A Sucker Born Every Minute

by Lia Kane

  He stepped toward me and cupped my face in his hands. He was crying. “This is for the best,” he sobbed. “You can go while you’re still young, and you won’t have to suffer from this disease anymore. The longer you live, the more you’ll suffer. You don’t have to let VAM destroy your world like it did mine. You’re so young, Jerrika. Just a baby of a VAMP. You can leave this world as a baby.”

  “Kiss me,” I urged him. My mouth was burning. This time I could feel it happening. My canine teeth were pushing through my gums and elongating into my mouth. It tingled. It hurt.

  It made me feel oddly powerful.

  He lowered his face toward mine, then stopped. He sniffed the air. “Is that blood on your breath?”

  “I have to tell you something, Victor.”

  “What is it?”

  I thought of what Jonathan had told me just hours before and smiled. “I’m not a baby. I’m seven years old, you bastard.”

  I steeled my legs and pushed my buttocks off the chair, lurching upward no more than an inch or two before the restraints on my ankles stopped me. It was just enough to close the distance between us. Tilting my head to the side, I swung my open mouth toward Victor’s Adam’s Apple and bit down as hard as I could.

  I sank my teeth into his neck and when I felt his skin pierce, I forced my jaw shut. My upper teeth closed down on my lower teeth. My mouth was filled with skin, muscle, cartilage and a few inches of his jugular vein, which was still pulsating in my mouth. The taste of salt and flesh mingled on my tongue and made me want to gag. I jerked my head back and spit Victor’s voice box on the floor.

  He staggered away from me, windmilling his arms. In the moonlight, I could see a gaping, dark hole on his neck. Blood spurted out of it, spraying my face, while Victor toppled and crashed flat on his back. I could hear him trying to pull air into his lungs through the hole in his throat. The wet, sucking sound of his distress made me wretch again.

  He would be dead in a matter of seconds. But while his mind and his consciousness were still intact, he found the book of matches and struck one. He held the glowing flame up for me to see, as if to tell me that I had won the battle, but lost the war.

  “Victor, no!” I screamed.

  But it was too late. His arm dropped and the gasoline ignited. In the blink of an eye, Paul and I were surrounded by a ring of fire. Victor writhed on the floor as the flames had engulfed him. I let out a deep, primal scream in a plea for my life, and watched in horror as flames shot up the stairwell.

  I continued to scream as the searing heat entered my lungs and the room grew black with smoke. I tried to kick my legs, hoping to break free from the bonds, but they wouldn’t budge. In the struggle, my chair fell to the side and I hit my head on the floor.

  My vision began to blur and my head felt like it had been struck by lightning. Thankfully, I could still breathe. A buried memory from Smokey the Bear’s visit to my first grade class came rushing to the front of my mind.

  “Smoke rises, so if your house is on fire, boys and girls, stay on the floor,” said the man in the bear costume.

  It was almost amusing. I’d heard that when people are getting ready to die, their entire lives flash before their eyes. Here I was, minutes from my death, and it was not memories of my whole life, but one isolated remembrance of Smokey the Bear that I had to cling to for comfort.

  I heard an odd, high-pitched sound, and wondered if it was the sound of my own voice. Maybe in my delirious state I was laughing out loud. But as the seconds passed, the sound grew louder and clearer.

  It wasn’t me. I wasn’t laughing.

  Just before I blacked out, I realized what it was.

  A wailing siren.

  • • •

  I awoke in a hospital bed. The bright overhead light stung my eyes.

  Oxygen was blowing into my nose through a mask. A man in blue scrubs hovered over me. His face was blurry.

  “Paul?” I managed to say.

  “No ma’am. I’m Dr. Levy. You were rescued from a house fire. You’re going to be alright.”

  This certainly sounded familiar, and I wondered for a second if I was dreaming or experiencing a déjà vu. But memories came flooding back within seconds of waking, and I found myself wishing that it had been just a bad dream.

  “Paul,” I whispered again. “Where is he?”

  “He’s here too.”

  “Is he alright?”

  No answer. I tried to sit up, but Dr. Levy gently pushed me back onto the bed.

  “Doctor, is he alright?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  Tears formed in my eyes. “The children?” I asked. “Sarah? Claudia?”

  “Everyone else is going to be fine,” he assured me.

  “I need to see Paul,” I wept. “Please, can I see him?” I sat up and ripped the mask away from my face, then tugged at the stickered leads on my chest that were connected to the heart monitor beside the bed. “I need to see him…”

  The Doctor forced me onto my back again.

  “Paul!” I screamed. “Don’t let him die. You have to save him!”

  “Just relax,” the doctor whispered in my ear. “Getting upset isn’t going to help anyone. I’m giving you a sedative. This will help you calm down.”

  I felt a tingle start in the fold of my arm and travel up into my shoulder, then my chest. Everything went black.

  • • •

  When I awoke again, a sweet-faced nurse was standing at my bedside.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Do you feel strong enough to sit up?”

  I nodded and she helped me to my feet. I looked at the window to see sunlight blazing through the blinds. I squinted my eyes and turned away.

  “You’re being discharged to go home,” she said.

  “I don’t have a home.” I coughed up a mouthful of smoke and mucous. My throat was burning with the familiar sting of smoke inhalation.

  “The police are taking all of you to a hotel.”

  “Let me guess… Holiday Inn?”

  “I think so.”

  “Guess we should sign up for their frequent guest program.”

  The nurse gave me an odd look.

  “What about Dr. Paul Miles?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, but there are laws that prohibit me from telling you anything about him since you’re not next of kin.”

  “But we live together. We were in the fire together.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you his status.”

  “Can you at least tell me if he’s still alive?” I locked eyes with her. “Please?”

  She gave the slightest nod.

  That was all I needed to know.

  • • •

  The night after we were rescued from the fire, we found ourselves back in the same four-bedroom suite at the downtown Holiday Inn. The police drove us there in black and white cruisers. The school-age children were thrilled to no end that they got to ride in both ambulances and cop cars just days apart from each other.

  While everyone else returned to the suite to sleep, Detective Bishop took my statement. As a result of the information I shared with them, a team of officers broke down the door of Victor Drake’s house and recovered a very traumatized but grateful Kelly Holt from his basement. Next, they brought in bulldozers and began the process of wrecking Victor’s back yard. Alyssa’s corpse was discovered sometime shortly after midnight. They worked the rest of the house into the wee hours of the morning, tearing through his belongings to look for evidence of any additional crimes he had committed during his term as the self-hating VAM Mayor of Blue Sky.

  Dr. Miles’ receptionist, Trish, was arrested from her home that night for deleting all of our prescriptions out of the system. They hit her with a number of charges, the greatest of which were eight counts of endangering the welfare of a minor. She rode to jail in her housecoat, fuzzy slippers and curlers, crying not because of what she had done, but because she had left her dentures soaking in a glass on the bathroom coun
ter.

  Victor Drake’s burned body was taken to the morgue for an autopsy. All who came into contact with his corpse had one thing or another to say about how the house fire couldn’t have been nearly as bad as the burn he was feeling now in hell.

  Once the police had all of the information they needed, I asked Detective Bishop to return the favor by finding out what Paul’s status was. He stepped aside, mobile phone glued to his ear, and called his contacts at the hospital. He returned to tell me that Paul was on the critical care unit, and after a long night of blood transfusions and surgery to repair the damage done to his hand, he was finally in stable condition. He was going to make it.

  Sometime after midnight, I was finally able to reclaim my room in the suite and take a shower.

  The hot water hit my head and fell in sheets down my body. I saw nothing but the color red as the blood that had dried in my hair began to dissolve and flow down the drain. I rested my elbow against the wall and leaned into it, pressing my face into the bend of my arm.

  And I wept.

  “Jerrika?” I heard Paul’s voice call to me.

  I wondered if I was hallucinating. I spun around and saw over the top of the shower curtain that the bathroom door had opened.

  “Paul?”

  “Are you alright?” He asked from the doorway.

  “I’m fine. But you… are you okay? I heard that you were in critical care. Should you be out so soon?”

  “I signed myself out A.M.A.”

  “What?”

  “Against Medical Advice.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  I watched through the opaque shower curtain as his shadow moved. He entered the bathroom and stood before me, silhouetted against the thin sheet of plastic.

  “There’s nothing else they can do for me. I’m fine. I just wanted to be with you and the children.”

  “Your hand?” I asked. “Is it okay? I want to see it… please…”

  “It’s alright.” He held his arm up over the shower curtain rod. His hand was wrapped with so much gauze that only his fingertips were visible.

  “Good as new,” he said.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  “Not as much as you might think.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I know it will be scarred for the rest of your life. I know it almost killed you to lose that much blood. I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m not. You and the children are alive right now. There’s nothing that I wouldn’t have sacrificed for that.”

  I reached up and placed my palm against his wounded hand. He laced his fingers between mine. We pressed our faces together, our lips together; the plastic shower curtain still between us.

  And I cried again.

  “It’s over now, Jerrika. It’s over,” he whispered. “I’ll take care of you and the children. I’ll protect you. That’s all I want to do.”

  His words washed over me like the water cascading down my body. All my doubts, all my fears were slowly passing down the drain. I knew that with Paul, I was safe.

  And always would be.

  Chapter Nineteen

  SOMETIMES IT TAKES a tragedy for parents to realize the depth of their love for their children.

  In the days that followed our second escape from death by house fire, I witnessed not one, not two, but three events that will forever live in my memory as the miracles that they were.

  When Reverend Bill Jeffries learned that his only daughter had been among those almost burned alive, his religious leanings made a complete turnabout. He officially stepped down as the minister of Blue Sky Believers Fellowship and made a public declaration that he denounced his former anti-VAM teachings. He had been spiritually blind, he claimed, but God had lifted the confusion from his eyes and now he saw the harm that had been done to innocent people. He appealed to his daughter to come back to him.

  And Naz gladly did.

  Paul and I drove her home and watched from a respectable distance as her father cried like a baby when he saw her arrive. He held his daughter in his arms and told her over and over again how sorry he was, and that he loved her.

  Then he apologized to me and asked for me to forgive him.

  I assured him that I already had.

  Next, Detective Bishop called me to tell me that a woman had shown up at the police station begging to know where the Hope House orphans were. Her name was Chandra Bagwell, and she was the mother of Jermaine and Jervonne. She wanted her boys back.

  I arranged for a meeting with Chandra at the Department of Social Services in a family visitation room. The moment I saw her beautiful dark skin, her piercing, lovely eyes, and the same gap-toothed smile that I had grown used to seeing times two every day, there was no doubt in my mind that she was the mother of the twin boys.

  I asked her where she had been all this time. If she hadn’t been able to be a mother to her boys back then, why was now the right time?

  Chandra explained that she had been in prison for six and a half years. Since getting paroled out six months ago, she had been living in a halfway house while working at two minimum-wage jobs and going to night classes to get her GED. It had been her plan from the very beginning, she insisted, to get Jermaine and Jervonne back. She had been waiting until she had a home of her own and could demonstrate an ability to provide for them. After hearing about the fire, she couldn’t wait anymore.

  I asked why she had been in prison.

  It was a driving while impaired conviction, she explained. It had been a suicide mission. Chandra was living with an abusive boyfriend at the time. She had learned how to cope with his daily beatings, but after he contracted VAM from drug use and passed it on to her, the difficulties of surviving everyday life were greatly multiplied.

  Then Chandra found out she was pregnant with twins. Seeing no other options for herself and her babies, she knew that she had to end the pain for all of them. After downing a bottle of wine to dampen her inhibitions, she took a drive. Chandra headed for Blue Sky’s proverbial dead man’s curve, a hairpin turn wrapped around the side of a mountain.

  The tight curve, with an obscured view from both sides, threatened to dump vehicles off the highway and down the side of the mountain if poorly navigated. When Chandra put her foot on the gas to end it all, she had no idea that another car would be rounding the curve from the opposite direction.

  The man and woman that she hit had been some kind of high-class important people in Blue Sky, she said. They were hurt, but they survived.

  But because it had been such a high-profile case, Chandra was slapped with the maximum sentence. Her babies were born in prison and became wards of the state of North Carolina.

  Chandra has been paroled early for her good behavior. She told me that she had saved up enough money to cover six to eight months’ worth of rent and had already started looking for apartments before she heard of the orphanage fire. She was a seeing a man she met at a VAMily Reunion meeting. He was kind and gentle, and was already talking marriage, but Chandra said she didn’t want to rush it. He had four teen daughters from his first marriage, and Chandra had grown to love them like her own. All were VAM-Negative and were dying to meet Jermaine and Jervonne. Each of the four girls had pledged their willingness to be familiar donors.

  After our long talk, both of us had exhausted a full box of tissues, and Chandra was busting at the seams to see her sons. Paul was waiting in the room across the hall with Jermaine and Jervonne. I called for him to bring them in.

  The reunion was every bit as moving as the one that we had witnessed between Reverend Bill and Naz. I needed another box of tissues before it was over.

  A caseworker was assigned to Chandra and the boys to help facilitate the reunification process. It was agreed that Jermaine and Jervonne would stay at the Holiday Inn with us until Chandra had taken out a lease on an apartment and could successfully complete a home visit with the caseworker. Chandra had visitation privileges with them in the meantime.

  Jonathan took the
news of Jermaine and Jervonne’s impending departure harder than anyone else. I watched him one evening when we took the children outside behind the hotel to play. He moved away from the others and took a seat at one of the picnic benches, where he crossed his arms and pouted.

  Lucy went to sit with him. She rubbed his back and talked close to his ear. I watched him nod his head a few times, then turn to embrace her. She wrapped her arms around him, ran her fingers through his hair and kissed the top of his head. Jonathan got up, smiling, and joined Haley as she picked dandelions from the ground.

  I went to Lucy. “Mind if I join you for a minute?”

  “Go right ahead,” she said. She crushed out the cigarette she was smoking and pitched the butt under the table.

  “You holding up alright, Lucy?”

  “Yeah. Considering all that’s happened lately, I’d say I’m doing pretty darn good to still have my wits about me.”

  I gave her an encouraging smile. “You’ve been incredibly brave throughout all this. What about Jonathan? How is he doing?”

  Lucy’s eyes watered at the mention of his name. She blinked furiously to keep tears from forming. “Well, he’s going to miss Jermaine and Jervonne, as you know. But he’s happy for them. He wishes someone would show up out of the blue for him too. He just really needs a mother.”

  “From what I can see, he has one. He’s got you, Lucy. You’ve been there for him since the very beginning. Have you ever thought about adopting him?”

  She frowned. “My blood is no good. I’ve been struggling for a long time, Jerrika. I used to use drugs that I stole from the hospital where I worked to ease the pain. When they found out and fired me, I turned to alcohol. Then when I quit drinking, all that was left were cigarettes. I love the boy so much but my blood has always been so full of bad stuff that I could never fulfill the most basic human need that he has – I could never feed him. What kind of mother would I be to him?”

  “You’re still the closest thing he’s ever had to a mother, even if you can’t give him your blood,” I said. “Can I ask what led you to the drugs and alcohol? What was hurting you, Lucy?”

  She stared at me hard. Her eyes didn’t immediately cut away like they normally did. “I have some things I need to tell you.”