by S. L. Naeole
“Atta-girl—wake up, Grace,” I heard as his lips moved once more, his voice actually coming through this time. “Well, hello. Welcome back.”
I blinked as he pulled the vile little package away and pressed something cold and wet against my upper lip. “I haven’t left,” I muttered against the dripping cloth.
“You suffered a nasty fall I heard. You’ve got a concussion, and you’ll probably be a bit woozy for the next couple of days, but now that you’re awake I think you’re going to be just fine,” he explained.
“Where’s my dad?” I asked, knowing he must be frantic with worry somewhere; hopefully not restrained and locked in a dark closet.
The doctor nodded to the nurse standing beside me who left with a wink. I frowned at that little gesture, it saying more to me than anything she could have uttered.
“What did you do to my dad?” I demanded, trying to pull myself up. “Where is he?”
The doctor stepped back and allowed me to sit up, a look of panic written clearly on his face. “He’ll be here in a minute. He’s fine, honest!”
I tried to climb off the bed but the sharp pull of the IV that was hanging from a rod attached to the bed prevented me from doing so. “He’s fine? If he’s fine, why isn’t he in here? What did you do to him?” I demanded once again as I struggled with the valve that attached the tube to the needle that was taped to my hand.
“He was frantic and he wasn’t allowing us to do our job, so we gave him a sedative. It was a mild one. He’s asleep in the children’s ward, perfectly fine. I promise.”
I calmed down as the explanation sunk in. “Oh, I knew this was going to happen,” I moaned. I sat back down on the bed and shook my head. “Ow.”
The doctor approached me hesitantly, but I did nothing to wave him away. He placed a cold hand against my head, his frigid skin offering a great deal of comfort to my throbbing head. “I apologize for having to do that to your father, Grace. If it could have been avoided, I would have gladly appreciated it but unfortunately there was no other recourse.”
I sighed and gently nodded my head. “I know. He’s never been good with hospitals, and until my baby brother is born, he’s only got me to focus all of his worries on. I just—I warned him that this was going to happen. Well, not this exactly, but I knew he’d end up freaking out or something. Thanks, Doctor…”
The doctor chuckled at my confession. “I’m Ambrose. The nurses here call me Dr. Bro because they think I don’t like my name, but to tell you the truth, I do.”
“I do, too. Ambrose…like the Saint?” I asked, surprised at my question.
He grinned and nodded. “Yes, actually. Not many people know that. He’s not exactly one of the more well-known Saints, but my mother, she wanted me to grow up to be a great doctor and so she named me after one of the ‘doctors of the Church’. She couldn’t read very well so she didn’t know that Saint Ambrose wasn’t a medical doctor, but the end result is still the same. She’s got her doctor son named Ambrose. How do you know about him by the way? Your dad doesn’t strike me as Catholic…”
I smiled. “No, he’s not Catholic. We’re not very religious, actually. I do like to read a lot, though. I suppose I read about him at some point, but don’t ask me when because I probably couldn’t remember. Not now, anyway.”
He chuckled but then quickly sobered as a question formed in his head. “The police are waiting outside to ask you some questions. Do you know why?”
I looked at the ground and took in Dr. Ambrose’s shoes. They were dark blue clogs, comfortable looking and very plain. “They’re here to ask me about the man who ran me over.”
He nodded solemnly and walked over to the doorway to peer out into the hallway. “Do you have something new to tell them? Is that why they’re here?”
“I know who it was,” I answered quietly.
He turned around and looked at me in surprise. “You do? How do you know?”
“I saw his shoes.”
His head quickly dropped to his own feet before snapping back up to look at me once again. “Who is it?”
“That’s exactly what we want to know,” a stern voice concurred through the doorway. An officer with a pen and pad pinched between his fingers stood between me and the only exit. I glanced from between the officer and the doctor and knew that whatever came out of my mouth was going to set into motion a set of actions that I couldn’t take back, for better or for worse.
I took a deep breath and began…
GAMBLE
As all things go, the ordeal of having to explain to the police what had led me to believe that Mr. Branke had been the one to run me over was a long and involved one. As soon as Dr. Ambrose gave me the all clear, I was whisked away to the police station to give my statement.
Although Dr. Ambrose—probably out of guilt—argued that I should be able to give a statement at the hospital, or at least wait until Dad arrived from the children’s ward to be with me, the police in turn stated that I was now a legal adult and didn’t need my father to be with me when they questioned me. And so I was placed into the back seat of a very dirty, off-smelling police vehicle and made the relatively long journey to the Newark police station.
Once there, I was seated in front of a desk littered with stacks of papers and fast food wrappers. The officer seated behind the desk was a portly man with dark, greasy stains on his already dark uniform. His nametag had a dollop of what looked like dried mustard on it, and he had the remainders of what had probably been a pizza clinging to the cleft in his chin.
“Okay young lady, you’re going to write down everything you’ve said to the officers in the hospital and then you’re going to sign it at the bottom of this-” he placed a lined sheet of paper in front of me “-form and date it. When you’re done, you’ll be free to go.”
I blindly accepted the pen he handed me and began to write. All around me, the business of law enforcement seemed to revolve around answering phones, rushing out, stomping back in, and the filling of endless amounts of paperwork.
“How much time do you guys actually spend outside?” I asked as I neared the end of my statement, checking it twice before signing off on it. I dated it and then handed it to him before the officer finally answered.
“It depends on what our assignments are. Some of us get stuck on desk duty for one reason or another. I was wounded while on duty, so I’m on desk duty until I get the all-clear from my doctor,” he garbled, his lips getting in the way of fully articulating his words.
“Wounded, Charlie? Tell that girl the truth! Listen, little lady, Charlie over here ‘wounded’ himself by throwing his back out when he bent down to pick up some Skittles he dropped on the ground,” a female officer laughed from the desk across from us. “He’s been on desk duty since before you were even born and will probably be there till he retires. Wounded while on duty. That’s a good one, Charlie!”
I turned to look at Charlie and immediately felt sorry for him. “I like Skittles, so I don’t blame you for getting hurt. Nothing sucks like a wasted candy.”
He smiled at me and took my form, looking it over to make sure that I hadn’t missed out on anything important. “You’re a good kid, Grace. I hope that we catch this S.O.B. so that you can stop worrying about him. That wasn’t right, running over a kid and then leaving without helping.”
I nodded as he stood up and walked over to an office that was surrounded by glass and wood panels. A man inside stood up and peered out of the glass, his eyes focused on me. He nodded his head and then picked up the receiver of the phone on his desk.
Charlie turned around and walked back towards me, a smile on his face. “They’re calling it in. He’ll be brought in within the hour, if you want to wait so you can identify him, although we won’t necessarily need that.”
Was that what I wanted? To be sitting here while they brought Mr. Branke in handcuffed? I shook my head. “No, I think I’ll go and wait outside for my dad.”
The officer nodded and then thank
ed me. “You stay safe, now.”
“I’ll try,” I said and headed towards the exit, trying my best to remember where it was. When I stepped outside, I realized that I had left my coat and gloves at the hospital. The cold, February air still had a vicious bite to it and I knew I’d freeze to death if I remained out dressed the way I was.
With rushed steps, I hurried back inside and sat on a bench that was bolted to the floor and wall. It was a full thirty minutes later before my dad finally showed up. He was so angry, he blew right past me and was halfway down the hallway before he heard me calling out to him.
“Grace!” he shouted. He ran back towards me and wrapped his arms around me, his breathing heavy and erratic. “I’m going to kill that doctor for putting us through this. If I ever see him again, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
I giggled as I really couldn’t find any fault with his reasoning for it. At least, not when it came to him. I took a look at his face and then burst out laughing. “Dad. Um…have you taken a look at yourself in the mirror?”
He growled and nodded. “Yes. That twisted so-called doctor drugged me and left me in the Art room in the Children’s ward.”
He raced to a display case and inspected his reflection while I snickered behind him. He turned around and I burst out into loud laughter once again. It appeared that, while passed out, the children in the Children’s ward had felt a need to use Dad’s face and hair as their own living canvas.
Half of his face was painted a bright purple with orange spots dotted below his right eye and at the corner of his mouth. The other half of his face had been painted with alternating black and white stripes, followed with what appeared to be hot pink glittered glue. His hair had streaks of yellow and green paint, and the slightly bald spot that neared his hairline had been filled with the same hot pink glue, although he must have moved while it had been drying because it clumped over to the side.
Dad tried to grit his teeth but even that failed when they squeaked from the crayon that had been rubbed against them, making them a streaky olive-green. “Is this what I have to look forward to with Matthew?”
I nodded between laughs, pressing against the tightness that was building in my side. “Boy am I glad I’ll be away at college when that starts.”
He sighed, my words a sobering reality that neither of us had been ready for, despite my utterance. “Just a few more months, kiddo,” he said resignedly. “A few more months before you’re on your own. You’re not my little girl anymore.”
“Aw Dad,” I groaned. “Do we have to do this in the middle of a police station?”
He immediately straightened and, as if suddenly remembering why we were here in the first place, became intensely serious. “What happened? Tell me everything, give me the names of the officers who questioned you, everything.”
“I’ll do it on the way to the car,” I promised, and so I did, leaving out nothing except the part where the officer named Charlie had said that they were bringing in Mr. Branke in less than an hour.
***
It would be less than twenty-four hours later when the news we hadn’t expected threatened to tear apart the little bit of security that had been formed knowing that Mr. Branke would be behind bars.
“Grace,” Dad called out from downstairs. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, my mouth full of toothpaste foam.
“Wha?” I shouted, spraying foam all across the reflective glass.
“Come downstairs. Now.”
I quickly rinsed out my mouth and rushed downstairs to see Dad and Janice sitting on one side of the sofa, Graham’s pillow and blankets all piled on the opposite end.
In Dad’s favorite chair sat one of the officers from the hospital, his hat in his lap. The look on all three of their faces told me that something wasn’t right, something was not right at all.
“What’s going on?”
Dad glared at the police officer while Janice shook her head disapprovingly.
Taking a deep breath, the officer began to repeat to me what it appeared everyone else already knew as I suddenly became aware of Graham stomping around in the kitchen.
“Grace, as I told your parents already, I’m afraid that after speaking to Mr. Branke and following up on his statement, it appears that he has an alibi for the night you were hit. We also examined his car and there’s no damage to it. At least, nothing that would result from hitting someone on a bicycle. He’s not the person who hit you, Grace.”
The weight of his words seemed to transplant onto me as he sighed from the release of them. I shook my head in denial. “I know what I saw. I saw his shoes. They’re the same shoes, the exact same shoes,” I argued.
The officer nodded in understanding and offered me a hand for comfort but I jerked away. He sighed once more and tried to explain. “Grace, I know you want to believe that it was Mr. Branke that did this, but please understand that we checked and double checked his alibi. He was teaching a weekend biology course at the community college. There are fifty eye-witnesses that place him in class. He didn’t do this, I’m sorry.”
I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t believe it. “When you brought Mr. Branke in…was it while he was still in school?”
The officer nodded. “Yes, actually. He was in the middle of some kind of afterschool science club meeting. There were quite a few angry students there, I must say.”
I groaned as the repercussions from my implicating Mr. Branke became clear to me. As creepy as Mr. Branke might be, he was a respected teacher by many kids, and I had just accused him of nearly killing me and leaving me on the side of the road to die. I had sealed his reputation to those who had already disliked him and tarnished it to those who didn’t.
“Oh no, what have I done?” I moaned, the pounding in my head returning. “Oh, what have I done?”
Graham came out of the kitchen and grabbed my arm, yanking me up the stairs and towards my room. “Don’t worry about it, Grace. I’m not going to let anyone use this against you,” he vowed as he sat me down on my bed. He walked to the door and shut it so that they couldn’t hear us downstairs. “If you still believe that Mr. Branke did this, we’ll find a way to prove it, Grace. But…do you? Do you still think it was him? I won’t question you if you don’t.”
I looked at him through foggy eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. I saw his shoes and I could have sworn that he was the guy. I felt the connection there, Graham. I know I did.”
He sat down beside me and placed his arm around my shoulders, giving them a gentle and reassuring squeeze. “You did the only thing you could do. I’m not that bright, but I can see that and so will everyone else.”
I nodded but felt unsure. I didn’t know what Mr. Branke’s arrest had left in its wake, and I was terrified of finding out. But more importantly, I was afraid of what would happen when I would eventually see him in class. I would have to apologize to him—I wanted to apologize to him—but I didn’t know if I had the courage to do so.
“Hey, where’s Robert been? Shouldn’t he have stopped over or something yesterday?” Graham asked.
I stared at the empty wall near the door and shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I’ll take you to school today then. I’ll stick by your side like glue all day, okay?”
The thought of Graham being permanently attached to my side would have probably made my day if I were any other girl, but I wasn’t just any other girl. “I’ll be fine, Graham. But I’ll accept your ride to school.”
He nodded and stood up. “Well, if I’m going to be playing bodyguard, I need to fuel up. Janice made some real bacon today, so I’m going to stuff my face while you get ready.”
He left, quietly shutting the door behind him, and I waited until I could no longer hear the thumping of his heavy footsteps before I turned around on my bed and opened my window. I looked at the police car parked conspicuously in our driveway, saw the faces of the neighbors who had gathered across the street to point
and whisper behind raised hands about why it could possibly be parked there.
One of them, a Mrs. Gladys Fallacci, saw me peering from out of the window and she waved, embarrassed that she had been spied gossiping yet smug all the same because the car wasn’t parked in front of her house.
I quickly shut the window and yanked the curtain closed over it. “Every single time I think I’m getting close to being normal, something comes up and changes everything.”
I rummaged through my drawers for something to wear to school and settled on a pair of old, camouflage pants and a plain black t-shirt. I was heading into battle; I might as well dress like it. I was pulling on my boots when Graham knocked on my door to see if I was ready to leave.
“I’ll be there in a second,” I called out in response and began to tie my laces. I looked over to my dresser and saw the picture of Robert and I that Janice had taken last October. “Where are you?” I asked silently.
With a heavy heart, I grabbed my bag and hoisted it onto my shoulders. I opened my door and did my best to put on a brave face as we walked downstairs together. I grabbed my jacket—Dad had remembered to grab it from the hospital—and walked with Graham to his car, ignoring the officer and the concerned looks on Dad and Janice’s faces.
He was in the middle of unlocking the passenger door when the sound of an engine revving behind us alerted us to the presence of another person.
“Your boyfriend is here,” Graham snapped as he fumbled with the keys in his heavily gloved hands.
Robert’s black motorcycle stood out against the white of the snow covered street but it paled in comparison to the jet of his hair. His gray eyes were like cold steel as they glared at Graham, but turned molten the minute he looked at me. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, immediately feeling calm and relaxed. “I’m okay.”
Graham snorted. “Of course she’s okay. She wouldn’t be heading off to school if she wasn’t.” He looked at me and grunted as he shook his head. “Whatever it is he has on you, I hope it’s good, Grace. He should have been here today. He should have been there yesterday, too, instead of me.”