Teek Page 7

  “We’ll talk about it. Why don’t you sit back down?” The cop was within six feet of him now.

  Chuck glanced at the stretcher where he’d been strapped down and saw the cop’s feet move. Chuck didn’t know if the cop was grabbing for him, but that was what he expected, so he lashed out. His hand was useless, but the doctors had left his steel-toed boots on, and he kicked as hard as he could.

  Chuck caught the cop in the stomach. Coffee sprayed the wall as the cop crushed the cup he was holding. The cop’s eyes widened in a single moment of lucid fury, and his other hand started moving to his belt. Chuck didn’t know if it was for the baton or the gun. Chuck kicked again, near the kidney.

  The cop folded as if he had taken a bullet.

  The next kick took the cop in the side of the head, and the cop dropped. Before the bastard had time to recover, Chuck used both hands to wrestle the gun out of the cop’s holster. Chuck looked to either end of the corridor and neither doctor nor nurse had moved.

  Boy, are we in trouble now.

  He pointed the gun, left handed, at the cop on the floor. I’m not going to jail or a nuthouse, period and excla-fucking-mation point.

  “You two,” he said to the nurse and the doctor. “Get over here or I waste the fucking pig.”

  After a brief hesitation, both came. For the first time Chuck thought he might actually get out of this hospital.

  EUCLID HEIGHTS, OH: Sunday October 24, 1999

  02:16 AM

  Allison was ripped from sleep by the worst pain she had ever experienced. She curled in her bed, drenched with sweat in a room that felt like a freezer. The pain in her skull transfixed her, leaving her unable to move, unable to say anything but a low moan that sounded like a car unable to start. Talons ripped at her brain. Something buried deep in her skull was hatching, tearing its way out. Every beat of her heart sent razor claws to rip at the backside of her eyes. She tried to cry, but every throb caught her breath short.

  Her arms, legs, and back knotted into cramps that felt as if she was being peeled apart from the inside. Her abdomen felt like it was being clutched by a giant fist.

  She couldn’t move. The pain wouldn’t even let her think.

  All she knew was she was dying.

  CLEVELAND, OH: Sunday October 24, 1999

  05:52 AM

  The sky was lightening by the time Chuck walked out on to the streets of Little Italy. He had gotten himself thoroughly lost within the boundaries of University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University. In a way, that was good, since three minutes after he’d found his way out of the University Hospital ER building, cops were everywhere, looking for him. If he didn’t know where he was going, the cops certainly didn’t.

  The only real touchy part was avoiding all the damn security cameras. That had meant no well-lighted thoroughfares and, consequently, no visibility on an overcast night. He’d nearly broken his ankle twice, running where he couldn’t see. Eventually, after dodging cop cars with spotlights, and hiding in dumpsters, he had stumbled down to a set of train tracks and had followed them up to Little Italy.

  Through the night he had managed to ditch the lab coat that he’d stolen from the doctor, as well as everything from the doctor’s, the nurse’s, and the cop’s wallets, except for the cash. Chuck felt he was owed that much, since the hospital had taken his wallet, his knife, and his keys, everything but the loose change in his pockets.

  Everything else from the hospital was stashed in a plastic bag he’d found fluttering by the Food Co-Op when he’d climbed down from the tracks. Even the gun was in the bag. With his shirt as it was, a gun in the belt or a pocket would be an invitation saying, “shoot me!”

  All the shops down here were dark and closed at this early in the morning, except for a donut shop he passed. A donut shop with, fortunately, no cops.

  Chuck kept an eye out for cop cars, but he didn’t see any. But he was worried about going up into the Heights area. The place was crawling with police, especially at night. All he had to do was walk in front of the wrong speed trap.

  Time to drop a dime on a friend.

  Chuck stopped at a pay phone, and called up one of the more available girls he knew. He bent over the phone and nodded a lot, “Yeah, I know… sounds like a party Gigi… I know, always a party there… yeah, was wondering if I could come crash… uh huh I got something for you… yeah, you’ll like it… no, the couch is fine, just if anyone’s looking for me… you got it— could you send someone down here to pick me up?… Little Italy, in front of Presti’s donuts… don’t ask… yes, I have some for him too… and if anyone asks for me… yep… see you.”

  Chuck hung up the phone and picked up his little plastic bag of contraband. He faded into a shadowy part of an alley, where he could watch for his ride without being observed, and he fished through all the stuff he’d liberated from the hospital.

  The bag held the cop’s gun, gauze for his hand, and what had mounted to impulse theft on Chuck’s part. He’d swiped a half-dozen hypodermic needles and syringes, rubber hoses, a scalpel that was still wrapped in plastic, and a dozen small vials filled with various medications.

  He was glad he’d thought of it while he had a doctor at gunpoint. Gigi was about to have quite a party.

  SIX

  EUCLID HEIGHTS, OH: Sunday October 24, 1999

  07:52 AM

  Allison woke with a hazy memory of agony and the dull ache of faded cramps in her arms. She didn’t want to move, or open her eyes. She barely breathed for fear of triggering the pain again.

  Eventually the need to be clean again won over the fear.

  The sheets were soggy with sweat. The clothes she’d slept in adhered to her body in the most grotesque way. She could smell the fact that her bladder— and worse— had given way while her mind had abdicated.

  She felt sick with embarrassment. The last time she had wet the bed was when she was five. Upon opening her eyes, she saw a puddle of vomit next to her head. She bolted upright—

  Bad idea.

  The sudden movement overwhelmed her with a tidal-wave of dizziness. She clamped her eyes shut until she was certain that she wasn’t going to throw up again. She took several deep, shuddering breaths, trying not to gag on the sour taste in her mouth.

  When her brain stopped spinning, she opened her eyes. When she finally saw her room, she almost threw up anyway.

  “Oh my…”

  At first she thought that she was in the wrong place.

  But it was her room. It was just a godawful mess. Her bedding, and some of the clothes she’d slept in, had been thrown to the walls. Her night stand had been upended, spilling lamp, phone, and alarm clock. Something must have hit her bureau because stuffed animals were everywhere and the TV was silent, and face down on the throw rug between the bed and the dresser. Frozen in shafts of dawn light, her homework lay in drifts like an academic blizzard.

  At the foot of her bed, on top of the naked mattress, Babs Bunny sat a little cockeyed on top of Allison’s history textbook, as if the rabbit had planned all this.

  I must have been delirious, Allison thought. Delirious and violent. She was frightened by the fact that she remembered none of it. She couldn’t remember moving at all.

  Where was Mom?

  There had to have been a hell of a racket, at least when the TV upended. Why didn’t her mother come to check her out?

  Scared in more ways she could name, Allison got out of bed and walked the length of the hall to her mother’s bedroom. She had to hold on to the wall to stay upright. Her perception felt off in odd directions she couldn’t fathom. Her arms and legs didn’t occupy the right spaces. She had to think about simple motions like walking.

  It reminded her of the one time she’d been drunk, except her vision was so oddly sharp. She felt she actually saw more of the world than she should. When she thought about it, her eyes hurt.

  Allison reached her mom’s bedroom door, the last one at the end of the hallway, and knocked on it softly. �
�Mom?”

  She heard breathing beyond, and pushed gently on the door.

  Scarlett’s striped orange form bolted out of the room, between Allison’s legs. She had to hold on to the door frame to keep from falling over.

  The first thing Allison saw was the empty bed. Her breath caught in her throat. But when she turned away from the bed, she saw Mom, asleep on a recliner in the corner.

  Across Mom’s lap was a photo album Allison had never seen before. Yellowed newsprint stuck out the edges of the book, and it was open to a picture of a uniformed man posing in front of the American flag. The pose was familiar. Macy’s oldest brother, Jason, had sent home a picture just like that when he joined the Marines.

  On the floor, by Mom’s dangling right hand, was a half-full tumbler of amber liquid, and a nearly empty bottle of Jim Beam.

  “Mom?” Allison repeated, softly.

  A grumble and a slight stirring, but no other reaction. Allison looked at the tumbler, and the scrapbook, and knew that this was a scene she wasn’t supposed to see. She closed her mother’s door and walked back to her room trying not to think of how far away the floor seemed, or the thought that her questions about Dad had driven Mom so deep into a bottle that she couldn’t hear it when her daughter tore her room apart in some sort of delirium.

  She grabbed all the bedding that had scattered to the points of the compass, pulled her white fluffy bathrobe out of the closet, and went to the bathroom. The bedding, and her clothes, went into the laundry hamper, filling it. She managed to confirm, to her disgust, that all her bodily functions had let go in the night.

  She let her underwear soak in the sink while she tried to shower off the filth. The hot shower was the best thing she’d felt in quite a long while.

  ◆◆◆

  As she put her room back in order, she thought, maybe that was it. The worst for last. She hoped that was right. The headaches, up to last night, had been growing less frequent. Maybe they would finally come to a stop.

  You’re kidding yourself, Allison thought. Things are not going to be all right. Not the way this is leading. She had to break it to Mom that she’d been hiding these headaches, no matter what kind of weirdness it would cause. She wasn’t ready to go through another night like this, even if she had to get someone to sedate her to the gills to stop it. Another night like this would probably kill her.

  Fortunately, the only fatality had been the light bulb in her table lamp.

  Her crotchety TV seemed to have even improved its reception somewhat. Though now it was missing both the contrast and brightness knobs.

  As she put Babs up next to the TV’s antenna, she heard Mom wake up. Allison froze, as if she was doing something wrong and was about to be caught. Do I just run out now and spill everything while Mom’s still hung-over?

  She’ll just say it’s nothing, it’s stress, it’ll go away… and she’s keeping things from me… and… and…

  “I don’t want to find out something’s wrong with me.” Allison whispered, trying not to cry.

  “Allie, you awake?” Mom’s voice came from the hall, sounding half asleep. It made Allison feel watery inside. Mom never drank heavily, never alone.

  “Yes, Mom.” Allison could hear the catch in her own voice.

  She heard her mother fussing in the bathroom. “We’re going to have to do the laundry. Whose turn is it?”

  Allison thought of the stained sheets in the hamper and lied, “My turn.” Tell her.

  There was a pause, and Allison thought her mother was going to correct her. “Ok, hon. Do it sometime today.” Then Allison heard the bathroom door close.

  “Yeah,” Allison said.

  The shower started.

  You can’t bring yourself to tell your mother that something’s seriously wrong inside your head.

  Allison stayed there, staring at Babs in her hand. Babs stared back with a goofy fabric smile. “What if I’m dying?” she asked Babs in a whisper. “Is that what Mom is afraid of? Is everyone just lying because it’s hopeless, inoperable, or what?”

  She clutched the stuffed animal to her chest and whispered, “The doctor said there was nothing wrong with me. Nothing. Nothing.” Allison repeated the word until she realized how much she sounded like her mother.

  ◆◆◆

  Mom: “Calling here again.”

  John: “I deserve the chance to talk to her.”

  Mom: “You have some nerve. Good bye, John.”

  John: “Tell her. You owe her that.”

  Mom: “Don’t tell me how to treat my daughter.”

  John: “If they look they’ll find out the doctor’s appointments.”

  Mom: (goes off on the fact my headaches weren’t anything to worry about.) “They cleared up after last the visit. Nothing, nothing, nothing!”

  John: “Did the doctor know the other possibility… If she’s a teak(teek?), they’ll—”

  Mom: “Leave us alone. I don’t believe any of this. They’re stone insane. You’re insane. Call and I drag you into court. Touch my daughter and I’ll kill you.”

  The page sat there, on top of all her homework, christened by a few drops of Chuck’s blood. Allison stared at it, knowing that it meant her headaches were something evil.

  If it wasn’t for that third-person plural pronoun. They. Them. Allison was beginning to hate that word. If it wasn’t for that reference to “they” then all of it would make sense. If not for these unnamed third parties, and their implied activity bearing on her, the conversation was simple.

  John thought she was imperiled by these migraines, and Mom didn’t. Or at least Mom very much didn’t want to see things that way. Allison couldn’t blame her mother for acting as she did. Allison managed to do more than her share to enable Mom’s denial.

  Allison wondered who “they” were. Could they be relatives she didn’t know about? Maybe someone on her father’s side would want to fight for custody, declaring her mother unfit for ignoring her daughter’s medical problems—

  “But she hasn’t. I was at a doctor the same day I mentioned the first headache. Two visits, scads of tests…”

  No, that didn’t seem likely.

  She sat cross-legged on her bed, hugging Babs Bunny, her homework stacked in front of her, surrounded by cats offering their feline brand of comfort. Scarlett was draped over her left leg, purring into the crook of her knee, while Rhett was intermittently stalking her hair. Meowrie had even come in, to curl up next to the radiator.

  Allison right now wished she was a cat. Cats managed to understand things without having a too complex existence.

  Maybe “they” were some foreign government whose exiled royalty had a genetic predisposition for adolescent migraines.

  Maybe she’d been half-asleep and misunderstood the entire conversation.

  As she mused, the doorbell rang. Mom had left after her shower with a, “love you, be back soon,” so Allison was the only one in the house— except for the cats, who stubbornly refused to go answer the door. The doorbell rang again.

  Allison sighed and closed the cover of her notebook, marveling again at the straightened wire binding and the thumb-shaped tear. She got up, scattering cats, and went downstairs. Some latent paranoia made her keep the chain on when she opened the door.

  Standing on the porch, waving at her, was Macy Washington. “Hi, girl, let me in? Or are you too busy reverting to infancy?”

  Allison looked down and saw that she was still carrying Babs.

  “I was discussing my career opportunities with Babs here. She thinks I might have a future as a cartoon.” Allison unchained the door and let Macy in. “Enjoy the movie?”

  Macy shrugged. “Just another of Ben’s action flicks.”

  Allison sat on the sofa and perched Babs on the coffee table on top of an issue of The Economist. “Why do you let him drag you to movies you don’t like?”

  “Free popcorn? Milk Duds? Sitting up front to crick my neck?” Macy sat down and leaned forward. “You look better.” />
  “Huh?” Allison’s mind seemed to slip a gear. “I do?”

  “The color’s back in your cheeks, and you lost that crease.” Macy tapped Allison’s forehead with a long ebony finger.

  “I can’t think why…” Allison’s befuddlement allowed it to dawn on her that she was feeling better. She’d been so preoccupied to notice that, after that horror last night, a weight had lifted from her body. It wasn’t until then she realized that, for weeks, the headaches had never quite left. She had been living with a constant low-level pain that she had learned not to notice. It was as if, for two months, she’d been on the verge of a sneeze— and then she went “achoo” when she wasn’t looking.

  “Hey,” Macy said, “you’re smiling.”

  Allison supposed she was.

  “What happened to the old grump?”

  Allison shrugged and said, “Ask Babs.”

  Macy picked up the stuffed pink rabbit and threw it at her.

  Allison ducked and sat down, “Sorry I couldn’t join you guys.”

  “It’s all right,” Macy took up position on the couch. “But I did want to talk to you, and you hung up rather abruptly last night.”

  Allison felt a wave of embarrassment, “Sorry about that.”

  “Like I said, no problem—” Macy leaned over and looked seriously at Allison, “But I hear you pulled a number on Chuck yesterday.”

  Allison, who had been feeling free of her personal problems for the first time in weeks, came crashing to Earth. “What do you mean?”

  “David went on about Chuck in the library, hollering and bleeding, cussing you to high heaven. What happened, girl?”

  Allison tried to think of a snappy comment to deflect the issue, but for once she couldn’t find one. “I let him scare me too much.”

  “How?”

  “I saw him in the library, and I ran.” Allison waved her hands toward the ceiling. “I rushed, dropped one of my notebooks. And there Chuck was, holding it out. And. He. Wouldn’t. Let. Go.” She had to stop because tears were welling up. She grabbed a tissue from the box on the table and blew her nose. “He wanted to apologize for what he did at David’s party. No hard feelings he said. No hard feelings!”