Jumpstart the World

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Frank’s head was shaved right down to the skin. All over. He had a big patch of bandage taped to one side of it. And his right arm had been splinted and wrapped in a sling, which looked like it made him hard to grip on Molly’s side. She had to wrap her arms around his waist to hold him up.

  Just for a split second, I might’ve thought, Why did they let him out of the hospital in that condition? But, if so, the thought scooted right away again.

  By now, I was looking straight up at them as they stood over me. Molly was digging around in her purse, probably looking for her keys.

  I think Frank looked at me. It was hard to tell how alert he was. How much he was actually taking in. But his eyes roamed across the doorway and landed on my face and paused there. And just in that moment, the things I hadn’t dared think came up and got thought all at once. Fell all over each other and tangled up in the thinking.

  If he had died …

  It’s one thing to lose your best friend. It’s another thing entirely to lose your best friend while you’re treating him like shit. Before you even have a chance to make it up to him.

  Guilt. I felt it. Big. Had it been there all along? I had no idea.

  “Thank God,” I said out loud. “Thank God he’s okay.”

  “He’s not that okay,” Molly said. Her voice sounded tight. It sounded like her voice but with somebody else’s disposition in charge of the tone. She had her keys in her hand now. “You want to move, hon? We need to get him inside.”

  I scrambled away from the door so fast that I tripped and ended up on my hands and knees on the hall carpet. My knee landed on the broken glasses, breaking them further. I left them where I squashed them. When I made it to my feet again, they were helping Frank through the door.

  I followed them in.

  I hadn’t exactly been invited. I definitely hadn’t asked permission. Probably because I wasn’t sure I’d get it.

  I just needed to go in. I needed to be there with them. With him. I needed to be a part of this. So I didn’t ask. I took advantage of their one-pointed focus.

  Nobody told me to go home.

  For the first hour or so, I sat in the living room by myself. The lights were off everywhere but in the bedroom. I sat on the floor by the window, as if I’d take up less space there. As if no one would notice. No one to catch me feeling guilty.

  I rested my chin on the windowsill and watched the empty street. It seemed strange that the street should be so empty, even in the middle of the night. It was Saturday night. Where was everybody?

  Not even Crazy Harry.

  But there was a good reason for that. They had taken him away. Thank God.

  I pictured him pacing under a streetlight. Marching back and forth under that circle of light, shaking his head back and forth. As if arguing with someone who wasn’t even there. Or maybe with himself. The way he would have been. If everything were normal.

  I heard a little noise, and looked up to see Molly standing near me, looking out the window. Close enough that I could have reached out and touched her. Of course, I didn’t.

  “Somebody should do something about him,” I said.

  “Who, Harry?”

  “Yes. Harry.”

  “They did. They took him into custody.”

  “I hope they never let him out.”

  “They have to let him out. When he’s back on his meds, he’ll come home.”

  “They shouldn’t let him come back here. He shouldn’t be allowed to live here.”

  “Then where should he be allowed to live?” she asked.

  A moment later, when it was clear to both of us that I wasn’t going to answer, she said, “I’m going to make tea. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  Like a five-year-old.

  I felt like an obstacle in the lives of everyone who came near me. I felt like the stupidest, most abhorrent person in the galaxy. I shouldn’t even be allowed to live around decent people.

  Then again, I guess I have to live somewhere. Don’t I?

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  We were sitting around the kitchen table. Me, Molly, and Liz. That other woman’s name was Liz. She was a nurse. And their friend.

  We had been drinking tea for a long time before I got up the nerve to ask.

  Molly sighed, as though she just didn’t have the energy to answer. She tossed her eyes over to Liz, who spoke for her. Like they did their thinking with only one mind between the two of them.

  “His right wrist is shattered,” she said. “Complex series of breaks in his elbow. He’ll need orthopedic surgery. And tons of physical therapy. That’s not really the biggest problem, though. Not right now. Right now the head injury is the worry. They can be dangerous. Tricky.”

  “Why did they even release him from the hospital, then?”

  A silence as Molly and Liz exchanged looks.

  For a while, I thought nobody was ever going to answer me. Such a simple question, too.

  “They didn’t,” Molly said. “He left against medical advice. They wanted to admit him. But he refused.”

  “Why?”

  No answer. Just silence.

  “That’s crazy. Why would he do that?” I could hear my voice come up. I was disturbed by the tone and volume of my own spoken thoughts.

  “He had a bad experience in a hospital.”

  “So? I have bad experiences in school all the time, but I still go.”

  Molly pushed back from the table suddenly. The squeal of her chair legs on the linoleum startled me. A splash of hot tea sloshed out of the cup and onto my hand. I didn’t say ouch, though it would have been easy.

  “I’m too tired to explain it to her,” Molly said. I guess she was talking to Liz. She sounded exasperated. Like I was getting on her last nerve.

  She stomped out of the room.

  I heard the bedroom door close.

  I looked up at Liz, but she was looking down at the table.

  “Is Molly mad at me?”

  “I guess you’d have to ask Molly about that,” she said.

  A long silence, during which I took a paper napkin from the holder in the middle of the table and used it to mop up my spilled tea.

  “Other than outright hate crimes”—Liz’s voice startled me—“the two most terrifying experiences for someone in transition are hospitals and jails.” That sat on the table for a moment. I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do with it. “Think about it. Put yourself in his position. In the hospital, they take away the two most important things in the world for somebody like Frank. Your clothes. And your control. All it takes is one bigot. One sadist. He had a really bad experience back when they lived in South Carolina.”

  South Carolina? Molly and Frank lived in South Carolina? I had no idea. How could I not know that about them?

  “Yeah, but … South Carolina. That’s like a different world. This is New York. It wouldn’t happen here.”

  “You sure? You want to guarantee him it couldn’t happen? Like I said. It only takes one.”

  I had no idea what to say. My thoughts tangled around for a few minutes, and then arrived at the simplest possible statement.

  “Could he die?”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it. I’ll monitor his condition all night. If I think there’s any bleeding or swelling on his brain, we’ll get him back to the emergency room, pronto.”

  “But … if he could die … How can he not go to the hospital if he could die?”

  She didn’t answer for a long time. Just sipped at her tea. I thought maybe it was a question with no answer.

  Then she said, “Maybe he’d rather die with his dignity intact.”

  I heard myself make a funny sound. A muffled noise. I think I started out to say Oh, God, but it ended up coming out as a grunt. It made me sick to think about that. So I closed my eyes and said nothing at all. And, as much as possible, thought nothing at all.

  “I’ve got his back,” Liz s
aid. “Which is better than nothing.”

  I woke up on my back on the couch, with Gracie sleeping on my chest. It was hard to breathe all the way in, but I liked the warm weight of her, and she looked comfortable, so I didn’t ask her to move.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Molly sitting in a hard-back chair by the window. As if she was waiting for something. I wondered what she was waiting for.

  I scratched Gracie behind the ears for a minute, and then it hit me.

  “Oh shit!” I saw Molly jump. “I forgot Toto. I didn’t give him his afternoon pill.”

  “You better go home and take care of your cat,” she said. Her voice sounded cool.

  I eased Gracie off my chest and onto the couch. “If I do, can I still come back?”

  “Maybe you should just stay with Toto and get some rest.”

  I stood up. Humiliatingly, I had to fight to keep tears back. “Did I do something to make you mad?”

  I thought it was brave to just spit it right out like that.

  She sighed. Still looking out the window. Not at me. She didn’t answer.

  “Are you just scared and worried about Frank, or are you really mad at me?”

  “A little of both, I guess.”

  I stood taking that in. Feeling a little woozy. Unsteady on my feet. Maybe because I had just wakened up. Maybe because I’d only had forty-five minutes of sleep all night. Maybe because of Frank lying in the other room, his brain about to bleed and swell.

  Maybe because of Molly’s last sentence. Which, by the way, was a walk in the park compared to her next sentence.

  “Don’t you think Frank has feelings?”

  My mouth felt numb while I tried to answer. “Yeah. Of course he does.”

  “He likes you so much. He really cares about you. How do you think it makes him feel when you treat him like he has an infectious disease? Don’t you think that hurts him?”

  I lost my battle with the tears. They ran down my face. Dropped onto my shirt. I even watched one hit my boot. The same boot. That boot had seen a lot of life in the past few hours.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Then I slunk back to my own apartment.

  The phone blasted me out of sleep. I opened my eyes, then winced them closed again. It was light. Too light.

  Another ring.

  I grabbed it up. It was Liz.

  “Oh, thank God you’re there,” she said. “We have to get Frank back to the hospital. Molly and I are going to bring him down the stairs. If you want to help, go down and get us a cab, okay?”

  The line went dead.

  I’d been sleeping on top of the covers with all my clothes on. So I just got up and ran. Grabbed my key off the table on the way out the door.

  I took the stairs two at a time, even though I felt like I was doing it in my sleep. Like I was dreaming about running down the stairs.

  But I had been asked to do something to help. And I was going to do it right. I was going to do such a good job on it that Frank would be okay. I was going to do my one little part so perfectly that Molly would forgive me. The pain I’d caused Frank would be drowned out and erased by the perfection of my ability to get a cab when one was needed.

  I blasted out into the barely cool morning. Into the street.

  I saw a cab coming immediately and raised my hands. Waved frantically. Jumped up and down like a fool.

  He saw me. He was going to stop. He pulled up to where I stood.

  Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

  I opened the back door of the cab.

  A man with a black trench coat and a briefcase jumped in.

  At first, I just stood there with my mouth open. I did not let go of the door.

  “Thanks, hon,” he said. “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Get out of my cab.”

  “I flagged him first. You just didn’t see me.”

  I held the door more tightly. Leaned in. I caught the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “Did you stop for him or for me?”

  “I stop for you,” he said. He had some kind of African-sounding accent. Lilting.

  “Get out of my cab,” I said to the briefcase guy.

  “It’s really an emergency, hon.”

  I almost screamed. I opened my mouth to scream. I was going to let him know what a real emergency looked like. For a second, I thought I might literally grab hold of him and drag him out onto the street. Or try, anyway.

  But I didn’t. I was right at the edge of violence. But I didn’t commit any.

  I left the door open. And I made my way to the front of the cab really fast. And I sat on the hood. Right on the driver’s side. Right in his view. Right where he wouldn’t be able to see the road if he drove away. Which was a moot point, of course, anyway. Because he wasn’t going to drive away.

  Not now.

  I felt the heat of the hood through my jeans, and the vibration of the engine. This steady thrumming under my butt.

  A moment later, I turned around to see Molly and Liz helping Frank into the cab. They were really carrying more than helping. He seemed completely unconscious.

  I watched them struggle to get him into the backseat. Which, by the way, was empty. I looked around and saw Briefcase Guy walking in the street, inside the row of parked cars, looking for another cab.

  I jumped off the hood and into the front seat, next to the driver. Before anybody could tell me not to. Before they could leave without me.

  We had pulled away from the curb and driven two blocks before I consciously realized I was still in my sock feet.

  Liz’s voice. “Have you lived in New York all your life?”

  No answer. I thought she was talking to the cabdriver. Though, truthfully, it seemed like a funny time to be making small talk.

  It took me a minute to realize she might have been asking me.

  “Who? Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “Yeah, I was born here. Why?”

  “Remind me never to try to steal a cab from you,” she said.

  ELEVEN

  A Special Kind of Idiot

  It was almost eight o’clock that evening when Molly found me in the hospital lobby.

  I had been trying to stay out of the way without actually going home.

  It’s not like I could really be with Frank anyway. First, he was in the OR for this procedure—which I had been working really hard not to visualize—where they drill a tiny hole in his skull and insert a drain. Then after that, he was in a recovery room.

  I think about an hour earlier they’d put him in a regular room, and I think Molly and Liz got to sit in there with him. But I couldn’t bring myself to push my way into that scene. I felt like it was their moment, not mine.

  I felt like I didn’t deserve it.

  I was wrong to think that acing getting a cab would fix everything. It didn’t.

  I instinctively jumped up when I saw her.

  “Is he okay? Is everything okay?”

  “It went well,” she said. Long pause. The energy surrounding the pause didn’t quite fit the atmosphere of good news. “But he definitely has to stay the night. At least one night. If we’re really lucky.”

  “What did Frank have to say about that?”

  “Nothing. He’s still unconscious.”

  I sat down hard. I’m not sure how long I was staring at that weird pattern of linoleum floor—and my own ridiculous sock feet—before Molly sat down beside me.

  “Poor Frank,” I said. “What if he wakes up in the night? He’ll be so scared.”

  No answer. After a time, I looked over at Molly, and I could see she’d been crying. Why hadn’t I seen that before? Why hadn’t I looked closer?

  “Maybe they’d let you stay with him?”

  A snort of laughter. “We’ve been through it with them, Elle. For almost an hour. Bottom line, Frank and I can’t get legally married at this point, and I can’t stay past visiting hours if I’m not a spouse. I know it’s not fair and you know it’s not
fair, but they obviously feel it’s not their problem. I have no legal connection to Frank. Like it or not. I tried reasoning with them. I tried shouting. Cajoling. Threatening. All it got me was the promise of a call to hospital security.”

  A long pause. That linoleum pattern was so weird. Black and white. It burned itself onto my eyes so that when I squeezed them shut, I could still literally see the pattern on the insides of my eyelids. And I’d been staring at it for most of the day. But I only just thought about it now.

  “You could sneak in,” I said.

  Another bitter snort of laughter. “After the stink I made? They would never take their eyes off me.”

  Another moment of silence. During which I knew something. Something that was important. That was real. It just took me a moment to form it into words and say it out loud.

  “I didn’t make a stink. They don’t even know I’m connected to Frank.”

  I looked over at Molly, but her face didn’t show much. Just wear.

  After a minute, she said, “It’s possible that you could get arrested.”

  “So?”

  “Besides. What would you do? I mean, even if somebody did give him a hard time … what could you do about it?”

  “She would sit on the jerk’s hood.” Liz’s voice, just out of nowhere.

  It startled us both. I jumped, and I felt Molly jump beside me.

  “Come on, Molly,” Liz said. “I’m taking you home. You need sleep.”

  Molly rose heavily to her feet, and both women stood over me for a minute. I looked up into Molly’s face.

  She said, “Liz, could you please get a cab? I’ll be right out.”

  Unfortunately, I knew what that meant. Big talk. I braced for the worst. Like a fighter tightening up his ab muscles just before the gut shot.

  “I owe you an apology,” Molly said.

  I blinked. Too much, I think. I felt my gut untie its knots. “You do?”

  “I feel I do, yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I shouldn’t have lost my temper with you. You know. Before. I don’t know if you can understand this. But Frank is so helpless right now. And I’m trying so hard to defend him. It’s like anybody who’s ever hurt him—anybody who’s ever even thought about hurting him—better watch out. But it wasn’t fair of me to take it out on you. I’m sorry.”