Shorts - Sinister Shorts (28 page)

The Brit returned, successful, with a resident in tow. He sat back down in his chair in front of the sink. The mother removed herself from the bed. The tall, thin doctor, black bags big as old-fashioned doctor satchels pouched under his eyes, leaned momentarily against the wall for support, then moved toward the bed. “Where does it hurt?” he asked.

“It freaking hurts there, and there! It hurts all the way underneath!” she said. “I went to this clinic last week? And they gave me painkillers, that's it! Can you believe it? And now I end up here!”

“When did the pain get really bad?”

“Two days ago.”

“And when did you originally injure yourself?”

“Last weekend, on Saturday night. A week ago.”

“How did you do it?”

“I was frolicking,” she said. Weirdly, she giggled. “I was frolicking in the bushes, and I fell, and a twig or something caught on my nipple ring, you know?”

A shocked pause stopped all activity for a few seconds. The resident, who probably had seen it all and heard it all, paused in his scribbling. Even he seemed rattled. Gretchen held herself utterly still. Craig's mouth hung open, stalled at the start of a sentence.

“I never frolic,” said the doctor, and the relief in his voice-if such was the result of frolicking, then by God, he was glad to put in thirty-six-hour shifts for the rest of his natural life-shook the other people in the room, on both sides of the curtain out of their momentary arrest.

“Too busy to frolic,” the mother said. “You must work very hard.”

“Yes,” he murmured. “Um, you'll need to remove your jewelry for surgery, Ms. Heller.”

“All of it? Some of them won't go back in. They're permanent.”

“Okay,” the resident said. “Fine.”

“They made me remove my wedding ring,” Gretchen whispered to Craig. “Said you can't have anything metal in the operating room.”

“They don't want to tangle with her,” Craig said. “Don't want to get stuck with something sharp. Holy Christ, what's the matter with those parents? She looks completely savage. Her parents ought to be teaching her more about what it means to be human.”

“You're how old?” the resident asked Katie.

“Twenty-one.”

“Smoke?”

“Yep.”

“For how long?”

“Since I was ten. That's… uh…”

“Eleven years,” her mother offered helpfully.

“Right. Eleven years.”

“Drink?” the resident, from here on out unflappable, said.

“Yeah, to excess, regularly.”

Craig, listening across the curtain, ruffled his hair again, clearly quite upset.

And despite the obvious heat of the story bubbling behind Katie's words, the resident ignored the implications and moved right along. “Anything today?”

“No.”

“Street drugs?”

“No.”

Craig snorted. Gretchen put a hand to his lips to shush him. “Yeah,” he whispered, “she was running naked through the bushes and she doesn't take drugs. Right.”

“I imagine the staff know instantly what lies are being told. Like when they asked how much I weighed…” Gretchen said. “They can probably tell by looking.”

“Oh, you. You don't lie very well. Every crazy thing you do, you eventually confess.”

“You didn't know I knew about your girlfriend.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I didn't want to know. Maybe I wasn't ready until now.”

“Prescriptions?” the resident continued with the girl.

The father stood up. “I've got the list,” he said. “Already gave it to the nurse.”

The resident's head stayed bent over his clipboard. “Read 'em off.”

Katie's father listed at least a dozen medications in a clear English accent. The first ones, familiar names like Xanax, came out brightly, as though he were reciting a list of breakfast cereals. Several others he had trouble pronouncing, but he struggled until he had conveyed the information, and put the paper back into his pocket, satisfied.

“Okay, I was wrong,” Craig said. “She didn't need street drugs when she could get high legally ten different ways every day.”

“Diagnosis?” asked the resident through the curtain, a paragon of dispassion.

“Bipolar,” Katie said, sounding almost happy at being truly pegged. “And…”

At this point, Craig bumped into Gretchen's table and upset the water pitcher, so they didn't hear the rest of the diagnosis. But the next question from the doctor regained their attention. “Are you sexually active?”

“Not anymore,” Katie said, again filling her words with portent.

“One of those drugs that's supposed to make her sane must inhibit her libido,” Craig said, keeping his voice quiet, obviously fascinated.

“Where can I get some?” asked Gretchen. “Stop you from wanting to screw your newest blonde and any other willing women in your future. Nip your desire in the bud. Make you act your age.”

“Don't be bitter, Gretchen. That's ugly.”

“I'm not pretty but you used to think I was. I guess now all your blind loving goes her way. Now you think she's pretty. Now you see me in front of you, faded. I thought you had more character, Craig. You could have resisted.”

“I couldn't. You think you can control everything.”

“I do have control, Craig.”

“Nobody controls life.”

“I make a dozen decisions every day to regulate my behavior, to keep to the path I've picked. I don't grab for the man making eye contact in the elevator, even if he's handsome, and I'm lonely and ignored. I don't steal at the store even if it's something I want and nobody's looking. I won't sell my soul for a nickel!”

“Here you go again, hysterical. Souls at stake, instead of a failed relationship.”

“Out-of-control is so easy. You didn't make a conscious choice when you looked too closely at a woman and started noticing her perfume, and then took it further and talked to her. Touched her.”

“Gretchen, it isn't as if you don't do crazy things. You know you do when you drink.”

“I'm not proud of that. It's not who I really am.”

“You had to know eventually. I'm glad it's out.”

“I didn't want you to tell me. I wanted it to burn out. Now, you've told me, it's real.”

“She's just a place to go for now. It isn't what you think.”

“Should that make me feel better? That you didn't even fall in love with someone else? You left me for nothing?”

“I didn't say that…”

“Romance is fantasy, you know. You think there's a special woman out there for you when it really all amounts to the same thing, a woman, a sexual attraction, connection. Doesn't matter what woman. It might as well be me as her.”

“I need something different in my life.”

“Question,” Gretchen said. “If you don't love me, how do I feel about you?” She started crying, but really it was her leg killing her now. The dull pain sharpened and struck, and the long bone that had broken burned inside her leg like a molten sword. She took her other half pill with a piece of leftover bread, and pushed him away when he fluttered around her, looking angry. He hovered between her and the window, casting shadows on the bed.

On the other side of the curtain, a nurse announced that they had squeezed Katie in next for surgery. With much effort and many encouragements from her parents, a crew of family and hospital personnel helped her onto the gurney. They took her away. The room quieted for a moment.

“The squeaky wheel,” Craig said dismissively. “Wonder what other poor schmuck will have to wait while they fix her miserable, self-abused breast.” He walked to the foot of her bed and held the metal bar, looking at her. “If you'll get ready, we'll go. If not, I'm leaving.”

She knew he didn't mean it. “I need more water. One more, okay?”

He started over to the sink, but before he got there, two people arrived with armloads of fresh linens and began to make Katie's bed. Silently, he watched. After they left, Gretchen pulled back the curtain and watched him pour her water, then wash his hands.

“What a sordid little life. I guess those people were her parents. What losers,” he said, handing her the glass.

“How do you mean?”

“Smoked since she was ten. Where were they?” he asked. “Lots of teen piercings. Nipple rings.”

“She's an adult. She's twenty-one.”

“And free to act like any old adult fathead, apparently. They popped her out and gave up. Let her roll in the slop on the floor.”

“You don't know what they've been through with her. Maybe this is the best way. Maybe being forgiving, unconditional… people can do that, love unconditionally.”

“To hell with her pain. I'd have had her over my knee. I'd be ripping the damned ‘jewelry' out one by one.”

“I got something different,” Gretchen said, reaching into the bag for her clothes. She pulled the hospital gown down onto the floor and threw on a sweater.

“Oh? What did you get? That they're such good people because they let her ruin her life? Come on, you were as staggered as me about what a waste she is. She won't live to be thirty.”

“She seemed very young to me. Immature, and very, very desperate. She was hurting. The dad kept track of everything for her. He ran out to find help. The mother cuddled her because she needed that. They forgave her everything, every dumb thing she did.”

“They're irresponsible idiots. People like that should never be parents, and that girl had no business living, she was so screwed up.”

“How is it you're so responsible? Remind me. I forget.”

“My life is honest, at least. When I knew I had to change things, I told you.”

“You always overrated honesty. What matters isn't what you say, it's what you do. I don't think you're responsible at all. I think you depend on other people too much, and I think your ego gives you the idea you're running your life independently, when you don't. You need me. You always will. You've got to face that before you can understand real love.” Gretchen pulled on her underpants carefully, up and over her injured leg. He came over to help her with her sweatpants.

“No.”

“That looks awkward. Let me help.”

“You'll push too fast and it will hurt. Please don't. Leave it.”

“I'll be careful.”

“No!”

He stared at her.

“I'm too pissed now. I don't want you to touch me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I can see we're going nowhere. It's like you said, this isn't a negotiation, and you're not changing your mind without leaving here tonight. You won't let go of her and come back to me yet, which is what you should do. So do something else for me.”

“What?”

“Go, Craig.”

“I'll take you home. I said I would.”

“I don't want you here right now. You need to grow up. See what's in front of your face. That she's not real. I am real, and I am here for you when you figure that out.”

He loved the idea; she saw it in his eyes, but the well-trained gentleman in him rose to the occasion, offering up token arguments which she easily dismissed.

“How will you get home?” he said, finally giving in.

“Don't worry. I can take care of it.”

“It's very… generous of you, Gretchen.”

“No, it isn't. It's pure selfishness.” She was adamant, and he was eager to get back to his new lover. He left, cell phone open, finger punching away.

Katie's mother came back into the room looking vaguely around. “Forgot her apple juice,” she said, checking under the sheets. She finally found what she was looking for on the counter beside the sink. “She loves apple juice.”

Well, Mom did seem a little on the dim side, Gretchen decided. Nobody left apple juice in bed.

But she sure loved her wayward, screwed-up daughter.

Gretchen swung her leg over the side of the bed and pressed the red button to summon a nurse. Somebody needed to get her a wheelchair, to push her out to the curb. By the time she got home tonight, Craig would have gone to Julie's apartment.

What would Craig do when Julie didn't answer her door? Probably the same thing he had done all evening with the cell phone. He would try and try again. At some point, maybe days down the line, he would get it through his thick skull that Julie was gone.

She hadn't been hard to take care of. Soft, not a suitable match for Craig, Julie wasn't someone with the strength to prop him up. She was certainly no match for Gretchen.

Gretchen had followed her and Craig on Friday night. They went to a restaurant, the restaurant where Gretchen and Craig always used to eat together. Now Gretchen couldn't go there anymore. She would be too embarrassed for their waiter, Harold, to witness her humiliation.

To Gretchen's surprise, Craig hadn't gone home with Julie. At least he had told the truth about that. He left her at the doorway to her building. They kissed while Gretchen watched. Then she followed his new woman all the way back into the dinky, dark apartment house. Gretchen knocked on the door and Julie answered.

Flimsy, insubstantial person. Gretchen would have known better. She had all night to finish, because she and Craig had fought earlier about her drinking. She had stomped off to stay at her mother's, supposedly. Julie's kitchen was full of things Gretchen knew how to use, even if she didn't usually use them.

That Saturday night dancing with Craig, she had seen the specter of Julie coming toward her in his eyes even though she knew it was impossible, that Julie was gone, but with that traveling car wreck of a thought, she had fallen. In that moment, she had succumbed to fear and weakness, and this was her punishment. She accepted it. She took responsibility. She didn't have to like it: visible injury. Weeks of disability. So she learned her lesson. You take control; you accept consequences.

Would he come back begging? Or would he waste a lot of time searching for Julie first?

Maybe he would call the police.

But they would never find her. No one would ever find her. Julie, as it turned out, was a clean freak. She had more bleach stowed below her kitchen sink than a hospital. And Gretchen, messy in her own life, knew how to clean, she just didn't like it much.

He had no one else. She had also spoken the truth when she said he wouldn't have had the courage to leave Gretchen without someone waiting in the wings to substitute. He needed a woman to anchor him. He would be unhappy without one.