Transition

by Henry Charles Mishkoff

  “The doctor tells me,” Karnaga replies, calmly, “that she is in a mild state of shock, and that it is not serious. But he says that we should take her to the hospital as quickly as possible, as a precaution. So if you will follow the doctor to the ambulance, you may ride with your daughter, if you wish.”

  “Can someone give me a phone that works out here? Or can you get someone to call my wife? Let her know that Jill’s okay, and where we’re going? Jesus, she must be worried sick…”

  ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍

  Jillian’s sudden entry into the clearing has worked a dramatic change in Sunshine. A flash of light gleams in her eyes. Some color begins to seep back into her cheeks.

  Jill’s okay, she thinks. Thanks to me, Jill’s okay. I protected her from that… that monster. I went through a horrible ordeal, but it was worth it. Sure, it’s going to be hard to live with what I’ve been through. But after all that, if anything had happened to Jill – well, I don’t think I would have been able to stand it.

  “Hi, Jill,” she calls, almost shyly. I hope Jill doesn’t make a big deal about it, she thinks. Sure, I know she’s going to be grateful. But I don’t really feel strong enough for her to make a scene right now.

  “YOU!” Jillian shakes herself loose from her father’s grasp and strides purposefully over to Sunshine, her eyes flashing with sudden anger. “You slut!” she screams. She slaps Sunshine viciously across the face. “You fucking whore!”

  “Jill, no!” G.W. is stunned.

  Sunshine places a hand on her wounded cheek. “What are you saying?” she cries, sounding more stunned than hurt.

  “You just couldn’t wait to jump into bed with him, could you?” Standing just inches away, Jillian shouts at Sunshine with a mounting fury. Her face grows red. Her hands ball into fists. “I saw you getting all prettied up for him,” she snarls, “and don’t you think I didn’t.”

  “No, Jill, you don’t understand.” Suddenly, Sunshine feels small, insignificant, unable to withstand Jillian’s incomprehensible assault. “I did it for you, Jill, can’t you see that?” Tears of hurt and frustration began to well up in Sunshine’s eyes. “I did it for you,” she insists.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s saying, Sunshine.” G.W. comes up behind Jillian and grasps her lightly by her arms. “Don’t pay any attention to her. She’s delirious.”

  “For me? That’s a laugh,” Jillian says bitterly. “Everyone knows you’re nothing but a little tramp, Sunshine. So don’t feed me that bullshit about doing it for me. You’d fuck a goddamn snake if you thought it would do you any good.”

  “Jillian!” G.W. tugs at her arms, but Jillian will not be moved. “Sunshine, Jesus, I’m sorry, don’t even listen to her.”

  “HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT TO ME?” Sunshine howls. All activity in the small clearing comes to a sudden halt as everyone turns to see what’s going on. “YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TALK TO ME LIKE THAT! I SAVED YOUR LIFE, YOU… YOU STUCK-UP LITTLE BITCH!”

  “How dare you!” Jillian is indignant. “Saved my life! Saved your own ass, is more like it.”

  There they stand, toe to toe, like two boxers facing off in the center of the ring before the main event. Jillian’s face is screwed up in hate, her eyes narrowed to slits. Sunshine, tenacious as a bulldog, glares up at the taller girl, her face twitching with anger.

  “After all I’ve done for you,” Sunshine says, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper, “I don’t deserve this. You think that everybody owes you everything. Like you’re some kind of princess or something. I used to think that you were really something special, Jill. But you’re nothing but a spoiled brat, that’s all you are. A complete ingrate. All you ever do is take. You never give.”

  “Never give? Never give? You’re calling me an ingrate? After everything I’ve tried to teach you about being a professional athlete? Shit, I don’t know why I even wasted my time on you. You’ll never amount to anything.”

  “I’m every bit as good as you are,” Sunshine bristles. “Everything always comes so easy to you. You’ve never had to work for anything in your entire life. You just ask Daddy for it,” she mocks. “Well, Daddy’s not going to be able to help you win this race. I’m going to be so far ahead of you, you won’t even be able to see me with a telescope.”

  “Somebody give me a hand,” G.W. pleads. “We gotta get her outta here.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m really worried,” Jillian scoffs. “I don’t care how far ahead of me you get, because when it starts to get tough, you’ll just quit. You’re nothing but a goddamn quitter, that’s all you are.”

  “THAT’S NOT TRUE!” Sunshine screams, with such unexpected venom that Jillian blinks and takes a step back. Taking advantage of the momentum, G.W. starts to drag her away. “I am not a quitter!” Sunshine howls after her. “You’re the one who quit! When I needed you, when we were locked in that room, you just gave up, you just crawled off into your little shell somewhere. You were absolutely worthless, you couldn’t handle it at all. I had to do it all myself. Where were you, you spoiled little brat? Where were you?”

  “QUITTER!” Jillian is livid. “You’re a quitter and you know it!”

  “SPOILED BRAT!” Sunshine screams back. “You’re nothing but a spoiled little BRAT!”

  “QUITTER!”

  “SPOILED BRAT!”

  “Jill,” G.W. urges, “come on, let’s… ummmph…” This last as Jillian unexpectedly delivers a sharp elbow to his stomach.

  And then she wriggles free of his grasp, and she charges headlong at Sunshine, who not only stands her ground but who actually leans into the onslaught. The force of Jillian’s attack sends them both sprawling to the ground, where they roll around, scratching, clawing, and still screaming, hurling horrible epithets at each other.

  It takes half a dozen burly men to separate them and to drag Jillian away. G.W., still woozy, restrains Sunshine as best he can.

  They’re still screaming at each other as the doctor plunges a hypodermic needle into Jillian’s arm. They’re still screaming at each other as the attendants throw Jillian into the back of the ambulance and shut the doors. And they’re still screaming at each other even as the ambulance drives away and the blare of the siren recedes into the distance.

  5.3.16: Tanami

  Jillian opens her eyes, blinks them several times. She sits up, looks around. She’s in a hospital room. Again.

  Diffused light filters into the room through partially drawn curtains. It appears to be either dawn or dusk – or, perhaps, an extremely cloudy mid-day. Hard to tell.

  Off to the right side of the room, near the window, her father slouches in a chair, sound asleep, snoring fitfully. At the foot of the bed, her mother sleeps curled up in another chair.

  Of all the myriad sensations and thoughts that flutter through Jillian’s mind as she awakens, the single most overpowering impression is: I feel great. I’m obviously in a hospital bed, but I don’t know why I’m here, because: I feel great. Never better…

  Oh God, I was kidnapped. Now I remember. They shot Leida. We ran, me and Sunshine. That shriveled-up hag in that disgusting hovel, she said she was going to get help, but she went and led the kidnappers straight to us instead. Thanks a lot, lady.

  And they came and dragged us off to… to where? I was in some dark little room, wasn’t I? Or was that a dream? No, I was there. I’m sure of it. Well, almost sure. I was with Sunshine. And then I was alone. And then there was a lot of noise, and people were climbing in through the windows. And then everything got really confused. And then… and then what?

  And then we were rescued, I guess. And then they took me to a hospital. Why? Was I injured? No, I feel too good to have been injured. So why am I here?

  “Daddy?”

  G.W., snoring at an even drone, doesn’t even stir.

  And somehow, it’s not really that important. She feels perfectly relaxed, at peace with the world. The hazy light bathes the room in a soft glow, imparting an ethereal effect to everything it il
luminates, smoothing out the rough edges, as if everything in the room was sprinkled with a light dusting of new snow while Jillian slept. Outside the window, birds are singing. A truck rumbles down a distant highway.

  She throws off the covers and swings her legs over the edge of the bed. She’s aware of a pressing need to urinate. Is there a bathroom in here? she wonders. She rises to her feet, half expecting that her legs will be unsteady, perhaps as a result of some injury that she doesn’t remember receiving. But they feel fine, solid.

  She’s barefoot, clad only in a flimsily immodest hospital gown. Treading softly, she locates the small bathroom next to the door that she assumes leads to the hospital corridor.

  After she relieves herself, she splashes some cold water in her face and towels it dry. With some trepidation, she examines herself in the mirror. Her hair is filthy, disheveled. Other than that, she looks fine. And I feel, she tells herself yet again. I feel great.

  She opens the door and glances out into the hallway. A long corridor stretches in both directions. For a fleeting instant, she has a mischievous impulse to stroll down the corridor, find an exit, leave the hospital, and go… and go where? Not only don’t I know how I got here, she realizes, I don’t even know where I am.

  Before I go exploring, maybe I better wake up Daddy and find out what’s been going on.

  “Daddy?”

  She kneels by his chair and touches his arm. He snores on, oblivious.

  She smiles. He looks so peaceful, she thinks. Maybe I should just let him sleep. He must be very tired. He’s usually such a light sleeper, but he sure is out of it now. He must need his sleep very badly.

  But I have to know what happened, how I got here. Everything’s so… so cloudy. So hazy. I feel like there’s something important hiding right around some corner in my brain. I can almost grab it, but it’s just the tiniest bit out of my reach.

  “Daddy, wake up.” She grabs his arm and shakes it.

  After one final snort, G.W.’s eyes open. He blinks, several times. “Jill?” he asks, strangely unsure. “Jill? Is that you, baby?”

  “Shhh! Mother’s asleep.”

  For some reason, it’s important to Jillian that she be able to spend a few minutes alone with her father, almost as if she feels that her mother will be angry that she had let herself be kidnapped. Better get the whole story from Daddy first, then we can wake Mother.

  G.W. is groggy. “Jill, sweetheart,” he says. “Is it really you? Are you okay?”

  Of course I’m okay, she starts to say. But before she can speak, G.W. grabs her and pulls her close to him and squeezes her in his powerful arms like he hasn’t seen her in years, and he never, ever wants to let her go.

  He says that he wants to go tell the nurses that she’s awake so they can examine her, but she ridicules the idea. She feels fine. She doesn’t need to be examined.

  He smiles. “No wonder you feel so good,” he teases. “You’ve been sleeping for” – he glances at his watch – “Jesus, for almost twenty-four hours.”

  “Why did they bring me here?” she wants to know. “Was I injured or something? Did they hurt me?”

  He says no, but she was in just a teeny bit of a state of shock when they brought her in. And how much does she remember?

  “I remember being kidnapped. And then I woke up in some little room somewhere, and it was really dark, and Sunshine was there with me, I think. It’s all kinda hazy after that. Tell me, I want to know what happened, I feel like I can almost remember, but I need some help.”

  “I think I should talk to the doctor first,” G.W. says, frowning, lines of worry etched into his face. “Let me tell the nurse you’re awake.”

  He starts to stand up, but she tugs him back down. “I want to hear it from you,” she says. “I don’t want some stranger telling me what happened. I don’t want other people around who know what happened and I don’t, I’ll feel like a real idiot. Tell me.”

  And although he has reservations, she is insistent, and she is so much fresher than he is, almost bubbly, and she quickly wears him down.

  He recounts what he knows about the kidnapping itself, but she remembers most of that, and she hurries him through that part.

  Hesitantly, he asks if she knows that Leida Andersen is dead. She does, it doesn’t seem to matter that much anymore, it’s old news.

  Does she know that Jason Stackhouse and the Russian kid, Karl Malenko, were shot? Her hand flies to her mouth in dismay. That explains the shots she heard as they ran away.

  “Are they okay?” She studies his face, and she knows the news must be bad. “Is Jason… is he dead, too?”

  “No, Jason’s alive,” he assures her. “It was touch-and-go for a while. He was in surgery for hours. He won’t be racing for a while, maybe never. He’s still in intensive care, but they seem to be pretty sure that he’ll live. Thank God for that.”

  “And Karl?”

  “Karl was only hit in the arm. But he followed the kidnappers on a bicycle, and he lost a lot of blood. They found him passed out by the side of a back road somewhere. He’s gonna be okay. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know how we would ever have found you. He’s a brave kid, let me tell you.”

  “What about Sunshine? Is she here in the hospital, too?”

  Now G.W. is very hesitant, and at first Jillian is afraid that something terrible has happened to Sunshine, but G.W. says no, that’s not it. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, but she keeps probing, and finally the whole story comes out, a piece at a time, how Akaso Siko sent for Jillian but Sunshine went instead. And Jillian remembers, although it seems like she’s remembering a dream or something that happened to someone else rather than something that really happened to her.

  He tells her about Nathan’s role in the affair, and she is stunned, then furious, then worried about the effect it must have had on Sunshine. “She was pretty rattled,” G.W. admits.

  Glossing over some of the more sordid details, he tells her about how Sunshine dispatched Akaso as he slept. Jillian’s eyes grow wide. She’s overwhelmed, speechless. This is starting to sound like a fantasy, she thinks. This isn’t the kind of thing that happens to real people.

  He describes the assault on the house, reconstructing it as best he can. She has vague recollections of the commandos climbing into the room. She remembers fighting with them as they tried to cover her face with a gas mask. Embarrassed, she hides her face in her hands and shakes her head.

  He’s going to stop there, but she feels that something else happened, some kind of fight, perhaps? Just before they carried her into the ambulance?

  He’s reluctant. She’s insistent.

  He gives in.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he suggests. “I don’t want to wake up your mother. I don’t think she’s gotten more than a couple of hours of sleep over the last two nights. I know I sure as hell haven’t.”

  She wraps herself in a paper-thin robe that she finds hanging on a hook on the back of the door, and they edge quietly out of the room.

  The hall is very bright, long and cold, sterile. They pass an occasional nurse. G.W. exchanges familiar nods with some of them. Jillian notices that G.W. seems to know his way around pretty well; he’s obviously been here a while. She realizes that her time sense is completely shot, she has no feel for how long she was in that little room or for how long she’s been in the hospital.

  They wander into a small waiting room: three garish chairs, a worn sofa, and a small television. The picture on the TV screen is fuzzy, but it appears to be some kind of newscast. Jillian is surprised to see Sunshine’s picture flash across the screen, then her own. Scowling, G.W. grabs the remote and turns off the TV. They settle into the sofa.

  With obvious reluctance, G.W. describes the terrible scene in the medical area. Although he tells the story as matter-of-factly as possible, there’s no way to lessen the impact of the events, of the unexpected slap, of the horrible accusations, of the headlong attack.

  As G.W. rela
tes it, it comes back to Jillian in a rush, a torrent of unlocked and unwelcome memory. She groans. More than embarrassed, she is deeply ashamed. Again, she buries her face in her hands. When she looks up, her face is damp with tears.

  “I’ve done a terrible thing,” she moans. “And after everything she did for me. How could I do such a thing?”

  G.W. tries to console her. “Now, honey,” he says, “don’t be too hard on yourself. You were delirious. You had been through a lot. “

  “Not half as much as she went through,” Jillian points out, shaking her head. She’s thoroughly disgusted with herself. “I can’t believe I did that. Did she understand that I didn’t mean it? That I didn’t even know what I was saying? Or doing?”

  “Well, I don’t know. She was pretty upset. She didn’t seem to be in a real understanding mood, if you know what I mean.”

  Jillian sighs. “Well, I guess I need to go talk to her. Apologize, if she’ll let me. Where is she? Is she here in the hospital?”

  G.W. shakes his head. “No,” he says. “She wouldn’t come to the hospital.”

  Jillian senses that G.W. is being evasive. He’s telling the truth, but he’s leaving something out. Something important.

  She presses him for more information. Again, G.W. wants to summon the doctor. Again, Jillian insists that she feels fine, that she’s not in need of any medical attention, that all she wants is to know what’s going on. And she asks again: “Where’s Sunshine? I have to talk to her. Just as soon as possible. To beg her to forgive me. Where is she?”

  G.W. sighs, avoids her eyes. He answers her so softly that she can’t hear him, she has to ask him to repeat it.

  “She’s at the race,” he says, shaking his head, staring at the floor.

  The race! The effect on Jillian is electrifying. She leaps to her feet, smacks herself on the head. The race! “Oh my God,” she says. “The race is today? I never even thought… everything was so confused… I thought it was tomorrow or maybe… oh, I don’t know what I was thinking. What time does it start? It didn’t start already, did it? Oh Jesus please tell me I didn’t miss it please tell me I didn’t please….”