The Infinite Moment of Us (3 page)

The router jumped beneath his hands. Ah, shit. He’d

turned it up slightly, so that the bit was pointing toward the left rather than straight down, and the webbing between

his left thumb and forefinger moved directly into it.
Shit
.

Shit, shit, shit. He clamped his T-shirt over the wound, and

his foster dad, Chris, glanced over.

“Wassup, Chahlie?” Chris said in his rough Boston

accent. He took in the blood soaking through Charlie’s

T-shirt and put down his rag and can of varnish. He came

over and gave Charlie’s wound a close, careful look. He

whistled. “C’mon, son. Let’s get you stitched up.”

Grady Hospital was the largest hospital in Atlanta, as well

as the fifth-largest public hospital in the United States. It

smelled like shit, piss, and body odor. Patients on gurneys

lined the ER hallway, since, with more than three hundred

patients walking, stumbling, or rolling in each day, there

were never enough rooms to go around.

“Just fill this out,” a brown-skinned woman told the

elderly white woman ahead of them in the long line.

“I’m fine,” Charlie told Chris for the fiftieth time.

He wasn’t, but finances for Chris and Pamela were hard

enough without adding on a couple hundred bucks for a

drop-in visit to the emergency room. “Really. Let’s go.”

Chris ignored him, just as he’d ignored him the first

forty-nine times.

Charlie sighed and searched fruitlessly for an escape

route. At the next desk over, a girl tapped into a computer,

head down, as a frizzy-haired woman standing before her

complained about a crackling sound when she breathed.

“Don’t worry,” the girl said. “We’ll get you taken care

of.” She looked up from the computer, and Charlie’s blood

froze in his veins. Not really; it oozed relentlessly through

the towel his foster mom had given him, just as it had since

he’d nearly sliced his thumb off. But it felt as if his blood

froze, as well as his brain, his heart, and every last muscle

in his body.

“Charlie?” Wren said, her expression registering equal

shock.

Wren. Behind the desk. At the hospital. Why?

The frizzy-haired woman took her paperwork with a

harrumph.

“Charlie,” Wren said, beckoning him forward.

Chris approached the desk, relieved. “You know my

boy?” he said. “Great, because Chahlie here got into a fight

with a router, and if you’ve ever gotten into a fight with a

router, you know who won.”

Wren smiled uncertainly. “Ouch,” she said. “Well, let

me get you into the system. Can I see your driver’s license

and insurance card?”

Charlie had his license. That was no problem. But he had

to look away as Chris patted his pockets and put on a show

that they both knew would lead nowhere.

“Insurance card,” Chris said. “Sure thing.” He pulled out

his wallet, a battered and bruised thing that was perhaps

once made of leather. “Just give me a minute here . . .”

Wren watched. She bit her lip. She looked at the clock

behind her and said, “Oh crap, Rhondelle’s going to need

her desk back. Her break’s just about over.” She stood up

and came around to Charlie. “But, uh, come with me.”

Chris frowned. “’Scuse me?”

want to have a seat in the waiting room? I’ll help Charlie

with the paperwork, and I can come get you when we need

you.”

Charlie knew his face was a fiery red, but he followed

Wren to a tucked-away corner of the reception area. He

glanced over his shoulder. Chris looked confused, but he

turned and walked toward the waiting room.

Wren sat on a cracked plastic chair and patted the empty

chair next to her. Charlie sat.

“Thanks,” he said. “Chris, he’s not so good at . . . you

know . . .” He sighed. He held his left hand, bundled and

useless, close to his rib cage and stared at the floor, where

a dead cockroach lay beside a vending machine.

“Why don’t I fill this out for you,” she said, sounding

crisp and professional. He suspected she’d put some of the

pieces together, such as the fact that Chris wasn’t going to

find that insurance card. He suspected she’d brought him

over here as a way to let Chris off the hook.

“So, you have a job here?” Charlie blurted.

“Not exactly,” she said. “I did it for my community-

service hours.” All Atlanta public school seniors had to

complete seventy-five hours of community service. Char-

lie had fulfilled his through tutoring kids at his brother’s

middle school. “I finished in March, technically, but . . .”

“Working hard for free seemed like the best way to

spend the first day of summer vacation?”

She looked at him strangely. He’d been trying to be

funny. Had he sounded rude instead?

“They’re always understaffed here,” she said. “I like

helping out. And it’s better than fighting with . . . what’s

that thing you fought with?”

“A router. And, yes, working here
is
better. Better,

smarter—you name it. I think it’s cool that you help out

just because.”

“Oh. Um, thanks. What
is
a router?”

“It’s a tool for making furniture. For cutting wood.”

“And for cutting flesh?”

“Yeah, but only if you’re a dumb-ass.”

She smiled slightly, and they held each other’s gaze. He

still couldn’t believe she was here, or that he was here. That they were here together.

Wren gave herself a shake and held the pen over the

paper on the clipboard. “Right. So—oh my gosh, I don’t

know your last name. Crap. I am such a jerk. What’s wrong

with me?”

“Parker,” he said. And nothing’s wrong with you, not a

single thing.

“Charlie Parker?” She sounded delighted. “Like the

musician?”

“I don’t know—which is to say no, I guess. Who’s Char-

lie Parker?”

“Well, the
other
Charlie Parker”—she gave him a half

smile—“was a famous jazz musician. Not that you should

know who he is or anything. I just like jazz. Or, my dad

does, and he’s in charge of the stereo.”

“I think my birth mom just liked the name Charles.”

Charlie saw a subtle shift in Wren’s expression, lead-

ing him to guess that “birth mom” wasn’t a term she ran

into often. She recovered swiftly. “And her last name was

Parker.”

“Still is, as far as I know.” Except he didn’t know and

didn’t want to know. “So. The other Charlie Parker. What

instrument did he play?”

She opened her mouth, then shut it. Then she eyed

him as if to say,
Yes, I really am about to do this
, before leaning close and singing a funny tune in a sweet, soft voice.

“‘Charlie Parker played be bop. Charlie Parker played alto

saxophone. The music sounded like hip hop. Never leave

your cat alone.’”

He grinned. She giggled. God, she was adorable.

“It’s from a book my dad read me when I was little,” she

said.

“‘Never leave your cat alone,’ huh?”

“Words to live by.”

Again, they gazed at each other. To Charlie, it felt like

more than a coincidence that here they were, their thighs

inches apart in their crappy plastic chairs, where, in any

alternate universe, there was no way their paths would

have collided like this.

She cleared her throat and sat up straight. Once more

poising her pen above the clipboard, she said, “Your hand.

Can I see?”

He tried not to wince as he unwrapped his left hand.

Pamela, his foster mom, had pressed a worn towel against

the wound, and it stuck to the webbing between his thumb

and forefinger. The gash was deep but not too deep. He

felt self-conscious about his fingernails, which were dark

around the nail beds from years of staining wood.

Wren gently lifted his hand, turning it this way and that.

“I don’t think you’re going to lose your thumb.” She

glanced at him. “That was a joke. But you are going to need

stitches.”

Charlie had expected that. “Will it cost a lot?”

“Not if your dad—” She broke off, and Charlie could

see the wheels turning in her head: how he’d called Chris

“Chris,” how he’d referred to his “birth mom.” “Is the man

who brought you in your dad?”

“Foster dad,” Charlie said evenly.

“He doesn’t have insurance?”

Charlie hesitated. “He makes cabinets. He owns his own

shop. He has a workers’ comp plan, but the insurance peo-

ple aren’t fans of power tools.”

“Because in an accident, the power tools always

win,” Wren said. “And accident reports make the premium

go up. Got it.”

Actually, the problem was the high co-pays, but close

enough. Charlie was surprised that she understood, but

then he thought of the overcrowded emergency room and

the cockroach on the floor.

Wren stood. “Stay here, okay?”

He tensed, because maybe he’d guessed wrong and she

didn’t understand. Maybe there were rules she knew about

that he didn’t. “What for?”

“So that I can . . . so I . . .” She looked at him. “Noth-

ing bad’s going to happen. But don’t leave, because you
do
need stitches, or your thumb won’t heal right. And you

need that thumb, I assume? To keep making furniture or

cabinets or whatever?”

He gave a terse nod.

She took the top sheet of paper out of the clipboard and

folded it in half, then in half again. She put the clipboard

on her seat. “Do you promise you’ll stay?”

“I promise.”

“Do you mean it?” she pressed.

He replied in his lowest, most serious voice: “I don’t

make promises I don’t mean.”

Twin spots of color rose on her cheeks, and, as was so

often the case, Charlie had no idea what wrong or unusual

thing he’d said this time.

She pulled herself together. “Um, good. Just stay here—

I’ll be right back.”

She walked quickly toward what appeared to be a staff

break room. When she returned, she carried a battered

first aid kit. The first thing she did was very carefully clean his wound, and he winced at the sting of the antiseptic.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she cried.

“No, please,” Charlie said, chagrined that he’d made her

doubt herself.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She bit her lip.

“I’m sure,” he repeated. “And thank you. Really.”

Wren proceeded to stitch up Charlie’s thumb herself.

She cradled his hand in her lap and smoothed on a numbing

cream first, and her touch was so gentle that Charlie knew

he would gladly suffer a dozen injuries—a thousand—in

exchange for this: the feel of her fingers on his, the tug of

the thread, the slight pinch of the needle, the intoxicating

scent of her as she leaned in close.

“Katya taught me,” she told him. She pressed her knees

together as she concentrated. When she shifted, the hem

of her skirt rode up, revealing a finger’s width of her skin.

He wanted very much to look down her shirt, too, but he

told himself not to. He almost succeeded.

“I think I know Katya,” he said. “Russian? Wants to be a

pediatrician?”

She glanced at him, baffled. “Yeah, that’s her. But how

do
you
know her?”

“I’ve met a lot of a nurses, that’s all.”

Now her expression was doubly baffled, and he felt like

a fool.
I’ve met a lot of nurses
, as if he were bragging, as if he were some sort of player.

Speak, he told himself. Explain.
Now.

“I’ve been here a lot, that’s all. The pediatrics ward.

That’s how I know Katya.”

“Why were you in pediatrics a lot?”

God, why had he brought this up? The last thing Charlie

wanted was for Wren to be concerned about him. To see

him as a charity case, or a charity case by proxy.

“Charlie?” Wren said.

“My little brother’s in a wheelchair,” Charlie said quickly.

“He’s fine, but stuff comes up. Like, we were here at the

beginning of the year, because—”

He broke off abruptly. He picked back up with, “So,

yeah. That’s life. Who said life was easy, right?”

He forced a laugh. It was the stupidest laugh of all time.

“Just shoot me,” he said. “Do you have a tranquilizer-dart

gun? A pill to make patients shut up?”

“You don’t need to shut up,” Wren said. She paused.

“Why were you here at the beginning of the year? Does

your brother have a chronic illness or something? You

don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, obviously.”

was doing so much for him; he owed her an answer, even if

he couldn’t give the full answer.

“No chronic illness,” he said. “Dev’s paralyzed from the

waist down, but not from a disease. He’s eleven—did I tell

you that? He’s a sixth grader. He goes to Ridgemont. He’s

not, like, in some special school or anything. And in Janu-

ary, he . . . got burned. That’s why we were here.”

“I’m so sorry,” Wren said. “How?”

Charlie went inside himself. How? Because two eighth

graders cornered Dev in the bathroom of Dev’s not-spe-

cial school. They held a cigarette lighter to his leg. Dev

couldn’t feel it, but he could smell the burning. He could