Night Blindness (36 page)

Mandy poked me in the side. “We
were
all waiting for you.” I ignored her and kept searching. “Do you know him?” Her words were slow and measured, as if she were talking to a child.

“Yeah, I think so.”

A few minutes later, we pulled through the gates of the cemetery. The driver opened the door and bright sunlight poured in, but I kept flipping through the guest book.

“Jensen.” I barely heard Nic's voice. “We're here. You have to get out.”

He slipped out of the limo and everyone followed. Ryder was about to slide out, when I finally found what I was looking for. “It
was
him,” I said.

Ryder was still sitting there. “Who?”

“Ron Griffith. I thought that's who it was.”

“The doctor?” His face had gone white. We walked to the grave site in silence.

I shut off the shower now, toweled off and threw on the same jeans and sweater I'd changed into after everyone left the night before.

When I got downstairs, Jamie and Luke were sitting close to each other on the couch, not speaking. It reminded me of when Will died, when we didn't talk for an entire day after his funeral. Luke had told me later that the Yupik Eskimo culture didn't allow people to speak of their dead. I wondered, vaguely, if we'd created our own society of grief. “Your husband went outside.” Luke motioned to the front door. “Sounds like he's on his way out of town soon.” He raised his eyebrows.

Nic was sitting on the front steps, holding an empty coffee mug.

I sat next to him. “Hey, you,” I said. Out on the road, a boy and a girl were riding their bikes, circling around and around, the streamers on the handlebars standing straight out in the wind. I slipped my hand through Nic's and leaned against him.

“I'm not stupid, J.,” he said quietly. “I knew it before you did.” His face was like stone, but I saw that quick twitch in his jaw. He wouldn't yell. It was one of the things I loved and hated about him.

After a while, I said, “I was painting Will.” The girl stood up on her bike and her blond hair flew out behind her. “Those self-portraits were really Will. That's why they sucked so bad.”

“They didn't suck.” He kept watching the kids. Eventually, he said, “I told myself when I met you that you'd break my heart.”

I watched the kids ride off, leaving the street empty. It started to drizzle, but we kept sitting there. “I wish I'd known him better,” Nic said.

“My dad?”

He nodded. “I'm an asshole.”

I buried my face in his shoulder. No matter how many times we washed his shirts, they still smelled like glaze. I knew that later it might come, the yelling, the fights over the separation, the horrible words between us, but right now there was a certain peace. In a way, I felt closer to him than I had since we'd met. I pressed my shoulder against him. “You're not an asshole. You're a big shot. You're so big, I could stand on your shoulders and see the whole world.”

“My world.” He gazed down at me. “I never really let you see your own.”

 

38

Nico left the next morning. I stood in the window and watched the black town car pull out. He hadn't wanted me to drive him to the airport. He'd slept in the guest room, and I saw now that this was how he would be. That was Nic's way, his defense. He'd grieve alone. That's one of the reasons I'd been drawn to him in the first place. I understood the way he hid his vulnerability. He'd cut me off. His pride would make me nonexistent. Some other girl would worship him and together they'd go to Greece. The thought brought a sting of jealousy, a helpless urgency to run after him. But beneath that, I felt something deeper: relief, reprieve.

“I'm going out for a little while,” I told Jamie and Luke when I got downstairs. They were sitting on the couch together, like they'd been doing for two days.

“Out?” She looked startled. She'd been clinging to me since my dad died. “Out where?”

I saw Luke take her hand. “That's fine,” he told me. “We'll be here when you get back.”

*   *   *

“Excuse me,” I said to the triage nurse. Her long dark hair wasn't tied back and I thought that must be some kind of health code violation. “Can you tell me where I might find Dr. Griffith?”

“You're in luck.” My eyes followed her pencil. “He's right there.” She was pointing across the hall, where he was leaning on a counter, talking on the phone. I walked over to him, and he startled, mumbled something into the receiver, then hung up. He was wearing wire-rimmed glasses, and deep wrinkles spread out from those piercing blue eyes like a road map. His hair, which had been thinning and black so many years before, was a faint ring. He still had that curved scar. When he spoke, it was as if he'd been expecting me.

“Jensen. Let's go to my office.”

I followed him down a brightly lit hallway to a small room. He waited for me to enter, then closed the door. I had the strange, sudden thought that he might kill me. He motioned to a straight-backed chair with a brocade cushion, and I sat. I watched him take a seat on the other side of his desk, leaving a thick mahogany barrier between us.

“I kept thinking I saw you over the summer while my dad was sick, but I wasn't sure. And then I did see you … at his funeral.” I waited for him to say something, to give me an explanation or offer his condolences, but he just tapped his pen on the desk. “Thanks for coming,” I said.

“I had a feeling when you saw me at your father's service that you'd come here. I guess, in a way, I've been waiting thirteen years for this moment.” He tapped the pen one last time before putting it down. “The night your brother died, this place was a madhouse.” His voice sounded loud in the tiny room, and my stomach tightened at the mention of Will. He made a temple of his hands and rested his chin on his index fingers. “When he came in the first time, we had an MVA involving a bus of senior citizens going to the casino.” A thin line of sweat stood out on his top lip. “We were up to our ears in broken hips and concussions. Radiology was backed up for hours.”

The burning feeling in my stomach felt like it would eat through me. There was something about this man. I remembered how he hadn't looked at anyone when he'd told us about Will thirteen years ago. Now he leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head, his gaze fixed on the middle distance between us. “Because Will suffered a head trauma on the football field, I ordered an MRI of his brain, then did a full neurological workup. Other than a mild headache, he seemed to have no residual effects from the impact. His balance was excellent, he wasn't dizzy, and his pupils were working properly. He had no signs of impairment.” I thought it was odd that after such a long time, he remembered so much about my brother.

And then I realized he was going to confront me. I heard Luke's voice telling me the only way to freedom was to confess your lies. “Listen,” I said.

But Dr. Griffith put his hand up to stop me. “I'm going to say this once.” His eyes nailed me to my seat. “I could lose my medical license for telling you this, my reputation.…” He took a sharp breath in. “The fact is”—he blinked—“I never saw your brother's scan that night. The film and report were misplaced somehow.” He spoke quickly, defensively. “Radiology was backed up, so we couldn't do another. And he seemed fine. So I released him. Then he died, and I couldn't understand it, because he'd presented with a normal neuro exam. That's why I asked about a second trauma.”

My head felt like a balloon as I listened, and I didn't know if I was hearing him correctly.

“A few days later, Will's scans showed up on my desk. Apparently they'd been filed under the wrong name.” He held his pen again and his lip twitched. Finally, he looked right at me. “Your brother had sustained a subdural hematoma during the game.”

I didn't understand what he was saying. “What does that mean?”

“Will had a brain bleed on the football field. That's what killed him.”

“No,” I said, loudly enough to startle us both.

“Yes,” Ron Griffith said. “The injury on the field caused a slow bleed at the base of his skull, which is what killed him. I would have seen it if I'd been able to check his MRI, but he seemed okay, and I didn't want to keep him here for hours while I waited for someone to redo the scan. We didn't even have enough beds.” I watched his eyelid twitch. “I read about your father in the paper and went to his funeral because all these years, I'd wanted to tell your parents that I'd misdiagnosed their son.” His forehead was wet with sweat. “I wanted to tell them I was wrong and that I was sorry. I should have made Will stay here until I read his scan. But it wouldn't have made any difference. We can't, of course, reverse something like that, which is why I never told your parents.” His face had turned an odd pale color. “To have hope that your child is okay and then…” He cleared his throat.

“But he was fine when we got home. His head didn't even hurt that much.”

He massaged his temples with his pointer fingers. “That's the thing about brain injuries. It's rare, but sometimes there are no symptoms at all. The only way to diagnose them is with a scan.”

The room was so quiet, I could hear the ticking of his watch. He took his glasses off and placed them on his desk as if they were made of eggshells.

“It was me.” I could barely hear my own voice. “I pushed Will later that night and he hit his head.” I felt suffocated in that tiny space. “It was my fault.”

He shook his head. “It had nothing to do with that.”

“Yes, it did.” My tone was accusatory. “You said so. You kept asking if he'd had another accident.” I sat on my hands. “I pushed him, and he hit his head on the hearth. And then he died. Right there.”

“The hematoma was so massive that it was only a matter of time,” Ron Griffith told me. “If he fell when you pushed him, it was probably because the pressure in his brain affected his balance. You need to understand this, Jensen. Will would have collapsed and died even if you hadn't pushed him.” He paused, waiting for me to understand. “Nothing, not even surgery, could have saved him. Basically, your brother was dead as soon as he got hit on the field.”

I stared at him, at his scar and the odd, shifty way his eyes slipped from mine. For the first time, I remembered that Will had wavered when he came at Ryder; he'd faltered, as though off balance, as though drunk. His words had been a little slurred, and I remembered thinking it was the anger, the rage. I could see the weave of Dr. Griffith's shirt, a small rip starting in the corner of his pocket. It dawned on me in his antiseptic office that my father had been right; it wasn't my fault. It. Wasn't. My. Fault.

“I would have told the truth had I known you thought you were responsible. But you were so adamant that nothing else had happened.” He put his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “If it would help, I'll talk to your mother.”

“That's not necessary.” I stood; I couldn't look at him any longer. I went to the door and stared at the pattern in the wood grain. I was about to tell him how his mistake had ruined my life, but then he spoke up. “Miss Reilly,” he said. “I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.”

 

39

When I got back to the parking garage, it was like I'd never been there before. I couldn't remember which floor I'd parked on.
Basically, your brother was dead,
Dr. Griffith's voice chanted in my head,
as soon as he got hit on the field.

Tires squealed on the floor above me, echoing against the concrete walls. I walked until I saw an elevator, got on, and went up a floor. The doors opened. Three giggling teenagers got in.

“Ma'am?” the tallest one said.

I was standing with one foot on the pavement and one foot still in the elevator. I could hear the soft clicking of the doors trying to close. “Sorry.” I stepped out, feeling dizzy, drugged. My car was under a spray-painted number, which was a faded daffodil color: R4. It took me three tries to turn the key in the ignition. My hands were slippery with sweat. Backing out of the parking space, I saw myself in the rearview mirror; my skin was colorless as parchment.

I thought about how I woke up screaming from the image of Will's head hitting the stone. I'd spent so long feeling haunted by what Ryder and I had done, hunted even, that I couldn't reconcile this new information. I used to think if I could take it back, if I could have made it so it wasn't my fault, everything would fall into place. I circled down the exit ramp, the steering wheel almost unmanageable in my hands.

“How's your dad?” a skinny kid asked when I gave him the parking stub and a five-dollar bill.

“I'm sorry, what?”

“Your dad?” He rested his hand on the edge of the booth and smiled. He was missing a bottom tooth. He was the one who'd let me go without my ticket the first time my father was in the hospital in June.

“He died,” I said, my voice flat and stiff.

“Jesus.” He stood up like he'd been struck. “Sorry.”

The striped lever rose, and I drove through, turning right on Howard Avenue. Stoplights blended together, and it wasn't until a horn screamed that I realized I'd run a red light. It had all been a waste: running away from my parents, leaving Ryder, my missed ride to Juilliard, Nic. And what had I been running from? Nothing. Above me, the tree line was a brown blur of branches, and the sun was trying to poke through a heavy film of clouds.

*   *   *

His car was in the driveway, parked in front of the garage. I pulled in behind it and got out. I was on my way across the lawn when Ryder opened the front door. He was in jeans and wasn't wearing a shirt. I saw the number 18 on his bicep, and it made a hard lump rise in my throat.