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The Becketts are at first reticent. The three of them exchange a glance, but it’s Mrs. Beckett who turns to me and asks, “Did you hear what they’re saying?”
In the last couple hours, the gossip mill has been at it again. It’s all anyone is talking about, how Caitlin Beckett was pushed from the pedestrian bridge. I’ve heard it again and again—at the nurses’ station, in the break room. Did you hear? The police were here. Caitlin Beckett didn’t jump after all. She was pushed. Eyes glinted as they spoke. Dear God and How awful, people said, but their voices betrayed them. They were less compassionate and more gossipy, everyone eager to find someone who hadn’t yet heard so they could be the one to break the news.
Every time I heard it, I bristled, thinking of the final shove that drove her over the edge.
“Yes,” I say, swallowing. “I did. It’s awful. I’m so sorry. Are they certain?”
“Yes.”
“Do they know who did it?” I ask.
Mrs. Beckett shakes her head as Jackson releases his hands from her shoulders, stepping back. There is this vacant, wooden expression on her face, though it’s not quite the same grief she’s been wearing on her sleeve the last few days; it’s something different. She turns away from me again; her eyes stray to her daughter on the bed. She scootches forward to the edge of her seat, stretching a hand to move a section of dark hair that’s fallen on Caitlin’s forehead, gently sweeping it aside and then staring for a long while at the stillness of her daughter’s face.
“The police don’t know. There was a witness. A woman who saw Caitlin on the bridge that day. Someone else was there,” Mr. Beckett says, and my heartbeats quicken at his words.
“Why would anybody do this?” Mrs. Beckett asks, holding back tears.
This time, it’s Mr. Beckett who places a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know,” and then to me he says, “She, this witness, was in a car on Lake Shore Drive, driving past. She didn’t get more than a few seconds’ look, but she’s certain there were two people on the bridge that day. She didn’t actually see Caitlin get pushed, otherwise she would have called the police right away, but she saw something happening on that bridge, something contentious. And then she drove on and forgot all about it because it’s a big city and altercations happen all the time, and she wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t just two people screwing around.”
Mr. Beckett’s phone rings then. He takes it from his pocket, looking down at the screen. “I’m sorry,” he says, “but I have to take this. It’s for work.” He excuses himself, stepping out into the hall to take the call.
Mrs. Beckett turns to me, picking up where her husband left off. “This woman didn’t give it another thought until that segment the other day on the news, about suicide in the city. I didn’t see it but I heard about it. She knew our Caitlin didn’t jump like they said. Something else happened on the bridge that day. The police looked into it. Caitlin was living with a friend, but she had started working with a Realtor just a few weeks ago. She was looking into condos to buy. Caitlin was putting down roots. Who thinks of the future and does things like looking for condos to buy if they’re suicidal?”
She locks eyes with me, and I see something new in them now. Shock, anger and fear, but even more than that: relief. Her daughter wasn’t depressed like she thought, and she didn’t have a desire to die. “They’re saying it was an attempted homicide, Meghan. Not a suicide attempt after all. Which means Caitlin didn’t try and take her own life like we thought.” There’s a long, pregnant pause and then she says, “Someone else did.”
My stomach clenches. Homicide. Murder. It sounds so brutal, so cold-blooded when she says it that my mouth turns suddenly acidic, tasting like vinegar as saliva collects under my tongue and in my mouth.
“Do you think it’s possible someone lured her to that bridge?” she asks now, speculating.
“Maybe,” I say, my shoulders rising up into a shrug.
“Do you think whoever did this was there, waiting for her to come?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.” Now that the police are involved, they will focus on finding who did this. Twenty-four hours ago that was irrelevant, but now it’s the only thing that matters, aside from keeping Caitlin alive, though as the days pass and every day I come in to find her still unconscious, I wonder if she’ll always be that way.
“What is it, Meghan?” she asks, and I realize I’m not looking at her anymore, that my eyes have strayed and I’m staring at the bare white wall, somewhere far away.
“There was a man here the other day,” I say, meeting her eye. “He came to see Caitlin.” As I say it, I think of his eyes again, the way they traveled my body to my name tag, looking at it with interest.
“A man?” Mr. Beckett asks, returning to the room just then, coming to stand beside his wife, concern manifest in the lines of his forehead. I should have told them about this man before, and now I wish I had, that I hadn’t kept that to myself.
I watch as he slips an arm around the small of her waist, drawing her close. “You didn’t tell us,” he says, and at first, it sounds like an accusation and maybe it is.
“No. I didn’t. I’m sorry,” I say, my face hot. “I didn’t think it was worth mentioning. He said he was a friend.”
“What was his name?”
“He didn’t say. Visitors are supposed to report to the nurses’ station when they arrive, and if he had, we wouldn’t have let him in. I’m so sorry,” I say.
“Well, what did he look like?” Mrs. Beckett asks.
I describe the man for them. I tell them about his dark, curly hair, the blue eyes, the bent nose. The Becketts’ bodies stiffen, growing taller. They look at one another and decide, “We don’t know anyone who looks like that.”
Mrs. Beckett’s voice quivers when she speaks. “What did he want?”
“To visit, I assumed, but I told him only family was allowed in Caitlin’s room and that he’d have to leave, and he did.” It wouldn’t have been hard for him to find Caitlin’s room without reporting to the nurses’ station. There are thirty beds in our ICU, ten beds broken down into three pods. There is a whiteboard at the nurses’ station, where the charge nurse sits, designating assignments. For purposes of privacy and to avoid HIPAA violations, patients are listed by initials only, but that would be enough for someone who knows her to recognize her by, if the whiteboard was visible to him. It’s not exactly on display, but it’s not inconspicuous either. Anyone passing by with decent eyesight could see it.
Aside from that, the doors are made of glass. They’re easy to see straight through. The hallway can be chaotic at times. In fact, it’s often chaotic. The nurses’ station is a central hub. It’s located in the center of the pod and is where everyone congregates. At any given time, there are people milling around it, so it would be easy to see how a person could slip by and no one would notice, no one would think twice.
