Darren Effect

by Libby Creelman

  “It’ll be packed,” Heather said.

  “Although I heard on the news they expected worse.”

  “Darren, it’ll be packed.”

  “Nevertheless, I am feeling woozy.”

  “I’ll take him,” Heather said. “It’s on my way.”

  “No, Heather.”

  “You better check on your neighbour. It’s a mess in there. I’ll drop him at emergency.”

  “She said it’s on her way, Darren.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I’ll be right along,” Darren promised. “I’ll see he gets home.”

  She nodded as though she were sleepwalking. She was excruciatingly tired and the five-minute drive to the Health Sciences Complex felt like something she’d been at for days. As she brought the car to a crushing, lethargic stop at each intersection, she couldn’t understand how such a short drive could last so long. Byron was blithering on about concussions and skull fractures, which was irritating and helped keep her awake, but it was so incessant and pointless she grew concerned that he had, indeed, injured himself.

  When they arrived, she parked the car and told him she’d accompany him inside. Just in case, she explained.

  “In case I collapse. Good point.”

  They passed through the emergency doors where a small, easily overlooked sign forbidding entry to the media had been posted, then into a corridor of tiled walls and columns. Heather immediately noticed the abundance of haphazardly arranged chairs, nearly every one of which was occupied.

  Heather and Byron approached admittance, passing a number of women all looking grey and tired and either angry or defeated. One woman sat with her elbow on the arm of the chair and her sweater pulled up over her mouth and nose. Many looked asleep. Some clearly had a bad flu.

  The first thing the clerk wanted to know was whether Heather realized she was in the wrong part of the hospital. “I can let you through this way, but you should have been told the entrance is — ”

  “I’m not in labour,” Heather said coldly. “We’re here for him, not me.”

  The second thing the clerk wanted to know was whether that was real blood.

  Strangely disappointed, they had to admit it was not real blood. Heather glanced down. While her clothes were wet, it was Byron’s white shirt that most obviously bore the ruddy evidence of Cooper’s initial assault. The clerk’s question was not unreasonable, given this was an emergency department, but perhaps because it was also doubling as a twenty-four-hour walk-in clinic and because neither Heather nor Byron seemed excessively distraught, the clerk said, “I didn’t think so.”

  “It’s only paint,” Heather explained.

  “It’s not paint,” Byron said.

  “Well, it’s not blood.”

  “It contains a number of ingredients. I can’t identify all of them, but certainly Kool-Aid is one. Corn syrup another.”

  The clerk had turned her attention to her computer screen. “Hospital card?” she asked.

  “How long will this take?” Heather asked.

  “There’s no telling. Either one of you with a hospital card?”

  Heather stepped back. In a moment she could leave. A few chairs and wheelchairs lined the short hallway connecting the emergency department to the rest of the hospital. Space had also been made for two stretchers: on one a blond woman wearing sunglasses reclined; on the other a dishevelled, confused-looking man appeared to have just sat up. Heather remembered this area being stark and empty at the time of her visit for the frostbite.

  Primarily women occupied the two hallways, while the men had taken possession of the waiting room, where, along the farthest wall, a string of young men in soccer uniforms sat, every one of them with his head resting against the wall and following the least movement with his eyes. The few women in the waiting room sat alone, one beside a vending machine. Heather could see the back of her neck and shoulders, her caramel hair recently set, and still with the absent air of a sleepwalker and under the watchful eyes of anyone whose eyes were open, Heather wandered away from Byron and into the waiting room.

  Her mother had made a good seating choice, Heather could not help thinking, as the vending machine gave her less contact with other patients. And on her other side, her large leather handbag stood upright, occupying the seat. She was wearing her white rayon skirt and beige cardigan, a youthful, summery combination that dimmed her blue eyes and drained her face. Heather picked up the handbag and sat down.

  Across her mother’s face a flicker of relief was followed by consternation.

  “You’re having the baby. What do you want me to do?”

  “No, I am not. Sit back. What are you doing here?”

  “Good lord, you finally got my phone message.”

  “What are you doing here, Mom?”

  “Do you answer any of your phones?”

  Her mother had never left a phone message in her life. “Did you try Mandy?”

  “Who?”

  “Mandy?” Heather’s throat began to feel funny. She was awake now.

  “Oh, I know who Mandy is. But I’m not calling her. My God, if I have to hear one more question about cow hunting.”

  “But what’s wrong?”

  Her mother stiffened. “It’s personal.”

  Heather looked up. Just a few feet away, a woman knitting a misshapen yellow square was listening to them. Beside her, a pale-faced burly man was breathing loudly and leaning on her. He was sweating profusely.

  “Is he all right?” Heather asked the woman.

  Her mother gave her the softest of nudges.

  The woman nodded. “He’s after whining and complaining all day,” she said, the knitting needles clicking furiously in her hands. “He’s the mother of all sorrows, he is.”

  Heather suspected the woman had been saying this to people all day. She looked over her shoulder and scanned for Byron, wondering if he had seated himself elsewhere.

  “Heather,” her mother said, taking her handbag and reclaiming her daughter’s attention. “I already mentioned Timmy to them at the desk. Surely he can get me seen more quickly. It’s all who you know in this town.”

  “Who?”

  “Timmy O’Keefe. Dr. O’Keefe now. You might want to go back up there and spell his name for them, Heather. Nurses aren’t the brightest crowd.”

  Embarrassed, Heather looked across at the woman, who at that moment gave her shoulder a fierce shake, rousing her husband. He lifted his head from her shoulder and blinked dully. He looked very sick. “I think I’ll just have a little lie-down,” he told his wife. He slid gingerly off his chair, landed lightly on his knees, and curled up on the floor.

  The woman stopped knitting and stared at her husband, but it didn’t take long for two nurses to arrive and get the man on his feet. As they led him away the woman finally stood. They told her to stay put.

  One of the nurses looked briefly around the room and noticed Heather.

  “You’re in the wrong part of the hospital, love.”

  “I’m not having a baby!”

  The nurse froze, taken aback, then laughed as though it was the funniest thing she’d heard all night. Heather’s mother put a hand on her arm, a cautionary gesture that seemed to suggest they save their energy.

  “How long have you been waiting?” Heather asked the woman.

  “We’re after coming in about two this afternoon,” the woman replied loftily.

  “That’s nine hours,” Heather said. “Mom, how long have you been here?”

  “Certainly not as long as that.” Shifting slightly, her mother pressed her lips together.

  “Mom?”

  A man leaned out from the row and said to no one in particular. “I’ve been here thirteen hours.” He glanced around, looking to make eye contact with someone, and settled on Heather. But then the blond woman with the sunglasses put some change in the vending machine and he turned to her. Heather was surprised the woman had abandoned her stretcher, but when she peered down the hallw
ay she saw it was gone. Rooted out of it, Heather figured, for a more deserving customer.

  It was at this point that Byron spotted her and came straight over. He took the seat vacated by the sick man and said, “What a scene in there. I got as far as the duty nurse, who checked my vitals. Nothing alarming.”

  “That must be a relief,” Heather said.

  “Yes. Even a minor head injury can result in severe brain damage.”

  Her mother nudged her again. Heather realized she would not be able to keep from her mother the fact that her arrival here was entirely on behalf of this man.

  “Mom, this is Byron,” she said. “Byron, I’d like you to meet my mother — ”

  To Heather’s astonishment, they both stood, as though being formally introduced. Byron held his hand out, but Heather’s mother ignored him.

  “I’m going to the ladies’ room,” she said. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  “You know where it is?”

  “I do.”

  Byron sat back down.

  As soon as her mother returned, she asked, “Did you ask them to page Timmy O’Keefe for me, Heather?”

  Heather hesitated, glancing at Byron. “They said they would do what they could.”

  “That doesn’t sound promising.”

  There followed a period of silence occasionally broken by Byron’s comments on head injuries in humans, then in birds, which expanded into bird diseases and injuries of all kinds. The woman beside him, listening attentively, began another yellow square, or what Heather assumed would inevitably resemble a square. Heather’s mother amazingly offered the information to Byron that Heather had a new bird feeder and a number of bird books. To Byron’s question whether Heather was into birds, her mother responded by saying it was only a passing interest. At this, she rose for another visit to the ladies’ room.

  When she returned Byron was discussing the various objects that could be used to set broken bones. A stainless steel bar from a rat’s cage was as good as anything, just sharpen it and boil it. Heather’s mother interrupted to ask whether or not he was married.

  The question was so thoroughly outside Heather’s future reality or interest, she ignored it. She checked her watch. It was 2:37 am.

  “No, I’m not married,” Byron told her mother.

  The woman beside him knitting the yellow square nodded and drew her breath in sharply, signalling this came as no surprise to her.

  Heather found herself resenting this. The man was a crackpot, but he didn’t need to know others thought so.

  She wondered what had become of Darren. He had promised he would be right along. It didn’t matter. She was staying anyway.

  Near dawn her mother said, “You can’t imagine how much I’m looking forward to having a grandchild.”

  Heather was surprised. It was the first time she’d heard her mother express this sentiment. She placed her hands over her stomach. It was of an unbelievable size and tautness. Some women were happiest when they were pregnant. Some women were only happy when they were pregnant. Heather realized that the more she looked forward to the baby, the less she missed its father.

  “Are you happy, Mom?” Heather asked.

  “I suppose so. Yes.”

  Heather was aware of both the woman knitting and Byron listening. She didn’t care.

  “But it’s odd that I would be this woman,” her mother said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s odd that I ended up being alone all these years. A single woman.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when I was a girl all I wanted was to love, and be loved. I waited and waited for it, and then when I got it, it didn’t last.” Her mother sighed and patted her handbag. “But I’m happy enough now.”

  Heather didn’t know what to say. She told her mother she was going outside for a moment to get some fresh air. As she walked slowly past admittance, a nurse looked up and asked if she was all right. Heather nodded.

  She took a seat on a bench and breathed in the out-of-doors air, so fresh and oxygenated she began to believe she didn’t require sleep after all. Bunches of clouds were forming high in the sky. The colour was impossible to name. Not grey, not white, not pink exactly. Lower in the sky, a bright streak of light intersected the nearby wooded hill, which seemed incompatible with the helicopter pad at its base, the plateau of parking lots and finally the hospital with its golden machines capable of passing a narrow beam of X-ray photons straight through human tissue to see broken bones, swallowed objects, congested baby lungs.

  A figure was coming across the parking lot. A man with a bouncing, deliberate walk. She thought he looked rather handsome. She tried to rise.

  “What are you doing out here, Heather?”

  He stopped in front of her.

  “You should have gone home hours ago.”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  A look crossed his face: uncertainty, hope, pleasure, then worry she’d seen it.

  “Sure, Byron’s a big boy.”

  “I know that. But I also ran into my mother.”

  “Here?” He sat beside her.

  “Bladder infection.” Heather was finding it difficult to breathe without making a lot of noise. “She gets them. Chronic. She’s fine.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “A few minutes ago,” Heather said, panting and arching her back. “My water broke.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  By the first week of August, most people could no longer remember when the hot weather had started. Everyone was complaining of a lack of sleep. Heather had been hearing it for days, since she returned to work, and knew it was, like Christmas, a formidable psychological stressor — humidity, heat and sleeplessness.

  She was working two days a week. She had been anxious to return to her office, to her clients. She had forgotten how much she liked her job. How much she liked the anticipation of what the day might bring.

  She purchased a fan at Canadian Tire to combat the heat and poked it in a corner of her office. It created a bizarre environment, just moving the heat around like that. She suspected it was only an illusion of cooler air.

  She was surprised the Quigleys had made an appointment at all. She assumed they would have moved on, disgusted — particularly Derm — with her sudden, unexplained disappearance.

  But when the Quigleys arrived — promptly — Derm was not with them. Donna and Tracey seemed confused with the three empty chairs Heather had stationed in a welcoming crescent. Eventually they sat, side by side, looking vulnerable and nervous.

  “We were wondering what happened to you,” Tracey said and Donna nodded.

  For several minutes neither would look directly at her. Both were wearing tank tops and cut-offs, which struck Heather as far more sensible than her own cotton sweater set and skirt. She realized they were saying they’d missed her.

  Then Donna sucked in some air and said, “We don’t know where he’s to.”

  “Toronto.”

  “We don’t know that for sure, Tracey.”

  “Derm is gone?” Heather asked.

  The women nodded.

  It seemed impossible. Although he had been overbearing and full of himself, he had made the trio what it was. Heather would never have predicted this.

  Now even the illusion of coolness was beginning to fade. Both women had been carrying lit cigarettes when they entered the building, held covertly at their hips. Heather pictured them stepping off the bus — the car would have been Derm’s — and without delay lighting up. The smoke joined the swirling heat of Heather’s office and she imagined it settling into every nick and cranny of her clothing, every pore of her skin.

  “Tracey here — well, I never — she’s after looking for a job,” Donna told Heather.

  For a moment Heather couldn’t remember which of these women had been Derm’s wife. But wasn’t this symptomatic of what had always been the real dilemma?

  Tracey produced a shy smile. “I’ll need to, won’t I,
if I get a divorce?”

  “Now she’s talking about divorce.”

  “That comes as a surprise to you, Donna?” Heather asked.

  “I don’t understand,” Donna said. “He hasn’t even called us. He might be in trouble.”

  Donna finished her cigarette, then dropped it on the floor and ground it out with the toe of her flip-flop. “Did we do something wrong?”

  “Jesus, Donna,” Tracey said quietly. “Do you even know where you’re to?”

  Donna looked like she was near tears. She leaned down and retrieved the squashed butt, then held it in her hand and looked at Heather. There were no ashtrays in sight.

  Heather stared at the flecks of tobacco on the hardwood floor and remembered her last rendezvous with Benny.

  Could she really have been so heartless?

  “Miss?”

  “I’ll take that, Donna,” Heather said gently. “Not to worry.” She opened a drawer and pulled out an ashtray.

  Could she really have locked him out of the car in the rain and driven away?

  “If she gets a job,” Donna said, “I don’t know what I’ll do. Sure, he did everything for us.”

  “I tried some of them tricks you told me,” Tracey announced. She sat back. She was clearly pleased with herself.

  “I’m happy to hear that. And you’re staying on your meds?” Tracey nodded.

  “Staying on your meds is essential.”

  “I know.”

  After the tragedy of the boys on the ice they did not see each other for a while. It had been in all the papers and on the news and Benny had felt exposed by the attention to the event, although there was never a photo or mention of him by name — only a reference to those bystanders who had been first on the scene and who made a courageous attempt to rescue the boys.

  But after that Heather had trouble reaching Benny.

  By the time they met again, it was late summer, a year ago. They had been out in the woods and returned to his car just as a light rain started. It blurred their view of the stand of poplars and patch of ocean visible from inside the car.

  “Heather,” he had said. “It’s not possible for us to continue seeing each other.”