Radiant (2 page)

Mom stared at her. At last, she said, "Well, we'll worry about that later."

The attending doctor came with Mary's x-rays. "Good news. I didn't see anything wrong. For getting hit with the side of a car, you're doing remarkably well, Mary." He turned to Mom. "She'll have some aches from her bruises, and I definitely recommend cleaning those scrapes on her hands and knees to keep them from getting infected. Might be good to keep her home for a couple days to rest."

"
Of course," Mom said in that professional tone she always used with doctors.

"
What about the kid the red car?" Mary asked.

The doctor
took off his glasses. "I'm sorry. He didn't make it."

Mary
stared at him. "But he looked at me."

Mom and the doctor exchanged concerned glances.
Mary looked down at her bandaged hands, trying hard to remember. A lot of details still weren't clear, but she did remember Carter opening his eyes. If only for a quick moment. "Can I see him?" she asked

"I don't know if that's a good idea," Mom said.

"Mom," Mary said. "Please."

Mom's brow wrinkled. Then, she
sighed. "We can see if his parents will allow it."

The doctor released her
, and Mary left the room with her mother. When they got to the end of the hall, they saw a homely couple speaking with one of the ER surgeons. The woman was crying, and the man clutched her as if he was keeping her from falling apart.

"I'm very sorry Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell," the doctor said.

"We're not the Maxwells," the man said. "I'm Marcos Romero, and this is my wife Linda. We're their housekeepers. Carter's father and stepmother are out of the country right now."

"I see," the doctor said. "Have either of you contacted his parents?
Or his mother?"

"
I called and left a message for Mr. Maxwell," Mr. Romero said. "Carter's mother past away several years ago from cancer."

Mrs. Romero
wailed. From the way she was crying, she might as well have been Carter's mom. Mary wished that she could cry with her. Mom once joked that Mary was born with the tiniest tear ducts in the world, so she didn't cry often. Now, she wished she could drum up a couple tears, if anything to not seem so unsympathetic.

Mary looked at her mother, who nodded. Then, she cautiously approached them. "Excuse
me. But I'm Mary. I'm the…what I mean is…." She couldn't find the right thing to say. Mary had always been terrible with words. Especially the sensitive ones needed for things like this.

Mrs. Romero
looked at her disheveled school uniform and her bandaged hands and knees. "You were the girl who was almost hit by the bus," she said.

"Are you all right?" Mr
. Romero asked.

Mary nodded. "I am, thank you. But I was wondering if I
could see him? Carter, I mean."

"I would advise against tha
t," the surgeon said. "The body…I mean Carter…is not—"

"Please," Mary
begged.

The
stout couple looked at one another. At last, Mrs. Romero said, "Let her."

The
doctor looked at her. At last, he sighed and gestured for Mary to follow him.

Mary was used to hospitals, ever since Mom became a nurse. But she had
never seen an operating room occupied. Instruments and equipment were still in the places where the doctors and nurses had left them when they were trying to save Carter's life. At the center was the operating table with a still figure on it, covered with a bloody sheet.

The doctor took
part of the sheet. "Are you sure about this?"

No, Mary thought. But she
nodded nonetheless.

He pulled the sheet
down to Carter's neck.

Mary stare
d at the broken, pale face of a boy she hardly knew.

"I'll give you a few minutes."
The doctor left the room to wait outside.

Mary studied Carter's closed eyes
. Maybe when they had opened in the car, it was because of an involuntary spasm. Or maybe she really had just imagined it.

Mary bowed her head
, once again wishing she could cry now. But all she could offer was a meager, "I'm sorry."

Mary
took one last look at Carter as she turned to leave. But she stopped.

A
single tear slowly fell from the corner of Carter's right eye.

Mary
rubbed her eyes, making sure her vision was clear. Then she looked again.

Another
tear escaped from the corner of Carter's eye.

Mary
bolted from the room. "He's crying!"

Everyone
looked at her like she was a lunatic.

"Mary, calm down," Mom said.

"But Mom, he's
crying
!" Mary repeated. "He has tears coming from his eyes."

The doctor looked at her curiously. "Are
you sure? Maybe the tears came from you?"

Mary frowned. Could
n't he tell she wasn't crying? "You have to check him again," she said.

The Romeros
looked at the doctor, like they had seen a glimmer of hope struggling through the sorrow. He sighed and shrugged, but he turned and went back into the operating room.

A tense few minutes passed. Suddenly
, the doctor burst from the door, calling for his team. Several nurses rushed in and the door closed again.

Mary and the others hardly breathed
, let alone spoke, as they waited in the hall.

Finally, a
fter what felt like ages had passed, the doctor came out again, followed by the undeniable sound of the heart monitor beeping.

Carter was alive.

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Recovery

When Mary woke
the next morning, she was so stiff that she could barely get out of bed. Her side was one giant bruise, and everything ached. She didn't want to move, but her bladder finally forced her up and to the bathroom.

Mom took t
he day off to take care of her. She was also on the phone a lot, talking with police and insurance companies and such. It was a mess, and Mary had been given a citation for crossing the street when she wasn't supposed to. Carter apparently got one too, for running a red light.

Mary stared at the amount for the ticket. "I'm really sorry, Mom."

"Don't worry about it," Mom told her. "Just get better."

But that didn't help Mary
feel
better. She knew money was thin between the rent, private school fees, her grandmother's medical bills that the insurance didn't cover, and the tiny bit Mom tried to tuck away for Mary's college. A police ticket was the last thing they needed.

Mary sighed and let her forehead hit the kitchen table. "Ow."

"Here, take your meds." Mom opened a bottle of prescription painkillers and put two in front of Mary.

"I hate pills," Mary said.

"I know. But you hate pain more," Mom said as she filled a glass with water and put it on the table next to the pills.

Mary groaned, but she managed to choke down the medicine. Then, she stood and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Mom asked.

"My telescope is still on the roof," Mary said. "I need to get it."

"No you don't," Mom said. "You need to rest."

"But I don't want the wind to blow it over," Mary said. "And what if it starts raining?"

"Then I'll get it," Mom said as she got up. "But you rest."

As Mom went to get the scope, Mary sat on the
couch and turned on the television. The only thing worth watching was a movie where a teenage boy died in a prank gone wrong, and a bunch of kids tried to cover it up. But the dead kid's vengeful ghost came back to haunt and kill each of them.

The pills must've kicked i
n some time after the second kid was killed, because the next thing Mary knew, she was waking up to video game explosions creeping down from the ceiling. Mom must've turned off the TV when Mary fell asleep, and she had left a note on the coffee table saying she was going to pay the electric bill and pick up some groceries.

Mary
turned the TV back on, but it wasn't enough to drown out the explosions and zombies screaming from above. She finally turned off the TV and hiked up to the roof.

The telescope was gone, but the plastic lounge chair was still in the same place Mary had left it the day before. She lay down on it and watched as
the sky turned deeper shades of blue and purple. The first stars started to come out. When she was younger, Mary used to think that each star was an angel assigned to watch over a human on Earth. But when Mom started working at the hospital and Mary saw all the suffering there, she wondered why the angels weren't doing their jobs. Then she learned in school that stars were actually massive balls of burning gas far away, and all the magic was gone by then.

Her mind turned to Carter,
who had been moved to the intensive care unit not long after the doctors had successfully revived him. The stars had definitely not watched out for him yesterday. If Mary hadn't seen him crying, he probably would've been stuck in the morgue and died then. Before Mary and Mom left the hospital, Mr. Romero came to talk with them once more.

"Thank you," he had told Mary.

For what? Carter had been on that emergency table in the first place because of her. Pain started growing up her leg and her bruised side. But Mary didn't want to choke down more meds just yet, so she curled up on her good side. And in a way, she felt like she deserved to be in pain for what happened to Carter.

W
hy had he saved her, she wondered. Why had he risked his life doing it? How many bones had he broken? Would he be able to walk? Did he have brain damage? What if he was a vegetable? Or what if he never woke again?

She felt like crying again. But as usual, tears didn't come.

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Crimson

Mary stayed home from school for the rest of the week. On Saturday morning, Mom finally allowed her to go out. "You want me to come with you?" Mom asked.

"
I'll be fine. Just visiting Ba," Mary said. The more she sat around doing nothing, the more she thought about Carter in the hospital, which tempted Mary to iron her own hands from guilt. "Besides, you need sleep. You've just come off a monster shift. Why did you work so long?"

Mom lowered herself into a chair at the kitchen table.
"It's this new patient, Scotty. He was having some trouble last night and we were short staffed, so I stayed."

Mary
's mother worked in the kids' cancer ward. The kids there were the kindest and bravest kids Mary had ever met, and it was always a big deal when some of them got better and were able to go home. The nurses would throw going away parties. But then there were the ones who didn't get to go home. That was always hard.

Mom
rubbed her eyes. "Sometimes I wonder what good we're doing. Some live. Some don't. All of them suffer."

Mary
didn't know what to say. She never knew what to say in times like this, when she wanted to offer words of comfort and couldn't. Instead, she put her arms around her mother's shoulders.

"Thanks, honey," Mom said.

"Promise you'll rest and eat?" Mary asked.

"Yes, doctor," Mom said. "Now go on. Say hi to Ba for me."

"Will do." Mary kissed her on the cheek. "Oh, I need a new sketch pad and some paint. Can I have some money?"

"Where's your allowance?" Mom asked.

"I bought a brush with it," Mary said.

Mom raised an eyebrow. "All of it? What's this brush made of? Unicorn hair?"

"Well, no," Mary said uneasily. She didn't buy things like clothes and makeup often. But when it came to art supplies, it was hard not to get the good stuff.

Mom shook her head as she opened her wallet and took out some cash. "Here. This is an advance on next week's allowance."

"Thanks." Mary stowed the money in her bag and picked up her wide portfolio carrier before she left. She'd taken art classes in school for years, but she learned how to paint from her grandmother, Ba. Painting was their favorite thing to do whenever Mary came to visit.

Riding the bus again was
a little eerie. All the noises—the engine, the creak in the door hinges, and the various beeps and clicks seemed sharper. When the bus came to Fair Avenue, Mary got off and hiked the few blocks toward Anna's Art Supply, which was actually run by a guy named Ben. Anna's wasn't in a great part of town, but since it was still pretty early in the day, Mary felt safer about going there by herself. The store was squished between a crappy pizza joint and a fortune teller/psychic whose windows were covered with purple curtains.