The Believer's Daugher - [A Treadwell Academy - 02]

by Caitlyn Duffy

  “Why don’t YOU have a seat?” I bellowed. “This man’s little girl might very well be dead and you need to get out of my way right now!”

  The man looked shocked that I would speak to him so boldly. My hands were on my hips and I’m sure I was red in the face. Without another word, the man walked over to a row of chairs and sat down.

  “You’re here to see Quian Chan?” the nurse asked me.

  “Yes,” I said, putting my fingertips on the counter and imploring her with my eyes to make this easy. “The man who came in with me, who’s sitting over there, is her father.”

  The nurse looked up briefly at him and unemotionally returned her eyes to her computer screen. She began typing, her face giving away no clues as to Quian’s status.

  “Excuse me,” I piped up. “Is she… is Quian alive?”

  The nurse hesitated before making eye contact with me and then nodded. She pulled a piece of paper out of the printer on her counter and handed it to me. “She’s in critical condition. The mother is back there with her. Only immediate family can enter the Intensive Care Unit.”

  I took the piece of paper directly to Mr. Chan and did my best to explain to him that he had to go through the double swinging doors at the far end of the waiting room without me.

  After he passed through the doors on his way to visit his daughter, I sank into the vinyl chair he had left vacant, which was still warm from his behind. My adversary from only minutes before gave me the stink eye and returned to harassing the head nurse. It was only eight o’clock at night, but it felt like it was two in the morning. I felt useless. There was nothing I could do to help Quian at this point. I hadn’t even had the smarts to stick around the scene of the accident earlier and get the taxi driver’s information in case the Chans were going to have to sue him. As much as I was really angry at God for allowing all of this to happen, I really didn’t feel like asking him for anything, and I really, really didn’t want to be reminded of any of the things my father often said. But I could hear my own father’s voice in my head.

  When you have to humble yourself to ask for help, that’s when God will strain his ears to hear you, my father used to say.

  So I closed my eyes in the frenzied emergency room waiting area, and tried to feel God’s presence. A feeling of calm washed over me, but it was too hectic and noisy around for me to really feel like God was listening.

  Uh, hi, God. I know it’s like, been a while.

  Behind me, interrupting my concentration, a sick baby screamed.

  So, I’m doing my best to take care of some stuff in my life on my own, as you know. But this thing that’s happened to Quian, it’s really messed up. She’s just a little girl, God. If you take her home to be with you, her mother will never recover. And she’s a good mother, God. Please, please. I know I’m not supposed to challenge your will and you’re going to do whatever you think is right, but I’m willing to do whatever you ask of me in exchange for Quian being OK. Anything.

  When I opened my eyes, I had the distinct urge to call Mama, and for a second, I thought maybe God was telling me that’s what I needed to do. But then my eyes came to rest on the abandoned blue vinyl seat in the row directly across from me. There, discarded, was a copy of The Village Voice, turned face-down so that the community personalized ads were facing upward. I rose to my feet and lifted the newspaper, and my gaze immediately landed on an ad smack-dab in the middle of the back cover.

  GRACE. THANKS FOR YOUR NOTE.

  MEET ME AT GREY DOG ANY

  MORNING BETWEEN 8 AND 9.

  LET’S TALK. ANTHONY.

  The writer from Time had received my letter and wanted to talk. Was it a coincidence that I had just, moments ago, asked God for a helping hand? It had been at least two weeks since I had seen Mama’s letter in the November issue of The Spirit Monthly, and hadn’t followed up on the investigation into my parents’ finances, or the legal proceedings related to my brother. It was easier to just pretend that none of it was real. None of it felt real. So, the timing of this discovery of Mr. Michael’s response to my letter was a bit suspicious.

  I ended up falling asleep in the waiting room. I knew there was little chance that either Mr. or Mrs. Chan was going to leave Quian’s side for a second to provide me with an update on her condition, but I felt strangely about just leaving without saying a word. In the few short weeks since Quian had knocked on our door, the Chans had become like an extension of our little family. I wondered often what they would make of our parents’ enormous mansion in Arizona, when they seemed so happy together in their cramped little apartment. I felt guilty even just thinking about my parents’ affluence when I was in Mrs. Chan’s presence. She probably couldn’t even begin to imagine the luxuries I had already experienced in my life.

  Around eleven, the swinging doors leading to the ICU opened and Mr. Chan stepped through with Feng, holding his hand gently. Feng looked exhausted. I feared the worst in the moments that it took for them to cross the waiting room area and meet me at my chair. I nearly burst out crying before Mr. Chan even opened his mouth.

  “Quian is still in critical condition,” Feng told me.

  Mr. Chan nodded to verify. I gathered that Feng was probably doing a lot of translating that night.

  “Is she going to be all right?” I asked.

  “The doctor says she has a brain confusion,” Feng said. “She also broke this part, and this part.”

  He put his own hand to his collarbone and then his upper right arm.

  “A brain contusion,” I corrected him gently.

  I don’t know much about severe brain injuries, but I knew enough then to know that contusion was a fancy word for bruise, and bruises on the brain are really bad news.

  Fortunately, a male nurse who was Chinese entered the waiting room and appeared to recognize Mr. Chan and Feng, presumably from being called in to help translate Quian’s condition earlier. He approached us and introduced himself.

  “Hi, I’m Nurse Huang,” the nurse told me, extending a hand to shake mine. “You’re a friend of the Chans?”

  “I’m their next door neighbor,” I corrected him. I didn’t feel worthy to consider myself a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Chan. They were at least fifteen years older than me, too old to consider me their equal.

  “Quian has suffered a massive brain injury. I’m afraid she is in very serious condition. The next few hours are going to be very critical for her. She’s in a coma, but we’re prolonging it to allow her brain time to recover from the trauma,” the nurse told me. As he spoke, he put a hand on Mr. Chan’s shoulder, obviously aware that Mr. Chan couldn’t comprehend most of what he was telling me in English.

  “But she’s going to be OK, right?”

  “We’ll have a better idea in the morning,” Nurse Huang assured me. “Now, Mr. Chan tells me that you might be able to take Feng home and help him get ready for bed? Mrs. Chan is having a very difficult time and we’ve had to sedate her. It would be good for everyone if Feng got a thorough night’s sleep.”

  Mr. Chan asked me in his broken English if I could make sure Feng got to school the next morning on time. I agreed, even though I knew that it was pretty much going to be impossible for me to drag a reluctant fourth grader to school in the morning after everything he’d been through that night. I was reading a lot between the lines. I supposed there was a genuine chance that Quian wasn’t going to make it through the night, and Feng’s presence at the hospital was making the potential scenario of handling her death even worse.

  “Did you eat dinner?” I asked Feng once we were outside.

  The temperature had dropped since I had been walking home from Prekin and huge snowflakes, chunky and wet, were falling from the sky.

  “No,” Feng said.

  I didn’t know my way around the downtown area too well, but we managed to find a McDonald’s, and I kissed five more of my precious dollars goodbye and watched Feng devour a Happy Meal. He largely ignored me as he stuffed fries in his mouth and plucked
the pickle off his burger. I tried not to be offended. I could hardly imagine what was running through his little head. I didn’t remember what it was like to be nine years old, but I was sure at that age, I was suspicious of fifteen-year-olds, too.

  Back at our building, it occurred to me that I didn’t have keys to the Chan’s apartment, and neither did Feng.

  “How is she?” Aaron called out from the couch before he even saw me enter with Feng.

  “She’s OK,” I lied, for Feng’s benefit. We stepped from the dark kitchen into the tiny living room area and Aaron sat up straight when he saw that Feng was in our apartment. “We’re having a sleepover party tonight. Feng is going to have to borrow a t-shirt or something for pajamas.”

  We made a big production out of Feng spending the night. I thought we owed it to him to try to distract him a little bit. It was an odd sensation being considered a grown-up when I sure as heck didn’t feel like one, but surely in Feng’s eyes, Aaron and I were adults. I went down to the deli and bought popcorn kernels and we made popcorn the old-fashioned way, the way Daddy made it at home since we didn’t have a microwave in our apartment: in a pot with oil on the stovetop. The popcorn made watching re-runs of The Golden Girls a little more festive until I noticed that Feng was falling asleep.

  “OK, Feng. You can sleep out here on the sofa. I sleep in this room and Aaron sleeps in that room. If you wake up during the night, you can come and talk to either of us,” I offered. I gave Feng the blanket that I usually used as a cover, and my pillow.

  About an hour after we turned off lights and all said goodnight, Feng appeared in the open doorway of my room and turned the light switch back on.

  “I don’t like the dark,” he announced.

  “You can leave the light on,” I assured him.

  He remained there, unmoving.

  “You can sleep in here with me, if you’d like,” I offered.

  After a second’s hesitation, he sat down on the floor next to me, crossed his arms over his bent knees, put his head down and began crying.

  “Oh, Feng,” I said, wrapping my arms around him.

  I didn’t know what to tell him. Promising him that everything was going to be OK would have been a lie.

  “You are such a brave little boy,” I told him. “Your mother is so lucky to have you and she loves you so much. You help her in so many ways, Feng. You’re such a wonderful son.”

  His nose was running everywhere and I fetched some toilet paper so that he could blow.

  “Is my sister going to die?” he asked me after he had calmed down and I had retrieved the pillow from the couch and put it down on the floor for him next to where I was laying.

  “I don’t know, Feng,” I said, rubbing his back.

  “What will happen to her?”

  “I’m not a doctor,” I said. “We’ll find out more in the morning. She might have to stay in the hospital for a long, long time. Or…”

  I trailed off. This was a pretty awkward position to be in, having to talk about life and death with a little kid. As much as I had started to doubt a lot of things my parents had taught me, I still, way deep down, believed in heaven and that God would welcome a little girl like Quian with open arms.

  “Sometimes people die,” I said. “Sometimes they’ve been hurt so badly that if they live, they’ll be in a lot of pain, so we have to be brave and let them go to heaven because it’s better for them.”

  “It’s not better for my sister,” Feng insisted, barely able to keep his eyes open. “Living at our house is the best thing for her. With us.”

  I didn’t argue, I just rubbed Feng’s back until I heard his breath soften and I knew he was asleep.

  My eyes moved to my window, where the white faces of the bride and groom on the wall across from my building were illuminated by the street lamp. I wondered for the first time who had painted such an odd portrait, and why they had chosen that particular wall, so well-obscured from street traffic.

  My thoughts drifted back to Felix and his periwinkle eyes. It felt like our encounter earlier in the day had happened years rather than hours ago. Running into him, and the persistent hope that we would find ourselves unexpectedly face to face again, was giving me a reason to get out of bed every morning. Before I fell asleep I was musing about how just two months earlier, I had no inkling of what it was like to walk the streets of New York and I didn’t know a single soul in the whole city. Now, I felt like little silver threads connected me to so many people in this city, in so many directions. If my brother and I hadn’t been in New York, who would have been tending to Feng?

  There was no denying it anymore. New York was becoming my home.

  Chapter 12

  Quian was brought out of her coma successfully the next afternoon.

  The doctors had warned Mr. and Mrs. Chan that there was a strong likelihood of brain damage but they were hopeful that Quian’s initial inability to speak was a temporary condition.

  I had taken Feng to school in the morning and had stopped by the principal’s office to let the school administrators know what had happened to Quian, and that they could call me to pick him up if he didn’t want to spend the day at school. To my great surprise, he lasted the whole day, and I let Jim know that I needed to leave early to address an emergency. Luckily, I had been working insane shifts, and it wasn’t a big deal for Mark to fill in for me.

  I met Feng after school outside the front of his elementary school building, and we walked in silence further downtown to the hospital. The previous evening’s weather had blossomed into a strangely warm day for December. Snow had morphed into a humid, sticky rain. The sky was gloomy and prematurely dark for three in the afternoon.

  Once again, Nurse Huang was on duty and he patiently filled me in on the details of Quian’s situation. The police had come by the hospital earlier that day to talk to Mrs. Quian about the accident. It was unfortunate, but not surprising, according to Nurse Huang, that the taxi cab company, for whom the driver who had hit Quian worked, had a very minimal insurance package. The Chans were inevitably going to be facing an overwhelming hospital bill. If Quian had suffered severe brain damage, she would need months and possibly years of physical therapy. But, the crushing financial obligations were the least of the Chans’ worries. Quian still had a long road to recovery ahead of her, and she still was at high risk. Any kind of infection or virus in her fragile state could be lethal.

  I left the hospital two hours later. Mr. Chan was going to have dinner at the hospital cafeteria with Feng, and then accompany him home. My heart broke a tiny bit when I saw Mr. Chan take Feng’s small hand in his own and lead him back through the doors to the ICU. I had a fleeting memory of Daddy holding my brother’s hand just like that when we were really little in Tempe, before the compound had been built and Aaron was on a Little League team. Mr. Chan was a great father, just as my own father had been great. It seemed so enormously unfair that on top of everything else in the world the Chans had to worry about, they were going to end up paying for some cab driver’s mistake.

  Outside, I pulled my hood up from my hoodie sweatshirt and pulled my pink denim jacket tighter. It was drizzling still, and I didn’t have an umbrella. The weather was remarkably strange that day; I could see a break in the clouds three or four blocks north of where I was, where bright blue sky was peeking through, along with rays of sunshine. In fact, when I felt my phone vibrate and I stepped out of other pedestrians’ way to check my text from Jacinda, I could see a faint rainbow in the sky near the part in the clouds.

  Seriously, I thought. A rainbow?

  I had asked God to send me a sign, and he had let Quian live, but of course, the nurse hadn’t said the phrase I had been waiting for: she’s lucky to be alive.

  Because it remained to be seen if Quian was, in fact, lucky to be alive.

  Two blocks away from the hospital, the rain started coming down heavily, and I ducked into a coffee shop. I splurged on a $2 coffee primarily to have a good reason to sit down o
n a comfortable stuffed chair and rest my back while I texted Jacinda with an update on Quian’s condition. All of these weeks of sleeping on the hard floor were taking a toll on me.

  It was a Friday afternoon. Under normal circumstances I would have been at track practice at Treadwell, running my laps around the track, probably in Alyssa Ackerman’s footsteps with my lungs burning. I hadn’t run a mile in two months. I imagined myself trying to run even around the block in my brown suede boots through the dirty slush. I probably couldn’t anymore. I thought regrettably of my closet back at school with all of my pairs of running shoes; I had at least eight pairs. I wondered if my parents had formally withdrawn me from classes and if all of my belongings were boxed up somewhere, or if the janitorial staff at Treadwell had just filled a dumpster with the possessions of Grace Mathison and bid her an informal farewell. I thought sinisterly of Juliette’s bottle of Chardonnay on the top shelf of our closet and wondered if the cleaning staff at Treadwell would have reported us for it, or just consumed it.

  I walked home at a snail’s pace despite the rain. When I got home, my brother was waiting for me with a huge smile on his face. He had a box next to him on the couch, wrapped in newspaper.

  “How’s Quian doing?” Aaron asked.

  “She made it through the night,” I said. “What’s this?”

  “Happy Birthday,” my brother said impishly, handing me the box. “Don’t get mad. I bought these before I fell. I really wanted to surprise you. There was supposed to be more, but…”

  I sat down on the couch next to my brother without even taking my coat off, and set the box down in my lap. Taking a deep breath, I ran through the events of the last two days. It took me a moment to flip through the calendar pages in my mind to realize what the date was. The day before, when Felix had come into the store, and Quian had been hit, it had been December 13.

  My brother was right. It was my sixteenth birthday.

  I opened the package slowly, savoring each tear of the paper.

  I couldn’t help but imagine what my Sweet Sixteen would have been like if I were at school where I belonged, rather than hiding out in this apartment with my brother. It wasn’t unthinkable that Mama would have shipped a huge box of clothes to me, all intricately wrapped, tied with shiny bows, and packed in confetti. I had been dropping hints about wanting a convertible all year. There was a good chance that a white convertible would have been waiting for me in the driveway when I went home for Christmas to Phoenix. I had specifically asked for a Mini Cooper but Mama had thought they weren’t safe enough, so I had been kind of counting on a Jetta. Those days were over; whatever amount of money my brother had spent on me before his accident was more than we could afford. Even if the gift box contained corn flakes, we were so far behind on setting money aside for January rent, breakfast cereal would have been an extravagance.