The doctor looks up at me as he takes a huge bite of his unwrapped wrap. I feel bad interrupting because I know how it goes: on the Job and with a toddler, I eat when I can get food and a minute in front of me, and it ain’t dainty.
Dodd looks like he’s lost, so I step in front of him and say, “Gentlemen. I’m Detective Gina Simonetti. I’m here about Kay St. Claire.”
The suit puts on a smile, and then his glasses, the overhead lights reflecting white squares in his eyes. He stands up. “I’m James Novak.”
“Are you the doctor?”
“He is the CEO,” Dodd says, looking at the floor tiles.
“Please,” Novak says, “M.D. is a more important title around here. I am proud to say, though, that I am responsible for bribing some brilliant minds, like Dr. Kitasaki, here, to work with us.” He opens up his stance to the doctor. “I believe he’s the man you’re here to see.”
Kitasaki nods, swallows, pulls out the chair in front of me. “Call me Kuro.”
Dodd says, “Dr. Adkins is waiting, sir,” and whisks Novak off. Or probably he just follows him off. I don’t know; I’m just glad Dodd is off.
When I sit, Kitasaki says, “I told Dodd to keep you guys—you—away from St. Claire. She’s in no shape to answer questions.”
His objection isn’t unexpected, but his dead-on south-side accent totally throws me. An attractive Asian doctor who sounds like an intelligent version of my cousin Vito? I’m in love.
“She’s the victim of a crime,” I argue, though I don’t think I sound argumentative.
He takes another bite of his lunch, chews awhile and says, “St. Claire is having an episode brought on by trauma. Patients in her condition are very easily aggravated. She is confused—this is catastrophic for her—to be attacked, and then taken out of her familiar environment, and then interrogated—”
“I haven’t asked her a single question yet.”
He swallows. “I just think you should know it’s common for patients like her to blame the people who mean to help.”
“I’m told her son is to blame.”
Kitasaki looks at me. “The woman’s got dementia. I could be her son.” His pager buzzes; after giving the device a cursory glance he says, “My job is to help St. Claire get better. Please, give her some time to do that.” He shoves the rest of the wrap in his face, tears open a wet wipe, and cleans his hands while he gets up.
“I’ll take what you said into consideration,” I say, “but we aren’t working at cross purposes, here. My job is to help her, too.”
“I think your job is to find the bad guy,” he says. “I’m not him.”
“I didn’t—” I start, but he walks away. So much for love.
I wait about four minutes and then I go back to St. Claire’s room to do my job.
St. Claire is alone, staring out the window, eyes dull. She must be doped. Her hair is wavy and much longer than most women her age wear it but it’s beautiful, really, a soft, rippled gray. Her face is mapped by wrinkles.
“Mrs. St. Claire?”
“CeCe,” she says, the emotion that was caught up with the name before now tucked under a fast-thickening blanket of medication.
“Is CeCe your daughter?”
St. Claire lolls her head toward me. She doesn’t look pleased. “Who are you?”
“I’m Gina.” I step forward and show her Isabel’s photo, the screen saver on my phone. “I have a daughter, too. Her name is Isabel. Would you like to see?”
St. Claire squints at the photo. “She looks like you.”
“She’s my everything. I guess all parents feel that way about their children, even in the worst circumstances—”
St. Claire starts trying to get away from me, off the bed, like I’m coming at her with a six-gauge needle. “Who are you?” Her good eye is wide now, and fixed on me.
I back off, tuck my phone away. “I am Gina Simonetti. I’m—” about to show her my lanyard but—
“Where is Robin?”
“Robin?” Suddenly I feel like I’m talking to Isabel—translating non-sequiturs—but by now, I’m pretty good at deciphering nonsense. I get it: “Robin is your caregiver.”
“She doesn’t know where I am. She could be waiting at the house. She’ll be so worried about me.”
“Well, she’s the one who called the police. She knows where you are.”
“No, she doesn’t. Or else she’d be here.”
“Okay,” I say, deciding to U-turn, come at it from the other direction: “I am here, now, because you were hurt. Do you know how you got hurt?”
She looks at me, then, and things seem to come into focus for her. “Oh yes.” Her eyes sharpen, and she breaks a smile. “My boy.”
“Johnny Marble,” I say, and I think we’re getting somewhere, but then I feel someone behind me, and I realize St. Claire isn’t looking at me, but over my shoulder.
I turn to see a man twice my age on his way out the door. Her boy.
“Johnny Marble!” I call out, like it’ll stop him.
I chase him down the corridor past an elderly patient with a tracheotomy tube who’s rolling an IV cart. “Call security!” I yell at her, though I don’t have time to tell her what to say and I don’t know if she can say anything anyway.
The man turns the corner and lopes down a long corridor; it doesn’t seem like he’s running as fast as I’m trying to, but his legs are long so he puts distance between us pretty quickly. I try to get a good visual to make sure it is Johnny Marble. I put him over six feet and at two hundred pounds. He’s wearing loose cargo pants and a purple warm-up jacket. His hair is a tamped-down Afro. I can’t say for sure it’s him—I only saw his booking photo—but there’s a reason he’s running.
And I saw Kay St. Claire’s face. He’s got to be Marble.
At the end of the hall he ducks into a stairwell marked FLOOR 4 WEST and by the time I get there, thanks to the fire code, the door’s closed itself. I draw my gun.
I turn the handle and kick open the door and clear the landing and then I step in and check the stairs going up to five, and he isn’t there, which I anticipated since he’s probably trying to get the hell out of here. I get my back against the wall next to the door just as it swings shut and then I wait for my eyes to adjust. A dim rectangle of light projects from the door’s small window, and there’s faint ambient light from the EXIT sign; neither is a guide. A droning hum from the hospital’s power systems rushes from the vents. I feel my way down a few steps, into the dark. It’s like I’ve stepped inside the guts of a machine; I worry that he knows how it works.
“Johnny Marble!” I call out again, the sound of my voice swallowed by the noise.
I can’t see, and I can’t hear, but he can’t be far. Somewhere below. I can smell him. Sour. A stress-sweat.
I move to the opposite wall and find the landing below, another pair of faint lights from the EXIT sign and the door a dozen steps down. The landing is empty. From there, the steps to the third floor double back, disappear to black.
I wait. I shouldn’t wait. He may have already exited the third floor.
Then I think I hear him breathing. Out of breath. Or fucking panicked, adrenaline forcing him to breathe. Or is that me?
I keep my back to the wall and feel my way down a half-dozen steps, my left foot cramping like the sole has pulled apart and I’m walking on bones.
That’s probably why I miss a step. I catch the rail—I catch myself—but my gun clatters to the landing.
That’s probably because I let go of the gun to catch the rail.
“Johnny Marble!” I shout because I want to act like I’m coming at him, strong, even though I shouldn’t have come this far. I feel around for the gun and find it and hold it in both hands and wait. That’s what I should do: just wait.
Then I hear him—
“Gina Simonetti!”
How does he know my name?
I aim my gun to clear the next landing. As I start down the steps, I hear the
ground-floor door blow open. “Security!” a male voice shouts.
And Marble is trapped, now.
He comes up the steps, back toward the third-floor exit, and I’m on my way down to meet him, but I misstep again—my brain unable to get the right messages out—and this time, since I’m not about to lose my gun, I wind up losing my feet out from under me. I lurch forward. From eight steps up it’s like I’m diving, and I dive right into Marble. I knock him down and we hit the landing and my head hits him in the face and his head hits the steel and then neither one of us makes a sound. He tries to push me away but I’m afraid if there’s space between us he’ll take the gun so I slip my free hand, my left hand, around his torso. I pull myself to him and I try to hold him there. Right there.
It doesn’t work.
He rolls on top of me and pushes my face against the landing. I try to grab for his jacket and I can’t do it. I try curling up, to protect myself, my gun, when he stands and jerks me up by my bag. I’m dangling, splayed, head and arms off the floor, and I’ve got my gun but can’t find my aim; in the two rectangle spots of light, though, I can see him. His mouth is bleeding. He doesn’t seem to care. He begins to laugh.
And then he drops me.
My head hits the steel this time, and when I look up again I see three of him standing over me. I think he’s got my gun and I bet he’s going to kill me and I know it’s my fucking fault.
But what I wonder as this man—this fucking beast—laughs at me, is if the very last thing that’ll cross my mind is that Isabel’s first word was mama, and when she said it, she meant me.
“Security!” the male voice shouts again, closer. Not close enough.
I close my eyes and wish I’d prayed long before now.
2
They say pregnancy changes the brain; that a mother develops a heightened sense of smell, and sometimes hearing. One study claims all the senses become more focused—that a sort of hormonal hypervigilance develops—in effect, turning a mother into a twenty-four-hour baby-security system.
I was never pregnant but I’m telling you, I have that same awareness for Isabel. I can feel her blink.
Additionally, I have marked morning puffiness under my eyes, frequent nausea due to a diet consisting mainly of leftover cheese sandwiches, and the patience of a two-year-old with everybody except the two-year old. I have become a mom.
And being a mom is the real reason I forgot what it’s like to be scared. It’s not my star, or my gun. It’s that I’m perpetually worried about someone else.
I actually wasn’t worried when Calvin the security guard found me on the landing and acted like I was near-dead. I wasn’t scared when he radioed dispatch and checked my airway and took my pulse and palpated my neck and did everything except what I wanted him to do, which was to go after Marble. I tried to tell him so, but the words must’ve been caught up somewhere between my brain and my mouth.
He said, “Help is on the way. Don’t worry, Officer. You’re going to be okay.”
I said, only to myself I guess, “We’re in a fucking hospital. Don’t you think I’ll be okay?”
I wasn’t scared—not even though I knew that as we waited, Marble probably walked out the front door with my gun.
What could I do, though? I was flat on my back. My head ached. Both hands were numb and a new and incredible electric pain surged up and down my entire left side. I felt like I’d been plugged in. Electro-shocked.
And that’s when I finally got scared, because I was certain there’d no longer be a way to hide the fact that I have multiple sclerosis.
Listen, I’d done the math before on a cop working with an undisclosed disease like mine: it equals an early retirement and in my case, probably a lawsuit. I’ve still got eyes on me for cracking up a squad when I was after a thief; I had to make that accident—my fault—look like a gutsy collar. Add to that the fact that I just basically handed my gun to a suspect, and I’d estimate coming away with something like absolutely nothing. No pension, no severance, no star.
And then no income, no insurance, no Isabel.
No more being her mom.
While Calvin radioed dispatch, I shut my eyes and kept them that way. Same with my mouth.
When the doctors arrived in the stairwell and determined it was safe to move me, they put me on a stretcher and brought me back into the bright and cold and white. There, everybody sounded worried, which made me worry some more.
What if they already knew? What if they could plainly see, through their expert lenses, everything I’d been hiding?
Somewhere along the way I started to feel not so worried. I felt real dreamy. The doctors’ voices trailed off and I could no longer make out the words, so I imagined them breaking apart into letters. And I imagined the letters floating, joining some swirling ether of abc’s. The last thing I remember was wondering if the doctors left, or if I did.
* * *
When I come around, I find an IV in the crook of my arm that’s connected to a crash cart where my vitals hold steady. A computer sits opposite the bed, a Sacred Heart logo screen saver ponging around. And on the other side of the room, Dr. Kitasaki is washing his hands in the sink.
“What the fuck?” I think I say and apparently I do because Kitasaki turns around.
“You’re awake.”
“You’re observant.”
Kitasaki dries his hands, no indication he’s bothered by my attitude, or his rash. He says, “I’m glad you’re awake.”
The room lights are bright and the curtains are pulled and I can’t tell if it’s day or night. “What time is it?”
He checks his watch. “Almost four.”
“Shit,” I say. “I need my phone. I promised I’d be home before dinner.”
“Well, you missed dinner. Breakfast comes around seven—”
“It’s four in the morning?”
“Nearly.”
“Why are you here?”
“Surgery ran late. Have to do rounds when I can—”
“Can you get me my phone?”
He points to a red-and-white sign by the door that reads NOTICE: CELL PHONE USE PROHIBITED. “You’re in intensive care. Your partner—Andy?—he said he’d notify your family.”
Isabel isn’t going to understand. She needs to hear my voice. “Can I use the room phone?”
“First things first.” He pulls on latex gloves, shines a light in each of my eyes. “Any headache?”
Yes. “No.”
When he leans in to look through the ophthalmoscope I can smell coffee on his breath and I want to puke. “Dizziness or nausea?”
Yes and yes. “No, neither.”
He tucks the light away and raises his hand. “Follow my finger.”
I do. “I’m telling you, I’m fine.” I think.
He snaps off a glove and he looks relieved about it. I look at the rash as he raises his bare hand beside my left ear and rubs his fingertips together, then does the same on the right. “Does this sound the same on both sides?”
“You’re the one who’s not hearing me. I told you: I need to make a call.”
“You’re almost done. Palms up.”
Though I see him do it, I don’t really feel it when he uses the capped end of his pen to draw a sensation down each forearm to my palms. “Same on both sides?”
“Yes,” I lie. I can’t feel the left one.
He goes to the end of the bed, draws the same inkless lines up the bottoms of my feet. “Same,” I say and I’m not lying this time because I don’t feel anything on either side.
He snaps off his other glove, turns to the computer, and begins typing. He types for quite a while.
Does he know I lied?
I wait until I can’t wait anymore, my heart stuck in my throat when I ask, “What’s wrong with me?” I’m ready for the guillotine.
Kitasaki finishes typing and turns to me. “As far as I can tell, it’s a TBI.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sorry—trau
matic brain injury.”
“That seems right.” My heart could come out of my mouth and fly around the room. A TBI. I like it.
“But,” Kitasaki says, “I haven’t yet seen the CT scan results.”
Wait. “You gave me a CT scan?”
“We were worried about swelling in your brain.”
“Don’t you need my consent for that?”
“You gave us your consent.”
“No fucking way I did.”
He comes back to the end of the bed and rifles through some papers stowed in the chart holder. “Your intake forms are right here.” He shows me my signature.
“How did I sign anything while I was unconscious?”
“You were actually awake for about an hour yesterday afternoon.”
No. Fucking. Way. Even if I was up and dancing, I couldn’t have signed anything—with my right hand useless? I know I should shut up, but, “I don’t believe it.”
“It’s common to feel confusion,” he says. “You hurt your brain.”
“I would remember signing that.”
“Well, you also asked to make a call, just as you are now. Do you remember that? We tried contacting…” As he flips through the file, he maintains an even, unbothered expression; it’s infuriating. “Here it is. Next of kin: George Simonetti? But he—”
“Shut up. You called my brother?”
“He was the only Simonetti in your phone contacts.”
“There’s no way I asked you to call my brother.”
“Actually, you asked us to call your partner. We thought that meant, you know—husband? Or, life partner? We didn’t make the connection, about your—about Andy, until he arrived with Sergeant Iverson.”
“Iverson was here?” This just keeps getting not any better. Carrie Iverson is a true-blue bitch.
Kitasaki fiddles with one of the monitors I’m connected to and plugs a new port into my IV.
“What’s that?”
“Dexamethasone. For the swelling. If you’re uncomfortable, I can add a pain reliever—”
The Lies We Tell Page 2