I awoke gagging and shaking, dangling half on, half off my bed. It took me a long time to shake off the aftereffects of the nightmare. I hadn’t had one like that in years. I knew why it had returned tonight: my afternoon with Kim McCormick.
Over the next few days I realized that Kim had invaded my life. I kept thinking of her alone in that motel room, eating fast food, her eyes glued to the Weather Channel as she tracked the next storm, planned her next brush with death. The image haunted me at night, followed me through the day. I found myself keeping the Weather Channel on at home, and ducking off to check it out on the doctors lounge TV whenever I had a spare moment.
I guess my preoccupation became noticeable because Jay Ravener, head of the emergency department, pulled me aside and asked me if anything was wrong. Jay could never understand why a board-certified cardiologist like myself wanted to work as an emergency room doc. He was delighted to have access to someone with my training, but he was always telling me how much more money I could make as a staff cardiologist. Today, though, he was talking about enthusiasm, giving me a pep talk about how we were a team, and we all had to be players. He went on about how I hardly speak to anyone on good days, and lately I’d barely been here.
Probably true. No, undoubtedly true. I don’t particularly care for anyone on the staff, or in the whole damn state, for that matter. I don’t care to make chitchat. I come in, do my job—damn efficiently, too—and then I go home. I live alone. I read, watch TV, videos, go to the movies—all alone. I prefer it that way.
I know I’m depressed. But imagine what I’d be like without the forty milligrams of Prozac I take every day. I wasn’t always this way, but it’s my current reality, and that’s how I choose to deal with it.
Fuck you, Jay.
I said none of this, however. I merely nodded and made concurring noises, then let Jay move on, satisfied that he’d done his duty.
But the episode made me realize that Kim McCormick had upset the delicate equilibrium I’d established, and I’d have to do something about her.
Just as she had researched lightning, I decided to research Kim McCormick.
Her driver’s license had listed a Princeton address. I began calling the New Jersey medical centers in her area, looking for a patient named Timothy McCormick. When I struck out there, I moved to Philadelphia. I hit pay dirt at CHOP—Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Being a doctor made it possible. Physicians and medical records departments are pretty tight-lipped about patient information when it comes to lawyers, insurance companies, even relatives. But when it’s one doctor to another…
I asked Timothy McCormick’s attending to call me about him. After having me paged through the hospital switchboard, Richard Andrews, M.D., pediatric oncologist, knew he was talking to a fellow physician, and was ready to open up. I told him I was treating Kim McCormick for depression that I knew stemmed from the death of her child, but she would give me no details. Could he help?
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he told me in a staccato rattle. “Sad case. Osteosarcoma, started in his right femur. Pretty well advanced, mets to the lung and beyond by the time it was diagnosed. He deteriorated rapidly but we managed to stabilize him. Even though he was on respiratory assist, his mother wanted him home, in his own room. She was loaded and equipped a mini-intensive care unit at home with around-the-clock skilled nursing. What could we say? We let her take him.”
“And he died there, I gather?”
“Yeah. We thought we had all the bases covered. One thing we didn’t foresee was a power failure. Hospitals have backup generators, her house didn’t.”
I closed my eyes and suppressed a groan. I didn’t have to imagine what awful moments those must have been, the horror of utter helplessness, of watching her child die before her eyes and not being able to do a thing about it. And the guilt afterward…oh, lord, the crushing weight of self-doubt and self-damnation would be enough to make anyone delusional.
I thanked Dr. Andrews, told him what a great help he’d been, and struggled through the late shift. Usually I can grab a nap after two a.m. Not this time. I sat up, staring at the Weather Channel, watching with growing unease as the radar tracked a violent storm moving this way from Tampa.
I called Kim McCormick’s motel room but she didn’t answer. Did she guess it was me and knew I’d try to convince her to stay in? Or was she already out?
As the clock crawled toward six a.m. I stood with keys in hand inside the glass door to the doctor’s parking lot and watched the western sky come alive with lightning, felt the door shiver in resonance with the growing thunder. So much lightning, and it was still miles off. If Kim was out there…
If? Who was I kidding? Of course she was out there. And I couldn’t leave until my relief arrived. I prayed he’d show up early, but if anything, the storm would delay him.
Jerry Ross arrived at 6:05, just ahead of a pair of ambulances, and I dashed for my car. The storm was hitting its stride as I raced along 98. I turned onto what I thought was the right road, fishtailing as I gunned along, searching for that Nelson pine. I almost missed it in the downpour, and damn near ditched the car as I slammed on the brakes when I spotted it. I reversed to the access road and kicked up wet gravel as I headed for the tree.
The sight of her Mercedes offered some relief, and I let out a deep breath when I spotted the pale form huddled against the trunk. I barely knew this strange, troubled woman, and yet somehow she’d become very important to me.
I skidded to a stop and ran up the rise to where she sat, looking like a drowned rat. Halfway there the air around me flashed noon bright and the immediate crash of thunder nearly knocked me off my feet, but Kim remained unscathed.
“Not again!” she cried, not bothering to cover her breasts this time. She waved me off. “Get out of here!”
“You can’t keep doing this!”
I dropped to my knees beside her and tried not to stare. I couldn’t help but notice that they were very nice breasts, not too big, not too little, just right, with deep brown nipples, jutting in the chill rain.
“I can do anything I damn well please! Now go away!”
I’d been here only seconds but already my clothes were soaked through. I leaned closer, shouting over the deafening thunder.
“I know what happened—about Timmy, bringing him home, the power failure. But you can’t go on punishing yourself.”
She gave me a cold blue stare. “How do you—?”
“Doesn’t matter. I just know. Tell me—was there a storm when the power went off?”
She nodded, still staring. The red blinker on her lightning detector was going berserk.
“Don’t you see how it’s all tied together? It’s guilt and obsession. You need medication, Kim. I can help.”
“I’ve been on medication. Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Tofranil, you name it. Nothing worked. I’m not imagining this, Doctor. Timmy is there. I can feel him.”
“Because you want him there!”
More lightning—so close I heard it sizzle.
“Damn you!” she gritted through clenched teeth during the ensuing thunderclap. I didn’t hear those words, but I could read her lips. She closed her eyes a second, as if counting to ten, then looked at me again. “Do you have any children?”
I didn’t hesitate. “No.”
“Well, if you did, you’d understand when I say you know them. I know Timmy, and I know he’s there. And since you’ve never had a child, then you can’t understand what it’s like to lose one.” Her eyes were filling, her voice trembling. “How you’ll do anything—risk everything—to have them back, even for an instant. So don’t tell me I need medication. I need my little boy!”
“But I do understand,” I said softly, feeling my own pain grow, wanting to stop myself before I went further but sensing it was already too late. “I—”
I stopped as my skin burst to life with a tingling, crawling sensation, and my body became a burning beehive wi
th all its panicked residents trying to flee at once through the top of my head. I had a flash of Kim with strands of her wet hair standing out from her head and undulating like live snakes, and then I was at ground zero at Hiroshima…
…an instant whiteout and then the staticky blizzard wanes, leaving me kneeling by the tree, with Kim sprawled prone before me, flaming pine needles floating around like lazy fireflies, and a man tumbling ever so slowly down the slope to my right. With a start I realize he’s me, but the whole scene is translucent—I can see through the tree trunk. Everything is pale, drained of color, almost as if etched in glass, except…
…except for the tiny figure standing far across the marsh, a blotch of bright spring color in this polar landscape. A little girl, her dark brown hair divided into two ponytails tied with bright green ribbon, and she’s wearing a yellow dress, her favorite yellow dress…
…it’s Beth…oh, Christ, it can only be Beth…but she’s so far away.
A desperate cry of longing leaps to my lips as I reach for her, but I can make no sound, and the world fades to black, my Beth with it…
I sat up groggy and confused, my right shoulder alive with pain. I looked around. Lightning still flashed, thunder still bellowed, rain still gushed in torrents, but somehow the whole world seemed changed. What had happened just now? Could that have been my little Beth? Really Beth?
No. Not possible. And yet…
Kim’s still white form caught my eye. She lay by the trunk. I tried to stand but my legs wouldn’t go for it, so I crawled to her. She was still breathing. Thank God. Then she moaned and moved her legs. I tried to lift her but my muscles were jelly. So I cradled her in my arms, shielding her as best I could from the rain, and waited for my strength to return, my mind filled with wonder at what I had seen.
Could I believe it had been real? Did I dare?
Still somewhat dazed, I sat on Kim’s motel bed, a towel around my waist, my clothes draped over the lampshades to dry. When she’d come to, we staggered to my car and I drove us here.
The room looked exactly as before, except a Hardy’s bag had replaced the Wendy’s. Kim emerged from the bathroom wearing a flowered sundress, drying her hair with a towel. She was bouncing back faster than I was—practice, maybe. She looked pale but elated. I knew she must have seen her boy again.
I felt numb.
“Oh, God,” she said and leaned closer. “Look at that burn!”
I glanced at the large blister atop my left shoulder. “It doesn’t hurt as much as before.”
“Oh, Joe, I’m so sorry you caught that flash too. I feel terrible.”
“Don’t. Not as if you didn’t warn me.”
“Still…let me get some of the cream they gave me for my heel. I’ll make you—”
“I saw someone,” I blurted.
She froze, staring at me, her eyes bright and wide. “Did you? Did you really? You saw Timmy? Didn’t I tell you!”
“It wasn’t your son.”
She frowned. “Then who?”
“Remember by the tree, just before we got hit, when you asked me if I had any children? I said no, because…because I don’t. At least not anymore. But I did.”
Kim stared, wide-eyed. “Did?”
“A beautiful, beautiful daughter, the most wonderful little girl in the world.”
“Oh, dear God! You too?”
My throat had thickened to the point where I could only nod.
She stumbled to the bed and sat next to me. The thin mattress sagged deeply under our combined weight.
“You’re sure it was her?”
Again I nodded.
“I didn’t see her. And you didn’t see Timmy?”
I shook my head, trying to remember. Finally I could speak.
“Only Beth.”
“How old was she?”
“Eight.”
“Timmy was only five. Was it…?” Her own throat seemed to clog as she placed her hand on my arm. “Did she have cancer too?”
“No.” The memory began to hammer against the walls of the cell where I’d bricked it up. “She was murdered. Right in front of me.” I held up my left arm to show her the seven-inch scar running up from the underside of my wrist. “This was all I got, but Beth died. And I couldn’t save her.”
Kim made a choking noise and I felt her fingers dig into my arm, her nails like claws.
“No!” Her voice was muffled because she’d jammed the damp towel over her mouth. “Oh-no, oh-no, oh-no! You poor…oh, God, how…?”
I heard a sound so full of pain it transfixed me for an instant until I realized it had come from me.
“No. I can’t. Please don’t ask. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”
How could I talk about what I couldn’t even think about it? I knew if I freed those memories, even for a single moment, I’d never cage them again. They’d rampage through my being as they’d done before, devouring me alive from the inside.
I buried my face against Kim’s neck. She cradled me in her arms and rocked me like a baby.
“What about Timmy’s father?” I said, biting into my Egg McMuffin. “Does he know about all this?”
After clinging to Kim for I don’t know how long, I’d finally pulled myself together. We were hungry, but my clothes were still wet. So she took my car and made a breakfast run to Mickey D’s. I sat on the bed, Kim took the room’s one upholstered chair. The coffee was warming my insides, the caffeine pulling me partway out of my funk, but I was still well below sea level.
“He doesn’t know Timmy exists. Literally. We never married. He’s a good man, very bright, but I dropped him when I learned I was pregnant.”
“I don’t follow.”
“He’d have wanted to marry me, or have some part in my baby’s life. I didn’t want that.” My expression must have registered how offensive I found that, because she quickly explained. “You’ve got to understand how I was then: a super career woman who could do it all, wanted it all, and strictly on her own terms. I went through the pregnancy by myself, took maternity leave at the last possible moment, figuring I’d deliver the child—I knew he was a boy by the third month—and set him up with a nanny while I jumped right back into the race. I saw myself spending a sufficient amount of quality time with him as I molded him to be a mover and a shaker, just like his mother.” She shook her head. “What a jerk.”
“And after the delivery?” I’d guessed the answer.
She beamed. “When they put that little bundle into my arms, everything changed. He was a miracle, by far the finest thing I’d ever done in my life. Once I got him home, I couldn’t stop holding him. And when I would finally put him into his bassinet, I’d pull up a chair and sit there looking at him…I’d put my pinkie against his palm and his little fingers would close around it, almost like a reflex, and that’s how I’d stay, just sitting and staring, listening to him breathe as he held my finger.”
I felt my throat tighten. I remembered watching Beth sleep when she was an infant, marveling at her pudgy cheeks, counting the tiny veins on the surfaces of her closed eyelids.
“You sound like a wonderful mother.”
“I was. That’s no brag. It’s just that it’s simply not my nature to do things halfway. Everything else in my life took a backseat to Timmy, I mean way back. It damn near killed me to end my maternity leave, but I arranged to do a lot of work from home. I wanted to be near him all the time.” She blinked a few times and sniffed. “I’m so glad I made the effort. Because he didn’t stay around very long.” She rubbed a hand across her face and looked at me with reddened eyes. “How long since Beth…?”
“Five years.” The longing welled up in me. “Sometimes I feel like I was talking to her just yesterday, other times it seems like she’s been gone forever.”
“But don’t you see?” Kim leaned forward. “She’s not gone. She’s still here.”
I shook my head. “I wish I could believe that.”
The lightning episode was becoming less and les
s real with each passing minute. Despite what I’d seen, I found myself increasingly reluctant to buy into this.
“But you saw her, didn’t you? You knew her. Isn’t seeing believing?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes believing is seeing.”
“But each of us saw our dead child. Can we both be crazy?”
“There’s something called shared delusion. I could be—”
“Damn it!” She catapulted from the chair. “I’m not going to let you do this!” She yanked my pants from atop the lampshade and threw them at my face. “You can’t take this from me! I won’t let you or anybody else tell me—”
I grabbed her wrist as she stormed past me. “Kim! I want to believe! Can’t you see there’s nothing in the world I want more? And that’s what worries me. I may want it too much.”
I pulled her into my arms and we stood there, clinging to each other in anguished silence. I could feel her hot breath on my bare shoulder. She lifted her face to me.
“Don’t fight it, Joe,” she said, her voice soft. “Go with it. Otherwise you’ll be denying yourself—”