Swerve

by Inglath Cooper

  “I suspect you need each other as much as my sister and I needed each other. And still do, in fact.”

  We sit for a while, Katie holding onto my hand now, as if she doesn’t want me to let go. When the time feels right, I say, “Is it okay if I ask your mom to come in now?”

  She nods once, and I get up to go outside the room and get her.

  An hour later, I leave Katie’s bedside feeling optimistic that she will get through this because she’s opened the door and let her mother back in. I’m hopeful that they can hold on to each other. They’re going to need to.

  I’m headed for the nurses’ station when my phone beeps. Mia’s picture flashes on the screen in a FaceTime call. I step into a nearby linen closet and answer.

  “Hey,” I say. “Are y’all having a good time?”

  “Hey, Em,” Mia says, her voice infused with laughter and cotton candy and the kind of teenage fun I’m happy she wants to experience. Witnessing Katie’s despair just now makes me realize how unnatural it is for someone their age to be filled with anything other than joy.

  Grace sticks her face on screen and says, “Hi, Emory! Wish you could have come. The festival is amazing.”

  “Glad you’re enjoying it, Grace. What’s the best thing so far?”

  “The lead singer in the first band,” Mia pipes up, her sunshine blonde hair glistening under the festival lights behind them. “Oh, and the cotton candy. You should have come with us.”

  Is the note of accusation my imagination? “You know I would have if I hadn’t had to work.”

  “You always have to work,” Mia says with a blend of resignation and disappointment.

  “Food on the table,” I say.

  “Yeah, but you never get to have any fun.”

  “I’m off this weekend,” I say. “Why don’t we plan something?”

  “Like what?” she says, attempting not to sound too excited. I feel a stab of guilt for the fact that I’ve made such promises before only to get called in and have to cancel them. “We could go to Virginia Beach. Maybe spend Saturday night?”

  “Really?” Mia ditches her indifference now. “That would be awesome. Can Pounce come?”

  “You think he’d like the sand?”

  “He would if I’m there. And I just got him that cool new cat harness.”

  “Cats don’t like the beach, Mia,” Grace chimes in.

  “My cat is no ordinary cat,” Mia defends.

  “I will have to agree with you on that one,” I say. “What time will you be home tonight?”

  “Is midnight okay?”

  “As long as it’s no later. You have school tomorrow.”

  “Will do, Doc.”

  “I’ll be home about eleven-thirty,” I say.

  “You don’t have to wait up,” Mia says.

  “I will,” I say. We both know I have to know she’s home before I can go to sleep.

  “Okay. Later, sis,” Mia says.

  Grace pops back on the screen. “Bye, Emory! We won’t talk to strangers!”

  “Good deal,” I say, smiling at her teasing. It’s the last thing I always tell Mia before she leaves the house to go out even though we both know it’s something of a ridiculous request in an age where they talk to strangers on their phones 24-7. “You two have fun.” I click off and put my phone in the pocket of my white coat.

  I’m headed back to the ER when I spot Dr. Maverick walking toward me. He’s got an entourage of first-year residents in his wake, and I’m surprised when he stops just short of me to ask, “Your page turn out okay?”

  “She will be. A bit of a journey ahead, but I think she’s up for it.”

  He nods once, looking as if he wants to say something, but thinks better of it. “Good to hear, Dr. Benson,” he says, and then continues down the hall, the neutrality of professionalism notably back in place.

  Knox

  “Down is up, up is down. Good is Wicked, Wicked is Good. The times are changing. This is what Oz has come to.”

  ―Danielle Paige

  HE WONDERS EXACTLY when it was that the police became the enemy.

  Sitting at a large round table with eleven of his fellow officers, Knox Helmer listens as Senator Tom Hagan presents his case for the Metropolitan Police Department’s committed efforts to be at peace with its community.

  “These are trying times we live in,” Senator Hagan asserts, his blue-blood inspection skirting the crowd of officers before him. “The efforts of the police departments in our country have never been under more scrutiny. I realize the tremendous pressure you are under when a situation calls for a quick-thinking response. Many times, your decision will result in life or death. Unfortunately, your jobs require that you think beyond the present moment.”

  Dawson Healy leans in close to Knox and says in a low voice, “You mean the part where we’re dead?”

  Knox tips his head in acknowledgment of the question, wondering if the senator would expect them to carry out a military mission with their hands tied behind their backs.

  “We in public service,” the Senator continues, “must be aware of our role to set an example for our citizens.”

  “I guess that example includes the armed security who walked his ass in here. And anyway, I thought our role was to serve and protect,” Dawson says now in a less-concealed tone.

  “Restraint must serve as the hallmark of your every action,” the senator continues.

  “Does that include when we have a gun pointed at our heads?” Dawson asks in a voice loud enough that the other officers at the table give him looks that say, “Cool it.”

  Knox’s own blood pressure has started to inch upward. He runs a finger between the collar of his shirt and his neck, wondering why the hook of tonight’s invitation had been Appreciation Dinner when it should have read Political Correctness Lecture. He decides a bathroom break is in order and leaves the table to weave his way to the back entrance of the hotel’s conference room. He’s just stepped into the hallway when the door swings open behind him. Dawson Healy has followed him out.

  “Screw that,” he says, reaching inside his jacket pocket to pull out a pack of cigarettes. “Join me outside?”

  “Sure,” Knox says following him across the carpeted floor to a glass door that leads out to a balcony. He lights up, offers Knox one.

  “Thanks. I’m good,” he says, leaning against the railing to stare out at the lights of downtown Washington, DC.

  “When the hell did the good guys become the bad guys?” Dawson asks, pulling in another drag from his cigarette and then expelling the smoke from his lungs on an angry whoosh.

  “Damned if I know,” Knox says under his breath.

  Another drag on the cigarette is followed by, “I’d like to see Senator Priss Pot in his Armani suit make a life-and-death decision with a Glock pointed at his chest. Guess he’d do a quick calculation of the guy’s likelihood of having experienced social injustice versus the chance that the bullet will hit within the protection of his vest. He could probably discount the fact that the prick will just go ahead and aim for his forehead.”

  “He’d probably piss the suit,” Knox says, even as he realizes there’s little to be gained from indulging in a bitch fest with Healy.

  The two of them have worked enough crime scenes together for him to know that Healy is old school. Translation: the general public deserves to live with the reasonable expectation of being able to go to a nightclub on a Saturday night without hiding out in the bathroom to escape the guy intent on killing as many people as he can before someone can shoot him. Or to go to a country music festival without becoming target practice for a psycho.

  “You got that right,” Healy says. “This shit is upping the likelihood that we’re gonna end up giving our lives to the cause. I see guys making calls every single day that aren’t based on what we were trained to do. They’re making a decision based on whether or not the perp’s girlfriend is going to plaster her cell phone video all over Facebook with an edit that
makes it look like we created the situation. I swear it’s like somebody turned the world upside down, gave it a good shake, and nothing makes a damn lick of sense anymore.”

  The door behind them opens, and a tall blonde in a designer-obvious black dress that shows off notable cleavage steps outside. “Either of you have a light?” she asks in a silky voice.

  Healy pulls his from his shirt pocket, holds it out with a raised eyebrow. “You really smoke, or are you as enthralled with the speech as the two of us?”

  She takes the lighter, pulls a cigarette from between her breasts and lights up. She draws in a long drag, as if she’s been waiting for the fix before saying, “There’s your first answer. As for the second, not exactly enthralled, but he’s my husband so I make the effort.”

  Healy looks as if a spotlight has just hit him square between the eyes. “Oh. Well. Come to think of it, I should probably do the same. See you inside, Knox.”

  “I should get back in too,” Knox says to the senator’s wife, starting for the door.

  “Stay for a minute,” she calls after him.

  It would have been the moment to keep walking. He knows it instantly. And he has no idea what makes him turn around. The cleavage. Or the fact that she belongs to the windbag who thought it his place to tell an entire room full of cops how to do their jobs.

  Whatever the reason, he does turn around. And walk back. Leans against the wall that offers its view of the city and says, “Smoking’s bad for you.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Why do you keep doing it?”

  “I have a very short list of things I like to do that might not be so good for me.”

  Knox has a built-in alarm system for risky situations. It’s going off like a sonic boom in his ear. Which in no way explains why he continues with, “Such as?”

  “Run with traffic instead of facing it.”

  “Check.”

  “I have a tendency to fall asleep in the bathtub with a book.”

  “Living on the line.”

  “Oh, and there’s one more.”

  He looks at her then, feeling the physical pull between them. “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “I like edgy men.”

  He stares at her for several seconds and then, “That the category you’re putting me in?”

  She shrugs her narrow shoulders. “I’m guessing I’m right. I noticed you in the conference room. You were sitting at the table across from mine.”

  He props an elbow against the wall, looking at her intently now. “And you followed me out here?”

  “Does that bother you or impress you?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  She takes a step closer, puts the cigarette out on the wall next to them. “I’d enjoy having the opportunity to help you make up your mind.”

  “What if he comes looking for you?” Knox asks, holding her gaze with something closer to curiosity than interest at the moment.

  “He won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because if he were interested enough in my whereabouts to come looking for me, I wouldn’t be out here trying to seduce you.”

  “Is that what you’re doing?” he asks, his eyes falling to the fullness of her lower lip.

  “Awkwardly, and obviously not very well, but yes.”

  “Maybe you don’t give yourself enough credit.”

  They study each other for several long moments before she places her hand over the zipper of his suit pants, and then concedes, “Maybe I don’t.”

  There was little point in denying it, so he doesn’t.

  “We could leave,” she suggests.

  “And go where?”

  “I have a place.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  She holds his look then, as if acknowledging the next play is his.

  He removes her hand from the front of his pants, holds it for a moment in clear indecision. She pins his gaze, as if she knows he is wavering.

  He laces their fingers together. She smiles and says, “Follow me.”

  At the door, she drops his hand, and they walk through the lobby, two people simply going in the same direction. Until they reach the taxi. He opens the door, and she slides in, giving the driver the address.

  He hesitates, and there is a moment when they both recognize it as an opportunity to change their minds. “By the way, I’m Savannah.”

  “Knox,” he says.

  “Come,” she says.

  His life has already included a very long string of turning point moments. He realizes this could be one of them. But he also has ample evidence of the fact that doing the right thing doesn’t guarantee a good outcome. He’s all but sure it doesn’t make any difference at all. And without giving himself time to reconsider, he gets in, and the taxi speeds off down the city street.

  The Senator

  “The universe is a vast system of exchange. Every artery of it is in motion, throbbing with reciprocity, from the planet to the rotting leaf.”

  — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  TOM HAGAN WATCHES the video of his wife getting into the taxi, noting the tall, wide-shouldered man getting in behind her. Ex-military. You could spot it a mile away. It wasn’t just the build or the haircut. It was the way he held himself, straight, alert, as if he’d prepared his entire life to sense when danger was around the next corner.

  He plays it through again, noting the smile of invitation on his wife’s face, then sends a text to the assistant who had messaged him the video.

  Find out who he is.

  A second later:

  On it.

  One o’clock in the morning, and he’s wide awake. He sits down at the desk in the middle of the Hart Senate Office Building and pulls a bottle of Glenfiddich from the side drawer. He picks up a glass from the round tray at the corner of the desk and pours himself two inches.

  The single malt Scotch burns going down, but he relishes the sensation and the alcohol’s almost immediate ability to smooth the edges of his anger.

  Does he have a right to be angry?

  By a normal husband’s expectations, yes.

  But then he isn’t exactly a normal husband. Hasn’t been for a very long time. And they don’t exactly have a normal marriage.

  Although it had started out that way.

  They’d met in college, both in law school at the University of Virginia. He’d gone to undergrad on an academic scholarship and used college loans to get his law degree. She’d attended as the daughter of one of the university’s most noted donors, her family name featured on a plaque on one of the academic buildings.

  They’d had absolutely nothing in common other than a passion for the club where they’d met, the Virginia Law Democrats. They’d met at a meeting where students had volunteered to work on a pro bono case for an undocumented family facing deportation. Until that point, their lives could not have appeared more different.

  He takes another sip of his Scotch, remembering how passionate they’d both been about winning that case, how it had planted the seed for his own desire to get into politics where he could actually make a difference in the laws that affected such things.

  And God, she’d been beautiful. Fresh and full of life. He remembers the first time he realized she was flirting with him. How he’d hardly been able to believe it. Because why would a girl born to everything she’d been born to even look at him?

  She’d told him later that it was his passion for the law and his desire to right the wrongs that other people accepted as part of life. By other people she meant the family she had rebelled against, the father she hadn’t spoken to in a year.

  They were old tobacco money. The South Carolina family home had been built when slaves were still used to harvest the crops. The first time Savannah brought him home with her for a long weekend, he’d felt as if he were walking around in a dream. He’d never met anyone who actually lived in such a setting. The house looked like a set for Gone with the Wind with the enormo
us white columns spanning its front and the four century-old-oak trees marking its entrance.

  Until that weekend, he’d had no idea her family was in politics. She’d never talked about it, and he’d had no reason to ask. As it turned out, her father had been a senator for the state of South Carolina. The seat he himself now held. That weekend had been a defining point in his life, although he certainly hadn’t realized it then. He’d encouraged Savannah to make amends with her family, and he supposed that was what had made her father take note of him when he had apparently been dismissive of the other boyfriends she’d brought home.

  They’d actually nearly broken up over her father’s approval of him. But in those early days, there had been something real and hard to find between them. And for the first few years of their marriage, they had stayed hungry for each other. They’d moved back to her hometown of Greenville, opened a law practice with her family’s support and approval. And for a good long while, life had mostly been everything he’d once dreamed about.

  He wonders, not for the first time, what would have happened if he’d never gone to work for her father, never agreed to run for the senator’s seat when he’d been forced to retire because of his health. Would he and Savannah have stayed in love? Would he be less tarnished in her eyes?

  Maybe.

  How many times during his early years in Washington had she accused him of letting it change him? And how many times had he denied it?

  She’d been right, of course.

  It had changed him.

  Power does that.

  He’d resisted at first. Tried not to be influenced by the doors that continued to open for him, doors behind which he found things offered to him that he’d never thought to imagine. Temptations he’d proved to weak to resist. Savannah was no fool. She recognized the changes in him. He denied them at first, but eventually, there was no point in denying it. He didn’t want to go back. Not even for her.

  He opens the top drawer of his desk, reaches to the back and pulls a cell phone from a hidden compartment at the back. He turns it on, hits Contacts, scrolls down to Hotel California and opens it. He stares at the number, his finger itching to tap the screen. A late-night visit would certainly even the score. But the proprietor frowns on impulsive appointments, prefers a certain restraint in her clients.