Pariah (12 page)

On the way to the emergency room, Doyle steps around a man on crutches, dodges a drunk with blood streaming down his face, and keeps on marching until he reaches the reception
counter. Behind the counter two nurses are laughing and joking. One of them manages to slot the words ‘donut’ and ‘anus’ into the same sentence, and the other – a
redhead – laughs even harder. The redhead’s hair is an alluring auburn rather than shocking ginger, and is formed into soft curls. She has pale skin and a laugh that hints of mischief
and adventure in the bedroom. She reminds Doyle of a girl he once knew in Ireland – an older girl who gave the impression of knowing all the secrets of post-pubescence – and so it is
her
name badge he examines first. Her name is Nurse Lynley.

His first thought is that things can’t be all that bad. Nurse Lynley, the woman he spoke to on the phone, is too filled with joy. She has had a good day. Nobody assaulting or abusing her.
No costly mistakes. Nobody in her care dying.

‘Hi,’ he says. ‘My name’s Doyle. I spoke with you on the phone.’

And then it is as if a rain cloud has moved across her head, darkening her features. The sudden sobriety shocks Doyle into the realization that, like him, she is a professional who is used to
dealing with death and injury on a daily basis, and that, like him, she has to make sure it doesn’t warp her view of life. It’s why cops tell jokes at murder scenes. It’s why
nurses tell jokes about the anatomical applications of confectionary. It says nothing about your satisfaction with the day you’re having.

It’s a mirror that Doyle finds unsettling to face.

When the nurse comes around the desk and takes him by the arm and leads him off to a small side room, he is only vaguely aware of Nadine trailing behind. In the room itself he sees a small table
and plastic chairs, a coffee machine, a sink with two unwashed mugs. Nurse Lynley is talking to him, but he feels like he’s bobbing up and down in a choppy sea, catching brief snatches of
conversation each time he comes up. The isolated fragments make little sense to him. He stares into the sink. The faucet is dripping into one of the mugs:
plop . . . plop . . .

The cry from Nadine breaks the spell. His brain wakens again, and he sees the nurse searching his face. Jesus, she is so like that girl back in Ireland. A real tease she was. Proud of her body
and keen to impart its mysteries to all of us grubby boys. What was her name again? Helen something . . .

‘Mr Doyle? Do you understand what I’m saying to you?’ He blinks, tries to clear his fogged head. ‘Yes. No.’

So she tells him again, and this time his brain drops its shield and allows the painful arrow of truth to penetrate.

Rachel, his beautiful Rachel, has died of her injuries.

No.

This can’t be right.

He must be getting confused. Thinking about the time Amy was being born. Rachel lying on a hospital bed, pressing a mask to her face between the screams. The midwife issuing her instructions
– when to push, when not to. The blood, so much blood. And then the sudden change in the atmosphere in that room. The
wrongness
. Everybody galvanized into a course of action that
clearly signaled a problem. He remembers being ushered out of the room, still looking into Rachel’s eyes, calling her name. And her words back to him: ‘You wait for me. You wait for
us
. Me and this baby, we’re not going anywhere.’

And so he waited. Through all the talk of placental abruptions and blood loss and transfusions, he waited.

When she came back to him, her tiny gift of life cradled in her arms, he cried. And she said to him, ‘You don’t get rid of me that easily.’

It became kind of a joke after that. Whenever they argued, and they sulked about it for a while, and they got back together again, she would repeat her mantra.

You don’t get rid of me that easily.

So, yes. That must be what he’s thinking about. It’s the hospital environment and the stress. They’re taking his memories and twisting them into horribly warped
hallucination.

He looks at Nurse Lynley.

‘I want to see her.’

She stares back at him as though in appraisal. As if she is assessing his strength for this.

‘Mr Doyle, I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Your wife . . . She won’t look the same to you. Especially after the work the doctors have done on her. It can be a shock to
some people.’

‘I want to see her. Where is she?’

The nurse tilts her head as she considers the request. ‘Come with me.’

He follows, passing Nadine who has tears in her eyes and a sheen of wetness on her cheeks. They head down a brightly lit corridor. A scrawny man on a gurney shows them a toothless smile. A black
porter whistles ‘If I Were a Rich Man’. Nurse Lynley pauses at a pair of swing doors. Gives Doyle a look that asks,
Are you sure you’re ready for this?

They enter. The room is empty. Except, of course, for the body on the steel table.

Doyle swallows, and wills himself forward. He has to see, has to be sure.

He sees her hair first of all, shoulder length and dark. Normally glossy, but now matted into thick tendrils. He wonders why he can’t see her face properly. What have the doctors put over
her face?

And then he realizes that what he’s looking at
is
her face.

It is all the colors of sorrow. Purples and blues and browns. And it is so misshapen. Her nose is spread sideways across one cheek. Her lips and eyelids are like lightly inflated balloons. One
side of her head is concave, and the ear seems to have dropped several inches.

Doyle has seen worse before, but never on someone he loves. And that’s what makes all the difference. That’s what closes the gap.

He takes a few more steps forward, feeling a growing tightness in his chest. Like he is going into cardiac arrest. Like he is going to be grateful to be in the vicinity of medical experts any
second now.

And then it overwhelms him. He lets out one huge sob that fills the room, and he pitches forward as his legs finally give way. He reaches his arms out to stop his fall, and feels his hands slam
into the cold metal table. He stays like that, bent over, head buried between his outstretched arms.

A hand alights on his back, rubs gently. He knows it’s Nadine, and he can sense that she is crying.

He hears Nurse Lynley’s steps as she comes forward.

‘Mr Doyle? Is there anything I can get you? Some water?’

Doyle sniffs and raises his head. His eyes move from the nurse to Nadine – one patiently concerned, the other on the verge of being inconsolable – and he doesn’t know which
emotion to release first. His anger . . .

. . . or his sheer relief and gratitude.

He says the only thing that seems appropriate in the circumstances:

‘It’s not her.’

Nurse Lynley’s response comes in a flash, like it’s automatic.

‘Come outside,’ she says. ‘Let’s find you someplace we can talk.’

Doyle knows what she’s thinking. That he’s in denial. She’s seen it so many times before.

‘It’s not her. This is not my wife.’

Her lips tighten slightly. ‘Mr Doyle—’

Nadine cuts her off. ‘Cal. Come on. Let’s go.’

In response, Doyle grabs the sheet that has been draped across the body on the table, then yanks it back, exposing the naked upper torso. The action elicits a gasp from Nadine and a glare of
annoyance from the nurse.

‘Look at her, Nadine! Look at her ribs! She’s like a damn glockenspiel! And here . . .’ He takes hold of the cadaver’s arm and lifts it. ‘You see those? Track
marks. She’s a junkie. You see a wedding ring at all? You see any marks where there
used
to be a wedding ring?’ He turns toward the nurse. ‘You got her clothes? Her
possessions?’

Nurse Lynley glances at a red plastic tray on the counter by the sink. Doyle goes over to it. He lifts the scraps of material he finds there – a thin red blouse, a translucent black
brassiere with red trimming – and shows them to Nadine.

‘You think Rachel would wear any of this stuff?’

The tray also holds a small open purse. Doyle tips out its contents. He sees Rachel’s driver’s license, and also what looks like her cellphone, but the other items are unfamiliar to
him.

‘Take a look at this lipstick, Nadine. And this perfume. You think this is Rachel’s style?’

Nadine shakes her head. She looks like a child, upset and confused. Nurse Lynley appears even more dumbfounded, perhaps mortified at the thought that she has made a dreadful error.

‘I don’t understand,’ the nurse says.

Doyle keeps the phone and ID, and tosses the rest back into the tray. ‘Don’t worry. It’s not your fault. You’ve been had. We’ve all been had.’

He heads out of the room, Nadine once again following at his heels like an adopted puppy.

‘Cal, wait. If that’s not Rachel, then where the hell is she?’

He has no answer. The relief he feels is tempered by the fact that he still doesn’t know that Rachel and Amy are safe. His mind races to come up with ideas for locating them.

His cellphone rings. He removes it from his pocket and looks at it. It’s not a number that’s stored in the phone’s address book. He answers it.

‘Hello?’

‘Cal? Is that you?’

He stops, Nadine almost crashing into his back.

‘Rachel? RACHEL?’

‘Cal, where are you?’

‘I . . . I’m at Bellevue Hospital.’

‘Yes, but where? And why have you got your cellphone? Are you okay? You sound—’

‘Yes, I’m okay. Where are you?’

‘I’m at Bellevue too, but I can’t find you. I’ve had everyone looking for you.’

Doyle brings his free hand to his forehead. This conversation is making absolutely no sense to him. Why shouldn’t he have his cellphone?

He looks up at the people milling around him. A short bald man carrying flowers and trying to figure out which way to go. A young man pushing an elderly lady in a wheelchair. A small child in a
fur-trimmed duffel coat, a pink balloon tied to her wrist.

‘Cal?’

The little girl stares at him, smiles . . .

‘Cal? Are you there?’

. . . and then she runs. She comes straight at him. Her face radiates sunshine and daisies and moonbeams and castles and fairies as she dodges around the short bald man and the old lady in the
wheelchair, and she is opening her mouth and shouting something, one word over and over, a word that means everything to Doyle, a word that puts the world back on its axis and the stars in their
rightful places, and that word is . . .

‘Daddy!’

He bends at the knees, ready to scoop up the incoming human missile, and as he does so he catches a glimpse of somebody else at the payphones. A woman, turning to check on her child, staring in
disbelief at what she sees. Such a familiar figure to Doyle. Such a part of him.

Rachel!

And as he gathers Amy up into his arms and whirls her around, he checks his wife on each rotation, sees her come closer and closer, until she too becomes swallowed up in the maelstrom and they
all spin around together, hugging and kissing and laughing and crying and oblivious to what is beyond their reach.

When they settle, when they calm, and some of the love has been doled out to Nadine too, there are answers to be sought.

Rachel says, ‘God, Cal, I thought you were dead. When they couldn’t find you—’

‘Who? Who couldn’t find me?’

‘The nurses. I was told you were in the ICU, but they didn’t know anything about you. They tried the operating rooms, and there was no sign of you there either. I didn’t know
what to—’

Doyle takes hold of her upper arms. ‘Slow down, Rach. Rewind this a little. Who told you I was in the ICU?’

Rachel takes a breath. ‘I got a phone call tonight. It was a really crackly line, and the guy sounded foreign – Indian or Pakistani or something – so it was really hard to
understand what he was saying. He said he was a doctor at Bellevue, and that you’d been brought in with gunshot wounds to the chest. He said you were in a pretty bad way, that it was touch
and go whether . . . whether . . .’

She breaks down then. Doyle wraps her in his arms, whispers reassurances to her as she sobs into his chest. Over her shoulder, he looks at Nadine, then nods toward Amy and the hospital exit.
Nadine gets the message, takes Amy by the hand and starts to lead her out of the building.

Amy says, ‘Why is Mommy crying?’

Nadine answers, ‘She’s just happy to see your Daddy, sweetie. Come on, let’s go see if we can find the car.’

When they have gone, Rachel surfaces again. ‘What’s this all about, Cal? Did someone make a mistake?’

Doyle shakes his head. ‘It was deliberate. Somebody’s idea of fun. I was told you were hurt too. Bastard beat up an innocent woman and left these on her.’ He takes the
cellphone and driver’s license from his pocket.

Rachel gapes at the items. ‘I’ve been looking for those! I was convinced I put them in the car’s glove compartment this morning. When I went to get them later on, they were
gone. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me.’

‘He must have broken into the car somehow, looking for things that belonged to you.’

‘Who, Cal? Who the hell would play such a cruel trick on us?’

‘I don’t know. I really don’t.’

‘What about the woman? The one who got beat up? Couldn’t she tell you anything?’

Doyle looks at her, biting his lip. His vision suddenly blurs, and he blinks it away.

Rachel says, ‘Oh, God, Cal! She’s dead? And you thought it was . . . Oh, Jesus!’

She latches onto him again, pulling herself as close as she can get. He savors the intimacy while he can. There are other things he needs to say to her.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

They head toward the exit, his arm around her shoulders, keeping her safe against him, wishing he could be her protector forever.

She doesn’t suspect yet, he thinks. She doesn’t know what’s coming.

He hears footsteps hurrying along the corridor behind him.

‘Mr Doyle! Mr Doyle!’

He turns, and Rachel turns with him. He takes her hand in his, and waits for the caller to catch up with them.