by Ann Marie
It had been a while since she had witnessed such concern for a friend. There was that summer, three or four years back, when some pre-college kids were up for vacation. One of them had plowed his car into the side of a concrete wall and didn’t make it. The mood of the waiting room then, had felt much like it did now. She hoped, for all of their sakes, the outcome was not going to be the same.
Jim spotted Bernie, off to the side, by himself. He never especially liked Bernie, but he felt pity for him now. Bernie looked as if someone had just gutted him and left him to die. His feelings for Antonia surprised most people, considering women were not his genre. But Jim understood how, even Bernie could be attracted to Antonia. “Hey,” Jim started, “why don’t we go get a cup of coffee.” Bernie just shook his head. “Josephine is out in the lobby, you could...” Bernie shot Jim a fevered look and Jim simply responded by placing a comforting hand on Bernie’s shoulder. He patted it twice and walked back to the crowd. “What do you say we all go and grab a bite to eat, maybe a drink.” The offer of food had finally grabbed their attention. “We can call from the restaurant and leave the number. If anything comes up, the nurse can call us.”
Jim went back to the lobby to let Josephine know he would be back in an hour. He didn’t expect to be back in an hour, but he didn’t think she was paying him any attention anyway. He left the hospital at seven p.m., taking several of the waiting zombies with him. Within the next hour, the only two who remained waiting, were Bernie and Josephine.
Josephine was still sitting in the lobby when Dr. Kessler arrived for work. He recognized her at once. They had gone to Yale together. Although they majored in completely different areas, they shared a speech course their first year. During the course of his time at Yale, he had seen her outside of school a couple, no, a few times. It was never anything more than a casual passing of time, but he still could feel the moment. He walked over to where she sat and offered his hello, but felt at once that it was not heard. “Josephine?” he spoke as he sat himself on the small table in front of her. Placing his hand upon her knee, he repeated himself, “Josephine,” finally she looked at him. “Is everything OK?”
“I’m cold.” she responded. He removed his suit coat and placed it around her shoulders. He looked into her eyes and sat himself back down.
“Is that better?” he asked, while trying to see if her eyes acknowledged his presence. He was wondered if she may have a slight concussion, simply from seeing the wound on her forehead. “Josephine, have you seen a doctor?”
She nodded her head, up and down.
“Are you waiting for someone? Is there someone I can call for you?”
After a moment of silence, he was about to repeat his question again. Josephine looked at him, Anthony...my head hurts.”
“Anthony what?” Dr. Kessler asked. “Josephine...Anthony what?”
“I think we were arguing.” Josephine babbled mindlessly.
“And this Anthony...what...did Anthony hit you?” Dr. Kessler had no idea who Anthony was. He was assuming Anthony was Josephine’s boyfriend, since he saw no trace of a wedding band.
“No, pushed... Anthony pushed me.”
Josephine was in what seemed to her, a never ending fog. She was trying to remember, just what had happened. ‘Why had Anthony pushed her? No, now that she thought about it, Anthony kind of threw her. Why? Why would Anthony throw her? What were they doing?’ Josephine racked her brain. Dr Kessler was still speaking to her. She heard nothing of what he was saying. He stood up and went to the main desk to inquire about Josephine’s situation. He was told to check inside the emergency room area, since that was where she came from, just a little over two hours earlier.
Dr.Kessler walked through the waiting room and into the emergency room where the on duty nurse filled him in on the evening’s events. He then walked towards the doors that closed off the surgery area from the main room. He lifted a metal pad off the hook which held it and opened it. After making a couple notations, he hung the pad back on its hook. He took a deep breath as he looked at the doors. He glanced back to the desk, where the nurse’s eyes were watching him. Then he pushed open the doors and entered the surgery area.
The scrub room held a window allowing sight into the actual surgery. There was a lot of blood, but there usually was in surgery. After scrubbing in, he entered surgery and asked how everything was going, if his attention was needed or if he could get anything for anyone in the room.
“A season pass to Disney World.” The verbal request was tossed over the table to him, while another wanted a deep dark tan. The simplicity of the humor was lost in the air. You could feel the tension in the room. Somehow it felt as if no one was breathing. Everyone holding their breath until the job was complete. Dr. Kessler walked over to the monitor which recorded the patients vitals and glanced at its print out. Then he glanced at the clip board which held up to the minute actions. He looked at the young woman on the table. She was lying on her stomach, her head turned to the right side of the room. He could see the neat little hole near the center of her back. He glanced once again at the clip board before walking towards the head of the table.
“What’s the good word, Luke?” he asked of the lead surgeon. Luke looked up, if only to let him know he heard, and then back down to the task at hand.
“We’re going to need more blood here Jen, take care of it.” A body left the room immediately. “It’s a pretty rotten thing we have going here, Doc,” the lead surgeon was saying, “four shots, everyone making an entrance, two planning to stay a while, one ending a life as well as any future plans of creating life. Damn shame. Hold this here...steady...one more...alright, close this one and let’s start the next...lucky this one missed the spine. Trouble is it tried to make friendly with the pulmonary trunk. Got Sidney flying up from Long Island to check it out. Seems to be some swelling, he won’t be here for another hour or so, that one may be the bad seed, hard to tell. Guaranteed to be in here a while Doc. Go ahead and make your rounds, I’ll find you if I need you...damn shame.”
Dr. Kessler exited the surgery room and walked back to the nurse’s station. “Page me if anything in that room changes.”
“You got it, Doc.” the nurse replied while posting a note on the phone that read, ‘Page Kessler’. He exited emergency through the waiting room, stopping at the receptionist’s desk to make a notation on the schedule, which was hanging on her door.
He looked up and noticed, for the first time, the gentleman seated in the corner. He glanced over to the receptionist, who in turn responded, “Came in with the gun club. Everyone else went out for drinks. He hasn’t moved. You want him, he’s all yours.”
He smiled smartly at her and walked over to Bernie. He sat himself, again, on the edge of the magazine table, in front of Bernie. “I am Dr. Kessler. You are?” Bernie came out of his trance and started to cry.
Dr.Kessler looked back to the receptionist, hoping for some sort of life preserver to be tossed his way. She only looked back with a sarcastic smile and waved her hands, signaling she had nothing to do with it.
“Do you know the woman who was shot?” Dr. Kessler decided the head on approach would be best. He had always detested the mental part of his line of work. While awaiting some sort of response, he dropped his head into his left hand and rubbed his forehead. He hoped the rest of his shift didn’t mirror his last hour.
Bernie wiped his nose on the hem of his shirt. He looked pleadingly at Dr. Kessler. “Is she OK? Can I see her?”
“She’s still in surgery but holding her own, it will be a while before anyone can see her. You should go home and wash up. Get some rest. You would do her a better service if she didn’t see you in this shape.”
Bernie crunched his brows. “Holding her own, what...what exactly does that mean?”
“It means she is a strong woman and seems to be in good physical cond...”
“Strong woman, yes, Antonia is strong and in the best physical shape. She works out every day. You would be
hard pressed to find any fat on that girl. I see...holding her own. She was pretty shot up huh?”
“Were you there when it happened?” Dr. Kessler tried to move the conversation.
“Everyone was there.” Bernie said as he replayed the scene in his mind. “Everyone but Billy.”
“And Billy is who?”
“Billy is supposed to be Josephine’s bodyguard. Billy was supposed to be on duty. That’s what he gets paid to do. Protect Josephine, how hard can that be?” He looks up at the doctor and starts to cry again.
“Josephine? Josephine Ferrero?”
“Do you know of any other?” Bernie rolls his eyes.
“Josephine and this Antonia, were they fighting?”
“They were having some sort of argument. Seemed a bit one sided to me, can’t see how you could call it a fight.” Bernie wiped his nose again.
“When was it that Antonia pushed Josephine?”
Bernie glanced at the wall and shook his head. “Josephine, she slapped her.”
“Antonia slapped Josephine?”
“Lord no, never. Antonia would never, not even to save her own life. “Josephine slapped her, you know, Antonia. Antonia started to walk away from her to find that damn Billy and Josephine slapped her right across the face. Bitch.”
Dr. Kessler was now totally confused. He started to stand, and was going to excuse himself and get on with his rounds when Bernie caught his attention.
“She saved her life you know.” Bernie added. “She saw the man with the gun. She saw him and she got Josephine out of the way. Josephine, she...you know she didn’t even look at Antonia, she just pushed her aside, just pushed her aside like a piece of furniture that had fallen on her. And then she started complaining about her head. Antonia made her hit her head and now she was going to need stitches and...stitches...she was complaining about stitches... Antonia was bleeding to death... right next to her...stitches...” Bernie started to cry again. Dr. Kessler decided it was time he started his rounds. He offered a polite good bye and ducked out of the room, into the hospital.
He noticed Josephine, still sitting in the lobby but decided not to stop. He had work to do, down here on earth, in the real world. He wanted to remove himself from the soap opera that he accidentally wandered into this evening.
Josephine heard the elevator bell, signaling it was rising. It brought her back from the fog. She looked down at her hands and saw the cup still full of coffee, but now cold. She placed the cup on the table and stood to stretch her legs. ‘How long had she been here?’ There was a clock directly over the registration table. Just past nine p.m. Over three hours. ‘Why was she still here?’ She remembered she was supposed to wait for someone. Who, she couldn’t remember. Her head was starting to hurt again. She saw a sign for the restrooms across the room and headed over to it. After using the facilities she came back into the lobby where she noticed a large cross hanging from the wall, directly above where she had been sitting just minutes ago. The figure on the cross seemed to be staring right at her. To her right was a small sofa. She went to it and laid down. Pulling her legs up, so that she was in almost a fetal position, Josephine looked back at the cross again.
Still the figure watched her, accusing her. In her mind’s eye, Josephine saw flashes. Flashes of memories she had long since forgotten. The flashes started with a large cross, much like the one she was looking at in the lobby. Flash, a cane pole. Flash, the cross. Flash, a broken statue. Back and forth, these flashes kept coming, then from somewhere in the distance, a voice, a stern, angry voice and the sound of a crack, the sound of the cane pole hitting something. Josephine squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could, trying to block all the intrusions. A sharp searing pain shot across her temples, and once again she was thrust into the fog.
Chapter 4
Josephine found it difficult adjusting to the strictness of St. Agnes. She was not used to rules and regulations. The single fact that there was no television anywhere on the campus baffled her. She spent weeks searching for one. Antonia, on the other hand, was always reading, so having nothing else to do didn’t bother her at all. Josephine was constantly bored and found the fact that her friend did not share her boredom, aggravated her to no end. So she started to entertain herself.
She took things from the other girl’s rooms and hid them throughout the buildings, just for fun. After about a month the game got old, for Josephine as well as everyone involved. Antonia, being the poor girl who never owned anything, was repeatedly blamed and punished for the disappearances. She was banned from interacting with anyone for a week. She had to eat alone and study alone. She was not permitted to go to classes and had to sit in the maintenance building while she did her school work. She also had to sleep in the infirmary.
When Josephine asked her why she didn’t deny taking anything, Antonia would simply say that she knew she did not do it and that was all that mattered to her. But Josephine didn’t like being without Antonia. She grew angry and thought that Antonia took the punishment, just to hurt her.
Sister Katherine seemed to have a bitter taste in her mouth for Antonia. She was harder on Antonia than she was with any other child. Everyone saw the dislike. Everyone it seemed, but Antonia. She never seemed to notice. She never seemed to care.
Sister Katherine would randomly pick a girl and make her stand and recite passages from the bible. If the girl did not know the passage, word for word, Sister Katherine would make her write it one hundred times. Once she had Antonia in her sights, she never asked anyone else. But Antonia never slipped up. She had read the bible, front to back. It was what she did. She read. She read everything. So on the day that Sister Katherine requested she recite a specific passage, in Latin, Antonia stunned the whole class by obeying perfectly. Sister Ursula sat off in the corner of the room, smiling proudly to herself. Sister Katherine was furious. She accused Antonia of trying to humiliate her in front of the class. For punishment she was made to kneel on a cane pole, in the front of the class, for the remainder of the school day.
Together, Josephine’s antics and Sister Katherine’s hostility made daily life a puzzle for Antonia. She never knew what each new day would hold for her. But by the time the girls had completed their first year, Sister Ursula had decided to put an end to all of it.
One rainy day, just after lunch, the girls were all sent to their rooms to study. Josephine was not in the mind to study. She wanted to be outside. The rain always brought the frogs. Josephine loved to chase frogs. She was bouncing up and down on her bed, watching Antonia read. Josephine stopped bouncing. She picked up one of her books and threw it at Antonia, hitting the girl in the shoulder.
“What did you do that for?”
“I don’t know, just felt like it I guess.” Antonia went back to reading, as if nothing had ever happened. Josephine started bouncing once again and when she had her dresser in her sight, she stopped. An idea came to her. She pulled out the drawers of her dresser and started to climb up to the top.
Antonia looked up from her book. “What are you doing?” she asked.
Josephine ignored her as she made it to the top and stood on the dresser, facing her bed. Josephine jumped. With her arms out stretched, she played like she was flying. She landed safely on her bed.
Antonia was uncomfortable with this new activity
“You are going to get hurt Joe, stop it.”
“You are going to get hurt Joe, waa waa waa.” Josephine repeated sarcastically. “What do you know about getting hurt?” Josephine kept talking as she climbed back up the dresser. “Can’t get hurt reading a book, now can ya?” And off through the air she went again. Antonia put her book down and looked at her friend. “I know what it feels like to get hurt Joe, and you are going to get hurt. Please stop it.”
“Make me, if you are so worried about my getting hurt. Make me stop. I dare you.”
Antonia was concerned, she knew Joe was going to get hurt. She knew it with every fiber of her being but she didn’t know how to
stop her. She got up off of her bed and walked over to Joe’s dresser.
“Please, Joe, come down from there. Please.” Antonia was looking up at Josephine. Pleading with her eyes as much as her words.
“Please, Joe. Please.” Josephine repeated again, sarcastically.
Josephine brought her hands to her face, in a mock show of fear. Then she quivered her knees and threw her arms out to the sides, in a display of tightrope walking. “Oh no,” she laughed, “oh, no Antonia, I’m gonna fall. Help me, Antonia, help me please...” but as she said her last line, the statue that claimed ownership of the top of the dresser started to rock.
Josephine tried to grab it before it went crashing to the floor. The statue escaped her grasp and fell to its doom, with Josephine following. She landed with a thud and a crack, which Antonia was sure, came from Josephine’s arm. What followed was perhaps the single worst memory Josephine had from St. Agnes. She had not thought of it since, pushing it as far back in the recesses of her mind as she was able.
Sister Katherine had been called to the hall, when the noise from Josephine’s flying had disturbed the girls studying in the room next to them. She was at the door a few moments after Josephine’s fall. Antonia had no time to back away from the situation. Sister read what she had wanted to into the accident. In her eyes, Antonia was to blame. She had purposely and maliciously destroyed school property. She intentionally demolished a ‘Blessed Statue’. She caused physical injury to a fellow student. Josephine’s arm was definitely broken. There were two older girls, standing in the doorway, when Sister Katherine exited the room, practically dragging Antonia by the arm.