by Hannah Jayne
Butterflies rushed through my stomach. I wasn’t sure if it was the weak prescription, Nate’s proximity, or that I was about to go out into the real world, into the sunlight where people kept living life even though mine was virtually over.
“Ready?”
We crossed the street toward the next strip mall, stepped onto the sidewalk in slow motion. My heart was slamming against my rib cage, and I could feel the sweat beading under my T-shirt, soaking into my bra. I tried my best to look equal parts unconcerned and earnest, hoping that my clipboard was prominent enough to distract anyone from making eye contact.
Someone nudged Nate and then stopped, and my knees went to jelly. We were caught. The man in the suit adjusted himself, looked at me and then at Nate, and then opened his mouth. I wanted to run. I knew I should run, but I was rooted to that space, half hoping that we were caught so I could get this over with.
“Save the whales, man?” Nate asked in a slow, half-stoned sounding voice. “If you just sign my petition—”
The man immediately looked at his shoes and shuffled around us, mumbling something about giving at the office.
“This is like human DEET,” Nate said in a low voice. Then, louder, as we started to cover distance, “Petition here to bring safe drinking water to children in Africa?”
More lowered heads, and people started to give us a wide berth.
“People are assholes,” Nate said.
“Let’s just keep moving.”
* * *
We rounded the corner to the gas station, and I don’t know what I expected. To fall to my knees, wrested by memory? To suddenly have some amazing spark and remember the man who brought me there, remember exactly where Josh was? Instead, I just stood there, looking at that stupid gas station, thinking only of the time that I had stopped there to buy ChapStick on my way to school one day. That was months ago, and I walked in and bought wintergreen ChapStick and handed the lady a five-dollar bill, and why could I remember that but not what happened to me last night?
I was starting to feel hopeless. “I don’t even know what we’re going to find here. And what do I say to the cashier? ‘Do you remember a man and a teenage girl who came in last night? Was he a crazed killer, or was she?’”
I wanted Nate to confirm something, but all he said was, “It’s a woman at the register. Come in a few minutes behind me. Pretend you’re shopping.” He handed me his clipboard and slipped my hood up. “And don’t look at the security cameras.”
He zipped across the blacktop, and I admired how free he was. I tried to walk as surely after him, but I felt my shoulders slumping, my eyes darting as though I were prey. I slipped into the store just as Nate made his way to the counter, leaning casually against a case of Snickers bars.
“Hey, so were you working last night?” he asked, his voice smooth and even.
The cashier raised an eyebrow. “Who’s asking?”
Nate shrugged. “No one.” I could see that cocky but somehow still attractive half smile playing on his lips. “My girlfriend was in here last night. With some dude.”
“Girlfriend?” The cashier cocked out a hip and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
“Ex-girlfriend, if she was here with some dude, right?”
I stiffened, not entirely sure why.
“There weren’t too many people in here last night. What does this ex-girlfriend of yours look like?”
I crept closer, pretending I was studying a bag of Cheetos.
“Short but cute. Dark hair, curly. Nice figure.”
I shrunk into my sweatshirt, felt heat on my cheeks. He had noticed my figure?
“You and your not-girlfriend might want to take a break. She sounds like the chick from the news.”
The clerk jabbed a thumb over her shoulder to a tiny TV set up behind her. She upped the volume—I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be for my benefit or for hers—and I felt myself stepping forward, drawn to the stupid counter and the television screen.
This time, it was another reporter, clutching the microphone in front of a gray building.
“While police aren’t disclosing any new information, we have learned that Elizabeth McNulty, the woman brutally attacked in her home and left for dead, is here in this hospital in critical condition. Her husband, Edward McNulty, was murdered in the attack.”
I didn’t wait for the clerk to call the police. I beelined out the door.
Ten
“Hey, where you going?” Nate called after me.
“Hospital.” I didn’t slow down.
“Like that? You won’t make it past the waiting room.”
I pulled my hood over my head and kept walking, my eyes blazing a trail to the bus stop across from the gas station.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No.” I didn’t bother shaking my head or elaborating.
“Yes.”
I kept walking.
“Andrea, wait.” Nate grabbed my arm, and I finally stopped, gritting my teeth and hoping that the avalanche of fears wouldn’t tumble and stop me. “Do you even have a plan?”
My resolve crumbled completely. “My mom,” I sniffed. “She’s alive. I have to see her.”
“They’re not going to let you, Andi. You know that. They will probably make you sign in with ID, and there’s probably a cop—”
I sucked in a breath and clamped down my jaw. “I’m going to see her whether I can walk right in or if I have to climb through the fucking window. You can shut up and come on or hang out behind your stupid motel counter.”
I wasn’t mad at Nate, and I immediately wanted to apologize, but the anger—however misplaced it was—kept the blood humming through my veins and kept me putting one foot in front of the other.
The bus pulled up, and I shoved $1.25 in the meter feeder. I sat down and saw Nate’s expression, blank but still somehow pained, before it blurred and disappeared in the bus window.
I couldn’t expect him to help me.
The bus lurched, and my heart started to hammer, heat crawling up the back of my neck. I frantically looked at everyone on the bus: a young woman with a round, slick-cheeked baby; a guy about my age wearing his backpack on his front, studying his phone; and the bus driver, whose eyes flicked up in the rearview mirror and quickly stared at the road again. Did they recognize me? Were they waiting to call the police? Were they suspects?
I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn’t a detective or an amateur sleuth. I hadn’t even graduated from high school yet, and I was out to solve a murder, because—my tongue went heavy in my mouth—because the whole world thought I did it.
When the bus stopped across the street from the hospital, the woman and the baby got up. I followed her toward the back door when the kid with the backpack reached out, grabbed my sweatshirt.
I was caught.
Was he a detective, undercover?
Sweat beaded on my upper lip.
“Hey,” he said, his voice far deeper than I expected. “Are you—”
I felt my eyes bulge as fireworks set off in my veins. I could see nothing but red and black—fear, prison bars, I didn’t know what—but I slapped the guy’s hand off my sweatshirt and shoved past the lady and her baby.
“Hey!” the woman screamed, and the baby wailed as my feet hit pavement and I started to run. Everyone knew who I was, and the police were everywhere, behind every tree—or maybe it was my dad’s killer—but either way, I knew I had a target on my back and an electric arrow pointing to me, Andi McNulty, person of interest, suspect, murderer.
I was hiccup-crying by the time the bus pulled away. The woman and her baby were gone, the kid with the backpack still on the bus, and my heart beat in my throat. I pinched my eyes shut.
Pull yourself together, idiot.
No one was staring at me. People were strolling from the ho
spital parking lot, waiting for the light to change, and not a single one looked at me or noticed me or pointed at me. But I didn’t feel relieved.
The second I stepped into the hospital lobby, I realized I had never been alone in a hospital before. Around me, people walked with purpose, and the elevators dinged and popped open, and a half-dozen people walked out and another half-dozen walked in carrying flowers and balloons and the occasional teddy bear, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. There were eleven floors and maybe about twenty rooms on each floor, and how was I supposed to find my mom?
When the elevator sounded, I stepped in along with two women carrying pink balloons and pink flowers and a giant pink teddy bear. They jabbed at the 3 button, and I shrank back and listened to them talk about “the baby,” then waited when an elderly gentleman in a sweater got on and touched the 6 button.
Three must be maternity, I reasoned.
The women got out, and the pink and blue lambs decorating the walls of floor 3 confirmed it was maternity. I smiled at the man still in the elevator, and while the doors closed, he gestured to the buttons. “Floor six too?”
“Uh,” I started.
“You look awfully young to be joining us old folks.”
I couldn’t help but smile at this old man who was smiling at me, kind and patient and friendly for no reason.
“Floor six is geriatrics.”
“I’m looking for my mother,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “She was in an…accident.”
The old man pushed his lips together sympathetically and poked a button on the pad. “Trauma.” He reached out to touch my shoulder, and I flinched, then softened when his withered hand patted my sweatshirt. “Good luck to you, hon.” His eyes caught mine, and I could tell there was recognition there. He recognized me.
Heat singed my spine, and I wanted to push the elevator doors open as he disappeared behind them on floor 6 and tell him I wasn’t that girl, I wasn’t that criminal, and beg him not to call the police. But all I did was watch him tip his hat to the nurses and shuffle down the hall until the doors closed, my eyes swirling with tears.
Maybe he recognized the old me?
Eleven
I bit down the sob that started to bubble and sucked in a half breath when the doors opened on the trauma ward. A woman in a headscarf pushed by me, her eyes thankfully glued to the text she was frantically thumbing on her phone. I took a tentative step out and looked both ways, hoping for a marquee or something that listed patient’s names and room numbers, but all I got was a half-annoyed sounding, “May I help you?” from a tired-looking nurse in bright pink scrubs.
“I’m looking for…” Could I just say my mom’s name? Would the nurse just let me in?
“You have to be family to visit here—” The nurse cocked her head, listening to something that sounded muffled but urgent on the overhead speaker. “One second.” She disappeared into a room, and I had taken a few steps down the hall when the bottom dropped out of my world.
“Excuse me.” A uniformed cop—or security guard, I couldn’t tell which—was walking toward me.
“Uh, sorry,” I muttered, eyes on my shoes, praying he wouldn’t notice the blood. I took a hard left, blessing the labyrinthine feel of floor 11, forcing myself to act normal and walk when every fiber of my being screamed RUN. I dipped into the ladies’ room and climbed up on the toilet seat, locking the door behind me.
I thought my whole body was going to explode.
The bathroom door opened, and I stiffened, pulling my legs up underneath me. But it wasn’t the cop. I peered through the crack in my door and felt my mouth drop open.
Isla Sands.
We went to school together.
She was tightening her blond ponytail in the mirror, head cocked, cell phone on her shoulder. She was wearing a bright blue smock over her clothes with the important-looking SAN JOSE GENERAL VOLUNTEER embroidered in white lettering on the chest, right next to the grinning photo of herself on her glossy name badge.
“I’m out of here in five minutes,” she said, her voice reverberating in the tiled room. “I just have to drop off some flowers and change and then I’ll be over. Oh, you know what floor they have me on today? Eleven. Andi’s mom is here. I’m not supposed to know, but there’s a cop out front, so kind of hard to hide. I don’t know, in case she shows up to finish the job or whatever, I guess.” She laughed.
My heart thudded.
Isla took some lip gloss from her smock pocket and swiped it on. “No, only family can visit. Someone showed up for the mom though. Some lady.”
I pushed open the stall door, wanting to pounce on Isla as she walked out the bathroom door, still chattering.
Someone showed up for the mom though…
Who? A lady? What lady? When? I was desperate to know. But Isla would recognize me and—in case she shows up to finish the job—obviously thought I was the she, I was the one who started “the job.” I waited for the tears, but they didn’t come. Anger did.
My father was dead. My mother was dying, and the whole world was sitting back, waiting to arrest me while the person who did this walked around free.
Walked around with Josh.
I followed Isla and her cell phone to the nurses’ station; I hung back while she pocketed her phone and picked up an enormous bouquet of flowers.
“Do you know who’s coming to replace you?” The nurse sitting behind the desk asked.
Isla shrugged. “Don’t know. Probably someone else from my school though.” She grinned. “It’s double credit in health class to volunteer here.”
The nurse didn’t smile. “Glad you’re here for all the right reasons.” She jutted her chin toward the flowers. “The next volunteer can deliver those. Can you take these downstairs and drop them off before you go?” She handed Isla a stack of envelopes. “You can head out now.”
Isla didn’t waste a minute shimmying out of her smock, tossing it in the soiled linens hamper, and disappearing into the elevator.
Heart in my throat, I crawled in front of the nurses’ station and picked up Isla’s smock before popping into what looked like a locker room. There was a bank of lockers and a cheap-looking couch, plus a kitchenette and a table heaped with breast cancer awareness T-shirts and slap bracelets. I pawed through the stack and found a few hot pink handkerchiefs, tied one over my hair, put Isla’s smock on, and prayed that my unease wasn’t oozing off me the way I felt it was. I practiced hanging my hand over my chest where Isla’s name badge had hung, deeming it good enough if I moved quickly.
“Hi, I’m here for my shift.”
The nurse looked up, and I grabbed the flowers, obscuring my face and the part of my chest where a name badge should hang. “Do you want me to deliver these?”
“Great. Room seventeen, please. What’s your name?”
“Lynelle,” I blabbed.
There was a beat of silence that went on for eons as the nurse took her sweet time writing out every letter. “Badge number?”
“Six-seven-one.” It was out of my mouth the second she asked, before my brain had a chance to intervene. I hoped the nurse wouldn’t recognize that 671 wasn’t any kind of badge number; it was the bus route to the hospital. I was able to breathe again when she didn’t question it, raised her eyebrows, and said, “So, room seventeen?”
I had no idea which direction room 17 was, but I had no intention of going there anyway. I wasn’t sure if it was the flowers or the blue smock, but no one even looked twice at me, and I counted down the doors, my heart aching as I picked up speed and finally found the room I was looking for—my mother’s.
There was a female officer sitting out front of her room, and a bead of sweat dripped down the back of my neck as I hiked the flower arrangement up on my hip and tried to stay partly hidden.
“Uh, delivery,” I said, my voice quavering.
“I could barely see you behind those flowers!” The officer’s voice was jovial, but I was still on edge, my every synapse sparking.
“They’re for…this room.”
I expected the officer to part the flowers and scrutinize me, to ask my name or make me sign something, but all she did was step aside and push the door to my mom’s room open for me.
“Mom.”
It was silent in her room, save for the whir and buzz of machines doing their thing. I was sure that I was silent, too, a sob dead in my throat, my heart stopped, the blood in my veins frozen and unmoving.
Her feet were just a few inches from my fingertips; I could reach out and touch her flesh and validate her life, but I couldn’t make myself move, couldn’t even force myself to put that stupid giant bouquet down.
I wanted to scream and to apologize. I wanted to crawl up into my mother’s flaccid arms and beg her to hold me and forgive me and to make everything go away and stay the same. I wanted to pull back whatever was set in motion, but she just lay there, the rise and fall of her chest so slight, and my body was rooted to the floor.
Finally, something clicked.
“Mom, oh my God, Mom.” I rushed to her shoulder, touched her hair splayed on the pillow, and slid my hand into hers. “Oh please, Mom, please wake up. Please.”
A wave of memory hit me hard, and I doubled over, hearing my voice in a weird echo chamber in my head. I was pleading again, somewhere in the past.
In my house.
That night.
“Please, please…”
My voice or hers?
“Is everything okay in here?”
The officer’s eyes flashed when she saw me holding my mom’s hand.
“I’m sorry—she just—I just—”
“You need to leave.”
I slipped out of my mom’s grip and darted past the officer in a heartbeat, but not before I saw my mother’s lips twitch, her eyelids flutter.
“Andi…”
Twelve
“She recognized me.”