Paint My Body Red

by Heidi R. Kling

  “I don’t understand, if he’s DNR, why is he keeping himself alive, day to day then? With the tubes and the respirator?”

  “Natural causes. He wants to die of natural causes.”

  “Okay.” I sigh. I find myself wanting to think like Anna. Be logical and strong and deal with this new set of information in a rational, How-Do-We-Move-On-From-Here manner. I suck in a long, deep breath. Close my eyes for a second and wash away the images in my head of a woman unplugging the man she loves and waiting for him to die. That’s not going to be us—at least not today.

  “Well,” I say in a calm, clear voice, “you did what you did, and it’s done. So we have to move on. Dad’s not going to hold this against you. He’s going to understand.”

  I’m not sure this is true. For all I know, Dad will be livid, but I say it anyway.

  He won’t have a choice to be angry. He’ll have to pack away his selfish notions that put Anna in this horrible position of choosing whether or not to let a man she loves die. And he’ll have to listen to his own advice: “Suck it up, and move on. It’s done.”

  Jake is on the other side of Dad’s bed watching his face as he lies there, an oxygen mask tight over his face, too, but unlike Patient A, his covers are pulled high over his body, tucked in below his neck. What’s left of his hair is neatly combed to the side over an oily forehead, slick with ointments that keep the devices from sticking to his skin. The day-old stubble is the only physical difference between today and any day.

  Anna strokes his cheek, gently. “I was planning on shaving him in a few minutes—after the doctors left. He doesn’t like stubble. You know him, clean-shaven or a full-grown beard. No in between with Gus.”

  Life or death: not a coma, not brain-dead waiting to be unplugged—no in between with Gus.

  She’s looking at Dad with such love. Even at their best, my mom never looked at him that way. Anna accepts him exactly for who he is—flaws and all. “He’s so lucky to have you, Anna.”

  Her eyes lighten like she really needed to hear those words. “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  She swallows, eyes tearing up again. “Thank you, honey.”

  I put my arms around her and hug her tight.

  Jake, who’s been quiet for so much of the visit, says much more with his actions and gestures than with his words. He stands near my dad and rests his hand on Dad’s wrist, in a comforting way—protective, strong. And even though everything is wrong, this moment is somehow exactly right.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  We stay all day at the hospital bringing cup after cup of stale vending machine coffee to Anna, who won’t leave Dad’s side. I decide we need food to soak up some of the caffeine, so around 4 p.m., Jake and I pick up deli sandwiches in the cafeteria. We eat ours on a vinyl couch in the lobby because the cafeteria smells like sick flesh and vinegar.

  “What a mess,” Jake says, limply pulling lettuce from a sandwich roll and setting it on the side of his plate.

  “I know.” His eyes hold mine and what I see in them frightens me. “What?

  “If we’d been there, Paige…things…”

  “What?”

  He looks away. “Nothing.”

  “Come on, it’s not nothing. What are you saying? That things would’ve been different if we’d have been there? I know that’s what you’ve been thinking all day.”

  “I don’t want to upset you. I just…I know what your dad wants, and I’d want to honor him.”

  I set my sandwich down, panic rising in my throat, the earlier calm of shock gone, replaced by pure emotion imagining the worse. “You would’ve sat there and watched him die?”

  His Adam’s apple bobs like this is hard to admit, but his eyes hold mine in a steadfast gaze. Like admitting to Anna that I slept over in his cabin, he might feel bad about upsetting us, but he doesn’t feel guilty about his choice.

  “It’s what he wants. I gave him my word. I signed the DNR agreement stating I would…” He breaks eye contact and moves the lettuce around on his plate. “But in the moment, who knows. Maybe I’d have done the same as Anna.”

  I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to feel. Not letting him die is breaking a promise. He can’t move. The only thing he has left is his wishes via the computer. He can’t talk. He counts on us. Not that I want him to die, I absolutely do not, but suddenly I can hear what Jake is saying. I understand what my dad wants. There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to choosing to live or deciding it’s time to die and once again, we’re swimming in murky gray waters.

  I cup my forehead, pressing into my temples.

  “I think we need to hire a nurse, Paige. Someone without blood ties, someone…”

  “Who doesn’t love him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I agree. How could Anna live with herself if she let him die? Let him choke on his baby food and not even call 911? It’s not right to force her to make that kind of choice. To force you to make that kind of choice.”

  He nods, once, appreciatively.

  “I don’t know how we’ll find the money, but I’ll think of something.” As I say it I know exactly how we’ll find the money. Scout. We’ll sell Scout. We’ll have to.

  I search Jake’s eyes to see if he knows what “we’ll find it” means. He does.

  “I don’t want you to have to do that,” he says.

  “If it means saving one of us from making this choice about Dad? If it means giving him what he wants? Honoring the one thing he still has control over? I’ll do it, Jake. As much as it’ll kill me to, I’ll sell Scout to save Anna or you from having to make that kind of choice.”

  “Okay. If you’re sure?”

  I nod.

  “We’ll talk to her about it tonight. Or tomorrow. Or whenever Gus gets discharged.”

  He sets his plate down on the ground and takes my hand. “I’m so glad you’re here.” His blue eyes glisten with emotion, and I squeeze his hand back.

  “I heard someone say once the right thing isn’t always the easiest thing. I’m glad I’m here, too, but even if I wasn’t, Jake, I know you—you’d do what’s right.”

  “The problem is, in this case and with…” He looks at me. “And with you, I don’t know what’s right anymore.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  I’d had no idea how to deal with Ty.

  I knew how volatile Ty was—how near the edge—and I didn’t go to my mom or his dad to tell them because telling them would be me admitting how close we were, and so I protected my own pride over protecting Ty.

  I made that choice and I’ve been living with it each day since. I had to tell Jake.

  I should just tell him now.

  But how do you tell someone you love that you’re responsible for the death of someone who claimed to love you?

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Then

  I drove as fast I could down to the tracks.

  Holding the phone in one hand I winced as, on speaker mode, I listened to his barely coherent voicemail ramble on words that made me barely able to focus on my driving.

  I know you don’t love me and it doesn’t matter anymore just have a nice life and no I’m not sorry for you or for anything or maybe I am who the hell knows whatever goodbye.

  I threw the car in park and jumped out into the darkness. “Ty!” I screamed his name into the cold windless night. Fog-thick air filled the empty space between the chain link fence and the tracks.

  Warning signs have been hung in several places now. ACTIVE RAILROAD, with a crossed out cartoon of a person walking on the tracks. THERE IS HELP, with holding hands and a suicide hotline help number. Bright lights pooled on the tracks from newly installed lights. All cautionary measures the school took to dissuade railway suicides at our high school.

  “Ty! Are you here?”

  No answer.

  I heard the message. He was going to do something. I knew it.

  Shaking from both cold and fear, I wrapped my arms
around myself and called his name over and over.

  A crow grazed by me, landing on the tracks six feet away. I screamed.

  Come on, Paige. Keep it together.

  “Ty! If you’re here, please. I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I…”

  Just say it. Out loud. Just in case he’s here and it could save him.

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Behind the crow, on the tracks, stood Ty.

  He was wearing a gray hoodie, jeans, Converse. His hood covered his eyes. All I could see was his mouth.

  Worry faded into anger. He was waiting for my apology. He knew how anxious I was, how scared, and yet he waited, lurking in the dark. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Seeing what they saw.”

  “What?”

  “Those last moments. The lights coming toward them. The sound. It must be louder than waves, you know? And I’ve been way out, you know that, caught in the barrel, when the wave comes like this, from deep in the sea, after traveling so far, it overwhelms you. Louder than thunder.” He looked at me. “Louder than screams.”

  My knees started to shake. “Get off the tracks, Ty.”

  “I wonder if when they saw it coming they thought about changing their minds, you know? If they thought, what the hell am I doing? But then when death really faced them, when they looked straight in its face and dared it to remove them from this life, I wonder if they chickened out, but it was too late and they were toast anyway.”

  I stepped through the hole in the fence—a hole Ty made?—disobeying the signs to stay away from the tracks. “Come home with me.”

  He pulled off his hood and looked straight into me with eyes that weren’t Ty’s. They were still the same beautiful green color, but something about them was dead inside. Hollow, like a crow’s. Like the Ty part of him was gone, the funny, hopeful part, and what was left was just this angry, vengeful side. The side I hated.

  “Why, Paige? So you can reject me over and over and over again? So you can remind me day after day that you think I’m a fucking rapist and make me feel like the most pathetic asshole on the planet? No thanks. I’d rather be dead then feel you look at me that way.”

  Shit.

  Shit.

  I scrambled. He was still standing on the tracks. I didn’t know the train schedule. Did Ty? “Why? So you can live a normal life.”

  “Normal?” He laughed too loud. Chills ran down my spine. “You know as well as I do, there is no normalcy to this life of ours. Especially mine. Once you’re accused of something like that, even if you get off, it always follows you. It always haunts you. Who knows, maybe the others—maybe they had stuff to run from, too. Maybe they were right to just check out.”

  He turned away and faced the northern tracks.

  “No,” I insisted. “They weren’t right. They had families that loved them. Friends who are devastated. You can’t just ‘check out’ because things get rough!”

  He looked at me again with those purgatory eyes. Half here. Half already gone. “Who says?”

  “Me.”

  “Oh, you say, so that’s how things go, right?” His hands flew into the air and made swooping, sarcastic gestures. “Whatever Paige says goes. Don’t worry—when you said you hate me, I heard you. You don’t need to backslide and pretend you didn’t mean it, because I saw the look in your eyes when you slammed the door in my face. I’ve seen it before. I saw it when my mom told my dad to fuck off and then disappeared forever. She might as well have told me the same thing, because she’s gone, gone for good, just like you’ll be gone for good soon, too.”

  I stumbled away. My back hit the fence, blocking any chance at escape. “No, that’s not—”

  He lunged forward and grabbed the chain links on either side of me. “DON’T LIE TO ME, PAIGE. If you think lying is going to get me off these tracks, you’re stupider than I thought. You’ll leave for Wesleyan and hook up with some polo player like that asshole at the dance and go to his parents’ house on weekends and drink in the gardens. I’ll be a blip on your radar. The creepy, drunk, pervy, rapist stepbrother you fucked whenever you needed to forget.”

  I slipped out from between his arms, scared to death.

  I needed to call my mother. I needed to tell his father. I needed help. My hands shook as I got my phone out to dial, but he screamed at me so loudly I nearly dropped it. “Don’t call them! This isn’t about them! It’s about us!”

  I started to dial them anyway, but his words stopped me.

  “Call them and I’ll be dead before they get here.”

  I stuffed the phone back in my pocket.

  “Smart,” he said. “Good.” He looked back at the tracks. His green eyes looked red in the lights. “I’m not trying to scare you. I just want you to understand. You have an escape hatch, Paige. You have one. But guess what? Not all of us do.”

  Maybe I could dial my mom without him seeing? I slyly tucked my fingers back in my pocket. If I could just get to my favorites, I could call her, and she’d hear what was happening. She’d piece it together and help me before it was too late. I tried stalling. “You’re going to college, too, Ty. That’s your escape hatch.”

  “Whatever.” His arms flew up and smacked down at his sides. “We won’t be together! You won’t visit! You can’t wait to get away from me, from all of this.” He gestured to the tracks, to the sign. Then he tucked his hands in his pockets and faced the direction I assumed the next train would come from.

  “Stop it! This isn’t funny anymore.”

  He looked at me over his shoulder. The lack of gestures. The lack of expression on his face made my heart stop. “Was it ever funny?”

  “You know what I mean!”

  He turned back around, and I took the opportunity to dial Mom. It rang once, twice, before being completely replaced by horrific sounds. Dooming sounds.

  The train’s horn bellowed through the night like a man’s scream. The roar of the train engine closed in on us. Closed in on Ty.

  Two headlights preceded 64 tons of steel that headed straight for one hundred and forty pound Ty.

  “Ty! Move!”

  I ran onto the tracks. I had no choice. If I didn’t, the train would kill him. I missed the first grab of his sweatshirt sleeve. As I tried for a second time, he ducked out of my way, jumping to the right.

  The train was too close. We weren’t going to make it.

  Bright lights blinded me. The screech of brakes overrode my shouts for him to jump. I fell out of the way just in time, smashing onto the dirt.

  The train roared by, horn blazing and brakes screaming, but unable to stop.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Now

  Jake makes me a cup of herbal lemon tea. I watch his back as he swirls a bit of honey into the boiling water. He catches me watching as he re-enters the room and smiles the sad smile of a long, hard day. I mirror his gesture. He sits down beside me on the worn leather couch that used to belong to my parents. My hair is damp, hanging loosely over my shoulders that are covered in the green flannel shirt he handed me when I was toweling off from a shower. I stood under the hot water until my fingers wrinkled and my cheeks pinked from heat, scrubbing away the institutional smells of the ICU, wishing the steam, the dull roar of the spray, would cover up the jarring beeps of the machines, the hum of the respirator that keeps my dad alive, the screeching train, and Ty’s screams.

  We talk quietly on the couch. I lean into Jake’s chest, loving that he smells like soap and the comforting beef stew he warmed up for dinner. We stay like that, our hearts beating against each other, for a long time until the quiet soothing becomes something else. My skin burns wanting him. My soul wants the same. The flannel is soft under my palm as I let it slide over his shoulders and onto his chest, onto his heart. I make a fist with the fabric and bend my head, resting my forehead on the fistful of Jake. At first I just kiss the material. It’s soft and rough, like him.

  He lets out a l
ittle sigh.

  I kiss him again.

  This time I bypass his shirt and let my lips graze his bare chest instead. It’s a little kiss, small, daring. Something I can still back away from. Something he can ignore and we’ll pretend didn’t happen. That I slipped. That it was just an accident. We haven’t talked about what happened after the bar—we could blame those kisses on silly drunkenness—but this is something else entirely.

  If he accepts it.

  Stroking his shoulder with my thumb from left to right, I find that tender spot under his collarbone and kiss that, too.

  “Ah, hell, Paige…”

  He lifts my chin and takes my lips with his. Strong hands run through my hair, over my face, smoothing, clutching. One of us moans, a low sound of want. The other answers with a sigh. My hands smooth over all the parts of Jake I’ve been starving for since I arrived at the ranch. The bend in his arm, the hard ripples of his muscles, feel just like I’ve dreamed. Better, even, because there’s softness to them, a gentleness.

  “Are you okay?” he breathes.

  “Yes,” I whisper. “More than okay.”

  My skin is on fire, and I’m about two seconds from melting into the ground when he sweeps me up off the ground and carries me into his bedroom.

  When he lays me gently on his bed, his need turns to patience.

  Slowly, gently, with the skills of a guy in a romance movie, he tenderly unbuttons each of the buttons on the plaid shirt I’m wearing, and with a sweep of his long fingers, slips it off my shoulder, kissing every piece of now-exposed skin. I shudder with impatience while at the same time never wanting him to stop. This is nothing like Ty’s urgent, sloppy insistence.

  “Jake,” I moan. I tug on his hair, pulling his face back to mine, kissing him with everything I have, everything I was, everything I am.