Nothing to Lose (22 page)

We were already on the Rickenbacker Causeway, but Karpe found the next opening and made a U-ey.

“Let me guess,” Kirstie said. “She fell down the stairs.”

I nodded. “Or ran into a wall a few times. And he’s with her, making sure she gets the story straight.”

“Making sure she doesn’t tell the truth, huh?” Karpe said. “That she ran into his fist.”

When he saw the look on my face, he said, “Sorry.”

The first person I saw when I walked into the E.R. waiting room was Walker. He was talking to a black nurse. He wore a button-down and looked like he’d showered and changed before coming. He laughed at something the nurse had said.

“I hear you,” he said. “I’m the same way—overworked and underpaid. But I was just wondering if you could take a look. She’s feeling bad. She fell a few hours ago. Seemed alright, then woke up hurting. I’m awfully worried about her, you know.”

I looked and saw my mother. She was curled in a ball on an orange chair. She didn’t have any injuries you could see. She usually didn’t. No bruises or black eyes. But her skin was pale, and her lips looked like there was blood in them. I’d seen that before, more than once.

“What’s wrong with her again?” the nurse asked Walker.

“She spit up some blood on the way here. Says her stomach hurts.”

Next to me, Kirstie nudged Karpe. “Let’s look for a candy machine. I’m starved.”

She gave me a little look like
You going to be okay?
I nodded and walked over to where my mother was sitting.

“You’re puking blood?” I touched her shoulder, and she drew away.

She glanced at Walker. “It’s not that bad. I’m okay.”

“Sure.”

But she clutched her stomach, trying to hold the pain in. She looked at Walker, still talking to the nurse. He saw me, and his face sort of clouded up. But you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t know him. The nurse looked at my mother too.

“You’re not okay,” I said. “What the hell did he do this time?”

“Nothing.”

“What the hell did he do this time?”

I wanted to shake her. She drew back and sat there, shivering. She didn’t answer.

“Forget it,” I said.

Because, in that one minute, I knew it. I knew that sooner or later he’d kill her. Maybe it would be a week or a month or ten years, but he would. And if I stuck around, I’d get to watch it, or maybe get killed too. Maybe I’d always known it. All the stuff I’d thought about wanting her to leave—it was just something I’d told myself. She’d never leave.

I swallowed. I didn’t want to know that.

And it was that knowledge that made my fists clench, that made my throat tighten, that made me want to grab Walker by the collar and scream
You bastard!
and shake him.

I did none of it. Walker came over with the nurse.

“Look, honey. I told you I’d get someone over here.”

Mom looked up. She met Walker’s eyes, not the nurse’s. They all ignored me.

The nurse started talking to Mom. “What’s wrong, Mrs. . . .?”

“Monroe,” Walker filled in. “Lisa.”

“Lisa.” The nurse nodded. Her name tag identified her as Sherri Mastin. She moved away from Walker to the other side of my mother. “Talk to me, Lisa.”

Mom glanced at Walker again. She wouldn’t look at Sherri Mastin, and I remembered what she’d said, about wanting to be a nurse once. Finally she said, “My stomach. It hurts a little. It’s not a big deal.” She closed her eyes, and a tear seeped out of the side. She looked at Walker.

“It’s okay.” Walker came around and patted her shoulder. “You want me to tell her what happened?”

“It’s better if I hear from the patient.” Sherri Mastin got down on her haunches, making eye contact with my mother.

Mom shrank back. She looked at Walker. “I … I…”

“Can’t you see she’s in pain?” Walker demanded.

“I need to know what happened,” Sherri Mastin said, while Mom snailed further and further into herself on the orange chair.

“I can tell you what happened.”

It was my own voice. They all turned toward me. The nurse met my eyes, and I knew beyond doubt that she knew. Knew and was trying to get my mother to say it. Maybe she would tell the police, and they would finally do something about Walker. Well, I could tell her.

“He hit her. That’s what he does—hits her in the stomach so no one can see, so there won’t be any bruises.”

“That’s not true.” Walker’s voice was calm. “Michael, I know you’re as upset about Mom as I am, but it’s important for the doctors to know what really happened.”

“That’s why I’m telling them.” I looked at Sherri Mastin. “He hit her. He hits her.”

“Were you there when this happened, Michael?” Walker’s voice was calm.

They were both looking at me again. Walker’s eyes were understanding,
fake
understanding. And Sherri Mastin’s eyes held that different understanding, that knowledge.

“Tell the truth, Michael,” Walker said.

“Just tell us what happened,” Sherri Mastin said. Her voice was so kind. I wanted to go to her, have her arms around me like a mother’s. I started to say I’d been there. I’d seen Walker hit Mom. I was going to lie. It wasn’t really a lie because I knew it was true.

“No.” It was my mother. “No. My husband has never hit me.” Her voice was stronger, like the lie gave her nourishment. “The bathroom floor was wet, and I slipped. I slipped.”

There were tears in her eyes. I wondered if it was just the pain, or if it was the betrayal.

But before I could think too much about it. Walker had her in his arms, and Nurse Mastin was walking away, saying, “We’ll run some tests. It will be at least an hour.”

I ran after her.

“She’s lying,” I said. “He did it.”

She turned to me. “Were you there?”

“No. I didn’t need to be there this time. I was there a hundred other times.”

“Why didn’t she leave him then, that other hundred times?”

“I don’t know.”

“She won’t leave him this time, either.” She started to walk away again.

I ran after her. “What is wrong with you people?” I was screaming. “I’m telling the truth. How can you ignore it like that?”

I wanted to grab her, smash her to the floor, hold her ears, and
make
her listen to me.

She said, “Honey, how can I
not
ignore it? I have over a hundred patients a night—traffic accidents, gunshot victims, heart attacks, and maybe half a dozen domestic cases like your mother’s.” I started to say I didn’t care about her other patients, but she held a hand up. “Sometimes the guy just dumps her at the door. That’s the best because maybe, maybe she’ll talk to me then. Or talk to a social worker if I can find one. Maybe she’ll take a pamphlet for Safe Space and he won’t beat the crap out of her when he finds it. But usually it happens like that.” She gestured at Walker. “He’ll sit there, telling the story with that arrogant, smart-ass look on his face that says
I can make this dumb bitch do what I want
until I want to smack him. And she sits there like a dumb bitch, and I want to smack her, too.”

“So you don’t do anything?”

“I can’t make them talk. But I try, like I tried with your mother. I try to get the story and put it on her chart. Try to get a record for the future in case—”

“In case he kills her?”

“I was going to say in case she leaves. But, yeah, there’s those others, too.”

“What others?”

“The ones it’s too late for.”

She glanced back at my mother and Walker. I looked too. He was still holding her, rocking her.

When I looked back at Sherri Mastin, she’d walked away. I screamed after her.

“Don’t you care?”

She stopped, looked at me, and with a gentleness in her voice that came from knowledge, she said, “I can’t afford to care anymore.”

She turned and walked away. I watched her back, down the hall. When she was gone, I turned toward Mom and Walker. Instead, I saw Kirstie waiting in the doorway with Karpe.

I ran to her.

“I know you were there, Michael.”

Angela says it gently, like when I was eight years old and confessed to Mom that, yes, I was the one who’d uprooted the marigolds from in front of Old Lady Cagle’s trailer—only to find out that Mom had already apologized and made arrangements for me to replant. I look at Angela, almost expecting her to pat me on the head and say she’s proud of me for admitting it—like Mom did.

“Did Karpe tell you?”

“No. I just knew. You don’t get very far in this business if you can’t see the facts behind people’s stories.”

“So I guess this changes everything.”

“It changes nothing. Yes, it’s possible—probable—your mother’s lawyers will want to speak with you about what happened that night. But you’ve committed no crime.”

“But I was there. I …” I stop, unable to hear my words. Instead, I hear the screams, the sickening crunch of the fire poker breaking Walker’s skull, the thud as his body hit the floor. My mind is red, red as my mother’s bloody face and hands. But my own hands are clean.

Now I’m looking down at my shoes, rocking back and forth. Angela’s beside me, her hand on my shoulder. “Listen,” she says.

I say nothing, remembering the blood on my sneakers. I’d washed them before I left.

“Did you help her plan to kill him?”

I try to pull away from her. “No one planned anything. We—”

She keeps holding onto me. “Shh! Did you help her cover it up?”

“No. No. I just left.”

“It’s not a crime to watch someone die, Michael. Strange as it may seem, you can watch just about anything. There was a case in New York where a whole neighborhood saw a girl murdered, and nothing happened to them.”

I stare at my shoes. But I think.
Didn’t it? Didn’t everything change forever for them?
Through the haze of blood and screams, I still see my mother’s face and Walker’s lifeless body.

“You’ve been running for a year now, Michael. Has it helped?”

I shake my head. “I want to tell them,” I say. “I can’t hide anymore. I want to do what I can for her.”

When Angela doesn’t say anything, I add, “I’m sure.”

She nods. “I’ll call Child Services. And then I’ll call your mother’s attorneys.”

“I’m ready.”

“I have to get out of here,” I said.

Karpe looked across the waiting room. “But aren’t we going to—”

“No. I need to go.” I was already pulling Kirstie’s arm. She didn’t argue with me.

When we got to the parking lot, Karpe asked, “Am I taking you home or to school?”

“Neither.”

“But there’s school in”—Karpe checked his watch—“in two hours.”

“You don’t have to take me all the way to the fair. Just dump our asses at the Metrorail. We’ll find the way.”

“But I meant
you
have school in two hours.”

“No, I don’t. I’m not going there. I’m never going back there again.” I walked faster toward the car, then turned to Karpe. “Look—thanks for picking me up. It was a pal thing to do, especially after the sucky way I acted yesterday. If you dump us at the train station, you should make school. I’m sorry… I’m sorry I made you lose sleep.”

I was sorry about other stuff, too, but Karpe said, “Screw sleep. Michael, if you told someone, maybe—”

“I just did tell someone. It didn’t help. Nothing will help.”

“My dad’s fiancée’s a lawyer,” Karpe said. “She could, maybe…”

But I shook my head.

“I’ll take care of him,” Kirstie told Karpe.

Karpe dropped us at the Vizcaya Metrorail station. It was nearly five, and the Wackenhut guard was hoisting the metal gate when we got there. I paid for both of us, and we climbed the stairs and waited for the first train.