The First Stone (6 page)

She could not rest. Would not possibly be able to r—

“Leeza.” A pause. “Leeza, can you hear me?”

She forced open her eyes to find a tall, heavyset woman standing by her bed. Graying hair pulled back in an unforgiving bun, narrow black glasses perched on the end of her nose, stethoscope jammed into the pocket of her white hospital coat like some serpentine creature caught trying to escape. On her lapel was a tag that said “Julia Mahoney, M.D.,” but she easily could have been a female bouncer in one of the downtown bars.

“I'm Dr. Mahoney,” she said, and the musical quality of her voice erased Leeza's severe first impression. In those few words were the softened edges of an Irish accent, and as she spoke she placed a hand gently on Leeza's arm. “You've been my patient since you were admitted to the ACU. We've spoken before, but you weren't completely conscious. It's good to see you fully awake. I won't ask you how you're feeling. I think I know.” She smiled, and Leeza could see in her eyes that she
did
know. “Your parents are waiting outside. I thought it would be a good idea to have them here when I spoke to you. Is it all right if I ask them to come in?”

The sledgehammer was still there, but it seemed less immediate, as if striking her softly from a distance. “Unh,” Leeza said. She'd meant to say
yes
, but her mouth seemed full of cotton and wouldn't form the word.

“Good.” The doctor nodded to someone behind her, and a door opened. Two people came in.

“Leezie, honey.” It was her mother's voice, but surely it wasn't her mother who had spoken. Diane Morrison was much younger than the person who stood at the end of her hospital bed. Lines now carved a face that in the past had elicited many admiring comments.
Your mother could have been a model
, Leeza's friends often said. Would they say that now? Her hair, once thick and richly auburn, looked thin and lifeless, pulled carelessly back in a metal clip. Her slim figure, so envied by friends and neighbors, now looked frail, almost gaunt, and her slender lingers, long accustomed to intricate work with pens and graphics software, looked like white bones that fidgeted aimlessly with the strap of her purse. “We've missed you so much. Welcome back.” Her voice caught and she brushed at sudden tears with the back of her hand.

Standing behind her, Jack Morrison put his hands on his wife's shoulders. He was a tall, athletic-looking man who kept in shape with regular visits to the gym, but he, too, seemed different—older somehow than the last time she'd seen him. Could that really have been three weeks ago? Clearing his throat, he said, “Great to see you awake at last, Leeza.”

Don't cry, Mom
, Leeza intended to say, but her mouth wouldn't manufacture the words properly and they came out “Donnn rrryyyy.” She frowned, moved her tongue around inside her mouth, but the words refused to form.

“It's the medication we've given you for the pain, Leeza,” said Dr. Mahoney. “You'll get used to it after a bit.”

“How long will she have to be on it?” Jack asked. “The morphine.” Even in her drug-fuzzy condition, Leeza heard the catch in his voice, knew what he was thinking. Jack didn't even take Advil for headaches. The thought of his stepdaughter getting regular shots of a narcotic would be difficult for him to accept.

“In light of her injuries, it's likely she'll be on it forsome time,” the doctor said. Turning to Leeza, she continued, “Do you remember what happened that brought you here?”

Leeza thought for a moment, but the only memories that surfaced were of other hospital rooms, these ones with beds that held her sister. She tried to shake her head, but pain zithered up her neck and she could only grimace.

“Is it necessary that she remember?” her mother asked. “What if it's too painful …?” Her voice trailed off.

The doctor ignored her. “You've been in a coma, Leeza, and it's important to determine if you have any significant memory loss. Think back. Do you remember the last thing you were doing?”

Leeza tried to concentrate and, for a while, her mind was as blank as the white ceiling above her. Then a memory of another hospital room floated out of her subconscious, a room that didn't have Ellen in it. Instead, there were dishes on the floor. And an old man.

She tried to tell them. “Ollll mannn,” she murmured.

“Van?” asked Jack. “Did you say van, honey?”

Her mother clutched her stepfather's arm. “She must be remembering the accident,” she whispered.

Accident?
The memory of the old man and the dishes vanished as Leeza's mind groped, grasped at the word.
Accident
? What had happened? Had she gone off theroad? Hit someone? Had someone been hurt because of her? Without knowing it, she began to moan.

“Leeza, it's important that you don't upset yourself,” said Dr. Mahoney. “I'm going to give you something to calm you down.”

She reached for the IV, but Leeza was barely aware of the doctor's movements. Unconsciously, she clawed at the sheet beneath her right hand, caught and twisted it between her fingers.
Accident?

And then it came to her, out of nowhere, like the object that had struck her windshield. “C-c-crash,” she sobbed, her head filled with sudden sounds and images of metal colliding with metal. Not like in the movies, though, where the scene would play out in slow-motion frame after frame after frame. These were quick and final, like hitting the wall with your fist.
Whump! Whump!
Twice? Three times? She'd lost count as the cars had careened into her, could only watch them coming and hold on. And scream.

Leeza sobbed again. “Cra-a-ash,” she moaned, the word slurred this time by tears.

“So. What do you think?”

Leeza's eyes fluttered open long enough to see her stepfather standing by her bed, then closed again. Her eyelids were folds of lead. She would need her fingers to keep them open, but they were attached to hands heavy as houses. Useless.

“I'd like to say the worst is over, but that wouldn't be entirely true.” The doctor. Syllables like water tumbling over itself.

“But she's out of the coma now.” Her mother's voice, high and thin. Like a guitar string wound pitch-tight. “That has to be good news.”

“Yes, Mrs. Morrison. It
is
good news. But the coma hasn't been our greatest concern. That was her body's means of preparing itself for the healing process.”

“So she
is
healing. Getting better.” Jack again.

“All the tests indicate her brain activity is normal.”

“Thank God.”

Leeza forced her eyelids apart again, momentarily saw her mother dab at her eyes with a tissue, Jack's hand on her arm. Leeza wanted to tell them she was awake, but her eyes wouldn't let her. The dark came down again.

“… know this has been very difficult for you,” the doctor was saying softly, “especially following the loss of your other daughter.”

Leeza tried to open her eyes again. Could not. Had she slept?

“You don't know. No one can. It's like a bad movie that won't end.” Leeza heard her mother blow her nose. It was a sound of hospital waiting rooms. And funeral homes.

Then something crept into her mother's voice.

Something hard. Whiplike. “And then to sit in court and watch that lawyer try to make excuses for what that boy did.” Her tone made the word
boy
sound as ugly as
pustule
or
gangrene
. “How can he sleep at night?”

“I'm sure he's just doing his job.” It was the doctor who offered this.

“I mean the son of a bitch who did all this. How can he look himself in the mirror?”

Someone did this?
Leeza thought.
To me?
An image swam out of her memory. Someone waving. At her.
Someone did this?
The image shimmered, fragmented, dissolved.

“That's not for me to say,” Dr. Mahoney replied. “I'm more concerned about how all this has affected your daughter.”

A curtain drifted over Leeza. She fought it, struggled to pull it back. Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes, slid in increments down the sides of her face. One hung suspended from her jaw and she willed it to fall to the sheets but it wouldn't.

“Is there something you haven't told us?” Even with her eyes closed, Leeza could sense her stepfather's distrust. Of hospitals and doctors. And drugs.

She heard the doctor draw a long breath, then let it out slowly. “It's not what I haven't told
you
. You've known every detail of Leeza's condition from the moment she was brought in here. It's what Leeza doesn't know that bothers me.”

The curtain again. Drawn lazily over her mind. No, thought Leeza. Not
now
. But the curtain wouldn't listen.
What is it? What don't I—

“… you even
looked
at the news stories they been writ-in' about this? Have you even
thought
about that girl and what's been happenin' to her?” Karl Barker slid the newspaper across the table toward Reef. “You're just lucky there were no other serious injuries. Or that someone wasn't
killed
, for God's sake. You could be in a whole lot worse mess than you are right now, young man.”

Reef felt the heat work its way up the back of his neck. Once his foster father got launched into one of his
young man
speeches, there was no stopping him until he'd had his say. And that could be quite some time. Depending on whether he got whipped up to full bore, it could go on for fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Sometimes longer. Reef thought casually about flipping the kitchen table over on its side and walking out, but it wasn't worth it. It was the price you paid for living with a foster family like the Barkers. You were just two ears on a body, ears that had to listen to every complaint and criticism and rant they threw your way. Speeches that began with such gems as
Whileyou're livin' under my roof
and ended with observations like
You don't know how lucky you got it
. Yeah. He felt pretty goddamn lucky, all right. Living under what amounted to house arrest with the Barkers until Social Services could find another place for him. Sitting here watching Karl's lips move, spit forming in the corners of his mouth, and sometimes getting caught in the spray of words he aimed at Reef, at the ceiling, at the floor. Karl had missed his calling. He should have been a preacher instead of a postman. Or a politician.

Avoiding the damp fallout of Karl's barrage, Reef glanced down at the newspaper and saw a picture of a man and a woman being interviewed by reporters outside the courthouse where he'd sat the last three days. He read the caption below the photograph: “Jack and Diane Morrison respond to questions following the pre-sentence hearing of the young offender guilty of causing the accident that seriously injured their daughter, Elizabeth.” The young offender. How often had he heard
that
phrase in the last few weeks? He'd laughed at the way Jink said it, like it had capital letters, like it was the title of one of those old movies they played on the Superstation.
The Young Offender
, starring Reef Kennedy.

Of course, Jink and Bigger hadn't guessed where his laughter had come from, hadn't known he'd pulled it up from some hollow place inside him. forced it out between lips frozen in a grimace that he'd somehowtransformed into a grin. Over the years, he'd pulled other things out of that place inside him: the sneer he wore in principals' offices, the mocking tone he used in police stations, the stony silence he'd shown his grandfather each time the drinking began.

It was that same stony silence he called on now as his eyes again found the name beneath the photograph:
Elizabeth
. There'd been no pictures of her in the paper. No family photos or yearbook headshots. “At the request of the family,” he'd read, and momentarily wondered how ugly your kid had to be for a parent to ask reporters not to print her picture.
Elizabeth
. His eyes kept returning to her name. And he imagined once more the feel of the rock in his hands, imagined its sudden release, the journey it made from his fingertips to the windshield of the car the girl had been driving:
causing the accident that seriously injured their daughter
. Imagined for a moment his fingers gripping rather than letting go, pulling back, returning the rock to its place in his pocket. Imagined that faceless girl at home with her parents instead of hooked up to monitors in a hospital downtown. Just like Nan.

He swallowed hard, reached deep inside for the safety of that silence, skimmed the article below the photo: “… spokesperson for the family reported that the seventeen-year-old accident victim has finally regained consciousness.” Reef released the air in his lungs, softly. At least there was that.

“… and I can't for the life ‘a me understand how none ‘a this seems to bother you …”

Yeah, well
, thought Reef,
that's because your Ph.D. in Postal Delivery don't include Reef's handy Life Lessons for Dummies
. Like Life Lesson Number One:
What don't kill you makes you stronger
. That's what his grandfather used to say. When he wasn't drunk and cursing his bastard grandson for every breath he drew.