Fifteen Minutes to Live

by Phoef Sutton

  Frank stepped back, looking down at him. “I’m sorry.” He snatched the letter out of Carl’s pocket with the rubber tips of his metal hand, glancing over at Jesse reproachfully. “I can’t believe you wrote Martin about us.”

  He shoved the letter into his pocket and turned to Jesse, who was pressing herself in a corner by the front door. “Move, we’re getting in the car.”

  “No way,” she said.

  He stared at her.

  “I’m not going with you,” she went on. “Whatever you’re gonna do, get it over with here, I’m not leaving him.”

  Frank glanced at Carl, twisting on the floor, holding his stomach. She wouldn’t leave as long as she could see him here. He stuck the gun in his belt, grabbed Carl’s arm and started dragging him from the room.

  “Come on,” Frank said, “out of sight, out of mind.”

  Carl groaned and Frank kept pulling. It was hard work because Carl kept twisting around, but Frank got him as far as the bedroom door. He flung open the door and bent over Carl again, pausing to take a breath.

  Carl hauled himself up onto his elbow, grabbed the gun in Frank’s belt, twisted it around and fired.

  Frank staggered back, looking at Carl in surprise. A dark stain was spreading on his shirt and he touched it, wondering. Then he understood. He cursed and snatched the gun from Carl’s trembling hands. He leveled it at Carl. Carl covered his face with his hands and Frank fired.

  Jesse screamed when she saw the blood pumping from Carl’s hands. Frank turned to her, pointing at her with the gun.

  “Out,” he said.

  She was too afraid to resist now. She backed out the front door and Frank staggered after her.

  “Get in the car,” he whispered, not for fear of being heard, but because he hurt too much to speak. He fell against the side of the car, pulled open the passenger door and climbed in. Jesse was behind the wheel.

  “Go,” he said, “get me to a hospital.”

  Jesse stared at him, helplessly. “I don’t have the keys.”

  Frank reached into his pants pocket, wincing with pain and pulled the keys free, yanking the letter out with them. The dark stained pages fluttered out across the sand. He tossed the keys into her lap. “For God’s sake, Jesse, hurry.”

  She started the car and pulled out into the desert.

  “I don’t know where I’m going,” she said.

  “I’ll tell you. Just listen to me. Just do what I tell you.”

  The last thing he saw as the car went down the long drive was a coyote digging at something in the sand.

  “Hey?”

  There was no answer.

  “I’m getting a little tired of driving.”

  Frank’s head was resting against the window.

  “The last sign said sixty miles to Los Angeles.”

  The white line seemed to glow in the headlights.

  “Hey, you.”

  No answer.

  “How long before we get home?”

  When the doorbell rang at four thirty in the morning, Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher hurried down the stairs, feeling equal parts apprehension, concern and anger.

  Then they opened the front door and Mrs. Fletcher started screaming.

  The woman stood on the front step like an apparition. Hair wild from the wind. Eyes burning. White dress drenched in blood.

  A car was half on the driveway and half on the lawn. The door was open so the interior light was on. You could see the passenger, slumped across the seat, black with blood, missing one of his arms.

  Mr. Fletcher started screaming too.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “The whole situation is really something of an ethical quagmire,” Dr. Hopley said, studying how the man across from him seemed to keep his right hand covered, out of self-consciousness.

  “I’m aware of that,” the man replied.

  It wasn’t self-consciousness though. When the bullet had struck Carl’s hand, it had shattered bone, ripped through tendons and severed nerves. The hand was good for very little now, but it had deflected the bullet from Carl’s skull so he was grateful to it for that. And he was learning to write with his left hand.

  “Though there is nothing emotionally or even psychologically wrong with her, the neurological deterioration is so extensive, an institution is really the only place for her.” Dr. Hopley’s voice dripped with sympathy. “For an individual to attempt to care for her on his own? The strain would be too intense. It could lead to a complete breakdown.”

  “I’m aware of that, too.” Carl said, smiling faintly. “What of the other…condition.”

  “Well, that’s even more of a quagmire.” Carl guessed that quagmire was Dr. Hopley’s word of the month. “She’s not legally competent to make a decision on her own, even if she understood the situation. The State can’t, of course, make it for her and neither can you. So there’s nothing we can do, even though having her come to term and go through labor in her condition seems, well, terribly cruel. She won’t even understand what’s happening to her.”

  “She will, as long as I’m with her,” Carl said, slowly coming to his feet. “Now will you let me see her?”

  Dr. Hopley sighed. “Well, you see, that’s all part of the complication. We can’t allow visitations from people outside the family, without permission from the family. And, well, in her case, there is no family to talk to.”

  Martin had died from an overdose of sleeping pills the day after his brother’s funeral. Carl was still in critical condition at that point and had been unable to attend.

  “So you see,” Dr. Hopley went on, “until we are finally able to contact her brother, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”

  “I can’t wait that long. No one can.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Carl braced himself against the desk with his good hand and leaned in. “I’m the baby’s father.”

  Dr. Hopley nodded once, then gave in.

  Carl followed Dr. Hopley through the white halls of the hospital, limping with a slow shuffling step. There were still stitches in his abdomen from where they’d taken out a few feet of his lower intestines.

  “What will happen to the baby?”

  “Well, that’s another…”

  “Quagmire?”

  “Yes. She’s obviously not capable of caring for it herself. I suppose the state will…”

  “I’ll take care of the baby.”

  Dr. Hopley stopped before a pair of double doors. “Well, that’s very noble of you, but there may be legal complications…”

  “I’ll take care of the baby,” he said, again.

  Dr. Hopley shrugged and opened the doors. They were in the common room now. People sitting about, playing games, doing puzzles, watching televisions. It looked more like a clubhouse than a snake pit.

  One woman sat alone though, staring at the floor in the corner, not looking at anyone around her.

  “There she is,” Dr. Hopley said, “occasionally she’s quite gregarious, but mostly she’s withdrawn like this. She’s frightened of everyone.”

  Carl was moving toward her now, quickening his step, calling out to her.

  She looked up and her face split into a wide grin. “Carl!” she called out and ran to him. She hugged him so hard, his eyes watered with pain.

  He stumbled over to a chair and sat down. She hovered over him, full of questions.

  “What is this place? Where am I?” she asked.

  “Don’t you remember? You’re visiting me, stupid,” Carl said. “I’m in the hospital. I had an accident.”

  “Oh, my God, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, staring at her worn face, “I’m fine.”

  She pulled up a chair and sat close to him, her hands always touching him as if she were afraid he might vanish if she let go. She seemed so much older than when he’d last seen her. Her hair was cut short, her eyes were hollow, her face was puffy and haggard. The institutional clothes hung about her loosely, but he could still
see the swelling of the child in her belly.

  She didn’t seem aware of it now, but he knew, in time, she would break the news to him. The news that she was carrying their child. He kissed her softly on the cheek and held her.

  Of course, he knew it was Frank’s child. The chronology left no doubt. The baby must have been conceived during the time Frank kept her in his house, on one of those nights when the loneliness and the misery and her blank, uncomprehending stare became too much for him. When he wanted to live the love he’d created for them.

  But what did that matter? Nobody but Carl knew the truth. And I’ll just forget about it, Carl thought. Forgetting is easy.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Phoef Sutton is a novelist, playwright, TV producer and screenwriter who was born in Washington D.C., grew up in Virginia and has lived in California for longer than he can remember.

  He won two Emmys and a Golden Globe for his work on the classic TV series Cheers and a Peabody and a GLAAD award for Boston Legal. He also wrote for the cult hit Terriers. He divides his time between writing, watching Turner Classic Movies and going to baseball games with his wife Dawn and his daughters, Skylar and Celia.

  His novels include the thriller Crush, the horror tales The Dead Man: Midnight Special and The Dead Man: Reborn, and Wicked Charms, which he co-authored with Janet Evanovich. He lives in South Pasadena, California and Vinalhaven, Maine.