Skin Privilege (6 page)

‘Who is he?’ she repeated.

‘The man…’

‘Who?’ Lena said. ‘Who is he?’

‘He’s the one,’ Hank mumbled, his eyes closing as if the effort of keeping them open was just too much. Still, he finished, ‘He killed your mother.’

MONDAY EVENING

THREE

From the moment James Oglethorpe first set foot in Georgia, men had been trying to chop up the state into their own perfect little pieces. The first attempt came in 1741, when the Trustees decided to split the land into two colonies: Savannah and Frederica. When Georgia became a royal colony and adopted the Church of England as their official religion, the territory was sectioned into eight parishes. After the Revolutionary War, Creek and Cherokee land in the south was taken for white expansion, then later more Cherokee land was claimed in the north.

By the mid-1800s, no Indian territory remained, so the good ol’ boys decided to start subdividing existing counties. Once 1877 rolled around, there were 137 counties in Georgia – so many little pockets of political power that the state constitution was amended to stop the overdevelopment, then amended again in 1945 to close loopholes that had allowed the creation of 16 counties in between. The final number allowed was 159, each with its own representative in the state assembly, its own county seat, its own tax base, schools, judges, political systems, and its own locally elected sheriff.

Jeffrey did not know much about Elawah County, other than that its founders had obviously borrowed the name from the Indians they had kicked out for the land. Night had come by the time he and Sara reached the town limits, and from what they could see, the place was not much to write home about. Lena was hardly the type to sit down and chat about her childhood, and Jeffrey understood why as he drove through Reece, Elawah’s county seat. Even the dark of night could not obscure the town’s depressing bleakness.

Jeffrey had studied American history at Auburn University, but you wouldn’t find it written in any textbook that there were some places in the south that still had not recovered from Reconstruction. Running water, indoor plumbing, basic necessities that other Americans took for granted, were considered luxuries to people living on the wrong side of Reece’s tracks. Jeffrey’s hometown of Sylacauga, Alabama, had been poor, but not this kind of poor. Reece was the sort of festering wound that was only exposed when some kind of natural disaster yanked off the scab.

‘Up here on the left,’ Sara said, reading the directions Jeffrey had gotten from the sheriff.

Jeffrey took the turn, glancing at Sara as a streetlight illuminated the car’s interior. She had changed into jeans and a sweater, but her face was still drawn. He wasn’t sure if this was because of the malpractice deposition or because of the situation with Lena. He had been surprised when Sara had volunteered to come. She was certainly no fan of Lena ‘s. While the two women had managed to keep their exchanges civil over the years, some of the worst arguments Jeffrey and Sara had had in recent memory were over the young detective – Lena’s stubbornness, her quick temper, what Sara saw as the other woman’s casual disregard for her own safety and Jeffrey saw as the makings of a damn good cop.

Part of Sara’s bad opinion was Jeffrey’s fault. At home, he only talked about Lena in the context of her screwups. He’d never had a conversation with Sara about the things Lena did well: the way she could work an interrogation or the fact that sometimes she actually learned from her mistakes. Having made colossal mistakes of his own early on in the job, Jeffrey was more forgiving. Truthfully, Lena reminded him a lot of himself when he was her age. Maybe Sara felt the same way; she wasn’t exactly a big fan of the Jeffrey Tolliver she’d known ten years ago.

If Jeffrey had to guess, he’d say that Sara’s offer to tag along came because she hadn’t wanted to be by herself. Or maybe she’d just wanted to get the hell out of town. Jeffrey wasn’t too pleased with how the citizens of Grant County were treating his wife right now, either. For the last two months, he’d been keeping a running list in his head of people who would never have a speeding ticket fixed for them again.

‘Up here,’ she said, pointing to a side street that looked like a dead end.

‘You sure?’

Sara scanned the directions again. ‘It says take a right at the barbecue joint.’

He slowed the car as he blindly reached overhead, looking for a way to turn on the interior lights.

‘Here,’ she said, pressing a button near the rearview mirror. Sara’s BMW was like butter on the road, but all the bells and whistles made Jeffrey’s head hurt.

He took the directions from her, holding them up to the light.

She said, ‘It’s not like I can’t read your handwriting. You have the penmanship of a first grade teacher.’

He pointed to the satellite navigation screen on the dash, which had read, ‘No data available for this position’ for the last half hour. ‘How much extra did you pay for this thing?’

‘What does that have to do with your handwriting?’

He didn’t answer as he looked at his notes. He’d clearly written ‘right at barbecue joint.’

Jeffrey handed the sheet of paper back to Sara and took the right. He drove slowly, the car’s tires dipping into one pothole after another. He was about to turn around when Sara spotted a familiar blue road sign with an H on it. Farther up ahead, they could see the bright lights of a parking lot, and beyond this, what could only be the hospital.

‘ Fifth Avenue,’ Sara read off the street sign. She didn’t say anything more as he pulled into the parking lot.

The Elawah County Medical Center was across from a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Kentucky Fried Chicken, both closed this time of night. The hospital building was an architect’s nightmare. Part poured concrete, part cinder block, and yet another part brick, the two-story structure looked like a mangy dog that had been kicked to the curb. The few vehicles scattered around the parking lot were mostly trucks, mud caked around their wheel wells from a recent rain. NASCAR stickers and Jesus fish dotted the chrome bumpers. They had driven almost three hours straight to get here, but there was no mistaking they were still in a small Southern town.

Jeffrey took an empty space right by the emergency room entrance. He didn’t get out of the car, didn’t turn off the ignition. He just sat there, thinking about what little information he’d been given. Lena had been involved in an explosion. She was being treated at the hospital. She had been arrested.

What has she done now?

Those were Sara’s words – Sara, who couldn’t understand why Jeffrey had stood by Lena all these years, who didn’t know what it was like to grow up with no one rooting for you, no one thinking you’d end up doing anything but making your parents’ own stupid mistakes. If that were the case, Jeffrey would die a worthless drunk like his old man and Lena would – he didn’t know what would happen to Lena. Her only saving grace was that she had rejected Hank Norton as a role model. As for the rest of the people in Lena ‘s life, Jeffrey had only met one of them, an ex-boyfriend, ex-felon, ex-neo-Nazi whose sorry ass Jeffrey had happily hauled back to prison.

‘Hey,’ Sara said, softly. ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah.’ He turned to her. ‘Listen, I know how you feel about Lena, but-‘

‘Keep it to myself?’ she interrupted. He studied her face, trying to figure out if she was annoyed or angered by the request. Neither emotion seemed to register, and she actually managed a smile. ‘Let’s just get this over with and go home.’

‘Good plan.’ He turned off the ignition and got out of the car. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted through the air, and Jeffrey could see a couple of paramedics leaning against an ambulance, shooting the shit as they waited for their next call. One of them tossed Jeffrey a wave and he nodded back as he walked around to open Sara’s door.

Jeffrey warned, Tm not sure how this is going to

‘I can wait in the car,’ she offered. ‘I don’t want to get in your way.’

‘You’re not going to get in my way,’ he answered, though the thought had occurred to him. He opened the back door and took out his suit jacket. ‘You can examine her. Make sure she’s okay.’

Sara hesitated. He knew what she was thinking, that she hadn’t felt much like a doctor lately, that with the lawsuit hanging over her head, she didn’t quite trust her instincts anymore. ‘I’m not really-‘

Jeffrey didn’t press her. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

The glass doors slid open as they walked into the emergency department. Inside, the waiting room was empty but for an elderly man in a wheelchair and a younger woman sitting in a chair beside him. They were both wearing surgical masks, eyes trained on the television hanging from the ceiling. Jeffrey was reminded of the health warnings he’d been seeing on the news lately about yet another new strain of flu that was going to kill them all. The receptionist behind the front counter wasn’t wearing a mask, but he guessed from the sour look on her face as they approached that any germ floating around would be too frightened to go near her.

He opened his mouth to speak, but the woman cut him off, slapping down a clipboard on the counter and saying, ‘Fill these out. Follow the yellow line to the business office to work out a payment plan, then come back here. We’re running about two hours behind right now, so if you’re not here for a good reason, you might as well go home and try to sleep it off.’

Jeffrey pulled out his badge and placed it on the counter beside the clipboard. ‘I’m here to see Sheriff Valentine.’

The woman ran her tongue along her bottom teeth, making it look as if she had a pinch of snuff there. Finally, she gave a noisy sigh, pulled back the clipboard and turned toward her computer, where a couple of clicks brought up a hand of solitaire she’d obviously been playing.

Jeffrey looked at Sara, as if she could decipher the goings-on of the hospital. She shrugged, and he was thinking they’d been given the brush-off when the receptionist heaved another heavy sigh, then said, ‘Follow the green line to the elevator, take it to the third floor, then follow the blue line to the nurses’ station. They might know what you’re talking about.’

He looked down. There were five painted lines under their feet. Two led down a hallway, one led toward the elevator, and the last one, a red line, led to the exit, which was less than ten feet behind him.

Jeffrey picked up his badge and tucked it back into his pocket. He let Sara walk ahead of him toward the elevator. As if by magic, the doors slid open on their approach. The floor of the car was reddish-pink from dirt, and the faint odor of Pine-Sol and vomit filled the air.

Sara stopped. ‘Maybe we could take the stairs?’

‘What about the blue line?’ Jeffrey asked, only half-joking.

She shrugged and got on. He followed suit, pressing the three button, noticing that there was a two but not a one. They both stood there, waiting for the doors to close. Nothing happened, so he pressed the three button again. Still, nothing happened. He pressed the two button and the doors closed. Above them, machinery whirred, and the elevator moved upward.

Sara said, ‘I really shouldn’t be here.’

He hated that she felt so out of place. ‘I want you here.’ He tried to sound more convincing. ‘I need you here.’

‘You don’t,’ she insisted, ‘but I appreciate the lie.’

‘Sara-‘

She turned around, studying the notice board screwed to the back of the elevator. ‘Meth is Death!’ one of the posters warned, showing before and after photos of a beautiful blonde teenager who, after a scant year on meth, turned into a soulless crone with no teeth and festering wounds erupting from her once perfect skin. A number at the bottom was scribbled over, a crude drawing of a joint obscuring the last two digits. Another poster outlining the steps to performing CPR took up most of the remaining space. This one was vandalized with the usual graffiti you found in spaces like this: dirty limericks, phone numbers for loose women, and messages for various people to go fuck themselves.

Finally, the elevator doors groaned open and a bell dinged. A dimly lit hallway greeted them, and Jeffrey guessed the lights had been turned off so that patients could sleep. The emergency exit sign across from the elevator gave off a warm red glow, pointing toward a doorway at the very end of the hall. Jeffrey glanced around, holding the elevator doors open, wondering if they were on the wrong floor.

‘There’s the stripe,’ Sara whispered, indicating the single blue line on the floor. Jeffrey saw that it went to the right, past the emergency stairway and around the corner. He looked up the hall to the left, but all he could see were more patients’ rooms and another exit sign.

They followed the painted line to the nurses’ station. He realized as soon as they got there that the hallway circled around and that they could have just as easily taken a left and gotten to the same place.

‘This is why people hate hospitals,’ Jeffrey told Sara, keeping his voice low. ‘If they can’t make you feel sicker, they drive you crazy.’

Sara rolled her eyes, and Jeffrey remembered the first time he’d told Sara that he hated hospitals. Her response had been almost automatic:
‘Everybody
hates hospitals.’

The nurses’ station was oblong, open at both ends, and packed to the gills with charts and colored sheets of paper. There was one desk with a lamp casting a harsh light over the blotter. A newspaper was folded to the crossword, some of the squares filled in. Jeffrey guessed from the half-eaten pack of crackers beside an open can of Diet Coke that whoever had been sitting there must’ve been called away mid-snack.

Sara leaned against the wall, arms folded over her chest. ‘The nurse must be making rounds.’

‘I guess we’ll wait here.’

‘We could find Lena on our own.’

‘I don’t think the sheriff would appreciate that.’

She gave him a curious look, as if she was surprised that he cared.

He was about to respond when he heard a toilet flush behind him. ‘Guess the nurse just finished her rounds.’

They both waited, Sara leaning against the wall, Jeffrey pacing, reading the signs that had been taped to some of the patients’ doors. ‘No Water.’ ‘No Solids.’ ‘No Unattended Toilet.’