Summer Session

by Merry Jones

  Gradually relaxing, Wyatt became aware of phones ringing around him and banks of monitors recording patients’ brainwaves and heart rates. That nurse, asking an aide to check the man in bed four. The living bustle of the clinic. He straightened up, inhaled deeply and opened a file. He knew the case; she’d been here almost every day. It was that young woman, that narcoleptic.

  ‘So.’ Leslie rearranged her legs, curling them under her on the sofa. ‘Anything you want to talk about first?’

  Harper shook her head, no. Not her marriage, not her childhood, not the murders, not the stolen drugs or the havoc in her house. Nothing.

  ‘Well, then, why don’t we begin?’

  Leslie guided Harper’s vision rapidly from side to side as she instructed her to revisit the street corner in Baghdad, the morning of the explosion. Once again, Harper was there in the glaring sun and dusty, hot air. Her equipment weighed heavy, and she had bad cramps, but wouldn’t complain. Marvin chattered, Sameh approached with a smile. The boy dawdled, toying with a sack. The car came speeding toward them. Sameh stopped in the middle of the road, hesitating, looking back. Meeting Harper’s eyes.

  Leslie stopped the memory before the oncoming explosion. ‘Well, two things are new. You never mentioned Sameh stopping before. Or said that the boy had a sack.’

  Harper closed her eyes. She could still see them. If Harper had paid more attention to the car charging the checkpoint and ordered her patrol to fire at it, Sameh and the boy would still be alive.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I should have stopped the car.’

  ‘OK, maybe you should have. But what about the others? You blame yourself, but you weren’t alone on duty that day. None of the others stopped it either. Why didn’t they?’

  Harper had no idea.

  ‘What were the others doing?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember—’

  ‘OK. Go back again. Look.’

  Again, Leslie helped Harper’s eyes dart from side to side.

  ‘Try to see what the other soldiers are doing.’

  Harper moved her eyes, following Leslie’s direction, and, suddenly, Marvin was beside her. The boy lingered nearby, his feet dusty but his shirt crisp and white. Sameh sashayed by, smelling of dusk. The car sped toward them.

  Harper looked around. Two in her patrol stood on guard across the road. Two others – Cooper and Joe – were positioned by the orange cones that blocked the road. The rest were clustered near the Hummers, watching the car race their way.

  ‘Excellent.’ Leslie signaled for Harper to relax and digest what she’d said.

  ‘They saw it. They watched it coming.’ Harper frowned, confused. If the others had seen the car, why hadn’t they stopped it? Why had they let it pass the checkpoint and blow everyone up?

  Leslie talked about the significance of her memory. The new details she’d recovered proved that Harper was not solely responsible for what had happened.

  ‘But I don’t understand. Why did they let the car pass?’

  ‘What was protocol?’

  ‘Any vehicle approaching our security checkpoint was to be stopped and searched. Access to the area had to be approved.’

  ‘And you had the street blocked off.’

  ‘Yes. We did. I don’t know. The car must have rammed us. They were suicide bombers, so they had nothing to lose. I guess they just kept coming.’

  ‘Did they?’ Leslie waited. ‘Harper, you’re remembering a lot of new details.’

  So? What difference did it make? How was remembering going to change anything? ‘Leslie, I’m sorry. I don’t see the point—’

  ‘OK.’ Leslie nodded. ‘That’s OK. Indulge me one more time. Go back. This time, focus on the car.’ She began her hand motions, guiding Harper’s eyes.

  Somebody’s arm was out the open window. The car old, dusty, dark green. A Taurus? She saw it coming, trailing its cloud of dust. Marvin stopped talking and spun around to look. Hummers and orange cones blocked the road; Joe and Cooper stepped up to the checkpoint, signaling the car to stop. The others readied their weapons. The boy froze, gaping. The car sped toward them and, at the last moment, brakes screeching, slid to a stop. Sameh turned, looked at Harper. And Harper left the ground, flying.

  The patient in bed number two was no stranger to Dr Wyatt. He’d been treating her for months. When he entered the room, she was deep in cataplexy, perfectly motionless, corpse-like. Her chart indicated increasingly frequent episodes over the last several days, to the point that the young woman was unable to function, subject to collapse at almost any time. It also indicated that he’d prescribed medication for her.

  ‘Nurse?’ The woman kept closer to him than his shadow. ‘Do we know that Anna has actually been taking the Effexor?’

  ‘She says it doesn’t work.’

  ‘She told you? When was that?’

  ‘Today. Before she passed out.’

  ‘Why isn’t that in her chart?’ He couldn’t tolerate incompetence.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Wyatt simmered. ‘Nothing in the chart indicates non-compliance to prescribed medication regimen.’

  The nurse remained unapologetic. ‘I suppose I was too busy recording everything else she told me before she collapsed. Such as the terrible stress she’s been under with so many of her friends dying.’

  Her friends dying? Wyatt blinked rapidly, thinking. His eyes darted from the patient to the nurse. ‘And? Where did you bury those records?’

  The nurse took the chart and pointed to lengthy notes inserted at the front, right where they were supposed to be, marked for his attention.

  Wyatt grumbled, annoyed that he’d missed them, and began to read. The patient, it seemed, had been present at the suicide of Graham Reynolds. She was a classmate of the two students murdered at the Jennings home, was in Harper Jennings’ Archeology class with them. Her narcolepsy had gone haywire with the emotional upheaval she was experiencing.

  Wyatt looked at the patient. Anna was hardly a woman, more of a girl. Although he’d been treating her for months, he’d never paid her particular attention. Porcelain, almost bluish skin; oval face lined with thick, frizzy black hair. Plump, bulging body stuffed into too-tight clothes. A pea-sized dark mole on her throat. Exceedingly plain. Probably a loner, the kind who’d spend Saturday night alone, reading Romantic poetry. Not likely to be part of a drug-taking, pill-popping, anything-for-kicks party crowd. Not likely to have much social life at all. Even so, she had proximity to the players. The girl might have overheard the drug thieves, might know something about who took the pills, where they’d stashed them.

  Anna’s case was his new top priority. He checked her chart again, noting that she’d been lying there for almost forty minutes, and he took a seat beside her bed. Any minute now, the cataplexy would pass, and he’d be able to interview her.

  Harper was confused. The car had stopped at the checkpoint. If its occupants were going to blow themselves up anyway, why would they stop to be searched and risk their mission? Why not just keep going?

  She replayed the memory, heard the screech of brakes, smelled the diesel exhaust, saw the car in the periphery of her vision. Her patrol had stopped them. She was certain.

  ‘Sounds like you’ve been blaming yourself for no reason, Harper. Your patrol followed protocol and stopped the car. The bomb went off anyway, but that was beyond your control.’

  Harper wasn’t convinced. ‘I should have prevented it.’

  ‘But how? Think about it, Harper. There was a whole squad there. Not just you. Why do you single yourself out for blame?’ Leslie’s brow furrowed. ‘You’re going back.’

  ‘Not again.’

  ‘One more time.’ Leslie directed her eye movement.

  Harper resisted for a few seconds, tired and full of dread. But, then, there she was, at the corner with Marvin, suffering cramps, watching the boy, seeing the car skid to a halt, turning. Seeing Sameh. Meeting her eyes.

  And then a bl
inding flash, a gust of heat forcing her off the ground, flying.

  Harper covered her face. ‘Sameh!’ Her legs bent and came up, dodging an unseen blow. Or explosion. She stopped moving her eyes, letting them rest on Leslie’s.

  Leslie waited.

  Harper was panting, heart pumping. She closed her eyes, aware, finally, of the source of her guilt. She was the only woman in the patrol unit. The only one who would have been allowed to stop and search a female civilian. But because her friendly greeting had become routine, Harper had never suspected, had never even considered stopping Sameh.

  And for that a boy had lost both his face and his life; Marvin, the rest of the squad and civilians had died.

  Harper slowly leaned back against the cushion on Leslie’s sofa. ‘Oh God. It was all my fault.’

  ‘No, Harper. Even if you’d have stopped her, she’d have set the bomb off, and the only difference is that you’d be dead, too. Listen to me. You didn’t blow everyone up. Sameh did.’

  Harper didn’t say anything for a long moment. She allowed Leslie’s words to repeat themselves in her mind, letting a mantra take hold: it hadn’t been her fault. She hadn’t killed everyone on the street. Sameh had. Sameh had. Sameh had.

  Wyatt looked at his watch. The wall clock was two minutes off; his watch was accurate to one hundredth of a second. He thought again of Ron Kendall, sitting at his desk, playing with number puzzles. Wasting time. But this girl, this Anna, might know something substantive. If she did, he’d have to use some finesse to get her to open up to him. Kendall might be better at that than he was; Kendall had charm, knew how to manage women. That would be the plan. If, upon assessing her, he thought Anna knew anything about the drugs, he’d fetch Kendall and let him work his magic.

  Anna, meantime, showed no signs of life, and Wyatt was getting impatient. He looked around the cubicle that served as a sleep room, saw her book bag hanging on a hook. Maybe there would be something helpful inside it. For lack of anything else to do, he got up, took it off the hook, unzipped it. And backed away from the stench.

  The bag reeked of bologna. Indeed, half a sandwich, wrapped in waxed paper, was smashed inside against some books. Who used wax paper anymore? Wyatt glanced at the girl. She hadn’t moved, so he dug deeper. Almost laughed out loud when he found a book of English Romantic poems. Lord Byron. Shelley. Keats. Good God. He’d had her pegged.

  What else? Her Archeology text. A spiral notebook. Pens, the usual. A stapler. A bunch of rumpled-up loose papers. A to-do list with items already checked off: Bake cake. Buy plates. Arch recit. Storage. Drop off. Clinic.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Damn, the girl was awake. Caught him with his hands in her bag.

  ‘Who said you could go through my stuff?’ She pulled the wires off her body, getting out of bed.

  ‘Anna, don’t stand up so fast.’ Wyatt stuck the wad of papers into the pocket of his lab coat, wrapping his fingers around one of the syringes he carried there, deftly popping off the protective cap.

  But Anna was on her feet, coming at him, furious. ‘What did you take? I saw you take something from my bag. Give it back.’ She reached for his pocket.

  Damn. For such a homely girl, Anna was surprisingly assertive, and she was making a racket, drawing unaffordable attention.

  Wyatt smiled to reassure her. ‘Calm down, Anna, dear.’ He reached an arm out for her and, before she could see it coming, withdrew his other hand from his pocket, emptying the syringe into her shoulder.

  Anna yelped and began to pull away, but the sedative worked quickly. She sunk deep into sleep, and Wyatt dragged her back to the bed, replacing the wires that monitored her brainwaves and vital signs, covering her with a blanket. Wheezing and cursing, he made notes on her chart that would discredit her in case she awoke and started talking. Anna had been delusional, paranoid; he’d had to sedate her. She might be having a breakdown. Might be abusing drugs. He wrote an order for her arms to be secured to the bed. After all, no one wanted her to fall.

  Before he left, certain that she’d been trying to hide something, he looked in her bag again but found nothing of interest. A good luck charm. Some keys. A few dollars. A phone. Nothing. Not even cigarettes or pot. Damn. Wyatt still wanted to question her, but she’d be out cold for a while, and he’d already spent too much time. Other patients were waiting. Best to carry on as if nothing had happened.

  Dabbing sweat off his forehead, rechecking his toupee, Wyatt brought the chart back to the nursing station. He had a bad feeling about Anna, the aggressive way she’d come at him. The way he’d had to subdue her. Most definitely, when the medication wore off, he and Anna Winters would have to chat.

  If she’d been guilty of anything, Harper understood, it hadn’t been of failing at her duty. It had been of trusting the wrong people. She’d trusted Sameh, had let her pass.

  Leslie had promised that they’d talk about the trust issue next time they met. But, after she left, as Harper rode down the hill to town, she decided that the trust problem wasn’t always her fault. People had deliberately deceived her. Not just her father, who’d deceived everyone. Or Sameh, who was a terrorist. But also Hank and Vicki, who were the people closest to her. If she couldn’t trust them, how could she trust anyone? Why should she try?

  She accelerated, speeding out Route 89 toward the lake, the wind in her face. No helmet, not today. Who cared if she crashed? Today, she took the little Ninja to its limits, riding through the heat, reliving the moment when she’d realized that Sameh, not the men in the car, had set off the bomb. That Sameh had carried the explosives on her body. Hidden beneath her smile.

  Harper seethed. She wanted to pound Sameh, shake the grin off her face. But Sameh was long dead, her final, satisfied smile forever frozen in Harper’s head. Harper raced, trying to outpace her mind, but the fact was that she’d been a chump, had greeted a murderer every morning, considering her, in those faraway, barren times, almost a friend.

  Well, Harper Jennings was finished being taken for a fool by people who posed as her ‘friends’. Even if there was nothing she could do about Sameh, she sure as hell could express herself to the live ones.

  Before she realized she was going there, Harper doubled back through Ithaca and College Town, ending up on Fairmount Avenue in Vicki’s driveway, then in her kitchen. And before Vicki could greet her or ask why her calls had gone unanswered, Harper balled her hand into a fist and landed a solid punch directly on to Vicki’s lightly powdered nose.

  Vicki landed on the parquet floor about the same time Harper landed on the seat of her Ninja and sped away, glad that, for once, no cops were following her around. All right, she thought. She hadn’t undone what had happened with Hank, hadn’t saved her students’ or her fellow soldiers’ lives. She hadn’t changed a thing. But damn, she thought, decking Vicki sure felt good.

  Gwen Summers fought tears as she stomped down the hill. She couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Kids were dying all around her. It was scary. She wanted to go home, but summer session was short, tuition was too high to drop out, and home was all the way in La Crosse, Wisconsin, a bus ride and two plane trips away, too far to travel for just a weekend. So, upset and lonely, she called a classmate, Shaundra. Maybe she’d meet her in town.

  ‘I can’t.’ Her nose was stuffed. She’d been crying. ‘I messed up, Gwen. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never been in trouble before. Not even a detention in high school.’

  ‘It can’t be that bad.’ Oh God. Was Shaundra pregnant?

  ‘I didn’t mean to take the stuff – I just – at the last minute grabbed it.’

  Grabbed what? ‘What stuff?’

  ‘I’m in big trouble, Gwen. My room-mate had to pay two hundred and fifty dollars to bail me out of jail.’

  Jail?

  ‘I needed some of those sticky things, you know, to hang posters, so I went to the hardware store. Next thing I know, a cop is looking in my bag, and I’m handcuffed, and I have all kinds of shit in th
ere. Tape and a screwdriver and tools I don’t even know what they’re for, let alone how they got there. I’m in so much trouble, Gwen. If my parents find out, I swear I’m dead.’

  Gwen didn’t know what to say. Shoplifting? Really? Shaundra was sophisticated, glamorous, dramatic and very cool. Who’d have guessed she was a shoplifter?

  ‘And did you hear about Jeremy and Esoso?’

  Gwen’s mouth was dry. She almost didn’t want to hear.

  ‘They got arrested, too. I saw them at the station. Jeremy’s nose is broken, and Esoso’s got a huge black eye. They were in College Town outside Johnny’s Big Red and started some kind of brawl. I don’t know anything else.’

  Again, Gwen ached for La Crosse where nobody she knew ever brawled or stole. Or jumped out of windows. Or got murdered. She missed her golden retriever, Athena.

  Alone, Gwen wandered through town. It was hot; suddenly, she realized she’d feel a lot better if she had a cold beer. She’d rarely been to a bar, never by herself. And, while she’d had her share of liquor at fraternity parties, she’d never had a drink so early in the day. Even so, she really craved a tall one, could almost taste it. Throat parched, she hunted for a bar, finally smelled one from half a block away and stepped inside.

  Willy’s was dark, air-conditioned. It had an old-fashioned juke box, a dartboard, a pool table. But Gwen didn’t care about any of that; she just wanted a beer. Cold clean beer would wash away the sweltering heat and her morbid mood. Maybe she’d get wasted. All by herself.

  She climbed on to a stool; rows of well-lit booze bottles greeted her from the wall behind the bar, offering themselves in consolation and partnership. Gwen was tempted, but she didn’t have enough cash for hard liquor. Beer would have to do.

  The bar was empty except for a shapeless middle-aged guy with frameless glasses who was jawing with the bartender. She sat for a while as they both ignored her. Finally, she called out, ‘Hey, can anybody get a beer in here?’