[Gina Mazzio RN 01.0 - 03.0] Bone Set

by JJ Lamb

  He couldn’t understand the increased demand: Father was supposed to be was very sick, but the shaking hands or troubled speech he’d expected as a result of the tumor had not happened. Had Father lied to him?

  A cellular phone rang out a merry-go-round tune and the man Shelly was talking to raised a phone to his ear.

  “Yeah?”

  “Okay. I’m on my way.”

  The man leaned over to Shelly and said, “Sorry, honey, I’ve got a sick kid at home.”

  Shelly held his arm briefly and Eddie noticed a large diamond engagement ring on her right hand. Like her opalescent fingernail polish, it flashed in the diminished light.

  “Do you really have to go?”

  He shrugged her arm off and without another word headed for the exit.

  Shelly took a couple of large gulps of her Margarita.

  “Better off without him,” Eddie said to her. “Seemed kind of like a jerk.”

  “And who the hell asked you?” Shelly said, her hazel eyes glaring like a striking viper. She turned away and tossed down the rest of her drink.

  He leaned back and forced a smile, but he could feel his scalp wrinkling with dissatisfaction. “Sorry! Just trying to make small talk.”

  Shelly turned back to him, studied his face again, didn’t recognize him. But she seemed to like what she saw; she caught the bartender’s attention: “Another one, please.”

  When her drink arrived, Eddie said, “Take it out of this.” He handed over a twenty. The server moved away from Shelly’s stash of money on the counter and swiped away a crisp Andrew Jackson.

  Eddie wanted to leave, wanted to rush outside the bar. He didn’t want to pick up Shelly, didn’t want to bring any more women to Father. But the insistent cell phone was vibrating inside his pocket.

  People were packed in tight around him and the noise level was making his ears ring. He shifted in his seat, focused on the discomfort – made it step back, far back. Soon, he was able to raise his glass of Merlot as she lifted her salt-frosted Margarita. They clinked glasses.

  * * *

  Shelly leaned on Eddie as he walked her to his car. She gave him her address and immediately passed out, sleeping soundly during the ride to the concrete block building. The roofie he’d slipped into her last drink had worked immediately on her.

  When he opened the gate and pulled into the back of the shop, a crash of rain battered the windshield. As he stepped out, the deluge on his neck startled him, added to his misery.

  He gagged, retching alongside the car. He couldn’t stop. He dry heaved again and again.

  “I don’t want to do this,” he muttered, leaning against the car. “I just want to go home.”

  But his brain echoed with the insistent admonition: MORE!

  He was afraid, afraid someone might remember him leaving the bar with Shelly. But there would be a more immediate price to pay if he disappointed Father, and he couldn’t face paying it.

  A sudden violent energy sprang from nowhere, zigzagged through his arms. It gathered a furious momentum and a chaotic buzzing hummed in his head.

  Women are all like your mother. Liars, deserters, users.

  Only when he reached into the car for Shelly, yanked her out, and tossed her up and over his shoulder did the noises stop.

  She grunted as her gut hit hard against him, but her hand swung listlessly, back and forth, back and forth.

  All at once, his chest opened up and a rush of air forced its way through his lungs. He screamed with a strange exhilaration. She became light as a feather as he swept through the smelly lockers into the processing room. Sides of beef and cuts of pork still hung on hooks in the chilled cutting room; fresh sawdust was scattered on the floor. He dumped Shelly onto the hardwood cutting table.

  An array of containers filled with organ meat was carefully lined up on an aluminum cart. Next to them were scalpels with various size blades mingled with boning and sawing knives. Eddie cringed, knew he would have to assist Father. They would be there past midnight preparing the packages.

  Shelly was moaning and starting to wake up.

  Father stepped from behind a swinging side of beef, quickly pulled a pair of poultry shears from an overhead rack, and expertly cut away her clothing as if it were a loose coat of fur. She lay naked, her skin forming goose bumps up and down her arms and legs. Pendulous breasts drooped to the sides of her ribcage; her gut bobbled as she coughed and rubbed her neck.

  “Red hair! How many times do I have to tell you? Red Hair!”

  “She is a redhead,” Eddie mumbled.

  Jacob pointed to Shelley’s mouse-brown pubic hair. “Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Just can’t get it through that muddled head of yours – red hair, small, attractive. God but you’re stupid.”

  Father duct-taped her wrists and legs to the table, pausing once to look at the large diamond ring on her finger. She was now awake, staring at him.

  “Where the hell am I?” she said, looking around the room. First she glared at Eddie, then at Jacob.

  “Son-of-a-bitch! What the hell do the two of you think you’re doing?”

  She yanked against the silver-gray tape; her face turned purple with exertion and rage. Every part of her trembled as she tried to pull free. Father leaned over and licked her face; she turned her head sharply away.

  “Sit!” Jacob said to Eddie.

  Eddie was shaking but he eased down on a high stool.

  “Touch her, you wimp. Touch her!”

  He ran a hand lightly across her thigh, across the soft flesh of her stomach.

  Father was laughing, but the voices in Eddie’s head boomed even louder:

  Miserable brat. Stop whining. Do it. DO IT R-I-G-H-T!”

  “Let me go!” Shelly screamed.

  Eddie’s head buzzed, buzzed with a never-ending accusation:

  It’s your fault your mother left me. Left me with YOU.

  Jacob’s voice was nasty and sweet at the same time. “Nurses should understand the values of anatomy and physiology,” he said. “Learning with the real thing is always best.” Father twisted, then yanked the diamond off Shelly’s finger, held it up to the light, then tucked it away in a pocket.

  Shelly was silent; her eyes followed Jacob’s every move.

  “Think of it!” Jacob said. “Your miserable body will teach future nurses everything they need to know about their insides … with your insides.”

  Shelly’s short, stabbing scream filled the room.

  Eddie smashed his hands over his ears, released a loud wheeze.

  The elder St. George frowned at him, then turned back to Shelly. His hands poised over her like a surgeon ready to operate. He smiled.

  Chapter 11

  Gina slipped into her apartment and quickly shut the door. She clenched her teeth and tightened her muscles to quell her shaking body, then drifted through the vast pool of darkness she called home. If Harry were here, the living room would have held a warm welcoming light and the rich aroma of one of his many spicy concoctions.

  She groped for the lamp switch, allowed the light to pierce the blackness. Everything was as she had left it that morning – coffee table filled with magazines that spilled onto the floor, the morning newspaper folded and unread on the sofa, and the scruffy chair she kept threatening to replace. It all stared at her reproachfully, including a framed photograph of Harry, with his soulful eyes that seemed to follow her every movement.

  When she finally removed her raincoat, she realized the apartment was damp and cold; it also smelled sterile, like some important human component had been drained from the place.

  Just four walls.

  Her gaze jumped to the answering machine, but there was no blinking light. No new calls. There would be no sound of Harry’s voice.

  Loneliness washed over her as she sprawled across the sofa, the chill of the room raising goose bumps. Limp, wasted, she felt small and vulnerable, like a child who sprinted home after school to be in a safe, warm place and found herself alone. How ma
ny times had that happened to her as a child growing up in New York City, with both parents working?

  But there were also many good moments being part of a large extended Italian family of parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and friends. Together, they created a world of trust, creature comforts, and the wondrous abundance and flavors of Italian cooking. It was as if she and those in the neighborhood had been intermingled during some ritual prenatal exchange, then delivered so tightly bonded, they even thought alike most of the time.

  Now she was on the other side of the continent, away from her roots. She glanced at Harry’s picture again and sighed softly. He was gone also.

  Harry!

  Another vital connection that no words could explain, but whose loss endangered her sense of belonging.

  She sat up, pulled his picture to her. He was the only man who made her feel secure, even if she refused to commit her soul to him. It wasn’t his fault – Dominick. had ruined that kind of surrender.

  Sometimes when she was scared and alone, she shook with fear as she thought about her ex-husband. Memories of that final night with him would flash through her head like a looped, slow motion film.

  She started to cry, stopped herself, started again. The worst thing was knowing that the man who brutalized her was her husband, someone she had once trusted, had placed her total faith in.

  And the betrayal of her mother and father, who acknowledged what had happened to her, but did nothing. Her parents and in-laws were paesanos from the same little village in Italy and that seemed more important than her life-threatening situation.

  “You can’t put your husband in jail. It was just a misunderstanding. These things happen sometimes with newlyweds.” She could still see them standing by her bed, watching a unit of blood flow into her arm as she lay in the hospital, torn and bruised. At the same time, her brother patrolled up and down the streets in his Chevy, looking for Dominick. He’d come back alone, unsatisfied and defeated

  For the first time in her life, she identified with the ravaged women of Africa and the non-existent or lowly status of women in the Middle East. She/they had no value except for the children they could bear. And for her, that dubious value might never occur.

  Later, they learned that Dominick had holed up in a fishing buddy’s upstate cabin. After Gina pressed charges, they picked him up and dragged him off to jail.

  Then came his threats of what would happen if she testified, followed by the trial, and sentencing – for the minimum term allowable: two to five years.

  Maybe her life, like those of other abused women throughout the world, did have less value in the eyes of the courts.

  She clutched Harry’s photo tighter to her chest and in spite of herself, smiled. Harry didn’t have one drop of Italian blood flowing through his veins, yet he happily merged his identity with hers and allowed her background to embrace him.

  “You’re my rock, my home,” she said to the photograph. “Why didn’t I grasp that before?”

  The telephone rang. Her heart raced as she grabbed the receiver.

  “Hello! Harry?”

  “It’s Regina. What happened to you? We were supposed to have a wedding this past weekend. I mean, you were supposed to have a wedding. I’ve been calling and leaving messages since Saturday. Don’t you ever listen to your message machine?”

  “I should have returned your calls, I know.” Gina could barely speak, had difficulty swallowing the lump that rose and threatened to choke her. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t tell me you got cold feet again. How on earth could you not want to marry that incredibly cool guy?”

  “No, no. It’s not that, it’s something else. It’s complicated.”

  “Gina, I swear, you can complicate the simplest of things. You either love the guy or you don’t.”

  She stood, stumbled over her own feet, and reached for the other lamp.

  “I know. And you and Bill went to all that trouble to set up the ceremony. I feel just awful.”

  “So Harry’s not there, huh?”

  There was a long silence before Gina answered. “No. I guess I’ve managed to mess up our relationship, along with everything else.”

  “Everything else?”

  Gina swiped at the tears that spilled down her face. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Regina. Can’t talk about it right now. Please tell Bill I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to the two of you.”

  “You better call.”

  “I will. I will.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Gina gently hung up the phone, slumped onto the sofa, and sobbed until there were no more tears.

  She dragged herself into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out a container of vanilla soymilk and fixed herself a bowl of cereal. After a couple of spoonfuls, she pushed it aside.

  “Mangia!” she muttered, remembering her mother, who would circle the kitchen table like a vulture, demanding that she eat. She started shoveling in spoonful after spoonful until the bowl was empty.

  Standing in front of the sink, she pushed aside the crisp, white curtains at the kitchen window. She watched the rain pour down on the cars under the street lamp; they were jammed together next to the curb and seemed to bear the brunt of the cascading downpour. Her little Fiat was standing like a brave soldier, but she knew the one small rip in the vinyl top would allow water to slowly puddle on the floorboard.

  She smiled when she remembered how Harry would force them out into a storm just like this one, in whatever they were wearing. He said it would make them feel more alive. And he was right. Her skin would tingle as the icy rainwater spilled over her. And how they’d laugh as they raced around the block, then dash inside to take a long, hot shower together.

  During those times, she was very much than alive, she was safe. She was with Harry.

  * * *

  After a soak in the tub, Gina tried to read herself to sleep, but it wasn’t until after 1:00 AM that she turned out the bedside light.

  The telephone rang.

  She grabbed up the receiver. “Harry?”

  Silence.

  “Harry, is that you? Please talk to me.”

  “Gina?”

  That voice. It was him. Her throat tightened. “How did you get my number?”

  “Please, I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m hanging up.”

  “I know all about you, Gina.”

  She froze, stared at the receiver. “What do you know?”

  “You help people.”

  “I’m going to call the police.”

  “They’re going to keep dying.” His voice was soft, but intense.

  “Who?”

  “Shelly’s gone. You’ll never see her again.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re just trying to satisfy your own sick needs by trying to scare me.”

  “She won’t be at work tomorrow. She’s all cut, cut into pieces.”

  “Why are you doing these terrible things; why are you calling me?”

  There were several beats before he responded. “I do it for Father.”

  “Father?” Gina clutched her pillow to her. “Like God?”

  “Not God. Father. What he says must be done.”

  Gina looked around the room, tried to focus on a single object, something that would allow her mind to stop jumping from one thought to another.”

  “You’re cutting women up because your father tells you to?”

  “No, he…”

  She waited, then said, “He what?”

  “He … he promises to tell where Mother is, but he never does. I beg him, but he won’t tell me.”

  She heard the wheeze. Small squeaks grew in timbre until Gina was struggling to stop a sudden tightness in her own chest. She could barely speak.

  “What can I do? You haven’t even told me your name.” Her hand was dripping wet from clutching the receiver tighter and tighter

  “Help me make it stop.”

  The
line went dead.

  Chapter 12

  Car keys in one hand, a piece of toast in the other, Gina tried once more to call Pepper Yee before leaving for work.

  “I have your other two messages, Ms. Mazzio,” the police receptionist said. “I’ll give them to Detective Yee as soon as she comes in.”

  “It’s really important. Can’t you radio her?”

  “She’s in the field, ma’am. If this is an emergency, give me the information and we’ll have someone else handle it.”

  Gina needed to leave immediately if she expected to meet with her manager before her shift at Ridgewood began. “Just tell her it’s important that I talk to her.”

  “Like I told you, ma’am, I have your messages … all of them!”

  Gina started to respond, then hung up the phone.

  * * *

  The caller’s words continued to echo in Gina’s head as she pushed through the doors to the Clinic: “They’re going to keep dying.”

  Three large mugs of high-test coffee were propping her up – the only thing that kept her going after being awake most of the night. Her eyes were dry and scratchy, felt like they’d been stretched to their limits in all directions.

  She tapped lightly on Lexie Alexandros’s office door, knowing that her manager habitually came in early. A wavy shadow moving back and forth behind the frosted glass confirmed she’d been right.

  “Come in!”

  Gina slipped into the office. Alexandros didn’t look up from her computer keyboard, pointed to the uncomfortable hospital-issued armchair opposite her desk. Gina sat, waited impatiently for her manager to finish.

  Alexandros was a couple of years younger than Gina: about thirty, with long, dark blonde wavy hair, and a trim body. As the manager typed, engrossed in the monitor, she curled and uncurled a flyaway strand with a nail-bitten finger. Finally, she looked up.

  “Sorry! Had to finish entering a report while everything was still fresh in my mind, otherwise I’d have to go back to my handwritten notes later and start from scratch. And you know what my handwriting is like.”