Jealousy

INTERMEZZO

The hospital corridors smelled like pain and Lysol. I hunched in the hard plastic seat, arms around my legs. I was still in the jeans I’d been in when I came home from school and found Gran still in bed, the fire almost out and the cold wind whistling in through the cracked-open door.

She hung on as long as she could for me. I’d bundled her into the ancient Packard—the thing was probably older than Dad—and half-hoped it wouldn’t start. But it did, rumbling into life, and Gran had muttered sleepily that she hated going into town, she surely did.

Driving down into the valley took a long time, and I was afraid she’d leave before I could get her to the hospital down the way. I drove half the night, and when I got there the emergency room people took one look at her and whisked her out of my hands. I had to search until I found the room they put her in. Then the questions started.

Who are you? What’s her name? Who’s next of kin? How old are you?

I just kept saying Dad was on his way and hoped like hell it was true. But he was gone, like he always was, and not due back for awhile. I put my head down on my knees for a moment, but there was no resting. It was too dangerous. I pinched the underside of my left arm again, hard. Bruises were already flowering where I’d pinched and pinched all night.

Across the hall was the visiting area. The chairs over there were padded, but this one was too uncomfortable to let me sleep. Besides, if that doctor came back with a cop or a social worker, I could escape at least three ways from here. If I moved across the hall, I’d be trapped.

My fingers made little patterns on the chair arm. They itched with the urge to draw. I wished I had pencil and paper. There was also a window, showing the naked tops of trees. Winter had begun. And on the ledge in front of the glass, Gran’s owl crouched. Keeping watch, just like me.

It had been in the room all night, while the machines beeped and Gran’s breathing flattened out. Perching on the windowsill, its feathers ruffled and its clear yellow gaze fixed on me. When the lines for her heartbeat finally went flat and the hospital crew crowded around her, frantically trying to tie down a soul that had already slid free of its old exhausted shell, the owl had disappeared between one glance and the next. I’d stepped back and to the side, sliding out the door and into the hall. The less notice the adults took of me the better.

I picked at a scab through the hole on the right knee of my jeans. It was a lulu. I’d fallen down a hillside while out looking for American ginseng. It was called devil’s club, for some reason. Good stuff, and Gran always needed more. She’d scolded me when I came home with bloody knees.

The owl ruffled its feathers. I pulled back into myself, all the misery in the air pressing down on me. Gran had taught me how to make myself a fist inside my head, to shut out the confusing babble of other people’s feelings. But the touch hadn’t warned me that she was about to leave me.

Dawn was coming up. Gray light brushed the horizon. I didn’t want to leave her here, alone in this bleached place that reeked of despair. But I couldn’t hang out much longer—an adult would remember I was here and wouldn’t be fobbed off by me saying my dad was on his way. I didn’t exactly know what would happen then, but I knew it wouldn’t be pleasant.

Oh, Dad. Please hurry. Please be coming here.

The elevator at the end of the hall dinged. My head jerked up, like an old dog’s. The elevator had been going off all night, each time making that wheezing little bell sound, like it couldn’t possibly open its door after mustering up all its energy to announce it was here.

“There she is,” someone said. I glanced down the hall in the opposite direction without turning my head, using my peripheral vision. It was a heavyset redheaded nurse, her hands on her hips. Behind her was that doctor, quick and ferret-like in his white coat, and a woman in a flowered dress that screamed “social worker.”

I slid off the chair slowly, as if I hadn’t heard them. The elevator door was opening. I couldn’t make it all the way down there unless I started running now. But I could jag down the stairs and escape that way.

I still had the Packard’s keys. They jingled on their wire loop, and I walked, head up, purposefully, toward the elevator.

“Hey! You! Kid!” It was the doctor. He didn’t even remember my name—that was evident. “Hey!”

The elevator’s doors wheezed open. I ran through what I knew of the layout in my head. It was like Gran’s game of What’s On The Table, where I would have to remember and describe every object with my back turned, or after she’d laid a fresh cloth over everything. Good training, she’d said. Use that old meat twixt your ears, Dru. You mind me now.

My heart pounded in my ears. My head was heavy. I heard feathers brush the air as Gran’s owl took off from the windowsill, and a moment of glassy, exquisite pain lanced through me. I didn’t dare look back to see the owl.

Besides, the normal people here wouldn’t see it. That was what “different” meant. It’s just another word for lonely.

Get to the stairs. Once in the stairwell you can get to the ground floor and get out. There’re fire exits, too. Then you can hole up at Gran’s house and—

“Hey! Kid!”

A man stepped out of the elevator. My heart leapt into my throat, started pounding. I didn’t realize I was running until my slapping footfalls threatened to jar my head off my shoulders. A short, despairing sound burst out of me as the doctor yelled again.

The man from the elevator opened his arms. Tall, pale blond crew cut, his jeans creased and rumpled, his T-shirt stained with motor oil. He was always so clean and neat, it was a shock to see him like this. I didn’t care. There were dark deep bruised circles under his eyes, blue like mine. Like Mom’s. His were sharp winter blue, cool and considering, with lavender lines in the irises.

I didn’t wonder or care about that either. I ran right into his hug. I realized the motor oil was splashed on his shirt to cover up something else, something reddish, and I could feel a bandage around his ribs. It didn’t matter. I hugged him so hard he made a slight whoof! sound, and I didn’t let go.

“Dru-girl.” One of his callused hands was on my hair, stroking the tangled flyaway curls. I hugged him even harder.“I came as soon as I could. I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry. Shhhh, honeychild, angel baby. Everything’s all right.”

I realized I was making a low hurt sound, and that my nose was full of snot. All during the night I hadn’t been able to cry, but now something broke loose in me and I began gushing. I tried to keep it quiet, though. I sobbed into his dirty shirt.

The trio—nurse, doctor, social worker—arrived about ten seconds later and started throwing questions at him. He answered each one in his slow clear drawl, and I knew things were going to be okay. He had all the ID and the papers, though God knew how he’d gotten them. I didn’t care. All I knew was that he was there, and that things were going to be all right.

And that I didn’t want to let him out of my sight ever again. Not if I could help it.

Not unless he made me.