“I sure as hell hope not,” he said. “Because if it is, losing your job is the least of your worries.”
The Present
Twenty
“IT JUST doesn’t make sense,” says Patti Harney as she paces back and forth, making herself crazy, unable to contain her thoughts or control her emotions. The last two weeks she’s felt like a pilot trying to navigate through meteors hurtling at her from every direction. Even though it’s the middle of June, she hasn’t seen sunlight for more than a week and sometimes loses track of whether it’s day or night.
“Well, this is definitely not my area.” Her brother Brendan, the oldest child in the family, is a financial planner who moved to Dallas when he fell in love with a Texas girl after college. Brendan rolls his neck and grimaces. He’s been sleeping, if you can call stretching out on a chair and catching a couple hours of shut-eye “sleep.” He’s wearing a shirt he’s had on for the past two days, the collar and armpits stained with sweat, his hair sticking up like it used to when they were kids after a wrestling skirmish between him and the second oldest, Aiden. They used to spend entire days trying to pin each other to the basement floor.
Speak of the devil: Aiden comes out of the bathroom, having splashed water on his face and run some through his hair—as always, too long for Patti’s taste, as if anyone asked her opinion. Aiden is divorced and lives in Saint Louis, where he manages a gym. Why he didn’t move back to Chicago after he split with his ex Patti never understood.
“What’s not your area?” Aiden asks.
“How all this happened,” says Brendan. “The shooting.”
“We still talking about that?”
“She is.” Brendan flips his hand toward Patti. “Pop says it’s obvious what happened. Kate walks in on Billy in bed with this woman Amy, and she goes crazy and starts shooting. She kills Amy, but Billy manages to get a round off before she shoots him.”
“I don’t believe that,” says Patti. “I just don’t.”
“Does it matter?” Aiden wipes a towel over his face. He’s a workout fanatic, which makes the choice of managing a gym a good one for him. His gray Russell Athletic T-shirt is probably two sizes too small for him. He has the bent ears of a former wrestler and looks like he could still be one. He walks over to the bed in the room and gently grips Billy’s ankle over the bedsheet. “All that matters is that our boy is way too tough to let a single fuckin’ bullet keep him down.”
Patti looks over at Billy, who looks like another person—not her brother, not Billy—his head wrapped, hooked up to tubes and machines and monitors. A portion of his skull was removed to lessen the swelling in his brain. These people actually have part of his skull on ice somewhere in this hospital.
Please come back, Billy. You got this far. You survived this much.
It’s been two and a half months since it happened. Two surgeries. The prognosis grim. The doctor explained it to all of them, the whole family—Patti and her brothers and her father—as though he were teaching a class. With a brain injury, he said, it’s like real estate. Location, location, location.
Nobody thought that was cute.
Some good news here, the doc said. The bullet traveled a straight front-to-back trajectory. It didn’t cross the midline, didn’t hit the brain stem or thalamus. It looks like it injured only one hemisphere and only one lobe. It was a low-velocity bullet, and the path was quite linear. There was no yaw, he said. Think of a football moving through the air in a tight spiral versus wobbling. This bullet was a tight spiral, with no wobble.
Patti had furiously scribbled down these words like a secretary taking dictation, not that she really knew what any of it meant. The only words that really registered with her were some good news.
The bad news, the doctor said, is that Billy actually lost brain activity for quite some time, as much as thirty minutes, which was why the responding police officers and paramedics initially thought Billy was dead. He was dead. And then he came back to life. It happens, the doctor said, but not very often.
The long and short: Billy has already beaten tremendous odds. But the truth is that he’s very unlikely to survive, and if he does, we have no way of knowing what kind of damage was done to his brain. We can guess, but we won’t really know until he regains consciousness.
“He’s going to make it,” says Patti. “And he’s gonna be better than ever.”
“Damn straight,” says Aiden.
“He’ll probably be a bigger pain in the ass than ever,” Brendan adds.
“He’ll be like Rain Man or something. He’ll be doing multiplication tables in his head. Like he wasn’t already smarter than the rest of us combined.”
That last part is true. Billy had a mind that never stopped calculating, always ten steps ahead of everyone else—
No, he has that mind, not had. He’s coming back. He’s going to come back. He has to.
“I can’t sit here doing nothing,” she says.
“You’re not doing nothing,” says Brendan. “You’re staying with Billy.”
“I’m gonna get some air.” She pushes open the door and comes upon her father in the hallway.
“Check again,” he says into his cell phone. “I said check again. I don’t care. That can’t be right.” He punches off the phone and turns and sees Patti. “Oh, sweetheart—”
“What can’t be right?”
Her father tucks his phone into his pocket, as if hiding the phone will hide the secret.
“Patti, go home and take a shower. Get some sleep. I promise I’ll—”
“What can’t be right, Dad?” She holds her ground.
Her father looks terrible, just as run-down as the rest of the family. The last two weeks have aged him considerably.
“Ballistics,” he says. “It must be a screwup.”
“Tell me, Dad.”
“I…they…it…it can’t—” Her father takes Patti in his arms. He’s hugged her more in the last two weeks than he has in her entire life, even when Mom died, six years ago.
He whispers in her ear. “I’m sure it’s a mistake,” he said. “Ballistics came back on the shooting. Amy Lentini wasn’t shot by Kate’s gun. She was shot by Billy’s gun.”
Patti pushes herself away from her dad. “What?”
Her father nods. His eyes fall to the ground. “They say the first person to fire a gun in that room was Billy. He shot Amy, then turned the gun on Kate, who fired back at the same time.”
She feels herself backpedaling. “No…no…I…no.”
“It can’t be right.” Her father, the chief of detectives, runs a hand through his grimy hair. “It just can’t be right.”
Twenty-One
PATTI LOSES track of time, marching the hallways of the hospital, not wanting to roam too far from Billy but unable to sit still.
None of this is right. The whole scene at Amy’s apartment. And now they’re saying Billy fired first? Billy killed Amy Lentini?
No, it can’t be. She knows it’s not true.
Now you really have to come back, Billy. You have to say what happened. You have to clear your name. You can’t let this be how you’re remembered. You have to come back, you have to come back, or all this will be my fault—
Wait. How long—how long has she been gone? What if the doctor comes? That would be just her luck—she sits in that damn room for more than ten hours, but then the fucking doctor shows up in the brief window of time when she walks out. I’ll bet that happened. I’ll bet he decides to waltz in while I’m gone—
She finds the elevator and stabs at the button so many times she’s sure she’s killed it.
“Come on!” she shouts at the elevator. Heads turn all around her.
Screw you guys. You try losing your brother, the only person who ever really understood you, the only person you’ve ever trusted in this miserable world, and tell me how well behaved you’d be—
The elevator doors slide open. Two elderly patients inside in wheelchairs, younger family memb
ers behind them.
Please don’t leave me, Billy. And now—what they’re saying about you. I know it’s not true. Help me clear your name. Come back to me, Billy; please come back, please come back, or all this will be my fault—
The door pops open. She races down the hallway, knocking into a tray of food, mumbling an apology—
At the door, at Billy’s door, a woman in scrubs. African American, cornrows, a petite figure.
“Doctor,” she calls out.
The woman turns. Dressed in surgical scrubs, yes, but she’s no doctor.
She’s Kim Beans, the reporter for ChicagoPC, the online newspaper covering politics and crime in Chicago. The rag that, last winter and this spring, dripped out a name each day, one at a time—celebrities who were caught patronizing the now infamous brownstone on the Gold Coast where the mayor was arrested.
“Patti?” she says. “Hi!”
“You.” Patti’s hands ball into fists.
A beautiful woman, yes, once destined to be a major star on the Chicago television news scene before it was discovered that she got a little too cozy with the subject of a story she was handling, a local kidnapping. She probably figured the brownstone-brothel story was going to get her back in the good graces of the Chicago news media.
If all Kim did was leak celebrity names from that brownstone, Patti would just chalk her up as another media jackal.
But she will never forgive Kim for what she did to Billy.
“Hang on, Patti. I’m on your side.”
“You’re not on anybody’s side but your own.” Patti gets up close and personal with Kim. “You have five seconds to walk out of here, or I’ll have you arrested.”
“You’re gonna arrest a reporter?”
“You mean a trespasser. Disguised as a surgeon. A reporter who doesn’t have the right to barge into the ICU to interview the family. Or to snap photos of a man in a coma—”
“I just want your side of it.”
“Five seconds,” says Patti. “One…two…three…”
“Patti—”
“Four…”
“Listen to me, Patti.”
Patti slaps Kim hard across the face, a satisfying, full-palm smack. Kim almost falls over in the process, looks back at Patti with fire in her eyes.
“Five,” says Patti.
“I can be your friend or your enemy,” Kim says. “Don’t forget that.”
Patti watches Kim walk down to the elevator and get in. Then she lets out a breath and walks into the room.
Aiden and Brendan are laughing.
“…and Patti was playing Mary, holding the baby Jesus. And you’re Joseph. All you have to do is sit there while the three Wise Men bring their gifts to the baby Jesus. I don’t even think you had a speaking part. Right?” Brendan, sitting on the right side of the bed, his hand holding Billy’s, looks across the bed at Aiden, who has the left side covered.
Aiden can’t even speak, he’s laughing so hard.
Patti feels her face warm. She remembers this all too well. She and Billy were six, in CCD, putting on a little Christmas story for the parents. All Billy was supposed to do was sit silently through the whole play.
“So right there in the middle of the play, Mrs. Ginger is sort of whispering to you guys what to do, and all the parents are sitting there in those shitty folding chairs, and all of a sudden you raise your hand and say, “Mrs. Ginger? How’d Mary have a baby if she was a virgin?”
Aiden and Brendan lose it. Patti does, too. It feels so good, the release. And it gets better.
Aiden wants to tell the next part. “So Mrs. Ginger, she’s trying to shush you, she’s like, ‘Billy, shh, Billy, shh,’ and some of the parents are already giggling, and before she can get to you, you say, ‘My pop says Mary must have had a hell of a time explaining that one to Joseph.’”
They all erupt. What a moment. Mom was mortified. Her father even more so. He wasn’t exactly a God-fearing Catholic—he said the job took all the faith out of him—but their mother was a churchgoer ’til the day she died.
Aiden has tears in his eyes. As the laughter subsides, the emotions ride the inevitable roller coaster. Brendan, the big brother, always the one trying to pick everyone else up, pats Billy’s arm. “You remember that, don’t you, buddy? You brought down the whole room.”
Aiden pushes himself away from the bed, tears falling. Such a big, muscle-bound guy with tears running down his cheeks—she remembers him crying when Mom died, but she can’t remember any other time. “It seems like just yesterday Billy was in a hospital just like this one.”
“I know,” says Brendan. “It was three freakin’ years ago. Can you believe it?”
Aiden shakes his head. “He was starting to get back on his feet, y’know? I mean, he was just recovering from all that, and this happens.”
“Well, if it isn’t the Four Stooges.” It’s Mike Goldberger—Goldie—entering the room, dusting off the nickname that everyone used for the Harney kids when they were growing up.
Her brothers greet Goldie, whom they’ve known for years, and he tells them he’ll take the next shift; they should go get something to eat.
Brendan grabs Billy’s ankle and says, “You hang in there while I’m gone, baby brother, or I’ll kick your ass.”
When they’ve left, Goldie gives Patti a once-over.
“Your pop told you about ballistics,” he says.
She nods.
“It’s bad,” he says. “And it’s about to get worse.”
Twenty-Two
“SO HOW’S our guy doing?” Goldie talking.
“Oh, you know with these doctors.” That’s Patti. “It’s all probabilities and prefacing every remark. Honestly, as much as I hate to say it—they’re saying he’s not going to make it.”
That doesn’t sound good.
“They’re saying it’s a miracle he got this far. I mean, he was actually dead for a while.”
I was?
“Yeah, I remember.”
Well, with all due respect to Mr. Twain, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
Although I don’t feel alive, either. I can’t feel anything, not my arms, not my legs. I can’t see anything, either. I can hear them, though, their voices muted like I’m inside some enclosure. Floating like a fetus inside a womb.
“And they say there’s no telling how he’ll come out of it if he does.”
A drooling vegetable?
“He could have a completely different personality.”
Some people might say that’s an improvement.
“He might not have any memory.”
Well, I remember you, Patti. And Goldie. And Mark Twain.
And my badge number. And pi to ten decimal places.
But I don’t remember how I got here.
“I hear the surgeries went well,” says Goldie.
“As good as they could, yeah. You know they removed part of the back of his skull to reduce the swelling.”
Hold up—part of my skull is missing? What the fuck happened to me? Yo, Patti-Cake, you wanna do a little background for those of us who are just tuning in?
“They say the bullet didn’t hit the left hemisphere,” she says. “The part that controls speech and language.”
Ah, okay. I got shot in the brain? The right side, sounds like.
So I’ll be in a wheelchair the rest of my life, but at least I’ll have my “speech and language,” so I can coherently ask the nurse for more applesauce.
“Well, that’s good.”
Nurse! I want more applesauce! Who do I have to kill around here to get more applesauce?
“Anyway, my dad told me about ballistics. It can’t be right. It’s not right, Goldie.”
“I know, I hear you—I mean, your pop’s got ’em redoing the entire testing. But really, when is ballistics ever wrong?”
“Billy’s not the shooter,” she says.
I shot someone? Who’d I shoot? The guy who shot me, I hope.
; “I’ll bet this’ll make the mayor happy,” says Goldie. “Or at least his lawyers.”
The mayor? Why would Mayor Francis Delaney care about me?
Did I shoot him?
Think back, guy. What do you remember?
I remember…a murder. A college girl. University of Chicago, I think. Then…then what?
Then—nothing. Nothing but a fuzzy screen.
I remember Stewart…
…sometimes, during the worst parts, I’d rest my hand over his, and we wouldn’t look at each other…both of us holding back tears, too proud to admit it…
…the jokes…the old man laughing so hard he sounded like a busted car engine, like he was about to expel a lung…
…laughing so we wouldn’t cry…
I remember when it was over. Feeling like…
…like I wanted to die, too.
I don’t want to remember anymore. I don’t want to remember anything.
“What was that? Did you hear something? Was that…Billy?”
“Billy! Billy, can you hear me?”
I can hear you, Patti, but I want to go away now…
“Stewart,” says Goldie. “I thought I heard ‘Stewart.’ Who’s Stewart?”
“Stewart was the old guy in the hospital, remember? Back when Billy practically lived at Children’s Memorial—”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Stewart’s grandson was hit by a car. They waited together for weeks. They got real close.”
I don’t want to remember that…
“Billy, are you there, pal?”
“Billy, it’s me. It’s your sister. Can you hear me?”
“Hey, Brendan, it’s Goldie. We think maybe we heard Billy speak. Okay, hurry.”
“Billy, you need to come back to me. Please, Billy. You can do it.”
I don’t know how…I don’t know if I want to…
“Do it for me, Billy. I need you. We love you, Billy. The family’s all here. Brendan and Aiden are here. Dad’s here. Goldie’s here. Come back to us, Billy. We need you to come back.”
I feel something.