by Lyle Howard
The killer dove the length of the foyer, gliding across the slick floor like it was Georgia red clay, catching the door just as the boy was opening it. The brute force of his shoulder caught the massive oak door flush, smashing it closed with a ground-shaking “boom” that would have made the storm clouds outside envious.
“You’re not goin’ anywhere, kid,” Magnetti sniffled, as he rolled to his feet and tried futilely to blot his bloody nose on his sleeve, “’cept the morgue!”
Then Matthew did something unexpected...the last thing the killer would have ever anticipated... he smiled!
Magnetti just stood there, his mind suddenly void of any quick witticisms. Even though this job had gone sideways, this little guy had moxie. He actually admired that. Now he would have to stay and clean up all of his own blood before he could leave. Can you believe it…a freakin’ nine-year-old kid is going to blow this thing?
Both his hands caressed the tape around Sweet Amy’s handle. The kid knew what he had coming, and he was willing to take it like a man.
The assassin reared back with the bat, and that’s when Matthew made his move.
Before Magnetti could react, the boy reached up to the security control panel next to the door and pressed the blue panic button…but nothing happened! Matthew jabbed at it twice more and still no alarm.
The bat stopped short and came to rest on Magnetti’s shoulder. “Sorry kid,” he apologized, “your folks should have invested in a newer system. Nice try though.”
With freedom just out of his grasp, young Matthew Walker closed his eyes, hung his head, and began to sob as Sweet Amy, at long last, finished her work. The sudden pain was all-consuming. In the split-second that followed, Matthew thought he saw fragments of his skull fly past his eyes, as the bat connected with the back of his head. In that last instant of awareness, he heard his own scream choked off in his throat, like it was all taking place in a nightmare. He screamed so loud, in fact, that his prepubescent vocal chords actually gave out.
Matthew staggered for a moment and then stumbled backward, colliding against the foyer wall, a deep red splotch discoloring the floral wallpaper behind his head. His limp body slid down the wall in degrees, leaving a repulsive crimson smear that traced his collapse.
Then there was nothing...
No sight...
No sound...
And the darkness enveloped him.
1
Intensive Care Unit
Children’s Memorial Hospital
The waiting room was an overcrowded gathering area for total strangers who suddenly found themselves thrown together under the most agonizing of circumstances. A cheerless place, even though the walls were covered with smiling cartoon figures that a child of any age would recognize. It was a place of nightmares, where the mere appearance of anyone in the doorway wearing hospital scrubs could cause the whole group to hold their breath in tremulous anticipation. It was hard to believe that so much anguish could be packed into such a confined space.
Each family member or friend who sat here on pins and needles had a loved one whose fragile life hung in the balance behind the two hissing metal doors that lead to the operating suites. Each caring smile they exchanged, and every sympathetic nod that was reciprocated, camouflaged the real dread and anxiety of knowing that, sooner or later, it would be their own turn to be on the opposite side of those sinister silver doors.
Magazines dating back to the dawn of man were strewn across the red plastic table in the center of the tiny room. Toy building blocks were scattered on the carpeting, itself worn threadbare in places, no doubt from the miles of overwrought pacing it had to endure. The television in the corner appeared to work, but the volume was kept so low that it was nearly impossible to hear the morning newscast. The complimentary coffee was cold, and only the bravest of souls dared to dip into the jar of powdered creamer that had been sitting open all night. Against the far wall, a young man waiting on word of his son’s bypass surgery had succumbed to the strain and had fallen asleep with the sports section spread across his chest.
Periodically, the fearful moment would arrive when an attending physician would enter the waiting room and, in a God-like manner, survey the occupants as though they were looking for some family resemblance before calling out the patient’s name. It was an arrogant practice that only served to augment a doctor’s already inflated ego and demean the families who were not called.
It was a harrowing experience to watch an entire family stand up in unison and step out into the hallway for their dreaded consultation. They would shuffle out of the room, clutching hands, slump-shouldered, as though walking their last mile, while the families left behind were compelled to crane their necks like nosey eavesdroppers, watching anxiously through the window for the telltale reaction which was sure to follow. This time around, the tidings were good, and even the most hardened member of the Gonzalez family—a brawny longshoreman who had worked the loading cranes at the Port of Miami for over twenty-two years—broke down with uncontrollable tears of happiness upon hearing the good news of his daughter’s imminent recovery.
As David and Barbara Walker sat huddled together near the television, they were finding it hard to imagine the relief and exhilaration that the Gonzalez clan was experiencing. The elderly couple smiled halfheartedly and squeezed each other’s hands at the family’s victory over the Grim Reaper, but it was a feeble attempt at a false front. Deep inside, they had both been as mortally wounded as their son and daughter-in-law. It was never right when any parent outlived their offspring, and now, the last fragile link the elder Walkers held to their own son was battling for his life behind those ominous steel doors.
Matthew’s grandparents had been notified too late to see the boy before he had been raced into surgery, and that was a good thing. Jacksonville was usually six hours away, but Matthew’s grandparents made the trip in four, with Barbara Walker clutching the dashboard in terror the entire way. When grilled by the grandfather in the emergency room, the trauma specialist had tried to sound as upbeat as possible about Matthew’s prognosis, but the pensive look on the Doctor’s face contradicted his words. One of the attending paramedics would later confide in the old man that he thought his team had pulled off a minor miracle just keeping his grandson breathing while racing the twenty miles to the hospital.
For Barbara Walker, the not knowing was the hardest part. It had been nearly seven hours since anyone had come into the waiting room with an update for them. All they had been told was that the head of Neurosurgery, a Doctor Roy Soto, had been called in, and that the trauma to Matthew’s head was extensive. That morsel of news seemed like it had trickled in years ago, and at the time, that was all anyone would tell them.
“Do you want a mint?” she asked, elbowing her husband as she searched her handbag.
Dave Walker ran his fingers through his bushy head of unkempt gray hair. The craggy lines that years of toiling in the Florida sun had chiseled into his face had become more profound over the last eight hours. His wife of forty-two years lovingly called them his “laugh lines” because, from a distance, they always seemed to broaden his sincere smile. But this morning, in the pale fluorescent light of the Intensive Care waiting room, they served to do nothing more than to deepen his frown.
Matthew’s grandfather held open his palm. “As long as it’s not your last one.”
She pinched a mint off the top of the roll and rested her weary head on his sturdy shoulder. “I’ve got plenty,” she whispered.
He patted her hand gently. For a venerable old sports fisherman like Dave Walker, Barbara had been the catch of a lifetime. He seriously doubted that anyone else could have put up with his shenanigans for as long as she had, and never once complained. She retaliated, but never complained. Any man who’d had to sit behind his desk wearing skivvies that were so starched they’d give his ass paper cuts could testify to her belief in quid pro quo
.
Barbara Walker was sixty-two years young, and to hear her husband tell it, she was still the blue-eyed dream girl he had escorted to the senior prom. Slim-waisted and fair-skinned, she had taken up this Zumba fad two years ago, and much to his delight, it had put a gleam back in her eyes and a bounce into her step that he hadn’t seen since the night their only grandson had been born. Now that sparkle was threatening to vanish again.
“What could be taking them so long in there?”
Dave Walker shifted his weight in the uncomfortable chair. “I’m sure they know what they’re doing, Barb.”
“I just know he’s going to be alright.”
The old man pursed his lips. “From your mouth to God’s ears.”
She forced a smile. “Amen.”
Matthew’s grandfather nodded his head. “Well, I hope your knack for predicting things correctly holds true again.”
Barbara Walker stared blankly up at the ceiling. “You know, I sometimes wonder...”
“Wonder what?”
“Well, if I had the choice,” she pondered, morosely, “Whether I’d want it to happen to me in my sleep, or drawn out like this.”
Dave Walker knew his wife was thinking about her only son, and her pain was palpable. There would be no consoling her, and in her own time, when she was alone, most likely in the middle of the night, probably in the darkened den that they had converted from Frank’s childhood bedroom, she would come to the understanding that her son and his wife were facing eternity together. And in a tidal wave of cleansing tears, she would come to grips with the inspirational reality of their fate. That was her way.
He too had valiantly tried to bury the gruesome death of his son and daughter-in-law into some dark pit in the back of his mind, but the grave was far too shallow, and he was failing miserably. He continued to tell himself that all he needed to do was to concentrate on the welfare of his grandson, and that would see him through. There would be plenty of time for mourning and remembrance, but for right now, he had to focus on the glimmer of hope that Matthew might need to overcome this ordeal.
“That’s not the kind of thoughts you should be thinking about right now,” he whispered. “We need to stay positive…for Matt.”
She shrugged in his arms. “I know, but we’ve never discussed...”
He held his finger over her mouth. “Shh...I don’t want to have that conversation now.”
As Dave Walker tried to soothe his wife by rubbing the back of her neck, he was suddenly distracted by the bold black letters that flashed onto the television screen above his head. With the subtlety of a train wreck, the local newscast was interrupted by the graphic... LATE BREAKING NEWS! ...superimposed across the anchorwoman’s face. It wasn’t so much the size of the letters that captured the old man’s attention as it was the live feed from the crime scene over the anchor’s shoulder, which made him sit bolt upright in his chair.
They had set up shop outside of his son’s house, the residence surrounded by yellow crime tape, the local reporter garbed in a neon-orange rain slicker. He was talking and pointing through the drizzle at the open front door, where a steady stream of official-looking people and police officers filed in and out of the house like it was between show times at the neighborhood Cineplex.
Walker nudged his wife. “Are you seeing this, Barb?”
Matthew Walker’s grandmother blinked a few times trying to clear the haze that had formed over her tired eyes. “Can you tell what they are saying?”
The sound was turned so low it was barely audible. Dave Walker shot a cursory glance around the room, and seeing that no one else seemed to be paying attention, lifted himself out of his chair, raised the volume on the television, and stood with his face nearly touching the screen.
It was the tail end of the piece, and the reporter was summing up what the police knew to this point. Nothing. The word hung in the air like a bad odor. “The details at this time are sketchy, but it looks like just another home invasion gone wrong. Two dead. One child remaining in critical condition, given little chance of making it through the day.” It was like being wide awake during a nightmare! This guy was talking about their Frank, Liz, and Matthew with the indifference of a stranger; finish this story and then just move on.
“Unfortunately, this sort of thing is becoming much more prevalent in South Florida; what is so unusual this time is that it happened in such a normally quiet and affluent section of town. This is Doug Nolan reporting for Eyewitness News from Gables by the Sea. Now back to the studio...”
Suddenly, David Walker didn’t care if anyone was watching the television or not. With a disgusted twist of his wrist, he shut off the set. Barbara Walker patted the chair next to her. “Come, David. Sit back down.”
But Matthew’s grandfather didn’t feel much like sitting. He’d been driving all morning. The worn grooves in the carpeting seemed to fit his feet just fine as he followed the tracks back and forth across the room. “They’re making a spectacle out of our tragedy!”
“Please sit down, Dave. You’re riling yourself up over something that we don’t have any control over! It’s what the media does.”
“Why do they have to broadcast it for the whole damned world to see?”
“Because it’s news, and maybe someone who sees it might be able to help.”
Dave Walker jabbed his finger in his wife’s direction. “They’re a bunch of callous vultures!”
A sudden expectant hush fell over the entire room as an unfamiliar face appeared in the doorway.
“Excuse me,” the Doctor announced, his voice just above a whisper. “The Walker family?”
Barbara Walker rose unsteadily to her feet and let her husband put his arm around her. “It’s gonna be alright, Barb. I’ve got you.”
Dr. Roy Soto looked much younger than what they were expecting, but the concern and compassion in his eyes helped to ease their anxiety. Still wearing his pale blue, sweat-soaked operating scrubs and paper boots, they studied the doctor as he came across the room to greet them. There was a reassuring confidence to Soto’s stride that instantly lifted the old couple’s spirits.
“Mr. and Mrs. Walker?” the surgeon asked, holding out his hand.
David Walker shook the outstretched arm like it was the handle on a well pump. “How’s our grandson?”
The doctor wiped away a few errant strands of dark brown hair that were matted against his forehead. He could have easily taken the time to clean himself up, but there was no use in putting off the inevitable. He had been briefed on the case history and decided that the family had already been through enough.
The doctor nodded politely. “I’m very sorry for the loss of your son and daughter-in-law.”
The couple nodded and sighed.
Soto looked around the room and, discovering that he was suddenly the center of attention, ushered the elderly couple out into the hallway. “Perhaps we should find somewhere a bit more private where we can discuss this.”
The Walkers allowed the doctor to lead them to a vacant office down the corridor. It was only after David Walker examined one of the numerous diplomas and certificates that adorned the walls that he realized that this was, in fact, Soto’s private office.
Barbara Walker took a seat in front of the Doctor’s impressive mahogany desk, but David Walker chose to remain standing. “Talk to us, Doc. Is our grandson dead or alive?”
His wife noticeably flinched in her seat.
Soto ran his fingers through his hair. “Your grandson is a fighter. He’s alive.”
David Walker slapped his hand on the chair behind his wife’s head. “Yes. Thank God. Thank you, doctor. Thank you so much!”
Soto leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “Well, the good news is, your grandson is quite a scrappy young lad, and although his recovery will be lengthy, I see every indication that he’s going to mak
e it.”
Barbara Walker reached up to her left shoulder, grabbed her husband’s hand, and kissed it. Her optimistic prediction had come to fruition.
For the first time in eight hours, David Walker let a faint smile crease his lips. “We owe you a debt we’ll never be able to repay, doctor.”
Soto winked kindly, knowing full well he had one more shoe to drop. “Yeah, well, I guess that’s what insurance is for.”
“So when can we see him?” Matthew’s grandmother asked, excitedly.
The doctor reached over to the corner of his desk and pulled a transparent model of a human brain towards him. “There is one thing that you both need to understand...”
Barbara Walker could hear her husband’s hand grip the fabric of the chair. It was quivering in perfect synch with her lower lip.
Soto, who was usually renowned for his polished bedside manner, could not find a tactful way of delivering the unwelcome diagnosis. As delicately as if he were actually performing surgery, the Doctor removed the posterior section of the clear skull and turned the model so the elderly couple could see the exposed part of the brain. “Matthew is not going to be the same young man that came into the operating room.” That didn’t come out sounding the way he meant it to. The doctor cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, let me amend that statement...”
Suddenly, David Walker needed to sit down.
“Your grandson will be the same by all outward physical appearances, but you’ve got to understand that he suffered an incredible amount of trauma to this area,” he clarified, by pointing a pencil to a spot on the model. “Technology in this field has come amazingly far in the past ten years, and because of these advances, we’ve been able to run some preliminary tests on Matthew while he was still under the effects of the anesthesia. We can say with a high degree of confidence that he has sustained severe nerve damage at the base of his skull...here,” he said, aiming the blunt tip at a specific section on the transparent replica.