Gingerbread Man

by Maggie Shayne

  As Mason pulled into the parking lot behind Binghamton General and looked for an empty spot, the shaking set in.

  My brother’s dead. But not quite. No, dead. He’s dead. No one could live like that. It’s a glitch in the works, some reflex trying to hold on. But he’s gone. I saw it, felt it. I know.

  My brother was a murderer. All those guys. How many licenses? Gonna have to go through them later. And that bag. God, I don’t want to go through that bag. Got to, though. And then hide it. Where it’ll never ever be found.

  I need to find the bodies. What the hell did he do with the bodies? Those families…

  Gotta call Mom. And ohmyfuckinggod, Marie. I gotta call Marie. How do I break this to the boys? It’s gonna destroy them.

  Yeah. I did the right thing. This is bad enough without…that note. That bag. Those IDs. Those faces. It’s bad enough. I did the right thing, God forgive me.

  But what if he lives?

  “Sir? Sir, can I help you?”

  He’d managed to walk into the E.R. without even realizing it, that was how far gone he was. He needed to pull it together here. He focused on the woman—a nurse wearing scrubs with big pink flowers all over them. She was behind a curved desk looking at him through an open glass partition. “Detective Mason Brown, Binghamton P.D. I’m here for my brother.”

  “I can help you with that. His name?” she was already tapping keys.

  “Eric Conroy Brown.”

  “Eric.” Tap-tap-tap. “Brown.” Taptaptaptap-big tap. She actually backed up from the computer screen a little, and the bright smile vanished. “He’s in the ICU. That’s up—”

  “I know where it is.” He was a cop. He knew his way around Binghamton General. He was gone while she was still talking. Wishing him luck or something equally useless. Elevators, buttons to push. Autopilot.

  What if he lives?

  He still had all the evidence. If his brother lived and was anything more than a bedridden vegetable, Mason was going to have to turn it in and take the consequences for removing it from the scene. It would be the end of his job. Which was nothing compared to the possibility of his brother going on killing.

  Eric. Killing. God, he couldn’t even imagine it.

  Yes, you can. You know damn well you can.

  How the hell had it happened? What had driven him to this? They’d had the same childhood. Not perfect, but no trauma. No abuse. What had made his older brother become a monster?

  He’s never been right and you know it. And what about all those cats, huh? Why was it we could never keep a cat? They all disappeared. And when they were gone, the neighbors’ cats started vanishing. Remember how everyone thought there must be a wild animal in the area, preying on house cats? Coyotes. They blamed coyotes. And when I asked for a dog, Dad said absolutely not, and there was this look in his eyes, remember that? This look like the thought of a dog was horrifying somehow. Maybe he knew….

  The elevator stopped, the doors slid open. He stepped out into the white hallway. It smelled so clean he didn’t think a germ would dare try to invade. Spotting the nurses’ desk, he went over and repeated his brother’s name to the guy sitting there.

  “Are you family?”

  Mason hated male nurses. Didn’t know why, it just chafed him. They always seemed, to him at least, to be full of themselves. People who see men in scrubs automatically assume they’re doctors, and privately, he thought most male nurses got a huge ego boost out of that and almost never corrected the misassumption.

  “I’m his brother.”

  “I’d better take you in. Your brother is—”

  “I was there when he pulled the trigger. You don’t need to prepare me. Just point me to the room, okay?”

  The chubby Justin Bieber-haired blond came around the desk anyway. “It’s right over here. He’s on a ventilator, but—”

  Mason walked into the room, right up to the bed. Eric lay there. His entire head was bandaged and padded underneath, so it wasn’t as obvious that a lot of it was missing. Someone had washed most of the blood away and put him in a hospital gown. His eyes were closed, sunken unnaturally back into his head.

  “Have you called his—your—family?” the nurse asked.

  “I was just about to.”

  “Good. The doctor will want to talk to them as soon as possible.”

  “Why?” Mason took his eyes off his brother to look at the nurse.

  “I really have to let the doctor be the one—”

  “Come on, kid. Do you really think it matters who tells it? Cut me some slack here. I just watched my brother blow his own head off. Just tell me what you have to say already.”

  The nurse lowered his head. “He’s brain dead. The machine is pumping air through his lungs, and forcing his heart to keep pushing oxygenated blood through his body. But he’s not coming back.”

  Mason nodded and exhaled long and slow. No vegetable brother wasting away slow for the next twenty years. No recovering murderer brother having to face the consequences of his crimes. No being forced to testify against his own sibling or reveal the nightmare to his mother or sister-in-law or nephews. No being driven out of the job he loved.

  It was better this way. Was that selfish? Okay, yeah, a little, but not entirely. It was better for everyone this way.

  “So the doctor wants us all here to tell him to pull the plug.” It wasn’t a question.

  “And to ask you about organ donation, though technically his wife has to make those decisions,” the nurse said with a nod in the direction of Eric’s left hand. “Most families make it together.”

  Organ donation. That hadn’t even occurred to him. He let his eyes travel up and down his brother’s body, completely intact except for his head.

  “The ventilator keeps the organs oxygenated until the decision is made,” Nurse Bieber went on.

  “I see. So he’s…”

  “He’s already gone, Detective Brown. I’m really sorry.”

  Mason nodded. “Seems like it would be a shame to just waste them, doesn’t it?” he asked. “The way he wasted the rest of himself.”

  “Yeah. It does. There’s someone right now praying they’ll stay alive long enough to get a heart, a liver, a kidney, a lung. Even his corneas are still good. He could make a blind person see again. Maybe for the first time.”

  A blind person see again.

  Maybe this accident happened for a reason.

  Mason turned and looked at the nurse, revising his opinion of him. “They should have you talk to all the families in this situation. You’re good at it.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to…?”

  “Yeah, I’ll convince the family. Marie…she listens to me. But don’t worry, I’ll let the doctor think he talked me into it. Now, about those corneas—can we pick someone to get those? A specific person? If they’re the same tissue type or whatever?”

  “Of course you can. Tissue typing isn’t even necessary for corneas anymore. The latest studies, blah blah blah.”

  The nurse’s words faded into the background noise inside Mason’s head, where the gunshot was ringing and echoing endlessly. He was staring at his brother, remembering when they were kids, playing on the tire swing that hung from the giant maple up at the lake, seeing who could swing out further, dropping into the icy cold water.

  How do you go from a laughing ten-year-old to a cold-blooded killer?

  “Detective Brown?”

  He nodded to let the nurse know he hadn’t lost him. “Can you, uh, give me a minute alone with him?”

  “Sure. And then you’ll call the family?”

  Mason nodded.

  The kid left and closed the door behind him, leaving Mason alone with Eric. He moved closer to the bed. “I don’t know what to say to you, brother.” He swallowed to loosen up the constriction in his throat. “Hell, I don’t even know if you can hear me, but…what the fuck, Eric? What were you thinking? You—” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You killed all those boys, you sonofab
itch. And then dumped it all on me? What the fuck, man?”

  He sighed, backed away. “Okay, so you win. You’re badass. You make the messes, and I clean `em up. Just like always, big bro. And now I’ve gotta go call Mother and Marie, and break their hearts. And they’re gonna cry and mourn for a piece of shit who never deserved either of them. Much less the boys. Damn you, Eric, how could you do this to your family?”

  He got up, started to leave, then turned back. “Why the fuck did you have to wait for me to get there, make me watch you do that? That’s never gonna get out of my head, you know.”

  He left the room, closed the door, lowered his head way down because his eyes were burning with tears, and then, finally, he called his sister-in-law.

  * * *

  BY NOON MY room was full of balloons, flowers and various idiotic stuffed animals. And people, let’s not forget people. My BBF—-best blind friend—Mott Killian was at my bedside, strumming his guitar, and singing away, doing his usual half-a-song-then-switch thing. Mott taught American History over at Cortland State. Amy, my irritatingly twenty-something personal assistant, had confiscated my tray table for her laptop. She was clicking away, tweeting and posting hourly updates to my fifty-thousand-and-some-odd followers, and manning her ever-present iPhone to tell reporters no to every interview request. I have no idea about social media. She does it all for me. My agent, Barracuda Woman, was keeping tabs via Skype from her Manhattan office. And my sister was riding herd on the hospital staff and ordering takeout. Her twins were texting nonstop—I could hear the tapping, soft as it was—and sucking down vitamin water. I could smell it. Misty had Berry Blast, and Christy had Mango Peach. They were trying not to let me know that their social lives were positively wasting away while they were doing time at their blind aunt’s bedside, but their frequent sighs were audible, and their impatience wafted from their pores like B.O.

  When a nurse tried to object to all the activity in the room, Sandra laid down the law. “Do you know how many times my sister has been on TV?” she asked. “She’s important. She needs her people around her.”

  My people. My entourage. And every one of them so devoted they would take a bullet for me. Well, except for Misty and Christy, who would take a slap for me, max. Maybe. As long as it wasn’t in the face.

  Moreover, the people in this room were the only people who knew that the real me was not the feel-good guru who showed up in my books and on talk shows. And they not only loved me anyway, they loved me enough to not sell the truth to the tabloids. That was devotion right there, because that information would’ve been worth a significant bundle.

  There was a tap on the door before someone came in. I smelled her and heard her signature footsteps, soft and close together, and I knew her instantly. “Hold up, hold up.” I tapped Mott’s knee as I spoke, and he stopped strumming.

  “Doc Fenway?”

  “You amaze me every time, you know that?” she said with a smile in her voice.

  “I do it on purpose,” I confessed. “So are you here to visit, or did this little accident have some kind of impact on my eyesight? Please don’t tell me I’m going blind!”

  Obediently, my entourage laughed. But only a little. There was still noise all around me. Amy’s clicking keys, Sandra talking on the phone—“Ham and pineapple, extra blue cheese, and the hottest wings you’ve got”—Mott still picking a string over and over as he tuned the guitar, because apparently he thought as long as he wasn’t playing an actual song he was in compliance with my “hold up” order of a moment ago.

  And then Doc Fenway went on. “Actually, I came with some good news for you.” And then she said it. One sentence that changed everything. “You’re going to see again, Rachel.”

  The room went silent. I flinched as the words exploded inside my brain. “I…um…how?”

  “We have a brand-new healthy set of corneas for you. Private donor. Wishes to remain anonymous, and—”

  “No.” I shook my head and kept on talking before the arguments could begin. “I’m not putting myself through it again, Doc. You know I reject every set I get. It’s too much to—”

  “Just hear me out, Rachel. Let me explain why it’s different this time. Then make whatever decision you want.”

  I bit my lip. I didn’t want to let my hopes start to climb. So far, they hadn’t, but if I let her talk they might, and I didn’t like the crushing disappointment of failure. I’d had transplants before. My body rejected them. Violently. I was sick all over. I know, another one of my endearing quirks. I’m a unique individual.

  “If everyone could leave us for a few minutes…?”

  “They can stay,” I said. “They’re just going to torture it out of me later anyway. Go ahead, Doc, give it your best shot, but you know how I feel about beating this particular dead horse.”

  “Okay.” She cleared her throat. “It’s been several years since we’ve tried. There’s a new procedure. Descemet’s Stripping Endothelial Keratoplasty.”

  “Oh, well in that case, let’s go for it. Anything with such an impressive sounding name is bound to work.” I loaded on enough sarcasm to clog up a black hole.

  Doc Fenway sighed, then repeated herself, but in English this time. “We transplant a thin layer of the graft, not the entire cornea. The risk of rejection is minimal. Recovery time is faster. It’s light-years beyond what we’ve been able to do before. And I think it just might be your answer.”

  My heart gave a ridiculously hopeful leap. I told it to lie back down and shut the fuck up.

  “The donor chose you specifically, Rachel. And we can do it today.”

  “Oh my God.” That was Sandra, and the words were damn near swimming in tears. “Oh my God, ohmyGod, ohmyGod!”

  I wasn’t quite as impressed. “Today? You want me to decide this today? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Meanwhile Sandra was still going on, “You’re going to see! You’re going to see, ohmyGod!”

  The twins started with the teenage girl squealing thing that sounds like giant mice having their tails stepped on. Really, someone ought to be researching a cure for that. Screw Descemet’s Stripping-whatever.

  “This is a miracle!” Amy cried. And then she and Sandra were hugging and hopping around in what sounded like a circle. I don’t know. Blind, remember? Everyone was talking and crying and laughing—and squealing, let’s not forget the squealing—at the same time.

  I held up my hands. “Stop. Just stop.” I had to speak very loudly.

  They all stopped, and I felt their eyes on me. “Okay. Okay.” I took a deep breath, but I wasn’t processing this. This wasn’t real yet. I didn’t get it. “I do need everybody to get out, okay? Except you, Doc. Everybody else, just…just go get a coffee or something. Give me a minute here.”

  I heard a keystroke and whipped my finger toward Amy. “Don’t you even think about tweeting anything about this. Understand?”

  “Yeah. No, I wasn’t—”

  “Close the lid, Amy.”

  I heard the laptop close.

  “Come on, everyone, let’s give her some space,” Sandra instructed. She was a little hurt that I’d asked. I could tell by the texture of her voice.

  “Yeah. I need space.”

  Mott leaned in close. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, you know.”

  “Right. Like you wouldn’t?”

  “No. I wouldn’t.” Petulant, maybe a little combative? What the fuck?

  I frowned. I mean, I knew he thought of the blind as a minority group and himself as our Malcolm X, but I didn’t think he’d want to stay sightless if he had a choice. Then again, he’d been born blind. I hadn’t. I’d had twelve years of vision. Eleven of them twenty-twenty. And I’d had blurry, half-assed eyesight three times, after the last three transplants, a few days each time before my body threw a full-on, no-holds-barred revolt. I knew what I was missing.

  Mott kissed my cheek, and everyone left the room. Shuffling steps, grumbling complaints, whispers, an
d finally the door closing behind them. I lay there in the bed, listening to Doc Fenway come over, sit in Mott’s former place, clear her throat.

  “What do you need to know?” she asked.

  I thought for a long time, and then I said, “Is this for real?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will it work?”

  “Almost certainly. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it, Rachel. This might be the miracle you didn’t think you’d ever get.”

  She was telling the absolute truth, as she saw it. Lies were one of the easiest things to hear in people’s voices. I felt tears brimming in my stupid sightless eyes. Damn, I did not cry. Not ever. And if I ever did, it sure as hell wouldn’t be in front of anyone. Thank God I was still wearing my sunglasses. “I don’t want to believe it just to have it go bad again, Doc. Not this time. It would be more than I can take.”

  Revealing my soft underbelly was not something I did often. But she wasn’t allowed to tell, right? She was a doctor.

  “But you have to believe if you ever want anything to change. Isn’t that what you’re always writing about? How it’s the belief that creates the reality, and not the other way around.”

  Right. Like I was twelve and somehow believed my way into twenty years of blindness right? I would probably go to hell for the bullshit I sold to the gullible.

  “How long before I’ll be able to look at my sister’s face?”

  She patted my hand. “Tomorrow, if all goes well. And better than the other times, right off the bat, with full recovery in two to three months.”

  “Tomorrow. I’ll be able to see my sister’s face again…tomorrow.” I lowered my head, shook it slowly. Even if it didn’t last, I’d have that. I just didn’t know if I could handle the letdown if it was only temporary. You might think temporary vision is better than none at all, but you haven’t been there. I have. It sucks.