36

I was swimming again . . . swimming forward . . . but the water was loud, drumming on my head . . . something was holding me back, clutching my middle in a viselike grip . . . Oh God, it hurt . . .

Swipe, swipe . . . swipe, swipe . . . windshield wipers swept the water from before my eyes . . . follow the red lights . . . bright lights coming toward me . . .

A face! . . . a brown face in the water . . . lit up bright . . . lit up scared . . . lit up—

I forced my eyes open. I felt sick as a dog. Immediately Denny’s face filled the space in front of my own. “You’re awake.” A smile crinkled his gray eyes. “Doc says surgery went smooth as glass—but you’re going to have to stay a few days.”

Pincers with jagged teeth seemed to grasp my whole left side, from my ribs down to my leg. I fought a wave of nausea. A tube hung out of my nose, taped to my face. “Hurts,” I moaned.

“I know, babe. You’re going to be okay, though. Just hang on.”

I was vaguely aware when I got wheeled through the halls . . . an elevator . . . more halls . . . into a room. The bare walls were blue . . . no, gray . . . something. Tall ceilings, tall windows . . . like a reformatory or convent.

I dozed, fighting nausea every time I awoke. People came in and out . . . Dr. Lewinski . . . Pastor Clark . . . a male nurse . . . Nony and Mark . . . Piecing together different comments, I realized I was minus one mangled spleen and had a metal rod holding my left femur together.

“Where are . . . kids?” I asked Denny at one point.

“Avis took them home. Edesa is going to stay at the house with them. Josh is okay, but Amanda . . . well, she’ll be all right with Edesa there.” He brushed the hair from my forehead. “They love you, you know. They’re worried . . . your folks, too. They’d be here in a milli-second, but your mom’s had a bad chest cold and her doctor’s worried about pneumonia. I told ’em to stay put; we’d take care of you.”

I squirmed under his intense gaze. “I must look awful.” I couldn’t look good and feel this awful.

“You’re alive. You look beautiful to me.”

THAT FACE! . . . the arms flailing . . . lit up bright . . . lit up scared . . .

I opened my eyes. The pain had dulled. The nausea diminished.

Denny was asleep in a chair in the corner, one leg over the arm of the chair, his head slumped at an uncomfortable angle. A shadow of a beard covered his chin and jawline. I watched him, remembering . . .

We’d had a fight . . . I was late. Late and mad. It was raining—no, pouring. The kind of rain that flooded the sewers and left small lakes at every street corner. And dark too early. I was trying to make the green light, trying to hurry . . .

Denny stirred and stretched. “Hey, babe. How you feel?”

I took several slow breaths. It hurt, but I had to get some air. “I remember the accident.”

Immediately Denny was at my side. “Don’t think about it, Jodi. Right now you just gotta get—”

“A boy, he . . . he ran right in front of my car. It was raining. I could hardly see. I tried to stop . . . I jerked the wheel. That’s . . . all I remember.”

“That’s okay, honey. We don’t have to talk about this now.” Denny fussed with my blankets and pointed to a basket of flowers on the windowsill. “Look. They’re from Yada Yada—well, Stu sent them for everybody, I think.”

I didn’t see the flowers. I didn’t see anything. Only the face, the flailing arms . . .

Another wave of nausea brought a vile taste into my mouth and I retched, but only spittle came dribbling out. Denny grabbed a tissue and dabbed at my mouth. “You okay?”

I focused on his eyes. “Denny . . . what about the boy? Is he . . . okay?”

Denny looked away.

“Tell me!”

Denny shook his head. “No. He . . . died last night.”

I heard Denny’s words, but they didn’t compute at first. Died? The boy died? But as the words sank in, they flowed like ice water into my veins.

“I . . . hit him?”

Denny nodded, tears wetting his cheeks. “That’s what they’re saying. Nothing’s for sure yet, not until they investigate—”

“They who?” My voice came out in a whisper.

“Uh . . . the police. When you’re better they want to talk to you . . .”

I think Denny said more words, but it was like a dream and far away. The boy . . . I hit him . . . I killed him . . . I killed a boy . . . somebody’s child . . . killed him! Killed!

I heard a scream, a scream piercing the blueness of the room, ripping it like fingernails on skin . . . I heard Denny’s voice from far away . . . “Don’t, Jodi, don’t!” . . . footsteps came running . . . hands held me down . . .

The scream was my own.

WHEN I AWOKE, I couldn’t remember where I was. What day was it? Why was I here? A blue room . . . bags of clear fluid hanging on a pole with long skinny tubes taped to my hands . . . my hands—tied by strips of cloth to the bedrails . . . why?

And then it all came back to me like getting smashed in the gut by a heavyweight boxer . . .

I screwed my eyes shut, trying to shut it out.

A car accident. I’d killed somebody. Killed . . . a boy.

The wail started in my aching gut and burst from my mouth. “Oh God, no-oo-ooo!”

“Jodi? I’m right here, girl.” A cool hand touched my face, brushed the tears from my cheeks. I opened my eyes. Bright sunshine streaming in the tall window created a halo of light around Florida’s dark face and tiny ringlets.

I groaned and turned my face away. Oh God, does everybody know? “Please! Pull the blinds.”

“But the sun is shining! And look at all these flowers that keep coming in.” She peered at the little cards. “Denny’s folks . . . couple of families from Uptown Community—”

“I want it dark!” I snapped. I wanted to yell, I don’t want flowers, either! Don’t people know I killed somebody? They oughta send the flowers to his funeral!

“You gotta get a grip, girl, else they gonna leave you tied up so’s you don’t pull out all these tubes.”

I refused to look at her. “Just . . . go away.”

“Huh. You got some attitude there. Well, it won’t work with me. I’m gone . . . all the way to this here chair.” The room darkened, then I heard the plastic cushion on the corner chair wheeze as she plopped down.

I kept my eyes shut. Maybe she’d think I was asleep and leave. But I heard her humming and filing her nails.

Finally, I opened my eyes. “Where’s Denny?” I whispered.

“Comin’. Avis, too. They gotta be here by ten o’clock. But your man needed some sleep. He’s been here nonstop since Sunday night.”

I mulled on that for a moment. Why ten o’clock? Then it occurred to me that I didn’t even know what day it was. “What’s today?”

Florida got up out of the chair, came over to the side of the hospital bed, and looked me up and down. “Tuesday mornin’. When the sedation wears off, Doc says you can get up and walk a bit today—test out that walker over there.”

She had to be kidding. “Don’t feel like it,” I mumbled. Tuesday . . . Tuesday . . . I was supposed to do something on Tuesday. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what.

“Gotta. Doc says he’ll take that tube outta your nose when you pass some gas.”

I glared at her. “Why is the doctor telling you anything?”

Even in the now-shaded room, I could tell Florida was grinning ear to ear. “Told him I was family. The look on his face was priceless.”

Oh, right. Like he believed her. I started to turn my head away again, then turned back. “Why ten o’clock?”

She shrugged. “Police want to talk to you, ask you about the accident. Denny said they had to wait till he could be here.”

My lip trembled, and I started to cry. “I-I’m scared, Florida.”

“Hey. Sure you scared. But it’s gonna be all right. Police gotta do they job. They gotta talk to everybody when there’s an accident—including you.”

She thinks she knows what I did. Oh, God, if she really knew . . .

A middle-aged nurse I’d never seen before came in to take my vitals. “Good, you’re awake, Mrs. Baxter. Can we take these off, now, hmm?” She looked at me over the tops of her glasses as if I were an erring child and proceeded to untie my wrists. I said nothing, just lay still and looked away.

Denny and Avis showed up shortly before ten. “My private taxi,” he grinned, jerking a thumb at Avis, then leaned over the bed to give me a kiss.

I stared at the thin blanket making lumps and valleys over my body, gripping its edges in my fists. Oh, right. I’ve also banged up the minivan, so now Denny has to bum rides from our friends.

Avis touched my hand. “Yada Yada is praying around the clock for you, Jodi. Everybody sends their love.”

Tears welled in my eyes, and I squeezed them shut. They could forget praying for me. They had no idea what they were praying about! Love me? Not if they knew. They should be mad—mad as hell! That would feel good. We could just yell at each other then. That’s what I wanted to do . . . just yell! Yell bloody murder!

“Jodi?” Denny’s voice broke into my stupor. “The, uh, police are here. They want to ask you some questions. Can you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, and started to cry.

“It’s okay, honey. I’ll help you.”

I grasped the front of his sport shirt and pulled him close to me, “I don’t want Avis and Florida here when the police . . .”

He turned and whispered something to Avis and Florida, who quietly left the room, passing two uniformed police officers who came in, holding their hats with the signature blue-checkered bands under their arms.

Déjà vu. Just a month ago, two Chicago policemen had come into José Enriquez’s room, and Avis and I had tiptoed out. I’d wanted to hang back and listen then . . . were Avis and Florida listening just outside my door? Go away! I screamed at them in my mind.

“Mrs. Baxter?” The first police officer was African American, a good six feet and two hundred pounds, with a bull neck as wide as his ears. The other police officer was also male, but younger, thinner, with straight black hair, olive skin. Maybe Puerto Rican. “I’m Sergeant Shipp, and this is Officer Carillo.”

I gripped Denny’s hand. It’s not fair, God! Why can’t I have that . . . that female officer with the ponytail who came to see José? I hoped they’d ask me questions I could just answer yes or no. But Sergeant Shipp went digging. “Can you tell us what you remember about the accident?”

I looked frantically at Denny’s face. He nodded at me encouragingly. “Just tell them what you told me yesterday, what you remembered.”

I closed my eyes to see it again, but the face rose up so quickly, I quickly opened them. Breathing as deeply as my tightly bound ribs would allow, I told them about the heavy rain and the darkness . . . about the green light at Howard and Clark Streets . . . about the hooded figure that ran into the intersection in front of the minivan . . . stomping on the brake and jerking the wheel . . . about the bright headlights coming straight at me. “That’s all I remember,” I said weakly.

“Mrs. Baxter,” the sergeant said, “you know by now that this accident involved a fatality. The young pedestrian died of injuries sustained when he was struck by a vehicle, possibly yours. Do you remember striking the young man?”

Panic began to rise in my throat, but Denny broke in. “Sergeant Shipp, are you saying there’s a question about which vehicle struck the boy? If so, then I don’t believe my wife is required to answer that question.”

Sergeant Shipp snapped his notebook shut. “All right. That’ll be all for now, Mrs. Baxter.” The two men made for the door, but Sergeant Shipp beckoned for Denny to follow them. In the doorway, the officer lowered his voice, but it still carried into the room. “Mr. Baxter, we have at least three witnesses who are saying it was your wife’s vehicle that struck the boy, and there are conflicting reports about who had the green light. The state’s attorney is prepared to press charges.”

“What—what charges?”

“Vehicular manslaughter. With or without gross negligence.”

“But . . . it was an accident. It was raining. The boy ran out into traffic—”

“That may well be, Mr. Baxter. But my advice to you? Get a lawyer.”