Skin Games (18 page)

 We walked up to the front of the house, and I fumbled for my house key with one hand while my other was buried deep in the back of her tight designer jeans; they were so tight I thought I might rip them as my arm squeezed between her belt and panty line.

My palm was wrapped around her ass as I said, “Stop!”  Her touch had my sides shivering with the tickles.  She kept at me, nibbling my neck and pecking my cheek while her hands were all over my ribs and belly and chest.  We both laughed as I dropped my keys to the floor of the front porch.

I slid my hands free and took a step back.  She looked at me with a stern and somber look that almost fooled me.  But she couldn’t hold it and burst into laughter which I quickly joined in.  I bent over and picked up my keychain with my back to her, and I couldn’t help but jump and yelp when I felt her fingers slap my ass and goose me.

“Stop it,” I said; then I whirled around and pushed her shoulder.

“You bully!” she shouted, then pushed me back, twice as hard.

“Who’s the bully?”  I fingered my house key and said, “Let me get the door.”

“Okay.”

When I slid my key into the door, it opened before I even turned the key.

“What the?” I said.  I looked around.  I felt someone watching me.  After what happened at the shop, what an idiot I was for not being more on guard.  “Wait here a second.”

“What?” she asked.  “What is it?”

I walked inside the house, my fists clenched and eyes sharply peeled.  Now I was sure someone was in my house waiting to jump me.  I stepped into the front hallway and quietly opened the coat closet.  There wasn’t much of a weapon in there, so I grabbed an umbrella.

“What is it?” Nicole asked from the porch.

I put my finger to my lips to silence her then slowly stepped forward.  As I turned to the living room, I saw Mrs. Griffin sitting on my couch.

“Mrs. Griffin?”

“Oh, Sean.  Thank goodness you’re home.”

I dropped the umbrella and walked quickly towards her.  Nicole’s footsteps were loud behind me, and she was quickly by my side.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Sean, it’s your mother.”

“Is she okay?  What happened?”

“Don’t panic.  She’s okay.”

“I’m not panicking.  What happened?”

“We don’t know exactly.  She was working up at Morley’s Market today, and she was in great pain.  She was just wailing and screaming, and you know your mother.  She is strong as an ox, that woman.  For her to be carrying on like that, she must have been in great pain.”

“So where is she?”

“They took her to Jacobi Hospital.  My husband went with her.  I would have gone, but I thought someone should wait here for you.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

“We can take my car,” Nicole said.

The three of us dashed outside, and I ripped the keys from Nicole and said, “I’ll drive.”

I shot through traffic; I was waving my hands and yelling at other drivers.  I barely slowed for stop signs and ran through several red lights.  At one point, I looked behind me at Mrs. Griffin, clutching to the leather of the backseat.

“It’s okay, Sean,” Nicole said, rubbing my thigh lightly.  “It’s going to be okay.”

A sense of urgency coursed through my veins.  I had to get to Jacobi.

“It’s going to be okay, Sean,” Nicole continued.

I peered into the rearview mirror and made eye contact with Mrs. Griffin.  I saw terror in her eyes.  Undaunted, I ran another stop sign and the heel of my palm stayed firmly planted on the blaring horn.

* *

Nobody likes a hospital.  There just isn’t much to like.  Everyone inside is either sick or visiting someone who’s sick.  I guess if you’re there to have a baby or something, maybe that’s an exception, but by and large, you don’t want to be there.

I can count on one hand the times I’d been inside a hospital prior to that day.  Not counting the day I was born, I’d been once to visit my sick grandmother, and once I visited the emergency room as a kid.  I jumped a fence and landed on some glass and had to have some stitches.  It wasn’t a big deal, just kid stuff.  So you total it up, I’d barely been to a hospital, and certainly nothing prepared me for what I’d encounter on that day.

We burst into the hospital.  Mrs. Griffin had this look in her eyes: I could tell she was scared.  Something was just so off.  For her to be acting this way was unheard of.  The entranceway to the ER was cluttered with a stretcher and two empty wheelchairs, and we just pushed through.

The waiting area was packed.  There was a guy with his hand wrapped in gauze, the gauze so red with blood you could hardly tell it was once white.  There was a woman whose face was so peaked, it was probably the color of the gauze before the man bloodied it up.  There was another guy dry heaving and a woman rubbing his back trying to comfort him.  I wasn’t there thirty seconds, and I was ready to turn and run.

To this day, I still don’t like hospitals.  It doesn’t make me unique.  Nobody likes hospitals.

I was gassed from running in.  Nicole was breathing heavily, too.  Mrs. Griffin’s round face was red as she trailed in behind us.  We looked around the room.  Then I heard an absolutely awful noise.

Screaming.  Loud, piercing, shrieking.  The noises split the drums of my ears.  I ran towards them, with Nicole right behind me.  Mrs. Griffin trailed slightly behind.

Sitting upright on a hard plastic chair was Mr. Griffin.  As I got closer, slumped over in the corner of the waiting room, I saw my mother.  Her head was between her legs, and the noises were coming from her.

She hollered out and then her stomach turned, and I saw her vomit into a plastic bag she was clutching.  Then she screamed again.

I’d never heard my mother so much as whimper in my entire life, but here she was crying, screaming and puking all at once.

Tears spilled from my eyes, and I almost threw up myself.  I ran to her side and knelt down next to her.

“Mom?  Are you okay?”  What a stupid question.  It was clear that she was far from okay.

And yet, she tried to put forward a strong face.  “I’ll be alright,” she said, but the words were gurgled.  Saliva dribbled from her mouth and she turned away from me, then gagged and heaved into the bag.  No matter how strong a woman she was, she couldn’t keep her strong face up any longer.  “Ahh!” she yelled out.  And the yelling got louder, and louder still.  Once she swallowed her pride, the pain just leaped from her mouth and echoed around the room.

I turned to Mr. Griffin and shouted, “Why aren’t they helping her?”  I looked around the room, searching for something: a doctor, a nurse, a sympathetic face somewhere amongst the crowd.  But I found nothing.

“They told us they’d be along soon,” he said.  “We just have to hang in a bit longer.”

“How long have you been here?” Nicole asked.

Mr. Griffin had this simple way about him.  He swayed back and forth and pushed back the gold rims of his glasses when he spoke.  He didn’t mean to sound callous, but he wasn’t capable of much emotion.  “Oh, a while, I’d say.”

Mrs. Griffin, meanwhile looked almost as bad as my mother.  The blue makeup she wore on her eyelids was running in smears down her face.  Her lip quivered, and she looked like she wanted to speak, but no words came out of her mouth.

Nicole, too, began to water in the eyes as she said, “We have to get some help.”

My mother groaned and tried to sit up.  “I’ll be fine, kids.  Just give me a moment.”  Then she grabbed at her side and cried out.

“Oh, this is just awful,” Nicole said and walked quickly towards the nurse’s desk.  I followed her.  “Excuse me,” she said.

At the front of the room was a large desk.  Behind the white Formica table sat a woman with a telephone in one hand and a pen in the other.  She didn’t look up.  She wasn’t speaking but seemed to nod her head every few seconds as if the person on the other side of the phone could see her.

“Excuse me,” Nicole repeated.  The woman held up one finger, but Nicole wasn’t satisfied.  “Excuse me.  We need help!”

The woman cradled the phone against her chest and finally looked up.  “I will be right with you,” she said, her tone drawn out as if she was exhausted.  In all fairness, I’m sure she was, but she could have sounded just a hair more sympathetic.

“There is a woman suffering here,” Nicole said.  “Can we please get some help?”

The sounds of my mother’s agony pierced through the noisy, crowded room.  I turned and looked at her.  Mrs. Griffin was holding her like a baby, the two of them somehow squeezed into one chair as my mother could barely hold up her head.

In my life I’d always held my emotions in check.  I’d been tested many, many times.  But the chaos of the scene.  The sounds of my mother’s cries, and the sheer callousness of the room was more than I could handle.

I found an empty seat next to a sneezing young Puerto Rican kid and sat down, buried my head in my hands, and just wept like a child.

Nicole finally got the attention of the nurse in front, and she was raising up quite a storm.  A second nurse came over, and the voices increased in volume.  All I could really hear was Nicole.  She was something else.  Her father had taught her one thing: how not to back down to anyone.

“Okay,” I heard a voice say, “Bring her inside.”

“Sean,” Nicole said.

I sniffled, wiped my eyes and composed myself, then quickly ran to the front.

“They are bringing your mother inside.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“She’s going to be okay.”  Nicole pulled me close and hugged me.

We were hand in hand, Nicole squeezing, as we walked over to my mother.  A nurse had wheeled over a wheelchair, and she and Mr. Griffin were helping my mother into it.  Mom continued to moan as they lowered her, and then she screamed out as her butt made contact with the chair.

“I think you should wait here, son,” Mr. Griffin said.

“No, I want to go with her,” I said.

He stood in my way and said, “It’s best, son.”

“It’s okay, Sean,” Nicole said.  “She’s going to be okay now.”

“I love you, Mom,” I called out as I watched the wheelchair roll up to a doorway and then disappear.  I found the nearest empty chair and simply collapsed into it.

* *

Time slipped into a blur.  I think I fell asleep, cockeyed and cramped on the hard plastic chair, my body leaning into the nearby wall.  A couple hours passed.  Nicole was there the entire time in the seat next to me.  Every time I stirred from my pseudo-slumber and looked over, there she was, mustering up a smile of reassurance.

“It’s gonna be okay, Sean,” she said, several times.

I knew she didn’t really mean it.  What did she know?  She wasn’t a doctor.  She didn’t know shit, other than where to get a great slice of pizza on Tremont Avenue.  But that wasn’t what mattered.  What did matter was she was there, next to me, sitting on that hard plastic seat in the crowded emergency room of Jacobi Hospital.

Nicole Torretta was there for me.  It was more than a token gesture.  It was a genuine expression of our blooming love.  She was capable of more than just being the selfish brat everyone thought she was.  She was my girlfriend.  And if the situation wasn’t so shitty, I guess that knowledge would have felt really nice.

Mrs. Griffin sat on the other side of me, quietly reading a beat-up paperback with a handsome man on the cover.  Mr. Griffin emerged from the doorway and walked to us.  I shook off the fatigue and stood up.  Nicole and Mrs. Griffin did as well.

Mr. Griffin motioned with his hands for us to relax.  His walk was slow and deliberate with just a hint of a goofy bounce.  When he reached us, Mrs. Griffin was the first to speak up.

“So?  How is she?”

He fiddled with glasses and took a deep breath.  “She’s resting comfortably.  They gave her something to help with the pain.”

“Oh, thank heavens for that,” Mrs. Griffin said.

“But what’s wrong with her?  What happened?” I asked.

Mr. Griffin shifted his weight from one foot to the other.  He pushed the lenses back on his face and shrugged.  “They don’t know yet, son.  They just don’t know.  She’ll undergo some tests in the morning.  She’ll be staying here tonight.”

“Oh,” I said.

“They’ve admitted her to a room.”

“Can I see her?”

“I don’t know if you want to just now, son.  She’s got a couple of roommates, and it’s pretty crowded in there.  Anyway, she’s asleep now.”

“Oh.”  I looked at Nicole, and she put her arm around me.

“The private rooms are too expensive.  You know, I had a hard enough time getting her squared away.”

Without a steady job, my mother didn’t have any kind of insurance or anything.  Not that she’d ever needed any before.

“How much does a private room cost?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about that.  It’s a fortune.  She’ll be okay.  Your mom is tough.”

“Are you sure I can’t see her?”

Mrs. Griffin tugged at my shoulder, gently pulling me towards the door.  “It’s best this way.  I’m sure you can see her in the morning.”

Mr. Griffin grabbed my other shoulder.  I didn’t exactly fight them, but they weren’t taking no for an answer either.  They just sort of led me outside.

Once out in the air, Nicole and I slowly walked to her car.  Mr. and Mrs. Griffin walked the other way.

“Goodnight, son,” Mr. Griffin called as he waved.

Mrs. Griffin added, “Your mom will be fine.  You go home now and get some rest.”

We walked up to Nicole’s car.  She put her hand out and said, “Do you have my keys?  I think maybe I should drive.”

I pressed my hands against my pants and found the keys, then handed them to her.  “Yeah.  Okay.”

The ride home was much different from the ride out to the hospital.  Nicole drove slowly.  She stopped at every light and slowed for each stop sign.  She turned on some music, and it played softly.  We didn’t speak, but she looked over at me every chance she had to take her eyes off the road.

Finally, as we rode up Hollywood Avenue, she asked, “Are you okay, Sean?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t pretend you’re okay when I know you’re not.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“It’s okay to be scared.  This was a scary day.”