Uncertain (2 page)

I walked over to Kevin who was still sleeping on the hood, one of his arms now hanging off the edge of the car. I picked his arm up and lightly put it next to him, and then just listened to him breathing for a few minutes to be sure he was OK.

I picked up my phone and checked the time. It was just before 4 a.m. I walked over to the metal cyclone fence and fussed with it for a bit, gripping it with my hands and leaning backward. Weeds lined the bottom of the fence, and the asphalt was chipping and breaking apart from age. I kicked at a chunk of it and listened to it bounce and tumble on the ground.

I put my face on the fence so that my eyes lined up with the holes, just to see the view of the planes coming in as if no fence was there at all. A plane was coming in for a landing, and I stared at it. I felt a pang of worry about my grampa and decided that he’d be awake. I called the house phone.

“Hello?” Relief washed over me when I heard his voice.

“Hey, Grampa”

“Hey, honey, you all right?”

“Yes, for sure. Just checking on you. I mean, you know, checking in.”

He paused. “It’s very early there. You sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, totally fine. Just couldn’t sleep.” I covered the mouthpiece as a plane passed overhead.

“Oh, OK. All is fine here. Just got done taking out the trash. How is the West Coast?”

“Different.” I felt homesick.

He laughed. “I bet. You’re driving with Kevin from the airport, right?”

“Yeah. He’ll bring me home.”

“All right, good.”

“Is there anything you want from here? As a souvenir?” I asked him.

“Oh, no, honey. Thank you. Just anxious to see you.”

I smiled. “Thanks, Grampa. I’ll see you later.”

“OK. Bye now.”

“Bye.”

I just wanted to get inside. I wanted to see if Harry was OK. I rushed into the medical center, slowing to a brisk walk from my parking lot jog. I felt an anxiety that was so strong it encircled my neck like a turtleneck sweater as I breathed, reminding me with every breath that the collar was there. I stopped myself just before walking into Harry’s room. I wanted to slow it down if I was going to be getting bad news. Who was I going to lose? 

From the doorway, I could see Harry’s empty, messy bed and I could see Harry’s always-sleeping roommate. When I had pictured the worst in my mind, the room was neat as a pin with a hospital-cornered bed made up, and all the pictures removed. As if no one had ever been here, all ready for the next patient.

I walked with care over to Harry’s roommate and watched him breathing steadily. I sighed several large breaths of relief and took a seat in the familiar pilled, burgundy chair across from Harry’s bed.

I set the bag of oranges on my lap that I’d brought back from California. The last time I came to visit, Harry told me by writing on his marker board that he’d had throat cancer. From the time I first met him, he hadn’t been able to speak, so he had always communicated with me using the marker board.

I listened to the beeps from the roommate’s equipment and let my mind wander until I heard one of the nurses speak. I realized just then that I had absolutely no idea what I was going to tell Harry about my trip. He was bound to ask questions, and I had no plan.

Panic swelled in me, and I stood up, grabbing the marker board that Harry typically used to talk with me. I started writing a note to him that I now planned to leave on top of the oranges that I set on his rolling tray. Then, I’d bolt out of the room and not worry in the least what I would tell Harry about my trip. I would buy myself some time to think about it before I visited again.

I wrote a note that simply said, ‘CA was great. See you soon. Mel.’

I darted out the door and headed down the hall. I kept looking around. People barely noticed me, so I slowed down, telling myself to remain calm. I walked up to the elevator and hit the button four times to go down. As I walked into the elevator, my stomach sank. Harry knew me not as Mel, but as Rita. I had lied about my name the first time I decided to talk with him.

I closed my eyes in disbelief. What a moron I was. I put my hand in the closing elevator doors to stop them and rushed back to the room. Harry wasn’t inside the room yet. 

I picked up the marker board, wiped off ‘Mel’ with my sleeve and wrote ‘Rita’ instead. I glanced over at the sleeping roommate, breathed a sigh of relief, and walked briskly out of the room. Just then, a nurse turned the corner about 15 feet from where I was, pushing Harry in a wheelchair. He looked over at me and gave a happy, little wave. I was busted. I smiled robotically and waited for him just inside the doorway. He squeezed my arm as the nurse pushed him past me, and I went back in and sat in the burgundy chair.

“You look
so
much better,” I told him as he got into his bed.

He smiled at me, picking up the marker board and noticing the note I’d left him.

I looked at his neck. He had some type of device on it. I imagined that citrus juice with all the acid might not be the best thing to put on an open wound inside his throat. I felt stupid.

“Oh my gosh, can you even eat those?” I said to him, putting my palm on my forehead.

Harry smiled and nodded and picked up the marker. He wrote on the board. ‘Can’t wait. Thank you.’

“Oh, OK. You’re welcome.” I figured he was probably lying to be nice.

‘So? How was it?’ he wrote next, sitting up in preparation for the details. What could I even tell him about my trip?

“Oh. Well, it was kind of crazy.” I looked down.

Harry gave me a puzzled look and moved his open hand toward himself to encourage me to continue.

What the heck, I thought. Lay it on him. “Well, turned out that I
was
needed.” I blinked spastically. I wasn’t sure how to explain this, and I hadn’t tried to yet—to anyone. “I got these weird pains and I could see stuff. Stuff that wasn’t right in front of me. So I knew I had to help this young girl who was pregnant.”

Harry’s look was nothing short of bewildered. His dark skin was crinkling on his forehead, no doubt questioning my sanity. I kept talking.

“So, this guy was after her. After the young girl, I mean. And I had to make him – well, make him leave her alone.”

Harry looked at me, stunned.

“How?” he wrote, finally. He rubbed his chin, waiting for a response.

I swallowed hard and blinked more, trying to tell myself to shut up. But I didn’t feel like shutting up. What I said had happened. And I really felt like saying it out loud.

“Well. I
fought
him.” I tensed up, balling up my fists, waiting for his disbelief.

Harry’s head jerked backward. He made large arm movements and looked at me in doubt. He pointed again at his written word from before. ‘How?’

I leaned forward and looked over at the sleeping man next to Harry. I set my elbows on my knees and licked my lips. I shook my head, deciding to continue. I couldn’t just walk out at this point, although I did test out that scenario in my head.

I shook my head a little again as I answered him. “It was as if I was a professional fighter or a Marine or something.” I looked off into the distance letting the room get blurry. “I knew exactly where to place my hands on him.” I stopped talking and pictured the man under me and the strategic way I’d moved him. Just so. “I knew exactly how to move. I had his neck cocked in such a way that I knew precisely how to break it.”

Harry picked up his board again and wrote, ‘Did you kill him?’

I was horrified and sat up straight as an arrow. My face didn’t hide my anger. “God, no. I only fought him. Guy just ran off.” I flung my hand in the air.

‘Then what?’ he wrote.

This was a mistake. I knew it. What the hell could I tell him at this point? Particularly because he’d thought I was a murderer a second ago. Maybe I could say,
Well, Harry, so then I delivered a baby and spoke perfect and like scholarly Spanish—oh and then I actually carried the mother of the baby…
I’m sure we could just talk about the weather after I laid that on him.

I started wringing my hands together, hard. I reached for the batteries that I usually kept in my pocket to spin around in my hands when I got fidgety. Nothing. My pockets were empty. I moved uneasily in my chair. But it
did
happen. All of it.

What was the reason that I had ever trusted this man? Why had I told him any part of this? What if the next thing I knew I was locked up in some weird mental prison because I committed a crime and I confessed to this random person?

I swallowed hard and stood up abruptly. “I gotta go, Harry.”

I walked out.

Dave and I had plans for cards at 1 so I headed home. I felt super uncomfortable, and the last thing I wanted to do was play cards—but I wasn’t going to cancel on Dave.

We played cards at my house because Dave’s parents were difficult to be around. His dad was always angry and his mother was always trying to cover up for it with sticky-sweet words.

Dave was waiting for me inside the door of his house. I could see him through the glass. I smiled and waved for him to come out. He opened the door and came bouncing down his steps.

“Hey, Melia, how was California? What’s it like there?

“Hi, Dave. It’s warm. Very pretty. You should see the ocean…”

He stopped in front of me. “I should move there.”

I laughed a little. I stopped for a second, realizing that I’d never even considered living anywhere else than right here. Not even there, as much as I had liked the beach.

Dave coughed, and I remembered his hospital stay and sickness.

“Dave, I can’t help but wonder if I could’ve talked you out of taking the boat when I missed your call that night. Saved you from all of this.”

“Why think backward, Melia?”

I looked at him. It was such a good question.

Right. “Well, I guess I want to think about things that I could’ve done differently.”

“What for?”

“To learn, I guess.”

“I think it’s way better to learn from what you decide to do instead of what you didn’t do,” he said.

“Well, I just feel bad. I should’ve answered the phone. I swear I didn’t hear it.”

“
I
don’t feel bad. Taking the boat was my choice. I would’ve done great except for that stupid tarp that fell into the water. Nothing you could’ve done about that. Stop thinking backward.”

“Hey, ‘ya got room for two more?” Murray, hollered from the garage. He and my grampa strode out into the light.

“Heck, yeah!” Dave yelled. “Now we can play Euchre.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Miss Mel starts thinking she’s a card shark with Euchre. She’ll go it alone with just the left.” Euchre was a regional game that we loved. I really wouldn’t sit my partner out with just the second highest card. Well, maybe I’ve done that before. But, I was just making a point.

Dave laughed. “I would too, Murray. Well…not really.”

Grampa put his arm around Dave, and we walked into the house. I wanted to stop Murray and take him aside to tell him that I wasn’t quite ready to come back to work.

“Murray, can I talk to you for a second?”

“Sure, whatcha got?” We hung back from Dave and Grandpa. I watched them walk up the steps of the deck and open the patio door before I chickened out. “Where you at tomorrow?”

“House on Rosedale, south of 9 Mile. Kitchen overhaul. Family is real weird. But, you know, check cleared. So, whatever.”

“Mind if I swing by?”

“Can I put you to work?”

“Maybe.” I smiled. I wanted to sleep on it. Plus, I was still certain that Harry was going to have me arrested, although on the whole drive over I reminded repeatedly myself that technically I didn’t do anything illegal.

I wanted to talk through everything, but I just couldn’t. And I didn’t know who to talk with if I chose to. Kevin had been with me and seen everything, so he seemed like the most logical choice, but I was pretty sure he was tired of me, having spent a long weekend living it. I tried to put everything out of my mind and focus on cards, but it wouldn’t happen.

I’d started to doubt my deceased mother and her prediction that I’d lose someone. I felt angry toward her and then wondered if I had any right to feel that way. How did I even know if the whole thing was real? How did I know that I was really going to lose someone? Had I made that up myself? I’d already checked on all the main people who were close to me.

I thought back to the very first dream I’d had of my mother, where she spoke to me. I had accidentally controlled her in that dream; she’d said I had a strong mind. Maybe this whole thing was just like that. Maybe she never wanted to tell me who I was going to lose, and that was my own mind, making crap up. I wasn’t sure how I’d ever know.

“Melia, you suck at cards today,” Dave told me.

“I know.” He was right, I was barely paying attention.

“You never did tell me about your trip,” Grampa said, tossing out a card.

“I guess I didn’t.”

“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked.

I almost laughed, then I decided that I would focus only on the best parts for my answer. “Um, I did. We went to a winery, actually.”

“Fancy.” He raised his eyebrows.

“Very fancy,” Murray agreed, calling the hand.

“Is Kevin a big wine guy?” Murray asked, leaning back.

“Not at all,” I said. “Just checking stuff out while we were there. We also saw these incredible cliffs overlooking the ocean. A couple was getting married there at sunset.”

“My word. Married on a cliff,” Grampa said

“That would be asking for trouble with some couples I’ve met,” Murray said.

Dave laughed.

Murray pretended to shove someone off a cliff with his forearm to keep Dave laughing.

I got excited as I remembered. “I have a picture. I took a picture on my phone.” This would be the first time I’d even looked at the pictures. I’d only taken about four, and I immediately pulled up the cliff wedding picture. The picture didn’t capture the feeling of the ceremony or the sunset. It was of the bride and groom—their backs to the camera— and of the minister. A few guests were also in the photo.

As I looked at the picture more closely, I noticed a man off to the right looking at the camera with a blank smile-less glare. The sight immediately took the wind out of me. Who the hell was that?

“Lemme see, honey.” My grampa extended his arm and I handed him my phone. He didn’t seem to notice the staring guy. “Well now, would ‘ya look at that. Real pretty.”

Dave looked over his shoulder. “Wow.”

Murray took the phone to look. I was distracted. Was that guy in the photo the guy I fought while in California? The one who was after the pregnant girl? I couldn’t make myself imagine his face—although I’d looked right at him so many times.