It was the truth but I kept it to myself. Like most things. People didn’t want the truth. They didn’t want to hear that you were drowning, barely keeping your head above water. No, they wanted you to say:I’m great! How are you?They wanted to talk about themselves and they wanted you to listen. But first, they had to pretend. Pretend they were actually asking. Pretend they cared. They didn’t. Just like I didn’t care about what kid was winning what award, or who was playing soccer, or how old little such-and-such was turning this year.
I admit it. I pretended too. We all did. But pretending was much easier when you kept things light. Ask how much propranolol you can get away with signing out before the pharmacist starts looking at you funny, and suddenly you find yourself locked on the other side of those unit doors. For me, death seemed much more appetizing than being trapped.
So that was why I did it. I doubted that was the answer he’d been wanting, though. Which was why I didn’t answer him at all. It seemed like the safer bet.
“I asked you a question, Jules,” he hummed while twirling the tip of a steak knife over the pad of his finger, pressing down hard enough to cause a trickle of blood to drip along the webbing of his hand. It didn’t appear to bother him. It didn’t bother me either. I wasn’t afraid to die. I was afraid of how long it would take for the dying to be over.
“You asked mea fewquestions,” I grumbled into my glass of OJ, flinching when I realized I’d said it aloud.
“I did, didn’t I? And you haven’t answered any of 'em.”
“Sor—” He cocked his head to the side. I swallowed down the rest of the word and quickly corrected myself. “What question would you like me to answer first, Mister…?”
“You want my name,MissKeller?” He grinned—I could see the way the mask moved up on his face—and I nodded. “Sure, why the fuck not?” He dropped the knife onto my half-empty plate, scooped them both up, and deposited them into the sink with a loudclatter. Then he stepped over the broken pieces on the floor, scraped the leftover food into the garbage disposal, and turned on the faucet. “It’s Cain,” he said, pausing as the grinding mechanisms rattled the lower cabinets. “Just Cain. No Mister. Got it?”
“Cain?” I repeated. “That’s very…” I tried to find the right word. Something that didn’t come off too judgy. “…biblical?”
He shrugged a single shoulder while setting the plate into the dishwasher and kicking the door closed again. “Yeah, my ma didn’t name me after no good book, Jules. More like her favorite thing in the whole wide world. But calling your newbornCokewouldabeen a little tooup the nose.” He tapped a finger to a nostril and made an exaggerated inhalation sound as he slid back into the chair in front of me. “Your turn, sweetheart. Which ona your parents got you all fucked up? I know it’s gotta be one of 'em?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HIM
I’d never given any of my girls my name before. Not that they could tell anyone if they wanted to. There just wasn’t much time to sit around and swap bedtime stories. Usually.
I glanced towards the window, eyeing the blizzard forming outside.There was plenty of time now, it seemed. No one was going anywhere with the roads looking like that.
I grabbed another knife from the butcher block on Jules’s counter, dragged my chair across the linoleum while kicking at the ceramic still scattered all over the floor until my leg was pressing against hers, and dropped back down in my seat. She didn’t pull away from me as I moved her dark hair out of her face and flipped it over her shoulder. She did sit higher though. Like someone had tugged her spine straight.
“Who hurt you, Jules?” I lowered my mouth to her ear. “Come on, you can tell me. It’ll be our little secret.” I watched the hair rise on the side of her neck and knewI’d struck a nerve. It was fucked up. To use the words my ma used to whisper to me before she stopped caring if I told anyone or not. ButIwas fucked up. I also wanted to know the answer and didn’t care how I went about getting it.
Nurse Keller leaned her head to one side so she could look at me, her eyes flicking up to meet mine. “My father.”
“Not very original. But I’ll take it.” I slapped a palm on the table, the other one clutching the knife I held at her back. “What he do?”
She shook her head. “I really don’t want to talk about?—”
“Did I ask if you wanted to do it?” I barked before she could finish speaking. “You know all that shrink stuff. At least you should. If you wanted to talk about it, it wouldn’t be a fucking thing. But keep talking about it, and then it doesn’t bother you so much.”
That last part wasn’t as true as everyone liked to tell ya. But a white lie never hurt none. Sometimes it was less painful than the truth.
“I can’t…” She stared at me with wide eyes, the kind that little deer had before some hunter clocked his mom in that animated movie.
Disney got a few things right, I guess.
“Ya can. Ya just need a little motivator to want to.” I nodded towards the knife in my hand, and she turned in her seat to glance at it.
Then she turned back around to look at me. “Do whatever you have to do.”
“Oh, this ain’t for you, sweetheart.” I slid my arm offthe top rail of her chair and lifted the blade to just under my jaw. Pressing until I could feel the warmth trickle down my throat, the rise and fall of my Adam’s apple causing the edge to bite deeper when I spoke. “It’s not much of a threat when ya want to die, but ain’t nurses supposed to protect and serve? Ain’t that in your oath or something?”
She jumped up, grabbed a clean rag from a cabinet, and pressed it to my neck before I had time enough to watch what she was doing. “That’s cops, you idiot,” she huffed out.
“What is?” I asked, peering up into those blue eyes of hers while she focused on whatever superficial damage I’d done—I wasn’t the one who was suicidal here.
“Protect and serve, that’s their motto. You’re thinking of the Hippocratic Oath. And nurses don’t take that either.”
She was wrong though. Most nurses cared more than doctors. Nurse Keller certainly did or she wouldn’t be so quick to patch me up.
