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He stares down at the white sheet, lost in thought, clearly affected. He reaches into his pants’ pocket and pulls out his phone. His hands are shaking now and his whole demeanor has changed.
He checks again, over his shoulder, to make sure his wife isn’t on her way back from lunch, and then he holds the phone out and puts it on speaker so that we can both hear.
He plays the voice mail for me.
Her voice, when I first hear it, throws me off-balance. It’s not the way I expected it to sound. What I expected was something more bold or self-assured, but not this.
“Daddy,” she says. Her voice is thin, reedy, like she’s trying not to cry. It complements the woman on the bed before me: naked, frail and exposed. She lets that one word slip—Daddy—and then she goes quiet and I wonder if she’s trying to compose herself or if she’s deciding what to say next. What does she want to tell him? What does she want him to know?
My heart has started to beat harder inside my chest, waiting for her revelation. Before me, Mr. Beckett rubs at the lines of his forehead. His head drops, slumping forward, hanging heavy. He’s no doubt listened to this voice mail a thousand times now, so that he knows it by heart, every word, her cadence, the rise and fall of her voice, every long pause.
The silence goes on, though it’s not only silence because there is some white noise, static, in the background, like running water or the whir of a fan. Just as I start to think the voice mail will end like that, with that one word—Daddy—her voice comes to me again through the speaker, breathy now, desperate and emphatic, losing composure. “I’m in trouble. I need your help,” she declares, and my throat constricts, my heart starts to beat even faster. She goes quiet again, and I wait with bated breath, wondering what she’s going to say, watching as the phone’s progress bar nears the end, the little dash traveling across the black line like a bullet train. She has less than eight seconds to say something—now seven, six—and I start to think that’s all she’ll say, that one desperate admission: I’m in trouble. I need your help.
But then, all of a sudden, there’s noise in the background. The slamming of a door maybe, or something fell. A thud and then a voice—mumbled, just out of earshot, weak. I can’t hear what the person says, nor can I tell if it’s a man or a woman, but what I can hear is the way Caitlin draws in a sharp breath, her voice becoming instantly composed as she says, “No one. Just a wrong number.”
I flinch, pulling back, caught off guard by her words.
No one. Just a wrong number.
The call ends all of a sudden and silence fills the hospital room. Mr. Beckett’s head slowly lifts. He turns to me. There are tears in his eyes now and I wonder if they’re from sadness or from guilt and I want to say something, to assuage that guilt, but don’t.
“Money,” he says, by means of explanation. “I thought she only wanted money.” He shakes his head, disappointed in himself. “Please don’t tell my wife about this,” he begs and I nod. I won’t tell anyone. “You’re the only one I’ve told.” I don’t know what to feel about this. I understand the need to unload, to get it off his chest. But why me? Why is he telling this to me? “I don’t want her to know that Caitlin called.” There is a moment of hesitation, a beat of silence, and then he says, “She’ll think our daughter is practically dead because of me.”
Later, I’m alone in the break room. It’s a misnomer—break room—because we don’t often get breaks. Most days we sit and we eat, but it’s fast, shoveling food in quickly so we can get back to our patients, but some days even that is a luxury.
I’m sitting at a little round table, eating leftovers from last night, thinking about my conversation with Mr. Beckett.
The small TV on the counter is on; it always is, even when no one is here to watch it. I’m staring at the evening news when Luke comes in, singing untimely Christmas carols, though the little tabletop tree with its lights and garland that was on the counter has been put away until next year. Luke is almost always upbeat. He’s one of only two male nurses on staff, which is typical—only something like 12 or 14 percent of nurses are men—though, contrary to popular belief, he’s not gay. You don’t have to be gay to be a male nurse. He’s married to a woman, though he was single for so long that people came to their own conclusions about him. His wife is gorgeous too, like a goddess.
Luke stops midsong when he sees me and smiles, his dimples deepening. “What’s on the menu today?”
“Spaghetti,” I say, picking at it with a plastic fork. It’s four in the afternoon, well after lunchtime, but is the first opportunity I’ve had all day to sit and eat.
“That sounds good.”
I make a face. “It’s not. It’s cold. The microwave won’t work.”
“Again?”
“Still.”
“I can take a look at it if you want,” he says, which is typical Luke, to want to help people, to want to fix things.
I tell him not to worry about it and, at the same time, his attention drifts to the TV. “What are you watching?” he asks.
“The news,” I say, as a breaking story comes on about another attack that happened in the city last night, this time on Grace Street, which is just two blocks from where Sienna and I live. My stomach churns. Luke stands beside the table and we watch in disgust as the anchor describes how the attack happened just after eight o’clock last night. This victim, like the others, was followed into her apartment through the back door, which she entered from the alley, climbing the back steps to the third floor. The assailant waited in the shadows for her to unlock the door. He stood silently by and let her open it. He came up from behind and forced her inside, but then, unlike in most previous times where the women were only robbed, this one was also raped. She never got a look at the man’s face because it was dark in her apartment and because he came at her from behind, forcing her to the ground face down, telling her that he had a gun and that if she so much as thought about screaming, he’d end her life.
I push my Tupperware away. I can’t eat.
Luke is quiet at first. He holds his breath before slowly releasing it, his anger palpable, and I know he’s thinking about his wife and what he’d do if this man ever laid a hand on her.
He says, “Last week I got asked to cover for someone for the night shift.” The night shift runs from seven at night until seven in the morning. “I said no, though Penelope and I really could use the extra money, you know?” he asks and I do know that. Luke has told me before about their financial situation. His wife is about ten years younger than him, pregnant and on bed rest for preterm labor; she’s unable to work and so they’re relying on one income for the time being, which has been an adjustment for them. It’s hard, especially with a baby on the way. “I don’t like the idea of her being home alone all night. Each of the victims lived alone,” he tells me, which is right, when I think about it, though I hadn’t until now. “He watches them. He knows when they’ll be alone.”
His words are chilling. A shiver runs through me as I think how the entire city’s sense of security has been completely upended by this one man.
I picture Sienna and my apartment. We have a back door too, like this latest victim. The back door leads to a small wooden deck that overlooks a communal backyard, which is shared by the building’s tenants. Just beyond the yard is an alleyway. I don’t often use the back door but if I did, that woman could just as easily have been me, tired, coming home from a long day of work. Most of the time, Sienna is home when I come home, but sometimes she’s not. Sometimes she’s with Ben and, on the nights that I work, Sienna is home alone.
Luke fills his water from the dispenser and leaves, and I shift my attention back to the news. Another story comes on, this one about a recent wave of suicides in the city. I reach for the remote, turning the volume higher. “Just last week,” the anchor says, “a fourteen-year-old boy took his own life, because of cyberbullying. And, over the weekend, a Chicago police officer was found dead in his apartment from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
