Second Kiss (10 page)

I was relieved. I wasn’t ready to find out what was behind the closed door. The kind nurse had overheard our conversation and invited me to sit on a chair next to her desk while I waited. There weren’t a lot of visitor chairs in the halls in the ICU. I guessed that was because there weren’t a lot of visitors allowed in the ICU. The halls were empty, except for another nurse that walked from door to door. I guessed that she was checking monitors and changing catheters, but I couldn’t see as the doors shut behind her each time she went in. The nurse at the desk offered me orange juice, but I was too sick to drink anything. I thought about Jess. I wondered if he was behind the same closed door that Mom went into. I sat on the chair for nearly ten minutes before she came back out into the hallway. I looked up at her eagerly, expecting her to wave me over to go into the room. My curiosity and concern were outweighing my nervousness by now, and I so badly wanted to see Jess and know that Caris was going to be all right. Mom’s face was pale as she walked toward me. She stooped on the ground next to me and rested her hand on my knee. She looked intensely at the arms of the chair I was sitting on, and I knew she was searching for the words to say.

“Mom?” I broke the silence and my voice cracked. “Is Caris okay?”

Mom’s lips pursed together as tears dripped out of her eyes. She shook her head once, and then choked out the words, “She’s not doing very well, sweetheart. She’s hurt very badly.”

“But she’s going to be okay?”

Mom just kept right on staring at the arms of the chair.

“Mom? Is she going to be okay?”

“They hope so. That’s all they can say right now. She’s not conscious.

“What happened to her?”

Mom looked into my eyes for the first time since she came out of the room, and I saw anger blazing from them. She whispered the answer, “Jess’s father showed up at their house at four o’clock this morning-intoxicated. He tried taking the girls.” She paused for a moment then looked back down again. “I knew they were having some custody issues lately over the holidays and such. Even Caris didn’t think he would go this far with it. But there are no limits with Kevin when alcohol is involved.” I knew that more than she probably knew I did.

“Where are Viv and Maggie? Are they okay?”

“Yes, they’re fine. They’re at their grandmother’s house.”

Vivian and Maggie were Jess’s little sisters. They were just seven and ten and much too young to have to experience something like this on Christmas morning. But then again anyone was too young to have to experience this on Christmas morning, or any other morning for that matter. I thought of Vivian and Maggie at Caris’s mother’s house. She was too old to walk let alone give them the happy Christmas they deserved.

“Is Jess here?”

She nodded.

“I don’t have to go in there. He probably wants to be alone with his mom.”

“He asked if you were here.” She squeezed my hand. “He wants you in there with him. He needs you now more than ever.” She stood up and wiped at her eyes. “I’ll stay out here. The nurse doesn’t want too many people in the room at a time.”

I got up from the chair and walked easily toward the door. Knowing that Jess was in there, wanting me to be in there with him, made entering the room a simpler task. But once I was in the room, a whole new reality hit me in the face. I saw Jess sitting next to the one bed in the room, hunched over a bruised and broken body that resembled Caris Tyler. Jess looked up at me when I stepped toward the bed. He smiled faintly, but the smile instantly faded to a look of pain and concern as he looked from me back to his mother. I walked around to the same side of the bed as Jess. As I got closer to him, I realized that he had not left the fight with his dad unscathed. Dried blood was stuck to his knuckles and upper lip. The skin around his eyes and cheekbones was red and almost purple. He was still wearing his pajamas-navy blue sweatpants and a gray hooded sweatshirt-that were covered in blood stains. Probably some of his own blood, and I guessed a lot of his mom’s as well-I hoped some of it was his dad’s. I had no idea what to say to him. There were no words that could come out of my mouth at that moment that wouldn’t sound naive, insensitive, and apathetic. I sat in the chair next to him and leaned in so closely that I could feel the heat radiating off his back as he hovered over his mother, holding her hand and gently caressing her brow. I had no words, so I simply put my hand on his arm. It was the only way I knew how to tell him that I was there for him. He placed his scarred hand on top of mine. He squeezed it so hard, I thought our two hands might mold together like clay. His breathing became heavy, and then for the first time in my life I saw Jess cry.

When the nurse came into the room, Jess straightened up and wiped his tears on the back of his sleeve. It was the same nurse that I had seen going door to door, and now that I saw her up close I noticed that she was young and pretty looking. Without saying a word, she walked around Caris’s bed toward the monitors that were beeping in the corner. She looked really young. She had to still be in high school. I figured that she was probably not a real nurse but one of those volunteers that come in on Christmas to help out. I caught her stealing a glance at Jess when he wasn’t looking. From the corner of my eye I saw her look down at our hands then back again at the monitors. She fiddled around with some of the tubes and wrote something down on a clipboard. She quietly asked Jess if he needed anything and then slipped out the door as elegantly as she had entered. When the door shut behind her, Jess spoke the first words I had heard from him since I got there.

“You shouldn’t be in a hospital on Christmas morning. You should be home with your family, opening presents, and eating your dad’s omelets.”

“We’ve already done all that,” I said quietly. “It’s not Christmas morning anymore; it’s almost two o’clock in the afternoon.” I sighed. On a normal Christmas day at two o’clock in the afternoon, I would be sitting at our large dining room table eating ham and cheesy potatoes and Mom’s special Christmas salad. I would be surrounded by my twelve cousins and plotting out the best hills to go sledding down after dinner. But this Christmas, I was in Jess’s world. I figured this was his first Christmas spent in the hospital too, but the feeling of the day was not new to him. And now I was on the front row seat, seeing everything up close. Jess’s hand was still resting on mine, and I silently examined the crusted blood on his knuckles. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know, but I still asked, “Mom said your dad came over in the middle of the night drunk?” I said it with a questioning tone, hoping that he would continue the rest of the story. But he sat silently, staring at his mother’s face.

“Sorry,” I muttered awkwardly. “You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to.”

He didn’t take his eyes off his mother. “I haven’t talked about it since it happened. Viv had to tell the police everything because I couldn’t.” His voice broke, and I thought he was going to cry again, but he didn’t. He took a deep sigh and continued, “It was horrible, Gem. I’m afraid the thought of it will haunt me for the rest of my life. I mean, I know he’s always had issues, but he’s my dad, you know? And to walk in and see your dad doing such terrible things to your mom-to someone who was his wife for eighteen years … “

Eighteen years. That was longer than I had been alive. It occurred to me then that while I had only seen Jess’s father a couple times, Jess had seen him every morning when he woke up and every night when he went to sleep. He had eaten dinner at the same table as him for the past sixteen years of his life. Kevin didn’t drink all the time, so there were probably times when he was a semi-normal father. He was the one holding the video camera on Christmas morning. The one who stayed up until midnight the night before putting together Viv and Maggie’s doll house so that it would be perfect when they saw it the next morning. He was Jess’s dad and Caris’s husband for eighteen years. He loved them once-maybe he still did-and Jess loved him-maybe he still did. I couldn’t begin to imagine what Jess had gone through at those early hours of the morning when I was tucked safely in my warm house-my parents asleep in their bed two doors down the hall.

Jess breathed deeply and let out a long puff of air. Still clenching my hand in his, he removed it from his arm and held it in his lap as he leaned back in his chair, slumping like a tired teenager in a first-period geometry class. He closed his eyes for probably the first time since four o’clock that morning.

“I heard something in the middle of the night, some kind of scratching sound. I thought I should go check it out, but I was so tired. The neighbor’s cat comes and scratches on our back door so much; I just figured that was what the sound was, and I fell back asleep.” He ran the hand that wasn’t holding mine through his hair. He looked so tired. “I have no idea how much time passed before I woke up again to Maggie’s screaming. I ran down the hall to their room and saw my dad holding Viv tightly around her shoulders while covering her mouth. Maggie was sitting on the bed crying and begging him to let go of her. I’ve never seen her so scared. I’ve never seen any of us so scared.” Jess’s eyes were open now, and he was gazing up into nothingness. It was as though the whole experience was being projected onto the white ceiling and Jess was giving me a play by play as he watched it before him. “I had no idea what to do. I wanted to attack him, but he’s my dad. I ran toward him and pulled Viv from his clenching hands. It was easier than I thought, and he kind of tripped to the side as I pulled her away from him. He was obviously drunk, but not so much that he didn’t know what he was doing. He yelled at me. He told me to go to my room-like I was still ten years old and I had just come home with a bad report card. I obviously didn’t go to my room; instead I begged him to leave. I didn’t know what else to do, so I just stood cowardly in front of my drunk father and begged him to leave us alone. That’s when my mom came in. She told me to take Viv and Mags into my room and close the door. She said she would handle it. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave her, but she wanted me to protect the girls. So I did as she said. I took them into my room, and I tucked them into my bed. I knelt on the floor by my bedroom door and listened to them talk. My mom tried to stay calm, but my dad was yelling as she led him downstairs and toward the back door. Their conversation grew faint as they got farther away, so I got up to check on the girls. They were holding each other under my covers, and they were both crying. That’s when I heard odd sounds coming from downstairs. I left the girls in my room and ran downstairs as fast as I could. I found my dad standing over my mom, who was curled up in a ball on the floor. I ran toward him just as he smashed one of our solid oak dining table chairs over her back. He raised the chair to do it again, but I intervened. I don’t know how many times he hit her before I got there.”

Jess wasn’t crying anymore. His eyes were emotionless, his face stone cold. He looked numb. Minutes passed before either one of us said anything. The silence in the room made Caris’s condition seem that much worse. I’m sure there was much more to the story than Jess had the energy to tell me, but he finished with, “The rest is a blur. The next thing I knew, you were sitting here next to me, and I was crying like a baby.”

I held my free hand around my ribs. It felt cold in the hospital room with its white walls and the metal bed. I thought about my warm, picturesque living room with the fire popping and the Christmas tree lights twinkling. How I wished that Jess and I were sitting together there, looking at all our presents rather than his bruised and hurting mother. I hated alcohol. I hated mean people. I hated Jess’s dad.

The door to Caris’s room opened slowly, and Mom’s head peered around the side. “How is she?” she whispered as she floated into the room as lightly as a feather.

Jess was the one that answered, “No change that I can tell. I hope she wakes up soon. She’ll be sad if she wakes up and Christmas is over.”

Mom sighed sadly. “She’ll just be happy to see that you and the girls are all right. It won’t matter what day it is.”

Jess nodded.

Mom then turned to me. “Gemma?” The sound of her saying my name was strange to me. I was in a whole other world in this cold white room on this particular day of the year, and the sound of my name brought me back to reality.

She continued, “I just talked to your dad. The whole family just showed up at our house. I feel like I need to run home and see them for a little while. Do you want to come with me?”

“And leave Jess?” The idea was barbaric to me.

Jess quickly interjected, “You should go, Gemma.”

I whipped my head around. “What? Why?”

Jess spoke slowly, “It’s Christmas. You don’t have to spend the whole day in this depressing hospital. Go home, see your family. Eat pie and open presents. Laugh. Have fun.” His eyes wondered sadly toward the space above my head. I wished I knew what he was thinking about.

I protested, “Christmas will come again next year. And I can see my family another day. They don’t live that far away.”

“Gemma,” Mom interrupted, “Jess may just want a little time alone. Some time to rest.”

Jess looked at me. “Some rest would be nice.” He squeezed my fingers lightly and I remembered that we were holding hands-in front of Mom.

I leaned in closer to him, my face fixed in a pained expression. “You want me to leave?”

His eyes were sad. He really did look so tired. “I never want you to leave, Gem. But I probably should take a nap. The nurse said she’d bring me a cot so I could stay in here with my mom.”

Mom’s voice broke the silence between us, “I’ll bring you back first thing tomorrow morning, sweetheart.” Her voice was irritating. I knew she meant well, but I didn’t want to leave Jess, and I was growing angry at him for kicking me out.

I stood up quickly from the chair and grabbed my coat, which I had thoughtlessly draped on the end of Caris’s bed a half hour before. I was angry and hurt. Hurt that Jess didn’t want me to stay and angry at myself for being so self-absorbed at a time like this. My dad used to say that I wore my emotions on my sleeve. For years I thought he meant that my mood determined the shirt I wore that day. If I was happy I wore yellow, sad I wore gray. But what he meant was that I was a terrible fake at hiding my true emotions. And if there were two people in the world that knew me well enough to see right through me, it was Mom and Jess. Usually Jess would have teased me about being so energetic in my distaste for life. But he said nothing. I didn’t blame him, though. My attitude problem was hardly an issue compared to the rest of the things he was dealing with. I took a deep breath and swallowed the ball of pride that was rising in my throat.