Текст книги "Epic Sins"
Автор книги: Trudy Stiles
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
Garrett
Past
Villanova, Pennsylvania
Age 15
I JAM THE PIECE OF PAPER into my pocket and quietly close my mother’s top dresser drawer. I can’t believe I’m invading her privacy like this, but I really have to take care of something, and she’s the only one who has the answers I need. I tip-toe out of her room and close the door behind me. I pass my room and go down the stairs, two at a time. Before I run out the front door, her voice comes from the den.
“Garrett?”
“Yeah, Mom?”
“Where are you off to?”
“I have a school project that I need to work on with…” My mind goes blank. There is no school project, and I can’t come up with a name to save this lie I’m about to tell.
“Who?” she asks, sensing my tension.
“Rob. You know, Rob Shultz. He has everything we need and he’s expecting me. So I better go.” Rob and I have been friends since third grade. He lives on the other end of our neighborhood, about a ten-minute bike ride away.
“Okay, Bill should be home by six. Will you be home in time for dinner?”
Bill Armstrong married my mother almost six years ago. We moved from Newtown to Villanova, leaving my childhood home behind. He officially adopted me last year after my father’s parental rights were finally terminated. Bill’s a cool dude, and he’s really good to my mother. She’s been happier with him than she ever was with my father, and that makes me feel good.
“I don’t think so. He’s ordering pizza for us.” I lie again.
She places a bookmark into the book that she’s reading on her lap and pulls off her glasses. Shit is about to get serious.
“Is everything okay?” she asks, and I shift back and forth, a bit jittery.
“Everything’s cool.” I wrap my hand around the doorknob and she speaks up again.
“Because you just don’t seem yourself.”
I let go of the handle and run my hand through my hair. “Mom, it’s all good.”
She puts her glasses back on, and the tension eases from my shoulders. She’s going to let me out without grilling me any more.
“Okay, if you say so.” She picks up her book again and opens it to the place where she shoved the bookmark. Her eyes drop to the pages and she says, “Tell Mrs. Shultz I said hi.”
Shit. I didn’t think this through. What happens when she sees Rob’s mom next week at the P.T.O. meeting?
I can’t worry about that now.
I pull the door open and ride my bike down the street. I look at my watch and see I only have ten minutes to make the next train on the Main Line. I increase my speed and turn the corner.
I lock up my bike on the bike rack and jog toward the train station. I’m panting as I reach the ticket booth and slide my money through the window. “Upper Darby.” I inhale deeply so I can regulate my breathing.
A ticket pops up, and my change is pushed back through the small opening. I swipe both and jog over to the track as the train pulls up.
If my mother knew I was getting on the train by myself, she’d flip. We’ve had long talks about me going into the city, and I’m not allowed to be doing this. I’m not really going into the city, I tell myself as if it’s okay to be going as far as I am.
I hop onto the train as soon as the doors open, pushing past the people trying to get off. I find the first empty seat and slide into it. As the doors close, I pull the crumpled piece of paper from my pocket. The address is written in my mother’s elegant handwriting. There’s a phone number under the address, but it’s been scratched out, barely legible.
I watch the stops speed by and soon it’s time to get off the train. After a quick cab ride, I’m on the street scrawled on the piece of paper that I’m holding. My heart starts to pound as I find the house with the number eighteen. The numbers are on a moldy post by the front door. They’re lopsided, and the number one is barely hanging on a bent rusty nail.
I force myself to walk up the overgrown sidewalk leading to the front door. All of the shades are drawn, and there’s no car in the driveway.
I wonder if he’s even home.
I press the cracked doorbell and don’t hear any chimes coming from inside the house. Broken.
I knock loudly on the storm door, and it rattles like it’s about to fall off the hinges. It pops open, revealing it wasn’t even latched or locked. I wait a few minutes for someone to respond to my knock on the outer door and then open it to bang louder on the front door.
Still no answer.
I hear the melodic beat of drums and try to determine where the sound is coming from. It’s not coming from inside this house, but it’s nearby. I bang again on the front door, this time with as much force as I can. My knuckles sting after the eleventh knock.
I back up and listen for sounds coming from inside the house.
Still nothing.
The drums get louder, and I hear the screeching sound of an electric guitar.
Where is that music coming from?
I flip open the black mailbox hanging next to the front door. It almost falls off the wall, but I notice that it’s stuffed to the brim. I pull out a couple pieces of mail, and there’s a notice from the post office stating they are holding all mail until they hear from the resident. It’s dated three months ago.
He’s not here.
I quickly turn and walk back toward the street, wondering how I’m going to find another cab to take me to the train. This was a complete waste of time, and if Mom finds out about this trip, she’s going to kill me.
The music is louder now, and I finally see where it’s coming from. Maybe they know where he is.
I walk up the driveway, and as soon as they see me, the music comes to a screeching halt. “Hey,” I say when they all lay their eyes on me.
The guy behind the microphone with the electric guitar says, “What’s up?” He nods his head, and the rest of the band watches me intently.
“Uh. I’m looking for the guy next door. Have you seen him?”
The drummer quickly responds, “What do you want him for?” He raises his eyebrows and is suddenly suspicious.
I look to the rest of the group and shove my hands into the pockets of my hoodie. “No reason. It just looks like he hasn’t been there in a while, and I was wondering if you knew where I could find him?” I wonder if he’s dead.
“No man. That dude is sketchy. He moved in, like, seven years ago. I think I’ve only seen him maybe three or four times.” The bass guitar player shifts back and forth and looks around to the other guys. There’s three of them in all, and they seem to be about my age. They all nod their heads in agreement.
“My mom said he went to jail,” the drummer says.
“Oh,” I say, and I can only imagine why. The last time I saw my father, he was rifling through my childhood house looking for money to pay off gambling debts. Years later, my mother explained that she got a restraining order filed the next day. Apparently the people he owed money to threatened to hurt me and her. She says it was to protect us from him. I believed her, but I’ve always had this need to find out why he never came back. Why he never tried to make things right.
“Yeah, he’s a weird dude. I don’t know why you’d want to see him,” the guy in front of the microphone says, and his voice echoes throughout the street. “Damn, I forgot to turn off the mic.” He smirks and steps on a pedal in front of him.
“You guys have a pretty cool setup,” I observe. Rob and I have only tinkered with our instruments and have nothing close to what these dudes have. There are at least six amplifiers, and their instruments are high end. I look around the neighborhood and see that it’s pretty run down. These guys don’t seem like they can afford some of the instruments that they’re holding in their hands. The bass player is playing a Rickenbacker that I know for a fact is over twelve hundred dollars. The guitarist, and I presume the lead singer, is playing a Fender American Telecaster—a majorly expensive model. The drums are a seven-piece Gretsch kit that reminds me of the setup of Taylor Hawkins from the Foo Fighters.
Who are these guys?
“I’m Tristan,” the bassist says. “This is my house.”
I nod toward Tristan as I ogle the extra guitars lined up in front of the lead singer.
“Do you play?” the drummer asks.
“A little,” I say, and I walk toward one of the Fender Stratocasters.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Garrett.”
“You already met Tristan. I’m Dax, and this is our fearless leader, Alex.”
I pull my left hand out of my pocket and wave. “Nice to meet you.”
“We’re Epic Fail,” Tristan says.
“Cool name,” I say and realize my hand is on the neck of the Strat.
“Play with us,” Alex says as he steps on one of the pedals in front of him and strums his American Telecaster. The sound fills the garage and Dax slaps his sticks together. They burst into a familiar song and within seconds I’m caught up in the perfect rhythm they have.
Before I know it, the Strat is around my neck and I’m taking over lead from the singer. He switches to rhythm guitar almost immediately, and the transition is seamless.
After playing a half-dozen cover songs together, I place the guitar back on its stand. I’m in a bit of a daze, and their whispers are caught on the still open microphones.
“He’s amazing,” Tristan says, and both Dax and Alex nod their heads in agreement.
I suddenly feel out of place as I look toward my father’s vacant home. “I need to leave,” I say and back out of the garage, pivoting on my feet.
“Wait!” Alex’s voice booms through the amplifiers.
Chuckles reverberate behind me and I turn around.
“Come back next Saturday. We’ll be rehearsing for a local gig and it would be cool if you came.” Alex has his hand over the mic and is talking in a normal volume.
“Really?” I ask. My mother will never let me come out here. This is going to be impossible to explain.
“Yeah, dude. Your hands were like magic!” Tristan says. “The way you and Alex played off each other was like, really amazing.”
I stuff my hands back into my hoodie and almost trip walking backwards.
“Thanks, but, um…I don’t live around here.”
“Who cares!” Dax says. “You need to get back here next week.”
I nod and try to figure out what lie I’m going to tell my mother.
Hanging with these dudes was the most comfortable I’ve been in a long time. Playing music with them felt so natural. Melodic.
I look over at my father’s house again.
“How do you know that dude?” Alex asks.
“I had the wrong address. I don’t know him at all,” I lie and crumble the paper that’s in my pocket with my father’s name and address, tossing it into the trashcan at the curb.
Alex raises his eyebrow but seems to accept my fib.
Dax walks toward me and hands me a business card. The words ‘Epic Fail’ pop from the front. They look like they were spray-painted onto the card over a deep gray background. These look professional, and I can’t believe these guys are about my age.
“Call me on Friday to confirm. I’ll add you to the gig for Saturday night. We’ll be playing all of the songs we covered today, so you’re good.”
I swipe the card from his hands and nod. “Yeah, I guess I’m good.”
“Later,” Tristan says, putting his bass back on its stand.
“Later,” I respond and look up the street past the corner. I see a few cabs passing on the main road about a quarter of a mile away. Hopefully, I’ll be able to catch one of them and jump on the Main Line before it gets dark.
“Epic Fail!” they yell in unison behind me as I jog toward the intersection.
I throw up my right hand in a backwards wave.
I like the sound of that.
Sam
Present
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Age 23
ROUNDS ARE OVER, and Cassie and I settle into our daily routine. Today’s scrubs are baby monkeys. Monkeys swinging from vines. Monkeys eating bananas. Monkeys hugging each other. Cassie hates these particular scrubs because the background color is beige. And she hates beige.
“Ugh, I can’t do anything right today,” she exclaims as she tosses a feeding tube into the garbage. Beige also makes her pissy. I look around the room and it’s filled with babies. Very sick babies. Two monitors go off at the same time, and we both rush to opposite ends of the room to check the vitals of the babies causing the alarms.
Suddenly, the door flies open and yet another baby is brought into the already crowded room. “Suction,” Dr. Hagan directs Becky as they work on this new baby. Cassie closes Baby Grace’s incubator.
She walks back over to Ben to begin his feeding tube again and gets flustered. “There are too many babies in here,” she says, dropping the tube onto the floor. Her reaction is surprising to me since she usually remains so calm under pressure.
“Here, let me.” I grab a new, sterile tube and begin prepping it for Ben. “Cassie!” Dr. Hagan calls as she’s working on the new baby. “Get Terry on the phone, please. We need to make sure transport is ready to send this little guy over to CHOP once he’s stable.” Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is another level 4 NICU in the city, and since ours is now beyond capacity, we need to make sure space is available elsewhere. This happens from time to time, and we do the same when other hospitals are over capacity. Baby Grace’s monitor alarms again while Cassie is quickly talking to the NICU at CHOP. Becky details the new baby’s situation. “Baby boy, full term. Hypertonic, exposed to various drugs. Mother tested positive for benzodiazepine, anti-depressants, and marijuana. Infant tox screen is pending. Mother is refusing transport.”
Great. A drug addict mom who doesn’t want to be with her sick baby. It never ceases to amaze me what some mothers will do to themselves, knowingly. I look around the room at all of the sick babies whose mothers did everything right, but they were all dealt a challenging hand. Two more monitors sound and I look down at Ben, who we’ve been trying to feed for the past hour. He’s miraculously off the breathing tube, for now, but this guy needs to eat.
Cassie makes the arrangements for transport while Dr. Hagan continues to work on the new baby boy. His screams are sharp and shallow and tear through my heart. The cries of drug-exposed infants are unique and heart wrenching. “Becky, we’ll need a tox screen on him. Cassie, please let social services know what’s happening. They’re going to want to speak with the mother.”
Cassie relays information to Heather, the hospital social worker, and quickly hangs up the phone, rushing to another monitor alarm. When it rains, it pours in here.
I get Ben’s feeding tube in place and turn on the drip. Dr. Hagan is finished examining the baby boy, and Becky wipes his foot clean of blood from the tests she just administered. Dr. Hagan leaves the room and sinks into a chair in the outer office. She looks exhausted.
Finally, the monitors have silenced, and Cassie, Becky and I all return to our standard routines.
“Where’s Olivia?” I ask, looking at the empty chair next to Ben’s incubator.
Cassie is pale and seems really off now. “I’m not sure. Her mother came to get her about ten minutes ago. There are some other people here to see her.” Cassie walks over to Mikey and turns on the lights above him. He’s here because he has severe jaundice and the lights help lower his bilirubin counts. Mikey’s large belly spills over his infant diaper. He’s huge. Well, huge for a baby in the NICU. Weighing in at almost eleven pounds, he’s the largest baby I’ve ever seen in this hospital. He’s perfect and fat and already has thighs that any mother would brag about. But since he has jaundice, he needs our help. He sleeps peacefully, full, content and looking so out of place here in the NICU. He’s been doing well, and if that continues, he should be going home by tomorrow. She adjusts the light above him and looks over at Ben.
“The bleed on the left side remains a grade three. Not good,” Cassie mumbles and sits on the stool in front of her computer.
“No, not good at all,” I say quietly, looking away from Mikey. It’s amazing how this room can go from frantic to quiet in a matter of minutes. “Cassie, are you okay?” I ask, concerned as to why she’s so off today.
“Yeah, it’s just…”
She stops talking as we hear a woman scream from the hallway, “No! No! No!”
Cassie and I turn our heads and see Olivia outside the NICU window, throwing herself into a large man, punching his chest. My heart grabs in my chest when I see another man next to him wearing similar clothes. Military.
“Oh no,” Cassie exhales and stands up.
Olivia’s wails turn to sobs, and her mother pulls her off of the Marine. She holds her daughter tight against her chest as the two Marines stand quiet and respectful.
“That can’t be good,” Cassie says. “When my cousin was visited by two Marines, she found out her husband was killed in Iraq. It’s never good when there are two of them. Never.” Her voice trails off as she moves to the window and peers out at them.
Olivia is shaking her head and then collapses onto the floor. One of the Marines bends down to a knee and scoops her into his arms, carrying her over to the couch in the lounge area. She doesn’t look conscious, and I call out to Dr. Hagan, who lifts her head from the desk. “Can you help? Olivia just passed out in the hallway.” She grabs smelling salt taped to the cabinet door and rushes out.
As soon as Dr. Hagan swipes the salts under Olivia’s nose, she opens her eyes and immediately begins to sob and wail. Her mother slides on the couch next to her, cradling her head in her lap. I can’t bear to watch this any longer.
“I hope to God she didn’t just hear what I think she did, but my instinct tells me she just found out her husband is gone.” Cassie pulls the blinds shut, giving Olivia privacy from our curious eyes. My chest tightens, and I try to fight the grief I feel for this young mother and her new family.
I look over at Ben and close my eyes. “God, please let this boy grow up strong and healthy,” I whisper quietly.
His monitor suddenly starts beeping wildly, jolting me from my silent prayer. Cassie and I both rush to the incubator and open it. His color is grayish and his heart rate is dangerously low. The monitors go off again, indicating something is wrong with his tube. The brand new tube that I just inserted. I feel faint and desperate.
Cassie puts her stethoscope to his chest and gasps. “His lungs are filled with fluid.” She begins working on him as Becky runs into the hallway to alert Dr. Hagan.
Several other nurses rush in with the doctor and I back away into the corner. I’m frozen as I watch them work on Ben. Cassie looks over at me, shaking her head. Her eyes are frantic and questioning. I look out of the blinds and see Olivia sitting up, drinking juice that one of the nurses brought to her. The Marines are still there, trying to give her space but also to comfort her. I look back toward Ben and I can’t see him. He’s surrounded by doctors and nurses.
Cassie’s eyes meet mine and I know.
We’re losing him.
I’M SEATED NEXT TO CASSIE inside the hospital administrator’s office.
I’m numb.
“Miss Weston, can you answer me?” Jim Burke, Chief of the NICU, asks again.
“I don’t know how it happened,” I say quietly. It’s my fault.
“You don’t know how the feeding tube was placed in his lungs instead of his stomach?” he asks accusingly.
“No, sir. I listened to his chest. I heard it in his stomach. I didn’t think it was in his lungs.” Cassie grabs my hand and squeezes. Did I actually listen to his chest? I don’t even remember. Holy fuck.
I’ve inserted hundreds of feeding tubes in babies tinier than Ben. Hundreds of tubes placed in the exact spot they were supposed to be placed. All the right way, never in their precious lungs. Lungs so tiny and desperate for air. Lungs trying to work hard to keep Ben alive.
Ben.
“Miss Weston, we’re placing you on administrative leave until we can conduct a full investigation into this situation.”
I inhale as Jim stands up behind his desk.
“But…” I say and break down. “I didn’t mean to, Jim. I did everything right. I don’t know what happened. Oh my God.”
It begins to sink in exactly what I’ve done. Cassie grabs me by my shoulders and guides me out of the room.
“Cassie.” I sob and fall to my knees in the hallway.
It’s my fault.
It’s my fault.
IT’S MY FAULT.
“Hush, Sam.” She sinks to the floor next to me and throws her arms around me. “Don’t say anything, okay?” She begs me not to confess. Not to tell her what I did.
“Whatever happened was an accident. Do you understand? The NICU was a zoo today. So much was going on. Too much was going on.” She rubs my arms, pulling me against her. I can hear the regret in her voice. She was assigned to Ben today, and it was her feeding tube that I inserted wrong. Her guilt is tangible, but not as thick as mine.
An accident? It was neglectful. Sloppy. Wrong.
“I killed him,” I whisper into her shoulder. “I killed Ben.”
