by Naomi West
I’m at the door when Christopher catches up with me, his mouth all twisted in anger. “Walk to the car with me,” he says, voice like bubbling lava, hot under the surface
“What the fuck was that?” he hisses. “Who the hell do you think you are? This is my meeting. I’ve been coming here for twenty-three years, and that’s how you talk to them? What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“I’ve got a headache, old man, and my body feels like it’s gonna jump out of my clothes. And that’s just for starters. I don’t wanna listen to a bunch of people patting themselves on the back. Who gives a shit?”
“I give a shit.” He grabs my jacket and brings his face to mine, angrier than I’ve ever seen him. “That’s who!”
“Old man,” I say, keeping my voice calm although if some other bastard grabbed me like this, it’d be game over, “I suggest that you take your hands off me right now. I didn’t know how angry you were about all this shit, all right? If I’d known maybe I would’ve been a little nicer about the whole thing, but you know I can’t let a man lay his hands on me like this. That isn’t how we live our lives.”
“No.” Christopher takes a step back. “You’re right. We fightin’, or you letting this slide?”
“I’ll let it slide, goddamn.” I pat him on the back. “I didn’t mean to insult you or nothing.”
He takes out a cigarette and lights it with his zippo. “I was an alcoholic once upon a time, lad. Real bad. Much worse’n you’re doing right now. I did some shit I’ve never mentioned to anyone at the club, made a real fool of myself. Don’t you get it?” He blows out so much smoke that his face is hidden for a moment. “I know the path you’re walking down because I’ve walked down it, and it ain’t good.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out a pamphlet. “Just take this. Read it over. And think about coming back for a meeting. You’re my friend, Xander, but I reckon you’re more than that. We’re a club. We’re family. I can’t let you walk down this road without putting up a fight. I just can’t. I can’t let you throw your life away like this. It just ain’t right. Why’nt you find a girl or something?” he asks, voice breaking. I didn’t know the old bastard cared about me so much. Or maybe I did but I just didn’t want to see it.
“A girl.” I shrug. “There ain’t no girls. Club girls, lose myself for a night, yeah, sure, and then what? Wake up feeling like shit when I hear her fuckin’ some other guy?”
“You care about that stuff?” He raises an eyebrow, stubbing his cigarette out at the same time.
“I never used to,” I say. “But ever since Arsen. A psychiatrist would have a goddamn field day with me. I don’t know what’s going on with me. All I know is that club girls don’t do shit for me no more.”
“Find another girl!” Christopher breaks out. “That’d help get your mind off this stuff.”
“Maybe, old man. Maybe.” I take the pamphlet. “I’ll look this over if that’ll stop you tearing up on me.”
He punches me in the arm. “I can still go some rounds, kid, be careful.”
“Yeah, yeah. Why’nt you drive me to my apartment?”
We’re silent for the car ride. I look out of the window and try to convince myself that I’m going to be better tonight, but when I get up to my apartment—Spartan and neat, a habit leftover from when my old man’d beat me silly for leaving shit lying around—I go straight to the whisky bottle on my bedside table. I take it to the couch and sit with the whisky bottle in one hand and the pamphlet in another. I sit in the dark, mostly, except for a shaft of moonlight and the standby light on the TV, a red-eyed cyclops watching me, waiting for me to stumble. And of course, I stumble, I can’t help but stumble; I open up that whisky bottle and take a small sip, just enough to stop my body from bailing on me.
But then a small sip isn’t enough, ’cause all a small sip does, really, is open up my mind to the day we found Arsen, with that Connor motherfucker nowhere to be found, that Connor prick who’s done one hell of good job at hiding these past months. So I take another sip, and another.
At some point in the night I go to the window and look down into the street. For a second Arsen is there, hair shielding his eyes, smiling up at me.
Chapter Four
Kayla
Even as a new mother, I know the difference between when Cormac is crying for attention and when he is crying because something horrible is happening. His cries can be quite ear-shattering, wall-shaking, heart-shuddering, but there’s never been anything like this. Now, his cries cut through the apartment like a chainsaw. A rattling noise comes from the back of his throat.
I leap up and run over to him in the corner of the room, turning on the light and leaning over him. His mouth is open so wide I can see his tonsils shaking. It’s like his jaw has been wrenched open by some powerful force. He paws and kicks at the air, looking sadder and more terrified than I ever knew a baby could look.
I pick him up and cradle him to my chest. “It’s okay, baby,” I whisper. “Everything is going to be okay. Hush now. Mommy will get you help. Everything will be okay. I promise.”
My chest is so tight I can hardly get the words out, because I don’t know that everything is going to be okay. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, only that it sounds awful. I rush around the apartment as quickly as possible, pulling on clothes and stuffing more clothes into a bag, then I rush out of the apartment and toward the staircase, Cormac wailing all the while. One of the apartment doors opens and an older man steps out, one of those men with gray shoots of hair jutting from his nose and his ears.
“I’m tired!” he snaps, and then slams his door.
“Me too,” I whisper, walking down the stairs as fast as I can while also being safe.
I get Cormac settled into his car seat, making sure to double-check everything because it’s dark and my heart is pounding so hard I’m sure I feel it in my fingertips. I kiss Cormac on the cheek and stroke his damp forehead and tell him that everything is going to be okay, but he just keeps on wailing. I’m not even embarrassed; the crying is so terrible to listen to. All I care about is getting him somewhere safe. I drive through the city toward the nearest hospital, the car a cacophony of noise: me telling him that everything is going to be okay, Cormac crying loudly, and the GPS lady calmly explaining to me to take the next left.
I pull into the hospital and carry Cormac through the automatic double doors, to the front desk where an old woman sits peering over her glasses at the clipboard. She glances up at me, face as tired and bland as only a sixteen-hour shift can make it. “What is the problem, miss?” she says, her tone so sour it even makes Cormac stop crying for a moment.
I explain to her about Cormac’s previous “minor illness.” “And then I woke up to him screaming the apartment down. I think he needs to see a doctor.”
She points at the waiting room. “If you take a seat, a doctor will be out shortly.”
“This is an emergency!” I snap, staring the lady down. “I can’t wait. He needs help now! What if my baby dies while I’m sitting there drinking bad coffee, huh? Then what?”
“I understand that this is a stressful situation,” she says. I get the sense that this is a rote-learned sentence, something she has used many times before in many different circumstances. She just applies it like a Band-Aid. “But getting excited about it will not help the situation. I suggest that you remain calm so that we can deal with this in a reasonable manner.”
I take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then say, “I’m not moving from my desk until my baby sees a doctor.”
She unfolds her arms, revealing her nametag. Margaret. She has a yogurt stain on her collar and her nails are chipped and bitten. She looks drawn-out and exhausted, similar to how I look some nights when I glance at myself in the mirror. “I’m not messing you around,” she says, sounding more like an actual person now. “The doctors are busy. I’ve marked you as high priority. I know it’s hard. It shouldn’t take too long.”
I shrug—wha
t else can I do—and go into the waiting room, sitting down opposite a kid who clutches his wrist and draws in sharp breaths through his teeth. I sit Cormac on my lap and bob him up and down softly, a motion that usually eases him off to sleep. But tonight, it seems to only make things worse. He throws his head back with a vengeance and lets out the roar of a lion cub, a roar that causes everyone in the waiting room—the kid, a lady with a cut on her head, an old man in a wheelchair staring at the TV—to turn to us. I ignore them all and focus on Cormac.
It’s like time bends as I wait out here for the doctor. There’s a clock on the opposite wall and the minute hands don’t move, or if they do, only very slowly. It’s half past one in the morning. As I watch, the hand creeps toward the thirty-five mark, but so slowly that I’m sure I’ve fallen into an alternate universe. I stroke Cormac’s belly and take some milk from my bag, trying to feed it to him. He suckles for a few minutes before spitting it out. I think about taking him to the toilet to breastfeed, but then a tall skinny man strides into the waiting room. He wears glasses which magnify his eyes, giving him a bug look.
“Kayla Caraway?” he calls over the room, glancing at his clipboard.
I shoot up quickly, striding across the room. “Yes,” I say, letting out a pent-up breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“Come with me.”
The next hour and a half is a whirlwind of uncertainty. It comes to me most strongly through Dr. Hutchinson’s eyebrows, which are the most expressive I have ever laid eyes on. They knit, they raise, they dance, they twinge. At one point they furrow so deeply as he’s peering into Cormac’s mouth that I’m sure he’s going to announce to me that my son has mouth cancer. Finally, we go into his office and sit on opposite sides of the desk. Cormac is quieter now, almost dozing from the medicine that the doctor has given him.
“Your son has an infection, Miss Caraway,” he tells me. He taps his manicured fingers against the desk. “I’ve seen it quite often of late, but what concerns me is that it is showing signs of spreading. It is nothing serious if handled correctly. You were right to bring him in when you did. Don’t worry,” he goes on, perhaps reading the dread on my face. “The little guy is getting what he needs. But I would like to keep him in overnight, just to make sure that the medicine is working. Okay?”
“Okay. Of course, doctor.”
Which is how I end up in the waiting room alone, chewing my fingernails and drinking bad coffee out of a plastic cup, praying that my sweet boy is going to be okay, wondering if I’ll ever be cut out to be a mother. The TV plays constantly at a volume just loud enough to be annoying, showing late-night infomercials and reruns of old black and white TV shows. I have no idea what channel this is: Nursing Home Broadcasts? After a while Nurse Margaret walks over to me and sits down.
“You have a very beautiful child,” she says.
“Thanks,” I reply, a little off-guard.
“They’re watching him now,” she goes on. “So I guess you’re going a little crazy.”
I offer her a smile, which I’m sure is shaky to the point of being terrifying. “Yes, just a little.”
“Well, I just want you to know that he’s going to be okay. You’re a good mother.”
I giggle nervously. Her eyes are half-closed. She’s drunk with tiredness and exhaustion. “How do you know?” I ask.
“Because you came here, and you looked worried.” With that, she gets up and leaves.
I don’t think bringing your child to the hospital is much of a threshold for being a good mother, but then I guess I’m not a nurse working twenty-hour stretches. I sip another coffee and bite my nails, biting them down to stubs, wishing that I had a man here, or at least a family member, or something. As it is, Cormac is all I have and I can’t even sit with him because he’s in a special environment—the doctor’s term—and I can’t intrude on it. And to add oil to the fire, I’m supposed to be starting work at nine o’clock in the morning. It’s five o’clock now and I’m so tired my eyes are fighting my will to stay awake. I set my phone alarm for eight o’clock and lie down on the seats, using the duffle bag as a pillow. I close my eyes telling myself that I won’t sleep; I’ll just rest my eyes for a few moments.
A few moments later, I open my eyes to sunlight streaming in through the window, flooding the room. I sit up and rub my face, rubbing sleep from my eyes. It’s eight o’clock and my alarm sings me back to reality. I go to the front desk and ask about Cormac. He’s still under observation, they tell me, but I’ll be able to see him at midday. I return to the waiting room and press my boss’s name on my cell, my hand shaking. I have to make this call work. I can’t leave Cormac here on his own when he’s ill, but I also can’t miss rent. I’ve missed it once before. My landlord’s patience is thin as it is.
“Kayla,” Mr. Brown says, his voice heavy with expectation. It’s like he’s been awaiting this call which, I guess, is not unreasonable. “And what tall tale do I have the pleasure of listening to today, then? What virus has leaped into Denver and chosen you, specifically, as its target? It’s going to be a lovely day, a good day for business, and yet something tells me that business is not your concern.”
I swallow. This is a bad, bad start. “Mr. Brown,” I mutter. “I know you don’t want to hear my excuses, but something very serious has happened. My son is in the hospital.”
A pause, a pause in which I dare to think that he might have a heart, give me a bit of leeway, but then he lets out a huff. “I know you have problems. Everybody has problems. But I can’t exactly be expected to eat the cost of every problem my employees happen to have, can I? I need someone here today, and you’re telling me that you can’t be here. That is what you’re telling me, correct?”
“Yes, but—”
“I’m going to have to let you go,” he says. “It brings me no pleasure to do this, but I think that it is necessary. I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a bad person. You’re just not a reliable person.”
He hangs up before I can say anything else. A burst of anger shoots up my arm, causing me to almost throw my phone at the wall. But then my better senses take hold and I drop it onto the chair next to me. I don’t want to have a broken phone on top of everything else. I pick up my handbag and root through it, praying that I have some painkillers buried in here somewhere. My head is pounding; the world is pounding.
I don’t find any painkillers, but what I do find is a scrap of paper I forgot existed until now. It has a phone number and an address on it. I remember when Arsen pressed this piece of paper into my hand. “If anything ever happens to me, find my brother. We take care of each other.”
Chapter Five
Xander
It starts with a drink, just one drink, and then before I know it I’ve been drinking for damn-near twenty hours and I don’t feel like stopping. I don’t have any club business today, nothing to worry about. Usually I’d go round the garage or the gym and try and do something vaguely productive, but today I just feel like sitting in my apartment and drinking whisky. I have plenty of bottles, at least ten of them in the cupboard under the sink, as though by keeping them there I can pretend that I’m not steadily working my way through them. I sit on the couch, football highlights playing on the TV, sipping the whisky straight from the bottle.
After a while I stand up and pace up and down in front of the TV, trying to get that day out of my head, the day Arsen took a beating from the old man for me. I was getting it pretty bad on account of stealing the old man’s car and taking it for a spin around the street, but then Arsen walked into my bedroom with his fists at his sides. “Leave’m’alone!” he hissed, his voice high-pitched. There was no man in that voice; Arsen always had a squeaky voice.
“Do you want it instead, you little fucker?” Dad roared, turning on the kid.
That was just one time the kid took one for me. He was a good little brother, the best little brother anyone could ask for. I should’ve been better to him. I should have—
The apartment buzzer jolts me from my memories. I walk across the room to the intercom, wondering if it’s Christopher or Ranger, or maybe even Maxwell. Sometimes they’ll swing by and try and talk me out of drinking myself silly.
“Yeah?” I say over the intercom.
“Uh, hello.” It’s a woman’s voice. She sounds shaky, on edge. “My name is Kayla Caraway.”
“Okay.” I take a sip of whisky.
“Can I please come up? I have something to explain to you, and I don’t want to do it from here.”
“I’m not in the habit of letting strangers just waltz up here,” I tell her. “Why should I?”
“Please!” Her voice breaks, and goddamn if it don’t remind me of the way my little brother’s voice broke. Suddenly I see myself as a bully, a wicked bastard, and no matter how much I tried to make it up to him as we grew older, I would always be that asshole who kissed Marie Keller in front of him.