by Harper Kim
Nodding, he gave my hands a squeeze before pulling away. Looking down, he shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. “Tess and I thought it would be best for us to move. I—uh, talked to my parents and they want to be a part of the girls’ lives since they’ve already missed out on so much.” He looked up. “Ky, we’re moving back to Walnut.”
I took a moment to process the news. I wasn’t sure what my face said, but inside I crippled in pain. Everything hurt. Even blinking, which I seemed to be doing a lot, was difficult. I didn’t know what the meeting would entail, but I thought—or hoped—that he was going to tell me that he thought of me and since seeing me again he couldn’t stop thinking about me. I thought—or hoped—he felt something.
Tension mounted as the silence stretched from one caramel macchiato order to three and then five. I never realized so many people enjoy the sugary drink. Sometimes I laugh at people who order a caramel macchiato without the caramel syrup on top. Don’t they realize there’s no caramel flavor in the drink itself? Don’t they realize it’s not even a real macchiato? Why don’t they just order a vanilla latte with whipped cream? People never cease to amaze me.
“Walnut?”
“Yeah, after everything that happened, Tess and I want to make our marriage work. We’re going to open a gastropub together and we think Walnut would be a great place to start over. The kids would be near their grandparents and we could be a family again. Anyways, Ky, I wanted to see you before we left. I wanted to make sure everything was fine between us. So we could both have some closure. Seeing you again, it made me realize I was holding onto the past and maybe you were too. We need to move on.”
“Of course we’re fine. And you should move on, I have. What happened was so long ago, it shouldn’t affect who we are today.” My voice sounded strange to my ears but Brett didn’t seem to notice.
“Right,” he smiled, “water under the bridge.”
“Water under the bridge.”
After the meeting with Brett, I delved into work as if it were the only thing keeping me sane. The department was concerned but grateful, especially Declan. All the cases I was able to solve during the past few weeks have directly boosted his rep in the Department.
Once he was promoted to lieutenant, Declan became a nervous wreck, drowned in paperwork and responsibilities. His grandfather, George Malone, retired as chief shortly thereafter, and the burden to make his Granddad proud was eating away at him, marinating his subconscious in stress hormones, slowly cooking his amygdala. Declan is a good cop—one of the few in the department not to antagonize and ridicule me for being a woman in a man’s profession—but he just needs to break away from the stigma of being George Malone’s prodigy so he can relax and find his groove.
Pickering demanded I slow down. He cautioned that if I wasn’t careful, he’d have to visit me in the hospital. Realizing he was just worried about me as a friend and not as his partner, I cut him some slack and didn’t go crazy on him. I knew he was being genuine; there were no doughnut holes in it for him this time.
But I didn’t want to slow down. I didn’t want time to allow myself to think. Even visits with Gramps shortened.
Last week, Pickering invited me over to have dinner with his family. His wife was supposedly making her famous Chicken Florentine Casserole, which she adjusted to halve the fat and sodium for Sean’s ticker. I didn’t feel like pretending to enjoy a well-balanced meal with a well-balanced family, so I politely declined.
Eve, on the other hand, stood by faithfully without saying a single word. She let me suffer alone, because she knew that interfering would only strain our relationship. But a few nights ago she stepped into the Precinct after-hours, dropped a large tub of spumoni gelato and two spoons onto my desk and demanded some face time. Being the good friend that she is, she brought a plate to put under the gelato container so it wouldn’t leave condensation marks on my desk.
That broke me. I had been on the edge for weeks, my nerves getting more and more threadbare each moment. All it took was Eve’s sympathetic gesture to open the floodgates, and a condensation catching plate.
Cradling me on the cold cement floor, Eve stroked my dark hair, smoothing out the strands that fell carelessly on my tear-stricken face. With each swell of ugly sobs, Eve held me tighter. Eve opened her ears and heart to me and tried desperately to absorb my pain.
After hours of listening to me explain my story about all the years Brett had held the key to my locked heart and how my shame and his absence chipped away at me each passing day, she yanked me up by my shoulders, brushed the hairs and tears from my face, stared straight into my eyes, and said, “Snap out of it, Ky. You wallowed, you cried, you broke. Now it’s time to pick up the pieces and start over.”
Eve’s voice was calm and stern. She lowered her face to intercept my downturned gaze, making sure I was coherent before continuing. “Just listen and hear me out.”
I nodded.
“So there’s this guy I know—”
“Eve, I—”
Eve raised a hand, gripping my shoulder a little harder. “Listen, Ky. I’m not going to sit back and watch you tear yourself apart. I gave you your space and now I’m demanding your cooperation. I want my best friend back. I don’t care if you despise the guy, love the guy, or couldn’t care less about the guy, but you have to go on this date, and you must come back with a full report. This is your assignment as my best friend. If you don’t follow through, we’re through.”
That woke me up. “What?”
“You heard me,” Eve’s lips spread out in a smirk, “we’re no longer friends if you don’t go on this blind date.”
Glaring through puffy eyes, I said, “You’re crazy. You’re giving me an ultimatum?”
Meeting my glare head on, Eve smiled and said, “Yes, I am. And yes, you aren’t the first person to ever call me crazy, but I’m also dead serious. Don’t test me.”
“But—Eve, I need to tell you something.”
“Okay, spill.”
Sniffling, I shook off the tears and stared squarely back into Eve’s eyes. “Eve, you have to promise me that what I’m about to tell you goes into the vault. You can’t repeat it to anyone, not even to Toki and Lulu. Got it?”
“You’re crazy too, but okay, I got it. Spill.”
“I’m a virgin.”
Eve smiled. “Like that’s new information. I already knew that.”
“What?” Flabbergasted, I sank back into my pity-me position.
“Consider the facts. One, you’ve been in love with this Brett guy since you were eleven. Two, that day when you made your proposition to him, he didn’t bite. Probably because you guys were caught before he had the chance. I mean, getting caught by your mom and baby sister is a bit of a mood-kill. If, on the other hand, you waited until he was alone in the house first and then came over…then, well, he was seventeen, so you fill in the blanks. And three, ever since then, you’ve been on a handful of first dates and no juicy details. In conclusion, what do you get? One twenty-eight-year-old, sexually frustrated virgin that desperately needs to get laid. Have you tried a vibrator? Maybe you need to practice on one. Hmmm…maybe I should get you one before this date. There’s this rule that you should never give up the goods on a first date, but that’s a load of crap. Take it from me, doll, your first time is always better with a guy you barely even know. If it doesn’t work out, hell, who cares? Besides—”
“Eve! Stop it. I got it. No, I don’t need you to get me a vibrator. No, I’m not going to sleep with this guy on our blind date. And I’m not sexually frustrated.”
“Okay, sure. Whatever you say. It’s not like I’m a badass homicide detective. I’m just the lady that handles the dead. And do you know what the dead say to me when I’m cutting them open?”
I sighed. “No Eve, what do the dead say to you?”
“ ‘Man, I should’ve had more sex before I landed on your table.’ That’s what they say to me. Think about that.”
I couldn’
t help but laugh. “Eve…thanks.”
Getting up from the ground, Eve stretched, rolling the kinks out from her back, neck, shoulders, and legs. “Heck. That’s what friends are for.” Grabbing her purse, she headed for the door. Without looking back, she waved her hand and said, “Ta-Ta. Get a good night’s rest, hun. The instructions for the blind date will be waiting for you on your desk by zero eight hundred tomorrow.”
Still crumpled in my back pocket are the instructions Eve left me:
Dress hot. Smell fresh. Wear killer heels. No undies.
Eight o’clock at Donovan’s.
Be ten minutes late.
When the note came attached to a plain brown box, I had a sinking feeling there was going to be some unwanted paraphernalia, but relaxed once I opened it and found a banana.
I ate the banana and went on with my day.
The guy was a meathead. Ate too much, talked too much, and leered at me too long. Not my idea of a match made in heaven, but I got the gist. Got me out into the mix.
At least now I have something amusing to share with Gramps. Tightening my ponytail, I stride toward Room 301. As I cross the threshold, my nerves fizzle and a lump of grief forms in its place. Gramps hasn’t moved from his position since the last time I saw him, but the sunflowers I placed on the lacquered birch table are gone. The flowers must have wilted before I had a chance to replace them—the sour sickening smell of rotting flowers still lingers in the room. I look down at my hands and they are empty. How could I forget the flowers? I choke on a backlog of tears, the guilt overpowering. I shouldn’t have left him alone.
Suddenly, an alarm goes off in the room and two nurses rush in, commanding their stations on either side of the neighbor’s bed. Chaos erupts in the tiny room. They fiddle with his tubes and change out his bedding.
Giving them their space and the man his privacy, I move toward the window and look out through the open blinds onto the filled parking lot—handicap and visitor’s spaces alike. My gaze turns toward 24-Hour Fitness where hundreds of bodies writhe and swarm behind glass. There are too many people these days. And all of them will need medical attention someday, sooner or later.
The nurse with the light auburn hair and splash of freckles hovers over the man’s bed, blocking him from my view. Strange, that in all these months I have been visiting while he has been here, I have never actually seen the man who occupies the bed next to Gramps. Absently I shrug my shoulders. If I cared enough I could have walked right over and peered behind the blue curtain, but I never had the curiosity to do so. I respect the man’s privacy, especially when he is so ill and vulnerable. If the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t want a stranger peering down at me.
The second nurse, with a crinkle of graying black hair hanging like a nest from her flat head, rushes in and out of the room, each time returning with a new object in her trembling hands. She must be new, and this is probably the first distress call of her late-blooming career. After the patient stabilizes, the strain on the second nurse’s face relaxes considerably.
Understanding the toll a scare like that can have on a green nurse, the nurse with the freckles straightens her rumpled scrubs—green, the same color as the drab hospital furniture that surrounds them—and turns to face the suddenly pallid nurse. “Candace, I’m thirsty. Would you mind going on a coffee run?”
Candace’s eyes brighten in relief. “Sure. I can do that. What do you want?”
“Get me a large iced caramel macchiato.”
Candace nods, eager to escape the suffocating situation. “Anything else, Connie?”
Fiddling with the cords attached to the large beeping monitor stationed beside the patient’s bed, Connie says, “Uh…tell them to forget the whipped cream and syrup. I can do without the extra calories today.”
Just as I smirk, I hear a loud hacking sound coming from the patient behind the curtain. I could have sworn the patient was laughing. The hacking sound gets Candace’s large body moving swiftly out the door. Out of sight, out of mind—not her responsibility.
Connie hands the patient a paper cup filled with water; he drinks it greedily. “There, there,” Connie says as she pats his back and gives his pillows an extra courtesy fluff. “Feel better?”
The patient doesn’t say anything.
Connie adjusts the numbers on the screen and finishes filling out the log on the patient’s chart before leaving. Finally, she addresses my presence with a quick nod and closes the door behind her. This time the blue curtain is left hanging loose near the head of the bed, exposing the patient’s haggard and restless face. His eyes are closed and breath uneven. His cue-ball head is liver spotted and protruding veins run beneath the surface of his loose skin.
Embarrassed for staring, I turn away and grab hold of Gramps’ limp hand.
“What, no flowers this time?”
The man’s voice startles me. I turn to face him. His eyes are now parted open. A sliver of hazel shows through the crusty yellow flakes that surround his heavy lids.
“You noticed?”
“Of course I noticed. Sometimes the smell gives me a headache.”
“Sorry, if I’d known it bothered you, I wouldn’t have—”
“Honey, I’m kidding.” Cackling, he raises a hand letting me know he’s okay. “My friend here likes them so I’m fine with them, too.”
“Your friend visit often? I haven’t seen anyone come through here—” I bite my lip, ashamed. It’s not like I visit around the clock; his friend could visit at a different time.
He shakes his head, grimacing. “No, no.” He waves a feeble hand in my direction. “My friend is that man right there. The Sarge.”
I smile, wistful. “Oh, Gramps.”
“Yeah. He’s a great listener. Never complains when I talk his ear off.”
“Yes, Gramps is a wonderful listener.” A trailing tear escapes the corner of my eye and I brush it away with the back of my hand. I stand and walk slowly to the side of the man’s bed. I take his exposed hand in mine and introduce myself. “Hi, I don’t believe we’ve formally been introduced. I’m Kylie.”
He looks at me and his feeble cheeks twitch.
“You can call me Joe.”
“What’s your story, Joe?”
“How long you got?”
“For you? Forever.”
I watch as his cheeks twitch again. “Great answer.”
For the next few minutes, I listen to him rattle on about his wife, the economy, the President, and the drab furniture. His speech is fragmented, but I get the gist. His thoughts on life are amusing and I enjoy listening to his qualms, quirks, and humorous anecdotes. There is a soft hitch in his voice whenever he mentions his loving wife, Betsy. I have a soft spot for true love, the kind that ages like a fine wine. Like what Halmoni and Gramps shared.
My smile fades when Joe’s body starts shaking with brutal force; his eyelids blink rapidly and a white foam oozes from the corners of his mouth. Quickly I push the panic button beside his bed, a moment before the beeping machine takes on a life of its own.
Connie comes running almost immediately, with a brown stain dripping down the front of her green, ill-fitting scrubs (her caramel macchiato drink without the caramel, the most likely culprit). Flushed from the sudden sprint down the hall, Connie pushes past me and checks the litany of monitors and tubes when two men and two women in matching scrubs surround the bed. I move out of their way.
Shouting off orders, I watch in horror as one of the men grabs the two paddles and presses them to Joe’s writhing chest. In huge, whopping movements, Joe seems to soar into the air and collapse in defeat. The monitor drones a steady, high-pitched tone. After a few more tries, the paddles drop to the floor. The room is still. The same drone, constant and eerie, drills in the background.
Connie calls out the time, “Time of death. Fifteen forty-two.” In shock, I stand aside; the nurses scurry about with somber faces, unhooking the tubes and needles from Joe’s limp and silent body. In minutes, the bags of sal
ine and blood are removed, the urine bag discarded, the machines unplugged and carted out of the room to be used in another.
Death is ugly. No matter how it comes about, natural or forced, from illness, age, or untimely accident. And Joe’s death is no exception. His weathered face hangs lax, lips parted open in a haunting O that reminds me of that Edvard Munch painting I saw once at the art museum. Blood cools and congeals beneath necrotic skin.
Connie unlocks the wheels of the steel-framed bed so she can roll Joe out of the room to make way for another patient. Just before she covers Joe for the final time, I catch the glint from Joe’s neck. Reaching out, I grip the side of the bed, sending Connie reeling backward. The nurses and residents in the room are alarmed.
“Please, give me a moment.” I look up at Connie. She seems to have spent the most time with Joe and thus would be the most understanding. I am right.
Hesitating, Connie frowns and cocks her head. “Are you family? I thought you were—”
“No, I’m not family. But, I’ve gotten to know him from my visits and we became friends.”
Connie chews on her bottom lip and then sighs. “I’ll give you ten minutes.”
I thank her and wait patiently for the rest of the disgruntled staff to file out of the room. When the door clicks closed behind the last to exit, I immediately grab the gold chain that hangs around his lifeless neck and shudder.
Resting in my cold fingers is a clunky, gold class ring with a peridot center hanging on a simple gold chain. My frantic mind races back to Loral’s lifeless figure, positioned around a garden of dancing poppies. How peaceful she looked. How it looked as though someone showed her tenderness in death. Or regret.
In utter disbelief, I turn over the ring slowly, noting the engraving MICHAEL on one side with a quarterback emblazoned below, 2012 and the scales of criminal justice on the other side.
Slowly, I pick up the man’s chart. At the top, printed in clear and legible script is the patient’s name: Neil Joseph Wilcox.
