The Secrets You Keep

by Foster, Delaney

  So, here I am, flashers on, going fifty miles per hour in a thirty, stop signs be damned, because: A) I have an unconscious woman with too many drugs in her system in my back seat, and B) I left my pepper spray at home.

  Twenty minutes seems like forty-five when I finally pull under the awning at Emergency Receiving. Karen has Albert, a burly male nurse, ready at the entrance with a stretcher. Thank God. My back is already screaming at me from hauling Natalie’s dead weight from her bedroom to my car. I don’t think I could lift her again if I needed to.

  I shoot a quick text to Annette, letting her know what’s going on, then follow Albert past triage to one of the exam rooms where Karen is waiting for us. I catch the fear in her eyes when she sees Natalie, lifeless and unconscious. It’s a brief flicker that she hides well, but I don’t miss it.

  “Do you know her personal information?” she asks, making a feeble attempt to distract me.

  I interact with parents who are anxiously awaiting me to tell them whether their premature newborn will make it through the night. I meet with expectant mothers who have gone into labor months before their time, explaining to them why they still have to give birth, but we can’t even try to save their baby. I recognize all the tactics we’re trained to use to distract from the trauma at hand. I don’t need things sugar-coated for me. I was prepared for the worst the minute Lucas ran into my arms. But I respect Karen as a physician, so I do as I’m expected.

  “I know enough to get her registered,” I reply, my tone telling her, I’ll let you do your job. She reaches for my hand, giving me a knowing smile, then pulls the curtain shut around them.

  I set the clipboard on my lap and begin filling out the paperwork. The lines all start to run together somewhere between “last name” and “emergency contact.” I look away, thinking a glance at the scenery will reset my brain, but it doesn’t. The gray porcelain tile runs right up into the boxy, commercial style gray chairs. Mothers hold their sleeping toddlers in their arms. Wives rub the backs of weary husbands. Once in a while, someone makes the journey across the cold, hard floor to the Coke machine or the bathroom. On a television mounted to a wall somewhere behind me, a newscaster takes breaks in between celebrity gossip and stories of armed robbery to talk about tomorrow’s weather. It’s going to be another sunny day in September. It’s all irrelevant. Because the only thing I can think about is the fact that my sister is fighting for her life behind a set of double doors twenty feet from my chair. And somehow I’m going to have to break the news, one way or the other, to her terrified little boy that’s probably struggling to fall asleep on my sofa right now and to our father who is fighting for his life as well.

  Maybe it’s lack of sleep and long hours at work followed by longer hours at home. Maybe it’s the fear of walking in that bedroom and not finding a pulse. Maybe it’s the frightened look on a nine-year-old boy’s face as he walked through my door. But it’s suddenly all more than I can handle. I hang my head in defeat. Where’s the finish line? When is enough, enough? How much is one person supposed to take before they crash and burn? I need a break. A week on a deserted island with a cabana boy, the sun, and an unlimited supply of fruity adult beverages.

  “Grace?” A familiar voice snaps me out of my daze.

  I look up to see waves of long red hair and curves that won’t quit. If Jessica Rabbit were a human, she’d be Naomi DeMarco. Her father-in-law is the Chief of Staff at St. Anthony’s. When she isn’t at the country club being the picture-perfect wife to her pro-golfer husband, Naomi stays busy putting herself in the middle of any and all charity work here at the hospital. She lost her own father when she was younger. So, Mr. DeMarco took her under his wing, and she’s spent most of her adult life giving back. I don’t know her whole story— not many people do— but I do know it isn’t pretty. Whatever it was, it didn’t break her, at least not on the outside.

  In a lot of ways, I can relate to her. Sometimes I wonder if she works so hard for everyone else because it keeps her from the silence of her mind—from the demons of her past. If she spends so much time with the broken because deep down, she’s broken too. I know what that’s like, maybe too well. It’s why I chose to work at this hospital rather than one on the South Shore. It’s also why when Naomi approached me three weeks ago about working with Doctors Without Borders, I jumped at the opportunity.

  “Naomi. Hello,” I reply, trying to breathe some life back into my tone. She doesn’t buy it.

  “You’re on the wrong side of the waiting room,” she teases as she takes the empty seat next to me.

  I force a chuckle. “I think I like it better on that side of the double doors.”

  “Is your dad okay?” She looks genuinely concerned. I admire that. I’ve only spoken to the woman a handful of times and only once about my father’s health.

  “He’s fine,” I tell her, after my stomach finally stops tying itself in knots. “My sister.” That’s all I say.

  It’s all I can manage. I can’t say the rest out loud. Saying it out loud makes it all too real. My sister overdosed and may not make it out of here. No. I can’t say those words. So, I leave it at that.

  She nods, an understanding that the gory details are mine to keep. “I’m so sorry. I wish her well,” she says, and I believe she sincerely means it. “Holly needs to set your travel arrangements. The hospital in South Africa is expecting you soon.” Her words are more of a question than a statement.

  I know what this is. She’s asking if I can still go. I knew her assistant would be needing a final answer soon. I just thought my main obstacle would be finding someone to care for my dad. It turns out, that was the easy part. Between Annette and his home health team, my dad will be in good hands the week I’m gone. Now I have to worry about Natalie… and Lucas.

  This is the chance of a lifetime. What real doctor wouldn’t want to travel the world to help the less fortunate? I owe Naomi an answer. I’m sure there’s a waiting list a mile long, and right now I’m holding up traffic. I glance at the double doors that lead to my future and say a silent prayer. Help me.

  As if my words were swept up by the universe and carried straight to God’s ears, then scattered in tiny pieces of hope from this hard, gray chair to the bed behind closed curtains, the heavy wooden doors swing open. Karen looks stressed but not hopeless. I stand to meet her.

  “She’s going to be fine.” She moves her eyes from me to Naomi, as if asking permission to continue in her presence.

  I don’t care if the Pope was sitting in that chair, I want to know what happened to my sister.

  “Go ahead,” I encourage her.

  She takes in a deep breath and steadies herself. “I have her on two amps of sodium bicarbonate.”

  I nod.

  She continues. “We ran active charcoal on her before it got to her liver. She had a pretty intense tricyclic and opiate cocktail. She was hypotensive with myocardial dysfunction.”

  No wonder I thought she was nearly dead. Karen is using medical terms for low blood pressure and irregular blood flow to the heart. I assume she’s hoping Naomi won’t understand. At this point, Naomi’s opinion of my sister’s habits doesn’t matter. I just want to know if Natalie will be okay.

  “She’s stable. We’re keeping her overnight to make sure,” Karen says.

  Antidepressants. I hold back a laugh at the irony. Then I say another silent thank you to the ceiling. And another one out loud. Karen reassures me with a smile, nods to Naomi, then heads off to get Natalie situated in a room upstairs.

  Naomi stands and wraps me in a hug. Awkward. But appreciated. “Take your time, Grace. Just let Holly know when you’re ready.”

  In this moment, I have two choices. I can let my circumstances define me, bog me down, keep me from pursuing my own happiness. Circumstances someone else’s choices brought me to. Or I can let go of a responsibility I never asked for and do something for me for the first time since I took this job. My body—every single fiber—feels like a tightrope being pul
led at both ends. If I’m not careful, the once-strong threads will thin to nothing more than pieces of string. If I’m not careful, it’s all going to come unraveled.

  “Tell Holly to make the arrangements,” I reply, as my head battles with my heart.

  “You’re sure? If now isn’t a good time—”

  I cut her off. “I’m sure. Now is the best time.”

  It may not be exactly the break I’m looking for, but it’s a break I’m going to take.

  ***

  Two days after my sister was discharged, I got the call from Holly. Dad’s care was all set up, and before Natalie was released from St. Anthony’s, I’d made sure to set up her after care while I’m gone. I also arranged for Lucas’ father to keep him over the next week. Paul will pick up his son after school and return him late Sunday evening. If Natalie wants to pull another one of her stunts, fine. At least her son won’t be around to witness it this time.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Callan

  Sandy beaches, streets lined with colorful buildings, and tent vendors selling handmade tapestries are luxuries I don’t get to enjoy when I come to Cape Town. My trips don’t include rugby games at the sports arenas or afternoons at water bungalows. Most of my time lately is spent peering past the back of a Jeep while Johan drives over the dusty roads of a nearby township, trying not to get carjacked. The lines of wealth aren’t blurred here. There are haves and there are have-nots. And those who have better damn well make sure those who have-not don’t know it. The Lord giveth, and the have-nots taketh away.

  This was a lesson I learned the hard way. The Fontaine family, my family, lived among the wealthy. As a child I’d heard my father whisper in the kitchen long after I was supposed to be tucked into the security of my bed. He would talk to my mother about things like righting wrongs and fearsome unrest, but I had no idea what any of that meant. Until one day, years later, I was at school when a group of men showed up on our farm and decided what was ours was theirs, including my mother and sister.

  One of my father’s friends rushed to get me, mumbling about things I didn’t have the patience to understand. I just knew I needed to get home. Of the seven men that attacked my family, three were still there when I arrived. The gruesome scene laid out before my eyes the moment I stepped out of my truck. My family’s workers—my lifelong friends—lay beaten and bloody on the path leading to our front door. I hadn’t made it ten steps inside before I saw my mother, lying on the kitchen floor, weeping uncontrollably, one hand cupping her crotch as she pulled her legs into her body and the other over her mouth in disbelief. My sister hid underneath the dining table, knees pulled to her chest as she rocked back and forth, shaking her head vehemently and mouthing the words, “No. Please make it go away.” I assumed she was speaking to someone with more power than I had at that moment.

  I followed my mother’s eyes to the adjacent room where I found my father, a man I’d looked up to my whole life, lying in a pool of his own blood. I remember shifting my eyes from him back to my mother, then to my sister. Back to him. The sobs of the woman who gave me life, the forced silence of the man who raised me, and the shouts of three strangers who had taken it all from me suddenly became deafening. The room spun. The noise grew louder. The innocence of my soul was ripped away by the claws of destruction, torn to pieces, disappearing so fast I couldn’t catch it if I tried. Then… silence. The chaos stopped spinning. The sounds of despair stopped swirling around me. Something happened in that moment. Something changed. I was no longer a naÏve young man, but a callous soul determined to control every element of the world around him. Water. Air. Earth. Fire. People. Whatever it took. Nothing would ever affect me this way again. Nothing.

  After I made sure the three men who were left would never lay their hands on another inch of innocent flesh again, I carried my father’s lifeless body out of my mother’s line of sight then took her and my sister into the bathroom and cleaned them up. As I sponged the blood from their broken and abused bodies, I realized the truth about the world I lived in. There’s no room for weakness here.

  That was almost twenty years ago, and nothing’s changed. Except now the workers are all armed and prepared to do whatever it takes to keep my mother safe. I tried to convince her to leave, but she’d said my father had spent his life making that farm our home. There was no way she was giving up on it. My sister got as far away from here as she could. I can’t say I blame her. I tried running, too.

  I thought I could start over and build a new life in the United States. For a while, I even called Miami home. But men like me never really have a home. We can’t afford to. We aren’t soft, and we don’t get attached. We’re given a destination and an assignment, and we don’t leave until the job is done. I don’t sugarcoat it. What I do is gritty. It’s dangerous. And it sure as hell isn’t easy. I don’t have a single weak-stomached person on my army of private soldiers, and I like it that way.

  I’m the guy the government calls when they need the balls to get the job done but can’t afford to get their hands dirty. When shit goes wrong, I’ll do whatever it takes to make it right. Sometimes—most times—“right” isn’t too fucking pretty.

  Right now, genocide floods the streets of South Africa, and it’s starting to hit a little close to home. People are murdered nearly every day as the world I grew up in grows ugly and dark. Private militaries have started their own border wars, and with every day that passes, it gets uglier and darker. My sources seem to believe the rapid growth in violence is being instigated by the South African government—that these private militias have something to do with politics. It’s my job to get to the bottom of it. Then make sure the “problem” goes away.

  All hell is breaking loose in my homeland, and I was on another continent chasing pussy. No. That’s not true. With Jenna it was about more than sex. It was about control and the fight to maintain it. I loved her. I always will. But loving her had made me weak. It consumed me. So much that I couldn’t even see that she was fucking our neighbor while I was in the middle of a desert risking my life. She keeps a secret that has the power to destroy me—a secret that, to this day, only she knows. Jenna tried to break me, and I refuse to be broken. So, I left. It’s been eleven months, and I still think of her when the rest of the world goes to sleep. But with each passing day, she gets easier to forget.

  ***

  Three weeks ago, two of my guys, Johan and David, set off into Nyanga to scope out some of the violence that had broken out in the past weeks. A quarter of a mile down a dirt road, two cars boxed them in and motioned for them to pull to the side. It’s not as though the road was unsafe or less traveled. But men with guns poked their torsos out of the car windows, warning them to obey.

  Once they pulled over, a man from one of the other cars put a gun to Johan’s head, as if the gesture were as natural to him as salting potatoes, while another wrapped a blindfold around his eyes. He was shoved into the backseat of his own car and driven around for about an hour before being dragged out onto the dirt of an abandoned lot and left alone.

  The only sign of David we’ve seen since that day was a video sent to my email about a week later. The man in front of the camera said, “a message needed to be sent.” I caught sight of a flag in the background and knew immediately what I needed to do.

  ***

  “What the fuck?” Johan shouts over the sound of rugged tires crushing rocky gravel. “How many do you think there are?” he asks, pointing at a line of men with semi-automatic weapons strapped over their shoulders as they block the road in front of us. I let my eyes scan the space about sixty yards ahead.

  “Six. Maybe seven.”

  “Should I turn around? Slow down? Please don’t tell me we’re going to stop.” His voice is shaky even without the rough terrain.

  These men mean business. We’ve crossed a line, stepped into their territory. We’re the haves and they’re the have-nots. We have no business here. It doesn’t matter that they’ve taken one of my men, and
I’m here to find him. They don’t give a fuck about justice. Their blood runs purely on instinct and survival. A weaker man would find fear in their determination to create mass chaos, but I’m not a weak man. We’re not turning around. David is out here. Somewhere. And I’m not leaving until I find him.

  I’ve done things I’m not proud of, things that jolt me awake in the dead of night, my skin covered in sweat. Things I don’t speak of. Things that have kept me and my team from being tortured and killed—things that have kept millions of innocent people sleeping safe and sound in their beds. Most people don’t have a clue that men like me even exist. They like their world, their bubble, where it’s peaceful and calm. Out here, in my world, it’s survival of the fittest and I have become a master at the game of self-preservation.

  “Keep going,” I order, my eyes locked on the man in the center of the blockade. Willing him to move. Daring him to stay.

  Johan grips the steering wheel with both hands. And if I didn’t know better, I’d swear he closed his eyes as we continue at full speed toward the men.

  The one in the middle brings his weapon from his shoulder to firing position. I stand, my head rising above the foam-covered roll bar while my hands grasp the sides, holding me in place. I give Johan two taps on the shoulder, urging him to speed up. The wind slaps my cheeks as the Jeep picks up speed.

  Twenty meters. The men square their shoulders but exchange anxious glances. The man in the middle yells something that I can’t discern. He doesn’t drop his gun. I don’t drop my gaze. Always look them in the eye. How’s a man supposed to take you seriously if you can’t look him in the eye?