Second Chances

by P. D. Cacek

  He hoped.

  “All right. But there will be weekly mental health checks and if there’s evidence that Jessie’s condition has gotten worse—”

  “It won’t,” Mrs. Steinar said. “I promise it won’t.”

  Barney rapped his knuckles against Jessie’s file and nodded to the doctors. They nodded back, looking relieved.

  “Fine. We’ll get Jessie signed out and you can take him home.”

  Mrs. Steinar was all smiles as she stood up. Mr. Steinar just stood up and walked to the door.

  “I’ll go get the car.”

  The room emptied out quickly as the doctors followed Mr. Steinar out. Barney and Mrs. Steinar stood up together, but neither of them moved away from the conference table.

  “You do understand that Jessie, like your son, will never be cured.”

  She nodded. “Can I ask you something, Dr. Ellison? My son was a genius, and sometimes genius goes with madness, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ve read some reports to that effect, yes.”

  “So, do you think Jessie’s a genius too?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Steinar. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  * * *

  Jessie held on to the sink with both hands as he leaned closer to the mirror. When he turned left, it turned right. When he turned right, it turned left.

  Shifting the weight to his left leg as a counterbalance – the pills really did a number on his equilibrium, but at least they got the dose right…the first time he’d passed out – Jessie lifted his right hand and waved.

  The boy in the mirror waved back with his left.

  It reminded him of the ‘mirror game’ a girl named Jessie once played with her sister, Abbie. They used to play for hours, especially on snow days. They would sit cross-legged, directly opposite each other, and mirror each other’s moves. They’d gotten so good that Abbie once suggested they do a ‘Me and My Shadow’ routine for their middle school talent show, with her as the lead and Jessie as the shadow, but just the thought of getting up in front of people had made Jessie vomit.

  But that was then and this is now and times, they did change.

  Along with other things.

  The boy in the mirror was still too thin, despite all the water ices he sucked down, but at least his face had lost the sunburned and peeling patchwork-quilt look. He needed a haircut and shave…a process, thank God, that only needed to be performed a few times a week – so far – and seemed more arduous than when he…then she…had to contend with daily leg shaving.

  But it wasn’t a bad face. The boy’s mouth was too wide and he had a slight overbite, but his eyebrows were dark and didn’t meet in the middle and matched the color of the thick lashes that framed Jessie’s green eyes.

  Once upon a time Jessie would have died to have lashes like that.

  Who knew that had been a real option?

  The boy stuck out his tongue.

  Jessie turned away and got three, maybe four steps before it woke up.

  There were some things about being transgender that hadn’t been covered in any of the LGBTQ literature or PBS specials and one thing in particular.

  IT.

  All Jessie had to do was move wrong or get dressed or wash in the shower or just wake up in the morning and there IT would be, standing at full attention. Jessie had taken Sex Ed (a.k.a. Our Changing Bodies in middle school and Human Reproduction as a freshman) classes and, coming to terms with her own sexual identity early on, knew how and why IT worked. Then, of course, it had been mostly theoretical; now it was a fact.

  A hard reality of life was the way Lurch, his 6’7” nurse and personal guide to all things masculine, put it after coming in one day to ask if Jessie needed any more help ‘figuring things out’.

  This had come right after the man had told Jessie how to pee standing up.

  The process had been described – not shown – with as much delicacy, thought, attention to detail and consideration of the circumstances as was possible. It was simple, once he got the hang of it…hah, hah…and Jessie knew it would be. Once he decided to do it. Until then he peed sitting down.

  Jessie closed his eyes and counted to ten, waiting for the morning meds to do more than just make him look like a staggering drunk. When they did, IT would give up and curl up inside its tighty-whitey cave like a slumbering naked mole rat.

  Divine retribution was not over yet.

  Bracing himself in the bathroom doorway, Jessie leaned forward and glared down at the crotch of his pajama bottoms.

  Dr. Ellison didn’t know what he was talking about. This was purgatory.

  * * *

  Arvada, Colorado

  It was as if he’d lost both his daughters.

  Since Jessica’s funeral Abigail had been in a constant daze, barely speaking, her eyes never quite focusing on those rare occasions when they actually met his.

  Jess didn’t know what to do.

  He’d helped so many others he should have been able to help his own child. The words of comfort and succor and platitudes were waiting on his lips. He could repeat them without thought, could tell her he understood what she was going through and remind her that although her sister was gone, Jessica’s soul was in paradise and her body safe and peaceful in its grave.

  But she seemed beyond his words and it frightened him.

  That’s why, when Jess first came out of his office and heard music coming from upstairs, he thanked God. The house had been too quiet since the funeral and it’d seemed unnatural. There’d been silence only once before, after their mother’s passing, and it made it worse, made the loss all the more real.

  Hearing the music gave him such hope that he tiptoed up the stairs as quietly as he could, afraid to break the spell. At first he thought she was praying, her sweet voice whispering along the hall, until he reached her door and looked in.

  And even then, for a moment, he could lie to himself. She was sitting on the unmade bed in her new room, eyes closed, hands clasped, still in her nightgown, the morning sun washing over her. If she’d opened her eyes she would have seen him standing there, listening.

  Abigail wasn’t praying.

  “Jessie? Jessie, please. Jessie? Please, Jessie. I know you can hear me. Please, Jessie. Answer me. I know what happened. I know and it’s okay. Please, Jessie, just talk to me.”

  He backed away, intending to leave without her knowing he’d been there, but his foot stepped down onto a loose board and she turned at the creak, blinking as if she’d just woken up. Jess felt his heart shudder.

  The corners of her mouth twitched. “Oh, hi Dad.”

  “Hi. How are you doing, Abigail?”

  “Okay. You okay?”

  He nodded. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Slept in.”

  She looked down at her clasped hands. “Yeah.”

  “I took my shower early, so there’s plenty of hot water.”

  “Okay.”

  “I thought I…. How about I make us some breakfast or brunch? I know, how about French toast with peanut butter. That was always your favorite, right?”

  Her eyes blinked. “No, I like Nutella.”

  Peanut butter on French toast was Jessica’s favorite. “Okay, Nutella it is. Why don’t you grab a shower and get dressed and I’ll get things started?”

  “Okay.”

  Jess started to walk away again, and stopped.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  “We can talk, if you like.”

  “I know.”

  “Please, let me help.”

  “It’s okay, Dad. I’m fine.”

  Jess heard the bathroom door close when he was halfway down the stairs, but didn’t let himself cry until he heard the water running thr
ough the pipes.

  “Please God, how can I help her?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Haverford, Pennsylvania

  Jessie sat on the narrow window ledge and looked down into the courtyard. Two nurses in maroon scrubs were sitting at one of the round patio tables near the edge of the walking path drinking coffee and talking. Jessie had ‘done the walk’ twice a day since ‘graduating’ from the walker. At first it had been a slow geriatric shuffle but it’d only taken him a couple of days to get used to the longer stride length and bigger feet (size 12 M).

  The first time he’d completed the walk unassisted, with Lurch keeping a respectable five feet behind, Jessie came back to find the patio filled with cheering doctors and nurses.

  Yay, Jessie!

  It was a little more difficult now, with the medication they gave him, but they said he was still making progress and the medication did help.

  It helped him not care that he’d died and come back as an Imposter living inside an animated corpse.

  No, not true. He cared – really, really, really – but the little orange pills, twice a day with food, helped. A lot. Besides keeping the IT from the Tighty-Whities under control, it made his head feel like it was filled with a soft, thick cloud that made everything soft and smooth and took away all the sharp edges. If it weren’t for those pills he would have probably ended up straitjacketed in a psych ward somewhere instead of going to live with his body’s parents.

  Ain’t modern medicine wonderful?

  “You rang?”

  He hadn’t, but that was just part of the shtick. Lurch’s real name was Jonas, but, he’d told Jessie, when you were the tallest kid in your class since kindergarten and taller than most of your teachers since fourth grade what else would they call you?

  “It was either Lurch or Herman, as in Munster.” He’d laughed when he said it. “Kids can be mean, but they’re only kids. Right?”

  Yeah, kids could be mean.

  “So what’s the story, morning glory?”

  Without thinking Jessie scratched the stubble he’d missed on his right cheek. “You came in, you tell me.”

  The big man rattled the small white paper cup in his hand. “Medication time, gentlemen, medication time.”

  Jessie still didn’t understand the joke, but Lurch always laughed when he said it. Jessie liked the man’s laugh; it was big and booming and echoed off the walls. And it made him a little jealous too. He’d never be able to laugh like that. When the body’s original owner had tried to off himself, he’d messed up his neck and vocal cords, or something; Jessie forgot all the gory details, but it also meant he’d never hear his real voice again, the one he remembered.

  But maybe that was okay. If he opened his mouth and Jessica Faith’s voice came out then everyone would know what he was.

  Oh God.

  The panic attack hit Jessie like a tidal wave, racing upward from the pit of his stomach. If it reached his throat, ruined or not, he would scream and keep screaming because this wasn’t right…this wasn’t supposed to have happened. He’d died. He was supposed to be dead and buried under a headstone that read Jessica Faith, one body, one soul, but he was still alive…she was still alive and trapped and….

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Jessie blinked at the huge hands in front of him, one delicately holding the small pill cup, the other holding a slightly larger disposable cup from the bathroom.

  “What? No. No, I’m not okay. Can’t you see that?”

  The small white cup suddenly got closer. “Okay, okay, just breathe. You’ve got this, okay? Just relax. Here, take this. They’ll help. Come on, it’s just panic, nothing’s wrong, you’re okay. Here, let me help you hold the cups, okay? You’re a little shaky, but that’ll pass. You’re okay.”

  Jessie swallowed the pill and managed to get most of the water into his mouth.

  Lurch took the cups and crushed them together in one palm as he kneeled in front of Jessie and began counting. “One, two, three, breathe, Jessie, nice and slow, that’s it, four, five….”

  The pills started working when he reached fifteen. Lurch was a good guy.

  “Better?”

  Jessie took another deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  Lurch elbowed Jessie as he stood up. Then he walked back into the bathroom to toss the cups. By the time he came back the cloud behind Jessie’s eyes had gotten thicker and the panic was gone.

  He yawned.

  “Hey, try to take the excitement down a notch, okay?”

  Jessie gave him a thumbs-up.

  “So, you ready to blow this Popsicle stand?”

  Jessie thought about saying something snarky like “I have a choice?” but it suddenly seemed like too much effort, so he just nodded.

  “Well, why don’t you just sit there and watch me work?”

  Jessie did just that; he sat and watched the big man lift the green suitcase that had arrived that morning onto the bed and open it.

  “Nice duds,” he said, taking out a pale blue polo shirt and tan chinos and laying them on the bed. “You’ll be the beau of the ball.”

  “Merci.”

  Lurch cocked his head. “You speak French?”

  “No. And I suck at conjugating.”

  “Well, you’re still young enough to learn if you want.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  The big man tossed a sparkling white pair of jockey briefs and added matching white tube socks. “I ever tell you about my niece?”

  Jessie couldn’t remember, sometimes the cloud in his head made things fuzzy, so he shook his head.

  “Bonnie was seven when she choked to death on a piece of hot dog at a backyard barbecue, but no one noticed. She was sitting in her playhouse, out of sight, but hey, she was seven, not a baby, so we thought…you know. She wasn’t breathing when we found her. I did CPR. I’m trained to help people, but it was too late.

  “When the ambulance showed up and they got a pulse, man, we thought it was a miracle. And in a way it is. The Traveler’s name is Asoka, she’s fourteen years old and from Ajmer-Merwara in India. As far as anyone can tell, she died in the eighteenth century when she threw herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. He was forty-six. Okay, then—”

  Lurch clapped his hands and it sounded like a cherry bomb had gone off.

  “Can you handle getting dressed by yourself or do you need some help?”

  Jessie stood up.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘thanks, Lurch, but I can handle it myself’. Okay, I’ll be back in fifteen with your transportation. I know, you can walk, but it’s hospital policy.” The big man started toward the door, snapped his fingers then walked back to the closet where he pulled out a pair of the nerdiest brown loafers Jessie had ever seen. “Tress chick, kiddo.”

  Jessie gave him back his own Lurchy growl.

  “Nice one,” he said and set the shoes down next to the bed before pulling the privacy curtain closed behind him. “Ah’ll be bach.”

  “That’s the Terminator,” Jessie said and heard a deep, gravely sigh.

  “Everyone’s a critic. Get dressed.”

  * * *

  “Allan, will you please sit down? And for God’s sake stop drinking that coffee.”

  He looked at her over the rim of the paper cup as he took another long swallow. Eva sighed and went back to thumbing through a magazine she remembered her mother getting for the recipes and ‘helpful life hints’. So far she hadn’t found anything helpful in it, but at least she appeared to be doing something useful. Unlike her husband.

  From the moment they’d been escorted into the private waiting room, he’d done nothing but pace back and forth, pausing only long enough to refill his cup from the carafe on the hospitality table.

  Eva looked up again when he stopped for another refill. Dear God, he�
�ll be up all night.

  “Seriously, Allan?”

  “I don’t know how you can just sit there reading.” He finished pouring and put down the carafe. “Aren’t you the least bit nervous?”

  Eva closed the magazine. “Why would I be nervous?”

  “Why?” His eyes bulged slightly when he looked at her. Definitely too much caffeine. “We’re bringing a complete stranger into our home.”

  “Jessie’s not a stranger, how can you say that?”

  Her husband said something under his breath and began pacing again. It had to be the caffeine. They’d met with Jessie, supervised, of course, a dozen times during their Caregiver Orientation course, spoken with him and told him about themselves but, as instructed, refrained from asking personal information of him. He’d tell them about his past life when and if he felt like it and that suited Eva. It wouldn’t matter once Curtis came back.

  Jessie was just a placeholder, a significant zero in the decimal representation of a number.

  She remembered the first time Curtis called her that. He’d just turned seven. Genius.

  Opening the magazine, Eva found an article on ‘What Pets Really Think’ and wished her husband would stop pacing. It was really getting on her nerves.

  * * *

  Arvada, Colorado

  Jess’s knees were aching and he could feel the muscles in his back and shoulders begin to tremble under the strain, but he clenched his clasped hands tighter together and pulled them into his stomach. Prayer was not supposed to be an easy thing and he knew his pain only served to strengthen the appeal.

  He’d been kneeling on the hard marble slab in front of the altar for two hours, praying for strength and forgiveness the same way he had every day since Jessica’s funeral. It was where her coffin had lain and the memory added to the pain.

  But his pain meant nothing. He deserved it.

  “What can I do? Dear God, please help me find a way. Abigail is all I have left but she’s so lost I can’t find her. Please, she is your child as much as she is mine and she needs your help. In your glory, you created them and we were blessed and blessed again when you called Jessica home. Amen. And we know she is safe within your love and at peace, the one soul you gave her safe within your eternal care. I know Jessica is at peace, but I’m worried about Abigail. She’s never been alone before, not truly alone, but now she is and Jessica’s death has…confused her.”