The Case for Jamie

by Brittany Cavallaro

  And Watson. Watson there every day. On the hard plastic couch next to Leander. Watson speaking with the nurse. Watson asleep with his head in his hands. Always there when I was struggling in or out of sleep, when I was still wordless. When my dreams were all red weather. Watson there until he wasn’t.

  Thirty-One

  Charlotte

  Two weeks later

  I STILL COULDN’T MOVE MY ARM.

  Or my shoulder. Or my neck. There was a physical therapist. We were practicing small motions together. It was straightforward and infinitely boring.

  The withdrawal from the morphine was something else. Because it was all the same thing—oxycodone, morphine. Opioids, all of them, and my body rid itself of them the same way. Poorly.

  This was boring in its own way, too. But the nausea had passed by then, and the runny nose, the teary eyes. The dreams where I woke up screaming. I had hoped, somehow, that withdrawal this time would be different. It wasn’t. Not really. Only the incessant yawning was new. My body demanded sleep it then refused to allow me. I spent nights watching the television bolted to the wall, shows mostly about men rebuilding houses. This has good bones, they would say, or This is a gut job. The episodes about gut jobs brought back my awful stomach cramps, and so I moved on to hospital shows instead.

  Those annoyed the nurses, at least, and I felt a pathetic sort of triumph about that. The worst thing about the hospital was how available I had to be. A kind of girl art exhibit, there for gawking at, to be examined at all angles and interpreted. There were so many comments on my accent that I adopted a Texan swagger just to be contrary. There were so many people in scrubs calling me Miss Holmes. The cheeky addiction specialist called me Charlie. That, I found, I didn’t mind.

  Leander hated it, I think. He spent almost every minute by my bedside. When I’d read about that kind of behavior in books—the doting relative in the hospital room—I’d always thought it to be unbearably gloomy, someone clutching the patient’s hands, weeping, while a synthesizer groaned out a soundtrack. It wasn’t much like that. Leander kept his blazer on, though he left his collar unbuttoned. He played quite a bit of Sudoku. He read to me from novels and poetry books and the newspaper. Mostly the newspaper; he liked to read out savage film reviews in a swashbuckling voice, and when he ran out of those, he moved on to the good ones. Together, we made a list of movies to see. He was appalled to find out I’d never seen Alien. After he demonstrated said alien ripping its way out of someone’s chest, I found I was appalled too.

  James Watson came by, with flowers but without his son. He didn’t bring his wife, either, which I supposed was intentional, as he and Leander took the opportunity to go out to the hall and have a very loud fight. There is no way that Shelby is going to that godforsaken school, it nearly ate your son and Of course he doesn’t hate you, James and Don’t be a martyr, I know it’s your default setting, get over yourself. Then they stole the Connect Four set from the nurses’ station and made me watch them play each other. I began placing bets on Mr. Watson. It wasn’t good strategy, but it made my uncle furious. Well, as furious as he could be with Jamie’s father around.

  Shelby came; I had always liked that girl, her enthusiasms, her happy voice. Her face so much like Watson’s. How she let herself in and immediately said, “We aren’t talking about it, it’s too screwed up, can we just watch YouTube videos instead?” and then proceeded to French braid my hair into pigtails. She’d smuggled me in a whole dozen old-fashioned donuts and then ate ten of them in sock feet, talking so fast that I could hardly understand her, a lone sprinkle on her shirt.

  She was so much like her brother it made me want to cry. I didn’t. I braided her hair instead, much to her surprise and delight.

  It hadn’t ever been a decision, really, whether to choose her life or mine.

  Lena came by, sans Tom; she’d given him up as a bad job, she said, but I knew there were still three more months left in school, and that Lena had a thing for a boy in a sweater-vest. DI Green called, and Detective Shepard. He’d finished questioning me to his satisfaction, he’d said. I wasn’t facing criminal charges. Yet. I rather wanted to get back to England before he changed his mind.

  Hadrian Moriarty sent me a bouquet of lilies, most likely because he knew they were funereal. Bastard. My brother sat tragically by my bedside and pledged that he’d never leave me again. Save for prison, as he had made a full confession to the police. He would serve his time with dignity, he said.

  Four years ago I would have severed a limb for such treatment from Milo Holmes, but today I just made him sit in the plastic-covered chair and watch Ugly House Rescue with me until he fell asleep. He was gone in the morning. His assistant said he’d gone to Taiwan. I doubted he would ever really take responsibility for what he’d done.

  My mother called; we had a very civil discussion about my injuries, and she invited me to visit her in Switzerland. Her language made it clear: it was her home, not mine, and I wasn’t welcome to think of it as a refuge anymore.

  If I ever had to begin with.

  That was all. My mother didn’t want me, and my father never showed, and still the nurses called me Miss Holmes, Miss Holmes, like I belonged to that family, and it had been days since I’d seen him. Watson. He’d left, and not come back.

  Until he did.

  Leander was down at the vending machines. The nurses had just done their rotation. We were working on the paperwork for me to be transferred to a rehabilitation facility. They didn’t want me to fly, but Leander was insisting on bringing me home. There wasn’t much they could say to it—I was a British national, and I would wait until I wasn’t in immediate danger any longer, and then I would be gone.

  Seeing Watson in the door made me wonder at that. Danger. Why he and I found that we needed it. Why I felt it even now, him being there. He had on his leather jacket, and his ridiculous watch, and the boots that Morgan-Vilk had given him. He didn’t say anything for a long time.

  Until, like a fool, I said “Jamie,” and he came to me like a man compelled, feet slow, eyes dark, almost against his will. Almost against his will he put a hand on my shoulder. Dropped down to his knees. Put his face in my hair. For a moment—just a moment—and then he straightened and stood.

  “I did this,” he said. “I should have—you should have just shot me.”

  “You realize how ridiculous that sounds.”

  He stared at me. “You’d kicked it, hadn’t you.”

  “In a way.” I met his eyes. “You don’t ever really kick it, you know. Not completely. Though the current treatment plan certainly isn’t the best.”

  “The current plan?”

  “My getting shot, and needing morphine.”

  He smiled, despite himself. “That’s not much of a joke.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “I’m usually quite funny.”

  We talked. He was finishing his college applications; his suspension had been hand-waved away, and he was installed back at Sherringford in his single room. I had the sense that he was counting the days until it was over.

  I hadn’t seen Shelby in days. She wasn’t, as Mr. Watson had insisted, remaining in America. She was returning to her mother in London, for now.

  Watson hadn’t spoken much to his mother. “I don’t know when I will again,” he said.

  “Give it time,” I told him. It was advice I’d heard given before. I assumed it had some merit.

  And really, only days had passed. I had begun to feel unstuck from time, somehow, in a way that was particular to hospitals, and as I was explaining it to Watson my uncle appeared in the door with an armload of crisps and chocolate. Then he saw the two of us, and slipped away.

  Not before Watson saw him. “I should go,” he said. “Leave you to it.”

  “Why have you been away?” I asked him, all at once. “You were here—and then you left.”

  I had always been good at reading people, and Watson was a bit of an open book. I don’t know how to describe the
expression that washed over him. Not then. There was something wary about him, and something devastated too. Something too like a boy left out in the cold.

  “We aren’t good for each other,” he said. He took my hand. “There’s actual evidence for it, Holmes. We’re not. Not as we are.”

  “Does that matter?” I asked, quietly.

  Watson nodded. “It does. It does when it ends with you like this.”

  “Me? Your sister were almost shot—”

  “By you,” he said. “That isn’t even my point. Do you understand how messed up all this is, if the worst part isn’t you getting shot or pumped full of drugs? We’re like some kind of wildfire. We make terrible decisions. We make each other make terrible decisions. We’re not—we’re not good together, and I can’t keep doing this to you.”

  All of this. All of this, and to hear him say it.

  “I’m going back to London. It could be as soon as tomorrow,” I told him. I hadn’t meant to. It wouldn’t change anything.

  He nodded. Once. Twice. Three times, very quickly. “I guess—good-bye then.”

  A memory: the two of us on his father’s couch, Watson the one recovering, me running his scarf through my hands. It wouldn’t be London without you.

  “Come see me there,” I said now, imagining that younger Jamie. “Come see me. I’ll be living with Leander.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you really want me to?”

  “Is this about you doing penance? You don’t have to do penance,” I told him.

  He sighed. “Neither do you.”

  The machines hooked up to my arm continued their steady beeping. Watson traced one long IV line down to my arm.

  “Have I told you that I’m sorry?”

  “We need new words for sorry,” I said.

  Fits and starts. Always as though we were warming up a car that had been left in the cold.

  “I’d like that.” He was still staring at my arm. There were newer needle marks there, I supposed. At least they were from blood work. “I apologize. I am ashamed. Shamefaced. I feel guilty—”

  “Stop,” I said, because he was too far away, and soon he would be farther. “Do you see my bag? There, on the chair. There’s a folder in there for you.”

  It was an account of the last few years. I had been working on it at night, in my hospital bed, when I couldn’t sleep. It was ugly, and at times deeply pathetic, and full of the occasional Watson-style simile, and truth be told, I had no idea how to spell the word “necessary,” and he would think far less of me after he had read it. Still I could feel the pages staring at me at night, almost as though the act of writing it down had given it flesh.

  He knew it for what it was in moments, the pages flashing in his hands as he flipped through them. “Are you sure?” he asked, finally.

  “It’s our story,” I said to him.

  “No,” he said, and he was smiling. “No, it’s not. It’s yours.”

  Epilogue

  JANUARY

  FROM: C. Holmes < chholmes@dmail.com >

  TO: James Watson Jr. < j.watson2@dmail.com >

  SUBJECT LINE: Leander

  I thought you should know that I’ve been discharged from the rehabilitation center, and that I’ve been back in London a week now. Uncle Leander does not currently have an occupation, save for parenting me. The results have been varied. And awful. When he is not making me pancakes in the shape of mice or rabbits, he is dragging me to pubs to eavesdrop on perfectly innocent people. For fun, he says. Never mind the fact that I am still in three separate plaster casts and about as inconspicuous as an elephant. Neither is Leander, who spends these expeditions noisily eating crisps and grinning at me.

  I told him he had to find a new hobby. This morning I awoke to a poster of Harry Styles he had affixed to my ceiling. In said poster, he is wearing very tight leather trousers, and glitter. So much glitter.

  He badly needs a case. Leander, that is.

  Please go murder someone or rob a nearby bank. Please. I beg you.

  FROM: C. Holmes < chholmes@dmail.com >

  TO: James Watson Jr. < j.watson2@dmail.com >

  SUBJECT LINE: Perhaps

  Is it in poor taste for me to be joking about murder?

  FROM: C. Holmes < chholmes@dmail.com >

  TO: James Watson Jr. < j.watson2@dmail.com >

  SUBJECT LINE: Re: Perhaps

  I assume that’s why you haven’t yet responded. Though it’s unlike you to be offended. Or rather, it’s like you to be offended while also enjoying feeling offended.

  FROM: C. Holmes < chholmes@dmail.com >

  TO: James Watson Jr. < j.watson2@dmail.com >

  SUBJECT LINE: Re: re: Perhaps

  Watson. I can’t make any deductions from across the pond. Not good ones, anyway. If you’re upset with me you’re going to have to spell it out. Is this part of your needing “distance”? I assumed two thousand miles would do the trick.

  FROM: James Watson Jr. < j.watson2@dmail.com >

  TO: C. Holmes < chholmes@dmail.com >

  SUBJECT LINE: Re: re: re: Perhaps

  C,

  You do know that you sent all four of those emails over the course of like twenty minutes, right? I was in class. Some of us still have classes to go to, if they want to do things like graduate and not go crawling home to one of two Broken Homes afterward. Which, by the way, I’m officially making jokes about, because (a) my mother is still not speaking to me and (b) my dad and Abigail are fighting so often that I can’t take more than ten minutes of being in their house, and it’s all so awful that it’s almost funny. So college = important.

  What are you doing for school, anyway? Have you thought any more about whether you’re going on to uni? Is the total sum of your education right now Leander dragging you down to the Dog’s Arms or the East Sider or (God help us) the Sherlock Holmes pub and ordering you fried food?

  Also, if that’s the case, can I come too?

  I’m back in my room over lunch hour. By the way, Lena says hi, and that you and I should switch to texting like “normal people” because someone needs to teach you how to use an emoji and anyway only “adults” send “emails.” I’m not sure if anyone’s disputing whether or not an email’s called an email, but when I told her that, she called me a pedant and stole my brownie, and Elizabeth laughed so hard that she started coughing, and then Tom made a joke about her choking on a diamond, and Elizabeth choked but for real, I think you actually have some competition in the Offending People category.

  I miss you, you nut. Tell Leander hi for me.

  J xx

  FEBRUARY

  FROM: C. Holmes < chholmes@dmail.com >

  TO: James Watson Jr. < j.watson2@dmail.com >

  SUBJECT LINE: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Perhaps

  All I am saying is that it is a completely acceptable act to eat alone in the cafeteria and I don’t understand your fear of it. You don’t need to have someone along with you every time (i.e., Elizabeth or similar) in order to eat your meal. They’ll serve you either way, I guarantee it.

  FROM: James Watson Jr. < j.watson2@dmail.com >

  TO: C. Holmes < chholmes@dmail.com >

  SUBJECT LINE: Look

  You can just ask if I’m dating her again. (I’m not.) (Also I only eat with her with everybody else, so your “or similar” means “Lena Tom Randall Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s boyfriend Kittredge.”)

  FROM: C. Holmes < chholmes@dmail.com >

  TO: James Watson Jr. < j.watson2@dmail.com >

  SUBJECT LINE: Re: Look

  I suppose it is nice to have someone keep you company while you eat.

  Which is, coincidentally, something I’ve been speaking to my therapist about. She is the thirteenth therapist I’ve seen, which is both shameful and slightly invigorating. She’s also the first to speak any kind of language I understand. (Though she keeps
referencing someone named the godfather when I talk about Moriartys and Moriarty-adjacent events.) Anyway, I like her quite a lot, which is surprising. Currently we are spending some time discussing my eating habits, and you, and outpatient programs, and the doctor that Leander keeps bringing in to see me, who is very handsome.

  My uncle is still refusing to take cases, by the by, because I “need some proper looking-after.” He has thrown himself headfirst into my “education,” where we at first worked through the syllabi for several graduate-level humanities courses, reading a number of quite interesting nonfiction texts and novels and some poetry and of course the relevant associated cultural criticism, but after a week or so of this my uncle chucked the whole thing over to make me watch television with him at night. Bad television. According to Leander, my father entirely overlooked my “social and emotional education” in favor of his “uselessly specific curriculum,” making me into some kind of “automaton who actually enjoys reading Heidegger—Good God, Charlotte, who enjoys that? Or Camus? Were you just reading Camus and laughing?”

  Apparently the only way to rectify this is to watch loads of old Doctor Who while eating Thai peanut chicken crisps on the couch.

  I am working through the Heidegger on my own.

  FROM: C. Holmes < chholmes@dmail.com >

  TO: James Watson Jr. < j.watson2@dmail.com >

  SUBJECT LINE: Re: re: Look

  C,

  That’s great about your therapist, that it’s working out. Less great about the Heidegger. Medium great about the Doctor Who.

  Is there a particular reason that you’re talking about the doctor? The handsome one?

  J xx

  P.S. Please tell me I can make you a whole list of TV shows and films for you to try out . . . maybe you should start with Coppola. Like, The Godfather?

  MARCH

  FROM: C. Holmes < chholmes@dmail.com >

  TO: James Watson Jr. < j.watson2@dmail.com >

  SUBJECT LINE: Re: re: re: re: re: Spring break