by Kim Hooper
MamaBear208:
Does anyone know the names of the injured people?
Boyseeeee says:
Ya. Someone posted that a while back. Kat Reynolds and Cale Matthews. I’m guessing Cale is a guy. WTF is that name? If ur theory is right, maybe it’s him.
Cale Matthews.
It must have been him.
Boyseeeee says:
How ridic if the guy he was targeting lived and these other people died.
LvAll21 says:
“Ridic” is one word for it. Tragic is another.
JR2018 says:
@LvAll21, the resident poet.
I hit the power button on my phone; it goes dark.
I want to meet Cale Matthews. I’m not angry with him; truly, I’m not. I just want to talk to him about what happened. I want to see Jed through his eyes. I want to understand this rageful version of my son.
He’s one of the injured at Saint Al’s.
That’s what Detective Kinsky said.
Saint Al’s is just ten minutes away.
“Gary?” I call out toward the garage.
“Yep?” he calls back.
“I’m going out to get some lunch.”
If he’s smart, he’ll know this is strange. I don’t often go out to get some lunch. And if I was going to, I would invite him.
There’s a long pause. I think he might be getting off his stool, coming to investigate my true intentions.
“Okay,” he says finally.
There’s a tentativeness to the “okay,” as if he knows I’m up to something but he’s going to let me be. It’s not apathy; it’s trust. It’s love.
KAT REYNOLDS
VICTIM #6, INJURED
I’VE NEVER BEEN TO a therapist before. So far, it’s just like it is on TV. I’m sitting on a couch, across from this woman named Tracy who’s sitting in an armchair you’d see in someone’s grandma’s living room. She seems nice enough, but I’m having a hard time keeping eye contact with her. I feel like she’s staring into my soul or something. It’s creepy.
“So, how does this work?” I ask her, fidgeting with a loose thread in my jeans. They’re the “distressed” jeans that are in right now. I paid fifty bucks for them—on sale—and they came with holes in the knees.
“It works however you want it to work,” she says.
“I don’t know how I want it to work.”
“Well, let’s start with what motivated you to call me,” she says.
The truth of it is that I made the appointment at the insistence of my parents and my girlfriends—Carrie, Michaela, and Britt. They were the three with me that night, at Ray’s. Carrie is the one who recommended Tracy. “She’s helped me so much already,” she said. “Please call her.”
Carrie has been in therapy for years—ever since her parents divorced when she was eleven. So when the shooting happened, she already had someone to call to help her “process” it (her words). Carrie has tried to convince Michaela and Britt to call Tracy too, but I can tell Carrie’s most worried about me. I was the one who got shot, after all.
I was trying to find the bathroom when the guy with the gun came in. Even now, I refer to him as “the guy with the gun.” I know his name, but it’s weird to think of him as an actual person. I prefer he remains a shadow in my mind.
I was drunk—so drunk, too drunk. I guess I was supposed to be—it was my twenty-first birthday—but I didn’t like the feeling. I hardly ever drink, can’t rationalize the calories. In preparation for my birthday dinner, I hadn’t eaten all day. I live in fear of someone presenting a pizza and cake to me, forcing me to eat it. That didn’t happen, of course. I got a salad, dressing on the side, like always. My friends didn’t question it—either because they completely understand how I am or because they completely don’t. The waiter brought a slice of cake when they told him it was my birthday. We passed it around the table, sharing. I took a few tiny bites—less than a hundred calories, I’m guessing.
I didn’t know where the bathroom was in Ray’s because I’d never been there before. And I was so unsteady on my feet, my head fuzzy with the few shots of tequila I’d had. I chose tequila because I knew it was only about seventy calories per shot, as opposed to vodka, which has about a hundred. I don’t know what I would do without Google. Well, I guess maybe I wouldn’t be anorexic.
I was heading to the bar to ask the girl working there where the bathroom was. That’s when everything happened. It was all so fast. I don’t think the guy with the gun wanted to shoot me. He was crazed and I was just sort of … there. When I saw him shoot the others, I moved toward him. I don’t know why— instinct? Maybe I wouldn’t have moved toward him if I hadn’t been so drunk, so inhibitionless. Maybe if I’d eaten more that day, I wouldn’t have been so drunk. Somehow, it comes back to this being my fault.
I don’t know what I thought I was going to do—tackle him with all ninety of my pounds? I must have scared him because he fumbled with the gun and it went off. There was this immediate pain in my shoulder, but I didn’t know what had happened at first. Everything around me slowed down. It was like when you’re underwater and you can’t hear anything and you’re just in this other universe. Then I saw him shoot himself. He held the gun right to his temple and pulled the trigger. He collapsed so quickly, hit the ground with a thud. I stared at the blood spatter on the wall next to him. That’s what I see every time I close my eyes now—the blood. That’s why Carrie says I need to see Tracy.
“I was at the Ray’s Bar shooting,” I begin. I’ve already told her this, on the phone, but she nods intently, paying close attention. I can’t handle that attention, so I stare out the window.
“You were shot,” she says. Again, we’ve already covered this on the phone. Even if we hadn’t, my injury is pretty obvious. He shot me in the shoulder. I’m still in a sling. According to the doctors, I was incredibly lucky; the bullet missed the subclavian artery by just a few millimeters. I needed surgery to repair some blood vessel damage, and they don’t know if I’ll get full motion back, but I’m alive.
“Yes, I was the last person shot,” I say. “I mean, before he shot himself.”
“That must have been so traumatic,” she says.
Her eyes get teary, and I’m taken aback. She barely knows me, and she’s crying.
“Maybe I’m still in shock,” I say. “I don’t know.”
“You probably are,” she says, composing herself. “It wouldn’t be uncommon.”
“I kind of wonder why I lived,” I say, running my finger up and down the seam of the couch cushion.
“Why?” she asks.
I shrug. “Those other five people died. I just wonder why I lived.”
“Do you feel guilty that you lived?”
I shrug again. “I don’t know. Not guilty. Just, like, I wonder if it means something. Am I supposed to do something different with my life now?”
“I don’t know. Is there something you want to do different with your life now?”
I stuff my hands under my thighs, dare to look up at her.
“I want to stop thinking about food all the time,” I say.
I look for judgment on her face, or surprise at the very least. There is nothing. She just nods. Maybe she knew, just by looking at me, what my secret was. Maybe I’m not as clever as I think.
“Tell me more about that,” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
I start from the beginning, figuring she may as well know the whole story. I haven’t told it to anyone except the therapist in the treatment center I went to when I was seventeen. Mom and Dad still think that three-month stint cured me. I’ve lost twenty-five of the thirty pounds I gained there, but they insist on believing I’m okay. They never ask me if I’m not; they don’t want to know.
I tell her about my autistic little brother, Aidan, how he got all the focus and attention, for obvious reasons. I tell her how my parents didn’t have time for me, how they still don’t have time for me. When they showed
up at the hospital the day after the shooting, the look of concern on their faces made me giddy. I’d never seen them concerned for me before, just for him.
“I’m aware this all makes me a selfish brat,” I say to Tracy. “Just to get that out there.”
She shakes her head. “Because you have needs? As their child?”
“Aidan has more needs. That’s just a fact.”
“His neediness has nothing to do with yours. You are still allowed to have needs.”
The therapist at the treatment center tried to tell me the same thing. I left there with the understanding that my anorexia was about making myself smaller, taking up less and less space. It was like I was saying to my parents, “You want me to have no needs? Look, I don’t even need food!” It was a subtle fuck-you to them, and they didn’t even seem to notice, not even when I dropped to eighty-five pounds. My high school friend Michelle’s mom had to intervene and tell them, “I think Kat might have an eating disorder.” That’s when they put me in that treatment center, so they would look like good parents.
After I got out of treatment, I started at Boise State. It wasn’t my top pick—I would have preferred to stay in Oregon—but I got a scholarship, and I knew that was important to my parents. They both had good-paying jobs, but care for my brother is really expensive—and they need care for him in order to keep their good-paying jobs.
“Is that when things got hard again, with the eating disorder?” Tracy asks.
I nod. “Yeah, I mean, I guess the treatment center helped me put weight on because I literally could not escape meals and stuff. But when I was on my own again, I was back to my usual ways.”
“And what about now, after the shooting? I’m assuming a traumatic event like that would make you want to cling even tighter to your coping strategies,” she says.
The morning after my surgery, they brought me a tray of food and I ate it, thinking, “I almost died. I will eat these dry eggs and these terrible pancakes because I’m alive.” I told myself I’d stop counting calories. I wanted to reserve the brain space for something else, something better. But just a day later, I was fretting about the sugar in the apple juice they gave me with lunch.
“I want to live differently now,” I say.
I feel embarrassed saying this, speaking as if I’ve been transformed or something.
“How so?”
“I just don’t want to think so small anymore,” I say. “My old therapist, the one at the treatment center, used to say, ‘Your eating disorder is your way to make mountains into molehills.’ Like, I’m too afraid to deal with these big things in life, so I focus on controlling my calories.”
“That makes sense.”
“Does it?”
She nods. “Of course. Like I said earlier, it’s a coping strategy.”
“I don’t want it to be anymore,” I say. “I can’t survive this shooting and just go back to being this pathetic girl who knows how many tortilla chips are in a serving.”
Twelve. There are twelve in a serving—140 calories.
“You are not pathetic,” Tracy says.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” I say.
“Look at me,” she says. The command startles me. I look at her, obedient.
“You are not pathetic,” she repeats.
My face gets tingly, like it does before I cry.
“Okay,” I say.
“You did survive this for a reason.”
I want to believe she has psychic powers, that she is going to tell me all these amazing things I’m going to do with my life.
“And you get to decide what that is,” she says.
So, the mystery remains.
“How do I not be anorexic?” I ask.
She gives me a smile. “The simple answer—you learn to accept your needs, trust your needs, and feel empowered by your needs.”
“What’s the complicated answer?”
“We work on it, over time, together,” she says.
“That doesn’t sound that complicated.”
She smiles again and glances at her watch. “Our time’s about up for today, so I’ll consider those famous last words.”
ANGIE
I DIDN’T GO TO work today. I went straight to the hospital this morning because I wanted to be there when they took out the breathing tube. That happened at eight o’clock. There were several people in the room, probably in preparation for the worst. While it was happening, I closed my eyes, feeling like a little kid going through a dark tunnel on a road trip drive. The room went silent. I held my breath while waiting to see if Cale would be able to find his. It was like I wanted all the oxygen in the room available to him, should he need it.
“Alright, he’s doing it,” Nurse Nicole said.
“It” meaning breathing on his own.
That’s when I opened my eyes.
I couldn’t believe it really. I watched his chest move up and down on its own, in awe of his body’s ability to perform this basic skill.
It’s been two hours now and he’s still breathing. I, on the other hand, am holding my breath for long intervals.
Nurse Nicole comes in around ten thirty and quickly turns off the TV. I always have it on when I visit. I figure it’s good for Cale to hear familiar sounds. The look on Nurse Nicole’s face—a mild panic—makes me turn around to look at the now-black screen.
“What was it?” I ask.
Clearly, there was something she didn’t want me to see.
“Just the news,” she says. “Nothing good.”
She’s nervous.
“What is it?” I ask again.
I reach for the remote, push the power button. Her shoulders slump in defeat.
It is the news. But it’s not “just” the news.
There is a reporter in front of the police department. The ticker at the bottom of the screen says:
Press Conference on Ray’s Bar Shooting
I turn up the volume. The reporter is summarizing what apparently just happened.
“Police Chief Barnard says they have determined that the shooter, Jed Ketcher, was triggered by a traffic incident on Ninth Street the night of the shooting.”
She goes on to repeat this same thing, with slightly different wording, then adds that Jed Ketcher acted alone and had no apparent premade plans for the attack.
A traffic incident?
This whole thing was caused by a traffic incident?
I turn off the TV.
“Why even have a press conference?” I say. But when I turn, Nurse Nicole is gone. I am talking only to Cale.
Cale is in a coma because of a “traffic incident.” The absurdity is infuriating.
I go to him, hold his hand. Just as I do, his entire body starts to tense. I’m excited, at first—something’s happening, something’s happening—but then scared as his breathing becomes heavy and his jaw clenches. Is he seizing? Sweat beads form in seconds, dotting his head. I can see a thin layer of sweat break out on his arms. Machines start to beep, probably because of how fast he’s breathing, and Nurse Nicole rushes in, along with another nurse I met earlier whose name escapes me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
The nurses ignore me, relay numbers back and forth to each other.
“What’s wrong?” I ask again.
“Probably a storm,” Nurse Nicole says.
A neurostorm, the first one I’ve witnessed.
I wonder if he heard the reporter on the TV. Maybe it upset him as much as it did me. Or maybe he could feel the anger in the grip of my hand. Maybe I transferred it to him, emotional osmosis.
“Is he going to be okay?” I ask.
They administer something, a sedative I assume, based on the way his body starts to calm.
“He’ll be okay. It’s just a small one,” Nurse Nicole says.
I watch the red heart on the monitor blink as his heart rate goes down—185 to 155 to 120 to 100 to 85. I let go of a breath held so long that I feel a little dizzy.
; “It’s scary, I know, but he’ll be okay,” she says. Then she leaves, says she’ll page Dr. Harris.
I sit in the chair at his bedside, watching his chest move. I’m afraid to touch him again. His head starts lolling from side to side a bit. It seems like he’s in the midst of a dream. Do people in comas dream?
“Cale?” I whisper.
His lips move just slightly.
“Cale?” I say again.
Then he whispers one word. I swear he does. I swear I’m not just hearing things. At first, I don’t understand. But then I do.
The one word he whispers is:
“Tessa.”
CALE
I DECIDED I HAD to tell her. It was time. I never intended for things to go on as they had, with me coming to the bar, burdening her with small talk while I tried to work up the courage to tell her the truth. I’m a coward. Always have been.
Here’s what I haven’t told anyone. Here’s what I should have told Angie in that beginning phase of dating, when confessions about pasts are standard.
I was only twenty-four when she was born. I guess that’s considered an appropriate age to be a father, but I felt like a child. I met her mother, Janine, at a party. I wasn’t even supposed to go to the party. I was working at an outdoor gear store called Wild World and a coworker invited me to come along, promising weed. So I went. When I got there, Janine was sitting in a beanbag chair, taking a hit off someone’s joint. When she saw me, she said, “And who are you?” with a flirtatious smile. She was a little drunk. There was a keg of cheap, watery beer and some flasks of bourbon going around. We ended up in an upstairs bedroom, like a couple teens at a post-prom party.
We exchanged numbers, but I didn’t call her. I didn’t have much interest in a girlfriend at that time. I’d broken up with someone a few months before, was relishing alone time. (Or that’s what I told myself. The truth is that I was probably a little depressed and dealing with it by escaping into the mountains on long hikes.) I was planning a solo backpacking trip—the Timberline Trail around Mount Hood. The night before I was set to leave, Janine called me, said she was pregnant. I didn’t believe it. I asked how she knew the baby was mine, and she hung up on me.