Save Me

by Lisa Scottoline

  “What about Danielle?” Wanda demanded, hands on hips.

  “Danielle had already gone. She was in the hallway with the others. I told Amanda and Emily to follow Danielle—”

  “Follow Danielle, that’s it?” Cathy interrupted, her light eyes round with astonishment behind her glasses. “You don’t put an eight-year-old in charge of another eight-year-old. They’re just kids, and it was an emergency. You should have taken them out to the playground yourself. Danielle wasn’t the lunch mom, you were. That’s your responsibility.”

  “Right,” Wanda joined in. “I heard what happened. You punished Emily and Danielle for something they didn’t do, and so what if Amanda was joking around with your daughter? Kids are kids. You have to let them fight their own battles.”

  Cathy leaned closer. “Let’s talk turkey. You’re just jealous of Amanda because she’s popular and Melly isn’t. Harry Potter this, Harry Potter that. Melly’s a freak!”

  “She is not!” Rose’s temper flared. “She reads, that’s all!”

  “Oh, please!” Cathy’s hand shot out, waving Rose off, but it startled her and she stepped backwards, bumping into a tall cylindrical ashtray, then losing her balance and falling to the hard concrete with the ashtray spilling sand, cigarette butts, and gum wrappers.

  “That’s it!” Leo bellowed, pulling a stunned Rose to her feet.

  Cathy burst into nervous laughter. Wanda’s mouth dropped open. The reporters surged forward, the photographers held their cameras overhead, and the crowd reacted with gasps, chatter, and a hoot or two.

  “Let’s go!” Leo hurried Rose through the glass doors into the hospital. The lobby was like a refuge, quiet and cool, filled with potted plants and soothing framed landscapes. A few older people sat in sectional furniture, one holding Get Well balloons weighted with a small sandbag. Leo touched Rose’s arm. “My God. Are you okay, honey?”

  “Yes.” She brushed cigarette ashes from her jeans. “And Melly’s not a freak.”

  “I know.” Leo smoothed down his suit jacket. “Sorry about that. I should’ve seen that coming.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Right. Yes, but they still laughed about it.”

  Shaken, Rose tried to recover. “You told me not to talk to them, but I thought they deserved an answer.”

  “They didn’t want an answer. They wanted to vent.” Leo put an arm around her. “Damn, I should have anticipated this. Hubby let you down.”

  “Hubby never lets me down.”

  Leo gave her a quick kiss. “You good to go?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then we need an information desk.” Leo looked around.

  “There.” Rose pointed, and they went to the information desk, where they gave their name and asked for Melly’s room.

  “She’s in 306,” answered the receptionist, who was an older woman with a button that read VOLUNTEER. “She’s one of the little girls from the school, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she’s our daughter.” Rose leaned over the counter. “Where is the other little girl, Amanda Gigot?”

  “Let me see.” The receptionist hit a few keys. “Yes. She’s in 406. That’s Intensive Care.”

  Rose felt her stomach tense.

  Leo leaned on the desk. “What floor did you say is Intensive Care? The fourth?”

  “Yes, but you can’t visit. Only immediate family is permitted.”

  “I understand, thanks.” Leo took Rose’s arm, and they left for the elevators.

  “Do you want to visit Amanda?” Rose asked, incredulous.

  “No, I want to avoid the fourth floor.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Rose stood at Melly’s bedside, suppressing a surge of emotion. It was one thing to know that Melly was in a hospital, and another to see her lying there, asleep. She took up only half of the bed, and her feet made little mounds in the white coverlet, midway. Her hospital gown was too big, and its scoop neck exposed her collarbones. Her eyes were closed, and even though she was only sleeping, she could so easily have been gone, forever. Rose watched her chest move up and down, to make sure she was breathing. There wasn’t a mother in the world who hadn’t done the same thing, more than once.

  Mommy!

  Melly’s head lay tilted to the right, displaying her birthmark in a way that would have mortified her, if she’d been awake. It was as red as fresh blood, covering her left cheek at its upper edge, roughly roundish in shape, about the size of a small plum. A greenish oxygen tube lay across it under her nostrils, and her index finger was covered by a plastic cap that connected her to a boxy monitor, flashing her vital signs in multi-colored digits.

  “She looks good,” Leo whispered, a wet shine in his eyes.

  “Thank God she’s alive.”

  “Let me get you a seat.” Leo picked up a wooden chair and moved it close to the bed, near the thick plastic guardrail. Behind them, a TV mounted on the wall played on mute. “Here, sit.”

  “Wanna share? I’ll move over.”

  “No, you.”

  “Thanks.” Rose sat down, resting her hand on the bedrail. As happy as she was that Melly was alive, she couldn’t forget that a different scene would be playing out a floor above them, in Intensive Care. She tried to shoo away thoughts of Amanda, but the images were too fresh in her mind.

  “Oh no. We left your overnight bag in the car.”

  “It’s okay.” Rose flashed again on Amanda, on the stretcher. The bandages on her forehead had been blood-soaked, and Eileen had said she’d gotten hit on her head with something, so she might even need brain surgery.

  “You’ll have to brush your teeth with your finger, like I did in the old days, when I used to stay at your apartment. That was before the guest toothbrush. Remember the guest toothbrush?”

  “Yes.” Rose thought of the soot on Amanda’s face. She’d been in the school a lot longer than Melly, but probably not in as enclosed a space. She could have brain damage, not only from whatever fell on her head, but from the oxygen deprivation.

  “You can sleep in your clothes, too. Do you want me to ask for a cot, or do you want to sleep in the same bed with her? Babe?” Leo took her hand. “You with us?”

  “Yes, sure.”

  “Take a look at your daughter. Now. Do it.”

  Rose looked at Melly. “She’s sweet, huh?”

  “She’s a great kid. My bonus kid.”

  Rose smiled. Leo always said that, and she loved hearing it.

  “Remember when we met, on the train? I went to the food car, starved and beat, and there you were, this stunning young mother with her brainy little girl, who recommended I try the hot dogs. We bonded over our shared love of sodium nitrate.”

  Rose smiled. It was true. They’d all met on the Acela between New York and Philadelphia. She wouldn’t have talked to Leo if it hadn’t been for Melly. She didn’t think he was her type. She’d been into bad boys, and Leo was not only a good boy, but an altar boy.

  “You did the right thing today. You saved her life. Don’t listen to those crazies out front, or anybody else. We love Melly and we’re blessed to have her. Looking at her, being here now, would you change anything you did?”

  “No.” Rose heard the truth in his words, but she still felt torn. “I keep thinking of Amanda and Eileen, just one floor up. How can I not?”

  “I’ll tell you.” Leo let go of her hand. “Because it could get worse, honey, and you need to keep your head on straight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s not talk about it now.” Leo shook it off. “Like I said outside, this isn’t the time or the place.”

  Rose didn’t like his expression. The shine had left his eyes. “No, what do you mean?”

  “We could get sued, babe. Eileen could come after us. Best case scenario, Amanda is fine, but she’ll have monster medical bills. Eileen’s a single mom. How will she pay?”

  “She wouldn’t win if she sued, would she?”

  “She could. When you
volunteer at school, you’re exposed to liability.”

  “You are? I am?”

  “Look, I’m a humble general practitioner, but I don’t see why you wouldn’t be. You took on the responsibility for her kid, and she got hurt, end of story.” Leo jerked a thumb to the hospital window. “And those women out front, the moms, will be the first witnesses testifying against you.”

  Rose felt her chest tighten. She sensed he was right, but it felt wrong to worry about being sued when Eileen was worrying about her child dying.

  “Eileen could sue the school, too, for letting her run back into the building, and don’t even think about what happens when they find out whatever blew up. Plus the family of the cafeteria workers could sue, and so could the teacher’s.” Leo spoke in his professional voice, albeit softly. “This could be a holy mess for the next few years, while the litigation goes on and on. Win or lose, we’d get hit for the legal fees, because I couldn’t represent us. It could cost us everything we have. We could lose the house.”

  Rose’s mouth went dry. The thought of losing the house shook her. Leo made a good living, but she had stopped working. They didn’t have much in savings apart from the kids’ college funds, and they had loan payments on two cars and a hefty new mortgage.

  There was rustling from the bed, and they both looked over. Melly shifted under the covers, moving her head back and forth, and they lapsed into silence, waiting for the moment to pass.

  “Uh-oh,” Leo said, nudging Rose. “Look at the TV, babe.”

  She turned around to the TV, then did a double-take. The screen showed her own face, then a shot of the firetrucks and burning elementary school. “Oh my God,” she said, appalled.

  “I know.”

  Rose felt her heart sink. The TV screen changed to Tanya, talking into a microphone. The closed captioning read, A LOCAL MOM IS A HERO TODAY, then the film was of Rose again, at the hospital after they’d gotten the news that Melly was fine. The captioning said, I DID WHAT ANY MOTHER WOULD DO.

  “Mom?” said a voice from the bed, and Rose turned.

  “Melly!”

  Leo got up and hit the POWER button on the TV, willing the screen into blackness.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rose lay in darkness, cuddling with Melly in her hospital bed, by now accustomed to the smoky smell in her hair. Leo had left at the end of visiting hours, gotten John from the sitter, and taken him home. Melly had been quiet during the evening, drowsy as a result of the drugs.

  “You sleepy, honey?” Rose asked, and Melly looked over, resting her head on Rose’s left arm.

  “A little. Are you going to sleep here?”

  “I sure am. Want more water, or Jell-O?”

  “No.”

  “How’s your head?”

  “Okay.

  “Mom?” Melly’s voice sounded raspy, from the irritation. “When I was in the bathroom, the floor felt like an earthquake.”

  Rose thought back. “Yes, it did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of the explosion in the kitchen.” Rose and Leo had explained to Melly generally what had happened, but she wasn’t ready to hear about the deaths yet, or Amanda.

  “Was it a bomb? It sounded like a bomb.”

  “They don’t know for sure. Whatever it was, the fire is already out, and they’ll make it safe to go back.”

  “Is it from a terrorist?”

  “I doubt that very much.” Rose cursed modern times. When she was little, the only bombs she saw were in cartoons, round black bowling balls with wiggly cotton strings.

  “It was a big noise.”

  “Sure was. Did it scare you?”

  “Yes. I didn’t come out of the bathroom.”

  “I know. Is that why?”

  “No. Remember Fire Safety Week?”

  “Not really.” Rose remembered nothing, and Melly remembered everything.

  “At our old school, we went to the firehouse on Fire Safety Week. You came, and we climbed on top of the firetruck, and they gave me a green sticker for my bedroom window and for Googie. It says, Save Our Dog.”

  “Okay.”

  “They said, don’t open the door if it’s hot. The bathroom door was hot, so I didn’t open it, then I couldn’t breathe. I hit the door and hollered so people would know I was inside, but nobody came to get me.”

  Rose felt a pang. “Well, it’s all right now.”

  “How did I get out?”

  “I got you out.”

  “Is that how you hurt your hand?”

  “No,” Rose lied. She’d burned it when she’d picked up the burning stud. “It got burned in the cafeteria, but it’s nothing.”

  “Remember when Quirrell gets burned by Harry’s scar? He gets burned on his hands, too.”

  “This wasn’t that bad.” Rose flashed on the mothers making fun of Melly’s love of Harry Potter, then put it out of her mind. She and Melly had read the Potter books aloud before bedtime, and it was easy to see why Melly identified with a kid with a scar on his face.

  “I’m sorry I ran to the bathroom, Mom.”

  Rose felt a twinge. Sometimes she thought motherhood was full of twinges. “It’s okay, I understand why you’d be upset. Does Amanda tease you like that a lot?”

  Melly fell silent.

  “Huh, Mel? Does she?”

  Melly didn’t answer. She wasn’t a whiner. She hadn’t complained about any of the teasing at their old school because she thought if they did anything about it, it would get worse, and she’d been right.

  “Mel, I won’t do anything, I promise. I just want to know.” Rose looked over, but she could barely make out Melly’s profile in the dark. “What does Amanda do?”

  “Yesterday we were finger-painting with Ms. Canton.”

  “Okay,” Rose said, keeping her tone drama-free. Melly, Amanda, and two other children in Mrs. Nuru’s class were in the gifted program, spending an hour in the afternoons with Kristen Canton, twice a week.

  “I was painting a picture of Dumbledore, and Amanda put poster paint on with her finger and painted on her cheek, like with the jelly. Ms. Canton told her it’s not funny or caring, and how we’re a community. I love Ms. Canton.”

  “Me, too,” Rose said, hearing Melly’s voice warm.

  “Her favorite Harry Potter is The Sorcerer’s Stone, and she has a cat named Hedwig and a Hermione wand. She says it looks just like it came from Ollivander’s. It doesn’t light up, but it sounds cool.”

  “I bet.” Rose felt lucky that Melly had found a fellow Harry Potter fanatic in the gifted teacher. “Maybe we should get some sleep, honey.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Okay, we’ll just rest.” Rose held her closer, feeling her body grow heavier. In the next few minutes, Melly fell quiet, her breathing grew regular, and she fell asleep.

  Rose lay awake in the dark, and found herself wishing that Melly had never had the birthmark. It wasn’t the first time she’d fantasized about how their life would be different, without. The birthmark had come to define Melly and their family, and they all revolved around the red circle as if it were the sun itself, setting them all in mad, dizzying orbit.

  Rose let her thoughts run free, knowing it was forbidden, like a family dog running through an electric fence. It was the birthmark that had started the sequence of awful events today, whether Leo would say that was a but for cause or not. Funny, Rose hadn’t even seen the birthmark when Melly was first put on her chest, as a newborn. In her first instant as a mother, Rose felt suffused with such wonder and happiness that she saw only a beautiful baby. The nurses all cooed happily, but Bernardo had asked the doctor, in disgust:

  What the hell is that red thing on her face?

  His awful words had a hang time in the cold delivery room, chilling Rose to the marrow. The doctor had replied that it was a nevus even before he’d announced that the baby was a girl, and the nurses had receded, their tones newly subdued and their smiles stiffening at Bernardo’s reaction. Rose had
gotten what she’d always wanted, a baby girl looking at the world with eyes the hue of heaven itself.

  I love you, Rose had told the baby then, and when she saw the stain on her cheek, she’d added silently, I love all of you.

  Rose’s parents were both gone by the time Melly was born, but her in-laws had flown in to see the baby, bringing their She’ll grow out of it, don’t worry. But the baby didn’t grow out of it, and Bernardo obsessed more and more on the birthmark, as if it marked him. He was a photographer, but rarely took pictures of Melly, and then only from her right side. Toddlers would stare at baby Melly in her stroller, and he would pull down the Perego’s top, hiding her in their walks through the West Village. Children would ask questions, and Bernardo would ignore them, leaving Rose to answer with the medical facts, much as Melly would later, fielding questions like the most patient of family doctors.

  The teasing had started in pre-school, and Rose had watched as Melly’s grin disintegrated, bit by bit. She became withdrawn and quiet, wanting to stay home and avoid strangers, begging to quit Mommy & Me and Gymboree. Meanwhile, Bernardo scheduled her with Manhattan’s best dermatologists, who judged the birthmark too big for surgery, then he dragged them all over the city for more opinions and different treatments, shooting the birthmark with pulse-dye lasers, treating it with bipolar radio-frequencies, and even covering it with custom-made foundation, to no avail.

  It was a thicker nevus than most, and all the time, Rose had hated the message they were sending Melly. Their marriage cracked under it and other strains, mainly Bernardo’s partying, and they divorced when Melly was three years old. Bernardo was killed the very next year, crashing his Porsche, and around that time, Rose and Melly met Leo on the train. They’d fallen in love and married the next year, and she’d left the city to move to southeastern Pennsylvania, near where Leo had grown up in Worhawk. On her own, she felt free to help Melly accept herself, even after her fifth Halloween, when she wouldn’t take off her Dora the Explorer mask.

  Mommy, I hate being me.

  Rose stared at the ceiling, then closed her eyes, and her thoughts returned to the room above. She wondered if Eileen was holding Amanda right now, or if that wasn’t permissible in Intensive Care. She tried to put it out of her mind, but gave up. She eased Melly off her chest, rolled quietly out of bed, and left the room. The hallway was empty at this hour, and there was only one nurse behind the desk. Rose crossed the polished hall, and the nurse looked up.