When all the presents were torn open and the magical room had suddenly turned into a war zone of ribbons and tissue paper, we slowly moved into the kitchen, where my dad made us all omelets and hash browns while Mom poured us steaming hot chocolate with whipped cream on top. When breakfast was over and the house was quiet, I knew I only had an hour or so before my grandparents and everyone else in our family showed up. Dad was sitting at the kitchen counter with Mom as they tried to figure out the new laptop computer he had given her. And Bridget was in the living room taking the tags off all of her new clothes. This was my one chance to give Jess his present. I quietly crept to the front closet, grabbed my coat, hat, and mittens, and snuck out of the house without being seen. I ran lightly across our snowcovered front yard toward Jess's house, toting a brown package in my left hand. It was still snowing, so I held my hand up in front of my face to shield the flurries from getting into my eyes. The snow was coming down hard now, and it was impossible to see more than two feet in front of me. There was a shocking difference between the cold, brisk morning air and the thrilling warmth that I had just left.
I watched the ground in front of me as I trudged through the cold wetness, making sure to not trip on the curb that led me into the street and the next curb that led me to Jess's front yard. As I worked my way across the snow in front of Jess's house, a sharp, flashing red light just to my left caught my eye. I stopped walking as I squinted in the direction of the light. A strong gust of wind blew, and a million tiny snowflakes floated away in a miniature cyclone across the snow, clearing my view of the red light for an instant. In that moment, I saw a black-and-white police car-the flashing red lights silently blaring on top of it as though someone had hit the mute button. The police car was parked in Jess's driveway. The motor was running, but it didn't look like anyone was inside the car. I stood frozen, piecing together the sight before me when I heard a screen door slam shut in front of me. Through the blustering snow I could make out the image of a large male police officer standing just outside of the screen door, looking down at something in his hand. He didn't seem to have noticed me standing twenty feet away from him. I was still squinting at him through the snow when he lifted his gaze toward me.
"May I help you?"
His voice was grim and the expression on his face was serious. My stomach wrenched in pain.
"I-I'm looking for Jess. Is he here?"
The police officer took a deep breath and lowered his hands to his sides. "Are you related to the family that lives here, young lady?"
I motioned toward my house without losing eye contact with the police officer. "No. I live across the street. I have a present for Jess." I squeezed the package and wondered if the man I was talking to even knew who Jess was. I tucked the package away in my coat.
"Well, the boy's not here," he spoke matter-of-factly and looked back down at his clipboard, which he was now resting on his large belly.
"Where is he?" My voice sounded loud. I sensed that the police officer would have preferred that I just left.
He didn't look up. "Sorry, ma'am, but I can't give you any details. Not unless you're family."
My heart was racing, and an uninvited pressure started pulsating against my neck. "Is he hurt?" My voice choked on the words.
The officer lowered his hands and the object he had been examining once again and then looked around himself as though making sure that we were alone. He stepped off the porch toward me into the falling snow and then stopped when he was a foot or so in front of me. He spoke this time in a much lower tone.
"Your friend is all right, but his mother is hurt. They're both at Mountain Lakes Medical Center." He stood up a little straighter and checked his surroundings once more. He looked at me with piercing but kind eyes. I nodded my head and turned toward my house. I ran as fast as I could over the same footprints I had made just moments ago. This time, however, I made only half the amount of prints as I leaped toward my front door.
Forty minutes later Mom and l walked through the revolving doors into the main lobby of Mountain Lakes Medical Center. The roads were slick, so we had to drive slower than usual. It was the longest car ride of my life. I eagerly stepped to the front desk and asked the receptionist where we could find Caris Tyler. The receptionist was older-in her fifties maybeand she looked tired and not happy to be working on Christmas morning. She looked at me wryly as though a fifteen-year-old girl in a hat, scarf, and mittens had no business talking to her.
Mom assessed the situation and stepped toward the desk. "Yes, we're looking for our friend Caris Tyler. She was brought in this morning-we believe."
The receptionist showed no more kindness toward Mom than she did to me. "What was she brought in for?"
"We're not sure," Mom answered sheepishly. She remained calm and friendly despite the receptionist's disrespectful demeanor.
"Is she having a baby? Or surgery? Tonsils? Gall bladder? Hysterectomy? This is a big hospital, and we have a lot going on in here."
"No, she's not here for surgery. We're not sure what happened, but the police were at her house this morning, so there could have been some sort of an emergency." I could tell Mom was growing impatient, but she forced herself to maintain a calm voice. "Do you have any way of telling us where someone might be by just knowing their name?"
The receptionist cleared her throat and defiantly turned toward the computer in front of her. It was just our luck to have to deal with someone so rude on Christmas morning. I swear that lady must have looked at that computer for five minutes before saying another word. She finally cleared her throat again, and without looking up from the screen, she said, "Tyler, Caris." She pronounced it wrong. She pronounced the first part of her name like a car that you drive. "Looks like she's in the ICU on the third floor."
I didn't know what the ICU was, but I could feel Mom tense up beside me. Her voice was shaking but also demanding as she asked, "Where is the nearest elevator?"
The receptionist-now showing the slightest glimmer of sensitivity-pointed down the hallway to our left. Mom quietly thanked her between her gritted teeth and grabbed my hand hard as she led me toward the direction that we were told to go. When the elevator doors opened on the third floor, a big white sign appeared in front of us with the letters ICU. It didn't take me long to see the words printed just under the letters-Intensive Care Unit.
Intensive care? Why was Jess's mom here? The nurse that was stationed at the ICU desk was much kinder than the woman in the front lobby. She directed us toward Caris's room, and my breath got lost in my stomach as we approached the door.
Mom looked down at me with weary eyes. "Gemma, why don't you wait out here? I'll take a look and make sure everything is okay, and then I'll come get you, okay?"
I was relieved. I wasn't ready to find out what was behind the closed door. The kind nurse had overheard our conversation and invited me to sit on a chair next to her desk while I waited. There weren't a lot of visitor chairs in the halls in the ICU. I guessed that was because there weren't a lot of visitors allowed in the ICU. The halls were empty, except for another nurse that walked from door to door. I guessed that she was checking monitors and changing catheters, but I couldn't see as the doors shut behind her each time she went in. The nurse at the desk offered me orange juice, but I was too sick to drink anything. I thought about Jess. I wondered if he was behind the same closed door that Mom went into. I sat on the chair for nearly ten minutes before she came back out into the hallway. I looked up at her eagerly, expecting her to wave me over to go into the room. My curiosity and concern were outweighing my nervousness by now, and I so badly wanted to see Jess and know that Caris was going to be all right. Mom's face was pale as she walked toward me. She stooped on the ground next to me and rested her hand on my knee. She looked intensely at the arms of the chair I was sitting on, and I knew she was searching for the words to say.
"Mom?" I broke the silence and my voice cracked. "Is Caris okay?"
Mom's lips pursed together as
tears dripped out of her eyes. She shook her head once, and then choked out the words, "She's not doing very well, sweetheart. She's hurt very badly."
"But she's going to be okay?"
Mom just kept right on staring at the arms of the chair.
"Mom? Is she going to be okay?"
"They hope so. That's all they can say right now. She's not conscious.
"What happened to her?"
Mom looked into my eyes for the first time since she came out of the room, and I saw anger blazing from them. She whispered the answer, "Jess's father showed up at their house at four o'clock this morning-intoxicated. He tried taking the girls." She paused for a moment then looked back down again. "I knew they were having some custody issues lately over the holidays and such. Even Caris didn't think he would go this far with it. But there are no limits with Kevin when alcohol is involved." I knew that more than she probably knew I did.
"Where are Viv and Maggie? Are they okay?"
"Yes, they're fine. They're at their grandmother's house."
Vivian and Maggie were Jess's little sisters. They were just seven and ten and much too young to have to experience something like this on Christmas morning. But then again anyone was too young to have to experience this on Christmas morning, or any other morning for that matter. I thought of Vivian and Maggie at Caris's mother's house. She was too old to walk let alone give them the happy Christmas they deserved.
"Is Jess here?"
She nodded.
"I don't have to go in there. He probably wants to be alone with his mom."
"He asked if you were here." She squeezed my hand. "He wants you in there with him. He needs you now more than ever." She stood up and wiped at her eyes. "I'll stay out here. The nurse doesn't want too many people in the room at a time."
I got up from the chair and walked easily toward the door. Knowing that Jess was in there, wanting me to be in there with him, made entering the room a simpler task. But once I was in the room, a whole new reality hit me in the face. I saw Jess sitting next to the one bed in the room, hunched over a bruised and broken body that resembled Caris Tyler. Jess looked up at me when I stepped toward the bed. He smiled faintly, but the smile instantly faded to a look of pain and concern as he looked from me back to his mother. I walked around to the same side of the bed as Jess. As I got closer to him, I realized that he had not left the fight with his dad unscathed. Dried blood was stuck to his knuckles and upper lip. The skin around his eyes and cheekbones was red and almost purple. He was still wearing his pajamas-navy blue sweatpants and a gray hooded sweatshirt-that were covered in blood stains. Probably some of his own blood, and I guessed a lot of his mom's as well-I hoped some of it was his dad's. I had no idea what to say to him. There were no words that could come out of my mouth at that moment that wouldn't sound naive, insensitive, and apathetic. I sat in the chair next to him and leaned in so closely that I could feel the heat radiating off his back as he hovered over his mother, holding her hand and gently caressing her brow. I had no words, so I simply put my hand on his arm. It was the only way I knew how to tell him that I was there for him. He placed his scarred hand on top of mine. He squeezed it so hard, I thought our two hands might mold together like clay. His breathing became heavy, and then for the first time in my life I saw Jess cry.
When the nurse came into the room, Jess straightened up and wiped his tears on the back of his sleeve. It was the same nurse that I had seen going door to door, and now that I saw her up close I noticed that she was young and pretty looking. Without saying a word, she walked around Caris's bed toward the monitors that were beeping in the corner. She looked really young. She had to still be in high school. I figured that she was probably not a real nurse but one of those volunteers that come in on Christmas to help out. I caught her stealing a glance at Jess when he wasn't looking. From the corner of my eye I saw her look down at our hands then back again at the monitors. She fiddled around with some of the tubes and wrote something down on a clipboard. She quietly asked Jess if he needed anything and then slipped out the door as elegantly as she had entered. When the door shut behind her, Jess spoke the first words I had heard from him since I got there.
"You shouldn't be in a hospital on Christmas morning. You should be home with your family, opening presents, and eating your dad's omelets."
"We've already done all that," I said quietly. "It's not Christmas morning anymore; it's almost two o'clock in the afternoon." I sighed. On a normal Christmas day at two o'clock in the afternoon, I would be sitting at our large dining room table eating ham and cheesy potatoes and Mom's special Christmas salad. I would be surrounded by my twelve cousins and plotting out the best hills to go sledding down after dinner. But this Christmas, I was in Jess's world. I figured this was his first Christmas spent in the hospital too, but the feeling of the day was not new to him. And now I was on the front row seat, seeing everything up close. Jess's hand was still resting on mine, and I silently examined the crusted blood on his knuckles. I wasn't sure if I wanted to know, but I still asked, "Mom said your dad came over in the middle of the night drunk?" I said it with a questioning tone, hoping that he would continue the rest of the story. But he sat silently, staring at his mother's face.
"Sorry," I muttered awkwardly. "You don't have to tell me about it if you don't want to."
He didn't take his eyes off his mother. "I haven't talked about it since it happened. Viv had to tell the police everything because I couldn't." His voice broke, and I thought he was going to cry again, but he didn't. He took a deep sigh and continued, "It was horrible, Gem. I'm afraid the thought of it will haunt me for the rest of my life. I mean, I know he's always had issues, but he's my dad, you know? And to walk in and see your dad doing such terrible things to your mom-to someone who was his wife for eighteen years ... "
Eighteen years. That was longer than I had been alive. It occurred to me then that while I had only seen Jess's father a couple times, Jess had seen him every morning when he woke up and every night when he went to sleep. He had eaten dinner at the same table as him for the past sixteen years of his life. Kevin didn't drink all the time, so there were probably times when he was a semi-normal father. He was the one holding the video camera on Christmas morning. The one who stayed up until midnight the night before putting together Viv and Maggie's doll house so that it would be perfect when they saw it the next morning. He was Jess's dad and Caris's husband for eighteen years. He loved them once-maybe he still did-and Jess loved him-maybe he still did. I couldn't begin to imagine what Jess had gone through at those early hours of the morning when I was tucked safely in my warm house-my parents asleep in their bed two doors down the hall.
Jess breathed deeply and let out a long puff of air. Still clenching my hand in his, he removed it from his arm and held it in his lap as he leaned back in his chair, slumping like a tired teenager in a first-period geometry class. He closed his eyes for probably the first time since four o'clock that morning.
"I heard something in the middle of the night, some kind of scratching sound. I thought I should go check it out, but I was so tired. The neighbor's cat comes and scratches on our back door so much; I just figured that was what the sound was, and I fell back asleep." He ran the hand that wasn't holding mine through his hair. He looked so tired. "I have no idea how much time passed before I woke up again to Maggie's screaming. I ran down the hall to their room and saw my dad holding Viv tightly around her shoulders while covering her mouth. Maggie was sitting on the bed crying and begging him to let go of her. I've never seen her so scared. I've never seen any of us so scared." Jess's eyes were open now, and he was gazing up into nothingness. It was as though the whole experience was being projected onto the white ceiling and Jess was giving me a play by play as he watched it before him. "I had no idea what to do. I wanted to attack him, but he's my dad. I ran toward him and pulled Viv from his clenching hands. It was easier than I thought, and he kind of tripped to the side as I pulled her away from him. He was obviously d
runk, but not so much that he didn't know what he was doing. He yelled at me. He told me to go to my room-like I was still ten years old and I had just come home with a bad report card. I obviously didn't go to my room; instead I begged him to leave. I didn't know what else to do, so I just stood cowardly in front of my drunk father and begged him to leave us alone. That's when my mom came in. She told me to take Viv and Mags into my room and close the door. She said she would handle it. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to leave her, but she wanted me to protect the girls. So I did as she said. I took them into my room, and I tucked them into my bed. I knelt on the floor by my bedroom door and listened to them talk. My mom tried to stay calm, but my dad was yelling as she led him downstairs and toward the back door. Their conversation grew faint as they got farther away, so I got up to check on the girls. They were holding each other under my covers, and they were both crying. That's when I heard odd sounds coming from downstairs. I left the girls in my room and ran downstairs as fast as I could. I found my dad standing over my mom, who was curled up in a ball on the floor. I ran toward him just as he smashed one of our solid oak dining table chairs over her back. He raised the chair to do it again, but I intervened. I don't know how many times he hit her before I got there."
Second Kiss Page 7