at Dr. Nickerson and his gaze remains fixed on me. “Dr. Campbell is the nephrologist who will be monitoring Avery’s kidney function. She’s the best in the state,” Dr. Nickerson continues. The weight of Adam’s stare lies heavily on me and if I look at him I’m afraid of what I’ll find in his face. “Perhaps,” Dr. Nickerson says, looking back and forth between Adam and me, “you’d like a quiet place to talk?”

“Yes, please,” I say as Adam scrubs a hand over his face as if trying to rub away the visions of Avery hooked up to an IV, an oxygen mask covering her heart-shaped face.

Dr. Nickerson leads us to a small room labeled Family Consultation. “Take your time. It will take a few minutes to move Avery to the sixth floor. We’ve already contacted your general practitioner and he’ll stop by on his rounds, as well.” She shakes both our hands and says her goodbyes, leaving Adam and me alone.

“Adam,” I begin.

“What happened, Ellen?” he asks, not angrily, not accusatorily, but in disbelief.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” I say in a rush. “I didn’t know she was in the van. Did you put her in there?”

Adam looks taken aback. “Yes, I put her in the van. I told you, don’t you remember? You were upstairs getting your bag. You yelled, ‘Okay.’”

I shake my head. “I don’t, Adam. I swear to God I don’t remember.” My voice is shaking and I swallow hard.

“I had early baseball practice because of the heat. Leah and Lucas were going with me to help. You were going to take Avery to Linda’s. I
told
you.” I’m still shaking my head back and forth as Adam’s voice rises. “I called to you before you got in the van. I said ‘Avery’s all set.’”

“No.” I cover my face with my hands, trying to remember. “No, I didn’t hear you. It was such a crazy morning.”

“Ellen, you gave me a thumbs-up!” Adam voice echoes through the tiny room. “A thumbs-up means you heard me!”

I feel as if I’ve been punched. I stumble backward, bumping into the wall. Adam’s face is twisted in grief, not anger, which is worse. “I’m so sorry, Adam. I’m so sorry,” I whisper, taking a tentative step toward him. There is a light knock on the door and I stop short. Through the narrow window of the consultation room, a sturdy, white-haired figure stands. My mother. I fling open the door and fall into her arms. She clutches on to me like I had hoped my husband would have. She strokes my hair and rubs my back, whispering, “It’s going to be okay,” over and over again into my ear. She releases me and envelopes my husband, who is twelve inches taller than she is but still he collapses into her capable arms. I watch as my husband dissolves into helpless tears and my mother comforts him.

It’s then when I see the little girl standing nearby, her long hair falling messily into her face. At first I think she is lost and I scan the hallway for an adult she might belong to. Her face is strikingly familiar to me. A former client, maybe. My mind scrolls through the endless list of children that I’ve worked with over the years. Then I think she is just a nosey, curious girl gawking at our display of human heartache, and I move to shut the door, but my mother, still clutching one of Adam’s hands, puts her other hand on the door. Tears glisten in my mother’s eyes and the tip of her nose is bright red. “This is Jenny.” I wait for further introduction, but none comes. “Jenny,” she continues, “this is my daughter, Ellen, and her husband, Adam.”

“Hi,” we all offer awkwardly, and I look at my mother questioningly. She responds with an
I will tell you later
raise of the eyebrow.

“How is she?” my mother asks, pulling a tissue from the box that sits on a small table in the corner of the room.

“We don’t know.” My voice breaks. “They’re moving her up to the pediatric intensive care unit. We need to go and meet her up there.” I reach for Adam’s hand and am relieved when he doesn’t pull away. Together, we make our way to the elevator and the little girl named Jenny looks up at us. “Sixth floor,” I tell her, and she dutifully pushes the button.

“Whoop,” she says, and giggles as the elevator rises quickly, causing my own stomach to flip. I figure that my mother is taking care of a granddaughter of one of her friends or the daughter of one of her co-workers at the restaurant, but it still puzzles me.

“Where are Lucas and Leah?” I ask Adam as the doors open to the sixth floor.

“They’re over at the Arwoods’.”

I nod. This is good, the kids spending the afternoon at the Arwoods’ home, our neighbors who have two children just the same age as Leah and Lucas.

“You got my message?” I ask my mother and I find myself carefully watching Jenny, who seems transfixed by the artwork that lines the pediatric hallway: bright watercolors of elephants and lions, whimsical prints from the story of Peter Pan, and handcrafted kites with delicate tails affixed to the walls. Again, I feel as if I know this little girl. Did she go to school with Leah? Did I visit her home? Place her in foster care at one point?

My mother shakes her head. “No, I saw the television.”

“The television?” I ask in surprise.

“I saw the reporter and the camera when I came into the emergency room,” Adam confirms.

“And I saw you on TV going into the emergency room,” my mother says to Adam. “The reporter was talking about a little girl left in a car—” she glances carefully in my direction “—and then I saw Adam rushing into the hospital. I knew something was terribly wrong and came right here.”

“Oh, my God.” My knees feel weak and my stomach sick. “Why were they talking about it on the news? It was an accident.” But I know why this has caught the attention of the media and the dizzying sensation that things are unraveling, that all control is being lost, presses upon me.

“Never mind that now,” my mother soothes. “You just need to worry about Avery. Everything will get sorted out soon enough.”

The corridor is bustling with foot traffic. Doctors, nurses and other hospital personnel walk purposefully, hands wrapped around paper cups filled with coffee. Families move more slowly, pushing wheelchairs or gingerly guiding a loved one connected to an IV pole through the hallways. Jenny halts in the middle of the walkway, her eyes pinned to a small boy slowly pedaling a Hot Wheels tricycle. His head is smooth and hairless, the tender skin beneath his eyes bruised-looking, his face a pale full moon covered by a yellow mask. He is tethered to an IV that drips an innocuous-looking clear liquid into his veins and is rolled along by his mother, who follows close behind. At first I think it is the little boy with whom Jenny is fascinated, but it’s the mother she can’t pull her gaze from. She is mesmerized. With rapt attention she scans the woman up and down as if memorizing her tightly drawn, exhausted face, the hunch of her shoulders, each leaden step. I see it, too. The way the mother looks at her ill son. It hurts to watch. But there is something in Jenny’s own face, and in the children I work with, that I’ve seen before too many times to count. A longing, a deep-seated need. I wish I had something to offer Jenny, some words, a hug, a pat on the shoulder. But I’ve got nothing. All I can think about is Avery.