by D C Grant
in my father’s arm.
I don’t know where the strength comes from but I wrench myself away from Sandman and rush forward, knocking the syringe from the captain’s hand. It falls onto the bed. The captain swings round and hits me on the side of the head with an open hand. I spin away and crash into the wall where Sandman grabs hold of me again.
“It’s no use fighting, Jason,” Gaffney says, returning to the bed and picking up the syringe. “I’ll kill you myself when I’m done here and I’ll make sure you stay dead this time.”
“No, you won’t.” Mike stands in the doorway with a gun in his hand.
Captain Gaffney stares at him.
“Surprised to see me?” Mike says as he comes into the room. “Thought you’d had me killed too? Sorry, it didn’t work out that way.”
“Put the gun down, or Sandman will kill Jason.” Sandman puts his hand around my throat and it begins to tighten.
“It’s too late, Boss,” Mike spits the last word out. “Even if you kill Jason, it’s too late. Backup is on its way and you can’t stand them down this time. It’s all over.”
“You bastard!” Gaffney says as he rushes at Mike with the syringe in his hand.
The gunshot is loud in the small room and Gaffney falters in mid-step as a red stain grows on his chest. He falls to the floor, where the syringe rolls away from his hand, and stays there. Mike trains the gun on Sandman.
“Let Jason go.”
Sandman raises his hands in surrender, releasing me, and I run to Dad’s bed where I put my hand in his and feel his fingers closing over mine. His skin is warm and his grip tight. He’s awake and he recognizes me. His brain is not damaged.
Someone pulls me away; the room is full of policemen. I struggle. I want to stay with Dad. I hear Mike call out, “No, leave the kid, he’s not involved in this. That’s his dad.”
The policeman who’s holding my arm lets go and I return to my dad’s bedside.
“Jason,” Dad says again and smiles.
I smile back, allowing myself to relax for the first time that night. It’s the wrong move. My body and mind have had enough. Everything shuts down at once and I don’t even feel the impact when I hit the floor.
Graveyard
A warm wind blows around the gravestones, but I feel cold. I stand behind my father’s wheelchair and look down at my mother’s grave. It’s the first time my father has seen it. He has a bunch of flowers on his lap, but they seem to be forgotten. Neither of us speaks. Gran crosses herself and starts to pray. I leave her to it.
There’s some comfort in knowing that those responsible for my mother’s death have been caught, but it won’t bring her back. The newspapers were full of it at the time: the busted drug ring, the crooked cop, and the boy who’d escaped death. There were pictures of my mother’s car being pulled away from the tree: “Car Thief Killed in High Speed Crash.” Mike made sure that I wasn’t named as the driver at the time of the crash, but I was named in the other report – “Son Saves Father from Corrupt Police Captain”. The story unraveled while I was in Harborview – Captain Gaffney, Chan and Sandman had been importing drugs into the country with Chan, in his position at the airport, smoothing the way for the consignments when they arrived. Mike had gone undercover without the captain knowing his true intent, seeming to align himself to the captain in order to obtain money for his wife’s treatments. As Mike had told me, he had never used the money from the crime – my dad had kept it all in safekeeping.
“You okay, Jase?” says Ben beside me.
I shake my head. I don’t think things are going to be okay for a long time. I look into Ben’s face. He lost a lot of weight while he was in hospital recovering from smoke inhalation, and even now he wheezes as a result of the damage to his nose and throat. For a while we were side by side in the hospital until I was discharged. His recovery was a little slower than mine.
My dad’s was slower still. As for Captain Gaffney, I didn’t care about his recovery – I just wished that he had died. But being shot while in hospital greatly improved his chances of survival, only to be taken to prison as soon as he was well enough to leave Harborview. Bail was denied so he remained there while we waited six months for a court date.
“The trial starts tomorrow,” Ben says. “Are you sure you want to do it – I mean, talk about what happened to you in front of a bunch of people?”
“I have to,” I say. “I want the captain to go to jail for a very long time. He tried to have us all killed.”
“What about Mike?”
I don’t know how I feel about Mike. I know that he was acting under my father’s orders, yet he still played the game after the car accident when he could have exposed the captain straight away, avoiding all the hurt and pain that Ben and I had to go through. I still have trouble understanding his motives, but Dad says he couldn’t have done anything until he found the evidence that Dad had hidden. Both Dad and Mike were in trouble with the police department for not reporting what they were doing, but Dad says that they didn’t know who else in the department was involved, and until they knew, they couldn’t file a report. Chief Clarke seemed to accept that, but Mike was stood down for a while pending an investigation, which eventually cleared him of any wrongdoing, including that of shooting his captain – an act of self-defense.
“Mike should have killed Captain Gaffney when he had the chance, in my hospital room,” Dad says, clasping his hands around an imaginary pistol to act it out. “Two shots – a double tap, to make sure of the kill. I’d have killed him myself, had I been capable, every time he came into my room.”
“But you were right out of it,” I say. “You didn’t know who was in your room.”
“Sometimes I did.” He looks up at me. “Like when you came in one time and asked all those questions. I could hear you but I couldn’t answer. I knew the captain was behind it but I couldn’t tell you.”
“I wondered – you moved once, but then I thought I was mistaken. That’s when the captain looked alarmed. I should have realized then that it was him, but I thought it was the chief of police.”
“I should have realized that they were on to me,” Dad says. “I’d hidden the evidence so no one could find it, not even Mike. I was stupid. I should have told him where it was. My worry was that if they found out what he was really doing, they’d beat it out of him. So I hid it away until I had everything, and when I did I told Mike that we were ready to move. But they must have suspected I had something, so I became their target and that put us all in danger and got your mother killed. Sometimes we do things we think are right, but they turn out wrong.”
“I made mistakes too, Dad. I should have stayed at Ben’s house and not gone out that night. I should have known that it might be dangerous.”
Dad smiles up at me and says, “Just like your mother, a little impulsive. You need to think first before you act.”
“I’ll try to remember that next time.”
Dad laughs. “There’s going to be a next time?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“I miss your mother,” he says and looks down at her grave. “Would you put these on the grave, Jason? I can’t reach from this damned chair.”
I take the flowers and place them at the base of the headstone. I run my hand over the cold marble, wishing I could touch my mother, not her grave.
Dad turns the wheelchair and begins to make his way down the path toward the car. I stay with Gran while Ben runs ahead and opens the rear door for him.
I feel Gran’s hand on my arm. “Help me down the path, Jason.”
“Is it ever going to be all right, Gran?” I ask as we walk away.
“Yes, it’s going to be all right, Jason,” she says with a smile. “Different, but all right. We can’t bring your mother back, but we can learn to live without her.”
“But will it ever stop hurting?”
“Some days will be better than others. Eventually you’ll be able to think of your mother without the hurt, though it may tak
e some time.” She gives me a hug. “You still have your father and me. And when I think about how near I came to losing you both …” She hugs me tighter. “Every day I thank the Lord that I didn’t.”
“It was close,” I say with a smile.
She smiles back at me and I know we’ll be okay in the end.
One day.
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