CHAPTER 4-1
2011 Words
CHAPTER 4
Every time Kennedy glanced at the car’s clock, she regretted she wasn’t at Aida with Reuben. Would they be into the second act by now? She didn’t know a whole lot about the Elton John show. She just knew she liked the music samples she’d heard online and it boasted rave reviews and several Tony awards.
Tonight was supposed to be something special, something she and Reuben could look back on and remember for years to come.
What had happened?
She’d dissected every second, from the moment they got into Willow’s car until the ambulance drove him away. What had gone wrong?
He had wanted to tell her something, and in her childishness, she’d dared to hope it had to do with their relationship. Had to do with his feelings for her. Part of her would be happy keeping things as they were. She and Reuben worked so well together, and if they started to actually date, there was always the chance of ruining a perfect friendship. But then again, what if they could go even deeper, enjoy each other’s company even more fully? It was worth the risk, wasn’t it? She thought about the line in The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis. “Further up and further in.” The representation of exponential improvement. An eternity of ever-increasing joys that carried you closer and closer to infinity, just like an asymptote.
All of her musings were pointless, however. Whatever it was, something had turned Reuben against her. He had done so much for her last semester, helped her through so many trying ordeals. Why would he shut her out now?
She wasn’t paying attention to where she was driving and realized she had missed her turn. If she kept going this way, she’d end up at Providence Hospital.
Providence Hospital.
She weighed her options. She could drown her sorrow and confusion over tea and Sandy’s homemade desserts, or she could actually talk to Reuben.
She stayed on the freeway.
When she pulled up at the hospital, her muscles were as tight and wound up as a spring scale. She texted the Lindgrens to cancel their plans and practiced a few of her deep breaths before getting out of the car. She could do this. If she could handle twenty-two Harvard credits and maintain a 3.9 GPA, she could walk into a hospital and offer her friend the emotional support he needed.
The wind had picked up. She clutched her light coat against her chest as her hair whipped across her face. Sometime during her scuffle with the cop, she had lost her barrette. She sighed and tried to envision herself exhaling all her disappointment and anger like those breathing gurus suggested.
It didn’t work.
As soon as she stepped inside Providence, she realized she had no idea how to find Reuben. She walked up to the information desk. “Hi, I’m looking for my friend. He came here by ambulance about half an hour ago.”
The man behind the booth didn’t smile. “Name?”
“Reuben Murunga.” She spelled it for him as he typed on his keyboard.
“Looks like they have him in the ER. Do you know the way?”
She didn’t answer. Her steps grew slower the closer she got to the emergency room. What was she doing here? Weren’t there all kinds of patient privacy laws that would keep her from seeing Reuben, or was that just in movies and TV shows?
When she reached the ER, she wasn’t sure who she should talk to, so she rooted herself in line behind a harried mother bouncing a crying baby and a middle-aged man with his arm in a sling. When it was Kennedy’s turn, she walked up to the glass partition and explained into the microphone why she had come.
“Let me ask if he’s accepting visitors. What’s your name?”
“Kennedy Stern.”
The triage nurse picked up the phone, but Kennedy couldn’t hear the conversation through the partition. The woman hung up and pointed to some empty chairs. “Have a seat. Someone will be out to talk with you shortly.”
Kennedy stared for just a moment in hopes of reading the woman’s expression. Why would they send someone to talk to her? It seemed like they would either let Kennedy see Reuben or not. Why all the extra meetings and waiting? Did she have to prove she knew him or something?
She sat in a chair and glanced at a young man whose arm was draped around his wife or girlfriend. Kennedy couldn’t see her face but could read the sorrow in her posture. The man kept his whole body hunched over as if he wanted to shield her from the world. Fear and grief were written on his face as clearly as the colored pigments on chromatography paper. After a perfectly still moment, he took his finger and lifted some stray hair off the woman’s forehead.
Kennedy pried her eyes away from the private scene and glanced at the other faces, the others here waiting. Sometimes it was hard to tell who was here for medical treatment and who had come to offer support. She was one of the only people there by herself.
“Miss Stern.” The title sounded foreign. Kennedy glanced up, half expecting to see a nurse ready to escort someone much older into the back rooms. But the man looking directly at her wasn’t a nurse.
She stared at the uniformed police officer and wasn’t sure if she should stand and go with him or try to run away. Was this what her dad warned her about? Was the cop going to accuse her of drug possession and drag her off to jail?
She glanced around. Several eyes were on her. What did these people think she’d done? There wasn’t anywhere she could go.
“You Kennedy Stern?” he asked, and she wondered why he didn’t keep his voice down. What happened to confidentiality laws?
She nodded.
He held a door open. “Will you please come with me?”
The hallway branched off in one direction and then another. Kennedy was lost within her first few turns following him. Each corridor looked the same, each hall so brightly lit she had to squint to keep the light from bouncing off all the bleached white walls and blinding her. Why was she here? What was the cop doing? She’d had enough of policemen for the night.
Maybe for an entire lifetime.
He was silent as he led her down the serpentine corridor, past rows of patient rooms, past vending machines stuffed with high fructose corn syrup, caffeine, and a whole arsenal of artificial ingredients. Her headache had returned with increased fury. Where was Reuben?
The cop opened an unmarked door and held it open. “Right in here, please.”
She glanced at his face as she entered the room. Late twenties, maybe, or early thirties. A short, well-kept beard covered his chin, with tinges of copper highlighting the dirty blond. Grayish eyes that were watching her every move. She wanted to hide.
“Have a seat.” He gestured to a small couch and then sat in a folding chair across from it. “My name’s Dominic.”
Strange. She would have expected him to call himself Officer So-and-So. Why the informality? Why the plush seat, the lounge room with a fruit basket and bottled water on an ornate coffee table? Why wasn’t he bringing her right to Reuben unless ...
Her whole body stiffened as if someone had frozen each of her muscle fibers with liquid nitrogen. This explained everything. Why the triage nurse wouldn’t tell her directly how to get to Reuben. Why the officer was using his first name. She glanced around the room, half expecting to see advertisements for funeral homes and pamphlets lying around on how to deal with the loss of a loved one.
She had to know. Had to ask, but her whole body was numb. Is this how Reuben would have felt right before ...
“I just got back from seeing your friend.”
Kennedy held on to his words like a drowning lab rat would clutch at a floating island.
“In case you were worried,” Dominic continued, “he’s doing fine. Getting a few stitches, and then it’s home.” He glanced at his notebook. “Well, back to his dorm, I guess. He’s from ...” His eyes scanned the page.
“Nairobi,” Kennedy answered.
“Nairobi?” Dominic glanced at his pad of paper, but even when he wasn’t looking right at her, Kennedy got the feeling he could read her mind. He stared at her with the same intensity her therapist showed when she first mentioned she was the daughter of Christian missionaries. “Right. So.” He clasped his hands to his knees and leaned forward. “Do you want to tell me what happened tonight?”
Reuben was fine, but confusion clouded Kennedy’s relief. Why was the cop asking her? Did he doubt Reuben’s story? Warning signals zinged through Kennedy’s cerebrum. Hadn’t her dad warned her about cops who make it hard for people who rat out other cops? Is that what this was? Is that why she couldn’t visit Reuben, why he brought her all the way down here to some secluded room ...
“I’d really like to check on my friend first, if that’s all right with you.” Why did she add that last part? Shouldn’t she be more assertive? What made this officer think he had the right to isolate her, intimidate her ...
“You’re welcome to check with the nurse when we’re finished,” he said, “but last I heard, he was refusing visitors.”
That probably only referred to cops like you. Kennedy knew better than to speak the thought out loud. She ran through the entire encounter on Arlington. She didn’t remember the details of the fight itself, but she recalled something about jumping on the officer’s back. If she was going to get in trouble for that, why hadn’t Bow Legs arrested her himself? Why did he just run away? Probably because he was a coward who knew he was in the wrong.
He’s the one who punched Reuben. The one who kicked him when he was down. Kennedy was only trying to help, and Reuben wouldn’t have given the officer any trouble if he hadn’t tried to grope Kennedy like that. Reuben was defending her. She was defending him. She was sure the public would see it that way, but of course her phone had betrayed her with its stupid memory. Why hadn’t she taken the time to erase some of those dumb photos of lab results or lecture notes leftover from last semester?
Kennedy hadn’t done anything wrong. The more she replayed the entire encounter, the more firmly she believed in her innocence. But would other policemen see it that way? Somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembered a campy cop movie she’d watched with her dad back in Yanji. A jaded long-time officer was explaining departmental policy to his new rookie partner. “You take a swing at one of us, there’s no way you’re walking into the police station on your own two feet. Not by the time we get done with you.” At the time, she’d just thought the threat was for dramatic effect, but after her dad’s warning, she wondered if that same unwritten code persisted even in a city as supposedly progressive as Boston.
She studied Dominic’s face, trying to read him. If this was some kind of a good cop/bad cop routine like in TV shows or detective novels, he seemed better suited for the part of the good guy. The friendly one. The one who’ll make sure you’re comfortable and offer you bottled water and keep his expression open and engaged, like he’d taken hours of departmental training in active listening.
What would happen if she didn’t comply? Would he turn into a raging maniac, threaten her with every single punishment he could legally throw at her? Or maybe there was a partner hiding in another room ready to take over if this nice-guy performance failed.
Kennedy fidgeted with her phone in her pocket, wondering what she should do. Could she ask him for a chance to call her dad first, or would that just make her look guilty?
Dominic leaned forward. “So, you ready to talk about it?”
No, she wasn’t ready. In fact, there was a decent chance she would never be ready. Not like this. For the briefest second, she wondered if he was even supposed to be asking her questions without a lawyer present.
Please God, she begged, show me a way out of this.
Her phone vibrated in her hand and then let out a little beep. She glanced at the screen. It was a text from Reuben. If the police ask you any questions, I haven’t told them anything.
- Writer
