Double Jeopardy

by Bobby Hutchinson

  “Look, Mr. Kilgallin, it’s crazy to hang around here. Why don’t you go on home and get some rest.” Sera put a hand on his arm. “There’s absolutely nothing any of us can do, and it’ll be a while before she’s allowed visitors except for family.”

  “Call me Jack, okay? And maybe I will go home. I’m sure not much use around here.”

  “None of us is. Give me your number, and I promise I’ll call you and let you know if there’s any change. Or better yet, you can call me.” Sera rummaged in her pocket and found her pen and pad.

  Dr. Halsey’s office number shared space with measurements from that morning’s work on the set, which now seemed an eternity ago.

  She ripped off a fresh sheet, scribbled her number and handed it to him. “You can reach me anytime. This is for my cell phone.”

  “Thanks.” He reached for her pen, tore a minute scrap from the paper and scribbled his own number. “I’ll be home in half an hour. I’ll be in all evening. There’s a machine if I go out for anything. If I can do anything for you or your family, anything at all, you’ll let me know?”

  Sera assured him she would.

  Back in the hospital waiting room, she found that many of her relatives had now gone home, and it was a relief. Kind as everyone was, to deal with people just now was a strain.

  Her mother and father were again in the Intensive Care unit with Gemma, and when they came out, Sera went in. There was no change in her sister; she lay exactly the way she had when Sera first visited.

  For the next hour, Sera and her mother and father took turns keeping a vigil at her sister’s bedside. Maisie called, as she had several times that day, and at six she arrived with two plastic carriers stuffed with food, bagels, cream cheese, soup, containers of salad, buns, cookies. Sera realized she hadn’t eaten anything all day.

  One of her father’s brothers cooked in a restaurant, and he’d brought huge trays of pastries and antipasto, but she’d been too upset to eat. Now she was famished. The food tasted wonderful.

  “How’d it go on the set?” Sera swallowed a mouthful of bagel and sipped from the container of soup as she and Maisie sat in the waiting room. She hadn’t given her job a single thought all day. This was probably the first time since she’d been hired as assistant set designer for the popular sitcom that her work had been out of her conscious thoughts for so long.

  She knew that she really shouldn’t be away from it any longer than just this single day; they were filming in front of a live audience in three days’ time, and Maisie needed her help for the dozens of last minute tasks.

  Maisie understood that Sera didn’t want to hear reassuring platitudes or be asked endless questions about Gemma. She talked about work, instead, forcing Sera to think of something besides the Intensive Care unit.

  “There’s a big problem with the scene where Dinah and the Englishman go to the pub,” she re- marked. “The paint we used for the walls doesn’t have enough depth. The cameras see it as flat. We tried using several different shades, but we couldn’t get the tones to relate to one another in just the right way.”

  “I’ve got the model at home. I’ll see if I can figure out what to do,” Sera promised. “I should be at work in the morning. If something happens, though, and I have to be here, I’ll call you.”

  Maisie gave her a reproachful look. “Don’t be a martyr, okay? If you want to be here with your sister, be here. Don’t even think of coming to work. I can bully everyone quite well by myself.”

  “Thanks, Maisie. I’ll see how Gemma gets through the night.”

  They talked over other details relating to work, and Maisie left at eight thirty. At nine Dr. Halsey came by again to check on Gemma. After examining her, he assured them things were going well; there’d been no extreme swelling or bleeding, no excessive increase in temperature. He was keeping Gemma sedated, and he urged the Cardanos' to go home, promising that the staff would call immediately if there was any change during the night.

  It was after midnight by the time Aldo and Maria drove Sera to the deserted parking lot where she’d left her car that morning. They reassured one another during the trip that Gemma was strong, that she’d come through this fine, that she was blessed to have Ben Halsey caring for her, that it was a miracle things hadn’t been worse.

  Aldo insisted Sera spend the night with him and Maria, but she explained that she would go to St. Joe’s early and then, if Gemma was okay, continue on to work. Her parents’ house was in Burnaby, a Vancouver suburb, whereas the apartment Sera was renting was closer to both the hospital and False Creek, where the set was filmed. It made sense to go home, but convincing Aldo took a lot of talking.

  “Okay,” he finally conceded with obvious reluctance. “But we’ll follow you. Make sure you get there safe and sound.”

  His authoritative manner irked Sera. She thought of the years she’d spent in various cities far from her father, but she gave in gracefully, sensing that Aldo needed to feel that one of his two children, at least, was safe this terrible night.

  Outside her building’s underground garage, Sera stopped the car but left the motor idling while she got out and ran over to give her father and mother each a kiss and a fierce hug.

  “I love you,” she told them, seeing the strain of the day etched in their faces.

  She hadn’t cried all day, but tears began to drip down her cheeks as she pulled the car into her underground slot, and she was bawling in earnest as she rode the elevator up to the ninth floor. She fumbled with the key and lurched through the door into her dark, silent apartment.

  She was crying for Gemma, for the pain and the disfigurement and the uncertain future her sister faced, but Sera knew she was also mourning a closeness that she and Gemma had shared as children and that was now gone. The accident, the unthinkable damage to Gemma’s face, had reinforced for Sera the distance between herself and her sister; their physical likeness had powerfully linked them, whatever their differences. Now, however temporarily, it, too, was shattered.

  She turned on lights and went into the small kitchen, blowing her nose on a paper towel. She mopped at her eyes, then heated a cup of water in the microwave and dunked an herbal tea bag in it. Leaning against the counter, she sipped the warm brew and thought about what it had been like to be born an identical twin.

  Sera and Gemma had shared a womb, and until she was two or maybe three, Sera had believed that Gemma was part of her, instead of a separate person. What a shock to learn that her sister wasn’t an extension of herself, like another arm or leg. All during their childhood years, they’d been together. Maria had bundled them into the same large crib at first, and she’d often told the girls that when they were tiny babies, they’d sucked each other’s thumbs as often as their own.

  Later, their bedroom had had twin beds, but when they were little, they’d insisted the beds be close enough so they could hold hands during the night.

  They’d grown up using each other’s clothing, shoes, makeup and sometimes identity; they’d learned to tease relatives and friends who couldn’t tell them apart.

  But Sera had realized early, and painfully, that in certain ways she and her sister were very different.

  At four, Gemma had stolen money from Maria’s handbag for lollipops and told Maria it was Sera’s idea. Both girls were spanked. Sera remembered to this day the feeling of unbelievable betrayal, knowing that Gemma had deliberately lied about her. It was Sera’s first real recognition that her sister was capable of doing things she’d never do.

  Maria soon caught on to Gemma’s tricks, but when the girls started school, Sera more often than not bore the brunt of Gemma’s escapades. Maria was an old fashioned mother, with none of the savvy psychological insights that mothers of twins have nowadays. She delighted in dressing the girls alike, and it was easy for Gemma to insist that Sera was the guilty one when mischief happened in the classroom or on the playground. Because of her love for her sister, Sera always took the blame, but her heart hurt each time Gemma let he
r be punished for something she hadn’t done. Sera could never have treated Gemma that way.

  As teenagers, Gemma delighted in making a special play for any boy she knew Sera liked. Sera refused to compete. She hid her hurt and turned to art, something both girls had always been gifted at.

  Gemma, always more physically active than Sera, went out for the track team and the cheerleading squad, and Sera began to appreciate and enjoy time spent away from her sister. She joined the drama club, and found she had little talent for acting, but she could envision exactly what was needed for the stage sets. She drew them, and her father taught her the basics of carpentry so she could build them.

  In her senior year, Sera fell in love for the first time. Liam was an actor, not classically handsome or tall but funny and endearing and smart. He always seemed able to tell Gemma and Sera apart, and he seemed impervious to Gemma’s bold sensuality.

  Sera trusted him and gave him her heart, only to have it broken the night of the senior prom when she caught him kissing Gemma. Liam stammered that he thought it was Sera he was with, but it was a pathetic excuse; he’d never mistaken them before.

  Gemma made a halfhearted attempt at apologizing afterward, but that was the moment Sera knew for certain she would have to make a life for herself, a life that didn’t include Gemma. Her sister wasn’t evil, but she was selfish, thoughtless, and manipulative.

  And because of Liam, for a long time Sera was convinced that all men would eventually betray her. Sometimes she still wasn’t sure she’d overcome that belief. She’d had several short-term relationships with men, but she certainly hadn’t loved anyone enough to consider a long-term commitment. Against her family’s wishes, she’d left Vancouver after graduation. She and Gemma had both planned to attend university in Vancouver, but Sera had applied to and was accepted by the University of California in Los Angeles.

  Gemma dropped out of university halfway through her first year. With Aldo’s financial help, she started a boutique, but it was bankrupt in six months. After that, she went from job to job without finding anything that interested her for long. She married at twenty four, to a slick real estate developer no one in the family could tolerate, and divorced fourteen months later, to everyone’s relief. She continued going from one menial job to the next, until eventually she began working as a carpenter’s helper for Aldo’s construction company.

  She’d stuck with it. The hard physical work suited her.

  Sera remembered conversations with her mother in which Maria fretted over Gemma’s doing construction work. “I know all this stuff about female equality, but it’s too hard on a woman’s body, and it’s dangerous,” she’d told Sera.

  Her mother’s concerns seemed prophetic now.

  “Your father’s told her a hundred times he’ll send her to school to do accounting or business administration, but no, she refuses.” Then Maria said what everyone in the family always said when there was a problem with Gemma.

  “You talk to her, Sera. She’ll listen to you.”

  And Sera had tried to convince Gemma to get training, she remembered now. She’d asked why Gemma didn’t accept their father’s offer, take up something less strenuous.

  “I happen to like what I do,” Gemma had insisted belligerently. “It’s a no-brainer, it pays better than anything else I’ve tried and there’re some spectacular bods on these macho construction guys.”

  There was no point thinking she should have been more insistent, Sera acknowledged with a sigh. If Gemma’s mind was made up, nobody could change it. And neither could anyone change what had happened today.

  Although the tea was calming, and it was very late and she was exhausted, Sera knew she wouldn’t sleep. She had work to do on the set for morning, so she made her way into the bedroom, which she’d turned into her work area, outfitting it with a long table and the materials she needed for models. She slept on the pullout couch in the living room. It was a good thing there was no man in her life; making up a bed every night wasn’t conducive to romance.

  The light was blinking on her answering machine, and she pushed the button, then clamped a hand over her mouth when the first voice on the tape was Gemma’s.

  “Sera, it’s me, I need to borrow that white silk suit of yours, you know, the one you wore to Valerie’s wedding in April? Give me a call and maybe drop it off at my place in the morning. I need it for Saturday. Hot date.”

  Sera’s face crumpled, and a sob caught in her throat. Weeks went by, sometimes a month, and she didn’t hear from Gemma. There was something uncanny about the sound of that deep-throated eager voice now, when Gemma was lying in the hospital voiceless and unconscious, far from those who loved her.

  The last thing Gemma would need for a while was a white silk suit, and the knowledge brought a new flood of tears.

  But her sister was alive, Sera reminded herself, and that was the thing that mattered. They all realized only too well that she could easily have died today.

  Dr. Duncan, the ER physician, had told them how fortunate it was that the accident had happened right on hospital grounds; transporting a patient with Gemma’s injuries was always problematic, she’d said. And they were also fortunate, she’d added, to have a reconstructive surgeon of Dr. Halsey’s caliber immediately available.

  It took a few moments for Sera to pull herself together and concentrate on the work she had to do. She reached for the scale model she’d designed to represent the pub scene. In the script the bar was owned by Louie, a regular character on the show, and Maisie had wanted the bar to reflect his doggedly glum personality.

  The show was filmed rather than taped, which was good because nuances of shade were lost in taping, even though the technology had improved over the past five years. Contrast was still a problem, though. Maybe if she painted a subtly lighter shade on one wall, Sera decided, and then went two shades darker on the other, she’d achieve the desired effect.

  She picked up her paints and began, and as the challenge of her work slowly forced her mind to focus, the gnawing worry about Gemma receded. Gradually, for the first time all day, she relaxed.

  In his spacious rooftop loft in Gastown, the oldest area in Vancouver and one of the latest to be gentrified, Ben smoothed his clay covered fingers over the head of a child he’d just finished molding and then stood back to inspect his creation, nearly tripping over his dog, Grendel. The dog yelped a protest.

  “If you’d move away from under my feet, this wouldn’t happen,” Ben reminded him as he patted an apology.

  He smiled with satisfaction at his sculpture. It was the head of a full cheeked three year old boy whose overwhelming curiosity and irrepressible exuberance were clearly evident in the wide grin, the raised eyebrows, the smiling eyes, the thatch of impossible hair that insisted on standing on end despite the efforts of the city’s best children’s stylist.

  “Gotcha, Stanley Brulotte, you rascal.” He peered at the photographs he’d been working from and, as always, felt a surge of affection for his outrageous little godson.

  Greg and Lily had produced a child who challenged them at every turn, taxed them to their limits and made everyone laugh.

  Ben adored him, but limited his visits to two hours, max. The Brulotte household wasn’t exactly geared to peace and tranquility, and when Stanley’s new sister or brother arrived in a couple of months, the situation could only get worse.

  A glance at the old fashioned alarm clock he kept on the table surprised him. It was long after midnight, and he had a surgery at 7:00 A.M. Past time to clean up the clay, shower and head for bed.

  He covered his creation carefully with a wet cloth and, after washing his hands, dialed the surgical ward to check once again on Gemma Cardano. He was relieved to hear that she was still doing well. It seemed that the universe was smiling on him, he concluded as he and his dog headed up the stairs. If she made it through these first twenty-four hours without nasty complications, chances were good that the real danger was over. The reconstruction would be c
hallenging, but certainly not life threatening.

  He yawned and thought of his patient’s sister, Sera Cardano. Twinning was a phenomenon that had always intrigued him, particularly from a medical standpoint. He’d recently read an article in a medical journal about identical twin males in their sixties who ended up in the same hospital on the same day with heart attacks and similar blockages of the coronary arteries. The chance of such a thing being coincidence was virtually nil.

  How would it feel to have someone have the same life experiences as you at the same time, to have a constant reminder of how you looked, talked, laughed? Most people, he knew, had little or no true concept of how they appeared to others. He could draw anyone, with uncanny accuracy, from memory; it was a gift he’d had since childhood. But he’d have a difficult time drawing his own face without looking in a mirror, Ben mused. There was something about living inside a body that made it difficult to envision how that body looked to someone else’s eyes...unless you were an identical twin.

  Ben opened the window wide, checked the alarm and set the clock back on the packing case that doubled as a bedside table, idly reminding himself that he should do something about furniture. He’d lived here over a year now and the only area he’d bought anything for was the studio. Why couldn’t he walk into a furniture store and purchase a couple roomfuls? Why did shopping always get put at the bottom of the list of things to attend to? Because life held so many other intriguing things to do, and buying furniture was not his idea of a good time.

  He climbed into bed and, after the usual tussle, Grendel settled on his dog mattress nearby. Every night without fail, the dog tried to climb in beside Ben.

  Figuring himself out was hard enough, Ben decided with a yawn as he began to slide into sleep, without there being two of him. The Cardano twins intrigued him, from a scientific standpoint, of course. Although he couldn’t help but be aware that his patient’s sister was an attractive woman.