The Tear Collector (6 page)

I start to talk, but Robyn exchanges my iPod for hers. She sits back, sighs, and lets “Yesterday” by the Beatles rain over us.

After a while, she pulls back on the road and starts speeding back home. Her phone rings—it’s her mom’s tone—and she picks up. She doesn’t hang up, so I pull out my cell to text Cody. As I’m clicking away, I listen to Robyn trying to act strong, but the longer she talks, the more emotional she becomes. The more emotional she becomes, the faster she drives.

“Slow down,” I say as Robyn whips around another turn, with one hand on the wheel.

“One second,” she says into the phone, then turns to me. “It’s okay.”

“We see people DOA in the hospital due to auto accidents,” I tell her, speaking slowly so she soaks in my words. “One minute they’re driving and living; a minute later they’re dead.”

“No way I’ll ever have an accident,” she says. “Don’t you know my life is perfect?”

Before I can answer, she’s back on the phone with her mom. She’s not talking about her situation; she’s talking about Becca’s next chemo. I end my text to Cody and turn the mirror to apply some makeup for when I see him tonight. Robyn finishes the call, then turns the mirror back toward her. From the mirror hangs a picture of Craig and Robyn from the Valentine’s dance. She crumples the picture, opens the window, and tosses it into the wind. She looks at me and says, “I wish someone would just throw me away, put me out of my misery.”

I turn to see her mask of tears. I know what I want to say; I know what I must not say. The battle rages within as from some place deep and mysterious inside of me the words
“Please don’t cry”
move to the tip of my tongue. I sigh, swallow the words, and Robyn’s tears roll on.

“It’s a sin,” I remind her. Like me, Robyn’s Catholic. “Suicide is a sin.”

“And I wouldn’t want to commit a sin,” she says. “That worked out so well with Craig.”

I don’t say anything about the off-limits subject. Robyn drops to her knees only to pray; Brittney earned her nickname Burnt Knees for good reasons.

“I have to be pure and perfect,” she says, pushing down even more on the accelerator.

“You have to be who you are,” I say. “You can’t deny your nature.”

“No, I don’t,” she counters. “I don’t have to be anything. I’m nothing.”

“Please, Robyn, stop talking this way,” I say, making my very words a lie. You can deny your nature, but only at the risk of losing everything. That’s my cousin Siobhan’s story.

Robyn stops talking. I make a few attempts, but she’s not responding. Driving over the gray pavement, she’s living on an emotional fault line. By the time she drops me at my house, it is as if she’s flatlined. Robyn’s like some movie zombie: not dead but not human.

She doesn’t know it, of course, but she’s just like me now—not human, but not a classic horror movie vampire either. I’m more of a succubus that maintains a human form to get along in the world but is void of so much of what makes a person human—such as the ability to love. Robyn’s lost love for now and I envy her, because I’ve never felt it and never will. Like animals, my family survives by instinct and the most elemental emotions. We leave the complex emotions to humans and soak up their suffering into our skin to survive. If we’d have emotions, we’d lose all our energy. Instead, we sense sorrow the way vultures and jackals home in on dying animals. The rules of our family prohibit us from directly causing sorrow; instead, we make ourselves available and inviting to those in pain. For us, the expression “shoulder to cry on” isn’t a cliché; it’s our way of life.

CHAPTER 6
SATURDAY, MARCH 14

Scott, is that you?”

Scott Gerard looks up quickly, but then stares at the shiny hospital floors. He doesn’t know how good all my six senses are; he doesn’t want me to see that he’s been crying.

I walk toward him. He’s got his hands stuffed in his pockets and his gray hoodie pulled over his head like he’s trying to disappear. As always, much of Scott’s face is partially hidden.

“Nice to see you again,” he says, but his tone contradicts his words. No one is ever happy to see anyone at a hospital. Almost every gathering here relates to worry, sorrow, or goodbyes.

“Same here, Scott.” Ever since talking with him in the library, I can’t stop myself from thinking about him in
that
way. If Scott pulls toward me, I can more easily push Cody away.

“Why are you here?” he asks, still staring at the mirrorlike freshly mopped floor.

“I volunteer,” I say, then pause, allowing him to ask for details, but he’s silent. The hall echoes with the sounds of beeping equipment, weeping families, and footsteps of rushing nurses.

“So, Scott, is everything okay?” I ask, knowing the answer to that question is always no here in the ICU. I was running an errand for a nurse, since volunteers don’t work here. I guess they don’t want the young, hopeful people to see the awful agony of a person’s final days.

“My grandmother,” he mumbles, then points toward the room behind us.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I’ve perfected this expression like a sympathy professional. He nods, and then I peek into the room to see a common scene: a human who is now more a machine than a person. Another ICU cyborg. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Another stroke,” he mumbles. Not a stroke, but another one. No wonder he’s thinking about God; he’s counting on a miracle. That’s why he was so distracted the other day.

I take a step toward him, then ask softly, “How bad?”

“The doctors don’t know yet,” he says, then finally looks up. Not at me, at his grandmother’s room. His hands come out of his pockets; they’re balled into fists. In every lounge, I think the hospital should install a punching bag to release all the pent-up rage.

“I’m sorry, Scott,” I say, and instinctively reach out a helping hand toward him.

“Thanks,” he says, but in that one word and the look in his two eyes, I learn so much. His green eyes are fields of emotions, with rows of fear, anger, worry, and grief swaying together.

“If you need to talk to someone…,” I offer, almost a whisper.

“Thanks, Cassandra,” he says. I flutter like a leaf on a tree when he speaks my name.

“There are people at the hospital, and then at school, you know—”

“The peer counseling thing,” he says, interrupting and surprising me. He’s never been in as far as I know. “That’s a great idea.”

“Really?” I say.

“I think it’s great you try to help people,” he says, taking a step back toward me. He sighs, then points into his grandmother’s room. “She was—I mean is—like that.”

“I’m here if you need me,” I say very softly.

“That what she used to say,” Scott says, his sighing sad face now cracking if not a smile, then something close to it. “My grandmother’s a saint. I guess soon she’ll be in heaven.”

I let that go; instead, I inch closer. “What kind of person is she?”

Scott starts telling me stories about his grandmother. He talks about how he never knew his father, and his mom always worked two, sometimes three, jobs to support him and send
him to Catholic school. They moved in with his grandmother, who raised him while his mom worked. After the last story, he musters a half smile, then says, “I’ve got to keep it together.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like the other day in class. I think Mr. Abraham was getting angry with me for choosing faith over science. I can’t afford anything other than an excellent grade in Honors Biology.”

“Mr. A is all right,” I assure Scott. “He’s a tough teacher, but fair.”

“I know, but I’m worried. It’s going to be hard to get into a good college with the rep of Flint-area public schools. I wanted to stay at Powers. There just wasn’t enough money.”

“That’s a good school.”

“I want to go to med school and be a doctor,” he says with pride in his voice at what he plans to do with his life. For some people, the future is all that pulls them through the present. Part of me wants to say, “I want to be a doctor too,” but instead, I’ll let Scott feel special.

“You should volunteer here,” I tell him. “You’d learn a lot.”

“I’d like to, but I don’t have time to volunteer,” he says. “I’ve got a job waiting tables.”

“That’s cool.”

“Besides, I’ve already spent too much time in hospitals these last few years.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, moving ever closer.

“Her husband, my grandfather,” he says, looking back into the room. “Brain cancer. I watched him fall apart day by day. And that’s when I knew I wanted to be a doctor. I know doctors can’t cure everyone, but I want to help other families not go through the pain we went through.”

“So, is he…,” I say, but trail off to let Scott fill in the blank about the void in his life.

“Six years ago,” he says, then actually lets out a small laugh. An escape valve for emotional steam building up inside him. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

“
A Tale of Two Cities
,” I say, never shy about showing off my intelligence to smart guys.

“So, she’s well read
too
,” he says, making me wonder exactly what he means by “too.”

I smile back. Like London and Paris, it seems we have many connections. Until now, he’d always seemed too shy, too secure, too centered. I like the vain but thin-skinned boys.

“When he was like this, in the ICU, I was so conflicted because—,” Scott says, then stops.

“It’s okay, Scott, you can trust me,” I remind him. He lets out a loud sigh of relief.

“Before I’d walk into the room, I would pray to God that he was alive,” he continues. “And then when I’d leave and think about his suffering, I’d pray that he’d be dead by morning.”

“That’s so sad.”

“No human being should suffer like that,” he says.

“The doctors do their best to ease people’s pain.”

“Drugs only help the patient, not the pain of the families,” he says. “My grandmother hated to come see him in that condition. It was just so hard for her.”

“It can be difficult to watch—”

“No, it was too hard for her not to want to reach over and pull the plugs from the machines keeping him alive. She used to come home after every visit and go on and on how she never wanted to end up like that. But now look at her,” he says, on the edge of losing it.

Scott looks at his grandmother. He’s talking about the past because she has no future.

“It’s against the law. Even if it wasn’t, the Church doesn’t believe in euthanasia. Only God decides who lives and dies,” he says, then turns back and our eyes meet in that special way. I’ve learned to listen not to what people say but how they say it. I watch them closely as they speak, in particular their eyes. Lips may lie, but the eyes never do. I know he doesn’t believe what he says. He loves his grandmother and he wants her out of her misery. He believes in God and he believes in mercy; he’s got to learn you can’t believe in both and make it in this world.

“Scott, if there’s anything I can do,” I say.

“Thanks. I didn’t know this about you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t know you worked here. I didn’t know how much
you cared about people. I guess I didn’t know you at all,” he says, then smiles. “I guess that was my mistake.”

I stay silent so he’ll keep talking. “We both know why,” he says.

I shake my head, then ask, “What do you mean?”

“You on Facebook or MySpace?” is his strange follow-up. I nod my head. I’m not into it like so many people at school, but like earrings, these sites are a required Lapeer High female accessory. I’m one of the few who have both. Facebook connects me to people at the center, like Robyn, while MySpace allows me access to Samantha and others who dwell on the fringes.

“From what I hear, every girl writes how they want a guy who is funny, kind, and smart,” Scott says. He’s not looking at me anymore; rather, he’s not letting me look at him.

“So?”

“Well, I’m funny, kind, and smart, so why have I only had one girlfriend in high school?” he asks. “And that girl, well, Samantha has a lot of problems, including her judgment in men.” Again, there’s no eye contact, which is good for me. He’d see my eyes lighting up like somebody hitting the jackpot. Cute guys like Cody act confident because life is easy for them, so when things get hard or go wrong, they’re totally crushed. They’re so hot, they easily melt and grow soft. Scott’s right; he’s not a hottie. I’ve learned, however, that it is the look in a boy’s eye, not his looks, that matters most. Scott’s green eyes reveal a field of hurt needing healing.

“Well, this year isn’t over yet,” I respond in the best flirting voice I can summon. I pause for a second, as I pull out one of the hospital pads I use to take notes. I write down my cell phone number, then offer it to him. His hand shakes a little as he reaches out.

“If you need to call,” I say as he takes the paper from my hand. I let my hand linger.

“I’ll do that,” he says. “But what about Cody?”

“It’s just a phone number, not a marriage proposal,” I say, then laugh.

“I don’t want any problem with Cody,” he says. “I have enough problems.”

“Don’t worry about him,” I say. “He’s nothing to fear.”