It’s good advice, but I have something else on my mind. “Did you tell the detectives what you think—about Dr. Koftura?” I rush the words out, worried she’ll leave before I can get an answer.
“Yes.”
A fist unclenches in my chest.
“And I’m smarter than your other doctor. I’m smarter than most people. They should listen to me.” Her eyes narrow. “And so should you. But I don’t know if either of you will.”
She snaps my chart closed, slips it into its plastic holder, and makes as though to leave. But she stops herself, and I watch uncertainty play out across her face. Then she walks quickly over to me, pushes the table that still holds my belongings to the side, and reaches down to hold my hand for a few seconds.
“Good luck,” she says to the floor, and then squeezes my hand once before letting go.
She rushes out the door and calls over her shoulder, “Don’t forget to call your friend.”
20
After I call Annie with the news that I’m being discharged, and confirm she’ll be about two hours before she arrives, I decide there’s no need to save my battery.
I open up my text messages first and scroll through them. The vivid colors of the emojis Justin sent to me light up my screen. Our relationship is full of smiley faces, hearts, cute puppy and animal gifs, and so much tenderness that I don’t know whether to let the ache of grief rip through me or to fuel my anger that perhaps all of this—whatever it was we had—was a lie.
I move through the list of messages until the very bottom. His last text to me was sent just before we met up Friday afternoon to leave for our weekend away.
Cannot wait to see you and spend an amazing evening together. I love you.
How could anyone misread that? I’d written back, I love you too.
We were happy, rolling through the snowy hills and pointing out beautiful scenes for the other person to look at. I remember he had me look at a pony that was nibbling on crab apples under a tree—the pony had on a little blanket for warmth, and the only parts of its body to be seen were its shaggy head and perky little tail swishing as it munched happily on its snack. That had been—what? Maybe fifteen minutes before Justin ran us off the road.
It just doesn’t connect. Not one single bit.
I only have a few voice mails from him, and don’t want to listen to them. Not yet. Instead, I open up my Facebook app.
His face flashes up onto the screen, and I see that he has twenty new friends since we’d uploaded his photo. The picture of the two of us together, in bed, looking so goddamn happy, still sits as his avatar in the small circle in the corner of the screen. I click over to the notifications icon and scroll down to his friends list from there. All of them are my friends (mostly online friends shared from Twitter), who must have added him after our relationship status updated. Annie’s profile stares back at me from Justin’s list of friends, and I remember how she was friends with him on Facebook even before I was.
There’s a rustling in my room, and I look up from my phone to see detectives Ormoran and Miller standing in the doorway. Ormoran’s braids are loose today, with a pussy-bow tie shirt and black slacks. Miller is wearing what seems to be her standard white shirt, black pants again, with the same leather jacket. And the pink purse too.
“So, you found your phone,” Ormoran says. “I’m sorry about the fingerprinting dust. It’s standard procedure, unfortunately.”
“Where’s Justin’s phone?” Miller asks, settling her laconic self in what seems to be becoming her favorite plastic chair again.
I stop dead in my tracks, picturing his phone on the dashboard and that name, “Mom,” calling just before Justin spun out of control.
“What do you mean?” escapes my mouth before I remind myself of Dr. Holdren’s advice. Perhaps she’s right—she is smarter than me.
“I mean,” Miller says, her face buried in the notepad she’s pulled out of her garish purse, “the two of you are heading out on a romantic weekend, and Justin doesn’t bring his phone at all to—what do they call it, Ormoran?”
“Story,” Ormoran chimes in, her face impassive. Miller must be good cop today.
“Right, even though ‘story’ isn’t an actual verb.” For the first time I hear Miller’s voice take on some tenor of emotion: revulsion. For the grammatical pirating, or the millennial need to document our lives, I can’t tell. She goes on, “People your age like to post the stories of your day online. So why wouldn’t Justin bring his phone with him to do just that?”
A small part of me is tempted to point out that Ormoran, Miller, and I are all approximately the same age, and that Justin was actually older than me. But, per doctor’s orders, I bite my tongue. Instead, I do my best to say nothing by saying something. “That makes sense.”
“What makes sense?” Miller asks, not at all confused.
“What you just said. I see your point.”
“Oh, really?” It’s Miller again, but Ormoran cuts in.
“Ms. Kalson, you’re not really helping yourself here. You’re just giving us gibberish.”
Maybe they’re smarter than me too.
“It might be better if you didn’t say anything at all,” Ormoran adds, to which Miller cuts a sharp look in her partner’s direction.
“Why don’t you tell us what happened in the car right before the crash?” Miller says, with more urgency than I’ve yet to see in her.
I don’t say anything.
Miller looks at her partner, and Ormoran sighs, then says, “It’d help us immensely if you could go over those last few minutes with us. I know it will be hard for you, but we’re asking for your help.”
That didn’t last long. I cast a look at Miller, who is still staring at her notepad.
I can’t avoid it. My mind is back on that winding road, watching Justin cut the car across the lanes in quick switchbacks. I see myself reach my hand out to the wheel, and feel the stiffness of Justin’s hand under mine as I try to steady my grip. I remember myself trying to turn the wheel to the right, trying to steer us away from danger. From that car barreling down on us. But then I think about Dr. Koftura saying, so many times over the years, the same mantra she gave me as I sat and watched her weep over her own guilt in this hospital room. Memory plays tricks on us. What we remember is not always the truth.
Why do you believe yourself?
Even though I haven’t said anything, Ormoran urges me on. “You can tell us.” She reaches out her hand and puts it just an inch or so away from mine—her signature move—and part of me wants to tell her everything. But the other part knows that really she’s just very good at her job.
I want to glance at my phone and check the time to see how much longer until Annie arrives, but I’m worried what that might prompt Ormoran or Miller to say.
After a minute of silence, Ormoran seems to decide to take a different track. “Where’s your mother?”
I look up at her, startled by the question.
“I was seven when I went into care. I never saw my mother again after that.”
“What led to you being taken away from your home?” Miller asks, scribbling in her notebook.
“Why do you need to know about my childhood?”
“It helps us get some context,” is all Ormoran offers.
Context forgives everything. Psychology 101.
So, I make a decision to tell the detectives a little bit about my life. For context. And maybe forgiveness.
“I was out in my neighborhood after school. We lived in the public housing over on Midlothian Boulevard, in Youngstown. It wasn’t the best neighborhood, but it wasn’t awful either. I had friends I played with. Our house was always full of people coming and going. I remember that. I don’t remember much else about my mother—I can’t picture her face. Sometimes I can remember her voice.” I pause, slow myself down. Be careful. “But that’s it. My doctor—” I avoid saying Dr. Koftura’s name “—told me this is probably because of the trauma. After trauma,
it’s not uncommon for children to lose their memories, especially if it involves brain injury.”
I feel like I’ve been talking forever, but Miller and Ormoran just sit there, quietly listening.
“One day, after school, I was playing in the neighborhood and I fell in the street. A car was going way too fast and smacked into me. It was a hit-and-run, and they never found the driver. My body flew over twenty feet, I guess—that’s what the doctors told me afterwards.” At least that’s what Dr. Koftura told me. “I was taken straight to the emergency department of a hospital after somebody called 911, and I guess when the police went to inform my mother they discovered the type of mother she was.”
“By this doctor, you mean Dr. Koftura, right? Your neurologist?” Ormoran interjects.
“What did she tell—” I start to say, but Miller interrupts me.
“What type of mother was she?” Miller asks, her eyes finally torn from her notepad and searching my face for something. “Your mother,” she clarifies.
“I was just asking about what Dr. Koftura told you—” I try again.
“Please answer the question,” Miller presses, still looking at me.
I let out a sigh.
“She was a terrible mother.” I go on. “She was filthy, with men coming and going, never paying any attention to me. I fed myself, washed myself, took care of myself. The only time she noticed me was when she needed me to run an errand for her, to another house or someone on the corner of the block. Otherwise, I was just a nuisance.” These aren’t my memories; they are pieces of information I’ve gathered from listening in on the conversations of foster parents, social workers, and doctors for the remainder of my childhood. Adults love to talk about how other parents failed their children.
“So they took you away after that, and you never saw her again? Foster care for the rest of your childhood?” Ormoran asks.
“And a group home for the last part.”
“Doesn’t it seem a little extreme?” Ormoran looks at Miller. “I mean, we’ve got all sorts of cases where kids go back to their parents, and their families have done much worse than just being a neglectful mom. I mean, it doesn’t sound all that bad, does it?”
“You didn’t live it,” I say, my voice icy.
“Yeah, well, it sounds like you don’t remember much of it, either,” Miller contributes. “Maybe it was worse than they’ve told you?”
Miller’s observation hangs in the still air until Nurse Debbie arrives.
She bursts into my room, a whirlwind of energy, to check my vitals and give me instructions for discharge. Today her scrubs have green frogs on them, and when she sees me eyeing them up, she explains, “I’m going to pediatrics later today.” She glances down at the frogs dancing across her huge breasts. “D’you think the little ones’ll like them?”
“Of course they will,” Ormoran jumps in. “What kid doesn’t like frogs?”
Nurse Debbie gives the detective a withering look. After she finishes measuring my blood pressure, taking out my IV tube, and rubbing the spot with a special concoction of alcohol and lotion to remove the sticky tape remnants, she pats me on the shoulder, leans down to my ear, and whispers, “Don’t let them fuck with you, love. If they were here to arrest you, they’d’ve done it already.”
With that, she gives a professional nod to the detectives and saunters out the door. Despite everything, I hadn’t even considered they were here to arrest me, and Nurse Debbie’s words of comfort only serve to stoke my growing fear.
I’m a suspect.
And the next words out of Ormoran’s mouth confirm it.
“Ms. Kalson, we have had to run your name through the system—standard protocol—and we got a hit. Granted, juvenile files are sealed, but your adult file has one report. Drunken and Disorderly Conduct. And a restraining order against you on behalf of a Richard Mueller. We have to follow up on something like that.” She shrugs her shoulders in apology. “So Miller and I dig a little deeper and end up reading Richard’s statement. It seems he tried to break up with you—it doesn’t state why—and you show up at his house drunk, mad as hell, and cursing him out. When he tried to calm you down, you took a swing at him, and even though you didn’t hit him, you did end up breaking one of his windows and needing several stitches.”
Or were they sutures? I think wryly.
Ormoran looks down at my hands, and a wave of shame floods my senses as I take in the tiny white scars dancing across my knuckles. I never wanted to hurt Richard, and I didn’t even try to hit him. His pretentious stained glass window on his front door was another story, though.
Miller adds, “You have to admit there seems to be some striking similarities here.”
There are bursts of light in front of my eyes. Thoughts creeping out of dark corners. Suddenly I feel so, so tired. And then I do it. I yawn. It can happen, when your sympathetic nervous system kicks in—it’s a sign of intense anxiety. But I doubt Ormoran and Miller know that.
“Are we boring you?” Miller offers, giving me a weighted stare in the wake of my yawn. “Or are you able to answer a few more questions? For instance, you mentioned the phone call Justin received from his mother just before the accident, but we didn’t recover his phone from the crash. In fact, we haven’t been able to find it at all. Do you know where Justin’s phone could be?”
“Can you help us, Ms. Kalson?” Ormoran adds for emphasis.
As I register what they’re telling me, alarm bells ring inside my head.
I wait a second, waiting for the pounding in my temples to slow down, and just as I’m about to parrot phrases I recall from Law & Order re-runs, like “Am I being charged?” “I want a lawyer,” or something similar, Dr. Holdren rushes in, her cheeks pink from running down the hallway. Thank you, Nurse Debbie, I think.
Behind her is a smaller figure with spiky blond hair.
“When did you get here?” Dr. Holdren demands of the two detectives. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Ms. Kalson is being discharged, effective immediately.”
Ormoran holds up her hands, as if in surrender. “We were just leaving.” Then she turns to me. “Think about what we said. We’ll be in touch.” And the two detectives head through the door, Miller holding it open for Ormoran to exit through first.
Annie doesn’t wait a beat. She rushes over to me, grabs me in her wiry arms, and hugs me until I can’t breathe. It feels wonderful.
21
We are flying down the highway, away from the hospital and the detectives, heading towards home. I let myself pretend, for just a few seconds, that I’m hurtling away from the disaster of my life, instead of heading back to it.
Before we left, Annie helped me send an e-mail to my boss, David, to notify him of my accident. I couldn’t manage to type the words out without my hands shaking, and so Annie wrote while I dictated. Since it’s still Monday, and my classes meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, plus my large seminar on Wednesdays, I haven’t missed any lectures yet, although I saw my inbox had fifty-four messages from students waiting to be answered. There are over thirty-five notifications on Twitter, some from my online friends asking where I’ve been. And several messages on Facebook.
One thing at a time, I tell myself.
At least I’m wearing real clothing again. The clothes I was wearing that night were too ripped and bloodied to give back to me—or the police are keeping them for other reasons and just not telling me—so Annie brought an approximation of an outfit from her closet for me. She dresses much more punk artist than I do, so I don’t feel quite like myself in her ripped black jeans and a nubbly neon orange sweater. Then again, I wouldn’t feel like myself in my favorite about-home outfit of slippers, sweats, and my chenille robe.
Because I’m not myself anymore. I left the hospital as someone different.
I know Annie is dying to talk to me, but I’m just too tired to handle more questions right now. I asked her to put on some music, and the strains of some indie band I don’t know the name of are float
ing around in the heater-scorched air of her car. Outside, the highway is a bleak scene of gray snow and skeletal trees, mixed with the odd silos of factory smoke and industrial equipment storehouses.
We are not taking the scenic way home.
“I’m going to stay with you for a while,” Annie announces into the heavy guitar lick that just spun out into some more emo-piano chords.
“Your music sucks,” I comment, which she knows really means, “Thank you.” We both laugh, and Annie says, “Well, you’ll have to get used to it for a while.”
“It’ll be just like old times,” I say, still trying to pretend that where my life is heading is different to what I know to be true.
“Hungry?” A huge sign is looming up in front of us for Davidson’s Family Style Diner, boasting “24 hr Breakfast” in flashing lights. I actually don’t know the last time I ate, and Annie’s jeans—she’s shaped more like a greyhound with long limbs and a willowy frame, whereas I’m a solidly built petite—gape off of me at the waist and thighs.
“I am famished.” I say it like I’m surprised to discover this after having not eaten anything of real substance for almost three days. Annie gives me another laugh.
“That’s a first.” Sarcasm drips off her voice, and having this pseudo-normal banter with my best friend is a balm to my heart. Besides, Annie’s right—I’ve never met an all-day breakfast I didn’t love.
The parking lot is full of pickup trucks and beat-up Chevy sedans, which bodes well for the quality of the diner food. My stomach growls involuntarily when I catch a whiff of grease and frying meat.
Annie and I sit down in a booth amidst lots of flannel-clad men nursing coffees and steak-and-eggs plates.
“What time is it?” Somehow I hadn’t even glanced at the clock in the car. I’d been grasping at straws, trying to stay rooted to the ground, despite the tumult constantly rumbling through my head. I remember learning in grad school that trauma victims cope by focusing on concrete needs. Food. Sleep. Touch. From what I can remember through the watery images of my childhood, those techniques didn’t work for me when I was a trauma victim the first time. Dr. Koftura had preferred other techniques.
It Was Always You Page 11
