Second Chance Friends

by Jennifer Scott

  “No,” Antoinette had said. “You go and say a few prayers by his bedside. You tell his family how sorry you are and you make yourself feel a hell of a lot better. And you are not the shittiest mother who ever lived. The fact that you haven’t disowned Travis yet means you have more patience than I would have. He’s a grown man. He has to take blame for himself. This is about you living with what happened. And praying that Curt MacDonald lives through it, too. For all of your sakes.”

  “You’re probably right,” Karen had said. And maybe the court will look on Travis more leniently if I’ve been to visit his victim, she thought. But she would never articulate those words to anyone. She had the feeling that nobody would understand how she could possibly still be thinking of her son right now. She didn’t entirely understand it herself.

  “By the way, I ran into Marty Squire on the way to the parking garage tonight,” Antoinette had told her.

  “Ugh, not now. I don’t want to hear about it,” Karen whined. Why was this man suddenly everywhere?

  “Oh, come on, Karen. He’s so cute. And he’s really, really into you. You want to hear what he said?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I’ll tell you what. If Curt MacDonald wakes up, I’ll let you tell me all about it.”

  Antoinette had chuckled into the receiver. “Then if you don’t get to that hospital and start praying, I will. I will not rest until I hear sloppy details about what Marty Squire wears under those suits of his.”

  “Gross.”

  “Oh, honey,” Antoinette had said on a sigh. “It’s so sad that you think sex is gross.”

  Now, kneeling in the chapel, watching the candle she’d just lit flicker in an unfelt breeze, Karen knew that Antoinette had been right about coming here, and it had nothing to do with Marty Squire. Her being at the hospital wouldn’t help Curt MacDonald wake up, but it couldn’t hurt. And maybe it would ease her guilt a little.

  She tipped her eyes up toward the ceiling, which had a water stain right in the center. At least, she hoped it was a water stain. In a hospital, how could you ever be certain? She closed her eyes, licked her lips, clasped her hands together, and prayed for the life of a man she’d never met, and prayed for the soul of her son, whom she no longer believed in.

  When she was done, she took a deep breath and marched to the information desk, hoping she looked more confident than she felt.

  “May I help you?” the woman at the front desk—Beatrice, her name tag read—asked, fanning a novel out over her lap to keep her page.

  “Yes, I need to visit someone,” Karen said. “Curt MacDonald?”

  The woman consulted a printout, running her gnarled finger down a list of names until she came to the right one. She found it, and peered up at Karen through thick bifocals.

  “He’s in the tower. Room 502. Go all the way to the end of that hall and take the elevators up to the fifth floor. You should be able to find him from there.”

  Karen blinked. It was really that easy? She’d expected to be grilled about whether she was family, maybe had been even a little concerned that, given how the man got his injuries, Curt MacDonald would be under some sort of protective custody. She’d expected the police to be worried that Travis, or one of his henchmen, would come finish the job to keep Curt MacDonald from talking if he should ever wake up. She supposed Travis didn’t look like the kind of guy who could afford henchmen, and the police knew it.

  She probably needed to stop watching so many crime dramas on TV.

  “Thank you,” Karen said. The elderly lady smiled and nodded, her hands already reaching for the paperback in her lap before Karen even walked away from the desk.

  She headed toward the hallway that the lady had pointed down, ducking into the gift shop on the way. She didn’t know if Curt MacDonald was into flowers, but it couldn’t hurt, right? Although after she bought them, she fretted about whom he’d tell his family and friends they were from. If he even knew.

  God, this was so stupid.

  Stupid, but necessary.

  She chose a mostly yellow bouquet, thinking the color was vibrant and might stimulate thoughts of waking up, getting out of bed, heading outside. Of course, he’d first have to open his eyes to see them.

  Twice, she set the bouquet on top of trash cans in the hallway, with thoughts of abandoning it. But twice she’d picked it up again, slowly making her way down the long corridor that would take her to “the tower,” which sounded medieval and torturous and deadly. Filled with trapped heroes and damsels in distress. A place where villains kept their victims locked away from the rest of the world. The image somehow fit Travis. She pictured her son, with his widow’s peak and his pointy eyebrows, his face red and angry from fighting, foam caught in the corners of his mouth, as he stood over a drunk and enraged Curt MacDonald. She’d never seen Travis get into a fight, but the way she imagined it was indeed very villainous.

  She was alone on the elevator, which meant that it was not nearly as long a ride as she wished it would’ve been. She felt her fingers begin to go cold around the vase she was holding. Dread began filling her, like water filling a bathtub—first shallowly shimmering in the very recesses of her, but quickly building upon itself until she was sure she would drown in it.

  Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. Would Marty Squire be working so hard to get into her life if he knew her life included visiting the deathbeds of her son’s victims? And why the hell would she be thinking of Marty Squire at a time like this anyway? She shook him away.

  The elevator doors opened, and Karen paused for so long, they began to close again. She briefly considered letting them go and just sitting cross-legged in the corner of the elevator car, pushing no buttons, going nowhere until someone else summoned the elevator. She would be surprised by which floor she ended up on. Perhaps the maternity ward, where she could look at the babies in the nursery and fantasize that she was starting over. Maybe with a do-over, she’d get it right.

  But just as the doors began to close, a nurse stepped over the threshold, making them bounce back.

  “You getting off here?” she asked. “This is five.”

  Karen found herself nodding, and then stepping through the doors, which promptly shut behind her, abandoning her in the brightly lit, beeping hallway. She stood just outside the elevator, so glad she had the vase to clutch.

  “Can I help you?” another nurse asked, from behind a large desk in the center of the unit. She was young, intense, giving the sense that she had other, much more urgent things to do than babysit some loon who’d just spilled out of the elevator onto her floor.

  “Curt MacDonald,” Karen said, her voice feeling rough and small. She cleared her throat a few times, chasing away the nothing that was lodged there. “I think he’s in 502?”

  The nurse nodded and pointed down the hallway with a pen. “Last room before the lounge.”

  Karen nodded and took a few steps, then turned to the nurse again. “Has there been any change?”

  The nurse smiled—a bit condescendingly for Karen’s taste—and tilted her head to one side. “And you are . . . ?”

  “His aunt,” Karen lied, shocked to hear the words tumble out of her mouth so easily. Was it really this simple to completely violate someone’s privacy?

  The nurse didn’t look convinced. “You’re welcome to see him,” she said on another condescending smile. “I can ask the family if they’d like me to share updates with you.”

  “No, no,” Karen said. “I’ll just drop these off.” She held up the flowers, for the first time actually wanting to get to Curt MacDonald’s room. She needed to at least see him before the hospital kicked her out.

  Her shoes clicked loudly on the polished tile as she made her way to room 502. When she pushed open the door, which had been hanging half-ajar, she was surprised to see a very young woman—barely more tha
n a teenager, really—sitting in a chair across from the foot of Curt’s bed. The woman had been leaning forward, craning toward the door, surely tipped off to Karen’s arrival by the sound of her shoes.

  “Oh,” Karen said, stopping short.

  The woman smiled warmly. “Hello,” she said. “Come on in. It’s just me in here. Sandra went to grab some lunch.”

  Karen stepped inside the room. She had no idea who Sandra was, but it seemed like a good idea to pretend that she did.

  “Still sleeping,” the woman said. She smiled again, gesturing toward the form in the bed.

  Karen finally turned to face him, her breath catching in her throat. She set the flowers on a nearby windowsill, hoping the movement would keep her from showing her shock too much.

  Curt MacDonald was young. Impossibly young. For some reason, throughout all of this, Karen had imagined an older man, a haggard drunk who’d been dodging bar fights for decades. She’d imagined a ruddy alcoholic face, lined and spotted hands with tobacco-tarnished fingers. Someone who spent a lifetime looking for trouble.

  Instead, she was faced with a man who looked no older than Travis himself, only softer, pinker. This boy looked like he’d never stepped foot in a bar. Had he not been lined with mostly healed scars, he would have had the perfection of youth.

  “We thought maybe today would be the day. It’s our anniversary,” said the young woman, and when Karen turned to her, she realized that the girl belonged with a boy this age. The girl shrugged. “Not wedding anniversary, of course. That’s still upcoming.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her ring finger, which was bejeweled with a glittering solitaire. “It’s the anniversary of the first time he asked me out. Three years—can you believe it?”

  Karen shook her head. “Happy anniversary,” she croaked.

  “Thank you,” the girl said, and smiled, showing off deep dimples and a brilliant whitening job. She was really beautiful. Way too beautiful to be sitting at her fiancée’s hospital bedside. She should be out in the world, choosing bridesmaids’ dresses and squabbling over whom to put on the guest list and whether she wanted fondant or buttercream for her wedding cake. “I’m sure he’s celebrating, even if he can’t say it. Sandra’s having a much harder time with it than I am. I know my Curt. He’s coming back.” She gave Karen a curious look, then stood and offered her hand. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve officially met. I’m Katy.”

  Karen took her hand and held on to it. It was so warm. “Karen,” she said.

  “You look like the MacDonald side. Are you Craig’s sister?”

  “Uh, no, I’m . . . from a different side,” Karen said, as if there were multiples “sides” of a family to choose from. “You’re engaged to Curt?”

  Katy nodded, her face clouding over only momentarily before she pasted another hopeful grin onto it. “Technically, we were supposed to get married the weekend that this happened. He was at his bachelor party that night.” She took a few steps forward and picked up his hand, squeezed it between her palms. She let out a soft breath of affectionate laughter. “That’s the funny thing. He never goes to bars. He doesn’t like to drink. But his friend Amos insisted, and he went along because that’s the kind of guy he is. Always pleasing other people. They tested his blood alcohol when they brought him in and it didn’t even register. He had been drinking soda all night. Leave it to my Curt to be the designated driver at his own bachelor party.”

  Karen felt a lump form in her throat. This was all so wrong. Where was the grizzled drug addict who’d baited her son into a bar brawl? Where was the man who deserved this?

  “Have there been any changes?” she squeaked out through what felt like a packed throat.

  Katy’s smile turned sad and she tilted her head to one side, studying Curt’s face. She reached up and stroked his cheek with the back of one finger. “Not really,” she said. “He’s made a few movements here and there, and we thought maybe he was waking up, but the doctors say those are involuntary movements and there haven’t been any real changes. We’re hopeful, though. Curt’s a fighter. He won’t give up and neither will we.”

  “No, of course, you can’t,” Karen said.

  “I just wish I could understand why, you know?” Katy said. She’d slipped her hand out of Curt’s and laid his gently across his chest. She crossed her arms, bunching up as if she was cold. “His friends all swear he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Said he bumped into the other guy’s barstool or something. Amos says he had his hands up and kept telling the guy he didn’t want any trouble. I just wish I could figure out why the guy couldn’t have just left him alone. Sandra said Curt has never been in a fistfight his whole life. He didn’t know how to fight. It just seems so . . .” She shrugged.

  “Senseless,” Karen supplied for her, and Katy nodded.

  “Yeah. That’s how I know he’s going to come back to me. There’s no way this is how he’s going to go out. It’s just not possible.”

  But anything was possible, and Karen knew that. If it was possible that her son had done this—this!—to the young man lying in front of her, a man who hadn’t been drinking, a man who didn’t want any trouble, then it was possible that Curt MacDonald would never wake up from his bachelor party. Unjust and unfair, definitely. But impossible? No.

  There was a bustling sound in the hallway, and the door was pushed open. Karen and Katy both turned as a woman came into the room, carrying a plastic sack.

  “Oh, she’s back,” Katy said, her smile returning.

  Karen didn’t know who “she” was, but she guessed her to be Sandra, the one who’d stepped out. And from the haggard look on Sandra’s face, the matte pallor of her skin, the dark circles under her eyes, Karen guessed that Sandra was Curt’s mother. She was certain of it. Only a mother could look so ill at her son’s hospital bed.

  “I brought you a sandwich,” the woman said, holding the plastic bag out. Katy took it. “Cafeteria was busy today. I should have gone out. No changes?”

  Katy shook her head. “Not yet.”

  The woman gave Curt a quick once-over and dropped her purse onto the chair Katy had been occupying when Karen had arrived. Only then did she seem to really notice that Karen was standing there. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” Karen responded, taking an involuntary step back from the bed, as if the woman would be able to sniff out that she was an intruder—someone who didn’t belong by Curt’s bedside.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I guess I’ve forgotten who you are. You’ll have to forgive me. It’s been a trying few weeks.”

  “Of course,” Karen said, her entire body going electric. Now that she was face-to-face with the other mother, she was hit with the enormity of what her being there at all would mean. How could she have shown up there? How could she have thought it would be the right thing to do? How could Antoinette have set her up for this? She wanted to escape, to run out of the room with no explanation. Surely they would be better off to forever wonder who the strange woman had been who’d visited Curt than to know that she had been the person who’d raised the man who’d beaten Curt nearly to death.

  The woman tipped her head forward, as if she was straining to hear Karen speak, her eyebrows jotting up into her hairline.

  “I’m Karen,” Karen said, offering her hand, but then thinking better of it and letting it drop to her side.

  The woman shook her head uncomprehendingly. “I’m sorry. You worked with Curt?”

  Karen realized how easy it would be to just nod, pretend that this was exactly how she knew Curt. But that was not why she was here, and while she was, at the moment, a swirl of confusion and guilt and grief, she still felt that to come here and lie would somehow only make her feel worse about this horrible situation.

  “Uh, no,” she said, her voice shaky. “I actually . . . um . . .” She shifted her weight, felt tears spring to her eyes, as if they’d been
waiting for the right moment to appear. “My son is Travis Freeman,” she finally blurted, feeling as if the words had been ripped out of her on the sinew of an enormous painful scab.

  It took a moment for the name to register with the woman. Her eyes darted to the floor as she searched for how she knew Travis Freeman. But then Karen could see it dawn on her. Her head snapped up, a red blotch instantaneously appearing on her neck, as if Karen had slapped her. “Travis Freeman,” she said dully.

  Karen nodded. “I came to”—say “apologize,” say “apologize,” say “apologize”—“to pray for your son’s recovery,” she said instead. “I prayed. In the chapel. And I brought him flowers.” She gestured toward the windowsill.

  The woman gazed at the flowers and then turned slowly back toward Karen. “You came to pray for my son’s recovery,” she said, and Karen wished she would say something else, something new, stop just repeating Karen’s words.

  Karen nodded.

  The woman’s face split into a grin, but unlike the brilliant grin that had been on Katy’s face, this one looked bruised and fragile. She nodded, as if listening to an amusing tale that nobody else could hear. “You should be praying for your own son,” she finally said. “My son doesn’t need your prayers. He is a good person who never hurt anyone in his life. Save your prayers for the monster that you raised. I know about him. Repeat offender.” She said these last two words with such venom, Karen actually backed up a step. “This is a game to him. People’s lives are meaningless. He needs your prayers so much more than my Curt.”

  “It’s not,” Karen had been saying. “It’s not a game.” But her voice was soft and uncertain. “He is sorry.” She didn’t know why she was saying this. Travis had been anything but sorry when she last saw him. She was protecting him again. It was so easy to say your son needed tough love, but much harder to believe it when his enemies were standing right in front of you.