Whisper Me This

by Kerry Anne King

  “Don’t touch her. You’re not supposed to touch her. It’s not in the plan.”

  “I’m not taking her anywhere,” Tony soothes. “Just checking on her, okay?”

  He slides his hand under the back of the woman’s head, finds the swelling, the cut, the blood-matted hair. “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Walter Addington.”

  “Well, Walter, I can see that Leah is certainly ill. Why don’t you let us take her to the hospital, give her some fluids—”

  Cara’s voice cuts across his words. “No directive. Just the daughter’s phone number.”

  Heavy footsteps signal the arrival of an officer. Mendez. He’s a good cop, and Tony’s glad to see him.

  “What have we got?”

  “Dehydration, a head wound. We’ve been unable to assess and treat, as Mr. Addington here says there’s an advance directive and she wants to die at home.”

  He watches Mendez assemble the pieces. The old man, unshaven and lost-looking. The unconscious woman in the bed. The dirty, stinking towels in the hamper. The glass of water with the spoon in it on the bedside table.

  “What happened, Mr. Addington? There’s a fair amount of blood in the kitchen. And on you. Old blood. Can you explain that?”

  “She fell,” Walter says. “She hit her head. I brought her in here to rest, but she won’t wake up.” He shakes his wife’s shoulder, very gently. “Leah. Wake up. Tell them.”

  “I’ve seen enough,” Mendez says. “Take her in. Mr. Addington, come with me, please.”

  “No!” Walter protests. “You can’t. She doesn’t want to go.” He leans over on the bed, covering his wife’s body with his own. “I promised.”

  Sickness twists in Tony’s belly, a revulsion for this whole mess. Maybe he’ll go back to school, find another job. One that doesn’t expose him to loss and despair on a regular basis.

  “Come on, Mr. Addington,” Mendez says, apparently unmoved and matter-of-fact. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

  The old man resists, but Mendez pulls him away as easily as if he were a child. “If I have to arrest you, then you can’t go see her in the hospital.”

  “I can’t—you can’t . . .” Walter’s resistance stutters to a stop, his brain grappling with a problem that shuts him down. Mendez propels him out of the room.

  Tony and Cara kick into gear, a smooth, synchronized team. EKG. Blood pressure. Cara gets the IV started—not easy, given the blood loss and dehydration. As they roll the stretcher down the hallway toward the ambulance, Walter’s protests follow them.

  “Listen, Officer. She didn’t want this. Wouldn’t want this. Please, you have to listen . . .”

  The words, the desperation in the old man’s voice, worm their way under Tony’s skin.

  What a sordid, ugly, twisted mess. He’s glad to be out of the house, will be glad to turn Leah Addington over to the ER staff and walk away. But he knows he won’t shake this case off easily. He feels the restless itch of his own trauma heating up.

  When his chief calls to say somebody has phoned in sick and asks if Tony can work a double shift, he’s more than happy to volunteer. Anything is better than the nightmares that are waiting for him if he tries to sleep tonight.

  Chapter Four

  On Elle’s advice, I wait to call Greg until we’re at the airport. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, she says. Since we’re already through TSA and waiting at our gate, there’s not much he can do besides layer on the guilt.

  Linda answers, sounding frazzled. I can hear the baby crying into the receiver and find myself wondering how Greg is adapting to this unexpected interloper in his perfectly ordered life.

  “Maisey,” Linda says, “everything okay with Elle?”

  “Elle is great. I just need to talk to Greg.”

  “Are you sure? He had a hard day. I don’t like to bother him.”

  “It’s kind of important, Linda. Please.”

  I hear the sigh, can almost feel her fatigue through the phone line. “All right. I’ll get him. Greg? Greg! It’s Maisey. No, I have no idea what she wants.”

  “You’re where?” Greg demands, predictably, when I tell him.

  Elle grins at me, a momentary flash of conspiratorial mischief that lightens my heart.

  “Elle and I are flying out to see my parents. We’ll be boarding in about fifteen minutes, so I need to keep this short.”

  I can hear him breathing, and I know he is pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes the way he does when he’s frustrated.

  When he speaks it’s with an exaggerated calm. “Would you care to explain why you are flying out to Washington State, with our daughter, on a school night?”

  No, I wouldn’t care to explain. As it turns out, I don’t have to. Elle grabs my phone.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  His voice might as well be on speakerphone. “I’m talking to your mother.”

  “Grandma’s dying and Grandpa needs us. Don’t worry about school. We’ve got it covered.”

  A silence. “Elle. Give the phone back to your mother.”

  “Whatever, Daddy. Love you. Kiss baby Jay for me.”

  She hands me back the phone. I take it reluctantly, bracing for the lecture I probably deserve. It’s Greg’s unexpected kindness that undoes me.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, and those three words melt the shield of ice that’s carried me from my kitchen into the airport.

  No, I am not okay. I may never be okay again. If I answer, my voice will break. The tears will flow. I’ll be a sobbing lunatic in the middle of this overcrowded gate, and everybody will stare.

  “Right,” he says, on the other end. “Stupid question. Of course you’re not okay. Oh my God. You could have called me, Maisey. If you’d only let me, I . . .” His voice trails off, but not before those words dump me into a memory so vivid I can taste the rancid bitterness of the stale gas station coffee rapidly cooling in a paper cup.

  The first big decision I ever made for myself was on a summer night twelve years ago. The night I told Greg I wouldn’t marry him, despite the baby growing in my belly.

  “God,” he says. “Your mom. Is she even allowed to be sick? You must feel like the universe is turned inside out.”

  “I’m okay. Just in shock. We’ll let you know when we get there.”

  “All right,” he says. “Keep me informed. Give your mother my love, will you?”

  If I had made a different choice way back then, Greg would be flying with us. Him, me, and Elle, the three of us, a traditional family. I try the idea on for size and shrug it off, like a coat that doesn’t fit. Elle is all the family I need.

  My old hometown looks dark and deserted when we roll in halfway between midnight and dawn. No lights. No cars. Even the gas station by the traffic circle is deserted. A slow, bleak drizzle of rain intensifies the effect.

  My brain, short-circuited by fatigue, anxiety, and the energy drink I bought to help me navigate the seventy miles of dark, deer-infested highway between Spokane and Colville, goes straight to apocalypse. I imagine the entire population sizzled into nothing by an electronic pulse or sucked up into a spaceship, the buildings left standing.

  Plague.

  Zombies.

  Maybe I’m driving Elle into a trap. I could let this traffic circle swing me right back around, let it fling the rental car free back onto the highway, back toward Spokane.

  Small towns sleep at night, I remind myself. It is two a.m., and we are not in Kansas City anymore. I’ve got enough to worry about without adding imaginary dangers into the mix.

  Dad, for example. He hasn’t responded to any of my calls since our brief and disturbing conversation. At least the hospital has people to answer the phone to tell me my mother is still alive and breathing. They also can tell me that they have not seen my dad, that he hasn’t come up to visit her, and that in itself is the most ominous news of all.

  I try to blink some moisture into my eyes, but the lids gra
te like sandpaper. My face feels like it might crack if I dare yawn or smile or do anything other than stare at the road. My hands are fused to the steering wheel, and my whole body thrums with the vibration of tires on pavement.

  All the way through town, I entertain the hope that everything is a huge misunderstanding. Dad and I will laugh about Mrs. Carlton, the wicked witch next door, the way we did when I was a child. Every one of her stinging remarks to me, about me, were softened by the stories Dad would tell.

  Me, the fairy-tale princess. Her, the spiteful but powerless witch, bound by a magic spell that kept her from inflicting any true harm.

  I tell myself that the real fairy stories are the ones the cop was spinning on the phone. Dad was in shock, that’s all. Who wouldn’t be? And there’s no way he let Mom lie unconscious for three days without calling for help.

  But then I turn onto our street and all my make-believe falls into ashes.

  The house is lit up like a carnival, every window glowing. Smoke pours out of the chimney—black, copious, and all kinds of wrong.

  My parents, for as long as I can remember, have been in bed every night by ten. All the lights off, except the dim one over the kitchen sink. And the fireplace is used only for ceremonial purposes. Small, decorative fires at Christmas. An occasional blaze on a Saturday night to go with hot cocoa and whipped cream.

  I skid into the driveway far too fast and slam on the brakes just in time to avoid crashing into the garage door. Elle bolts upright, eyes wide but glassy with sleep and confusion.

  She follows me out of the car and up to the front door, which is locked.

  I beat on it with my fists, shouting, “Dad! It’s Maisey. Let me in!”

  Nobody comes to the door. Acrid smoke drifts down from the chimney and into my nose. Panic freezes my brain, and it takes me way too long to lift the fake rock sitting right beside the door for any would-be thief to see. My hands are shaking, and I drop the key not once but twice before I manage to turn it in the lock and open the door.

  The entryway is blue with smoke.

  “Get back in the car,” I order Elle. “Call 911. If the house explodes, run for it.”

  “If you’re exploding, so am I,” she protests. “But I’ll call.”

  No time to argue. I dash through the entryway, down a short hall, into the living room.

  “Dad!”

  A haze of smoke drifts along the ceiling, but the only flames I can see are in the fireplace. Dad is on his knees in front of it, the poker in his hands. A sheaf of half-burned paper, some black and smoldering, some flaming, spills out onto the hearth. He pokes more paper into the fireplace, and with a whoosh it ignites. Hot paper ash floats out into the room, sucked by the current of air from the open door. Some lands on the carpet. A spark lands in Dad’s hair, and he drops the poker and swats at his head.

  A wad of flaming paper stuck to the poker continues to burn perilously close to his pant leg. He’s as oblivious to the danger as he is to our arrival.

  “Dad! What on earth are you doing?”

  I rush across the room and stomp out the flames on the paper, grinding ash into my mother’s carpet. The stink of hot chemicals and singed hair fills my nostrils.

  She’s going to kill me, I think, before I remember that she may never know or care what happened. That is the thought that sends a spike through my chest, skewering my heart.

  Dad turns his head, so terribly slowly, and looks at me. His eyes are blank, his face so expressionless I’m afraid that he doesn’t even know who I am.

  But it’s even worse than him not knowing. He is not happy to see me.

  “Maisey,” he says. “I figured you’d turn up.” His tone is one of final resignation, not joy or gratitude or relief. And then he turns his back on me, picks up the poker, and starts turning over the unburned papers in the fire.

  I hear the town siren begin to wail, a lonely, terrifying sound that has always made me want to dive under the furniture and hide.

  I drop to my knees beside him, careless of the soot and ash, and take the poker out of his hands.

  “It’s plenty warm in here, don’t you think? Maybe we should let this go out.”

  Something fierce passes through his eyes, and I actually think, Oh my God, I’m about to be smacked with the poker, before his hands let go and he melts, as if he’s made of wax and the fire has softened him. His shoulders round. His back curves. His chin sinks down onto his chest.

  “There’s more,” he says. “I know there’s more. I’ve forgotten something.”

  He’s not talking to me.

  My whole body feels stiff and strange and without sensation. Plastic. I don’t know how I am supposed to behave if my father has forgotten that he loves me, if my mother isn’t here to tell us both what to do.

  So the two of us stay where we are, kneeling in front of the fireplace, like supplicants before an altar. Outside a siren wails, coming closer and closer until it’s nearly deafening.

  “Must be a fire somewhere.” Dad turns his head toward the sound.

  “You think?”

  I look at the soot spread around us, the dusting of ash in his hair, on his shoulders, like dandruff.

  It’s too late to call off the fire brigade, and they come stomping in through the front door. Two firemen in full gear, extinguishers at the ready.

  So much antifire power to leverage at one small fireplace. Fatigue has made me giddy. I put my hand over my mouth to push back rising laughter, but it leaks through my fingers and into an unwelcoming silence.

  “Fire is not a joke, ma’am,” one of the suited figures says. He sounds like my elementary school principal that time I put earthworms in Catrina Larsen’s desk, and she had hysterics worthy of black widow spiders or rattlesnakes or something.

  Mr. Myers used the same tonal inflection, stood in the same stiff, disapproving way. And I’d had an identical attack of the giggles that got me suspended from school for a day and earned me a spanking from my mother.

  “The consequences for a prank call to 911 include jail time,” the fireman says, in the same sanctimonious tone. I realize all at once that I’m the one holding the poker. I’m going to jail or hell—one or the other or both—and still, I can’t for the life of me stop laughing.

  “I called,” Elle says. “There was smoke. And burning papers flying around the room. Am I going to jail?”

  “I don’t think this was a prank,” the other fireman says. I like his voice better. It has a warm, comforting sound to it, like chocolate or a good red wine. He sets down his extinguisher and takes a step into the room. “Mr. Addington? Are you all right?”

  Dad is not all right. He’s tilting sideways, a human Tower of Pisa, only his tilt is accelerating at a visible pace. His mouth is open, his breathing loud and harsh.

  My laughter congeals to something gelatinous and cold in my throat, and I’m unable to breathe or move. Is Dad going to have a stroke now, too, both of my parents checking out of life together?

  “Can’t. Get. Up,” Dad gasps. “Need a hand.”

  The fireman moves to act as a reinforcement so Dad doesn’t topple off his knees. “Are you hurt? Should we call an ambulance?”

  “No. Just . . . I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” Dad says. A wheeze escapes him; I’m not sure if it’s a laugh or some sort of predeath breathing pattern.

  The fireman pulls off his gloves and reaches down, respectfully allowing Dad to use him like a ladder to climb to his feet instead of picking him up like a child.

  “Old men and floors,” Dad says. “Not compatible.”

  I stare up at the two of them, the idea of getting onto my own feet suddenly daunting.

  My fireman extends a rescuing hand down to me, still steadying my father with the other. It’s a large hand. Square fingers, evenly cut nails. Warm when I take it, both strong and gentle. A pair of very blue eyes look down at me. His mouth has smile lines around it.

  The hand is attached to a muscular arm that lifts me effort
lessly up onto wobbly feet.

  “Maisey, right?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “High school.”

  I scan his face, trying to remember, but draw a blank. “I’m sorry. I don’t—”

  “Tony,” he says. “No worries. You wouldn’t remember.”

  My gaze drifts from the fireman to my father, who sways like a drunk. There is, as Officer Mendez told me, dried blood on his shirt. He hasn’t changed his clothes. He hasn’t shaved.

  I realize I’m still clinging to the fireman’s hand and let go to steady my father’s arm.

  “You need to sit down, Dad?” He doesn’t seem to hear me.

  The other fireman, the self-righteous one who is probably happy there’s an actual crisis in motion, finally takes a step in our direction.

  He’s too slow.

  Dad collapses from the bottom up, like a demolition charge has gone off. Knees first, then hips, then spine, all the bones and joints turned to jelly.

  My fireman is behind him, though, holding him, sinking down to the floor with him so he doesn’t fall. The other guy radios for an ambulance.

  As for me, I can’t seem to summon up the requisite amount of panic. I used to make little jokes about how my parents were so joined at the hip they’d probably go out together.

  I didn’t mean it, I pray, silently, just in case God or the fates or the universe or whatever it is that drives the boat is listening.

  My fireman, kneeling across from me with Dad between us, is busy checking for a pulse. “He’s breathing easily; his pulse is a little fast, but strong. I’m also a paramedic,” he explains. He pats Dad’s cheek, shakes his shoulder. “Mr. Addington. Walter. Can you hear me?”

  Dad’s eyes roll under closed lids, then flicker open. He stares up at the fireman, obviously dazed.

  “There you are,” my paramedic fireman says. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve been better,” Dad says. His voice sounds weak. His lips are dry and flaking, the bottom one split and bleeding slightly. He’s old, but he shouldn’t look this old, with fragile skin stretched tight over his cheekbones, his eyes faded and sunken. “Who are you?”