Finding Casey: A Novel

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  The pharmacist explained to the nurse how much less of a drug to give Aspen so she would wake up. Dr. Armstrong was arguing that it was more important that Aspen wake up on her own time, not to stress her. A student doctor in blue pajamas was telling another one how exciting it was to watch this play out, like it was a skit they were putting on. I got tears. Mrs. Clemmons said, “Children are resilient, Casey. Dr. Armstrong is a huffy old guy, but he’s the best at what he does. If my little girl was sick, he’s who I’d want taking care of her. I wouldn’t exactly like to go to dinner with him, but he’s very accomplished at his job, Casey. Focus on that.”

  Mrs. Clemmons had a little girl?

  I saw Aspen’s neck when the doctors moved out of the way, a pale pink half circle that reminded me of a baby bird that hasn’t got its feathers. Aspen and I used to try to save the robins that fell out of the nest at the Farm. Better than anybody, I knew how a person’s neck is the strongest and the most vulnerable part of the body. I was never going to allow anyone to do to Aspen what had been done to me, and I was imagining how to explain all that to the police without making the sound when I heard a different sound, the best sound I ever heard, which was Aspen coughing. “Ready to extubate,” Dr. Armstrong said, and the other doctor said, “Wait. We need to suction again, please.” Susie the nurse was standing close to Aspen and the respiratory doctor held onto a blue round ball connected to a clear plastic face mask. The student doctor told the other one, “Whether you’re intubating or extubating, hold your breath. It’s the perfect test of time. If you need to take a breath, so does your patient.”

  “This is my first extubation,” the other doctor said, as if Aspen was going through all this just for him to learn it.

  The shot doctor got a page and told me she had to go, but she’d check back with me soon, but I kind of hoped she was busy enough with other problems that she wouldn’t come back. “I’m tired of talking to people,” I told Mrs. Clemmons. She found me a chair to sit in, but when I sat down I couldn’t see anything, so I stood back up.

  Dr. Armstrong let the other doctor pull the tube out of Aspen’s throat, and everyone was holding their breath, not just me. He pulled kind of slowly but maybe that was how things like that had to be done. After it came all the way out, everyone sighed, and the nurse put the ball/breathing mask thing on Aspen’s face and squeezed. Then she took it away, and after a few times, back and forth, we could all hear the sound of Aspen coughing. The student doctors clapped. I heard Mrs. Clemmons say, “Thank God,” very quietly, like she didn’t want anyone to know. Another nurse came out of the room to get me. She was smiling, and she hardly ever smiled. “She’ll be disoriented,” she told me. “Now that she’s off the paralytics, she might have some jerking muscle spasms, but that doesn’t mean it’s a seizure. Don’t expect her to start talking all at once.”

  Dr. Armstrong called Aspen’s name, but she didn’t answer him. He rubbed her chest with his knuckles, and she whined. It was the first sound she made since the cough and I held my breath. He pressed a pen against her fingertip and she whined again, and moved away from him all on her own and I was so proud of her for being that little and to know to move when someone was trying to hurt you. That was a lesson it took me a long time to learn, but I never stopped trying to teach her how to do it. “GCS?” Dr. Armstrong said, and the respiratory therapist said, “Nine.” I whispered to Mrs. Clemmons, “What does that mean?”

  “The Glasgow Coma Scale. Aspen’s score right now is a nine, but you watch, it’ll rise as time goes by. The higher the number, the better it is.”

  Then she went into the room to watch Dr. Armstrong put a different kind of oxygen mask up Aspen’s nose. The clear tubes went around her ears. He told the nurse, “Any drop in SATS, I expect to be paged immediately.” People started to leave the room, and when I turned to give them space, I noticed Mrs. Clemmons wasn’t there. Had she told me she was going somewhere, and I forgot? Or was this going to be my life now, on my own? When Dr. Armstrong left the room, he told me, “I told you she was ready.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” I said. “Thank you from my heart.”

  His face got that flushed color and he said, “Go sit with your little girl,” and then he went next door to the nurses’ room, and it was just Aspen and me and Aspen blinked at me. I held her hand.

  Between every patient room there was an office where the nurse watched a television of her patient. Dr. Armstrong went in there and started talking on the phone. Him behind the glass like that reminded me of the gift shop and the aquariums, and how once I had a job I could take my own money in there and buy one for Aspen.

  “You’re too upset,” Chico said. “Go in the gift shop and buy the girl a present.” He went to the information desk by himself. “We’re looking for a friend,” he told the volunteers at the Information desk. “Laurel Smith? Her daughter, Aspen, is a patient?”

  Juniper chose the first thing she saw, a fake plastic aquarium with dolphins swimming by on a lighted roll. Ten bucks, and tacky, but what kid wouldn’t want one of those? Chico was right. At first she’d been seething, just ridiculously angry. It wasn’t a part of her she liked to admit was there. She thought she’d left all that anger behind in California, and she tried to calm herself down, mentally reviewing the periodic table of elements. Hydrogen, helium, beryllium, boron, carbon … suppose this Laurel person sold the micaceous pot because she needed the money? After all, she had a sick kid. Louella had made it clear that she thought the Farm people were freaks, at least this Seth person. But would that get her three hundred dollars back? Was that even what she wanted?

  “Shall I wrap this for you?” the clerk asked.

  “No need, but could we have a pink balloon?” Chico said, placing his hand on the small of Juniper’s back. The gift-shop clerk untied one from a bunch near the register, handed it over, and Juniper paid. “The elevator is this way,” Chico said. “The daughter’s in ICU, so we might not even get to see her, but a nurse will let Laurel know we’re here, and then she can probably meet us in the family visiting area.”

  When the elevator door opened, Juniper looked down the long hallway and saw a security guard and several people dressed in street clothes outside a room, and she wondered if that was Laurel’s daughter’s room. Did all those people mean bad news? Seeing them, thinking about a kid so sick she had to be in ICU kind of made her hate herself. In the scale of life, three hundred dollars was nothing. Then she recognized a face among the crowd, Daddy Joe’s friend Elena Gonzales. She’d met her twice, at fund-raisers for Candela. Before Chico could stop her, she walked up to her and touched her shoulder, interrupting her conversation with another woman. “Mrs. Gonzales? I don’t know if you remember me, but you know my dad, Joseph Vigil,” Juniper said when Elena turned to her.

  “Hijole!” Elena said. “You’re Juniper, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Joseph talks about you all the time.” She stared, open-mouthed.

  “Is something wrong, Mrs. Gonzales?”

  She patted Juniper’s arm. “Forgive me, I’m just surprised you got here so quickly. We only just called your dad on his cell phone but there was no answer. Juniper, this is Mrs. Clemmons, the psychologist on her case. I know you’re anxious to see her, but we’re going to have to follow her cues. We don’t want to overwhelm her. After all, it’s been seven years.”

  Juniper looked at the women and frowned. “Excuse me, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. Chico and I—he’s my TA—we just wanted a moment with Laurel Smith if it’s convenient.”

  “Well, of course you do!” Mrs. Gonzales put her arm around Juniper’s shoulder. “Dios mio, I know it’s hard to believe. It’s a miracle. You have all the time in the world, now.”

  Juniper extracted herself from the hug as carefully as she could. “I have no idea what you’re talking about or what you said to my dad. I’m just here to speak with Laurel Smith. If it’s not a good time, I can wait.” />
  “And you brought a present for Aspen!” Mrs. Gonzales gushed. “Isn’t that just like a sister—an aunt.”

  Juniper felt a shudder pass through her. Too much coffee, too much emotion in this day, and now one of her dad’s friends stood before her crying and making no kind of sense, calling her an aunt.

  Chico caught up. “Mrs. Gonzales? I’m Juniper’s friend. Would you mind backing up a little?” he said. “We’re not following you.”

  Elena frowned. “Yes, I see,” she said, and turned to the older woman in the pearls and pantsuit. “Juniper, this is Mrs. Clemmons. Ardith, this is Juniper. How would you like to proceed? Should we go sit down in the family visiting room? How much should I tell her? Or should we wait for Joseph Vigil?”

  Mrs. Clemmons had one hand on her pearl necklace, and with the other she touched Juniper’s arm. “My goodness, it’s wonderful to meet you, Juniper. Now, I’m sure this is going to come as a shock—”

  “What is?” Juniper said. “Take the present for the kid. Tell Laurel Smith when she has a moment, I need to talk to her about a pottery bowl I—”

  The words died in her mouth. The woman who walked out of the hospital room stood rooted before her. Juniper saw a thin, blonde girl not much older than herself, with a terrible scar on her neck, but there was something else about her. Her cheekbones, her eyes, the way she lifted her hand to cover her mouth because she’d needed braces but her parents couldn’t afford them. “No,” Juniper said. “This cannot be happening.”

  Chico took her arm. “What’s wrong?”

  Juniper couldn’t speak. All she could do was point, and the woman seemed to be having a similar reaction to seeing her. “What’s your name?” she asked. “Are you Laurel Smith?”

  “For a long time I was,” the woman said in a voice so raspy it hurt to hear it. “But now I’m who I was before. I’m Casey McGuire again. Who are you? Oh, gosh. Si, site, rite, tire, sire, sir, it, I, ire, resist, sis, sister?” she babbled as if she only had a loose hold on language. “Is that who you are? Are you my sister?”

  Juniper felt her knees go out from under her as if the muscles had been cut. Only Chico holding on to her kept her from falling to the floor. She tried to speak, but no words would come. She couldn’t take her eyes off the girl.

  “Mrs. Clemmons believed you were still alive,” Casey said. “Not me, though. She said if you were alive she would find you. How did you come here from California so fast? Did you fly in a plane?”

  One minute Juniper was on her knees and the next this person, Casey, was kneeling in front of her, arms around her, making the same noise Juniper had made the day she came home from school to find her mother on the couch, facing the door the way she always did, because until her dying day she believed Casey would come home. Nobody else believed that, but she did, and now it was too late to tell her she’d been right. Juniper could feel the chill of her mother’s skin, and see the amber plastic pill container on the coffee table, the lid off, the bottle empty.

  The present fell from her hands, and Chico intercepted it before it hit the floor. Juniper thought, If keening is the highest form of grief, and hard to listen to, this sound is one notch above all that. The sisters held on to each other and sobbed, and Elena Gonzales and Ardith Clemmons shooed the staring nurses out of the way, making a protective circle around them. Chico picked up Juniper’s purse, because it had fallen off her shoulder. He looked inside and took Juniper’s cell phone out.

  “Where were you?” Juniper said. “We looked for you everywhere.”

  “I would’ve come back if I could,” Casey told her. “These men took me. They hurt me. I have a daughter.”

  “A daughter?” Her voice was so awful. “Casey,” Juniper said. “My God.” Her sister started to pull away, but she clung to her fiercely. “Don’t let go. Please, even if this isn’t real, let me pretend it is. Don’t let go just yet. Please.”

  “I won’t, Juniper. I promise. I’m not going anywhere ever again.”

  Chico scrolled through Juniper’s stored phone numbers, bypassing “Topher” and “Aunt Halle” and the number for the pizza delivery that would come to the dorms. He found HOME on her speed dial and he called the number. He turned away and waited for her father to answer. When he did, saying “Joseph Vigil,” Chico cleared his throat.

  “Mr. Vigil, you don’t know me, but I’m the teaching assistant in Juniper’s Cultural Anthropology class.”

  “Dios. Has something happened?”

  “Yes, actually, sir. Something has happened.” He swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. “Sir, Juniper and I are at Presbyterian hospital in Española. She’s not hurt, I promise, but you need to get up here right away. You have to see this.”

  “Son, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Joseph said. “Slow down and start at the beginning, por favor.”

  “Sir, does Juniper have a sister named Casey?”

  “She did,” Joseph said. “I’m afraid Casey disappeared years ago. What does she have to do with this?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, sir. Casey is here. Honestly, she’s standing five feet in front of me. Juniper is with her. They’re hysterical. Fossils, I can deal with, other cultures, even other languages. Women crying, not so much.”

  Joseph tried to exhale, but all that came out was a sob. “Please,” he said. “If you could just stay there with her until I get there, I will be eternally in your debt.”

  “Of course. I won’t let either of them out of my sight. Oh, there’s a Mrs. Gonzales here who says she knows you. Would you like to speak with her?”

  “Absolutamente. Put her on. Thank you, son. Thank you.”

  Joseph stood there listening to Elena Gonzales, his friend of many years, his trusted colleague, tell him a story he simply could not imagine was true. Over and over, sure he was mishearing her, he asked her to please repeat it. Her voice in his ear was like Grandma Penny’s when he was a child, telling him a story to help him go to sleep. After a minute, they said good-bye and he hung up the phone. He stood in the kitchen looking around at the beautiful tiles Glory had selected, the copper pots hanging on the wall, the stack of mail on the counter waiting for him to separate it into recycling and bills to pay. He gave his family the nicest things he could. He planned for their future and made investments. His goal was to give them the best life he could, opportunities he’d never had for himself, and this house was proof of his success. But the stove, the refrigerator full of food he’d just unpacked, the dishes and decorations, even the walls could fall down, blow away in a moment and he would pitch a tent in the backyard. The most important thing was that Casey was alive, Juniper was there with her. A sick child. And the psychologist he’d had an appointment with only days earlier, an appointment he’d canceled because he didn’t want to leave Glory alone after the ER scare, was at the heart of it. Joseph knew his roles—husband, board member, former crime-lab photographer, and expecting father. His life was one of simple choices: Paper or plastic? Cash or credit? Chicken or fish? But what was happening at this moment was so far out of his league he was stunned into silence. The words of photographer Wynn Bullock came to him, though he’d never met the man and had never heard his voice. When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking the answers to things. And Joseph knew exactly what to do next. He picked up his keys, and like he always did, twirled the silver concho key fob Glory had given him for their anniversary, and he headed out.

  From the shelf in the great room where he kept his lenses and camera bodies, he fetched his Leica-M, the finest camera he owned, and one he rarely used since the advent of digital photography. But the Leica took black-and-white photographs like no other camera. The photos somehow had another dimension to them, or perhaps it was the grain, the photographic particles that gave a photograph its foundation. He loaded it with film, shot two pictures with the lens cap on, and opened up his camera case.

  He packed his 50mm lens. It was his favorite when he was in the crim
e lab, helping to solve crimes by noticing, capturing, allowing intuition to choose the detail in the shots and reason to figure them out later. No color to distract. He stood for a moment in the great room of his home, feeling the cool flagstone underfoot, hearing the soft sounds of his wife and sister-in-law talking in the bedroom, the click of a dog’s nails as Dodge or Caddy went through the dog door to bark at the hens or to do their business. He was struck by the notion that over the centuries, others had stood in this very spot in this house as well, allowing monumental news to sink in. It was too bad there wasn’t a book somewhere recording all that, helping whoever lived there next to avoid mistakes. But of course that was dreaming. Then he took a step, fully intent on speaking to Glory and Halle, and to change life as they knew it forever. Before he got there, however, he stopped and took his cell phone out of his pocket to call Elena.

  “Bueno?” she said.

  “Elena, it’s Joseph Vigil again. I have to ask you one thing. Casey, did she live on that place called the Farm?”

  “Hold on, Joseph,” she said, and he could hear her whispering to Mrs. Clemmons. She returned to the phone. “I’ve no idea how you knew that, but yes, she did.”

  His heart sank. “I’ll explain it to you later. I’m leaving now. Gracias,” he said, hung up, and went into the bedroom. Halle was sitting on the floor watching some talk show in which a group of women were arguing, but Glory wasn’t. She was holding on to the blue ribbon and thinking about the potter, he could tell. “My love,” he said. “Halle, turn off the television, please. Something wonderful has happened and I need your full attention.”

  In the momentary silence that followed, that single breath of time, Joseph noticed for the first time how much the two sisters looked alike, and how alike their souls were, so connected beyond the superficial differences. Had she been in search of a new life, Glory would drive past the glitter and show of Las Vegas, saving her quarters for gas money. Halle would stop at the buffets, throw quarters into the slots, spend whatever money she won on silly presents for those she loved. They were sisters who’d each lost a father and a husband, yet the trials they had endured had brought them together every time. Soon a child would bind them closer. Casey and Juniper were also sisters. Casey had a child already. He pictured that little girl on the Farm, singing about a butterfly.