by Mike Markel
Holy shit. I could feel my pulse start to race. Bruce hadn’t mentioned anything about Tommy cutting school. Or didn’t he know? Yes, of course, this was the perfect conclusion to the week, realizing that there was a big son of a bitch of a problem I hadn’t even seen coming: my son was falling apart.
One thing I’d learned about this kind of problem was if you fail to acknowledge it and pay it the respect it knows it deserves, it gets pissed off and decides to teach you a lesson. Well, here it was at my door, rapping with its huge, hairy knuckles. What a surprise! Come on in, won’t you stay a while? I downed the rest of my drink and walked over to the kitchen counter to refill it.
I picked up the phone to call Bruce but decided something this serious called for a visit. I poured and drank another inch of JD, picked up my keys, and hurried out to the carport. I didn’t remember the drive over to Bruce’s. Wasn’t aware of any other cars, the stop signs, the red lights. I couldn’t say whether it was clear or raining. All I knew was the blur of shock, fear, and regret, knowing my screw-ups were now hurting the one person I had wanted, more than anything, to protect. I pulled into Bruce’s driveway, the car parked crooked. Out of the car, up to the steps, knocking on the door fast and hard.
I heard the footsteps coming to the door fast. They were too heavy for Tommy, and Bruce never saw a reason to hurry like that. The door opened quickly, and Angela wore an expression close to panic. “Karen, what is it? Is everything okay?”
“No, Angela, everything’s not okay.” I could tell my voice was too loud, the pitch too high. I pushed past Angela. “Where’s Bruce?”
Angela was scared. “He’s out back, on the patio. What is it, Karen?”
I ignored her, striding down the hall, into the living room, to the screen door to the patio. There he was at the redwood picnic table, working on one of his rods. I slid the screen door hard, startling him.
He put the rod down on the table, a mean look coming over his face. “I thought we agreed to call first.”
I ignored the comment. Standing there, hands on my hips, I said, “Did you get that e-mail from Tommy’s school?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, picking up a screwdriver to work on the rod.
“The e-mail from the vice principal saying Tommy’s cutting school and they might hold him back because of it.”
“No, I haven’t seen that. Don’t look at e-mail much.”
This is typical Bruce. I tell him his son’s in trouble and he thinks I’m interested in his approach to e-mail. “Did you know he’s been missing a lot of school?”
“I know he’s missed a few days. Maybe he’s missed a few I don’t know about. So what?”
“‘So what?’” I tried counting, made it to five. “Bruce, listen, we have to talk about this.”
“Okay, talk.”
“Look, I know it’s been real bad between us. We’ve both done some things and said some things—”
“Shit, you’re admitting you said some things?”
“Yeah, Bruce, I know I got a mouth.” I looked at him. His face was a blank. “Bruce, you know there’s one thing we agreed on when we split: that we were both gonna be there for Tommy. We weren’t gonna let this shit between us get to him. You remember, even when you got custody and I was ready to kill you. In the courtroom that day, when we both told Tommy that.”
His face seemed to soften a little, as if he was remembering. I waited for him to speak, but all he said was “Yeah.”
“Well, Bruce, this is one of those times we gotta work together.” I paused. “When Tommy was born—remember that?—and you picked him up for the first time, I saw something in you that made me love you all the more. I saw it. You were crying. You knew, then, we both knew, we were gonna protect him from all the bad shit out there.” Bruce was still fiddling with his damn fishing rod. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I thought he was listening. He never was able to speak about anything important, but I was sure he loved Tommy. He had to know this was important.
“I’ve taken him fishing a few times. He gets more out of that than he ever will out from school.”
The words stung. “No, Bruce, think for a second about what you’re saying. You can’t mean that. You know he’s gotta go to college, so he can make something of himself. You know that. Please, Bruce, tell me you know that.”
I was on my knees, next to the bench. I reached my hand up and touched Bruce’s cheek. “Please, Bruce. I know you and me agree on what Tommy needs.” I felt the tears rising up. “Please.”
He turned toward me, our faces a few inches apart. “I just don’t see it as that big a problem,” he said. “But I tell you what: you think it’s important, I don’t mind you going to the school and talk to the vice principal, whatever he is.”
I said, “No, Bruce,” crumpling to the concrete on the patio.
Bruce pulled back, like he used to when we were together and fighting. He spoke slowly, in a level tone, showing how he was being reasonable and I was hysterical. “I don’t know what you’re so upset about. I just told you go do what you want. I’ve always met you halfway, Karen, but halfway’s never been good enough for you.”
I stood up, wiping the tears with the back of my hand, and walked back into the house, past Angela, who was wearing a worried look as she stood by the screen door to the patio.
“Is there anything I can do, Karen?” Angela said, touching my shoulder. I pushed her aside, kept going, out of the house. I got in my car and drove home.
Back in my house, I picked up the JD bottle and filled the glass. Sitting alone at my kitchen counter, I cried and drank. Some time later—maybe an hour or three—the bottle was empty. Damn it. I stood up, steadied myself, and started looking for my car keys. I found them on the coffee table. Bending down to pick them up, I lost my balance and fell onto the couch. Lucky the couch was there, I thought. I got up and walked out of the house, my hands on the hall walls for balance. The liquor store was less than a mile away, but no way was I going to walk that far in my condition.
The sun had set, with just a pale band of yellow remaining on the horizon. My eyes traced the yellow, watching where it disappeared behind a house, a store, a truck. A car coming in the other direction honked at me, and I realized I had maybe drifted a little into his lane. I didn’t remember whether I had my credit card in my purse. I fished the purse out of my big leather bag on the passenger seat, opened it, and pulled out the stack of plastic. The light was bad. I had to strain to see the cards.
Looking up, I saw the blue minivan crossing the intersection. Just visible over the passenger door, the girl, maybe eight or nine, her blond hair hanging in bangs, the seat belt snug against her neck. The girl’s eyes were wide with terror, her mouth open, as if she was screaming.
God, no, I thought, unable to move, as I heard the explosion of steel on steel, then the rifle shot of the airbag erupting in my face.
* * *
I felt the car rocking back and forth as a voice drifted in, the sound separating into words. “Come on, you son of a bitch,” it said. I lifted my head off the steering wheel, looked to my left, following the sound, and saw a pair of men’s hands working my car door, trying to get it open. I didn’t know where I was.
My head throbbing, I lifted my right hand and felt at the lump on my forehead. I pulled my left arm from beneath the tent of the deflated airbag. Grasping the door handle, I flinched in pain as my left wrist bent. “I got it, lady; just stay still,” the man’s voice said.
I half-closed my eyes to block out the piercing red, white, and blue flashes from the squad car, the fire-department dispatch truck, and two ambulances—the lights violent and out of sync. The memory was coming back to me, first in indistinct images. I read an e-mail about Tommy, then out to the patio at Bruce’s, then nothing. Then, in an instant, the images connected into a narrative and I gasped.
I looked out my windshield. The minivan, four feet in front of me, the passenger compartment crumpled, its window bro
ken in the center by an impact, cracks radiating out like a spider web. The minivan was empty.
I unlocked my seat belt with my good hand and started pounding at the car door with my shoulder. “Just a second, ma’am; you could be hurt,” the man’s voice said, but I kept pounding through the pain. Suddenly, the door pulled open and I started to fall, a man’s hand catching my shoulder before I hit the glass-littered street.
Recovering my balance, I pulled my bad wrist in toward my stomach and snaked my body out of the car, past the windshield frame, twisted down and in from the crash. “Stay where you are, lady,” the EMT said, but I pushed him out of the way with my good hand.
I was over to the minivan, its sheet-metal skin crumpled like balled paper from the front wheel to the back. “No, God, no,” I screamed as I saw the blood on the inside of the passenger window at the impact point. I looked down at the shattered plastic shards of the passenger door panel jutting out over the passenger seat.
Panicking, I looked around. What happened to the girl? Shielding my eyes from the blinding strobe of emergency lights, I saw two EMTs loading a gurney into the back of their ambulance. I ran over to it, but a woman wearing a neck brace saw me coming and intercepted me, pushing me off to the side. “You stay away,” the woman screamed in my face, then lifted herself into the ambulance as an EMT pulled himself in and shut the doors behind him.
Two EMTs from a second ambulance ran over to me, restraining me. The senior one started talking to me in a calm but strong voice. “Ma’am, you need to calm down.”
I was straining against him. “I need to find out what happened to that girl.”
“Ma’am, we’re getting her to the hospital. I need you to come over here to the curb and sit down. You could be hurt.” It took the two big men to half push, half lift me over to the curb, but I wouldn’t sit down. “Ma’am, you were the driver of the grey car, is that right?”
“Yeah.”
He was looking at my eyes, trying to get a read on my pupils. He could smell the liquor on my breath. He saw the lump on my forehead. “Ma’am, can you tell me if anything hurts? Are you aware of any injuries?”
“I’m okay. Bad wrist,” I said, waving my left arm at him. “Can you get on the radio now and find out the status of that girl? I need to know she’s okay.”
“No, ma’am, I can’t do that now. They’re gonna take care of that girl, and we’re gonna take care of you. I have to find out if you’re okay.”
“I told you, I’m okay,” I said, my voice rising, frantic, when I saw a second squad car pull up, the pitch of the siren falling as the driver shut it down. The lights, punching red and blue and white, stayed on. Matt hurried out of the squad car and ran over to us.
“Matt,” I cried out, reaching my arm out to touch him, “help me with this. There’s an ambulance taking a little girl in to …”
“Officer,” the EMT said, interrupting me, “do you know this woman? I think she might be in shock.”
“Yeah, she’s a police detective. I work with her.”
“Okay,” he said, “can you help me get her calmed down so I can get her vitals?” He leaned in to Matt. “You need to do a BAC on her.”
I heard this, pulling Matt off to the side. “You can’t do that now.”
“I’m sorry, Karen, there’s nothing I can do,” Matt said. “You were involved in a crash, an injury crash. I don’t do a BAC now, it’s my job.”
“Please, Matt, listen to me. I can’t take a DUI now. It’ll be my shield. I’m right in the middle of this Hagerty case.”
“What are you asking me to do, Karen?”
“Just give me two hours, Matt. Two hours. That’s all I ask.”
“What am I supposed to do with the EMTs?” he said, pointing to them, leaning against the ambulance.
“I can take care of it. Follow me,” I said, leading Matt over to them. “Guys, I’m real sorry about flipping out like that. I’m okay, really. Officer Anderson here is gonna do the BAC on me, then run me over to the hospital.”
The two EMTs looked at Matt skeptically. The senior one said, “Officer, you wanna do it that way?”
“It’s Moore, right?” he said, reading off his ID badge hanging from his neck.
“Ronnie Moore.”
“Okay, Ronnie, give her the Denial of Care form. I’ll take it from here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll sign it.” The EMT handed me the clipboard and I scrawled a signature. Matt and I watched as the two EMTs turned and walked back to their ambulance. “Thanks, again, guys,” I called out to them. They started the engine, shut down the lights, and pulled away.
I turned to Matt. “Thanks, Matt. I really owe you.”
“Forget it. You’d do the same for me,” he said. “Come on over to the squad car. We need to talk before the crew comes to clean up the mess here.” I followed him over and got in the front seat.
“How do you want to handle this?” he said to me.
“I’m okay. I sprained my wrist, but it’s not broken,” I said, grimacing as I moved it back and forth. And I got a lump on my head, but it’s not a concussion.”
“What I meant was, about the BAC.”
“Listen, Matt, if you do it now, I might be over the limit. Maybe way over. I’m willing to plead to Inattentive Driving, but if I get a DUI, the chief’ll have my shield.” I started to break down. “My kid—Tommy?—you never met him. He’s going through a real bad stretch now, screwing up at school and everything. I just can’t let him read about me getting fired, causing an accident, hurting a kid … Oh, God. Just give me a little time to tell him before you write it up, will you?” He was looking at me, his face impassive. “C’mon, Matt, please. It would mean everything to me.”
Matt looked around at the bystanders, fifteen or twenty people standing at the intersection, gazing at the busted-up vehicles. “I’ll tell you what I can do. I need to be able to show I did the BAC on you. Hold on.” He walked over to his squad car, popped the truck, and pulled out the BAC kit. He came back over to me. “Okay, you know the drill.”
“No, Matt. Shit, don’t make me do this now.”
“Trust me, will ya? Just blow into it.”
Finally I understood him. “Oh, God, thanks, Matt,” I said, blowing on the tube for everyone to see. “Anything you want,” I said. “Anything.”
He packed up the kit, escorting me to his squad car.
“You gonna bring me to the hospital?” I said, getting in the front seat. “I gotta check on that girl.”
“I tell you what. They’re not gonna let you see her. I’ll check on her for you. But if I bring you over to the hospital now, they’ll ask if I’ve done the BAC. They might want the results. It’d be better to bring you home, let you sit there for a few hours. Then, you can say you’ve still got a headache and I can bring you over to the hospital and we can check on the girl. That way, you’ll be under .08 if they check you. What do you say?”
“You can run me over to the hospital?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna stay with you.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. “I’ll be able to get to the hospital myself. I got neighbors with cars.”
“I’m not leaving you alone. In case that head injury is worse than you think.”
“All right,” I said. “I really appreciate it.” He started the car and started to pull away.
“No big deal,” he said. “You’ll owe me one.” And at that moment I understood I’d just made another really bad decision.
Chapter 7
I parked the rental car in the lot, then shut down the engine and sat there, unable to move. The breeze had already picked up, bringing some cold down from Canada. It was all over the news last night: a big high-pressure ridge or front or whatever the hell it was coming in from the northwest, giving us our first real taste of winter. The branches at the top of the elms near the hospital entrance brushed back and forth against the sky. People walked fast toward the hospital entrance, heads lowered, arms tight across th
eir chests.
The TV stations were in a competition to see which one could devote the most time to the weather and report on it earliest in the broadcast. Another soldier from Montana killed. Two people killed in a house fire. Kid hurt bad in a car accident. But wait, this just in: cold snap on the way. November in Montana—who’d have seen that coming?
I got out of the car and walked toward the entrance. A new mother was going home. She sat in the wheelchair, huddled over the baby, invisible beneath its layers of swaddling clothes. The mother was adjusting the layers to make a protective cone the baby could breathe through but remain untouched by the cold. The father was hovering over the scene, unsure what to do.
The nurse was motioning for him to go get the car; she would stay there to protect the mother and the new baby during this time of transition. He looked concerned, but the nurse reassured him, waving him toward the parking lot. With those three adults on duty, the new cargo would be protected. But in a moment, it would be just the two adults, and the baby would be in a car, and then they would be naked and vulnerable.
I stopped at the information desk near the entrance. I didn’t know where Pediatrics was. I was directed to the fourth floor. Yes, I knew where the elevators were. Arriving at the fourth floor, I knew I was in the right place. The walls were covered with giant murals of children romping through the fields and playing on jungle gyms. Even the dogs in the murals were smiling, which was creepy enough. Balloons in bright blues, reds, and yellows were attached to the walls and hung from the ceiling. I walked toward the nurses’ station, past rooms with tiny patients in beds, surrounded by adults. Many of the adults looked relieved and cheerful; others looked frightened or dazed or empty.
The nurse said, “Can I help you?” She was taking in my injuries: black eye, lump on the forehead. I don’t know if she saw the bandage on my wrist.
“Detective Karen Seagate, Rawlings Police Department. Can you give me a room number on Annie Pritchard?”
“She’s in 415, in the ICU.”
“Oh, God, no. ICU?”
