by Brett Cooper
Chapter Ten
Christine and her father sat wide-eyed in shock. With their minds stunned, their thoughts reeling into another dimension, seemingly, in the wake of this sickening news, their bodies could do nothing but wait for their minds to recover.
Mrs. Gold hung her head. She spoke in a whisper: “This is going to sound like an excuse, I know… James, you’ve been acting strangely for a few weeks now. Working later and leaving earlier. Holed up in the study. Hiding texts. And coming to bed after midnight. I was hurt. I was sure you were cheating on me. So… I wanted revenge.”
She let this sink in. Then she wept.
Christine said suddenly, “Don’t tell me it was Mr. Winger.” Only because that was the worst possible person she could think of.
Mom shook her head.
“Someone from the office?” Dad managed to say. “Theo.”
This time Mom did not shake her head.
Dad’s face went utterly slack, as if the only way to deal with the tsunami of unacceptable emotions threatening to drown him was to retreat within himself, shrink all of the unwelcome feelings, compress them into a tiny speck somewhere deep in his heart and then forget about that speck.
He breathed not a word, only clapped his hands on his knees as if to say, “That’s that.” And quietly he stood and left the room.
Mom waited a few seconds. Feebly she announced, as if to the ghost of her husband, to the empty space he had occupied: “I’m sorry.”
Not even glancing in Christine’s direction, Mrs. Gold then left her daughter alone and devastated.
Christine had felt once, about a week ago, that her family was more or less perfect – well, except for her own flaws. This week her perfect family had collapsed like a regular house of cards. And now, with the affair bombshell her mom had dropped upon her and her dad, the wreckage of the family seemed to be in the hungry mouth of a voracious sinkhole. Maybe this was just a long overdue dose of reality, she thought. Too much reality. Way more than she deserved.
Focus, Christine thought desperately. She felt like she might lose her mind and possibly her reason for living; maybe, she thought, she could act like someone clear-thinking and purposeful. Maybe that would help. One thing at a time. Focus.
She looked again at the flowers on the bedside table. Upon this one thing she focused. In the middle of the bouquet, she saw, was a single white rose. Every rose has its thorn, right? So true. Reaching over, she located the rose stem and broke off a two-inch piece from the bottom.
She held the stem piece like a stress reliever and, nearly pricking herself, pressed the pad of her thumb against the longest and sharpest of its few thorns. She closed her eyes and focused on the pain. The pain from the thorn helped – a little – to distract her from the pain of her wilting life.
The door opened. The sound was unexpected and disturbing. It was too late. Visiting hours were over. Something was wrong. She sensed this instantly. She didn’t know exactly why. Sometimes a sound is just wrong. Maybe there was more to it than that: an aura of evil?
She opened her eyes just a shade and only long enough to confirm what she was already sure of, that the intruder was Mr. Winger.
With eyes closed again, Christine wondered if she should press the Help button to call the nurses’ station but she decided to pretend to be asleep. Mr. Winger would see her like this, maybe call to her to see if she’d wake up, and when she wouldn’t, he’d leave.
But he wasn’t leaving, and now Christine was feeling committed to pretending to be asleep. Her options were dwindling.
As Mr. Winger drew closer to her, she heard his breathing and his very slow, sporadic approaching footfalls. Eventually there was no other sound, only her breathing and his. He was staring at her, Christine knew.
I’ve got to open my eyes.
As she did, intending to say, “What are you doing?” Christine saw Mr. Winger hovering over her, lowering his hands toward her face.
Before she could scream, he’d covered her mouth with a piece of duct tape.
By the time she thought to roll out of bed – a hopeless notion, considering her condition – and attempt to escape, Christine found herself pinned under his considerable weight as he forced her wrists back, a piece of duct tape readied in each of his hands, and bound her wrists to the steel bed frame.
All the while, her muffled screams sounded very far away, too soft to be heard from the hallway.
Kick him, she thought. Or kick the bed. She needed a loud noise to attract attention. In her weakened condition, though, and with little leverage, Christine found that she could barely lift her legs. She’d been silenced.
A moment later, Mr. Winger had taped her ankles to the bed frame, too.
What did he plan to do to her? Christine couldn’t allow herself to think about that. Her only hope now lay in using the rose stem she still clutched in her hand. Maybe its thorn could serve as a knife for slicing, and she could cut away at the duct tape below that hand. If she could free one hand, she could make a loud sound and help would come running.
She started to work at it, adjusting the stem in her hand so that the longest thorn was positioned correctly, toward the tape, bending her wrist at an extreme angle and repeatedly making a small sawing motion. It was terribly awkward and uncomfortable, and if it worked it would be slow going, but it might work. If she had time.
“The great thing about duct tape,” Mr. Winger said to her very quietly, “is that, while its adhesive is strong enough to bind almost anything, it can be removed pretty easily from a person’s skin using rubbing alcohol. That stuff’s commonplace in hospitals, you know. It evaporates quickly. Leaves no suspicious traces.”
Christine understood. The police would not find any signs of foul play. They wouldn’t find any duct tape or sticky residue left on her skin, no evidence at all. All of which meant that Mr. Winger intended to kill her.
Without warning, he yanked her pillow out from under her head, which then fell to the mattress.
“Ah,” he said. “Good pillow. From home, is it?” And he nuzzled the pillow and inhaled its scent, an act Christine found repulsive.
He eyed her expectantly, as though she might speak.
“You know what this pillow reminds me of, Christine?”
In a high-pitched voice he answered his own question: “What, Mr. Winger?” Then in his own voice he added: “I’ll speak for you, if that’s all right.”
He proceeded to enact both sides of a conversation, first leading as himself and then replying as though he were Christine:
“Marshmallows, Christine,” he said.
The falsetto again: “You’re right, Mr. Winger. The color of this pillow case is the same white color as a marshmallow.”
“I love marshmallows, Christine. Don’t you?”
Listening to this strange dialogue-monologue, Christine, with a sense of awe-struck terror, wondered whether Mr. Winger was literally, certifiably crazy.
“Yes, sir,” he answered himself, “I surely do.”
He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his split personality one-man show. Meanwhile, Christine continued to labor to use the thorn to score away at the duct tape restraining her right wrist.
Halfway there, she thought. She realized she might not need to cut all the way across the tape. If she could cut to within about a half an inch of the other end, she might be able to break through by mustering all of her arm strength against the tape.
“My favorite marshmallows, Christine,” Mr. Winger was saying, “are the crunchy little ones in Lucky Charms. You know the cereal, right?”
“Yes, Mr. Winger. I like all the rainbow colors. They’re super tasty.”
“I like the rainbow colors, too, Christine. But white marshmallows are tasty in their own way. Doesn’t this marshmallow-colored pillow look delicious?”
Now Christine knew where he was going with this. Her time was quickly running out.
“Yes, Mr. Winger. That pillow looks good enough to eat.”
What could she do?
Focus, Christine, focus.
Using all of her might to push out with her arm as she sawed against the duct tape with the awkward bent-wrist sawing action, back and forth, Christine counted each half-cycle, hoping the specificity of counting might somehow help to cause the tape to break.
One, two, three, four…
I’m counting my dying moments, she thought.
Then, all at once, several things happened:
First the tape that held her wrist finally broke.
Then, in one uninterrupted action, Christine swung the thorn at Mr. Winger’s face, gouging it.
He yelped, not at all loudly, for just a fraction of a second, reigning himself in immediately, as Christine hoped someone was hearing this.
Next Mr. Winger let go of the pillow to touch his face, no doubt reflexively trying to assess the damage.
In that moment the pillow fell to the floor.
As if blasting above the surface of a pool after having been held underwater against her will, Christine desperately inhaled through her nose. At the same time, she swung her arm again, aiming to land the thorn in Mr. Winger’s eye.
Swatting aside her blow, he recovered himself, wrestled her hand back and re-taped her wrist.
Then Mr. Winger snatched the pillow from the floor and smothered Christine once more, this time with animalistic determination, grunting and sweating.
No one’s coming, Christine thought.
She knew she was losing oxygen. She felt her strength draining away. She tried mightily, vainly, to breathe against the pillow.
She prayed for forgiveness: for her mom and dad, for herself, then for everyone and everything, the whole world, including the man who was taking her life.
Her grip loosened.
The flower stem fell from her fingers to the floor.