Death Benefits

by Jennifer Becton

  That was irrelevant now.

  “I don’t know how the hospital will deal with the bill, but they were obligated to help her. The fracture was pressing on a blood vessel. She could have lost her foot.”

  My father paused again and finally asked, “Do you need me to come?”

  This was a tricky question. Did we need him here?

  No, I thought, we didn’t. If my mother couldn’t handle the situation, I knew I could.

  But did we want him here?

  That was a resounding yes. At least on my part.

  Still, knowing it was probably the best decision for both Tricia and my mother’s emotional states, I said, “That’s okay, Dad. Maybe you can visit after surgery or once she gets home and settled. I’ll call you when we know more.”

  “Good,” he said and then added softly, “And if something changes or if something goes wrong, you call me right away. I’ll be there.”

  “I know you will.”

  We hung up and I lingered in the hall for a moment. I knew I should feel hurt at my father’s reluctance to come to the hospital to see to his own child, but I only felt relief. My mother and sister were volatile enough already, and I didn’t want to add my father to the mix. I didn’t know if I could handle a full-family meltdown right now.

  When I returned to the waiting room, I found my mother talking with a man in surgical scrubs. Assuming him to be Tricia’s surgeon, I hurried toward them, hoping to hear the details firsthand.

  “Oh,” my mother said. “Here’s Julia, my other daughter. Julia, this is Dr. Janowski, the orthopedic surgeon who operated on Tricia.”

  Tall with dark features, Dr. Janowski had a young face, a warm smile, and a firm handshake. “Pleasure,” he said.

  “How’s my sister?” I asked without preamble.

  “Miss Jackson came through the surgery just fine,” he said, “but we did have to take a few precautions to minimize the possibility of complications.”

  I blinked at him. “Complications?”

  “I’ll be happy to explain everything.” He gestured to a door at the far end of the waiting room. “Let’s speak privately.”

  I nodded, slightly concerned at the sudden need for seclusion, but my mother and I followed Dr. Janowski to the door, which opened into a small room with four chairs, a side table and lamp, and a box of tissues.

  That box of tissues set off all my warning bells.

  Dr. Janowski closed the door and then turned to face us. “First, let me assure you that we were able to repair the blood vessel, and Miss Jackson’s foot is receiving normal blood flow.”

  I felt myself release the breath I’d been holding, and my mother flopped into a chair, relief written plainly on her features.

  Then Dr. Janowski continued, “X-rays revealed that Miss Jackson suffered a trimalleolar fracture and a tibial plafond fracture.” I stared at the doctor, waiting for the translation from medical jargon to plain English. He smiled and explained, “She broke three bones in her ankle where the tibia connects to the foot, and I was able to repair it, using a metal rod and screws.”

  I considered his words for a moment. “That sounds like an awful lot of damage for a fall down a few stairs,” I said.

  “Your sister’s injuries were exacerbated by the condition of her bones.”

  My mother looked horrified, and her hands flew to her mouth in a gesture that would have been comical if it had been happening anywhere else but here. “But I gave her plenty of milk as a child,” she protested.

  Dr. Janowski looked momentarily surprised, but he managed to conceal it well. “I’m sure you did, but I’m afraid her condition is caused by too much of another, adult beverage and not from a lack of milk in her developmental years.”

  I watched as my mother’s face went completely blank. Denial time.

  Well, I wasn’t joining in.

  “Tricia is an alcoholic,” I said flatly. My mother seemed ready to protest again, but I held up a hand and continued, “What does that have to do with her bones?”

  “Alcohol inhibits calcium absorption, and we often see signs of malnutrition in heavy drinkers.” Looking at my mother, whose face had turned white, Dr. Janowski quickly moved on. Smart choice. “The presence of alcohol in the bloodstream also changes the way we prep a patient for surgery, just to be safe. As a precaution, we intubated her to help her breathe, so when you see her in a few moments, she’ll be in the intensive care unit on a respirator.”

  “ICU? A respirator?” my mother said as shock registered in her wide blue eyes. “For ankle surgery?”

  “Yes, ma’am. As I said, it was a precaution, and she’ll have the best respiratory therapists working with her to help her get back to normal soon.”

  Jesus, I thought. Could this get any worse?

  As is often the case, the answer to that question was yes.

  Dr. Janowski turned to me. “Because your sister has a long-term history of alcohol use, we’ll also be watching for withdrawal symptoms and delirium tremens. I’ll order some medication to help ease the transition, but she’ll still need to be monitored closely.”

  Great, I thought. This was going to be a disaster.

  Six

  He remembered them all. Maybe not their names, but definitely the important things like how the life had left their bodies, the moment he had closed their eyes with his own fingertips, the dull thud of their lifeless bodies hitting the earth.

  No, he’d never forget them. Not one. Somehow, these people seemed like family. He sneered at the thought. Yeah, like family. He’d treated them all just the way his family had always treated him. He shuffled them right out of his way and dumped them out here where no one would ever think of them again.

  No one would remember but him.

  In his experience, family was always the first to forget. The first to look at you and not really see you. The first to push and push until something snapped inside.

  He remembered the exact moment something snapped in him, and that was years ago when he was just a little thing.

  Early on, his daddy had started taking him in the woods with a rifle, telling him to take a shot at anything that moved. “Toughening you up”: that’s what his daddy had told him he was doing. He didn’t want a wimp for a son. No, he wanted a son who could look death in the face and feel nothing.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Turns out that making your eight-year-old son slaughter a goat will do the trick. It had toughened him up right quick.

  His eyes slipped shut as he recalled the event as if it had just happened, and it wasn’t the look of innocence in the goat’s brown eyes as he pulled the trigger that he remembered the most.

  No, it was the look of giddy pleasure on his father’s face as he’d forced his son to watch him field strip the critter afterward. To prepare him for the future, he’d said. His old man had explained each stroke of the knife over the still-warm flesh and seemed to revel in the blood that began to cover his hands and shirtsleeves. His daddy had wielded that gleaming blade like a madman and mocked his son for the tears that streaked down his cheeks. Then he’d laughed as he’d tossed the mutilated body into a trashcan and told the boy to clean up the rest of the mess.

  From that day forward, he’d hated two things more than anything else in the world: his father and the darkness his father had unleashed within him.

  To this day, he hadn’t been able to get away from his father or that blood-stained darkness.

  And he’d never killed anything with that rifle since.

  But he still used the knife—that shining, dangerous, beautiful knife.

  Seven

  I jolted awake around 6 AM and found myself in my own bed with Maxwell curled in a ball at my hip. He eyed me with his silent green gaze as if to tell me to settle down and go back to sleep.

  I reached down to scratch his head and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, am I disturbing your slumber?”

  Maxwell turned away, burrowing his head back into my side.


  Cats had it so easy.

  The events of their lives didn’t cause them to lose any sleep. They seemed perfectly content with any eventuality—save a lack of tuna—and were able to keep their sleep schedules on track.

  Me? I wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon, so I got up and padded down to the kitchen to start coffee. Soon the rich, dark aroma filled my house, and a warm cup steamed in my hands.

  I had plenty of time to get ready for the day, so I didn’t rush. I considered turning on the TV for company, but after flipping through a few inane morning talk shows, I decided against it. Who could stand that level of saccharine cheer so early in the morning?

  I winced. Not me.

  Instead, I peeked out my front window in the hopes that Helena St. John’s light might be on. She was often up at this hour with baby Violet.

  I peered across the street through the morning mist. Helena’s house was the image of the quintessential American dream: a white Cape Cod-style structure with a big oak tree in the front yard. The only thing missing was the white picket fence.

  And inside was Helena, my best friend who was in the process of living her dream. She had a successful law career, a beautiful daughter, and a husband who adored them both.

  It’s not that I envied her life exactly.

  No, my dreams were very different. Undefined, actually.

  I envied that she knew what she wanted in life.

  Aside from catching my sister’s rapist, I wasn’t sure what I wanted.

  An image of Vincent flashed in my mind, and I squelched it immediately.

  Those types of thoughts would not do.

  Instead of ruminating on my life situation, I returned to the kitchen, poured two travel mugs of coffee, and went across the street.

  I tapped softly on Helena’s front door. If no one was up and the light had been left on by accident, I didn’t want to disturb them, but as I’d hoped, Helena opened the door with Violet on her hip. She looked me up and down, rolled her eyes at the MPD t-shirt and sweats I’d slept in, noticed the coffee, and said, “Oh girl! You must have read my mind. I’m dying for coffee. Tim’s still in bed, so he’s no use, and someone”—she looked pointedly at her daughter—“demanded her breakfast first. Now get yourself in here.”

  I smiled, glad she was as eager to see me as I was to see her. Somehow we managed to exchange burdens. She took the coffee, and I got a squirming baby.

  “Hey, Miss Violet,” I cooed at her as I smoothed the pink floral t-shirt across her tummy. “What are you up to today?”

  “We’ve been eating breakfast, and later we’ll be helping Mommy organize her home office,” Helena said for her daughter. “But now we’re ready for playpen time.”

  I smiled. “Let me get her settled. You do what you need to do.”

  “Deal,” Helena said. “Just make sure she has her purple elephant toy. It’s her favorite.”

  I headed back to Violet’s nursery, found the stuffed elephant, and returned to the breakfast room, where the playpen was set up in the corner.

  Expecting the baby to object when I put her down, I lowered her slowly and then handed her the elephant. Violet gave me a large, watery smile and took the toy in her chubby fingers.

  “Violet’s such a good girl,” I said. “Babies don’t normally play so well on their own.”

  Helena nodded. “It’s Tim’s genes, I’m sure. To hear my mother tell it, I was never able to get along like that at her age.”

  “Tricia didn’t like to play alone either,” I said as Helena directed me to a vacant chair at her kitchen table. “Me, I didn’t mind.”

  “How is Tricia?” Helena asked.

  I could tell she was trying to be careful. Even though I hadn’t shared the full history of my family with her, she knew enough to comprehend that I never really wanted to talk about my sister.

  “Not so well, actually,” I said, keeping my eyes focused on my coffee mug. “She’s in the hospital recovering from a broken ankle.”

  “Good lord,” Helena exclaimed. “I hate to hear that. She just can’t catch a break, and I sure wish something would happen to help that girl.”

  I couldn’t agree more with what Helena said. I did wish something would happen for Tricia, but I didn’t think anything, not even a conviction for the man who raped her, was capable of yanking her out of the downward spiral her life had become.

  We lapsed into thoughtful silence, which I broke by asking, “Organizing your office, huh?”

  “Yeah.” She leaned forward, her almond-shaped eyes conspiratorial and whispered, “I haven’t told anyone yet, except Violet and Tim, but now that Violet’s a bit older, I’m starting a new job on Wednesday!”

  In my excitement on her behalf, I leaned forward too. “Really? Where?”

  “The US attorney’s office,” she said, still whispering as if the house might have been bugged by rival lawyers.

  “Wow! That’s great news!” I said, continually amazed at my best friend and her meteoric rise in the law world. I was also truly happy for her. The US attorney’s office was a big step up, and one that she deserved.

  “That’s right,” she said as she preened just a little. “You’re looking at the newest assistant US attorney for Middle Georgia. I still can’t believe it! I’ll be working downtown, right between the MPD station and the courthouse.”

  “No one deserves it more than you, Hels. You’re a hard worker and a great attorney.” I smiled at her broadly. “Now, tell me everything.”

  Helena chronicled the process that led to the job offer, but then she paused, coffee midair, and a shadow passed across her features. “Of course,” she said finally, “I wouldn’t trade this year with Violet for all the high-profile criminal trials in the world, but I’ve been itching to get back in the courtroom.”

  “I can understand that,” I said, nodding in what I hoped was an encouraging manner.

  “I didn’t. Not at first,” she confessed, eyes wide and moist. “I felt awful for wanting to go back to work, especially at such a time-consuming job. I love my little girl, and the last thing I want is for her to feel as if I abandoned her.”

  I picked up my mug and took a long sip while trying to find the words to express my thoughts on this subject. I mean, I had plenty of mommy issues myself, so I could certainly understand Helena’s worry. But this was a much different situation from my family’s craziness.

  My own mother had not abandoned me in any sort of traditional sense. She hadn’t thrown herself into a career or vanished completely, but since Tricia’s rape, she was not the same person. She seemed to have turned off the mothering part of her life, at least when it came to me, and I had become the parent.

  I put down my cup and said with firmness, “To be perfectly clear, you aren’t abandoning Violet. You know that, right?”

  I looked at her hard, as if my eyes could force logic into her head.

  If only that worked, my job at the DOI would be a lot easier. People would confess their fraud in less than five minutes.

  “Yeah,” Helena said with a longing glance at Violet, who was rolling on the playpen floor and chewing on the stuffed elephant’s trunk. “I know that, and it’s not as if a stranger will be taking care of her. Tim’s momma will be watching her during the day. But I just don’t want to miss anything. Violet won’t be a baby forever.”

  “No,” I agreed, “she won’t. But you know you can be in the house all the time and still miss things. Important things.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better!” Helena said with a laugh.

  I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. No human being can be there for every single solitary event in their child’s life. That’s just not how it works.” I studied her, making sure she understood what I meant before I continued. “You’re trying to find a way to balance your role as a mother with your career as a lawyer. And maybe at first you’ll mess up and end up overdoing one or the other, but eventually, you’ll reach equilibrium. And being a happy, fu
lfilled person is a good example for Violet to follow.”

  I spoke as if I had experience in that department. The sad truth was that I had been trying to reach a balance between my personal desires and my quest for justice my whole life. I certainly hadn’t figured it out, but I truly did believe that one day, I would reach equilibrium.

  Helena would have it figured out before I would.

  We sat in silence for a while—I guess we were both contemplating balance—and then Helena stood, walked to my side of the kitchen table, and threw an arm around me. “See, this is why I keep you around.”

  I laughed. “I only speak the truth. You’re a great mom, and you’ll be a topnotch US attorney.”

  Helena pulled back and returned to her seat.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling so confident about my new job because I’m nervous about going back to work full-time.”

  I was about to tell her she was being silly, but she interrupted me.

  “I know it seems ridiculous, but I can’t help it. I’ve been out of the courtroom a long time. I need a little confidence booster.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “A new wardrobe. Hey, why don’t we go shopping Sunday?” She looked me over pointedly, her eyes raking down my ugly gray t-shirt.

  I was tempted to demur—I wasn’t big on shopping—but Helena’s hopeful expression changed my mind. This was what friends did for one another. They went shopping together and reminded each other that it wasn’t the clothes that provided confidence but the attitude of the person who wore them.

  Shopping was something I could do. It was a whole lot easier than catching criminals.

  “Sounds fun,” I said, mostly meaning it.