I hang up. I drive. The road is a blur, but I just fucking drive.
* * *
I double-park in front of the house. I blow through the door and stop when I find Maricarmen, Geraldo, and George at the table. Maricarmen looks relieved to see me and starts to get up; Geraldo looks guilty, like I caught him doing something more insensitive than eating a slice of pizza. George just sits there chewing, one of my beers in hand.
“Where is she?”
“She’s asleep,” George says, like it’s some kind of accomplishment.
I want to take the bottle from him and break it over his head.
Maricarmen steps between us. “Mama. This is not the time for anger—”
“You’re right. There will be plenty more time for that.” I turn for Isabel’s room.
I step over a gang of stuffed animals to open the blinds. The moon puts a blue square of light on the wall above the crib.
I peek in. The sight of her breaks me.
She is asleep, clutching her bear. She’s got a knot on her little forehead the size of a golf ball. There’s dried blood around her pacifier, and on the bear’s face. I smell her wet diaper and her unwashed hair.
I want to pick her up, I want her in my arms, but I’m afraid; I don’t know what kind of fall she took.
I do know that head injuries are the leading cause of disability and death in children under four.
I also know that children either bounce back quickly from concussions, or they never do.
I use the lightest touch to move the hair sweat-pasted to her cheek. “Isabel,” I whisper.
She doesn’t stir.
“Come on, baby. Wake up. I’m here.” I take the bear; Isabel’s arms tense and she moans an objection.
“Hi, Meatball,” I say. “I’m so happy to see you. Have you been taking care of my Spaghetti? I hear she took a tumble.” Talking to the bear puts a shiny cover over my shaky voice.
Isabel stretches her legs and reaches for the bear: all limbs in operation. I give him a kiss and put him back in her waiting arms and she rolls on her side to snuggle up with him.
“Isabel. I need you and Meatball to wake up now.”
Because she moved easily, I decide it’s safe to pick her up. I reach in and wrap an arm around the backs of her legs, the other around her shoulders. I lift her carefully, though my voice isn’t all that’s shaking. “Isabel. It’s Mama.”
She opens her heavy eyes.
“Hi, baby.”
When she realizes it’s me, she spits the pacifier out of her mouth to say, “Mama.” The way she says it sounds like both a complaint and a comfort.
“Spaghetti,” I say.
She shows me a sleepy smile. And also that she’s missing a tooth.
“Oh, Isabel!” I turn her around to put her face in the moonlight, and to confirm that one of her six-and-a-half baby teeth—top front—is gone.
“What happened?” I ask, though I know she can’t tell me. I pull her close and hold her and I stand there teetering back and forth in my stupid, heavy boots. She whimpers; she’s picking up on my anger. I try softening my stance and my voice when I say, “I wish you could tell me what happened.”
“You left the door open,” George says, from behind me.
“What?” I’m as shocked to hear him speak up as I am by his answer.
“When you left. You rushed out. Isabel was upset. She tried to follow you. The door wasn’t closed all the way.”
“Where the hell were you?”
He tugs at his hair. “I was right behind her. I didn’t know the door was open. She slipped through and by the time I got out she was an inch out of my reach, and she went down.”
I try to picture the scene. The timing. The truth.
“I didn’t leave the door open,” I say and I’m not defensive, I’m certain.
“Well, it was open.” George comes in and steps all over the stuffed animals, his beer bottle held loose, by the neck. “Thank god Lidia was still here. Because at first I thought Isabel got through it with maybe only a scratch, you know? Like she did a tuck and roll?”
He examines Isabel’s forehead like he knows what the fuck he’s talking about. “I thought you were fine, right, Bell?”
It’s ridiculous, the way he talks to her. Like a buddy he helped in a bar fight.
“You weren’t crying at all,” he says. “You sat up and looked around. And I came down the steps and I said Are you okay? And you—what did you do?”
Isabel looks up at him, then at me, and she’s confused—not by the question so much as her dad thinking she has the words to answer.
“You puked!” he says. “There was puke and blood everywhere. God, it was so gross! And I picked you up and carried you upstairs and man, I thought we were both gonna die. Your mouth was gushing. I was so freaked out. But then there was Lidia, how about that for luck? She helped me get you cleaned up, and we—well, Lidia—she’s the one who figured it out—that the blood was all from your gums. I didn’t know gums bled like that! But once we got you cleaned up, and gave you some ice cream, it was no big deal, right?”
“Not a big deal at all,” I say, “if you didn’t know she had a tooth there before.”
“What?”
“It’s broken. At the root. Probably why she couldn’t stop crying.” I start for the door. “She needs to see a doctor. Not a lucky nurse.”
Isabel says, “Mama?”
I say, so nicely, “Hold on, baby. I’ve got you.”
Isabel holds on tight.
George follows me into the kitchen, where Maricarmen has put the pizza away; now she and Geraldo sit at the table, both of them silent, Mari obviously trying to get a bead on the situation, Geraldo probably wishing he hadn’t come along. They get up when I come in.
“I’m sorry,” Maricarmen says.
“Don’t be sorry,” I tell her, “it’s my fault for leaving her here with him.”
“Hey—” George protests.
“Lidia said she will be okay,” Mari says, sticking up for him.
“You’re some kind of team, now?” The sudden solidarity pisses me right off. I free up my good hand, get a grocery bag from the cabinet, and fill it with whatever I think Isabel might want in the next twenty-four hours. Snacks, toys, socks.
George tries to help—he tries to take the grocery bag and help—but I turn away.
Maricarmen says, “My youngest broke his arm when he was three. Children, they heal very quickly—”
“No offense, but I’m going to get a professional opinion.”
“Should I come with you?” George asks, following me to the door.
“No. I think you should go.”
“Gina—”
I don’t argue. I don’t look back.
I call Lurie Children’s Hospital on the way.
14
The day Metzler told me I had multiple sclerosis, I went numb.
I went to see him because I couldn’t feel my left hand. I’d been overtraining at the gym, and I thought I’d pinched a nerve in my neck.
I knew it was much more than that when I watched him read the MRI films. It was the only time I saw his face betray him. He sat me down and sat down with me and said, “Regina, I am so sorry.”
I was pretty sorry myself. The only other time I’d heard about the disease was when I arrested an old lady at Lincolnwood Town Center. She was a purse-snatcher; I caught her sitting on a wheelchair full of stolen bags. I thought she was using the chair as a prop and I asked her to get up; she told me she couldn’t because she had MS. I said I was sorry, but a disease was no reason to steal. She said the real reason she was stealing was because she was going broke paying for medication that didn’t work, and that she just wanted to buy herself a goddamned drink.
The day I was diagnosed, I walked out of Metzler’s office and into a bar.
A blur of gin and tonics later, when I was good and numb, I called work to tell them I’d come down with something—something viral, I said.
Contagious. Then I drove to the store and absentmindedly bought groceries. At home, I made myself breakfast—wheat toast with margarine, nonfat yogurt, and a banana—the usual. But when I sat down to eat, the first bite of toast made me as sick as I’d felt in years. I’d fixed that food-pyramid-perfect plate for as long as I could remember—mostly to have at least one healthy meal a day, as it was impossible at work and unappealing afterward—but apparently it hadn’t made a shit of difference. This disease, which I did nothing to cause and could do nothing to cure, was going to cheat me out of the best years of my life. The balance I thought I had struck was upended.
I threw breakfast away and vowed I’d never take another bland bite of anything. I was twenty-seven, and in no time at all, I’d be an old lady in some home where they’d serve me that same damn toast until I croaked.
I’d probably have done some real damage to myself that day if the spinal tap headache hadn’t arrived when it did. I was getting dressed to go back to the bar when it hit me. For three days, I couldn’t stand up. I couldn’t sit up. I couldn’t do anything. I thought I was going to die.
For a while there, I wished it.
But on day four, when I wasn’t dead, I knew: I had been diagnosed with a disease that jumped time, and if I was going to have any kind of life, I had to jump with it, and roll through.
So I got up. I got dressed. I took a cab to the hospital for a blood patch. And as soon as I could see straight again, I figured out how I was going to live.
My research about the disease proved that without recommended drugs and a careful, gentle lifestyle, women like me are prone to various recurring problems. Spasticity, weakness, dizziness. Gait issues, vision loss, fatigue. Research also shows that taking the drugs and living the prescribed lifestyle doesn’t necessarily work. Some women succumb no matter what.
I was barely a woman, and already screwed.
Still, if I was well enough to feel sorry for myself, I was ready to roll.
I started by going back to work. No one seemed suspicious about my made-up lingering cough. No one minded that I took overtime. And after a week, most guys stopped asking if I wanted to grab lunch. I said I wasn’t hungry; I wasn’t lying. Nothing tasted good anymore.
When I felt like I had a decent handle on things at work, I filled Metzler’s prescription. Before I took my first shot, I prescribed myself a drink. I had to be tough, after all. And while MS might not be genetic, self-medicating runs strong in my bloodline.
The so-called flu-like side effects were more like a once-a-week bout with malaria, but my excuses held steady, disappearing from my so-called personal life for work and vice versa. It was easy, that part. Dating Tom made excusing myself even easier as he didn’t want to chase me away, and everyone else assumed he’d caught me.
Things were going smooth along the surface until a few months into our relationship, when I woke up in the back of the Cloverleaf. I’d had too much to drink. It wasn’t the first time, but it was the first time I woke up and heard them talking about me.
It was Tom and his bartender, Jeremy.
She’s a piece, Jeremy said. That sassy little mouth, sucking down gin all night.
You like that? Tom sounded like he did.
She’s too skinny for me, Sheridan. And too smart for you. What’s she got her eye on besides your ugly face? Money?
I don’t care about money. It’ll never be alimony.
You don’t want to take her out of circulation?
Shit, Tom said, I don’t want to take myself out.
So, what happened is what happened in most doomed relationships: I wasn’t thinking about commitment until I figured out Tom didn’t want it. And then I was terrified. I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t have a shared history to be fond about or a promising future to anticipate. I had now. And so I latched on to him. And I got him to commit to me. Or at least the mortgage.
Yes, it was stupid. Pathetic, even. But if I wasn’t going to be a wife and a mother, I wasn’t going to give up on my first shot at settling. I wasn’t going to fail.
Then came Isabel.
* * *
When we arrive downtown, Isabel is excited: she loves the peg-lit skyscrapers, the midnight twinkle of Michigan Avenue’s trees, the fog reaching in from the lake.
She does not understand where we are going.
At Lurie Children’s, I valet and we take the elevator up to the emergency care center. I let her push the button. She tries counting the numbers. The doors open to a wall of pastel-painted balloons and no one in the room seems worried; no one is ruffled.
Isabel must think it’s some kind of dream.
The intake nurse believes my story, whatever it is I tell her. Maybe because I’m still dressed, my star.
The nurse who does the second interview is extra thorough. Maybe because my narrative is spotty, nonlinear. Maybe because Isabel is not my daughter.
While I fill out paperwork, Isabel sits with Meatball and watches a cartoon about pirates. Her curiosity defies the late hour, and her condition.
Once we’re in a room, the doctor comes. I don’t know his name. He may have said. His skin is washed out from too many overnight shifts. His smile is the kind I want to believe.
Isabel hides behind my legs. He asks her about her bear, and her favorite TV show, but she sees the scope he’s taken from his pocket. She begins to cry. She begins to understand.
He tries out the scope on Meatball; Isabel cries. He passes the bear to me and uses the scope on Isabel. She screams and cries. He passes Isabel to me, and tells me he wants to run some more tests. He speaks as though no one is upset. He says he just wants to be sure.
Isabel starts to kick.
The doctor says he will give her a sedative.
I want to cry.
He prepares the needle. I tell her it’ll be just a prick. She can’t hear me.
He gives her the shot and she stops kicking, and stops crying, and looks up at me, and gasps: I have betrayed her.
When the doctor leaves, I hold her and I rock her in a chair that does not rock. I tell her I love her. I promise I will not leave her side.
She is still awake when the nurses come and take her for an MRI. They let me hold her hand on the way down to the machine, but they won’t let me join her in the room. They make a liar out of me.
They say the test will take a while. And then X-rays. They suggest I wait in her room.
As I wait, I get numb. Not the impermeable unfeeling I remember from the day I was diagnosed; this is more like the soul-flushed, heart-trashed emptiness I felt the day my father died.
It was an accident. He broke his neck. I was the first one to the hospital, and when I saw him, I knew he wouldn’t make it. But in the moment—that moment I saw him on the bed, a halo brace—I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t feel it. It seemed impossible.
My brother showed up. He saw Dad, talked to the girlfriend. Her story was that my father slept on the couch after a fight. And so he woke up in the wrong place, stumbled to the bathroom, maybe. And on the way, he slipped. After, he managed to crawl into bed. To sleep, the brain swell unrestricted. A matter of time.
In the morning, the girlfriend meant to apologize. Tried. Couldn’t wake him. Called an ambulance.
Sitting in that room, waiting for those doctors, I kept thinking about a saying I heard in the academy: Witnesses’ stories tell their own innocence. And then I started thinking I didn’t have the full story.
Then, he died. Whatever the story was didn’t matter. It was over.
Sitting here, I just keep telling myself that the story doesn’t matter. And that this can’t be over.
Sometime later, they bring Isabel back. She is asleep.
Sometime after that, the nurse comes in and finds me on the bed with Isabel. The machines and monitors are towering giants, impassive guards around the high, tiny bed.
“If you’d like to get some rest, in the sleep room…” the nurse says, her whispered voice an intrusion, an ala
rm.
I think I say, “No.”
Or else she knows my answer, because she pushes the not-rocking chair next to the hospital bed, reclines the chair, and gives me a pillow. “You’ll both be more comfortable,” she says, and helps me from the bed to the chair without disrupting any of the cords or cables they’ve patched on or taped to Isabel.
I think I say, “Thank you.”
Eventually, she leaves.
I watch the sun come up from this hospital room’s window. I know being numb is selfish. Isabel needs me, and that should feel like something. Even if it hurts. Even if it’s fucking terrifying. And even if she will never remember any of this.
Because this isn’t over. It can’t be.
* * *
“Mama?” I hear Isabel say, her voice droopy, deep.
I sit up and reach over the bed rail for her. “I’m right here.” My mouth is dry as old cake and my neck feels like it’s been fixed with pins; I must’ve dozed off.
“Mama,” she says, trying to reach for me, too, but she’s tethered by the cords.
I get up and move the chair and climb back on the bed with her. “It’s okay, Spaghet.” I stretch over her to press the nurse’s call button. “Just stay right there.”
As I stroke her hair, I pretend I don’t see the knot on her forehead, so bruised it’s black now. I smell her and I kiss her cheek and I whisper, “I think I slept a little. Did you have a good sleep?” I hope familiar banter will help her adjust to the unfamiliar environment. I say, “I had a dream about the moon. It was a strange, spongy place. Everything was blue. Kind of like this room. And there were cupcakes. Do you think they have cupcakes here?”
She says, “Juice.”
“Juice, of course—they must have juice here.”
“Good morning,” a new nurse says, smiling her way into the room. She looks like a teenager, her freckles, her cinched ponytail. Her scrubs are owl-themed.
“Good morning, Cassie,” I say, off her tag. I slip off the bed but I keep a hand on Isabel. “I think she’s ready for some juice.”
The Lies We Tell Page 17