Heroine

by Mindy McGinnis

  “Off so soon? I’ve got a pie in—”

  “Sorry, Edes,” Josie says, yanking on her coat and taking her pill bag. “I’ve got to bounce.”

  I glance down at my phone, where a text from Dad has come in:

  Baby on the way!

  It’s got a string of happy faces and hearts next to it. It’s also part of a group text that Mom is included in. Geez.

  “Yeah, I’ve got to go, too,” I tell Edith, who is clearly hurt that we aren’t staying for snacks. “I’ll be back,” I reassure her.

  The shit thing is, it’s true.

  Chapter Fifteen

  addict: one who devotes themselves habitually, especially to a substance

  Dad’s second wife may not be my favorite person, but I feel sorry for anybody pushing a baby out of their vagina. Dad comes out to the waiting room every so often to give us updates on how Devra is doing. Mom practices her polite smiles in between his visits, but eight hours later she’s asking pointed questions, and not in her ex-wife voice, either. She’s talking to Dad like a doctor.

  “Is something wrong?” I ask, once Dad has disappeared back behind the double doors that separate the waiting room from the women in labor.

  “No,” Mom says brightly, smile back in place. “It can take a while with the first one.”

  I watch her carefully, familiar with every line on her face and where they’re supposed to be when everything is fine. That’s not where they’re currently located.

  “But?” I push.

  “But I’m watching the staff. They may look calm to you but it’s all a front. They’re all wearing oh shit faces.” Mom blows out all her air with the admission, her bangs flowing with the updraft.

  “Oh,” I say, a quiver of concern in my belly. I can’t say I like Devra, but I do know how excited Dad has been about his second family, and as a member of his first one, I’ve got a stake in this, too.

  I stretch out my bad leg, bending the knee a little to get some blood flowing to my foot, which has fallen asleep.

  “Honey, you should just go home,” Mom says. “It could be hours yet. You’ve got school tomorrow, and you can’t be doing yourself any good right now.”

  I’m definitely not doing myself any good. I realized that around Jeopardy! time, the waiting room TV posing unanswerable questions at me as tendrils of pain took a firm grip. The one 40 I managed to buy from Edith is down in the parking lot, ready to make it all go away if I cave and take it. But then I’d be out, and with no cash left. I decide to grin and bear it, just like Mom, sitting here for the sake of solidarity while Dad’s second wife delivers his first biological child.

  Mom’s fading into sleep, her head nodding to one side, when her phone goes off, making us both jump and sending a hot wire of pain that runs from my hip down to my little toe.

  “Shit,” we both say at the same time. She turns her phone around so I can read the message from Dad.

  emergency see section

  “Isn’t a C-section, like C as in cat?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Mom says. “But I don’t think he’s overly worried about autocorrect mistakes right now.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “Although,” Mom adds, rubbing the crease on her face where she fell asleep against the couch, “you do see a lot.”

  “Oh my God, Mom,” I say. “You’re so bad.”

  She starts laughing too, holding her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound as tears leak from her eyes. “Do not tell your dad I said that,” she says. “That was horribly insensitive.”

  “You earned it,” I tell her.

  The sun is up by the time we’re allowed back to Devra’s room, my little half brother—or adopted half brother, or I don’t even know what—asleep in a plastic crib near her bed. Devra is refusing pain medication, even though she’s as gray as the wall behind her, and her mouth is set in a firm line that I know too well. It’s the only way to stop yourself from screaming. Mom and Dad are in the hallway, arguing. I lean my head against the wall, able to pick up the hiss of their intense whispers.

  “If she says she doesn’t want them, then she doesn’t want them, Geoff. It’s her decision, period,” Mom says.

  “What if it’s too much?” Dad argues back. “What if she can’t take care of the baby?”

  “I guess you’ll have to take the leap of parenting your own child,” Mom says, and I bite my lip so that I don’t laugh again.

  “That’s not . . . I can’t very well breastfeed him, can I?”

  “Neither can she, if she’s got painkillers in her system.”

  I hear Dad’s heavy sigh, one that filled the house often before they split up. “It’s been a really long day, Annette. I just saw my wife’s intestines, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I see intestines at least once a week. Suck it up.”

  In bed, Devra reaches into her mouth, pulling the one pill she conceded to take under the vigilant eye of her nurse out of the pocket of her cheek.

  “Don’t you think you should . . . ,” I begin, but she shakes her head.

  Our eyes meet, and I know that look. She can’t even find words right now, all her brain is overrun by agony, every nerve she has singing a song that has no lyrics. Pain can come in a quick rush, fading off into something bearable after that initial peak. But pain that endures doesn’t give you that break, the moment of air that you need before you’re pulled back under. And under is all there is right now for Devra.

  She reaches for me, pill in her fist.

  “Get it the hell away from me,” she says, each word coming out low and tight, every syllable fought for.

  “Devra . . .”

  “Addict,” she says, cutting me off. I tighten in my seat, blood rushing to my face at the accusation. Then she touches her own chest, eyes closed tight in shame.

  “Recovering,” she manages.

  We’ve never touched before, but when I slide my fingers under hers and she drops the pill, slick with her spit, into my hand, I feel like I know her better than anyone in the world.

  I slip into the bathroom and take it myself.

  Chapter Sixteen

  steal: to take without right or leave, and with intent to keep wrongfully

  I get a free pass from school, something I’m only too grateful for. I don’t think I could handle it right now. Whatever the nurse had given Devra, it definitely wasn’t Oxy. It took the sharper edges off, but the comfortable numbness I’ve come to depend on is nowhere in sight.

  Mom and I head over to Dad’s new place, to get a few things for Devra. We go through their drawers, Mom matter-of-factly folding Dad’s underwear and packing a bag, instructing me to find comfortable, loose clothes for Devra. I feel weird, going through her stuff. But I’m surprised to find she’s more like me than I thought, veering toward sports bras and cotton undies. I toss some things together, and am about to join Mom downstairs when I see the sharp edge of a twenty-dollar bill sticking out from under Devra’s jewelry box.

  I pick it up to find a nice, neat stack of fresh bills, so new they look fake. I peel two off, having to rub them against each other to separate them. I head down the stairs with Devra’s bag over my shoulder, face flush with shame. And while I’m not proud of myself, there’s a louder, bigger thought in there.

  Forty is nowhere near enough.

  Mom’s waiting for me in the car, reapplying mascara. She’s never been in Dad’s new place, and I don’t know if she needs makeup because she took a few minutes to have a good cry, or if she’s just trying to freshen up as we head back to the hospital.

  “You okay, Mom?” I ask.

  “Yeah, honey,” she says. “I’m fine.”

  I’ve said it enough to know how it sounds when it’s a lie, and when it’s the truth. Somehow, miraculously, Mom really is okay.

  “Is it hard?”

  “It’s not easy,” she admits. “Want some coffee?” I adamantly nod yes and she pulls into a drive-through.

  “It’s not easy . . .” I
nudge her to continue.

  “Well . . . it’s . . .” Mom sighs, resting her head against the driver’s window as we wait. “It’s like this: When I found out your dad was having an affair, I was pissed. But when I found out how much younger she was than him, it was almost laughable. Like he was this big joke, an old guy chasing the young girls, right?”

  “Yeah, I get it,” I tell her.

  “But then she gets pregnant,” Mom goes on. “And I’ve got to rethink this whole thing. She’s not some little home-wrecker anymore. She’s a woman building her own family. And now—”

  She cuts herself off, orders our coffees, and rolls the window back up against the cold. “This is strictly between you and me,” she says.

  “Okay.”

  “Now I find out she’s refusing pain meds after a terribly invasive procedure, because she’s a recovering addict. She wants to be able to breastfeed her child, and be a good mother to it beyond that, into the future. Devra won’t take anything beyond aspirin, afraid it will make her relapse.”

  “She told me,” I say.

  “Yeah, well . . .” Mom pauses, rolling down the window and getting our drinks. “Now I’m right back to being pissed off again.”

  “Because she was an addict?”

  “No,” Mom says, popping her coffee open. “Because now I respect her, dammit.”

  The hospital is different during the day. There are more people, more crying, more hugs being passed around. There’s a lot of naked emotion that I’m uncomfortable with, especially when Mom picks up Dad’s new baby and her face shows pure bliss. She never held me like that, never smiled down with wonder on me. I came to her already formed, for better or for worse.

  I make an excuse and leave the room, leaning a little less on the crutches than I was yesterday, pushing the edges of what Jolene said I was allowed to do. I still need sleep—and a shower, if I’m being honest—but I’m not going to tear Mom away from the baby yet. I go for an awkward, lurching walk, swinging the crutches out in front of me, my body the pendulum that keeps going forward, never back.

  I may have missed school and the weight room, but if I keep moving on the crutches I can get a decent workout on my arms. So I keep going, past open doors and closed ones, down hallways I recognize from my own visits and then through some I don’t. I end up in the cancer ward, slightly out of breath, heart pumping harder than it should be if I want to be ready for spring training. I find an empty pair of chairs in the hall and settle into one, resting my crutches next to me.

  A woman about Mom’s age comes out of a patient room, phone in one hand, her purse in another.

  “No,” she says into the phone. “They don’t want him to have meds from home . . . I don’t know. No, I . . . something about they can only give him meds from the pharmacy here. . . . Yeah, and bill the insurance three times what they cost, I’m sure,” she snorts. “I didn’t know what he needed so I just grabbed everything . . . there were half-full bottles just lying around . . .”

  She’s quiet for a second, listening to the response. “Well, you know how he is, never finishes anything.

  “I don’t know, honey,” she says, her voice dropping lower. “He’s in a lot of pain.” She disappears around the corner just as my phone goes off with a text from Mom.

  Where are you? Ready to go?

  I tell her yes, and that I’ll be right there. I get my crutches under me and am heading back the way I came when I see the lady I accidentally eavesdropped on still talking into the phone, and as she heads into a bathroom I follow, telling myself that I have to pee, or take a thirteen, as the scanner on Edith’s counter would say.

  I don’t pee.

  What I do is this. I wait for her to come out of a stall, to wash her hands, and to turn her back on her purse as she dries them. It’s an old-lady purse almost as big as my gym bag, mouth gaping open to reveal a gallon Ziploc bag with four orange prescription bottles inside. I grab it and duck into a stall, lowering myself onto a toilet as I listen to her gather her things and leave.

  In my hands I hold Ronald Wagner’s pills, a man I don’t know, but I can guess by the dosage and amount of Oxy here that he’s got cancer. And I just stole from him. I wait for the shame that filled me when I took money from Devra, but it doesn’t come.

  Mostly what I feel, when I look at all that OxyContin, is absolute relief.

  Chapter Seventeen

  strong: having active physical power, the power of exerting great bodily force—or—having passive physical power, the ability to bear or endure

  My phone vibrates with a reminder about a checkup with Dr. Ferriman. I’m a month out from conditioning, putting half weight—and sometimes more—on my leg, but still with the assistance of crutches. I get my stuff together and check in on Mom. She’s napping, the small hump of her body lonely in the king-size bed she and Dad splurged on for their anniversary.

  An hour later I’m back in the teddy-bear-papered room, their cherubic faces less annoying when I’m not in pain. I feel great, actually, good enough to have left the crutches at home, thanks to one of Ronald Wagner’s OxyContin, the full 80 milligrams coursing through my system.

  There’s the two-tap knock on the door, then Dr. Ferriman comes in.

  “Mickey,” he says. “How are you doing?”

  “Good,” I say, swinging my legs to prove it.

  Ferriman rotates my leg, asks me questions about my pain levels, which I can honestly answer are quite low.

  “You’re doing great,” he finally says, finishing up. “Putting weight on the leg?”

  “Yep.”

  “Without too much additional pain?”

  “Nope.” Not after taking Ronald’s Oxy, for sure. “Can I get rid of the crutches?”

  Ferriman crosses his arms, eyeing me up and down. “Only if you promise me you’ll go back to them if necessary.”

  “Promise,” I say quickly, as if I’m afraid he’ll take it back. “Can I start conditioning in March?”

  “Can I stop you?”

  Technically, he can. So I don’t appreciate the joke.

  “Yes,” he says quickly, reading my mood. “But I strongly advise you to consider a different position. All that crouching behind the plate could create long-term problems for your injury.”

  I nod as if I’m listening, but I only heard the first part. I can play.

  Ferriman is reaching for the door when he pauses, and I wonder if he’s noticed that I’m a little slow with my responses, my eyes lingering too long on certain things that catch my attention, like the changing facial expressions of the teddy bears as the pattern in the wallpaper repeats itself.

  Instead he says, “I’m so impressed with your recovery, Mickey. Really. To see you doing this well, after an injury like yours, is a testament to the healing capacity of the human body, but also to your willpower.”

  “I . . . thank you,” I say, not really knowing what else would be appropriate.

  “You’re a hell of a strong person, Mickey Catalan,” he says.

  Somehow, this makes me feel like shit.

  Dinner with the Galarzas will fix that.

  Carolina and I are fixtures at each other’s houses, and I can almost claim to be as comfortable around their dinner table as I am on a softball field. Almost. The accident disrupted more than our health. Being housebound, unable to drive, then buried under piles of makeup work had taken me out of the weekly cycle of dinner with them. Tonight that changes. It’s one more step in my return to normalcy, I think, as I let myself in the side door without knocking. Most people would find that rude, but Mrs. Galarza—Clarita—had been more offended the one time I did knock.

  “You knock on your own door?” she’d asked, finger in the air to punctuate her question as I shook my head. “Then don’t knock on mine.”

  Still, it’s been so long that I do feel odd walking straight into their kitchen. That is, until I’m folded into Clarita’s arms, a spoon dripping asopao barely missing my face in the process.
<
br />   “How is this girl?” she asks, pushing me back just as forcefully as she pulled me in, to get a better look at me. “Wait . . . where are the crutches?”

  “Gone,” I tell her, emotion closing my throat so that I can’t get more than that out.

  “You look good,” Mr. Galarza—Ian—says from the table, folding his laptop shut. “I told my wife it will take more than a car accident to keep you two from playing.”

  I nod, unable to speak. I’m saved from breaking down into actual tears when Carolina shows up, pulling a sweatshirt over her head. She’s got pillow creases on one side of her face and her hair is sticking up in spots, but she gives me a smile.

  “Cinco minutos,” Clarita says, glancing at her pot of soup.

  I’ve been raised past the point of a guest in the Galarza family, which means I get to walk in without knocking, but it also means I have jobs. I help Carolina set the table, pausing only when Mr. Galarza glances up at the place settings and asks, “¿Aaron no viene?”

  “Not tonight,” Carolina says, and her dad can barely hide his disappointment.

  “¿Por qué no?” Clarita asks, carrying the soup pot over to the table. “Donde comen dos, comen tres.”

  What two can eat, three can eat . . . a saying I’ve heard more than once in this house, although it’s usually being used to invite me to stay for dinner, not Aaron.

  “He is a good boy,” Clarita says to me. “But his Spanish . . .” She shakes her head.

  “No es bueno. He has a teacher from the Midwest and speaks Spanish with a Wisconsin accent,” Ian agrees, shuddering. “But he will learn, now that he has a proper instructor,” he adds, giving Carolina a nudge with his elbow.

  She tells him off a little too quickly for me to decipher it, then we all clasp hands and say a table prayer in Spanish. I’ve done it a hundred times, at least, but I’m surprised to find my tongue falling silent once or twice, the familiar words not coming. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been away from the Galarzas too long, or if it’s the 80 I helped myself to before heading over.