Good as Dead(7)

“Andy.”

“Andy. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Holly, right?”

He had to one-up me. “Yeah.”

“See you around, Holly.” He waved and walked across the street. My house was definitely nicer than his.

And I had no idea how I was going to explain that.





EVAN


Three months ago

The nurse finally looked up at me from her post behind the counter. Her Pepto-pink scrubs were faded and stained. I felt like an asshole, standing there in my $1,800 suit, clutching a pleather purse from Payless. Needless to say, my shoes didn’t match my purse, and I wondered if she’d picked up on the obvious incongruity.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

I had a burning feeling in my chest. Guilt? I had no right to be there. I was a fraud and a charlatan. Fear? Shame?

“Holly Kendrick?” I said as if I’d been saying her name my whole life, when, in fact, this was the first time. I was careful not to identify her as a friend or a relative or anyone who would give a shit that I was there.

The nurse studied me a beat. I cursed my suit and the rich-guy vibe it gave off. I probably looked like a funeral director. Who the hell comes to the emergency room wearing a suit?

“Are you a family member?” she asked. I was prepared for this. I opened my mouth to spew my lies, but before I could get a word out, a bloodcurdling scream shocked the room into silence. I took a gamble.

“That’s Holly,” I said with feigned certainty.

The screaming intensified. There was a flurry of activity. Nurses, physicians’ assistants, and a bleary-eyed intern dropped what they were doing and hurried toward the source. Words of comfort wafted out from the ward. Screams turned to sobs. She was keening.

“Please,” I begged, a little surprised at how genuinely distressed I felt. I didn’t think I’d ever heard a person cry like that, and for a second I got scared I wouldn’t be able to go through with this.

The nurse finally broke. Maybe it was the purse that convinced her. “Last bed on the left.”

I tipped my head as she buzzed me through. The ward was mostly empty. I passed an old man on a respirator who looked frighteningly close to death. A few beds down, a little girl with her leg in a splint played on a phone. Her parents nodded to me, and I returned it with a solemn smile.

I finally reached the end of the row. The curtain that curved around Holly’s bed was closed, and for a moment I didn’t know what to do.

“You can see her, but she’s sedated now. Didn’t want to scare the other patients,” a woman in a white coat said, and with a whoosh she pulled back the curtain.

And there I was, standing at the foot of Holly Kendrick’s hospital bed. I knew from her driver’s license that she was thirty-seven, but in her tattered state I couldn’t have guessed that. A tuft of bleached-blonde hair plumed out from a thick white bandage wrapped around her head. No one had bothered to remove her heavy eye makeup, which had smeared into her eye sockets, making her look like a cross between a raccoon and a sad clown. Her lips were dry, and the corners of her mouth curved down like a dead fish. Her eyelids were pinched closed, like they were squeezing back a bad dream. Gazing upon her in her most vulnerable state made me feel like a Peeping Tom, but in truth I was something much worse.

I knew there was no way I could close things up in one visit, but I couldn’t leave without at least making contact. I had my spiel rehearsed and ready. I even had special business cards. I have cards for every occasion—“litigator,” “real estate specialist,” “liaison”—I’m a corporate Jason Bourne. I didn’t know how this would play out, so I had them all at the ready.

I would have to lead by acknowledging the death of her husband. I wished I could say My thoughts and prayers are with you, but I couldn’t. I don’t believe in God. I don’t pray. I have no one and nothing to pray to.

My brother’s first child died of SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He found the baby, cold and stiff in her swaddle. Doctors had no explanation. Apparently it’s something that just happens. My brother was inconsolable. He asked God, Why me? What did I do wrong? Please, if I could just go back in time, I’ll be a better dad, a better husband.

God didn’t send him back in time. Yet through it all, he never lost his faith. If anything, the tragedy made it stronger. He had to make sense of what happened. His daughter must have died for a reason. Maybe not to punish. Maybe to teach. Yes, that must be it, God killed his kid to teach him something. I suggested maybe what he should learn is there’s no such thing as God. I could see in his eyes that he felt sorry for me.

So what to say to this woman who just watched an SUV shatter her husband’s limbs and drive his skull into the pavement with so much force it looked like someone took an ax to it? I’m sorry for your loss? Why do people say that? The loss is the least of your problems. It’s the pain that follows we should be sorry for. A loss is an event, a moment in time. But grief is relentless—a simmering flame that can be stoked by a whisper. It burrows down in the deep recesses of your heart, then surges up like bile, filling your lungs until it hurts to breathe. My own mother died six months after I graduated from law school. I couldn’t breathe for a year.

I placed the purse at Holly’s feet—there was nowhere else to put it—and contemplated my next move. I knew coming to the ER was aggressive, but I couldn’t risk waiting even a few hours. I thought about waking her up. When you’re in the hospital, people wake you up all the time—to take your vitals, give you meds, draw your blood. It wouldn’t be unusual. But I had no idea what they’d given her, if she’d even be coherent.