by KL Evans
“I need to do this!”
“Why?”
“I just need to!”
“Well, I can’t. Will you please get back in your bed?”
“Why not, Seth McCollum?”
“It’s… it’s…” I couldn’t concentrate. You were topless behind a pillow and sitting on my junk, so I was having trouble remembering the very important reason why I couldn’t. “It’s unethical. You’re my subject. I’ve only known you two days. I don’t even know your name. I can’t.”
“I’ll tell you my name.”
Way too much temptation in so many different forms. “Jesus Christ, no.”
You collapsed forward onto my chest and I gripped the headboard to avoid touching you.
“Please, Seth McCollum. I don’t want to die a virgin.”
“Oh my God.”
“Please!”
“You’re dying?”
“No, but what if I die tomorrow? I could die tomorrow, you know.”
“That’s extremely unlikely.”
“But it could happen.”
I gingerly held your wrists in an attempt to coax you upright again. “Can you please… like… not lay on me?”
You sat up, letting the pillow fall to the floor. The only thing covering you was that insanely long hair of yours. Lady Godiva indeed. “Why don’t you want to have sex with me?”
“Because I don’t know you! And if you’re a… a, uhhh… you know… I mean, your first time should be with someone you love or care about.”
“Well I love you.”
“Today is literally the second time you’ve ever seen me.”
“So? I still love you.”
“No,” I said, holding your arms and sliding out from underneath you. “You’re still drunk.”
I pulled back the sheets and you climbed between them, and you were asleep again before I even got the blanket tucked in around you. I sat on the edge of the other bed, clutching my temples as I groaned.
“For fuck’s sake. I will be so glad when this whole thing is over.”
Hey. Look at us. The whole thing is over now. And as it turns out I’m not the least bit glad. What about you? I know now you were planning all of this even back then in that hotel room—it’s so obvious now—so how do you feel? Are you glad?
Hour Six
The clock on the nightstand read 8:06 AM.
You sighed quietly, still sound asleep. The pillow bore black smudges of mascara because you’d cried in your sleep. During the night, I had watched you and listened to you cry in your sleep, but I didn’t go to you because that wasn’t my job, just like everything else that followed was not my job.
I removed my undershirt and gave you a gentle shake, causing you to moan and press your face into the pillow.
“We need to get going,” I told you quietly. “You can sleep in the car.”
You moaned again and sat upright, clutching the sheet to cover yourself, and I held out the undershirt.
“Go ahead,” I said in response to your questioning look. “You need it more than I do.”
You took it and I turned around.
“Uh, Seth McCollum?” you began, and your voice sounded anomalous even for you. “Last night, did we—“
“No,” I said to the wall.
“Oh.”
All you said was oh. And then you followed me in silence to the car.
At the truck stop, I filled up the tank and peeked in the passenger side window.
“Want a coffee?”
You jostled your head in a slight nod, eyes closed and head tilted backward.
“How do you take it?”
Black, moved your lips with no voice behind the word.
When I returned, you appeared asleep. I set the coffee in the cup holder and you picked it up with a hand shaking so violently I thought the coffee would slosh out of the tiny opening in the lid. You sipped, flinching as it scalded your lips and forcing it down.
“You’re not going to get sick are you?” I asked, pulling out of the truck stop and onto the highway.
I glanced at you and you moved your head slowly to the left, to the right, and leaned it backward again. The open window let in breeze that whipped strands of hair across your face. With your eyes closed, I noticed the length of your eyelashes for the first time as they repeatedly flinched and relaxed. You were asleep again and I also noticed I was looking too much at you and not enough at the road. I turned on the radio and attempted to forget you were in the car.
You slept for almost two hours without stirring. As if you could sense our location in your sleep, you awoke just as I approached a sign for the exit toward downtown Fort Worth.
“Can you drop me off somewhere?” came your sleep-rasped voice.
“Uhh… where?” Knowing you—barely knowing you, that is—I figured you’d request to go all the way to Shreveport.
“JPS.”
I glanced at you. JPS. Also known as John Peter Smith Hospital, one of the publicly-funded health care facilities in the Metroplex. It was a standard hospital, but because of its publicly-funded status it was a place where lower-income people notoriously went to check themselves into rehab or to request drugs of all varieties. So, naturally, I wondered if you drank yourself into some type of clarity about your habit of excess.
“Sure.”
You went back to sleep until you were once again roused by a sixth sense of sorts that told you we were near the hospital.
“Just go to the main entrance. I’ll jump out.”
When I eased up to the curb, you started to pull my shirt over your head and I touched your hand.
“Keep it.”
You looked at me through bloodshot, glistening eyes. Pink nose. Sniffling. The corners of your mouth sharply tugged downward. All of these signs pointed more to you being upset rather than hungover. “Thanks, Seth McCollum.”
“Don’t sweat it. So, what are you here for?”
You shrugged; more evading.
“Can I get your number before you go?”
Your face suddenly brightened as you snorted, giggled, and leaned entirely too close to me. “Are you going to kiss me goodbye, too?”
“In case you forgot, this was not a date. You kidnapped me. You’re my subject. I need to be able to contact you again, which is why I need your phone number. Or you could tell me your name and I’ll look you up. Do you use social media? Facebook? Twitter? Something like that?”
You answered by grabbing my face and planting a two-second kiss on me, and then hopped out of the car as if it were a date. You left not only a taste of coffee spliced with stale alcohol in my mouth, but also a lingering imprinted sensation of pillow-soft lips on mine.
It was such a dichotomy—simultaneously offensive and a slight aphrodisiac—that I sat stunned as I watched you slip through the sliding glass doors. My stupor lasted approximately five seconds before I remembered I had a job to do and pulled away from the curb to park in a neighboring lot.
Inside the lobby there was no sign of you anywhere. Considering the time it took to park and walk over, I knew following you was a long shot and I figured I’d never find you in the massive hospital after losing sight of you. But, to paraphrase Blanche DuBois, I have always benefitted from the nosiness of strangers, and this instance was no different.
“You looking for something, son?”
To my left was a kindly old janitor, lanky and leaning against a mop. A stout woman stood next to him, tapping her perfectly manicured magenta nails on the granite of the receptionist’s desk.
“A young woman came through here a few minutes ago,” I said, approaching them. “She’s about five-eight, slender, early twenties, long, brown—”
“Yeah, you mean Charlie?”
Bolt from the fucking blue and I could’ve kissed that old man.
“Yeah,” I answered easily. “Do you know her?”
“Sure do. She’s here all the time. Very sweet girl. Doesn’t like to talk much, but always asks how my da
y is. Always gives me her leftover M&Ms.”
“Yeah she’s… she’s really sweet like that. Do you know wh—”
“You her boyfriend?” the woman interjected.
“Oh no,” I said hastily. “She’s my neighbor. I gave her a ride and she—”
“You need to invite her over for dinner some time,” she declared, magenta nail pointed assertively at my face. “She is so thin. Lord! It’s painful to look at. I wish someone would give her a sandwich.” The woman shook her head and bumped the man’s arm. “Maybe you should make her keep the M&Ms next time.”
He chuckled. “I try. She says she’s done with ‘em and doesn’t want ‘em to go to waste.”
“So you guys saw her? Where was she—”
“Yep, just a few minutes ago,” the woman said, turning to the man again. “I had to ask her about that hair of hers. Her hair is unbelievable, isn’t it? I wonder how long it’s been since she got a haircut. And that can’t be her natural color. Don’t you think it looks way too dark to be natural?” She turned back to me. “Does she dye it?”
“I have no idea. Do either of you know where she went?”
“‘Course,” the man said. “She’s up on the fourth floor.”
“Great. Thanks for your help.”
I made a casual turn for the elevator, and honestly I deserve an award for not sprinting.
“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” I mumbled. The doors closed and I waited.
That had to be your name. How many other women of your description could have come through the hospital lobby in a seven-minute span of time? Nevertheless, I couldn’t reconcile it with what the bar owner’s wife had said. “Some kind of old fashioned sounding name, huh? Charlie is old fashioned if you’re guy. I guess. But a girl? Named Charlie? That’s sounds more like—”
“Tee-hee.”
I turned to see a diminutive, elderly woman in the back corner of the elevator, tittering behind her hand.
“Sorry,” I said, cheeks flaming. “Didn’t see you.”
“You’re darling,” she gushed. She squeezed one eye shut and used the other to leer at my left hand. “My granddaughter is a nurse in the cardiology unit. Her name is Larissa.”
“She sounds like a smart young lady,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck and forcing a polite smile. “You must be very proud.”
“Oh, I am.” The bell chimed and the woman stepped through the doors. Before she disappeared out of view, she turned back to me one last time. “It’s probably short for something else.”
I gave her a nod and a smile and just as the doors closed again, the circuits connected.
“Charlotte!” I shouted at my reflection in the chrome. “Charlotte Reid. The legal advertisement. She’s been arrested multiple times. That’s her!” I punched the air and then glanced around to double check I was actually alone that time. I laughed to myself, slipping my hands in my pockets as the doors opened. “Charlie Reid. You’re my girl.”
I strode onto the fourth floor as if walking on air, elated in a way that only comes from a major breakthrough. As I turned down the hall, however, my swagger took a backseat to a sign on the wall.
TRAUMA - INTENSIVE CARE UNIT
Swagger had no place in the ICU. I knew that. What I didn’t know was what I was about to find you doing here, but I ventured to guess it had something to do with your occasional outbursts of crying.
I wiped the smirk off my face and let my posture droop as I stood behind a young couple waiting to be let through the doors. I followed them into the unit, feigning a right to be there, and maintained my somber expression while I discreetly peered into each of the rooms. Most had open doors with an internal curtain shielding the beds, but several of the curtains were pulled back and revealed the familiar heartbreaking scenes of this place. People in neck braces, people with shaved heads and staples in their skulls, withered people lying so still they seemed to be gone already, all of them with tubes threading into their bodies.
Throughout my career, I’ve reported on seventeen stories that involved someone in a place like this—usually car accidents, gang involvement, or domestic violence. And while it’s become familiar, I never get used to it. Places like the ICU are partially why it’s smart for a reporter to keep emotional distance between himself and his subject.
Now I feel like I’m trying to explain myself to you; why I didn’t do any of this the right way, which clearly resulted in your plan to leave and our current predicament. But I think you need this explanation. We’re not perfect people, Charlie. If we were perfect, we would’ve been honest with each other and ourselves about this from the get-go. But honesty is easier suggested than executed. You are manipulative and deceitful, and I’m insecure, all of which creates the perfect environment for dishonesty to fester. And maybe even honesty wouldn’t have changed anything. So maybe I’m just trying to explain myself to… well… myself.
Anyway, I managed to blend in all the way to the opposite end of the unit and found you in one of the rooms. You were asleep in a chair and the tininess of your limbs came in handy because all of you fit snuggly in the seat where you curled up like a kitten. And in the bed next to you was the reason you came.
A young woman. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old, but it was hard to tell with her shaved head and the halo of metal and screws drilled into her skull. So many tubes in her that it looked like an octopus had taken up residence in and on her face. She looked even thinner than you.
My gut told me she was your sister, but I had nothing to support that. I had no way of seeing any kind of resemblance between you two. You said nothing about any siblings, but you also said nothing about a lot of things. Maybe she was a roommate. Your mailbox indicated several female residents. You also alluded to the fact that living alone was a recent phenomenon. And then there was the evasive behavior when I asked if you had any friends. All evidence pointed to her being a friend of yours. But my gut told me she was your sister.
And because my gut told me she was your sister, I felt a pang in my chest that threatened to violate that necessary emotional distance. Truthfully, because you’d already pushed my limits to the point you had, the distance was already being violated. So the pang in my chest would have materialized regardless if she was your sister or your roommate or your friend or whomever. I just felt sorry for you.
“Excuse me!” a nurse whisper-yelled at me and I jumped. She stood akimbo next to me, wearing a cross expression. “You are not permitted to be in here unless you are with a patient!”
I nearly said I was with you, but I couldn’t invade your space like that. Not there. This was a secret, guarded part of you, so I wouldn’t approach you about it while you were sitting in the midst of it. But you’d better believe I had every intention of approaching you about it later.
“Oh!” I feigned surprise and bewilderment. “I must’ve gotten turned around.”
“Please leave before I call security!”
“I’m leaving. Sorry about that.”
I stepped around the nurse and marched out of the unit, pulling my phone out on my way. The time on the screen read 12:08 PM and now I had a full day of work ahead of me.
Hour Seven
It started, as it always does, with a Google search.
I sat in a coffee shop near the hospital with my laptop and typed in, Charlotte Reid White Settlement, Texas. Many of the results were appended with Google telling me Missing: White Settlement. There was a Charlotte Reid in Atlanta, one in Jacksonville, Florida, one was a handbag designer out of the UK, and one was a woman in Oklahoma who’d amassed an impressive collection of knitted items.
So I tried again.
Charlotte Reid Dallas.
I found an entry on a site called allmugshots.com and there you were, looking like a tortured minx. Shoulders thrown back; chin tilted upward; that eyebrow lifted defiantly; the devil-may-care-expression sharply contrasted by acute sadness in your eyes. The charges stated:
ON-SITE
NO DRIV LIC 02/21/2016
ON-SITE RAN STOP SIGN 02/21/2016
Location: Dallas County, TX
Under the section titled Previous Arrests there was a link to view your entire criminal history, but to my dismay it returned nothing—and why was that?
“Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Reid… Are you evasive or a liar? Or does this site just suck?” I rubbed my chin and sipped some coffee. “Could be all of the above. But I have a date now. All of this began sometime around February.”
Another search result was a site called legitbackgroundchecks.com—it didn’t look terribly legit, but it turned out to be the loose string that would unravel your heavily-fortified walls as if they were an old sweater.
LYNETTE HARRINGTON, the result header declared and I knew that name from none other than your mailbox.
Click.
“Lynette Harrington is eighty-four years old,” I read. “Lynette’s phone numbers include (click here for full report!). Lynette’s email addresses include [email protected]. Lynette’s possible relatives include Donald R. Harrington, Dorothea M. Clancy, Daniel P. Harrington, and Joseph L. Clancy. Lynette’s most recent address is 4036 Moran, White Settlement, TX 76108. Lynette previously lived at (click here for full report!) for (click here for full report!) years, (click here for full report!) for (click here for full report!) years, and (click here for full report!) for (click here for full report!) years. Lynette is possibly associated with Charles B. Reid, Jade S. Ashton, Stephanie K. McBride, and Charlotte A. Reid.”
Jade Ashton and Stephanie McBride were also names from your mailbox. My gut told me the young woman in the hospital bed was one of them and it was looking more and more like she was a roommate.
“Lynette is associated with Charles Reid...” I trailed off into my coffee cup. “Charles Reid and Charlotte Reid. That’s a blood relation for sure. So if Lynette is associated with Charles and Charlotte… maybe she’s related, too.”
I stared at the screen so long the intermittent clatter and hum of the coffee shop went silent and the text stopped making sense. First, the words strung themselves along in an incoherent row, and then it was like an explosion of letters scattered all over the page. All the while this was happening, the back corner of my mind spun pirouettes with something I couldn’t decipher until it slammed into my frontal lobe.
