A Twist of Hate (20 page)

              “He taught himself to shave. He fired his last nanny when he was twelve because he thought he was too old for a babysitter. My accountant had been mailing the woman checks for two months before I discovered she was no longer coming to the house.

              “I’ve neglected him, Damon,” Mr. Dougherty miserably confessed. “I’ve hidden in my own loss for so long, I don’t know this man my boy has become.”

              “You’re here, now. That’s what matters. How is he?”

              “It was a clean, deep cut circling his hip. It took sixty-four stitches to close him. The blade didn’t hit any organs, thank God for small blessings. He passed out from blood loss.”

              “I never would have allowed him to give blood if I had known he was injured,” Mr. Curran said.

              “Do you really think you could have stopped him?” Mr. Dougherty smiled sadly.

              “He was brought here.”

              “Who?”

              “Littlefield.”

              Haydon and Elvira Littlefield had approached the Prescott parents, begging forgiveness for Michael’s actions. The Livingstons retreated behind their professionalism, Carol recommending a colleague who could provide the counseling the Littlefields invariably required. Anna Kent, David’s mother, had turned her back on them. Mr. Kent had allowed Mrs. Littlefield to weep on his shoulder.

              Mrs. Littlefield had manically listed Michael’s injuries for anyone willing to listen. Mr. Curran repeated that list for Mr. Dougherty. “His jaw and right cheekbone are fractured, his right hand is broken, a couple of his ribs are cracked, there are puncture wounds in his neck and cheek, his larynx is bruised, part of his tongue is missing…”   

              Mr. Dougherty raised a hand in surrender. He couldn’t bear to hear more. “Until he was about twelve or thirteen, Camden spent a lot of time with the Littlefields. He liked being with a family. Anyone’s family. Elvira was the kind of mother who baked cookies, and gardened, and mended holes in a favorite pair of jeans. I always sent Cam to the mall with the nanny to buy a new jeans when his favorites got holes.”

              “There’s no rule book on how to be a good parent. By the time you’ve figured out how to do things right, your child has children of his own.”

              “I envy your relationship with Siobhan.” Mr. Dougherty caressed Camden’s brow. “I envy your relationship with Camden. What if I had lost him tonight? He’s all I have left. When Siobhan came to my office this morning to invite me to dinner, she said I’ve got one chance, that we all have one chance, to do things right the first time. I destroyed my chance with my son.”

              “Siobhan is young. She hasn’t learned that there’s such a thing as a second chance.”

              “Not if you’re unwilling to take it.”

              “I don’t understand.”

              “I called my wife. My ex-wife. Even now, Camden’s mother won’t come to him.”

***

              “Through exhaustive investigative reporting, KYNN News has discovered that Littlefield was obsessed with the attractive senior, who repeatedly rejected his advances…”

                The melodramatic, adenoidal voice of KYNN reporter Mark Macklewhite woke Mr. Curran from a restless sleep. He opened his eyes to see Siobhan’s senior yearbook photo filling the screen of the wall-mounted television. The photo faded into a live shot of Macklewhite, a trench coat bulking up his thin frame, standing in front of the headmaster’s house on Prescott’s campus.

              “Headmaster Cyril Edwards has been unavailable for comment,” Macklewhite said. “The injured students were treated at Raines-Hartley Hospital. David Kent has been released while Siobhan Curran, Camden Dougherty, and Brian Livingston remain in critical to serious condition. This is Mark Macklewhite, reporting live from Prescott High School for KYNN.”

              Mr. Curran pulled the recliner he’d slept in to its upright position, and he used the remote to turn off the television. His mother, Viola Curran, sat in a rocking chair by the window. “I was watching that, Damon.”

              “I’m sure it’ll be on again.” Mr. Curran got up and kissed Siobhan’s forehead, then his mother’s cheek.

              Grandma Curran had been busy since arriving at the hospital before dawn. Siobhan’s sleeping form was covered by the Navajo blanket she wrapped herself in when she spent chilly hours reading in the solarium. Three squat, bushy, potted ferns sat on the sunny windowsill. Siobhan’s favorite nightgown and robe were draped over the foot of the bed.

              A short, slight woman whose diminutive figure housed the soul of a tyrant, Grandma Curran rocked slowly as she worked on a piece of embroidery in her lap.

              “Where did you get the rocker?” Mr. Curran asked over the creaks and pops of his back and neck as he stretched.

              “Maternity. I can’t tell you how many friends and folks I’ve visited in this hospital over the years. I know this place well as I know my own house. I brought your shaving kit and fresh clothes. You can shower and change after you have some breakfast.” Grandma Curran nodded toward a hamper on the wheeled bed table under the television. The table was set for one, complete with a red-and-white checkered cloth napkin and a bouquet of white and pink roses.

              “Now I know what woke me up.” Mr. Curran emptied the hamper. His mother had prepared what she considered a simple country breakfast: fried apples, baked chicken with cornmeal waffles, rosemary and garlic home fries, turkey sausage patties flavored with sage, and broiled figs.

              “You should have come to the dinner party,” Mr. Curran said.

              Grandma Curran replied with a snort of disgust.

              “Mama, Siobhan created a wonderful evening. She’s always had your talent for cooking, but the way she put everything together was so much like her mother. It was just beautiful.”

              He dropped into the chair and covered his face with his hands. “I could have lost her. The only reason I haven’t gone down to the fifth floor and strangled that Littlefield bastard is because I don’t want my daughter to wake up and find me jailed for murder!”

              Grandma Curran marched over to him and pulled his wrists from his face. “Jesus said that every man is better than his worst act. I’m not sure I can believe that about that Littlefield boy, but your father, bless his soul, would never forgive you if your worst act was to murder somebody. Don’t let me hear you talk like that again. I mean it. The Lord will take care of Michael Littlefield.”

              “I want him to suffer for what he did to Siobhan.”

              “In the flesh, we reap what we sow,” she said gravely, paraphrasing another one of her favorite Bible passages. “The Lord will see to that damn boy.”

Chapter Ten

“Yes, I brought the gun to school. I had a permit, it was perfectly legal….But I didn’t mean for it to go off. …Of course, I knew it was a possibility, but nothing bad happened until the [expletive deleted] grabbed me. It was all her fault, from the beginning.”

—Michael Littlefield, interview with Riley Witherspoon on
KYNN-AM radio

              Camden had been told to spend the day on bed rest, but since he insisted on seeing Siobhan, has father had insisted on transporting him by wheelchair to her room. Camden had refused a fresh dose of painkillers, and he winced every time the wheelchair shuddered over uneven flooring.

              “You look like a prizefighter,” Mr. Dougherty mentioned casually, glancing at the individual dressings on each of Camden’s knuckles.

              Camden didn’t feel much like a prizefighter. He felt like a little kid on a carnival ride as motion sickness churned through his gut. His head cleared and his stomach settled when Siobhan’s room came into view. It featured a large window on the corridor through which medical staff could look in on her. After parking Camden’s wheelchair at Siobhan’s bedside, Mr. Dougherty returned to the corridor to speak with Mr. Curran.

              Camden, his legs shaky, rose from the wheelchair. The thin fabric of his hospital gown did little to stop the room’s chill from goose-pimpling his skin. He took Siobhan’s hand and leaned over her. But for the shallow rise and fall of her chest, she was still. The fingertips of her broken right hand peeked from the end of a bright red cast reaching halfway to her elbow. A big gauze bandage covered the right side of her forehead. Her right eye was swollen to the approximate size of a ping pong ball. Four neat stitches covered with thin lines of bandage tape marked the place where her eye had been lanced. A long purplish-black bruise striped her right cheekbone and jaw, the faint zigzag of a boot tread within it.

              Rainbows of bruises splotched her throat, collarbone, and arms. The hand nested in Camden’s bore seven stitches in its fleshy heel, where a thick splinter had burrowed deep under her skin.

              The colorful Navajo blanket concealed her other injuries: the gunshot wound, abrasions and lacerations on her legs and back, splinter punctures in her shoulder blades, buttocks, calves, and the soles of her feet.

              She was hooked up to an intravenous unit attached to a drip monitor. A plastic breathing tube, secured in place with tape to her chin and mouth, jutted from her lips and amplified her breathing. Several sets of thin wires trailed from beneath the blanket and terminated in ports on equipment monitoring her heart, respiration, and oxygen saturation. She seemed more machine than human. He touched her cold, limp hand to his lips, then tried to rub warmth into it.

              “You shouldn’t be on your feet, Camden,” Mr. Curran gently admonished, entering the room with Mr. Dougherty.

              “She’s so tiny,” Camden croaked in reply. He sat heavily in the wheelchair, his strength drained, an ache deep in his chest. “I never realized how tiny she is.” He knuckled away the moisture brimming in his eyes.

              Mr. Curran squeezed Camden’s shoulder. “Don’t let her size fool you. She’s stronger than all of us put together.” Mr. Curran put on a brave face, but the tremble in his hands betrayed just how close he was to breaking down.

              “Will you let me know when she wakes up?” Camden asked. “I need to talk to her.” He shook his head, hoping to disperse the fog steadily clouding his brain.

              “She goes in and out, and with the breathing tube, she can’t talk,” said Mr. Curran. “I can give her a message.”

              “No.” Sweat beaded on Camden’s brow. “I have to say it. I have to tell her myself.”

              “I’ll call you the second she wakes up,” Mr. Curran promised. “You get better, Camden.”

              Mr. Dougherty took Camden back to his room. “What’s so important that Damon couldn’t deliver the message for you?” Mr. Dougherty asked, closing the door.

              Camden’s movements were so unsteady, his father had to help him back into bed. Camden’s head and shoulders dropped heavily onto the pillows. “I never told her,” he murmured, drifting off, “it’s all I have to give her.”

              Mr. Dougherty pulled the covers up to Camden’s chest. “I think she already knows, son.”

***

              Brian gulped down the piece of his heart that had fluttered into his throat. His parents had warned him, but prior knowledge didn’t lessen the impact of seeing Siobhan Monday morning. He couldn’t speak at first, once he was standing at her bedside.

              “Camden?” Her eyes slowly opened, the right a mere slit. It took a moment for her to focus.

              “Easy mistake,” Brian smiled. “I’m not wearing my glasses.”

              “Brian,” she sighed weakly. She had been weaned from the breathing tube only a few hours before Brian’s visit. Her raw throat left her voice a hoarse rasp. Her hand seemed to weigh a ton as she reached for him. He captured her hand and held it lightly, afraid the least amount of pressure would cause her more pain.

              “I’m so sorry, Brian.” Scarcely enough breath drove the words from her mouth.

              “Don’t,” he said gently.

              “I thought I’d never see you again.”

              “I’m still here.” He lifted his face to the ceiling to keep his welling tears from falling onto her.

              “He got your arm?” She shifted her gaze to the brace and cast on his right side and arm.

              “Shoulder.” For the next several weeks his right arm would remain anchored to his torso to prevent movement in his reconstructed shoulder. “It would have been worse if you hadn’t knocked his aim off.”

              “It wouldn’t have happened at all, if I hadn’t—”

              “Don’t.” Without meaning to, he tightened his grip on her hand. She winced, gasping in discomfort. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Brian said, alarmed.

              “It’s not you,” she said. “I think the drugs are wearing off.”

              “Should I call a nurse?”

              She shook her head ever so slightly. “The drugs turn me into a vegetable. I look like an eggplant. I don’t like feeling like one.”

              He lowered his face, sure he’d weep like an infant if he kept looking at her.

              “It’s okay, Brian. My father can’t look at me, either.”

              He gazed upon her face, and sure enough, the tears came. “I can’t believe he did this. I should have stopped him somehow. I should have—”

              “Don’t.”

              “I woke up Saturday morning with this contraption on my arm, and I thought, ‘This isn’t so bad. It could have been so much worse.’ I thought everything would be okay. It’s not even close to okay.”

              “You’re right. It’s better than okay.”

              “Better than okay,” he echoed. “How do you figure that?”

              “We’re still alive.” Her eyes closed. “Who are you rooting for today?”

              “What?” He feared her head injury had caused serious damage.

              “March Madness. There’s a game this afternoon. Who’s your pick?”

              She lured him into what would have been a spirited debate under different circumstances. It was the kind of conversation they would have had at her house or his on a typical Sunday afternoon. They would have watched whatever games were on television, with Courtney bored and impatient in the background, then made pizza—one fourth veggie for Siobhan, one fourth low-fat cheese for Courtney, and half pepperoni for Brian.

              Brian had been bragging about the Kentucky Wildcats for a full five minutes when he noticed Siobhan’s stillness. “Siobhan?”

              She didn’t move or open her eyes.

              “Siobhan?” Her hand slid from his. The alarm on her heart monitor went off with a high-pitched beep that shrank Brian’s bladder to the size of a raisin. Yelling for help, he leaned on the red emergency call button above her bed.

              Mr. Curran, Mrs. Livingston, and a nurse rushed into the room. Mrs. Livingston ushered Brian from the bedside to give the nurse room to work.

              “We were only talking.” Brian strained to look over his shoulder. “What happened? I want to stay with her! Is she alright?”

              Mrs. Livingston escorted Brian back to his room, allaying his worry as they went. “Her heart rate is a little irregular because of the anesthesia used during her surgery. Once it’s out of her system, they’ll take her off the heart monitor. She’ll be fine, Brian. She’s in much better condition than the doctors expected. She’s actually doing very well.”

              “Mom, she looks like she was hit by a cement truck,” Brian almost yelled.

              Mrs. Livingston pulled the curtain dividing the room. Brian sat on the edge of his bed. “I saw Michael shoot her,” he said. “He just pointed the gun and pulled the trigger, and I couldn’t help her.”

              “What could you have done, kiddo? Did you know that Michael Littlefield owned a gun?”

              “No, but Camden probably did. He was probably the only one who could have stopped him.”

              “Be fair, Brian. You might have lost your arm if Camden hadn’t put a tourniquet on it. He put himself in harm’s way to rescue Siobhan. He even saved Michael by blocking him from the police.”

              Brian exploded. “Camden didn’t do enough!
I
didn’t do enough!”

              Mrs. Livingston carefully wrapped her arms around him.

              “I love her, Mom.”

              “Of course you do, kiddo. She’s your friend.”

              “It’s more than friendship.”

              Brian was a sensitive and intelligent young man whose whole world had suddenly spun out of control. Time would spin everything back into perspective. Whether his love for Siobhan lasted an hour or a day, if believing in it aided his healing, Mrs. Livingston supported it.

***

              Brian was wide awake and alone in the semi-private room when Camden came to see him Sunday morning. He was sitting in the wide window, looking out over the parking lot and the highway beyond it. He wore lightweight flannel pajama bottoms. Since none of his shirts fit over his brace, he wore a robe draped over his shoulders. Camden stiffly lowered himself into a chair.

              “I’d be dead right now if she hadn’t gotten in his way,” Brian stated bitterly. He kept his gaze on the cars below. “You would be too, according to my mother. Cam, you protected him and defended him and included him when no one else wanted him around. You put her in his crosshairs. You should have known what he was capable of. You’re an accomplice to everything he’s done.” He swung his gaze to Camden, fury tightening his face and his voice. “I just thank God that when you found them, you decided to help Siobhan instead of Michael.”

              The door opened and Brian’s roommate entered, pushing himself in a wheelchair. Camden exited the room before the door could complete its closing swing. He almost collided with Mrs. Livingston.

              “Your father tells me that you’re going home this morning,” Mrs. Livingston greeted brightly. She suddenly recoiled. “Cam, what’s the matter? Is it Siobhan?” She clutched her throat. “Is it Brian?”

              Camden’s mouth worked to form words, but he had no voice to propel them. He hurried away from her, ballooning misery crowding the air from his lungs.

              Mrs. Livingston, relieved to see Brian healthy and whole, sought answers from him. “What’s going on with Camden? He looks like he’s seen the devil.”

              “I told him what I thought about his best buddy Michael.”

              The ugly animosity shaping her son’s features horrified her. Brian’s roommate decided to make himself scarce once more.

              “Brian,” Mrs. Livingston began warily. “You don’t blame Cam for this, do you?”

              “Damn straight, I do. Siobhan could have been killed because of him.”

              “Son, you didn’t—”

              “He didn’t even have the guts to face me until today!”

              “Guts had nothing to do with it, kiddo,” Mrs. Livingston said sharply. “Cam was a patient in this hospital, same as you. Michael cut him with a straight razor. He gave blood for Siobhan’s surgery even as he bled from his own injury. You have better sense than to blame one person for the behavior of another. Camden has been a dear friend to you. You’re willing to let Michael Littlefield destroy that?

              “Are you sure you’re not just a little angry at yourself?” Mrs. Livingston ventured.