In Her Eyes

by Sarah Alderson

  My lungs scream for air but I can’t breathe.

  He leans forwards and whispers. ‘The cops aren’t going to help you.’

  ‘And your husband,’ James adds. ‘I can tell you this, he opens his mouth about Gene or about any of this, he’s a dead man.’

  A cold shudder runs up my spine. They must have friends in prison, friends who could reach Robert and threaten him or hurt him. Is that why Robert has been so silent? Did they threaten him already?

  Guilt eats at me as I realize everything Robert has done has been to protect us, his family. How could I ever have doubted him? It makes my anger at his financial mismanagement dissipate, not completely, but somewhat.

  Raul and James slip off their stools and Raul pulls out a wallet stuffed with bills. He selects one – a hundred – and throws it down onto the bar. ‘We got this,’ he says to me with a slight smirk. ‘But you better find Gene and that money. Clock’s ticking.’

  I watch the two of them turn and saunter out of the bar.

  Chapter 31

  Laurie’s hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel. All the blood has drained from her face. ‘What are we going to do?’ she whispers.

  I shake my head, staring at the glowing Corona sign in the window of the bar.

  ‘You need to go to the police.’

  I shake my head again, this time harder. ‘You heard them! I can’t.’ The truth is I would happily hand Gene over – he’s the reason June’s in the hospital and his father is in prison – but I can’t risk Hannah getting hurt, or Robert.

  ‘But how are you going to find that kind of money?’ Laurie asks.

  I chew on my lip. ‘They said Gene said the money was stolen from him. But who stole it?’ My mind is racing. ‘If we can find out who stole it, maybe we can steal it back.’

  ‘What?’ Laurie gasps. ‘Are you crazy?’

  I pull out my phone. ‘I need to find Gene.’

  I hit dial but the call goes straight to voicemail and his mailbox is full. I swear loudly and hang up. For months and months Gene’s been impossible to lever out of the house and now, when I need him, I can’t find him anywhere. Damn him. This is all his fault. ‘He’s run,’ I say, furious. ‘I know it. He’s run away and left me to deal with it all. I’m going to kill him if I find him.’

  I’m aware of Laurie eyeing me nervously and realize my hands are fisted and my voice is a growl. She thinks I mean it and I think I do too. I force my hands to unfurl.

  ‘I wonder who they buy their drugs from,’ I say.

  ‘I do not want to know,’ Laurie mumbles.

  ‘What if it was them who broke in though? Maybe they thought they could scare Gene or threaten him, or maybe they wanted to rob us in lieu of payment.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ she says.

  ‘More than possible,’ I shoot back. ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense.’

  My phone suddenly jerks to life in my hand and I jab at the button, hoping it’s Gene. It isn’t. It’s Hannah. She’s at the hospital. There can’t be a good reason she’s calling so late. I put the phone to my ear with a shaking hand.

  ‘Hannah?’

  ‘Mom?’ she says, her voice strangled.

  Oh God. Something is wrong – I can tell at once.

  ‘You need to come,’ she sobs.

  Chapter 32

  DAY 8

  Dr Warier meets us at the door to the ICU. He gives a very brief smile and then ushers us into the pastel-hued relatives’ room, where two other doctors and a woman in a sharp blue pantsuit await us, grim-faced as undertakers.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask, the bones dissolving in my legs as I drop down onto the sofa opposite them. ‘Where’s Hannah? She said there was some kind of emergency but said she couldn’t tell me over the phone. What is it? Is June . . .?’

  Laurie puts her arm around my shoulders. The first doctor, who I know is in charge of pediatrics, stands up and clears his throat, which is never a good sound, I’ve discovered, when it comes from a doctor. ‘I’m afraid we have some bad news,’ he says.

  The ceiling starts pressing down on top of me and with it comes a need to run from the room – but I can’t. I’m paralyzed.

  ‘June went into cardiac arrest last night. We performed CPR and we managed to restart her heart.’

  My own heart skips several beats. ‘She’s alive?’ I stammer as relief surges inside me.

  The doctor nods.

  I spring up from the sofa and make instantly for the door. I need to see her. I need to be with her. But someone steps in front of me. It’s the woman in the pantsuit. She won’t let me pass and, frustrated, I glare at her.

  ‘Someone interfered with her oxygen line.’

  ‘What?’ I look between her and the doctor.

  The woman gestures for me to sit back down and I do, dropping like a stone. Laurie sits too and takes my hand. ‘What are you saying?’ I ask again.

  She takes a deep breath. ‘Someone made a deliberate attempt on June’s life.’

  ‘How?’ I ask, staring at them. ‘Who?’

  ‘Someone bypassed security with a stolen pass and came in via the stairwell. He was wearing a white coat and surgical scrubs. He hid out in the supply closet and then he lit a fire in there. The cop on duty left his post for a few minutes to help put it out.’

  The woman darts a look at the doctors. The first doctor, the surgeon who operated on June, takes over the conversation. ‘We’re sorry,’ he says to me. ‘But June’s score on the Glasgow Coma Scale has slipped. As you know she was an eight. Now she’s scoring a five.’ And there it comes, the moment that tips me over into the darkness.

  ‘Now, what that means is—’

  ‘I know what it means,’ I cut in. I’ve Googled it. It means a severe brain injury. Anything below a three is brain dead. She’s deteriorated.

  I look around at the other doctor to see if he’s going to contradict him, because someone has to. He can’t be telling me the truth. But everyone is silent, grave-faced, deliberately avoiding my eye.

  ‘The likelihood of June recovering is now less than one per cent.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ I mumble, shaking my head harder and harder until it feels I might dislocate something. Where’s Robert? I need Robert. I can’t do this alone.

  ‘What does that mean?’ I hear Laurie asking. ‘You’re not giving up on her!’

  There’s a pause and then Dr Warier starts talking, his voice soft and calming. ‘We don’t feel there is any point in keeping June on life support. Even if she were to regain consciousness, there’s no telling what damage might have been done.’

  I look up, enraged, spitting fire. ‘No!’ What are they talking about? I’m on my feet, yelling now. ‘Someone did this to her . . . someone tried to kill her. This . . . no . . .! You are not switching off the life support. You’re not letting her die. I’m not going to let you. You can’t.’ I move to stand in front of the doorway. I won’t let them near her. I won’t allow them to do this.

  Dr Warier steps forwards and takes both my hands in his. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says quietly, tears filling his eyes. ‘We’ve done all the tests we can do. The kindest thing to do for June right now would be to let her go, let her die with dignity. Of course, we don’t suggest doing it right away. You and your family can take your time, say your goodbyes, prepare.’

  Goodbyes? Prepare? The breath is drawn out of me in one long, endless wail. The pain is so immense, so eviscerating, that I think I will die from it. I want to die from it. Because it’s too big to contain and I know that this is just the start, that it will grow and grow, like the sun expanding, until it consumes me and the whole, entire universe. There is no way of bearing it.

  I collapse to the floor, dragging Laurie with me, and she holds me, rocking me like a child, and all I can do is cling to her and howl June’s name over and over and over.

  Chapter 33

  ‘Mrs Walker?’

  It takes me almost a minute to break out of my daze and figu
re out someone is calling me. I’m in the relatives’ room still. I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, on the floor, in Laurie’s arms. I’m no longer crying or wailing and the doctors have all left but I don’t recall them going or what was said or what comes next. Goodbye. They said we should say goodbye. Prepare. My head throbs and my body is broken. My heart too – beyond repair. I’m all exposed raw nerves, and someone is holding a blowtorch to my body. How is it possible to live through this? To stand up? To keep breathing?

  ‘Why?’ I whisper, half-crazed, the world pulling in and out of warped focus like a hall of mirrors. ‘Why would they do this?’

  Was it another warning to pay up? Or did she see their faces? Were they worried she would wake up and identify them?

  ‘Mrs Walker?’ I look up slowly. A nurse hovers in the doorway. ‘There’s someone here to see you.’

  Nate enters the room behind her. He strides over and kneels in front of me. ‘Ava,’ he says. ‘God, I just heard. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘How did they get in?’ I ask him, swiping at the snot and tears. ‘How did they get in? There were police on the door. You were meant to be guarding her!’

  My fury takes him by surprise but he doesn’t reel away from it. I stagger to my feet and he follows me, reaching for my arm, which I wrench from his grip.

  ‘This is your fault,’ I hiss. ‘You told me she was safe. I believed you!’ I shove him backwards, both hands on his chest.

  He falls back a step, holding up his hands in supplication. ‘Ava, I’m sorry. We’re investigating.’

  ‘Investigating?’ I spit, a laugh erupting out of me like some demonic cackle. ‘Because you’re so damn good at that! You’re so focused on Robert, so obsessed with blaming him, you didn’t even bother looking for anyone else or for any other motive.’ I pull myself back. I can’t tell him about the drugs or about Gene, no matter how much it’s teetering on the edge of my tongue. ‘You didn’t even find the damn trash bag!’ I yell.

  Nate frowns at me, shaking his head in confusion. ‘What trash bag?’

  ‘The trash you said Robert didn’t put out, but he did! I found it behind the garage. You used that as evidence he was lying and he wasn’t!’

  Nate frowns. ‘What was it doing behind the garage?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t know, but the point is you were wrong. Robert didn’t lie and if you’d done your job none of this would have happened.’

  It’s my only chance of getting Robert off the hook – if I can’t tell the truth, I can at least provide evidence that could cast doubt on the suspicions.

  ‘Why didn’t Robert tell us where he’d put it then?’ Nate argues. ‘Why is he pleading no contest to the charges? If you were innocent you would deny them until your last breath, you’d fight it all the way. He hasn’t. Ava, you need to accept his involvement in this.’

  ‘No,’ I shout. ‘This isn’t on him. He’s not the one who broke in here and did this to June. And if you hadn’t been so focused on building a case against, you might already have found the people responsible.’

  Nate stares at me, clearly taking it in.

  I remember the warning I was given – the threats Raul made – and stay silent about the drugs. Whoever did this has already hurt June. What if they hurt Hannah too?

  I can’t lose another child. I have to find the money to pay them off.

  Chapter 34

  June doesn’t look any different, that’s what strikes me first. In fact, she looks better, her face flushed with color.

  Why did I leave her? I think as I stroke her hand. I should have stayed with her. I should have been here, then it wouldn’t have happened. I’m to blame too. I glance up at Hannah, who is sitting on the other side of June’s bed, hunched over and looking pale and red-eyed.

  Feeling my gaze, she looks up. ‘I went out to see what the alarm was about. I’m sorry,’ she says, her voice trembling.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I whisper, though the rage is eating away at my insides like acid and it’s taking everything I have to hold it in.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Hannah repeats in a whisper.

  ‘I know,’ I say, focusing on June. I know it’s not Hannah’s fault – not exactly – but why couldn’t she have stayed with June?

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Hannah says. ‘I shouldn’t have left her. I should have stayed.’

  Yes! I scream silently, biting my tongue until I taste the hot rusty tang of blood. ‘You didn’t see them?’ I ask after a few seconds. ‘You didn’t see who it was?’

  She shakes her head. ‘No. I told the cops. I didn’t see anyone. There were so many doctors and nurses rushing around. I was only out of the room for a minute, not even, I don’t know how it happened.’ I look up and see her wipe her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, bursting into tears.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ I force myself to say. No matter what I feel, I can’t let her think it is her fault. How will she live with it if I blame her? It will ruin her life. She will never get over it.

  ‘The doctors said she was OK though, right?’ Hannah asks again, her voice filled with hope.

  I take a deep breath. ‘They don’t know.’ I can’t tell her the truth and prick that bubble. Not yet. Besides, if I say it out loud, then it will make it real.

  I take June’s hand in mine – limp and heavy, but so warm it tricks me into thinking she’s just asleep. How can we turn off the machines? How can I kill my own child? I gave her life. I won’t give her death.

  I wonder if Robert has been told yet. He was always the one who argued with the doctors when June was fighting cancer. He’d stay up all night researching the latest treatments, making calls to different specialists around the world. He was the one who went tooth and nail against the insurance company when they refused to try experimental treatments and who convinced the doctors to put her on a trial drug that eventually cured her. If he were here, he would know what to do.

  ‘I’m going to get some air,’ says Hannah, standing up, shakily.

  ‘Stay inside,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t want you leaving the hospital.’

  She frowns but doesn’t ask why.

  When she’s gone I clamber onto the bed beside June, careful not to disturb any of the wires and tubes invading her body. ‘Please June, wake up,’ I whisper.

  The machines keep up their steady beep and the ventilator shushes me.

  I close my eyes and breathe in deep but all I can smell is disinfectant and bleach. She was born in this hospital. I had high blood pressure after the birth and a nurse sat with me all night to make sure I was OK. Against all the regulations, she brought me June and laid her down in the bed beside me. We fell asleep like that and I woke the next morning and blinked in astonishment at the sight of this baby swaddled, marveling at her spider-leg lashes, her perfect rosebud mouth, stunned that Robert and I had created something so perfect.

  As I lie there, the fog lifts, for just a moment, and I catch a brief glimpse of the picture I’ve been trying to grasp before it melts away again. I curl my body around June’s as I did all those years ago in a bed just like this one, and let out a wracking, soul-splitting sob. ‘My baby, my love, please keep fighting.’

  Chapter 35

  When I stagger out of the ICU like a zombie ten minutes later to use the bathroom and to check my phone for a message from Gene, who is still AWOL, I run into June’s friend Abby and her mom, Samantha, coming out of the elevator.

  ‘Ava,’ Samantha says, swooping towards me like a vulture, her arms stretched wide. I stand rigid as she pulls me in for a hug, like an animal already undergoing rigor mortis.

  I’ve never liked Samantha – or Stepford as Laurie calls her – a Christian who judges people more than an Old Testament God. She’s perfectly turned out today, as always, in a crisp pink shirt, jeans and blue ballet pumps. She looks exactly how you’d picture the wife of a pastor to look, and I have a sudden, sharp impulse to hit her and wipe that condescending sympathetic smile off her face.

 
‘How are you?’ she asks, looking me up and down, her nose wrinkling slightly, before she rearranges her expression back into faux-sympathy.

  I’m not going to tell her about June. If I have to watch her doe-eyes widen and hear her pronounce some Bible verse about the will of God or Him working in mysterious ways I will most definitely slap her.

  ‘It’s so awful what happened,’ she says now, resting a hand on my arm and giving it a little squeeze. ‘I hope you know that we’re all praying for you.’

  My jaw clenches so hard the bone almost shatters. I want to scream at her to take her prayers and shove them up her bony ass.

  ‘Abby’s been on at me to visit,’ she says, still squeezing my arm with her pink talons. ‘But they told us only family are allowed in the ICU. We were about to leave but then we saw you. You know, I’ve tried calling . . .’

  I stare at her blankly as she chatters on, zoning in and out, her words becoming jibberish. After a while I realize that Samantha has stopped talking and is looking at me askance. Did I miss something?

  ‘I was just asking about Robert,’ she says. ‘We couldn’t believe it when they arrested him. It’s so shocking. Have you seen him? Have they set a trial date yet?’

  My hand clenches into a fist. I’m about to shove it in her face just to stop the questions, but right then the elevator door opens and out steps Nate. He glances in my direction but then sheepishly looks away and starts to head for the nurses’ station. I wonder what he’s back here for. Investigating? That’s a joke.

  ‘Nate?’ Samantha exclaims at the sight of him. ‘Oh my goodness, I thought that was you!’

  Nate turns around. He looks at Sam blankly.

  ‘I saw you on the news the other day and I said to my husband, oh my goodness, I know him! That’s Nate Carmichael.’

  Nate, frowning, takes a step towards us.

  ‘Sam, Samantha Bridgewater,’ Sam explains, grinning at him. ‘Or rather, I’m Sam Caskell now.’ Seeing Nate’s still-blank look, she adds, ‘We went to high school together.’