The Blessed (4 page)

“No,” the nurse said, tamping down Lucy’s childlike eagerness.

“Yeah, he would never step foot in a Brooklyn hospital. He rarely leaves Manhattan.”

The nurse just rolled her eyes.

“What time is checkout?” Lucy asked, still transfixed by the bauble.

The nurse shrugged dismissively and returned to her business.

“Bitch,” Lucy mumbled as the short and stubby nurse waddled away.

Watching the nurse leave, she noticed a familiar face across the hall—not a friend or even much of an acquaintance, but a former classmate and a die-hard competitor for precious gossip-column space. The girl never had a bad thing printed about her, until recently when rumors of a pregnancy by an ex-boyfriend, now in college, began to circulate. Lucy knew all about it because she had started the rumor. And right next to her was the girl’s boyfriend.

There was no curtain on their bay. They were totally exposed.

“Hey, Sadie,” Lucy called out, getting the girl’s attention.

Sadie was clenched over in pain, moaning, holding her stomach. She was too weak to respond or to defend herself.

“Wow. Can’t believe how fantastic your postpregnancy bod looks,” Lucy said. “Hard to believe you were pregnant like . . . an hour ago.”

The girl tucked her head inside her hoodie, knowing what was about to happen, much like a mobster who’d been taken away in the backseat of a rival crime family’s car. But the guy didn’t even try to hide his face. In fact, quite the opposite.

Ratting Sadie out would surely impress Jesse and get her ER story better placement. In fact, it might even warrant a vlog post. All she could think was
jackpot
. In her circle, teen pregnancy was one thing, good for a few days of embarrassing coverage before it got turned into some noble endeavor, but termination, that was quite another. That could mean exile. And for Lucy, one less rival. She couldn’t count the number of times they had tried to humiliate her.

Eye for an eye.

Lucy took a picture with her cell and looked it over. It was a perfect snap, capturing all Sadie’s tears and torment. But the distraught look on Sadie’s face, her vulnerability, reached Lucy in a way she hadn’t expected. Even more moving to Lucy was Sadie’s boyfriend, Tim, hand in hand with her, right by her side. There was no one there for Lucy. Not even the man who should have cared the most, her dad.

She locked eyes with the couple, felt them pleading silently with her for media mercy, felt their pain, which was completely unlike her, and pressed send.

“You’re discharged,” the nurse said curtly to Lucy on her way down the hall. “Your things are in that bag and the paperwork is at the front desk.”

“That’s it?” Lucy asked, somewhat disappointed.

“Ha! What did you expect?”

Lucy frowned only slightly, but still just enough to give the night nurse a smirk of satisfaction.

“What do you think?” Lucy inquired, brandishing her bejeweled wrist regally.

“I think it suits you,” the nurse said. “Try not to pawn it too quickly.”

Lucy bared her teeth and raised her perfectly manicured hands into claws like an angry cat and hissed away the nurse’s bad energy.

She grabbed her weekender bag and headed out through the revolving doors. It was dawn, the time when people were getting up for work and, in her case, returning from going out. Her rush hour.

She walked to a food cart and ordered some scrambled egg whites and street meat on a bagel and a hot cup of coffee. Still thinking about what she’d just done to Sadie. How low she’d sunk. She watched the vendor crack the eggs and separate the yolk, the core, the most substantial part, and discard it.

“Scoop it,” she ordered, insisting he shell out the bagel, as she watched an obviously downtrodden couple order their toddler a Dr Pepper.

Right on cue, she felt a spindly hand grab her arm. She
didn’t need to look to know whose it was. Jesse’s black-sleeved jacket was a dead giveaway.

“Get your hands off me, prick,” she barked, jerking free without even turning around to face him. Jesse was tall, slightly hunched over from all that time spent on the computer, and thin. He tried, to a fault, to be on trend, and looked as if he were uncomfortably dressed by a girlfriend—which he did not have.

“Awwww,” he whined. “Wake up on the wrong side of the gurney?”

Lucy was suddenly struck by the reflection of the sun bouncing off the double-eyed charm. She could have sworn it was staring back at her.

“I’m done, Jesse. This time I mean it.”

“Done with what? You’re living the dream.”

“Whose dream?”

“Yours, remember?”

“All I know is I could have rotted away in there and nobody would give a rat’s ass.”

“I’m here.”

“Like I said.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lucy. You’re all over the place.”

He wiggled his phone in his hand, screen side up.

“I don’t mean morbidly curious about me, Jesse,” she said. “I mean concerned.”

“You just need some sleep.”

“You have no idea what I need.”

Jesse studied the disheveled girl in front of him. He was
good at reading her, usually, but something was different this morning. She was more melancholy than he’d ever seen.

“You couldn’t stop in the bathroom to fix your face?”

Lucy lifted her hand to her cheek, and as she did, he saw the bracelet.

“Nice,” he said, reaching for the dangling charm. “Where’d you get it?”

“Don’t touch it!”

“Damn. Well, at least somebody cares, right?”

“You’re evil.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“I’ve gotta go.”

“Don’t forget. We have a deal.”

Lucy couldn’t help but notice that the shadow she cast completely engulfed him. “I don’t owe you anything.”

“Loved the snap of Sad Sadie. Already ran it.”

“Then we’re more than even.”

“Did you catch something in that ER?” he ribbed, trying to keep up.

“Yeah, a conscience.” Lucy rummaged through her purse for a cigarette and taxi fare. “Stay away from me, it might be contagious.”

Jesse saw that she came up empty-handed. “Money for a cab?” He pulled a crisp bill from his jacket pocket and dangled a twenty from between his long, thin fingers.

“Don’t tempt me like you do everyone else.”

“Too late for that, isn’t it?”

“It’s never too late.” Lucy spun around on her four-inch spikes, dropped her oversize rehab shades over her eyes, putting a proverbial period on the conversation, and walked away, blowing him off as only she could. She didn’t have a penny and he knew it. Every cent she had, or had borrowed, she was wearing. If she were lucky, Lucy thought, the Metrocard she was carrying might have one fare left.

“Check your e-mail when you get home,” Jesse called after her, unconcerned.

She stopped for just a second, pulled down her dress, which she could feel riding up her thigh, and continued down the block. Checking to make sure that no one was watching, she then jaywalked over to a bus stop just across the avenue, praying no one would see her in her outfit from last night. Or worse, at a bus stop. All the walk of shame boxes were checked.

Hair—matted.

Lipstick—smeared.

Eyes—black from running mascara.

Clothes—stained and wrinkled.

Head—hung in shame.

Dignity. Lost.

3
The psychiatric floor of Perpetual Help also happened to be the highest floor. “The Penthouse,” as the ward staffers liked to euphemize it. At that moment, all Agnes could think was that it was a pretty good place to jump from, which might have been what the administrators had in mind when they moved the unit up there. The simplest cost-cutting measure of all.

Agnes was wheeled into the waiting room flat on her back but forced herself upright and into a sitting position after she was “parked,” slowly rotating her torso toward the edge of her gurney until her legs fell over the side. She was dizzy and grabbed the edge of the gurney and squeezed down, which, it turned out, hurt like hell. She hadn’t realized how much the wrist and forearm muscles were used in steadying yourself like that. Agnes lifted her head to check out her surroundings.

It was grim, barred up, quiet, dimly lit, with walls painted in neutral colors and furniture discretely bolted down, not a sharp edge to be found. Dull and drab, with one exception: an ornate stained glass window. Agnes bathed in the splintered moonlight that blazed through it. It was the only color to be found anywhere on the floor and the kaleidoscopic jewel-toned glow was soothing, maybe even a little mesmerizing. On the not-so-bright side, the place smelled like meat loaf, instant mashed potatoes, soggy canned green beans, and disinfectant. Nauseating.
Lunchtime for the lunatics,
she thought.

The wait seemed endless, but it did give her time to reflect. She was by herself without anyone in her ear. Suddenly, the door opened and a young nurse escorted a little boy into the room and locked him in behind her without saying a word. He was very young, not older than ten. Far too young to be there, surely, and definitely didn’t fit the funny-farm profile she was expecting from the campfire stories her ER nurse was telling downstairs.

Agnes smiled at him, but he wasn’t interested in gestures or even eye contact for that matter.

They were alone.

“What’s your name?” Agnes asked.

The boy sat quietly for an uncomfortably long time. In his own little world and not interested at all in small talk with some stranger.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to—”

“Jude!” he shouted, as if the word had been building
pressure inside of him and had now been launched like a rocket. “My. Name. Is. Jude.”

With that labored introduction out of the way, Jude darted toward an old and weathered statue of Jesus, with its left hand pointed gently at its exposed heart. Time and indifference had taken its toll on it. Flecks of white where paint and plaster had chipped or broken off dotted the figure. Agnes guessed that it must have been moved up to the psych ward and out of the way, just like everything and everyone else up there. It reminded her of the statues that adorned her school lobby, Immaculate Heart Academy, but in worse condition, lending it, ironically, a kind of unforced sympathy, which was more than likely originally intended.

Out of nowhere. Without warning. The boy jumped up on the statue’s pedestal and grabbed it with both arms, grunting and struggling with it as if it were fighting him back.

Maybe this kid isn’t too young to be a mental patient after all,
she thought.

“Say ‘Uncle,’ Jesus!” he said, trying to catch his breath.

Agnes tried not to look.

The boy was getting increasingly agitated and maniacal . . . hanging from the neck of an almost life-size statue, driving his knuckles repeatedly into the Savior’s plaster of Paris head.

“Say it!” the boy demanded as if the statue were resisting him.

Agnes was astonished at what kind of kid would bully a statue, let alone one of . . . Jesus. She stared intently at the painted face as several drops of blood suddenly appeared,
trickling down the forehead and off the brow.

Her eyes incredulously followed the streams down as they fell to the floor, bright red spots peppering the white, waxed marble. Proving that one—a certain one perhaps—can indeed get blood from a stone.

Startled for a second, she thought she might be seeing things, something miraculous even, until she noticed Jude’s knuckles, which were rubbed raw and bleeding. Undaunted, the boy examined his hand, shook it off, and returned quickly to his noogies, stopping only to feel around behind the statue’s head. As he pulled his hand away, and hopped off the pedestal and back toward her, Agnes noticed he was clutching something.

“He left this for you,” Jude said, handing Agnes the most spectacular white bracelet that she’d ever laid eyes on. “He wanted me to make sure you got it.”

Agnes was stunned. Without words. Her heart felt as if it were going to beat right out of her chest and she was sure, if someone looked close enough, they could see it through her smock. The chunky beads—maybe pearls, she gathered—were strung beside an unpolished gold charm embossed with a heart set aflame. She felt her incisions tingle and twitch as she gently fingered it.

“Tell him that I gave it to you,” the boy said proudly, without the slightest hesitation or stammer. “Okay?”

“Agnes Fremont,” the nurse called out.

Jude heard the nurse and dutifully returned to his seat and his silence.

“Who? Tell who?”
Agnes queried the boy with sudden urgency, eyeing the statue suspiciously.

The boy did not answer her.

Agnes, meanwhile, was in a kind of shock. Whatever his problems, the trinket was extraordinary. Agnes hid the beads under her hospital gown and tucked the gold charm under her bandage to keep it safe and out of view. The flaming heart emblem that hung from it pressed uncomfortably into her wound. It hurt, but the pain it caused felt somewhat reassuring to her. She really was still alive.

“Agnes Fremont,” the nurse called out again, this time with more impatience. “Are you coming?”

Agnes jumped off of her gurney and waited anxiously by the door like a pet that hadn’t been out all day. She looked back at the boy who was now sitting like an angel in his seat, and followed the nurse down the hall.