Without Absolution. Amy Sterling Casil

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СКАЧАТЬ has happened to him? Has someone…”

      “He was beating his head against the wall. All night long. The attendant let it go on, because he was used to autistic children. He didn’t realize what could happen.”

      “He didn’t realize how delicate Jonny was,” I whisper. The coppery, sickening smell of blood is everywhere. I push the physician’s assistant away from his feeble searches with a stethoscope, and touch Jonny’s shoulder. It feels cold. He’s bled a tremendous amount, and there is a gaping hole in the side of his head where he must have been hitting the wall. I can see the delicate membrane inside, see where it has torn and the blood and tissue has rushed out. His third eye and the other blind eye stare at me. His one sighted eye faces the bloody bedding.

      I want to run, but I keep my hand on his shoulder. “Jonny,” I whisper. “Jonny, I’m sorry.” Then, someone’s strong hand grasps my shoulder. A paramedic. The ambulance has finally arrived.

      “Move aside,” the paramedic says, then he gets a good look at Jonny and swears under his breath. “Who the hell bashed this kid’s head open?” Then, he saw the third eye and looked toward me, questioning.

      “Webern syndrome,” I tell him. The paramedic’s partner brushes by and moves a gurney toward Jonny’s bunk. The noise of their radios, their equipment, and their chatter is disorienting.

      Someone pushes me in the small of my back. Yet another paramedic. “You need to step aside,” he says. I do, and the charge nurse follows. They lift Jonny’s tiny body from the bed to the gurney. One of the paramedics grimaces and looks away for a brief moment. Even they’re not hardened to boys like Jonny.

      “He’s not going to make it,” I say, to no one in particular. Then, they’re wheeling him through the crying children. The blood spreads across Jonny’s bunk like the wing of a huge black crow.

      “We need to call the counselors in, for the children. Look at them,” I tell the charge nurse. The ones still in bed are agitated, flapping their fins back and forth, kicking their stubby flippered legs. The children who can walk are gathered here and there. I hear some trying to comfort the others. One piping voice says, over and over, that Jonny’s going to be okay. Even so, I can’t get the memory of his head, split like an overripe pumpkin, from my mind.

      * * * *

      At seven-thirty, the shifts changed. I’m returning to my office when someone hands me a portable phone. Monique is on the line.

      “We’re not waiting for dinner any longer,” she says. “Karen’s very upset.”

      I hear sobbing in the background. “I can’t come now,” I tell her. There is a long silence.

      Monique sighs. “I’m giving you two hours. If you’re not home by then, I’m talking Karen to my sister’s, then I’m leaving for Cabo. I may not…”

      “Jonny’s been taken to the hospital,” I say, the words rushing out. “He might die. There’s massive trauma.”

      “There’s trauma at home,” Monique says. “What can you do for him? There’s no point in staying.” Her voice is icy.

      “You don’t understand.”

      “I do understand,” she says, very slowly. “You’re killing yourself, Hed.” Someone touches my sleeve. One of the nurses. I hold the phone away. She wants me to go to another counseling session, then check in with the children in the dorm. I put the phone back to my ear, but the line is dead.

      There were more counseling sessions. I oriented the third shift. Then, the hospital called. Jonny was dead. They had not been able to repair his thin, spongy skull. Could I notify his family?

      The board of directors keeps a small wet bar in their meeting room. I keep the key. Call his family. I laugh, bitterly, as I open the doors to the wet bar and pour myself a scotch and soda. I’ve brought in plenty of ice, from the children’s ice machine.

      The night wears on. More scotches, more sodas, between conferences with the counselors, the psychologist, the new charge nurse. The ice is gone, and my coffee cup is nearly all scotch, just a splash of muddy institutional java. Amid a meeting, I stand awkwardly, mumble something, and rush for the restroom. As I relieve myself, I see my aging belly hanging miserably. It’s gray, gray with dark hair on it, as gray as I feel. I slump against the cold enamel wall of the stall for what seems like an eternity, before I finally leave.

      Instead of returning to my office, I stumble into the auditorium and sit in one of the folding chairs. They’ve kept the decorations up, the ones the children made for the Governor’s wife. Firemen. Nurses. Doctors. A little train engineer. The fireman held his fire hose between flipper-hands. The nurse had a third eye, very nicely drawn, with long curly lashes.

      I stare at the figures, until they split and dance before my drunken eyes. My stomach rebels. I’m afraid I’m going to be sick, and stagger from the auditorium. I avoid Jonny’s dorm, and return to my office. I call home. No one answers. There is nothing on the machine. I put my head down, just for a moment, and sleep takes me.

      The morning charge nurse wakes me. She has pale hair, braided tightly at the nape of her neck. “A message,” she says, flinging a piece of paper on my desk.

      The message is from Monique. “We opened presents by ourselves. I’ve gone to Cabo for a week. Karen is with my sister.”

      I stare at bit of pink paper. It’s Christmas Day, and Monique is gone, my darling Karen is gone. I crumple the message and look at the gray, hard-carpeted floor. My mouth quivers. Something hot and wet hits my hand. I am crying.

      As I cry, I hear someone at the door. The nurse again? I can’t face her. Her eyes accused me of something, when she left the message. Of what? Killing Jonny? Abandoning my wife and child? The door opens a crack, and I hear a tiny voice, asking to come in.

      I sniff back the tears. It’s not Jonny, but a little girl. She enters, and touches my leg. Gyla, the little dancer. She has something in her hand.

      “I made this, Doctor Arlan,” she says. She holds out a pretty white ornament, with my name written on it in silvery glitter. She climbs into my lap.

      “Thank you,” I say.

      “You’re crying.” She wipes the tears from my cheek with her silver-furred hand. I sigh, and draw her head toward my chest, and stroke her between her tiny pointed ears.

      “I’m sad.”

      “You’re sad because of Jonny,” she says with a child’s simplicity. “We’re all sad too, but we think he’s happy because he went to heaven.”

      I nod my head. I can’t speak. She nestles against my chest. She is wearing tiny, cheap tennis shoes that look like ballet slippers on her delicate feet.

      “I’m going to dance in all the ballets, when I grow up.” She gives me a big hug.

      Her face is a perfect little heart, with lovely pale eyes and a sweet rosebud mouth. Karen looked like that, when she was this child’s age. A perfect angel. Gyla’s silvery fur is very beautiful. It shines in the dim light of my office.

      Gyla does not need these cheap tennis shoes to dance in, I think. She needs slippers, real toe slippers, with ribbons that lace around the ankle. СКАЧАТЬ