Andrew and Steven

by Kenneth Wise

  Chapter 9

  Soon the evenings were getting chilly and the boys, when they worked on the trash truck, would have to wear sweatshirts. Mr. Jablonski wore long sleeved shirts and always had his handy leather jacket hanging in the truck dock area. One evening, the trash pick-up was complete and after watching Mr. Jablonski start down the winding lane that led out of the center, the boys headed for their room.

  The building was quite unique, the boys thought, because it had been built into the side of a hill and designed so that the basement level was the main floor. The boys tried to picture what it must have been like for office workers sharing their entrance and office area with the trash truck and shipping & receiving docks. They could almost hear the click-clack of high heeled shoes and the smell of sweet perfume mixed with the aroma of ripe garbage. “Sometimes”, Andrew once said, “we find some pretty weird things to think about. Do you think we are sick in the head?” “Of course we are, Bird-Brain, why do you think we are here?” Steven replied. Not to be outdone Andrew quickly said “Because we are not all there.”

  About half way down the exit road, Mr. Jablonski realized that he had left his jacket behind and it was getting cold, so he turned around and went back to retrieve it. As fate would have it, the room where Mr. Jablonski kept his coat, extra gloves, etc. was in a small locker room just inside the building where the boys’ secret room was located. They did not see him turn around and leisurely wandered “home”, as they had started calling their little room. As they were entering the building, Mr. Jablonski, was making the last bend in the road and thought he saw the boys going into the building. When he got inside, he saw one of the many doors in the main hallway closing. He went to see if it was the boys and what they were up to. When he opened the door and turned on the lights, he saw an empty room. He thought maybe his old, tired eyes were playing tricks on him in this dusky light. He turned the lights out, closed the door, donned his jacket got in the truck and once again started for the landfill forgetting that he thought he saw something. By the time Mr. Jablonski had opened the door to the room he thought he saw the boys enter, they were already getting comfortable in their room. They never saw him turn around and had no idea he had been so very close to catching them in a serious breach of The Center’s rules.

  A few weeks later, it was after Thanksgiving and before Christmas. The two teenaged boys had talked a lot about life in general and what it had to offer and decided that their lives were already doomed, thanks to a juvenile court system that had no concern for the kids that came into contact with it. Andrew’s seventeenth birthday was coming up and Steven’s was not far behind; under eighteen with lives forever sullied, ruined. They had been discussing alternative ways to end their sadness and the hopelessness they were feeling. They had developed a plan and this was the day they would put their plan into action.

  Mrs. Ferguson had a plan too. There was a lot of work to do to get ready for the group Christmas party. She needed help from everyone. She noticed that Andrew and Steven were both missing and it was getting late. They had never been this late before. She asked some of the other kids if they had seen her two wayward charges; no one had. She had a bad feeling and called the Chief of Security. She explained that two of her kids were misplaced and she would like them to begin the search routine they use when kids were late getting back to the pod. The chief told her the Security Department would check and monitor the perimeter and send cars out to check the three roads leading away from the center.

  The next call Mrs. Ferguson made was to the Director. She explained the problem and asked for help to search the grounds. The call went out from the Director’s Office to all staff including any teachers who were still on campus, to assist in the search.

  The boys looked at the pack of razor blades they had found earlier. Steven said, “I’m ready.” “Me too,” replied Andrew.

  They removed their sweatshirts and used them for pillows as they lay down on the cold concrete floor. They each held up their left arms and using the razor blades in their right hands made identical slashes across their left arms. The blood began to gush and the boys locked their bloody arms and laid their young heads on the make shift pillows making sure they could see each other, so that the last thing they would see in this world would be each other’s eyes. “I love you, Andrew”, said Steven. “I love you, Steven” echoed Andrew. No nicknames this time.

  Mr. Jablonski had returned from his afternoon trip to the landfill and was preparing to leave for the day when he saw all the commotion and asked one of the searchers what was going on. When he heard the story, he went looking for Mrs. Ferguson, he spotted and stopped her and said he may have information about where the boys were hiding.

  He quickly told her the experience from a few weeks ago when he thought he saw the boys but missed them somehow. “Show me”, she said and off she went with Jablonski and a few of the other searchers.

  Jablonski showed her the door he thought he saw the boys go into; he opened the door and they all saw an empty room. Curious, Mrs. Ferguson walked into the room and the automatic closer began to slowly close the door. Before anyone stopped it, she saw the hidden door. She had a bad feeling when she pushed the door open. To her horror she saw the devastating scene on the floor and the mother wolf kicked. “Call two ambulances! Get the nurse out here! Someone help me quick!” Mrs. Ferguson was yelling. She rushed to the boys and knelt beside them and began using their sweat shirts to try and stop the bleeding. "Is there a first aid kit anywhere in this place?" she wanted to know even though her instincts told her these boys needed a lot more than a first aid kit. Soon others were there helping, “What have you idiots done?” she said to the motionless bodies lying in a pool of blood. “Please God, don’t let these children die like this, please!” People started passing shirts, aprons, towels, anything they could find to try to stop the bleeding. Casper, The Center’s nurse, arrived in just a minute or two. She started taping and wrapping the wounds but the blood seeped through as quickly as she could wrap them.

  The boys were unresponsive, their bodies turning blue as their lives slipped away carried on a trickle of blood that would not be deterred. Anyone who saw the boys were sure they were gone. She tried using ammonia caplets to wake them; but to no avail. “Where are the god-damned ambulances”, she yelled. Everyone stopped for a moment when they heard Casper yelling. She always spoke in a very soft even voice and no one had ever heard her use profanity. “They are both coming up the lane now,” someone said. “Are they gonna make it?” Someone else asked.

  The ambulances arrived and the attendants brought in stretchers and, with help from the Center’s staff, got the boys loaded and ready to go. Casper grabbed one of the drivers and said, “If you are not going to drive any faster going than you did coming then get out of the way and we will drive the ambulances ourselves.” The driver said “No problem ma’am, no one told us how urgent it was. When the ambulances pulled out of The Center’s property, Mrs. Ferguson was in the lead and Casper was behind in the garbage truck. “If you slow down, I’ll push you there and you can just steer.” she had told the ambulance drivers as they were getting ready to pull away from the old admin. building. The ambulances arrived at the hospital in record time. To anyone looking, the convoy must have looked like some crazy stock car race. Nurses and doctors were waiting as the ambulances pulled in. In seconds, they were in the emergency room with doctors and nurses working feverishly to stop the bleeding; get new blood into their beautiful young bodies, and to save the lives of these two children.

  Outside the emergency room stood about twenty people from The Center, some praying, some just holding each other, and off in one corner stood a giant of a man, all alone, openly and unashamedly weeping.