Waiting for Fitz

by Spencer Hyde

  She kept repeating that. So dangerous. Too young. Scared to death. The usual suspects, right? But this time those phrases actually held meaning. It’s weird how phrases can have meaning in specific moments. They weren’t cliché when Mom said them that evening. They were the truth. I started crying again, too.

  “I’m scared they won’t find him, Mom,” I said. I rested my elbows on my knees and let my hands meet my face. I looked at my feet, tapping one each second while I alternated blinks. “And if they do, when they do, will he be alive?”

  I think Mom noticed, for the first time, that Fitz was more than just a fellow inpatient. She lifted me from my chair and held me close.

  She smelled clean, like fresh laundry, and dry. My sweatshirt was still damp, and I felt sweaty and clammy and exhausted. I was also sick to my stomach and knew that my lack of meds was the culprit. Well, partially.

  “I didn’t know he meant that much to you, Addie,” she said, holding me as I cried.

  “I didn’t know it either,” I said. “But I do now.”

  We sat in that room for at least another hour. I let Mom hold me. I let her comfort me. I didn’t know how to get a grasp on my emotions. It’s funny how something so big can make you feel so small, can make you want to revert back to an infant, looking for comfort in your parents, your mom.

  And Fitz didn’t have that.

  The officers were pretty good about making sure we were doing all right. They checked in twice and brought us both blankets and coffee. Well, Mom got coffee; they gave me hot chocolate. The drink and the blanket warmed me up, but I was still thinking of Fitz out there somewhere, cold and alone, listening to voices that were telling him to do who-knows-what.

  “Can we go look for him?” I said.

  Mom didn’t respond, but just pulled my blanket closer to my chin.

  “He’ll be looking for me,” I said.

  Mom said that someone from the hospital was coming to pick me up, and that we could talk there after I’d had a shower and some rest. She said she’d stay at the hospital with me and make sure I felt safe, but I didn’t want that. At least not at the time.

  “I need to look,” I said. “I can’t just sit here and wait.”

  She sighed and gave me this half-hearted parent look where half of the smile is a grimace that says “okay” and the other half says “but just this once,” and it almost made me laugh because, like, was I really going to break out of a psych ward a second time and lose my friend who was going through some very specific stuff and then get picked up by the cops again?

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, before she could say anything.

  As an only child, I tended to win those kinds of battles. And I always knew the right ones to fight for. This was one of them. C’mon. No question.

  Mom stepped out of the room and spoke with the tall officer for maybe ten minutes. I saw him scratch his forehead and look in at me at least twice. He left for a moment, then returned, and they talked a bit more.

  The blinds in the room were a really nasty brown color, and they looked stained from coffee or something darker. Dead flies lined the sill, and I saw rings of dust collecting on the reinforced glass, the small wires cutting diagonally across one another, creating this hideous patchwork of dark lines and thick, cloudy glass.

  The tile floor looked hopeless—a red that had faded to a sorry orange. I was halfway through counting the chipped tiles on the floor when Mom returned with a smile.

  “The officer agreed to let me take you to the hospital instead,” she said. “You’re lucky I’m good with men.”

  “Else I wouldn’t be here,” I said.

  “Oh, Addie.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Can’t go a day without joking about something, can you?”

  “Learned from the best,” I said.

  “I don’t joke.”

  “I know. I learned from you that I should start joking,” I said.

  She shook her head, and we walked to the old Camry in the parking lot. Small streams of water made their way down the car lot through the path of least resistance. The water on the pavement mirrored the lamps dotting the streets and the bright lights shooting from the corners of the police station.

  “I’m supposed to be taking you straight to the hospital, but I bet I can buy us an hour or two. I’ll say we got lost.”

  It wasn’t very plausible, but I didn’t care. I was still in this state of belief that adults never really got into trouble. I liked that kind of naiveté.

  We stepped into the car and wiped off the water from our sweaters or jackets or whatever. Some people say they don’t want to live near the Sound or in the Northwest because they don’t like the rain and it would make them all depressed or something, but they don’t know what that word really means so it makes me laugh. I love the rain. It’s a beautiful thing. Usually.

  Today, though, the rain tapped on the windshield, and I felt hopeless, like, how on earth was I going to spot Fitz in this storm? Where would he go? What would he do?

  I might know Fitz, but I didn’t know what Lyle or Toby or Willy would tell him to do, so where did that leave us? Well, it left us searching the docks where he and I had boarded the ferry. We drove by the inn. I tried to think of what Fitz might do if he started getting cold or upset or afraid. I saw a penny by my foot and picked it up and turned it in my hands, blinking for every dark spot between the pillars on the back of the coin, then turning and blinking for the same number on the face.

  Then it came to me. Lincoln. Willie. How could I have missed it?

  “I’m such an idiot!” I said.

  “What?”

  “I might have an idea of where he is. Call the cops,” I said. “No, wait. Don’t call the cops yet. Let’s go there.”

  “Where? Where is he?”

  “Wherever his brother is buried. Quentin. Fitz might be wherever the grave is. There is a small graveyard near Beacon Hill—by the hospital. We can see it from the windows of the psych ward floor.”

  “I know the one,” she said, turning the car around and speeding up.

  I took deep breaths, swallowed, the knot in my throat still there. I rubbed my eyes and ignored the mild pulse at the back of my head where I’d hit it against that pot. I realized Mom was not driving me to the station like I thought she might. She was going to the graveyard.

  The flutter of the wipers synced with the rapping of my heart. I put my hand against my chest and felt for that syncopated rhythm as the rain let up for just a moment and there was quiet.

  Then the oddest thing happened. When we stopped near the decorated wrought-iron entrance to the graveyard, it began to snow. It was a startling shift in the weather that I didn’t expect. I’m sure nobody expected it. It got really quiet. Total silence. The ground was soaked, and the temperature dropped and tiny flakes of ice-rain began to fall—a twinkling in the trees, the tapping sounding like a softer form of a rainstick turned upside down. I considered the oddity that silence could be so loud.

  That’s when I heard a yell, and I knew it had to be Fitz. I rushed through the soaked leaves and soggy grass. My shoes sank into the soft earth.

  “Addie, wait!” Mom shouted as I took off running.

  And I should have waited. And I should have walked to the scene with Mom, but I was only thinking of helping Fitz before things got any worse. And I wasn’t sure what was happening, and I wanted to save him from himself, from the voices in his mind.

  Really, I should have done a lot of things differently, but I was running on pure instinct and fear.

  I followed his voice, and I thought I heard him yell “Quentin!” But it was muffled, and I wasn’t sure if I was just shaping the noises I heard into that name so I could justify running from Mom. I sprinted, almost falling over numerous graves. I tripped on one that was embedded in the grass, the headstone a rectangle di
vot filled with water beginning to freeze. I knocked my knee against another stone and felt a stinging spike from my thigh to my foot, but I kept running until I reached Fitz.

  It might be too generous, my saying that I found Fitz, describing that person as Fitz. He wasn’t there. Sure, his body was there, and he was shouting “Quentin” and “Sorry” and “Come back” between loud sobs and angry, sharp motions as he dug a shovel into the soft earth and threw it over his shoulder, the clink of the metal against rock echoing through the trees.

  The gravesite was in a grove of what looked to be red maple trees, but there were almost no leaves left on the branches, and the snow would surely wipe out the rest. The fallen leaves were under my feet, their muddy arrangement contorted in the standing water and crystalizing in the now-freezing weather.

  I stood there, breathing hard. My breath plumed out in tiny clouds of white that looked like speech bubbles from a graphic novel or a cartoon just waiting to be filled. But I didn’t know what to fill them with. I didn’t know what to say, to think, to shout, to fear, to hope for. I fell to my knees and dropped my head and felt the blood rush to a point in my forehead and pulse there. I looked up again and felt dizzy, so I leaned against one of the maple trunks and said his name with what energy I had left—the adrenaline at least kept me present.

  “Fitz.”

  Nothing.

  “Fitz.”

  Nothing.

  Just a string of curse words and another shovelful of dirt.

  The snow was coming down in soft sheets, the flakes alighting upon my clothing and the ground and disappearing into the puddles of standing water. The trees began to collect small groups of flakes, and the whiteness started to shine in the dark night, the clouds lit by the moon in some odd outline of shifting shadows.

  “Fitz!” I screamed. “You’re scaring me! Stop!” I threw a rock and hit him in the shoulder.

  He turned and dropped the shovel and wiped the hair from his eyes. He was four feet down, and the sides of the hole he’d dug were crumbling softly, the walls coated by new snow. It was like looking at him through the blur of an old TV screen: nothing more than white noise. He didn’t say a word. He wasn’t home. Nobody was in there but hatred and regret and guilt and anger and the voices fighting to tell Fitz that he’d never overcome his past.

  I knew it wouldn’t help—my staying there and yelling at him or hugging him or helping him dig. He wasn’t there.

  And then I ran. I ran so fast.

  Looking back, I want to say it was because I cared about him so much, and I wanted to get him help as quickly as possible. But, if I’m being honest, and I am, I ran out of fear. He scared me, and I was afraid he might hurt me with that shovel just because he didn’t recognize me. There’s no way he could have known it was me, or else he would have stopped digging and joked with me about poor Yorick and the oddity of the words “exhumed” and “jester,” and then he would have held me and watched the snow fall with me in a quiet moment of peace.

  That’s what should have happened. But it wasn’t meant to be. It couldn’t be helped.

  He began yelling again, but I only heard faint moments of hissing and coughing and moaning. I knocked my shoulder into a tree and stopped fifty yards from the car. Mom was standing there, talking to a cop. The lights from the cop car were spinning, but there were no sirens. Just a quiet turning of color, the red reflecting off the fresh snow sticking to the ground.

  In that moment, it was like the world had been encased in a thin layer of ice that coated everything like some wonderland. Only, it wasn’t a wonderland—the snow was just a mask for the truth happening two hundred yards away and four feet down.

  I waved to Mom and pointed in the direction of Fitz, through the trees where the flakes were accumulating, the ice-rain turning into a completely soft fall of snow.

  “That way. Two hundred yards or so. Maybe three.” I sucked in air, and my ribs hurt because of the pain. I hadn’t run like that in months. “He has a shovel. He’s four feet down near a grave marker. But he’s not there—not really. And he’s angry.”

  Mom hugged me close to her as the cops rushed past. She brushed her hands through my icy hair, the strands clumped together and my lashes starting to freeze. I fell into her embrace and let my head rest on her chest, her heart beating just as fast as mine. Little clouds of breath floated above our heads, and I wondered what the scene would look like from above: trees everywhere, cruiser lights spinning, fresh snow blanketing the landscape, small dots running through the cemetery to an empty grave like a black piano key among the white. That was Fitz. He was in that key, trying to find the sound. Flats. Sharps.

  “Let’s get you back to the hospital,” said Mom.

  Eleven

  I couldn’t sleep. Obviously. I stared out the window as threadbare clouds gave way to a quiet night of stars reflecting off the snow. I thought of the stars and how some crazy, overwhelming gravity pulls on them all the time and how forces like jet engines inside push out on them so they can keep their shape. I wondered about the gravity pushing on me, the forces keeping me in that hospital room and shaping my fate, tying me to a life that felt at times like it had been decided for me. But I couldn’t accept that narrative. That wasn’t my narrative. Impossible. I wouldn’t allow that.

  Mom left the hospital the next morning after taking a call from the officer in charge of Fitz’s case. She told me she’d be back for lunch, that I needed time with the doctors or something first. I kept asking her for more details about Fitz, upset that she would only tell me he was safe and warm and that he’d be okay. What condition was he in? What did he look like? What was he saying? She wouldn’t say. Maybe she didn’t know.

  Nobody opened my door to get me for Group Talk. I waited, but when I heard nothing, I lay back on my bed and thought about Fitz and tried to rewrite the memory. Like, maybe I ran up to him just as he was resting his head on his brother’s gravestone, asking for forgiveness, and he’d waved me to him so he could hug me.

  I also thought about gravestone rubbings I’d done in elementary school, the crayon a small black stub, the rubbing a small remembrance of someone else’s grief and loss.

  Jenkins dropped by with my morning medication and said I’d get breakfast after a while. I guess they were giving me some time to sleep, knowing what I’d been through. I rested against the door and pulled my knees to my chest and let the sun from the window curl around my body.

  I missed being out in the open, where the booming rays could really wash over me and warm me up. Then again, those rays were now hidden behind cloud cover and a deep, gray sky. An hour later, Jenkins came back to take me to breakfast. By then, I was totally consumed by my thoughts and counting the beats in my chest and the tap of my feet against the bed.

  Martha hugged me when she saw me. She had this big grin on her face and jokingly covered her keycard. “Don’t steal from me again, girl, or you’ll see how I deal with thieves.” Then she leaned closer. “I’m so happy you two are okay.”

  “Where is everyone?”

  “The big doc didn’t want you eating with the others. You’re supposed to be alone until you meet with him. Don’t ask me—I just do what I’m told.”

  “Did Leah get in trouble? Is Junior okay?”

  “Everybody is fine, Addie. Junior was off suicide watch the next night. And you know I could never get mad at Leah. She just said she was teasing us and wanted to run, so we put it in an incident report, but left it at that. Told the docs ain’t nothing to look into there—just a sweet girl playing a little game on Martha.”

  “Thanks, Martha,” I said. “I wanted to leave you a note. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

  “I’m stronger than you think. You’re fine. I’m glad you’re back.” She smiled and hugged me. “Eat something. You’re looking skinny, and I don’t want any competition in here. I got the bod, and you know
it.” She flexed, like some bodybuilder posing for the final review. It was pretty great.

  She asked me about the outing, but I kept the details vague and told her I wasn’t sure where Fitz was. That much was true, at least. I’m sure she knew more than I did and was aware I was keeping things hidden.

  After breakfast, she escorted me to Doc’s office.

  Doc was waiting for me. He nodded to the seat across from his desk and opened my folder. There was a new stress ball on the table with a crazy-big grin on it.

  “A little creepy,” I said, holding it up for Doc to see.

  “But it works,” he said, smiling. “No holes. Junior busted another one yesterday and that’s all I could get last-minute.”

  “Can I see him?” I said.

  Doc knew exactly who I was talking about.

  “Not just yet, Addie. Not for a while.”

  “Is he okay? Nobody told me what happened after the graveyard. I’ve been awake all night. C’mon, Doc, you’ve gotta give me something.”

  “You found Fitz, but it wasn’t Fitz,” he said. “Am I right?”

  “Yes,” I said, dropping my chin to my chest.

  “What you two did was reckless. Dangerous.” Doc sighed. “The report says he was almost to the casket. He had a picture of a bird, but the rain had nearly ruined it. He was yelling Quentin’s name, but nothing else was really decipherable, according to the police. He’s lucky he was found. Things could have been so much worse.”

  I immediately thought of Lincoln again, and it made my eyes water. In the midst of all those voices, Fitz was determined to return to Quentin’s grave. Just like Lincoln and Willie. Fitz was trying to say sorry again, to find the mercy and justice and forgiveness he’d been looking for.

  I didn’t know quite how to reconcile that with the image of Fitz I’d seen at the cemetery. But I knew the real Fitz wasn’t completely lost. The real Fitz was in there. His digging at that grave was proof. And maybe I should’ve shared with Doc why I found that amazing, but I was nervous about it for some reason.