The Ghosts of Now (4 page)

Jeremy was about ten the day he didn’t come home after school. Mom and Dad had called the police, and they went out to look for him too. They told me to stay by the phone, so there I was when the door opened and Jeremy walked in. He was surprised that everyone was searching for him. All he’d been doing was playing
baseball! I was so glad to see him, and so angry with him at the same time, that I hugged him, then shook him until he broke away, kicking me in the shins.

I steady myself by taking a couple of deep breaths. What if it were some creepy friend of Jeremy’s thinking he was being funny? I don’t know any of Jeremy’s friends. Any except Boyd. And I’ve got to find out where Jeremy is. Maybe Boyd will know. I perch on the edge of the chair by the telephone and thumb through the white pages until I find Boyd’s address. My hands aren’t shaking now. I’m able to dial the number, and when a voice answers I ask for Boyd.

The words are deep and slurred with sleep. “It’s late, young lady. You shouldn’t be calling boys at this hour.”

“I’m sorry,” I answer, apologizing automatically. “I’m Angie Dupree, and I’m only calling Boyd because I think he can help me find my younger brother. May I speak with him, please?”

He clears his throat and his words are stronger. “Oh. I see. And your brother is a friend of Boyd’s?”

So Boyd hasn’t bothered to tell his parents about Jeremy. Some friend.

“Tennis partners.”

“At the high school?”

This man is driving me crazy. “Look, please may I speak to Boyd? It’s terribly important.”

“I wish I could help you,” he says in a tone that means no such thing, “but Boyd isn’t home. I believe he went to a party with some friends.”

“Did my brother go with them?”

“I have no idea. If you like I’ll leave a note for Boyd to call you when he gets home.” He’s grumbling like a bear dragged out of his cave during hibernation.
Come on, mister, it’s only ten forty-five
.

“Never mind,” I say. “Thanks anyway.” I manage to hang up before he does.

The house moves with little creakings and rustlings of the night. I don’t know any more now than I did when the whisperer phoned me. Where is Jeremy?

Another name comes into my head: Del. Maybe he’ll know what to do. Again I grab at the phone book, my fingers stumbling through until I find the name Scully. Only one Scully, thank goodness. It has to be Del’s father.

So I dial the number, and it rings and rings. “Answer, please. Answer,” I say, but no one does.

I lean back in the chair, my hands dropped at my sides, trying to relax, trying to think. If something had happened to Jeremy, who would know? The police? The hospital?

There is a hospital in Fairlie. It’s a three-storied, brown-brick building on the outskirts of town. Maybe Jeremy is there. It can’t hurt to call them. I don’t know what else to do. But the hospital isn’t listed under Fairlie. What is its name? It has to have a name. I brush back tears and breathe deeply and try to calm myself. Somehow I manage to think of the yellow pages, and there is the Lila Cookson Memorial Hospital.

I try to talk to an operator and then to whoever she switches me to. My interrupted sentences pile up like
broken sticks, until finally a woman actually listens to me. I explain about the phone call I’ve received.

“Tell me about your brother,” she says. “Describe him.”

My tongue is thick and hard to move, but I do, and she answers, “Can your parents come to the hospital right away? We do have a boy here who was hit by a car a little while ago. He didn’t have any identification on him. It might be your brother.”

My words come out in heaves, in shudders. “Is he—? Did he—? No! Please, no!”

“He’s in intensive care,” she says. “The doctor will be able to tell you more about his condition.”

Thank you thank you thank you. I know if I hear Mom’s or Dad’s voice I’ll only start to cry and won’t be able to talk to them, so I give her the number on the scrap of paper and their names and ask her to call them.

I snatch up my car keys and take our brown sedan. I know how to get to the hospital. It’s one of the buildings Del pointed out to me on our tour of Fairlie. I try not to drive too fast, because I know only a small part of my mind is working. I have to get to the hospital. I have to get to Jeremy. Maybe I could have handled this better if it hadn’t been for that terrible voice on the telephone.

Those words still cling to me as tightly as the West Texas dust that seeps inside my clothes, making a paste with my sweat-damp skin, and I can’t shake them away. “Whoever you are,” I say aloud to the whisperer, “I’m going to find you. Believe me, no matter how you try to hide, I’m going to find you!”

The hospital is a rush of cool, pine-eucalyptus air and the swish-splash of a mop on the brown vinyl floor. I stumble over the doorsill and sidle away from the mop. The wrinkled gnome using it never stops his back-and-forth motions, just raises his head enough to say “Wet floor. Watch your step.”

The only person in the lobby is a pudgy, pale-haired man seated behind the reception desk. In his white coat he looks like a gigantic marshmallow. I stammer through my story, and he picks up the phone and talks in a low voice to someone. Finally he hangs up and says, “One of the nurses will be along in a minute.” He shoves a clipboard toward me. “In the meantime you can fill out these forms.”

The papers on the clipboard mean nothing to me. The words don’t come together enough to make sense. “What are these papers? What have they got to do with me?”

“Just some stuff we need about your brother—medical insurance and all that.”

I shove the clipboard back at him. “I’m not even sure my brother is here! I’m not going to fill out anything!”

“Don’t get so excited, sis. I just do what they tell me.”

A nurse appears, managing to look efficient and sympathetic at the same time. She glances around the empty lobby. “Are your parents here too?”

Hot tears bubble up from my anger at the question, and she blurs and squiggles before my eyes. “Please, could I see my—the boy I was told was here?”

She hums-hums a moment, then says, “Perhaps you could identify him.”

“Yes,” I say. I take a long, deep breath. I’ve got to try to be patient.

“Come with me,” she says, and I follow her through a side door and down a corridor. Finally we arrive at a room marked No Admittance, and my leader pushes through, holding the swinging door to let me inside.

It’s a small room, with three cubicles containing beds and all sorts of electrical equipment and things I’ve never seen before. The first two beds are empty, but on the last narrow bed lies someone who seems to be hooked up to all sorts of devices. A nurse, hovering over him, blocks my way, so I squirm against the wall, edging around her. The two nurses say something to each other, but I don’t listen. I’m too intent on the person in the bed.

Slowly I tiptoe to the open side of the bed, to a point where I can see the pale face of the boy who lies there. Suddenly I can hardly breathe.

“Oh, Jeremy!”

There’s a satisfied sigh behind me, and the nurse who brought me here murmurs, “Well, now we have an identification for him, at least.”

His left hand lies on top of the white cotton blanket. I pick it up and stroke it. It’s warm, but his fingers, relaxed in sleep, don’t curl against mine. “Jeremy!” I call to him. “It’s Angie. I’m here, and Mom and Dad will be here in a few minutes!”

His eyes are closed, his lashes light shadows against
his cheeks. There’s a large, purplish bruise that begins on Jeremy’s forehead and spreads down the right side of his face to his jaw. His jaw is bandaged in a mummylike swath that winds up and over his head. There’s a cast on his right arm, and judging from the bulge under the blanket, there’s also one on his right leg.

I straighten, still holding Jeremy’s hand, and turn to the nurse on duty. The other one has gone. “He doesn’t answer me.”

She’s checking something on a screen, making notations on a chart. But I need her to reassure me.

“Tell me about my brother. Will he be all right?”

“The doctor will be here soon,” she says. “He’ll talk to you about your brother.”

The air is ice, and it shivers down my spine. “You’re not answering my question!”

She reaches across the bed and rests a hand on my shoulder. “We’re not allowed to,” she says. “It’s the doctor’s place to discuss a patient’s condition.”

“I just want to know if my brother is going to live!”

“I’ll get you some water,” she says. “You’re shaking. You ought to sit down.” Her eyes soften, and she adds, “Look, honey, his vital signs are good. His pulse and blood pressure are okay.”

“Thanks.” I lean against the wall until the trembling goes away.

The first nurse I met here opens the door, leans into the room, and crooks a finger at me. “The police want to talk to you,” she says.

Carefully I place Jeremy’s hand on the bed. There’s a bruise staining the back of his hand. As I look at it
I see something I hadn’t noticed before. Something small and very light blue is protruding from under his thumbnail. I turn his hand, gently, and pull it out.

“What are you doing?” the nurse asks.

I hold my hand toward her. “It looks like a sliver of paint,” I say. “It was under his thumbnail.”

She leans toward me, touching it, turning it. “That’s what it looks like, all right.”

“Are you coming?” the nurse at the doorway calls.

I hold the paint sliver carefully between my thumb and forefinger and join her in the hallway, where a tall policeman is waiting for me.

“Can you tell me what happened?” I ask him.

“Hit ’n’ run,” he says. “No witnesses.”

I hold out the scrap of paint. “This was under his thumbnail. Maybe it came from the car that hit him.”

He takes a small envelope out of one of his pockets and carefully takes the paint sliver from me, sliding it into the envelope. He writes something on the envelope and puts it back into his pocket.

“Could you find the car from that?”

He just shrugs.

“Didn’t anyone see the car?”

“Nope.”

“But what about whoever was with him?”

There’s a flurry at the end of the hallway. Mom and Dad burst through. This time the nurse is like a tug that’s been left behind. Mom, her face sagging like a punctured beach ball, stops to hug me, then runs to catch up with Dad as he slams into the intensive care room.

The policeman licks the end of his pencil and holds it over the pad of paper in his left hand. “Where was your brother going to be tonight?” he asks me.

My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

“Where did he say he’d be?”

“I don’t know. I guess he told Mom and Dad, but he didn’t tell me.”

“Can you give me the names of some of his friends?”

“Boyd Thacker.”

“And—?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know where he’d probably be? What did he like to do?”

“I—I really don’t know. Maybe if you ask Mom and Dad—”

A man with thick white hair, whose stethoscope dangles over rumpled, green hospital clothes, stumps purposefully down the hall and into the intensive care room.

“I want to hear what the doctor says about my brother,” I tell the policeman.

“Sure,” he says.

But I stand there a moment, thinking of the questions to which I had no answers, realizing I know very little about my own brother.

The doctor puts his glasses on, squeezes his face into a squint, and then takes them off and frowns at them as though they must belong to someone else. “It’s a critical situation,” he says. I look down at Jeremy and see my badly hurt brother, not a situation. Again I touch his hand, gaining some courage from the warmth in his fingers.

The doctor enumerates a fractured skull, what they hope will be only a temporary loss of consciousness, two broken ribs, a broken right arm, and a broken right leg. “He has a strong pulse, and his blood pressure is in the normal range. That looks good.” He consults his chart and adds, “We found no trace of drugs.”

Mom and Dad look at me as though I have something to tell them. “Of course you didn’t find drugs!” I shout at the doctor. “Jeremy isn’t on drugs.”

“It’s a routine test,” he says. He squints again as he peers at me over his glasses, which now rest on the end of his nose. “Many young people do try drugs. You wouldn’t necessarily be aware if your brother did.”

“Not Jeremy.”

“Of course not,” Mom whispers, but she looks bewildered.

I add, “I’d know if he did. Kids know what to look for.” I’m so angry at this doctor I shiver.

My mother’s voice is soft, and it’s hard to hear her. “Jeremy is going to be all right. Isn’t he?”

“We hope so. There’s no swelling of the brain and no hemorrhaging. But there are other factors. A lot always depends on the patient’s own attitude, his own will to live.”

“But surely—” Dad says. He doesn’t finish his sentence.

In unison our gaze is drawn to Jeremy, and I snap, “Of course he wants to live!” At the same time a part of my mind is asking
How do I know what Jeremy really wants?

“Jeremy?” Mom mewls like a kitten.

Dad puts an arm around her shoulders, giving her a little squeeze. “He’s our son,” he says. That’s all. But the confidence in his voice seems to pump into Mom, and she slowly raises her head.

Dad’s in command now, with the right kind of questions about Jeremy’s care. The doctor attempts to convince him that Jeremy’s in no condition to be flown to Houston to the medical center, that the safest thing to do is to let him rest, let his body begin to mend itself, and wait for him to regain consciousness.

Dad leads the doctor back into the hallway, leaving Mom and me and the nurse in the room with Jeremy. Mom’s eyes meet mine. I’d like to have her hug me and
tell me that everything will be all right, but instead I find myself saying, “Hey, it’s going to be okay, Mom.”

“Jeremy can’t hear us.”

“That doesn’t matter for now.”

“He’s unconscious.”

I remember once when I had the flu and fainted on the bathroom floor. I was dizzy, and wanted to call Mom. I had closed my eyes and could read the words in my head, as though my thoughts were typed on lined paper. But the lines were suddenly broken, the words spilling apart, falling into a tunnel that hummed. It wasn’t dreaming. It was another world, as I slid into a shattered part of my head. Is it this same kind of weird world where Jeremy is now?