by Holly Ryan
“I’ll just take a seat,” I say to her.
She walks away.
The seat I take is a good distance away from anyone else, which isn’t hard to do; there are only a few other people here, and most of them look like they want to mind their own business, too, putting on a strange resemblance to the grumpy guard.
I sit with my arms crossed and my head down, waiting to be called. I slide my eyes to the right. There are a few small families, bundled together with a mother trying to keep her children occupied. No one’s talking, but I wish they would. It’s not like it’s forbidden, for crying out loud. This isn’t a goddamn library, and it would sure help ease the tension in here.
An officer eyes me from behind his desk, glaring up. I sink a little lower. Okay, maybe I get it.
After a few minutes, I hear my name. “Harrington.”
I stand and I’m greeted by another officer, this one a man holding a clipboard and a buzzing walkie-talkie-style radio.
“Come with me,” he says.
I walk through the series of thick metal doors, exactly as I’m directed. The guard I’m following is yet another burly one, stone-faced and unfriendly, who soon mindlessly gestures for me to take a seat. The déjà vu hits me. God, this place hasn’t changed. My father hasn’t changed. Obviously, Ethan. And now here I am, once again. It’s pathetic – how I can still hear my father’s words, the ones he spoke to me the last time we were here. He’d said, “I promise it’ll change. I’ll change. I promise.”
I don’t realize that I’m frozen in place. I’m sitting here, in the middle of a long aisle, reliving this moment in such surrealism that I don’t even notice when he arrives. Now he’s so close to me; just a few feet away, holding the bright yellow phone attached to the wall by a chain, looking at me through the glass.
He may be acting the same, but even in my uncomfortably, briefest glance at him, I can see he looks different; once a powerful, healthy-looking man, his face is sunken and stressed. And his eyes are steely. I look away.
Then I snap myself out of it. I can do this. I take a deep breath, refusing to look him in those crazy, dark eyes, and then pick up the phone.
What I want to say, with anger, is, Do you remember what you said last time we were here? But I don’t. Instead, I say, “Hi, Dad,” and I finally lift my gaze to his, daring to truly take him in.
I was right. He looks like hell.
My body outgrew his a long time ago, so it’s no surprise to see him appear rather short in stature compared to me; but now … now he looks pathetic. His posture is slumped, and his hair is long and scraggly. His eyes look tired and old, his crows feet set deeper in his skin. The bright orange uniform he’s wearing is far too big for his frame, which is odd for him – he must have lost weight in here already.
“Son,” he says. His voice comes out gruff and raspy through the phone.
I move my eyes down to my free hand. “What are you doing in here?” I say it as if I don’t already know. I say it as though I’m expecting an explanation, as though anyone could provide any reasonable explanation for breaking the law.
He shifts in his seat. “Come on. I know they’ve told you that.”
That raspiness again. God, he even sounds different. Somehow he even sounds older.
“I want to hear it from you.”
“You want to hear it from me, huh?” He laughs nervously and rubs his temple. “Why did you come if this is what you want to do?”
I hold out my hand, lifting my shoulder into a shrug. “Why do you think I came? Why else would I come? It’s not like I’m here to tell you how much I love you for committing another crime.” I had meant it as a sharp insult, but instead, the words choke me up. I lean back in the chair, my hand gripping the phone with the strength of all my anger. “And I sure as hell didn’t come here for the fun of it.”
He doesn’t say anything. At all. He just looks at me. That bastard.
I lean forward. “So why did you do it?” Maybe not the most appropriate question, but like I said … I don’t feel like waiting for the healing this time around.
He sighs and looks around. Already, I can tell he’s not going to give me the answers I’m looking for.
I slam my hand on the counter, then ball it into a fist when I realize what I’ve done. “I need you to just tell me.” I look at a guard, who shoots me a corrective glance, and lower my voice. I turn back to my father. “Please?”
He shakes his head and breaths out. “I don’t have an answer for you, Ethan. What do you want? Do you want me to tell you I did it because I liked it?”
I slam the phone into its holder. I don’t bother giving him one more ounce of my respect or my time; I stand, and without saying goodbye, I leave. I can feel his eyes burning into my back as I leave him behind.
I rush out of the building – past the guards, almost forgetting to collect my things from the entryway, flying through the doors without care of them slamming behind me, just hoping that none of the guards who are eyeing me grow suspicious enough to stop me. I open the door to my truck just as violently and the second I sit down, I feel like hitting something. I don’t, though. Instead, I bury my head against the steering wheel and squeeze my fingers into the seat of the car.
His non-answer wasn’t what I expected. It doesn’t help me. If anything, it makes things worse.
That last phrase of his plays over and over in my mind: I liked it. I liked it.
I’d always known he was a criminal.
I didn’t know he was so cold.
Although it hurts like hell, I officially never, ever want to speak to him again.
When I’m home, I hesitate, biding my time in the driveway before going inside. I finish the rest of that Poptart while I think about what to do next. The plan had been to head to the library after that little visit, to finish up the half-day by getting some homework done and studying for next week’s exam – my attempt to maintain some sense of normalcy. But after that, there’s no way I’m up for it.
I pick up my phone to text my mom. I didn’t send her a text after I finished up at the prison like I should have. She’s probably wondering how it went.
i’m done. everything went fine
I send the text with a pang of guilt about the lie. But that’s how it’ll have to be for now. I’m not ready to face her knowing that I’m destroyed yet. The truth is, despite what I thought going in, I’m not ready to face any of this yet.
As I collect myself and grab my things to head inside, my phone rings. It’s my mom, texting me back already.
great. come inside. i have something for you.
Inside? She’s home? She said she was working today, and in her field it’s hard to get time off, not to mention last-minute time off.
I press the button of the garage door opener, attached to the visor. The garage opens, and there’s her car. Okay, so she is here. Huh.
And she’s right there when I walk through the door. She’s on the couch near the foyer, trying to look as casual as possible. She’s holding a thick stack of papers in her hand and she gets up and walks toward me.
“I’m not going to ask for details of how it went with that … creep,” she says before I have a chance to speak. “But I want you to know it’s okay to be not okay. And here.” She hands me the papers. “I thought these might help you.”
I take them. “What’s this?”
“Well, I thought about what you said this morning. About the need for closure and all that.” She touches her mouth. “I got in touch with my lawyer, and we filed a request for your dad’s police reports. With his help, we were able to get them expedited.” She looks at the stack in my hands. “So there they are. Everything damn thing you’d hope to know.”
“Damn,” I repeat after her, looking down at them, too. The stack is thick – there has to be a hundred pages here. “You got off work for this?”
She shrugs. “I told them it was an emergency.”
“Wow. Well, thanks, Mom. This means
a lot to me.”
She touches my shoulder and walks away.
I’m alone in my room with nothing to bother me but the occasional sound of my TV. The stack of papers is sitting where I left it, on my nightstand. I bounce my knee and then grab for them and plop them on my lap. I flip through the pages one by one. A lot of this means nothing to me – it’s incomprehensible professional terms and data that doesn’t apply to the layman. Some pages contain only a single sentence. Some contain helpful pieces of information about my dad’s cases. Some are individual police reports, describing the moments of his arrest; others are the specific charges that they’re planning to file against him.
I try to control my emotions as I read. Maybe this isn’t the best time to do this. But I can’t stop myself. I get to the end of the stack, and my heart sinks when I start to suspect none of this is about his present case. And then I see it. A single page, a list of charges.
In the cases of Whitney Cromwell and Alyssa Zucconi: two counts of murder. In the case of Avery Dylan: one count of attempted murder.
Avery
My very first conversation with my doctor was a rude welcome to the world of recovery.
My doctor is a short man, stout and with dark hair that sometimes resembled an Elvis-do, and my first impression of him was that he was always busy and aloof. He treated me like I was just another patient, but like one that was seriously hurt, and because of that he went out of his way to give me serious attention. That’s not a good impression to have.
“Welcome back, Avery,” I heard him say through my drug-induced haze. It might not have been the drugs. It could have been the haze of my own battered mind; I guess there’s no way to know for sure. But I felt druggy.
“What happened to me?” I said. It hurt to talk.
The doctor took a deep breath. He held his hands together in front of him. “I’d like you to tell me what you can remember.”
I thought.
I thought harder.
The thinking hurt, so I stopped. I gave up and just looked at him.
He leaned in closer. He was so close to me that I could smell his breath. I crinkled my nose. “Anything at all?” he asked.
“I remember some things.”
“Such as?”
“I remember leaving Cole and walking to my friend’s house–”
My mom interrupted. “You left Cole? Why did you leave Cole?”
I looked at her, surprised. I didn’t even realize she was there.
I shift my seat. “He dropped me off.”
“In the middle of nowhere?”
“Not in the middle of nowhere, no. I knew where I was.”
She shook her head. “I knew it was Cole. You’re not to see him again, Avery. Do you hear me? You two were arguing again, weren’t you? And he kicked you out.” She put her head in her hand. “That boy.”
“Mom, it wasn’t him. Stop it.” I didn’t bother pointing out that if it was him, as in the one who attacked me, of course I wouldn’t see him again. Like she would even need to tell me that.
She extended an arm, correcting herself. “I didn’t mean he did this to you, I meant he allow this to happen. He did, didn’t he?” She handed the authority back to the doctor. “Go on. Please.”
The doctor faced me again, his body just as close. He must think traumatized people are hard of hearing, standing this close. Funny, you’d think he’d catch on to the fact that we’d like some space more than anything.
“Ms. Dylan, do you have any idea of the injuries you sustained? What have you heard?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
“Alright. So I’ll start from the beginning. Whoever did this shot you once in the leg,” he said, his voice flat and professional.
All I thought was: That was the beginning?
“You sustained a pretty serious head injury, although we don’t know what from. Some kind of blunt force. And we had to put you in a medically-induced coma for close to three days to get that swelling down. You’re going to feel a bit groggy for a while because of the medication we gave you, but the good news is you’re on the mend.” He flipped his chart papers and nodded. “You’ve made progress in the right direction already.”
So, drugs. It was the drugs.
He pulled a prescription pad out of his front pocket and began scribbling.
“Here.” He tore off a sheet and handed it to me, then continued writing another. “I’m writing you a prescription for physical therapy. You’ll need to continue it for a while. Twice a week to start should be enough to head us in the right direction. After that, we’ll reevaluate you to see where you’re at.” He took a break from the scribbling to look up at me. “If you continue making progress, we can decrease your sessions to once a week. And this ...” He looked back down and ripped off the second prescription in a steady swipe.
I took it and placed it neatly on top of the other in my hands.
“… Is something to help with the pain.”
I held it back out to him. “Oh, I –”
The doctor refused to take the prescription back. He pierced me with his eyes and then twisted his body around to look at my mother, who was still seated comfortably, her arms resting on her crossed knee, her palms entwined together.
“Oh,” she said. “Avery prefers to stay away from the pharmaceuticals. It’s a … health-conscious thing.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s just … I’m sure she doesn’t want them.” Her attention shifted back to me. “Are you in pain, honey?”
I shook my head. I was, a little, but I could tolerate it.
The doctor disregarded my mother’s last statement. “Mrs. Dylan – I’m sorry. Mrs.?”
“Ms.”
“Ms. Dylan. Are you going to let me do this?”
My mother sat up straight. Her lips came together in a pursed line and her eyes widened. Her angry face. “I’m sorry?”
“Avery is an adult now. She’s more than capable of thinking for herself and telling me what I need to know.” He turned his attention back to me. “Well, Avery?”
Their eyes were on me. “I don’t like how they make me feel. I’d rather not take them.” I tucked my chin closer to my chest, well aware I was sounding like an organic-food-eating, barefoot-walking, overly-anxious patient. “I’d like to be clear-minded, that’s all.”
“Of course. I see.” He tucked the prescription pad back into his shirt pocket. “Well, there are alternative therapies out there, but I won’t be able to get you that kind of information. You’ll need to go through a naturopath for something like that. I can give you a referral if you like.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Thank you, doctor.”
He walked out of the room and closed the door.
“I don’t like that doctor,” she said.
“Mom, he’s fine. At least he listened to me.”
My mom sighed and rose from her chair, moving closer to me. She bended down.
“You’re right,” she said.
This closeness, I didn’t mind. The motherly kind. I place my hand around her forearm and smiled while she pushed a stray lock of hair away from my face. She looked into my eyes and said, “I was going to wait to tell you this, but I think your ready.”
My breath hung on her every word.
“They caught him for you, Avery. You don’t have to do anything. It’s already done.” She stroked the hair away from my forehead. “All you have to do is get better.”
The words felt just as good as you’d imagine. They caught him. It’s beautiful. I want to say it over and over. I’d been waiting for this moment; the simple relief of gazing into the most loving eyes a person will ever know, and getting the best news possible, considering. I had secretly hoped for it, to hear that the creep was behind bars. I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding. No matter how old I am, I don’t think there will ever come a day when I don’t long for my mother during my weakest moments of crisis.
Waves of emot
ion rush through me. I can’t describe the feelings. I imagine it’s something you had to have gone through to know, as unoriginal as that sounds. There was anger, yes – tons of anger toward that one evil man, and I doubted that was going to go away any time soon. But there was also a panic at what was yet to come: Will I have to testify? How will I manage to walk down the street alone again? How will I manage to dance again?
How will anyone look at me again without thinking, That’s the girl… How will I ever forgive myself for not taking a different street?
I looked down at my legs, hidden under the cheap hospital sheets. I leaned back, into my mother’s arms. She cupped my head. None of this is fair.
She kissed me, then took my face in her hands. “Let’s work on getting you home. Okay?”
I did my best to smile. “Okay.”
Meanwhile, in the back of my mind, all that remained was: I don’t have to do anything? Did you really just say that? Because yes, I do. Hell yes I do.
That, and: They caught him.
If I had to make a list of all the things I actually have to do, getting better would be, of course, number one. But there are so many other things on my plate besides just get better. So many things on the road to Better, and I can’t get there without visiting each of the rest stops.
Physical therapy would be number two. That’s my first stop. Despite its importance, it’s far from easy. It hurts. I’m being pushed in ways I hate and in ways I never thought were possible for me, and after a night or two of horrible, noisy, hospital-quality sleep (not to mention weeks of horrible, hospital-quality food – never eating Jello again after this), my strength is wearing thin. Too bad I’m only on my second session.
Luckily, today Mara’s coming to visit before my session. Her parents actually allowed her to take a half day off of school to come and see me before I get discharged, and I’m glad she’s coming. I don’t know where I’d be without that girl, and it hurts that I’ve only gotten to see her one other time in the two months I’ve been in here.
