AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That evening, after I’ve given my end of shift report to the night nurse and am getting ready to leave, a young woman steps into the ICU, slipping in before someone has a chance to lock the door for the night. It’s just after seven o’clock. My shift has been over for a few minutes. I’ve gotten my things already—my coat and my bag—and I stand at the nurses’ station saying my goodbyes.
I turn at the sound of the door opening, watching as the woman steps cautiously through the doorway. Her hair is fine, a dark brown that’s practically black, very monotone, which suggests to me an at-home box dye. She has long, straight bangs that sweep sideways across a small forehead before getting tucked behind an ear on the opposite side. Her small body is practically lost in an army surplus jacket, the olive drab arms overtaking her wrists and hands. The body of it is too wide, and I wonder if she picked it up from a thrift store, which is something Sienna and her friends are into these days: thrifting, seeing how far their allowance can stretch.
“Can I help you?” I ask, calling gently out to her. I smile, trying to take the edge off. She smiles back, but it’s perfunctory. No sooner does she smile than the smile is gone.
She steps hesitantly up to the desk. “I’m, um,” she says, slow to find her words, “looking for Caitlin Beckett.”
Up close I see that gold hoop earrings hang from her earlobes. The cartilage is pierced—a thin, minimalist hoop hugging the helix—as is her nose, where a tiny gold stud pokes out of the crease. Her skin is fair, pale even, which is completely contradictory to the dark hair. She’s young and lovely, with a heart-shaped face, wider around the forehead and eyes, narrowing at the chin.
“Visiting hours just ended,” I say, and then I ask, “Are you family?”
“No,” she says, shifting from one foot to the other, crossing and then uncrossing her arms, constantly in flux, “a friend.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, hating to be the one to tell her, though the Becketts are more adamant than ever that no one can see Caitlin but them. “Only family is allowed to see Ms. Beckett. But if you want,” I offer, “if you give me your name, I can let Mr. and Mrs. Beckett know you stopped by. I’m sure it would mean a lot to—” I start to say, but my voice drops off because, at the mention of their names, she stops listening. She stops moving. She plants both feet firmly on the ground beneath her, standing centimeters taller.
She gives me a hard blink. “They’re...they’re here?” she asks in a low tone and I feel her words somewhere deep inside of me.
“Yes, of course,” I say. “Why?”
I see her larynx move in her throat as she swallows.
Her eyes start to stray, leaving mine. As I watch, they pass slowly over the unit, studying the faces of people at the nurses’ station, and then moving on through the hall. Visiting hours are ending now, the night nurses encouraging loved ones to leave. It’s a process. Some go right away at a nurse’s first request, but others take more nudging. Regardless, people emerge from patient rooms, carrying coats and purses; this woman watches them all, looking through the glass and into the rooms.
She finds Caitlin’s. It’s not that hard, because of its adjacency to the nurses’ station and because of the ICU’s very design, which is intended for visibility. It’s important that the medical staff can see inside of them, in case of an emergency.
I don’t have to see the Becketts for myself to know that she’s found them. I see it in her response, in the deep breath that she draws swiftly in and holds in her lungs. As I watch, her eyes squint, sharpening the image before her like the turning of a camera’s lens, bringing objects closer and into focus.
I let my gaze go then to the Becketts, to see what she sees. On the other side of the glass, they sit, administering to Caitlin as they’ve done for all these days that she’s been here, though I’m not used to seeing it like this, from outside the room instead of inside of it with them. It feels intrusive, like I’m some sort of voyeur for watching, but at the same time, I find it’s impossible to look away.
The night nurse isn’t there, nor is Jackson. The police were here earlier, talking to the Becketts, but they’ve left too. For now, it’s just Mr. and Mrs. Beckett in the room with Caitlin, and their movements, their gestures are tender and affectionate. It takes my breath away at first and I stand there, moved by how endearing the whole scene is to someone on the outside looking in.
Mrs. Beckett sits perched on the edge of the bed. She holds a washcloth in her hands, gently wiping the visible parts of Caitlin’s face with it. Gauze is still wrapped around Caitlin’s head, though it’s been unwrapped and rewrapped to check the incision, and between it and the endotracheal tube taped to Caitlin’s face, pulling at the skin, there isn’t much for Mrs. Beckett to clean.
When she’s done, she sets the washcloth aside and reaches for a tube of ChapStick, which she sweeps across Caitlin’s lips, moisturizing as best she can around the tube. All the while, Mr. Beckett sits in the chair beside her, leaned in, his hand on his wife’s knee. He takes the ChapStick from her when she’s done with it, replaces the cap and sets it aside, and then he reaches for Mrs. Beckett’s hand. The intimacy between them, as a couple and as a family, is undeniable and I feel a stab of envy because the relationship I have with my parents is something less.
The woman’s voice is apoplectic when she speaks.
“Caitlin would have fucking hated this,” she says, the jaggedness of her words cutting into me like a knife.
“Hated what?” I ask, pulling back, tearing my eyes away from the Becketts to bring them to her, though she’s so taken with what’s happening in the room that she doesn’t return my gaze.
“This. Them,” she says, louder now, her voice seeping with disgust, making a dramatic sweeping gesture with her arm to indicate the whole scene, “hovering over her.”
My eyes go back to Caitlin’s room and I watch now as Mr. Beckett pushes himself from the chair and rises to his feet. He comes to stand behind his wife. His hands settle on her shoulders, his thumbs digging in, massaging them. She lets her own hands fall away from Caitlin and to her lap. She sags back, leaning into him, her exhaustion manifest after all these endless days of never leaving this place, of administering to Caitlin, of sleeping in the waiting room at night or, more likely, not sleeping. Mr. Beckett says something to her. I can’t hear him, but I see his lips move and then I watch as she firmly shakes her head—an adamant no—and I know that he’s trying to talk her into leaving, that he’s trying to convince her to go home with him for the night and sleep. But she won’t have it.
I bring my eyes back to this young woman’s face, searching her eyes. “Why would she hate this?” I ask.
Of course I can see why she’d hate the fact that she was unconscious, wearing an adult diaper and urinating into a bag. But that’s not what she means.
She looks at me, turning her head in slow motion. “Don’t fall for their charade.”
“Their charade?”
“They’re not who they pretend to be. Caitlin hated her parents. Both of them, but her mother especially. She would die if she knew what was happening right now.”
I look back into the room. Mr. Beckett is leaving now. He’s slipping his arms into a coat and moving toward the door, with his back to Mrs. Beckett. Mrs. Beckett still sits by the bedside, readjusting a pillow and then drawing the thermal hospital blanket up to Caitlin’s neck. It won’t be long until the night nurse asks her to leave too, and I imagine how Mrs. Beckett must relish these last few minutes before she has to leave for the waiting room. She draws the blanket higher than I would and I think how easy it would be to suffocate an unconscious person if you wanted to, if not for the glass walls and the nurses’ station so close by, though most of the time everyone is so busy they wouldn’t even notice something like that. It’s only the screaming of medical devices indicating changes in heart rhythm, in blood pressure and other vital signs that might call attention to what’s happening inside the room, though even those are often false alarms and don’t actually require immediate attention.
I turn back to ask the woman why Caitlin hated them so much.
