I was walking briskly down the hallway. I wasn’t particularly in a hurry, it’s just the kind of walk that an ER doctor develops pretty early in his career. I spent most of my time darting through the hallways of the hospital.
“ER’s full up today, Jimmy.” Alex Smith. He was a good nurse, but he lacked the grammar skills that one needs for other people to take one seriously. I nodded, but didn’t say a word. I had already gotten the page, I already knew that it was a real mess in there. Not like the kind of mess you get when an airplane crashes or there’s a six car pile up on the highway. But just the stuff you get on the long weekend when most people are drunk and stupid.
I stopped at the desk to grab my first patient’s paper work. “Dr. Hartwick, good afternoon.”
“Same to you, Marcy. What have you got for me today?”
“Casey Thomas. 9 years old. Possible arm fracture, and a good bump on the head. Normal little boy stuff.”
“Thanks sweetheart.”
I turned to leave the desk and ran directly into a young nurse. I had seen her a few times, but I didn’t know her name. She hadn’t worked here long, I thought, transferred from another hospital.
“I’m sorry. Excuse me.”
“Oh that’s okay,” she said, and we both went our separate ways.
As I approached the first examining room, I took a deep breath and stepped in. Inside was a young boy, presumably Casey, and an older man.
“Hello. I’m Dr. Hartwick. You must be Casey.” I looked at the boy, and the boy looked at me, and I knew there was something wrong. Generally I didn’t make it my business to get involved too much in why exactly a patient came into the ER. I got the gist of it, of course, although usually the gist was a very inaccurate description of what really happened. No one wants to admit to anyone that they threw out their back sleeping with the neighbor’s wife, or that the huge gash on their forehead is from a less then successful attempt at kitchen knife juggling. I had seen it a thousand times, just a little bend in the truth, no big deal. I eyed Casey’s father, and the guilty look on his face told me nearly everything I needed to know.
My eyes moved to the corner of the room behind the father’s head. My heart jumped when I noticed another figure. It was child sized, but I couldn’t tell if it was a male or female. At first I thought that perhaps it was a sibling who had come to comfort the little boy. But the figure strange, grey colouration. I stared for a while, unsure if I should acknowledge the person or not.
I didn’t like the way that the doctor was looking at me. It was none of his damn business how my son got here. In my opinion doctors have no business asking. I just wanted him to take the X-ray, put a cast on the kid and then get the hell out of business that was not his.
It seemed like he was staring over my head. What was wrong with him? He was probably on crack. Perfect, that way he wouldn’t ask a lot of questions.
“Casey, tell the man what happened.” I needed to get the hell out of here.
Casey started explaining the situation, exactly the way that we’d talked about. Playing on the swing set, trying to go over the top, the kind of dumb ass thing every kid tries to do at some point. He made the story pretty convincing, I thought. And the doctor had smartened up and was paying attention. But he kept glancing over to the corner of the room. He looked scared, like he was gonna piss his pants.
I rubbed my forehead slowly. I needed a drink. No, wanted a drink. I didn’t need anything. I’m not an alcoholic. Sara always says she thinks I am. I just like a drink every once in a while.
What had happened that night had been an accident. He had gotten in the way, and I had been tired, and angry. I hadn’t meant to hit him, but I wasn’t thinking straight, and once I had started, I couldn’t stop.
I watched as the doctor examined Casey’s arm. Hartwin, was that his name? I couldn’t remember. I felt a pang of guilt as I remembered the way I had grabbed my son by that same arm. The popping sound that had accompanied that movement would probably remain embedded into my mind for a very long time. Maybe even forever. I rubbed my head again.
“Well Casey, it looks like we’re going to have to take an X-ray. Have you ever had an X-ray before?”
Hartwin’s eyed the corner again. What the fuck was his problem. I turned to look.
“No. Does it hurt?” I couldn’t look my boy in the face. I knew what I would see there. I would see his big blue eyes, as wide as kitchen plates, hurt and scared. His little mouth would be twisted in pain and probably fear too. And hate? Would I see hate on that little boy’s face? I didn’t know, but I felt that there was a great possibility that it would be there.
And again, Hartwin looked.
“There’s nothing in the corner.” The man looked at me, startled.
“Oh, I-I know that. I just, I don’t know. Mr. Thomas? Could you step outside with me?
“It’s Peter.” I responded. The guy was nuts.
“Peter. May I speak with you just outside the door for a second?” I did not look at my son as I walked by him. I couldn’t.
“Well he’s probably got a dislocated elbow.” The doctor said when he closed the door. He eyed me suspiciously for a second, then turned to look down the hallway.
“Ow, poor kid.” I tried to sound casual. “But that’s not a big deal is it? That’s easy enough to fix.”
“Should be. He’s gonna need a sling and he’ll have to steer clear of any rough playing for a while. Especially on that swing set.” I nodded. I could tell that he didn’t believe the story Casey had told. I could feel my headache getting stronger. My throat itched. My throat always itched when I wanted a drink. It itched for the burn. I could see the bottle of whisky I had sitting in my study. I had only gotten through one glass before Casey had come in.
“We’re also going to need to put him on some pain meds. The poor guy is going to hurt for a while.” Again he looked at me. His eyes were so accusing, but mostly they were scared.
“I should be back in a little while. I’ve called the x-ray tech and he’ll be here in a few minutes to take Casey. You can go back in. I think your son probably needs some comfort right now.” He didn’t say the words, but I knew what else the doctor was telling me. He knew what I had done, and he was sickened by it. I was glad, for Hartwin’s sake, that he hadn’t actually said anything out loud, because tonight was one of those nights where I was apt to start a brawl in an ER examination room.
I was unsure about leaving Casey with his father, but I was more worried about leaving him in that room all alone with the figure in the corner.
I had been right to assume that no one else had seen it. They would have said something if they had. What was it? I had no idea, but I didn’t plan on going back into that room. I would send other people in, I wasn’t going anywhere near it. I returned to the desk, picking up the folder for my next patient. Catherine Jones. Diagnosed with severe depression. Attempted suicide. I hurried towards the next examining room. I took a deep breath, and entered. Inside the room there sat a woman. Her hair had been pulled back, but it was falling out, and strands were pointing everywhere. Her eyes were wide and cloudy. She seemed to be staring at the wall, but I was sure she wasn’t actually seeing anything. Beside her sat a much younger man. He stood as I entered the room. “Hello Doctor. I’m Jason Jones. Catherine’s my mom. I-I don’t know what to do. I just found her.”
I immediately reached for my pager to page a nurse, but before I did I felt a cold chill beside me. There it was, but this time I could see it’s face. A little boy. His eyes were sunk deep inside his head, and his lips were blue. I had never seen the boy before, although something about him pulled at my memories, as if begging me to remember something.
Now, at first I thought that he was a ghost, but in all my studies of science I had never come across a theory that successfully convinced me that ghosts were real. However, the only other explanation was that I had gone insane, and I didn’t like that one either.
“Umm, tell me what she took, Jason.”
“Percocet, I think. She got them last year for her back, but she never took them. I always told her she was crazy not to. She was in so much pain. I took them away before she managed to take too many. Uh, is there something wrong, doctor?”
I had been looking out of the corner of my eye at the boy beside me.
“Oh, no. Sorry. It’s been a long day.” A lie. I had only just started my shift.
“Excuse me boy, you’ll have to speak up. It’s a real blizzard out here isn’t it? Unusual time of the year for snow though.” Catherine tilted her head to one side slightly as she spoke, but didn’t take her eyes off the wall ahead of her.
“She’s delusional.” Jason placed his head in his hands.
“We’re going to have her admitted, and she needs her stomach pumped. If you don’t mind, Jason, I need you to sit out in the waiting room. Thank you.” The boy beside me hadn’t moved. Not at all. But he was radiating cold, like his whole body was breathing it on me.
I wasn’t happy that the doctor had sent me into the waiting room. The guy had seemed very distracted. I didn’t like that he was the one in charge of my mother’s life.
The life that she had tried to take. I didn’t understand why, but she had been so upset that she had thought the only way out was to kill herself.
I would admit that she had been strange lately, there was no way I could deny it. She was so paranoid. She jumped at every sound or any sudden movement. Some days she would just sit there and stare at the same place on the wall, the way she had been staring in the ER room. My sister was convinced that she was losing it. I knew that was probably it, but it had been harmless up until she had tried to kill herself.
I wondered if her decision had something to do with what she had said to me a few days earlier. Well that had been crazy. There hadn’t been a little girl in her bedroom, it was just a dream. It had to be.
When Jason left, I sat down in his place beside his mother. For a second the boy was gone, but then there it was, sitting between me and her. My heart was beating very quickly.
“This one isn’t so bad.”
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
Catherine turned her head and looked at me. Her eyes were vacant, but she smiled. “I’ve seen a lot worse than this little guy.”
“You can see him too, then?”
“Well of course. That’s why I’m here, you know.”
“I don’t understand, ma’am.”
She smiled again and turned back towards the wall. She began humming a tune. It was one that I recognized from a long time ago, although I couldn’t place it with an exact memory.
About 20 minutes later I sat with both hands wrapped around my Styrofoam cup. The coffee inside tasted like dirt, but it was hot and it was packed full of caffeine.
“Long day, Jim?”
I looked up to see Arthur Scott, a neurosurgeon who usually worked several floors above the ER.
“Yeah, a few uh – troubling patients, I guess you’d say.” I hadn’t seen the boy since Catherine’s examination room. “What are you doing in this neck of the woods, Art?”
“Couple kids got in a car accident, one of ‘em had a lot of head trauma. We were going to go into surgery but we lost the girl.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t heard anything about it. “How old?”
“The girl was 17. The boy, 19 I think. They were a couple. He was driving. He’s okay, a lotta stitches, but nothing that won’t heal easy.” Except his conscience I thought.
“Well, I better get back upstairs,” he paused and looked at the cup in my hands. “I hear the coffee down here is shit.” We both laughed, because we knew that the coffee upstairs was just as bad as the coffee down here.
As Arthur left, I noticed another presence in the room. A nurse. The nurse who I had run into near the beginning of my shift. She noticed as I glanced at her, so she smiled. “Hello.”
“Good uh..” I checked my watch. “Morning, I guess.”
The woman giggled. It was 1am. I hadn’t checked my watch in hours. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve ever officially met. Jim Hartwick.” I stuck my hand out. She shook it and smiled again.
“Mary-Anne Fennel.”
Mary-Anne was about 26 years old, barely 5 feet tall. She had the type of figure I would have loved to touch, but I was a professional, so I pushed the thought out of my mind as fast as I could.
“I’m sorry about earlier. I had a little boy with a dislocated elbow to tend to.”
“Oh, no problem at all, Dr. Hartwick. Everyone’s been busy today.”
I couldn’t help it. I found my eyes wandering over her body. It was wrong, I had a wife at home. But I hadn’t gotten any action from her in four months. And she did not look like Mary-Anne.
I was about to ask how her day had been when her pager went off. “Oh. Duty calls.” She giggled again, and quickly headed towards the door. “Nice meeting you.”
Mary-Anne’s departure left the room empty. It had been nice meeting her. It had left me a lot to think about. I didn’t like that. One of the best things about being a doctor was the distraction. The long hours let me put aside all the pesky thoughts in my mind. Like my wife, and the troubles we had been having. I hadn’t had the time to worry about it, so until now, I hadn’t. But I could feel the thoughts creeping in. Someone new. I hadn’t thought about that before. My stomach began to twist into knots.
But then I wasn’t so alone. There he was, by the coffee maker.
“Who are you?” I felt insane asking it. I knew that the boy couldn’t be real. But that wasn’t right. Catherine had seen him too. However, that was laughable. The woman was insane herself.
Not surprisingly, the boy didn’t answer, although he did move for the first time. He lifted his arm and pushed the coffee pot off the counter. And then he was gone.
What the fuck? I was scared. Until now the boy had been harmless. Catherine had said that these other ghosts (was that what they were?) had been the reason that she was in the hospital. Did they tell her to kill herself? Or did they scare her into it?
I started to clean up the mess when my pager went off. Dammit. I couldn’t wait. It was an emergency. I left the coffee on the floor and jogged out of the room.
It was a car accident. This time, there were more than just two victims. A family of six, in a mini-van had been t-boned by a big F-250. They would be arriving any time now.
“From what I hear this ain’t gonna be pretty.” I looked beside me. Alex Smith, the nurse with the bad grammar.
“Are there young children?”
“Yes. Three of ‘em. And a mom and a dad and a grandmama I think.”
The first ambulance pulled in. Several other doctors and nurses surrounded this one. Out of it came a little girl. She couldn’t have been more than 4. And she was crying. A large gash on her head was bleeding everywhere, and I was sure I could see more blood coming from her arms and her legs.
“That gal should be passed out by now. Poor thing’s losin’ so much blood.” I barely heard him. I didn’t need his commentary at the moment.
The rest of the ambulances arrived one after another. Another daughter, this one about 12, was unconscious. The middle child, a boy of probably 8 or 9 had a very broken leg, but was still awake. And there, on the gurney with him, was the ghost. He was sitting right on the living boy’s chest. And he was staring at me. His eyes were so dead and his hair was hanging in face.
The gurney was taken inside, taking both boys with it.
The father arrived in the ambulance with his wife. He had very few injuries, although the same could not be said for her. She had taken most of the blow from the truck and was in critical condition.
“Hartwick!” I looked up to see Dr. Sills, the top gun of the hospital calling me over. “You take the father, stitch up whatever he’s got, give him something to calm him down then meet me in OR1. I’m gonna need as many hands as I can get.”
“Yes sir.”
I headed over to the father. “Excuse me sir – ”. Hanging off the father’s back was the boy. “Umm, uhh, if you don’t mind, I need you to come with me.”
“No! That’s my wife, can’t you see her? She needs me.”
The boy on the man’s back stared deep into my eyes. The man clearly didn’t know that the boy was there, but he was. I felt like he was staring inside me, and suddenly I remembered something. The tune that Catherine had been humming. Then I knew she could make me happy..happy..happy. Flowers in her hair. Flowers everywhere.... I love the flower girl. The song was one that my mother had played a million times when I was young. She had danced to it. I remembered her swaying in her sun dress, singing and laughing. It was something I had forgotten, but it was something beautiful. Suddenly the memory turned darker. The song was still playing. I was outside, playing with another little boy.
I pulled my eyes away from his. Something in my mind told me that I didn’t want to see what came next. I came back to reality, and it seemed as if only a few second had passed.
“Sir, you’re bleeding quite badly from the head. I don’t doubt your wife needs you, but I think you would be more useful to her if you were conscious. Now please, let me stitch this up and – ”
Just then another ambulance pulled in. An older woman was taken out. Sills rushed to the paramedic, probably asking for details. The man just shook his head.
The man beside me stared at the vehicle. “Fine,” he said, “I’ll go with you.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“David Orr.”
“Okay Mr. Orr. I’m Dr. Hartwick. I’m going to do the best I can to get you fixed up.”
We walked to the examination room in silence. I was painfully aware of the figure on David’s back, but I never looked at him. I was afraid of what he was going to show me.
Once in the examination room, the boy disappeared.
“If you could just take a seat.”
“May I ask you to just clean the cut up and slap a bandaid on please? My family is dying! And I’m in here, getting a little scratch stitched up?”
“Mr. Orr please. You will be very thankful to have this properly dealt with, I promise.”
He sat without a word. I felt my stomach flip again. I was nervous. I wanted to help this man. But I didn’t know how. I couldn’t face my own problems, let alone the problems of a man who’s family was in danger of being torn apart. It already was torn apart. The image of the life-less elderly woman on the gurney returned to my mind.
I began cleaning Mr. Orr’s wound. It was deep. A band-aid would have done no good.
“What if – what do you – Do you think my wife will be okay?”
“I – I don’t know the extent of her injuries, Mr. Orr.”
“Call me David please, Doctor.”
“David. I am sure that Dr. Sills is doing everything that he can to make sure that she comes out all right. And your children as well. They are in the best of hands, I promise you.”
“But my mother-in-law, she’s dead isn’t she?”
“I can’t be sure.” But I was sure. The look on the paramedic’s face had told me exactly what the woman’s condition was.
David had begun to shake. It was becoming difficult to clean his head. “What do you do for a living, David?”
“I’m still in school. I’ve changed my mind so many times. Heather, uh, my wife, she thinks I’m crazy for going back again. But she always stands behind me, whatever I do. Even though we have no money and live with her mother. She knows that I won’t be happy until I find what I am truly meant to do.”
“What are you going to school for?” I was trying to take his mind off of the situation at hand. I couldn’t have him speaking of his family. He was shaking so hard I could barely keep my hands on the gash on his head.
“Engineering. I think this is what I want to do.”
“Tell me about the program.”
David proceeded to tell me all about engineering. I’m sure it was a fascinating, but I didn’t hear a word the man said. I only focused on finishing the job in front of me as well as possible.
I finished as fast as I could, and when I was done I gave David some pills “for the pain.” A tiny white lie. The pills were to calm the man down, maybe even make him fall asleep. I left him in the waiting room. It was the best place for him at the moment, as most other rooms were filled with people who needed them. As soon as he sat down, I hurried away, to help save his wife’s life, if it hadn’t ended already.
By the time I saw the van in the intersection ahead of me, it was way to late to brake. I tried it anyway, but I was pretty sure that we were gonna have a metal on metal collision.
When my truck hit the minivan, it took about three seconds before I was chucked out the front window. I didn’t feel any glass cut my skin, but I could see it. Everything was moving slowly. For a second I could see my own blood sailing through the air beside me. No lie. The next thing I knew my face was smashing into the pavement, and then I was out.
When I woke up I knew I was in the hospital. I had been in hospitals enough to know it. At first I was unsure about the reason, but then I remembered. I had leaned over to change the radio station. That had been the reason. Some people would argue that the large amount of mary-j in my system was the reason, but I drive with that shit all the time and nothing bad had ever happened. Not even swerved into the other lane. I had just been changing the station. I wasn’t gonna listen to any fucking 60's pop shit.
Nothing hurt right now. The tube in my arm made sure of that. I wasn’t sure if anything was broken. I was sedated, and I kinda liked it.
A nurse came into the room then. She was tiny. Was she even 5 feet tall? I couldn’t tell lying down, but I knew that my six feet and 5 inches would just tower over her.
“Oh good, you’re up Mr. Catena. Do you mind if I call you Joey?”
As the nurse walked closer to me, I noticed her face. She was a pretty little thing if I ever saw one. Nice body too. My head began spinning images of her in many compromising positions.
I laughed. “Call me Guy.”
“I think I like Joey better.” She giggled. Yes, I could see her in plenty of interesting positions. “I’m Mary-Anne. I’m sure you’ve been wanting to know what condition your in. I assure you, you’re going to be fine. Your left leg is broken. The doctors say you might need some therapy, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem for a big tough guy like you.”
I laughed. “Yeah who needs legs anyways.”
She smiled. “Are you comfortable?”
I told her I was, and she assured me someone would be in with some food as soon as possible. “You mean you’re not coming back, Sweet Thing?”
Mary-Anne giggled again. “Probably later.” She turned to leave, but there was a question that had been on my mind.
“Hey, so, I bet there’s a lot of people who are pretty pissed at me out there.”
She walked back to my bed and sat down in the chair beside it. “Why would you say that?”
“Well, I hurt people, didn’t I? There was more than one body in that van.”
“Yes.”
“How many did I hurt, Mary?”
At first she didn’t answer, she only looked at the floor. “I don’t know if I should....”
“It’s driving me up the damn wall in here not knowing what I did. I know I look like a big tough guy, but I got feelings ma’am, yes I do. And I know how to feel like shit when I fuck stuff up.”
Mary-Anne sighed. “There were six people in the van. Two are dead. Two more are in critical condition, and the last two are fine, for the most part. All patched up.”
Two dead. I had never killed anyone before, and I had been through a lot of shit. I’d sent my fair share of punks to the hospital, but no one had ever died.
When I didn’t respond to the news she had given me, Mary-Anne stood to leave. “I’m sorry, Joey.”
I knew she was sorry for more than just the two dead people. She was sorry that I had smoked up before I got into the truck, and she was sorry for the charges that were going to be laid on me as soon as I got out of here. I had faced lawsuits and charges before. Most of my paychecks went towards them. But this would be jail time.
“Tough luck, fella.”
I looked around. In a bed across the room sat a man of about 50 or 60. He had the greenest eyes I had ever seen.
“Oh, didn’t know anyone else was in here. Guy Catena.”
“Vince Hammel. I couldn’t help but overhear. I’m sorry for your misfortune.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say. Something about this man was a bit off. “So, why are you in here?”
“Fell in the shower. Oh, the woes of old men. When I was younger I was as spry as the day was long. Fastest in my high school, probably the strongest too. I would give a whole lot to go back to that time.”
“Uh huh.” I didn’t understand why the man thought that I wanted to hear about his glory days when I had just discovered that I had been responsible for the deaths of two people.
“Ever killed anyone before?” Vince sounded so casual, as if killing someone was as simple as hooking up with a chick or eating at the local Chinese buffet.
“No.”
“It’s not so bad you know.”
I turned and looked into Vince’s eyes. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. I hoped he was.
When Marcy handed me the phone, I knew what was coming before I even heard it.
“Why the hell haven’t you called?”
“Cher, I’m sorry. It’s been a really busy day.”
“I don’t care. You don’t think that I’ve had a stressful day too? She doesn’t want to stay there.”
“I don’t blame her, but she can’t stay with us anymore.” Neither of us had ever spoken the reason my mother-in-law couldn’t keep living in the apartment above the garage, but we both knew the reason. Cheryl and I were getting a divorce. It hadn’t happened yet, but it would. We knew that we would have to sell the house, we knew that her lawyer would take most of what I had, and we knew that we had to get her mother out of our lives before we could move on ourselves.
“You don’t get it do you? You don’t know what it’s like to talk to your own mother on days when she’s completely forgotten who you are.”
“No, but I know what it’s like to have a mother who has tried to forget who I am. Listen, I don’t have time for this right now. I have to stitch up a little girl’s knee. Your mother is better off where she is. I’m not arguing about it any more.”
There he was again. I had been expecting him, and he hadn’t disappointed. Standing behind the counter, staring right at me, right into my eyes. I love the flower girl. There we were, me and my little friend, playing outside. We were on an adventure, and we were heading into the woods. I wanted to tell myself to stop. I didn’t know what was in there but I knew that it was bad. Something inside me said so. We were running, deeper and deeper, finding clues so we could find the monster that we were chasing. My transistor radio hung around my neck. I didn’t know how long we were playing, but soon we came upon a clearing.
“Jim! Answer me.”
I was pulled from the vision, and the boy disappeared.
I hung up the phone. I would pay for that later, of course, but I didn’t care. I didn’t love Cheryl anymore, I had known that for a while. But I was too afraid to deal with it. Of course at that moment something like that seemed like a mediocre fear. “If she calls back, tell her I’m in surgery.”
I watched Dr. Hartwick hang up the phone. He looked flustered. I wondered who it had been. I didn’t know much about the man, except that he was going to be a great surgeon someday. And he had great eyes. I could feel my face turning red at the thought, but my mind wouldn’t stop. I imagined going into an empty room with him, like an episode of Grey’s Anatomy or ER.
As he turned to look at me I realized I was staring at him. For a second, I thought that maybe he could read my mind and had caught the thoughts I had of him having his way with me.
I secretly wished that he would stop to chat, but as he walked past me he didn’t even look up. My heart sank, and I wondered what I would have to do to get his attention.
“Hartwick, Eva Orr is up now. Do you know what the father would like us to do?”
I had been so caught in my own thoughts that I had forgotten about the crisis that was facing the Orr family. “I believe he wants to tell her. He thinks she should know as soon as possible.” I thought of the idea of telling a four year old that three of her family members were dead was ridiculous, but there was no other option.
“Where is he right now?”
“He’s still in the room with his son. We’re having some trouble getting him out of there.”
“Well, go talk to him will you? We need to get that body into the morgue and free up the room.” I nodded. The kid’s dead now, so he’s in the way, of course.
I didn’t really feel the need to go see a dead kid. I had my own following me around. “Dr. Sills? How is Catherine Jones?”
“She’s absolutely delusional, but she’s awake and all her vitals are fine.”
That was all I needed to know. I would pay her a visit as soon as I got David out of his son’s room.
Cody’s hand was still warm. I didn’t know if it actually was, or if it was just that I had been holding it for so long that I had kept it that way. I looked at his face. They had taken off his glasses. The lenses had been broken anyway. The glass had cut the perfect skin around his eyes. They had given him stitches. It seemed pointless now. Who had been giving him stitches when there were even worse things to deal with? But they hadn’t known about the internal injuries at the time. By the time they did, it had been just a little bit too late.
The tears poured down my cheeks. I didn’t wipe them away. I only let them fall onto the bed in front of me.
I wondered where the truck driver was. He had done this. He had been high. He had been high and he had a lapse in judgement and half of my family was dead.
“David?”
I didn’t turn. I knew that whoever it was, was coming to take me away from my Cody.
“My father always told me that men don’t cry. We’re the ones who are supposed to be strong, but I think sometimes in order to be strong we have to cry first.”
I looked up at Hartwick. “Where is the man who did this? I would like to speak with him.”
“I can’t let you do that, David.”
“Why? He deserves to look me in the face and hear what he has done to my family!”
“He knows, David. Please don’t shout.”
I forced myself to stand up. I couldn’t feel my legs, I had never felt this type of anger. I was angry that I was so helpless. I was angry that this could have been prevented if that man hadn’t been irresponsible. And I was angry that I couldn’t give that man exactly what he deserved for tearing apart my family.
“He knows does he? He might know, but he doesn’t understand. I bet he doesn’t have a family.”
“Anger is not the best way to handle this, David.”
“Don’t tell me how to handle this! Do you see this? This is my son’s dead body. He’s gone. So is my wife and so is my mother-in-law. Three people who I love so much. They’re gone.”
“I understand.”
“No, you do not. Let me see the man who killed my family.”
The man in front of me was staring awkwardly at my son’s bed. His eyes had gone out of focus and his mouth was hanging open slightly. I didn’t like the way he was looking at my son.
I felt my face twist into a snarl. “What are you looking at? He’s dead.”
Hartwick snapped out of his trance. “Perhaps you should concentrate on your daughters. They’re still here and they need their father to help them through this.”
I hadn’t thought about them. Eva and Sadie. I hadn’t thought about them even for a minute. “I don’t know how to help them.”
Mom was asleep. Even so, she looked unhappy. She twitched and moaned. I thought maybe it had something to do with the medication she was on, but mostly I think she was being haunted by her thoughts.
I couldn’t help thinking that maybe it was my fault. Maybe I didn’t tell her how much she meant to me often enough. I would start though. I would tell her every day. She needed it. Love would be the best type of therapy.
I slid my hand over hers. The doctors had told me that I should go home and get some sleep. She would be asleep for a while. But I couldn’t leave her. Right now she needed me as much as I needed her the rest of the time, and I wasn’t about to leave her alone in a time like that.
It was 4:30 in the morning, but I was wide awake. Mary-Anne had come in a few more times, but I hadn’t spoken much. I was scared of the morning, when the cops would come and ask me what the fuck I had been thinking. The fact was that I hadn’t been thinking, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t even the reason I had crashed. It was the fucking music. Some shit about a flower girl. I could feel my eyes burning. My face was wet. Tears? Those were for pussy’s. Guy Catena was not a pussy.
But I was crying, nonetheless. Crying like a scared baby. Everything had built up over my entire life, but I couldn’t keep it in anymore. I had killed people. Three now, Mary had told me. The little boy was nine years old. The kid had never even lived. I hated myself for that.
And now my own life was over. I would go to jail and then I would never be the same. I wanted to take it back. I prayed it was a dream, but every time I asked God to take it back, I opened my eyes and I was still there, in the hospital, counting down the hours until the end of my free life.
To make things worse, Vince had continued to try to make conversation. Most things that he said majorly creeped me out. I had told him I was going to try and get some sleep. He had been quiet since then.
Shouting in the hallway outside the door brought me back from my self-loathing.
“You’ll let me talk to him, dammit!”
I couldn’t hear what the other party replied. There was only one man yelling.
“He killed my family! How can you let him lay in there and not look me in the eyes!”
I was unsure of how I was going to face this man if they let him in. My usual reaction would have been to punch the shit out of him. But I thought that given my it would have been best if I cooled my temper.
I took two deep breaths and pulled myself into a sitting position and swung my legs over the edge of my bed. It hurt like a bitch, but I kept myself going. I pulled the IV out of my arm and tried to stand. I fell back on the bed. My left leg was in no condition to walk on.
“That doesn’t seem like a very good idea, fella.”
I ignored him and tried again, this time putting weight on my right. It worked. I hopped to the door. Outside the man was still yelling.
“No, don’t touch me. I just want to speak with him!”
When I opened the door and stepped into the hallway the scene was just as I had imagined. A man with a newly stitched wound on his head was trying desperately to pull away from a doctor. But the doctor had a good grip on him. I was glad about that.
“Let him talk to me.”
I leaned against the doorframe for a second. My leg throbbed. The pain was bad, but bearable. The rest of my body was weak and shaky. I wouldn’t be winning any fights today.
“You bastard!” He tried to pull free again. “You killed them! What on earth were you thinking.”
I wasn’t. “I don’t know what to say. I’ll never forgive myself for this.”
“Sonofa–.” Just then, he pulled away, and ran straight for me. Already pulling back his arm. On any other day, I would have easily dodged such a poorly executed punch, but today I was in no shape for fast reactions. His fist hit me square in the jaw. At first I wasn’t sure if the crunching sound that accompanied the punch was my jaw or his fist. When he started clutching his hand to his chest and making the most girlish, fucking annoying sounds ever, I knew it had been his.
I won’t deny that there was a lot of power packed into that shitty punch, and my jaw hurt pretty bad. Blood rushed to my head, carrying with it my fiery temper. I pulled back my own arm and prepared to uppercut the little bitch when a hand covered my fist.
“Please don’t,” Mary whispered.
And I didn’t. But there would have been nothing as satisfying as showing this man how to really punch.
“Mr. Orr, come with me, we’ll fix this up.” The doctor.
“No, I’m not done with him.”
I waited until Catherine’s son had gone home before going into her room. He had taken a lot of convincing, but finally he had accepted that she was stable.
I was looking forward to asking Catherine what she knew about ghosts. I hoped that she would be able help me get rid of mine. I had been just about to see the rest of the vision in the room with David and Cody, but he had stopped me. I wanted to know what was so terrible about that walk in the woods. I felt like I had been there before.
But of course I had. I lived by those woods from the day I was born until I moved out when I was 19. I wasn’t sure if the boy was showing me something real or something that he was manufacturing to drive me insane.
When I entered her room, Catherine was sitting up, sipping from a paper cup. “Oh, hello young man. Where have you been?”
“Hello Catherine. How are you feeling?”
“Oh, as good as can be expected. Where is your friend?”
“Who– oh, the little boy? I don’t know. Catherine, I was hoping you could tell me something about the boy. Like maybe why he’s here, and why we’re the only ones who can see him.”
“There’s no way to tell exactly why the dead present themselves to the people they do.” Catherine smiled.
“How long have you been seeing them?”
“Oh, since I was a little girl. It’s much worse now that I’m old though. They must sense I’m close to death.” The woman laughed. It was chilling, even though I had never seen a face as kind as Catherine’s. “Everyone thinks I’m crazy. Maybe it’s true. But these spirits have been haunting me for so long.”
Her eyes were as vacant as they were when I had first seen her. She sighed. “The boy needs something, and he knows that you’re the one who can help him. So he’s made himself visible to you. Listen to him, and he won’t get dangerous.”
And then she started humming again.
“Catherine?”
She only continued humming. She stared ahead in a daze.
And then there was the boy. He stood at the other side of her bed, and he was staring at me. I knew what to do. I wanted to know so badly. But I was scared. I was absolutely terrified. But I knew that I had to find out, because whatever this boy was telling me was something that was going to help him too. I looked into his eyes, eyes that seemed somehow very familiar.
I was back in the forest, watching my younger self and my friend. I still couldn’t see who the friend was. He had curly blonde hair. I racked my brains, but I couldn’t remember. We were running, jumping, playing. Every once in a while we would find something of importance and put it into our backpacks. My radio was playing my mother’s favourite song. I love the flower girl.
Suddenly my friend and I stopped. My younger self fumbled with the radio, trying to turn it off. I couldn’t see what was causing the scene below, but I could tell it was something in the clearing, something bad.
Then I could see it. There he was, the ghost boy, only this time he was alive, but he wasn’t alone. The man on top of him must have been 19 or 20. Then the images came back to me, all of them, all at once. I remembered rounding the corner and catching the eye of the boy. He was completely naked, his clothes were tossed all around. He said nothing, but his eyes called to me, they called for help. They were the same eyes that I was staring into now, as an adult.
The man with the boy must have been too busy with what he was doing, he hadn’t heard two little boys approaching with a radio.
It hadn’t been until one of us had gasped that he looked up. “What the fuck do we have here? Wanna play boys?”
The man stopped and stood up. His pants were around his ankles and he was sweaty and out of breath. His face was wild. His eyes were the most vibrant green I had ever seen. “This little guy here could use another play mate.”
It was then that we had turned and ran.
“Hey! You never tell anyone! Or I’ll find you and you’ll be dead! I promise you!” And then he had laughed, loud and long.
And we had never told anyone. We hadn’t even discussed it ourselves. That summer I had begun wetting my bed again. My mother had never understood why. My friend, Charlie, had died when we were in high school. A little too much whisky and a dare.
Back in my bed, I was holding ice to my jaw. David Orr had finally been dragged away. There was nothing they could do about my face. He had only bruised it.
“So, did you talk to him?” Vince laughed.
“Shut up, Vince.”
His laughter stopped. “What did you say to me, boy?”
“I said shut up, Vince. I’m in no mood for your shit.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are? Do you know what I can do to you?”
“Not much with a broken hip, old man.”
“Fuck you. What do you know? I think you’ll be quite surprised about what I can do.” He paused and smiled. “I’ve killed for less than this.”
The boy began to walk. Before then he had never moved. But he was walking, and I knew he wanted me to follow him. We started down the hallway. I passed Mary-Anne. She smiled. I smiled back, but there was no heart behind it.
We came to a door. The boy stopped, and stood beside it.
“In here?” He made no indication, but a feeling inside me told me this was where he was. In this room was the man who I had seen on top of this boy so many years ago; the man who had threatened to kill me as well; the who had scared me so badly that I had completely suppressed a memory.
I walked into the room. The first patient was a large man. He was barely 30. It couldn’t have been him.
I continued to the next bed.
“Hello doctor.” And there they were. The eyes. Those green eyes. They gave him away. Without those eyes, I would never have known. He could have just been any old man with a broken leg in a hospital bed.
Then the boy was there too. On his face was the look I had seen so long ago in the clearing in the woods. And then the boy nodded, and he was gone.
I knew what I had to do.
I love the flower girl.
Was she reality or just a dream to me.
I love the flower girl.
Her love showed me the way to find a sunny day.
- “The Rain, The Park and Other Things” by The Cowsills
