by Rich Foster
“I’m hungry!” Jacob announced from the doorway.
Grace glanced at the wall clock. It was almost six. “I better fix these children something to eat. Would you care to stay and lend moral support?”
“Sure.”
Together they rustled up a meal. Lucas tossed a salad. Grace baked cornbread from a mix. On the stove top Italian sausage browned while she heated spaghetti sauce. Into this she put diced tomatoes, mushrooms, green peppers and sautéed onions. Soon the house was filled with the pleasant aroma of dinner.
Sarah came in followed by her little brothers.
“What are we having? Mom never cooks like this anymore. Her food all comes out of the microwave.”
“You’ll see. Take a seat and you can have a slice of cornbread to tide you over until the spaghetti is ready.”
Soon they were all seated. Lucas bent his head.
“For this food and your many blessings we give thanks, Lord. Amen.”
“We don’t say the blessing. Not no more.” Jacob said.
“Hush Jacob.” Sarah shushed him.
“Momma says God doesn’t listen.”
“Jacob!”
Grace intervened. “Sometimes it seems that way.”
“But why did God kill Ruthie?” Jacob asked.
Lucas thought this was one of the hardest theological discussions he ever faced. “God didn’t kill Ruthie, a bad man did that.”
“But if God can do anything, then why did He let it happen?” asked Sarah.
Lucas resorted to honesty. “I don’t know why God let Ruthie die. Or why He let your daddy die. I’ve been told he was a good man. But, bad things happen to good people. For reasons we don’t know, God permits it.”
“I don’t think I like God,” Sarah said emphatically.
“He’s mean!” piped in Jacob.
Lucas was uncertain what to say. “Sometimes we just have to believe that God loves us, despite how it may seem.” Resorting to platitudes, he said, “God cares for us, he’s the bread of life.”
“I like this bread better,” shouted Caleb as he pushed a piece drenched with honey into his mouth.
As they ate, the conversation moved away to lighter subjects like school and their favorite activities. The children ate voraciously; one would think they had not eaten in a week. Lucas and Grace both asked questions, then, patiently listened to the children’s often rambling, answers.
“You don’t yell like mommy.” Jacob commented. “She’s always angry or tired.”
“Your mom works hard. She just needs a little help. You can help her, can’t you?” asked Grace. The little boy nodded his head fervently.
“I like to be a helper!”
When dinner was over the boy was as good as his word, helping to clear the dishes. His sister rinsed. Grace loaded the dishwasher. Lucas scooped vanilla ice cream. After dinner, coffee perked while Caleb played on the kitchen floor.
“Are you a Grandma?” he asked.
“No, I’m not.”
“Would you like to be one? You could be mine if you wanted to.”
Grace smiled. “That might be nice Caleb.”
The boy ran over and gave her legs a hug. Grace looked wistful. Lucas and she both had unspoken thoughts of the families they each might have had. If only Lester were a better man. If only Lucas had found someone for himself. The possibilities of missed opportunities filled the room.
They ate ice cream with chocolate sauce. Soon, the children ran off to play. Lucas felt a passing emptiness. It was both sorrow and pity for the little boy in his past that never knew moments like this. It had been a lovely evening with the children and their honorary grandma. If there were such a thing as a male biological time clock, his was tolling.
“You should have known her before.”
The comment interrupted Lucas’s reverie. Looking up he asked, ”Who?”
“Calley. Before Jason died, she was like a summer breeze when she entered a room. They had next to nothing, but they milked joy from life…more than any other couple I’ve known.” Grace fell momentarily silent as she reflected. “She never worried about things. Desmond and she had that in common.”
Lucas’s eyebrows arched as he tried to place the name.
“Desmond Jones, our church janitor. Those two trusted God completely. Now he’s dead, so is Jason, and Calley, poor girl, seems to be dying. She lost more than her daughter in the church that night.”
Lucas thought of the young people whose lives he had seen cut short. So many unfulfilled dreams, he thought. At times it seemed that God was careless with life.
The mantle clock chimed eight, yet Calley had not returned. Jacob slept on the sofa. Caleb softly snored in Grace’s arms as she rocked him in her rocking chair. Sarah finished her book and closed it firmly.
“Where’s my Mom?”
“I don’t know, Sarah, perhaps she was detained by a washout from the rain. I think you may have to sleep here tonight.”
Sarah’s eyes brightened. “Really?”
“Sure, come on. Let’s find you a new toothbrush and a bed.”
Grace led the way toward the bedrooms. Lucas scooped Jacob up from the sofa and carried him to the spare room. Soon he and his brother were settled beneath the sheets.
Lucas left Grace with Sarah and returned to the living room. He picked up the phone and called the hospital. There was no Calley Haskell admitted. He called the police. They had no reports of an accident involving anyone named Haskell. There had been minor mudslides closing roads south of town, but Route 12 to the Forks was clear and open. Lucas glanced up as Grace came in.
“I’m going to go look for her.”
Grace nodded. “That might be best. But where do you start?”
“I guess I’ll start by driving to Red Lake. Maybe she broke down.”
Outside it was cool. The storm clouds were breaking up and patches of stars twinkled above. Lucas walked to his house. Shortly, he was on the road driving through Mason Forks on a quixotic venture. Two miles past town, he thought to go past the Haskell house. He hit the brakes, letting the Porsche fishtail around for fun, and then downshifted hard, making the wheels spin.
The Haskell house was dark, but the jeep was in the drive. He parked and walked up on the porch. The door yawned open. Reaching in, he turned on the light. Calley lay sprawled on the corduroy sofa; a prescription vial lay on the floor.
Lucas rushed over. The bottle held a solitary pill, but the prescription was brand new. Calley breathed shallowly. He tried to wake her but her head rolled loosely. Slapping her firmly, he shouted her name, but she barely murmured. When he let go, her body went slack and she sagged back, like a heap of clothes.
He dialed 911, giving them the address. Then he called 411 for the poison control center. A calm voice told him that diazepam was not usually fatal, but he should get the victim to a medical facility. The minutes ticked by. He continued to shake her; fearful that she might slip away despite the assurances of poison control.
Fifteen long minutes later, he heard the wailing of a distant siren echoing off the hills. He audibly followed its approach. At the edge of town it died with a whelp. Moments later the living room windows reflected red flashing lights from the street.
Two EMT’s entered. They took Calley’s vital signs. “We better transport,” said the older one. They quickly loaded her on a gurney and into the ambulance. “I’ll call in her vitals and see if we are cleared to give her flumazenil.”
The younger medic slammed the hatch and hustled to the front of the ambulance. He glanced back at Lucas. “Your girl friend should make it, buddy. She’ll be at St. Catherine’s in fifteen minutes.”
Lucas did not bother to correct him. Calley wasn’t his girlfriend, but he felt a proprietary interest in her welfare. The medic put the vehicle in gear, which smoothly moved away. At the highway, he saw, the ambulance slow and then turn toward Red Lake. The siren came on. Lucas listened until it faded in the night.
There was no po
int in going to the hospital. He wasn’t kin. The hospital staff wouldn’t let him into emergency; he might as well wait at his home.
When he arrived, he called Grace, telling her what had happened. In his living room he poured himself a short scotch. He sat down in his leather chair and sipped it slowly. So many shattered dreams he thought. Then he began to cry. He cried a little for Calley, and a little for the lost boy in his youth. He shed tears for himself and for failed relationships, but mostly he wept for how damn hard life could be at times.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Remorse filled Robert Goodman’s heart. He truly wanted to kill Travis Parks. It goaded him that he lost self-control, got drunk and passed out. Instead of being in a Mexican cantina he was back at Canaan County Jail. He swore to give up alcohol if he ever escaped again, neither of which was likely to happen. Some inmates admired his escape; others ridiculed him for not holding his liquor. A wild brawl ensued as Robert taught one critic a lesson in manners. He ended up locked in solitary.
At St. Catherine’s, Miles Corning, the hospital’s chief executive officer read Calley Haskell’s personnel file. When an employee was admitted for substance abuse, it set off alarm bells that ran right up through the bureaucratic chain. Miles scrolled through her record. It carried no black marks. There were two significant breaks for unpaid leave, but these were noted as family emergencies. Besides, in the interim she had put in a substantial amount of overtime, which, with the nursing shortage, was not insignificant in Miles eyes. Her supervisors gave her all satisfactory or better reviews.
Next he skimmed the admitting report, noting that the pill bottle found with her at the time of the overdose was not empty, but one pill might be an oversight rather than evidence this was not a suicide attempt.
Miles called the charge nurse in orthopedics where Calley worked. He inquired into her recent performance. Was anything wrong? Did Ms. Haskell seem to be having problems? Was her work satisfactory? He ran through the questions. The nurse already knew, from the hospital’s rumor mill, that Calley, instead of working orthopedics, was at this moment locked up in the psych unit under a suicide watch.
She also knew Calley’s job performance was off, but everyone on the floor knew what she had suffered. The woman was tempted to shade the truth and cover for Calley, but her sense of professional responsibility overcame this. Her clear concise synopsis painted a picture of someone who was increasingly missing the mark.
“Have you been missing any meds,” Corning asked?
“No, no shortages.” Then she paused. Should she mention it? It might well mean the end to Calley’s career, but if she did not, it might later endanger her own job. “Actually sir, there was an incident yesterday. Calley collided with the meds cart when she was carrying a bouquet of flowers. When we inventoried the cart to get reissues from the pharmacy, we were short two Hydrocodone tablets.”
“I see,” said Miles.
“It’s probably nothing, sir. Water was spilled. Perhaps they dissolved, or rolled away and were lost.”
“Thank you, nurse.”
Miles rang off. He called down to security, requesting the previous days videos taken by the hallway cameras in the orthopedic ward. The head of security entered a password and moments later the file was transferred to Miles desktop.
Miles ran through the video at high speed. People appeared and disappeared in jerky motion. A few frames showed people kneeling on the floor. He pushed stop and ran the digital sequence back.
Calley moved down the hallway with flowers in hand. It seemed innocuous. The collision appeared to be a genuine accident. Calley had not picked up anything but the flowers. She was busy wiping herself off while an orderly helped the meds nurse gather the scattered medications.
He ran through the video a second time and saw nothing that showed Calley’s involvement in the missing pills. As he ran it backward one last time, his phone rang. Momentarily distracted, the images run further back than before. Miles answered the phone, then clicked stop on his computer. While he and the hospital’s CFO discussed Medicaid reimbursement schedules, he started the security video clip again. The footage was too far back; he let it play. Two minutes later he watched as Calley drifted down the hallway past the meds cart. It was a long camera shot, but when she reversed direction he clearly saw Calley rifle the small paper cups before the meds nurse’s return.
He played it a second time. As Calley’s hand moved over the cart he pressed pause and print. Moments later his office printer began to print the evidence. Miles called the hospital’s human resource office and put Calley on suspension. Then he began writing a professional misconduct report for the state’s Registered Nurse’s Licensing Board. Later, he would file a police report concerning the purloined narcotics. If nothing else Miles believed in the maxim, “Cover your ass.”
In the psyche unit, Dr. Urvadi read the new patients chart. If the woman was trying to kill herself there were better ways than by taking Valium. Perhaps it was a mistake. Sometimes people mixed drugs, got stoned, and just took all the pills they had. The lucky ones woke up on the floor or in the E.R. The unlucky ones went to the morgue.
Urvadi breezed into her the room. The woman was attractive, but gaunt. It was a common story; they started on pills and soon forgot to eat. Rather quickly they became walking wrecks.
“How are we today?” he asked casually. Calley did not respond. She stared out the windows at the blackened landscape.
Focusing on what she was giving attention to, he said, “The land is scarred, but it will heal, life will return.” He meant far more than that though. Urvadi came around the bed. He lifted one of Calley’s poesy strapped wrists. Her pulse was slightly elevated, nervous anxiety perhaps. The woman acted as though he were not there.
“Do you remember what happened last night?”
Calley shrugged.
“Did you take any medicine yesterday?”
Calley finally looked toward him.
“I saw my doctor. He gave me a Valium prescription.”
“And then what?”
“I had it filled and I took a few.”
“A few?”
“Uh… I mean I took two.”
“Did you take any later?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Do you have thoughts of hurting or killing yourself, Ms. Haskell?”
“Not myself, no.”
“Then there is someone you would like to hurt?”
“There’s someone I’d like to see dead!” Calley snapped at him. Suicidal patients were seldom angry, withdrawn perhaps, always depressed, but not angry.
“I’m going to remove these poesy straps. You can get up and move around the ward if you’d like. You’ll be with us for a couple of days.” He made it sound more like a resort hotel than a psych ward.
“We’ll talk later today.”
Dr. Urvadi left the room. Calley turned back to the decimated landscape.
Jamal finished his morning rounds. In his office he spent the remainder of the morning seeing patients. Funding cuts caused the fifty-minute hour to be reduced to thirty-five. Urvadi found he had very little time to actually help put people back together. More often than not patients were put on long-term medication. For the chemically imbalanced this worked, anything else would be like treating a diabetic with therapy instead of insulin. But too often, Jamal felt the meds simply covered the problem. The pills flattened the affect, took away the highs and lows. Existence became a gentle float down the river of life. What nagged the doctor’s mind was the doubt that enlightenment could be achieved while medicated.
He was a product of Hinduism. Blending western psychology and eastern philosophy was at times a challenge. Westerners sought more of life and more of self. Easterners pursued renunciation of self. Christians in the west desired to be re-born, whereas the east hoped to escape from samsara and re-birth.
All sought moksha or salvation, as the Christian equivalent was called.
Hinduism taught
that man was trapped by avidya or ignorance of self. Kama or as a westerner might say, desire kept one trapped in samsara until true enlightenment was achieved.
Jamal saw the two faiths as opposite sides of the coin. Western wealthy society bred those who wanted eternal life because life was easy. For impoverished eastern societies where suffering was rampant, the cessation of awareness was a welcomed relief.
He often mused on where religion might evolve if the East became very rich and the West exceedingly poor. Would their idea of “heaven” be traded? Would westerners embrace a return to the “whole” and end of self? Would the East buy into an afterlife paved with gold?
Personally, he was non-religious, but he did believe in karma or as the Americans would say, “What goes around comes around.” Perhaps not in a cosmic sense but on a personal level he believed base acts reduced a man and noble acts enhanced him.
His patient Kevin Daniels was one of those he considered to be trapped in ignorance of self. Unable to explain his loss, by his personal theology, Daniels rejected those beliefs; but he had nothing to replace it with. He raged at a god he now refused to believe existed, yet was unable to accept the death of his life-long god. He railed against the injustice of his wife’s death but had nothing to base his sense of injustice upon. Fate instead of faith was remorseless and faithless master, devoid of a sense of fair play.
Medications had stabilized the young man. Even so, Dr. Urvadi made little progress in reaching him emotionally. Whether it was the medications or his mental condition, Kevin remained detached. His viewpoint was nihilistic, but not in the Eastern sense of denial of self but in denial of meaning.
“All human action ultimately ends in nothingness,” Kevin would say. With futility as an end, he was paralyzed and thus he did nothing.
Of the two patients, Dr. Urvadi thought the boy more likely to one-day commit suicide than the woman. He saw Kevin’s professed nihilism as a posture, deterring his unfocused rage from turning inward. Kevin had beaten all the tenants of his moral philosophy into dross, but he had nothing with which to replace them. If his rage remained detached, Kevin would drift aimlessly in life, a vessel without a rudder. But if it ever turned inward, Urvadi felt certain Kevin would destroy himself, thereby killing the only god he now believed in.