Her Eyes (13 page)

"Okay, Frank, you know there was a woman named Pam who died. Otherwise, she wouldn't have been a donor. People just don't donate body parts to strangers for the heck of it. That's fact number one. What other facts? Green eyes, she had green eyes.

"Now, what have I observed. Catherine is now left-handed, whereas before she was right-handed. Pam, my Pam, was left-handed. I used to tease her all the time when we would sit side-by-side in a booth and our elbows would bump.” He sighed then brought himself from the memories to the present. “She talked about a knife, about being attacked by a knife and a car accident. How old was this Pam? Parsons said age doesn't matter. Dan wouldn't tell me, so no info on the age."

Sitting down, Frank began to scan the obituaries going back over the past year, looking for a first name of Pam. He almost missed it among the longer, more detailed ones, the ones that went on and on about how wonderful the person was and the loving family left behind. There it was. It listed Pam Banner with her birth date and the date she died. Memorial to be held at Chapel of the Hills Cemetery. And that was all. There was nothing about her being a loving wife, nothing about her family, not a word about what a kind person she was. Was this his Pam? The last name wouldn't be Miller if she'd gotten married. Was it her? Or just another woman named Pam? It seemed she wasn't even a footnote to her family. At least now he had a last name—that meant he could check the marriage records and see if that was her maiden or married name.

He scrolled back several issues, going back weeks before he found the article on the crash that killed this Pam Banner. He remembered it now. The crash this Pam died in. It had been nothing but a sad story on the news, but he remembered being upset over it all the same.

On the way to the hospital, Jim driving Frank there, following close behind the ambulance he recalled hearing the news on the radio. An accident involving silver car had a section of the road closed. It was far beyond his house, but the story upset him. At the time, he thought it had been stress over Catherine. Now he wasn't so sure.

Stabilizing Catherine had taken a few days, and during that time, specialists had been brought in. They spoke to Frank about how it was touch-and-go. They had started mentioning the possibility of transplants then and adding her to the list. Frank said yes but told them that it had to be Catherine's decision.

Frank felt sick to his stomach as he read about how Pam's husband tried to kill her. How he cut at her stomach, telling her he was going to remove the child she had just found out she was carrying. The man had been tried and convicted of two counts of murder in the first degree. He wouldn't be getting out of prison. Not that that would bring Pam back.

Finishing the last article he could find, Frank stretched, working more kinks out of his neck and back. He was surprised to find it was almost sunset.

It was an average-looking hotel room. A queen-size bed with one of those green and orange geometric patterned spreads and matching curtains they should have done without. Matching fake wood nightstands sat on either side of the bed, the kind that, if you chipped it you'd see that sawdust material. There was a desk of the same particleboard with a mirror that could only reflect from the waist up surrounded by an ornate decoration framing the glass. Three drawers were on the left of an open space where one could sit. Near the windows, there was a little table. The main source of light was a dim pole lamp that had maybe a sixty-watt bulb in it. There was an in-the-wall air conditioner under the window that afforded a view of the parking lot.

To the right as one walked into the room was the closet area with the ubiquitous attached hangers. The bathroom had the paper loped over the toilet seat to prove it had been cleaned. The shower with a half-sized tub had a dark ring in a perfect line near the top from some previous occupant.

She couldn't forget the all-pervading stale smell that seems to exist in every hotel room, even the finer ones. It mixed with whatever sanitizer they used creating the perfume, “eau du stinky hotel."

Catherine didn't remember leaving the house, not really. The wind was the only thing she recalled until the neon lights of this establishment lured her in. Catherine checked in, vaguely aware she used the name Pam White. For some odd reason that didn't make sense, she liked it. It had a nice sound.

When she arrived upstairs at the room, the first realization hit her that leaving was probably the first smart move she'd made in over a year. A year? How about since high school? Maybe she picked the name “Pam” because she was the great love of Frank's life. Wait, she was the great love of Frank's life. So many thought filled her head in a murky soup. She couldn't tell what memories were hers. Oh no. That was it. That other voice in her head was getting stronger. That's why her thoughts were muddled.

Catherine sat on the bed, trying to think. She married Frank straight out of high school. Then again, she distinctly remembered leaving him before his senior prom. Part of her thought she had fallen in love with him when they were children, and the other had never loved him. Her head hurt. She tried again to think about anything that defined her as a person. She remembered her mother and father. They were loving, good people. They divorced when she was in high school. No, that wasn't right. Her mother lived in a trailer park and hit her with that leather belt that had the big buckle.

She flopped on the bed. Pain scorched through her mind. Her body turned and twisted. For a moment no thought was possible. Every part of her hurt. All at once her seizures and headache ended. She lay perfectly still for a moment. Her body was her own again. Fatigue filled her, but she managed to sit up right and glanced into the mirror on the wall.

One named came to mind as she sat there, Pam. Talk about a mealy-mouthed, plain Jane who couldn't find her way out of a paper bag. Well, the paper bag part wasn't necessarily true. Pam Miller had been pretty smart, bookwise anyway, but when it came to guys, “Can we say loser?” Catherine asked while looking at herself in the mirror. “At least I have my own blue eyes back. That green and blue thing was too weird."

Deciding she needed a drink, Catherine grabbed her purse and headed downstairs and in search of a liquor store. Fortunately, in this part of town, she didn't have far to look for one. She purchased a bottle of scotch, some chips and headed back to the room. She dropped off the bottle and went to grab some ice before settling in to toast her new life sans Frank White.

She turned on the radio in the room. While out getting her scotch, she figured out that Pam was the green-eyed person's name. The donor had to be that dumpy girl Frank had been so hung up on. It was the only thing that would explain the last few days.

Sitting in one of the lumpy side chairs, Catherine pondered what she had found out about her donor since her transplant. It was definitely Pammie from high school. She apparently had been a doormat for her husband and had nearly died by his hand. “Now he and I would have made a great couple. We know how to end a relationship right. Well, actually he does. He offed his wife while I'm still stuck with ole Frankie."

She caught images of this Pam running from a house. Actually it was a pretty nice-looking house, the whole white picket fence thing that Frank would have liked. Blood ran from a cut to her stomach. The twit got into her car and some how managed to not just slam into a tree, but to practically rip the car in two right down the middle. She managed to live long enough to get to the hospital and the husband, pretending to be oh-so-sorry about her, was more than happy to donate her organs. Unfortunately for him, she hung around long enough and muttered things during her coma that the husband was arrested.

"And lucky me got the bottle-green eye. Whoop dee doo."

Pammie from high school would have been an organ donor too. What a dipshit. She was so trusting, thinking the best of everyone. That made it easy to fool her. A few well-placed rumors and making sure Pam knew who was banging Frank, their little relationship clique broke apart.

Frank was probably the most popular guy in school. Everyone wanted to be his friend, and he was friends with just about everyone. No one had been as close to him as Pammie. They were inseparable until Catherine entered the picture.

"I played her so well."

He and Pammie had been friends since they were kids, and everyone just assumed they would get married some day. They were, really, the perfect couple. Catherine wanted to be the perfect one. Everyone said she was pretty, beautiful. Besides, she needed a good catch—someone to get her out of the trailer park. She didn't want to end up a fuck bag like her mommy. So Catherine set her sights on Frank. They didn't really date so much as Catherine would show up wherever Frank was. Pam hated it, but never said anything to Frank. Maybe she knew Frank was out of her league. The coup de grâce had come when Catherine arranged the seduction under the bleachers after the senior year home coming game and oh-so-very carefully made sure Pam saw it all. Not only that, it was Pam she “confided” in that she was pregnant with Frank's kid.
Fat chance of that.
There was no child, but Pam left town. Frank proposed pretty quickly and, oh gee, what do you know, she “lost” the baby.

Catherine gained more by graduation than her mother had in her entire life. She was a wife. A man chose her over everything else and who worked hard to support her. Her mother never had that. Her mother never had a man buy her a car, a house, or jewelry.

"I told you I was special, Momma."

She stood, walked to the mirror, and raised the glass in a toast to herself. “Well, here's to losers named Pam. May the world soon be free of all of them.” As she stood admiring herself in the mirror, she suddenly felt a twinge in her gut, sharp enough to cause her to double partway over the desk. With her face only inches from the mirror, she saw her eyes begin to change. First, the transplanted one, then the other grew green. A brief instance they were both green and she fell back into that dark sea of the other's consciousness. This wouldn't do, and she fought forward, seeing the mirror again and her one blue eye returned to blue. Her lips didn't move, but the image in the mirror's seemed to.

"Why don't you just go, Catherine?"

Catherine didn't want to go. The only thing she had left to cling to was her hate, and that was enough to tether her to this realm and give her a fighting chance at the body she nearly gave up in her fit of pity. She couldn't let Pam have this body, her body, her life. Pam had it all and lost it. A second chance shouldn't be handed to her.

"Me go? I'm not the loser ... losers are named Pam and I'm named Ca-cath. Ca..."

Had someone been able to walk by the room or to peer in the window, they would not have been able help but notice the flickering of what seemed to be lights in the darkened room. Akin to the flicker of an old black-and-white television set, the lights seemed to blink on and off in the room. As one would pass in front of the mirror, the dim image of a woman would appear ghostlike in its reflection. The chill in the room came not from the air conditioner sitting silently under that window. Something more sinister dropped the temperature, opening doors and possibilities that should never have been. The two bits of energy, paced across from each other like animals readying for attack. The air grew colder, frost tingeing the window as the lights crept around the room. Shadows around them grew deeper, draping the room in mourning tones of the dead.

Perhaps even more disturbing to any who would pass by would have been the woman's body lying on the bed. Seemingly peacefully sleeping on her back, long blonde hair spread like a halo around her neck and shoulders, hands clasped as if in prayer, a closer look would reveal she was not breathing. Around and over her the two flickering images argued and threatened.

"The body is mine, you twisted goody-two shoes."

"No, Catherine, it is mine now, you gave it up."

"Never, I never give up what is mine. The body is mine, and Frank is mine. Now that I know you want him, I won't kill him, but I'll hurt him back enough he'll wish he were dead. I'll hurt him so he can't touch me, only look and wish he could feel the desire surging through him. At first, I was disgusted you gave my body to him so freely, had sex with him. Now I'm glad because when he's nothing more than a broken shell that can't do for himself, not even end his own life, he'll have the memory and that, that will hurt him."

"Why would you do that, Catherine, let him go, let yourself go? You made the decision to stop your time in this life. I was there, I walked in. Go, find peace."

"You don't really believe that ‘go into the light’ shit, do you? Please tell me you aren't
that
stupid. Maybe you are. You enjoyed fucking Frank."

"Making love with Frank is incredible, and if you had once, just once, allowed it to be making love and not just sex—"

"Make love with Frank? Are you crazy? I only wanted him because he could make me more than I was. I'm done with him now, you stupid bitch. I'll find a new lover who is better than Frank, then another one after that. Men use women like whores, it's only fair to use them back. Frank will be my good name, and I'll get a good fuck from whomever I find. I'm not giving up my future for you, bimbo."

"I'm not a bimbo, Catherine. I love Frank, and he loves me.” The light energy grew brighter. “Listen to yourself. You're not happy. You never will be. Leave this realm and let go of all that hate eating you alive."

"He's mine,” she shrieked. “I will keep that body, stupid green eye, scars and all if for no other reason than it will keep you from having Frank."

"The body is dying. It can't go on for much longer without one of us inside it to make it live. I'm going to enter the body now."

"I don't think so.” The ball of energy that was Catherine launched itself at Pam, emitting a sound akin to the sizzle of a live wire. Pam managed to evade the attack, flying high above the sparks that flew. Countering with her own attack Pam managed to send Catherine into the mirror's surface, flying towards the body. Before she could enter, Catherine grabbed her by the silver cord that emanated from the body to Pam's energy source, “
No!
I won't let you have that body."