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Jimmy didn’t know what to do with his newfound freedom. Residing at the halfway house under an assumed name, he wasn’t supposed to leave. But the parole officer, Weston something-or-other, had taken a liking to him, had even gone so far as to call him a hero. Without disclosing his identity, the newspapers had run several stories concerning events that took place at Brentworth three days earlier, including the terrifying ordeal of three brave teenagers who fought their way through a hallway of deranged lunatics to escape with the help of police, saving three other patients in the process. Only two, once Tessa dies. The papers had left out the parts about the innocents they’d failed to save—Terry, that nurse who’d had her head bashed in, and the four dead people in the rec room. Those facts were too troublesome to add to a feel-good piece.
Anyway, Weston must have put two and two together and guessed Jimmy had been one of the teenagers mentioned in the articles. Jimmy saw no sense in denying it, particularly if it curried him favor with the warden of his new prison. Weston allowed him to come and go as he pleased, practically encouraged him to do so, so long as he was back before the evening meal and curfew.
Jimmy had stayed inside on the first day. On the second, he went for a walk, feeling like a stranger in his own city. Everything seemed different somehow. But Fall River was the same as it had always been. He was the one who’d changed. Everything since he’d shot Glenn Rodrigues, which seemed like a lifetime ago, had shaped him into a new person. A man, he supposed, and maybe not a good one.
One newspaper had told his story as one of redemption—the teen with a “troubled past” rising in the face of adversity or some other garbage. But if helping Michael and those children escape Brentworth had made up for all the terrible things he’d done, then he couldn’t figure out why he still felt so dirty—like he could wash his skin under scalding hot water for hours, scrub it with wire mesh until a layer grated off like parmesan cheese, and still never remove the constant stain. The blood on his hands.
But it wasn’t guilt. No, the people he’d hurt had deserved it. Every last one of the sons of bitches. The cloud over him wasn’t placed there by himself but by society and by allowing his eyes to see himself as others might see him.
He slunk back into the home after only being out an hour. And when he woke the third day, he couldn’t think of any reason to step out again. He thought about visiting his parents, who upon seeing him, might put things together the same as Weston had. But he wouldn’t know what to say to them and felt like they owed him an apology for thinking he owed them one. There was Michael, too, somewhere out in that city, maybe lost to him as a friend. And then there was Tessa, dying if not dead already and probably off-limits to visitors.
His body felt like a hollowed out tree. Tessa had taken a bullet for Michael, for Sam, for him. He decided he would try to see her anyway.
Getting to Charlton Memorial had taken him nearly forty-five minutes on foot, and that had been the easy part. Sneaking into the ICU had been only slightly more difficult. He had arrived during family visiting hours and followed a couple while they signed in, entering behind them as if he were their son. When he broke away from the pair, he walked by nurses and doctors with his head down, all of them much too busy to give him any real notice, until he found Tessa’s room.
The only truly hard part of his visit was seeing Tessa lying as she was, her every breath a struggle, clinging to life through various tubes and apparatuses connected to her every limb and orifice. Machines beeped and whirred. Other than the heart monitor, Jimmy didn’t know what any of them did. He wanted to reach for her hand and hold it, to be there for her when she left their world for whatever came next. He’d been raised Catholic—like all good Irish children, his mother would say. But somewhere along the way, he’d stopped believing. Nevertheless, he sent up a prayer for Tessa’s sake.
And so he sat there in the dark on the floor beside her bed, remembering the night not too long ago when they’d done the same beside his. Lost in thought, he didn’t notice the man in the lab coat and surgical mask until a gun was pointed at his face.