Before I Wake (4 page)

“No big deal.”

“No, I mean, thanks for coming. You didn't have to.”

“Aw, hon, I got here as soon as I could.”

SIMON

The cabbie took the corner sharply onto the Johnson Street Bridge, changing lanes and cutting off an Audi next to us.

Mary had awakened me with a kiss to my temple. So beautiful, the sight of her face as I opened my eyes. I was naked under an old comforter that had probably been on her bed as a teenager, that had accompanied her to university, to law school and now into her apartment overlooking the Inner Harbour. Her apartment.

I jerked up. “I have to…How long have I been asleep?”

She glanced over at the clock on the VCR. “An hour or so.”

“Shit.” I dumped the comforter onto the floor as I stood. “Why did you—?”

“I thought you could use the sleep,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

I shook my head. “No, it's my fault. I should have known better. I shouldn't have—” The look on her face stopped me from finishing the sentence.

The cabbie leaned on the horn, cursing under his breath at a cyclist who dared to ride in the same lane.

“Hey,” I said. “You want to ease off a bit, maybe get me to the hospital alive?”

He responded with a grumble, turning up the radio.

The taxi slammed to a stop at a light on lower Johnson Street, throwing me forward. Glancing up, I made eye contact with the cabbie in the rearview mirror.

Mary had wanted to drive me to the hospital, but I had shaken my head.

“You're right, that'd be stupid,” she said.

“No, it's not that. I think I just need a little time to myself.”

“Okay. Just call me when you can, all right?”

I nodded. “Oh, and listen…”

I guess she heard the work tone in my voice, because she interrupted me, smiling, to say, “Sheila cleared your calendar for the next couple of days. Tom's going to argue for a postponement on Kitteridge. Bob Arnold was a little pissed, but everyone understands.” She shrugged. “Won't be a problem.”

As soon as the light changed, the cab squealed into motion, slamming into the right turn lane, passing the sedan we had been behind, jerking back in front of it. I lurched from side to side. “Jesus Christ,” I muttered, my voice rising as I found my balance. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You wanna shut up, pal, or should I drop you off right here?” He half-turned in his seat to face me.

“Just watch your driving.”

He pulled over to the curb and hit the brakes, jarring to a halt in a cloud of natural-gas exhaust.

“You wanna get the fuck—” He started as he turned to face me again. I lunged forward and punched him in the nose. There was a popping noise as the cartilage shattered and blood poured onto his shirt front in a gush.

“What the fuck?” he sputtered, frantically holding his nose, spraying blood with every breath. “I'm gonna call a cop.”

“Go ahead, Mr.”—I glanced at the license for his name—“Fredericks. Go ahead. You can explain your driving, your recklessness. They'll probably take your license. Go ahead.” I opened the door and extended one leg to step out.

“I'm gonna call my lawyer,” he called after me.

Leaning in, I dropped a five-dollar bill on his seat along with one of my business cards. “Please do.”

I slammed the door behind me.

So I was walking to the hospital, where my daughter lay dying.

Make no mistake—I knew what was going on. I knew how much the doctor was leaving out. “She could wake up anytime…it's too early to tell…”

Downtown was deserted except for the prostitutes, the street kids with their dogs and drums, the drug dealers and the junkies. The prostitutes stood brazenly at the curbsides in miniskirts and tank tops, or trench coats that flashed the nakedness underneath. I was subject to close study as I walked past, avoiding eye contact.

The doctor hadn't come out and said that Sherry was dying, that she would never wake up, that the damage was too great and there was nothing anyone could do. But I knew. For Karen's sake, I was grateful for the dissembling. It gave her the time she needed, a chance to adjust, to accept, to say good-bye in her own way.

Good-bye.

Oh Christ, what sort of a world…what sort of a person…

No.

I choked back the rage I felt building, and the tears. I'd had my time for weakness. I still couldn't believe that I had run to Mary, leaving Sherry in that bed, leaving Karen hurt—and hurting. That was enough self-pity and weakness for one night.

The walk to the hospital passed in a blur. I steeled myself before walking through the emergency-room doors, checking my watch. 9
:
20. I prayed that Karen wouldn't be too angry. That she wouldn't ask too many questions.

She was where I had left her all those hours before, leaning over the bed in a pool of harsh yellow light. She looked up as she heard me come into the room.

“Jamie was here,” she said.

“Jamie?”

“From the paper? You remember.”

“Of course.”

“Where have you been?”

I set my briefcase on the floor beside the bed. “At the office.” I leaned over the bed rail. “How is she?”

“I tried calling.”

“You know how hard it is to get a call through once the switchboard closes. Did you try my cell?”

“I needed you.” She was biting her lip, and I could see that she had been crying.

“I know. I'm here now.”

“Did you get everything done that you needed to?”

“I think so. I might have to go in for a bit tomorrow, but it should be all right.” Such a bastard.

She nodded. I slipped my arm around her back, shifting as she snuggled into me. “How is she?”

“The doctor came in just after you left, checked her, said that everything was stable. They'll do some more tests in the morning. Have you had anything to eat?” She gestured at an untouched hospital tray.

Mary had made me a couple of slices of toast and a poached egg. The smell of the hospital room was making the food congeal in my belly. “I'm fine.”

“They'll be bringing a cot up soon, so one of us can sleep here. I don't want to go home tonight. I don't want to leave.”

“Of course not.”

“One of us has to sleep in the chair, though.” She gestured at the molded plastic furniture and grimaced.

“I'll take the chair.”

“No, you take the cot. I probably won't sleep anyway.”

In the end, neither of us slept. The cot stayed folded up where the orderly left it. We stood at the bedside all night, not speaking, watching our daughter dying before our eyes, though only one of us knew it.

HENRY

I walked downtown from Hillside Centre, through James Bay, then along the water and back into downtown. I needed to keep moving. I kept checking behind me, half-expecting the police or the mother of that little girl to be following me, but no one seemed to notice me. There was no eye contact with anyone, no strange looks.

But everywhere I went I could feel her with me. I could feel the little girl I had hit in the crosswalk hovering over me. I could almost see her.

It felt like I was drifting, but I wasn't surprised when I found myself outside the hospital. It was where I had been heading all along, without even realizing it.

The little girl's mother was sitting in the waiting room, a bandage around her head. A man sat on the vinyl bench next to her. They each held a coffee cup, and they both looked up when I came into the waiting room. I took a step back, but she had no way of recognizing me.

They both turned away. I was completely alone, a ghost, a spirit haunting their lives.

A doctor brushed past me, and the two of them stood up as he came over to them.

I didn't hear too much of what he said. Coma. Accident. Their names.

Simon. Karen. Sherry.

Sherry was the little girl's name.

It was late in the afternoon before I even thought of Arlene and the kids. Would the police have come to the apartment looking for me? Arlene must be worried sick. For a moment I thought about going home, or at least calling to let them know I was all right.

But I didn't.

I wasn't.

 

Victoria New Sentinel
Thursday, April 25, 1996
Hit-and-Run
Girl, 3, comatose following accident
Police Seek Driver
~ City Desk ~

 

The family of three-year-old Sherilyn Barrett waited anxiously last night for a change in their daughter's condition following a hit-and-run accident on Hillside Avenue yesterday morning. The girl has been in a coma since being struck by a vehicle while crossing at a marked crosswalk near Hillside Centre with her mother, Karen Barrett.

“It's really too early to tell,” said a hospital spokesperson yesterday afternoon. “We're optimistic.”

Police are requesting that anyone who may have seen the accident please contact their local detachment to assist in the investigation. Police are also seeking Henry Denton, 24, for questioning.

 

KAREN

“Can I take a look at that file?” Simon asked, gesturing to the folder that Dr. McKinley was holding loosely at his side. The doctor was looking freshly pressed in clean greens. It seemed we were his first stop of the morning.

He hesitated just a beat before handing it over. “Let me know if there's anything in there you can't read, or would like me to explain.”

“Simon does a lot of personal injury work,” I explained. “He's good with charts.”

The doctor glanced at me, then busied himself checking Sherry's breathing.

Simon rustled through the pages, taking it all in, nodding fractionally as he moved from point to point.

“What do you think?” I asked, lowering my voice as if the doctor couldn't or shouldn't hear us.

“Just what he said. Too early to tell.” He closed the file.

The doctor looked up from where he leaned over the bed, listening through his stethoscope. He held up one finger, holding our attention and our silence for the few seconds it took him to finish. Then he folded the stethoscope and tucked it into a pocket.

“I'm a little concerned with Sherilyn's lungs,” he said.

A new sense of dread took hold.

“Her breathing seems a little…moist. I'm worried that she might be at risk for pneumonia.”

Simon and the doctor exchanged a look.

“What's going on?” I asked. “What aren't you telling us?”

“It's the pneumonia we're most concerned with right now. If she gets it…there's really nothing we can do.”

I started to speak, but he held out his hand to stop me. “I'm increasing her antibiotics. We'll do everything we can to stave it off, but while she's on the respirator she's at risk for opportunistic infection.”

“Then take her off the respirator.”

I could feel Simon's hand at the small of my back. That frightened me more than the doctor.

“We can't,” Dr. McKinley replied.

“What? Why not?”

“They can't,” Simon said. “They think—”

I turned my head away.

The doctor started to speak, but Simon cut him off with his courtroom voice. “The trouble with the respirator is that with all the bacteria and viruses in the environment, what happens is that the patient is more susceptible. If she catches pneumonia…” He shook his head.

I took a step backward. “Why are you saying this?”

“But they can't take her off the respirator because she can't breathe on her own,” Simon finished, so logically.

“Is that true?” I asked the doctor, ignoring Simon altogether.

He hesitated a moment, then nodded.

“So what do we do?” I asked the room, Simon, the doctor, Sherry. “What do we do?”

“We just have to wait and see,” the doctor answered.

SIMON

After the doctor left, Karen turned on me.

“How can you be so calm? How can you be so cold? Sherry is dying. Don't you care?” She was shaking with anger.

“Of course I care,” I said. But somebody needed to be strong, to be able to think things through. I didn't say that. I couldn't.

“You don't. You don't care at all!”

“Karen—”

“Get out,” she said. “Get the hell out of here.”

She didn't mean it. I was sure she didn't mean it.

“Get out!” she shouted.

I picked my briefcase up and turned toward the door. “I'm going to go home and get us both a change of clothes, okay? I'll be back in a little while. Is there anything else I can bring you?”

“You're going?” She called after me. “How can you just leave? How can you just leave us again?”

I could hear her sobbing as the elevator doors closed.

KAREN

“Are you okay?”

I jumped. I hadn't seen the doctor come in.

“What?”

“I saw your husband leaving and I just wanted to check…”

I nodded. “I'm okay.”

“Listen.”

I turned to face him. I was amazed at the depth of concern on his face.

“Why don't we sit down,” he said

Using just the slightest pressure on my upper arm he guided me to a plastic chair and sat next to me.

“I'm sorry about your husband,” he said

I found myself shaking my head defensively, not entirely sure why. “That's just…Simon's got a different way…”

“No, it's not that. You shouldn't have had to find out…”

“Find out?”

“Karen,” he stumbled a little on my name. “I would have given it more time.” He sighed.

“What do you mean?”

“There have been some developments.”

“Developments?”

“I didn't have a chance to update Sherilyn's file before your husband read it. Your daughter's already started to exhibit the symptoms of pneumonia. We upped the antibiotics last night…”