Where the Sun Sets (4 page)

Dr.Kessler walked through the waiting room
and into the emergency room where the on duty nurse filled him in
on the evening’s events. He then walked towards the doors that
closed off the surgery area from the main room. He lifted a metal
pad off the hook which held it and opened it. After making a couple
notations, he hung the pad back on its hook. He took a deep breath
as he looked at the doors. He glanced back to the desk, where the
nurse’s eyes were watching him. Then he pushed open the doors and
entered the surgery area.

The scrub room held a window allowing sight
into the actual surgery. There was a lot of blood, but there
usually was in surgery. After scrubbing in, he entered surgery and
asked how everything was going, if his attention was needed or if
he could get anything for anyone in the room.

“A season pass to Disney World.” The verbal
request was tossed over the table to him, while another wanted a
deep dark tan. The simplicity of the humor was lost in the air. You
could feel the tension in the room. Somehow it felt as if no one
was breathing. Everyone holding their breath until the job was
complete. Dr. Kessler walked over to the monitor which recorded the
patients vitals and glanced at its print out. Then he glanced at
the clip board which held up to the minute actions. He looked at
the young woman on the table. She was lying on her stomach, her
head turned to the right side of the room. He could see the neat
little hole near the center of her back. He glanced once again at
the clip board before walking towards the head of the table.

“What’s the good word, Luke?” he asked of the
lead surgeon. Luke looked up, if only to let him know he heard, and
then back down to the task at hand.

“We’re going to need more blood here Jen,
take care of it.” A body left the room immediately. “It’s a pretty
rotten thing we have going here, Doc,” the lead surgeon was saying,
“four shots, everyone making an entrance, two planning to stay a
while, one ending a life as well as any future plans of creating
life. Damn shame. Hold this here...steady...one more...alright,
close this one and let’s start the next...lucky this one missed the
spine. Trouble is it tried to make friendly with the pulmonary
trunk. Got Sidney flying up from Long Island to check it out. Seems
to be some swelling, he won’t be here for another hour or so, that
one may be the bad seed, hard to tell. Guaranteed to be in here a
while Doc. Go ahead and make your rounds, I’ll find you if I need
you...damn shame.”

Dr. Kessler exited the surgery room and
walked back to the nurse’s station. “Page me if anything in that
room changes.”

“You got it, Doc.” the nurse replied while
posting a note on the phone that read, ‘Page Kessler’. He exited
emergency through the waiting room, stopping at the receptionist’s
desk to make a notation on the schedule, which was hanging on her
door.

He looked up and noticed, for the first time,
the gentleman seated in the corner. He glanced over to the
receptionist, who in turn responded, “Came in with the gun club.
Everyone else went out for drinks. He hasn’t moved. You want him,
he’s all yours.”

He smiled smartly at her and walked over to
Bernie. He sat himself, again, on the edge of the magazine table,
in front of Bernie. “I am Dr. Kessler. You are?” Bernie came out of
his trance and started to cry.

Dr.Kessler looked back to the receptionist,
hoping for some sort of life preserver to be tossed his way. She
only looked back with a sarcastic smile and waved her hands,
signaling she had nothing to do with it.

“Do you know the woman who was shot?” Dr.
Kessler decided the head on approach would be best. He had always
detested the mental part of his line of work. While awaiting some
sort of response, he dropped his head into his left hand and rubbed
his forehead. He hoped the rest of his shift didn’t mirror his last
hour.

Bernie wiped his nose on the hem of his
shirt. He looked pleadingly at Dr. Kessler. “Is she OK? Can I see
her?”

“She’s still in surgery but holding her own,
it will be a while before anyone can see her. You should go home
and wash up. Get some rest. You would do her a better service if
she didn’t see you in this shape.”

Bernie crunched his brows. “Holding her own,
what...what exactly does that mean?”

“It means she is a strong woman and seems to
be in good physical cond...”

“Strong woman, yes, Antonia is strong and in
the best physical shape. She works out every day. You would be hard
pressed to find any fat on that girl. I see...holding her own. She
was pretty shot up huh?”

“Were you there when it happened?” Dr.
Kessler tried to move the conversation.

“Everyone was there.” Bernie said as he
replayed the scene in his mind. “Everyone but Billy.”

“And Billy is who?”

“Billy is supposed to be Josephine’s
bodyguard. Billy was supposed to be on duty. That’s what he gets
paid to do. Protect Josephine, how hard can that be?” He looks up
at the doctor and starts to cry again.

“Josephine? Josephine Ferrero?”

“Do you know of any other?” Bernie rolls his
eyes.

“Josephine and this Antonia, were they
fighting?”

“They were having some sort of argument.
Seemed a bit one sided to me, can’t see how you could call it a
fight.” Bernie wiped his nose again.

“When was it that Antonia pushed
Josephine?”

Bernie glanced at the wall and shook his
head. “Josephine, she slapped her.”

“Antonia slapped Josephine?”

“Lord no, never. Antonia would never, not
even to save her own life. “Josephine slapped her, you know,
Antonia. Antonia started to walk away from her to find that damn
Billy and Josephine slapped her right across the face. Bitch.”

Dr. Kessler was now totally confused. He
started to stand, and was going to excuse himself and get on with
his rounds when Bernie caught his attention.

“She saved her life you know.” Bernie added.
“She saw the man with the gun. She saw him and she got Josephine
out of the way. Josephine, she...you know she didn’t even look at
Antonia, she just pushed her aside, just pushed her aside like a
piece of furniture that had fallen on her. And then she started
complaining about her head. Antonia made her hit her head and now
she was going to need stitches and...stitches...she was complaining
about stitches... Antonia was bleeding to death... right next to
her...stitches...” Bernie started to cry again. Dr. Kessler decided
it was time he started his rounds. He offered a polite good bye and
ducked out of the room, into the hospital.

He noticed Josephine, still sitting in the
lobby but decided not to stop. He had work to do, down here on
earth, in the real world. He wanted to remove himself from the soap
opera that he accidentally wandered into this evening.

Josephine heard the elevator bell, signaling
it was rising. It brought her back from the fog. She looked down at
her hands and saw the cup still full of coffee, but now cold. She
placed the cup on the table and stood to stretch her legs. ‘How
long had she been here?’ There was a clock directly over the
registration table. Just past nine p.m. Over three hours. ‘Why was
she still here?’ She remembered she was supposed to wait for
someone. Who, she couldn’t remember. Her head was starting to hurt
again. She saw a sign for the restrooms across the room and headed
over to it. After using the facilities she came back into the lobby
where she noticed a large cross hanging from the wall, directly
above where she had been sitting just minutes ago. The figure on
the cross seemed to be staring right at her. To her right was a
small sofa. She went to it and laid down. Pulling her legs up, so
that she was in almost a fetal position, Josephine looked back at
the cross again.

Still the figure watched her, accusing her.
In her mind’s eye, Josephine saw flashes. Flashes of memories she
had long since forgotten. The flashes started with a large cross,
much like the one she was looking at in the lobby. Flash, a cane
pole. Flash, the cross. Flash, a broken statue. Back and forth,
these flashes kept coming, then from somewhere in the distance, a
voice, a stern, angry voice and the sound of a crack, the sound of
the cane pole hitting something. Josephine squeezed her eyes shut
as tightly as she could, trying to block all the intrusions. A
sharp searing pain shot across her temples, and once again she was
thrust into the fog.

Chapter 4

Josephine found it difficult adjusting to the
strictness of St. Agnes. She was not used to rules and regulations.
The single fact that there was no television anywhere on the campus
baffled her. She spent weeks searching for one. Antonia, on the
other hand, was always reading, so having nothing else to do didn’t
bother her at all. Josephine was constantly bored and found the
fact that her friend did not share her boredom, aggravated her to
no end. So she started to entertain herself.

She took things from the other girl’s rooms
and hid them throughout the buildings, just for fun. After about a
month the game got old, for Josephine as well as everyone involved.
Antonia, being the poor girl who never owned anything, was
repeatedly blamed and punished for the disappearances. She was
banned from interacting with anyone for a week. She had to eat
alone and study alone. She was not permitted to go to classes and
had to sit in the maintenance building while she did her school
work. She also had to sleep in the infirmary.

When Josephine asked her why she didn’t deny
taking anything, Antonia would simply say that she knew she did not
do it and that was all that mattered to her. But Josephine didn’t
like being without Antonia. She grew angry and thought that Antonia
took the punishment, just to hurt her.

Sister Katherine seemed to have a bitter
taste in her mouth for Antonia. She was harder on Antonia than she
was with any other child. Everyone saw the dislike. Everyone it
seemed, but Antonia. She never seemed to notice. She never seemed
to care.

Sister Katherine would randomly pick a girl
and make her stand and recite passages from the bible. If the girl
did not know the passage, word for word, Sister Katherine would
make her write it one hundred times. Once she had Antonia in her
sights, she never asked anyone else. But Antonia never slipped up.
She had read the bible, front to back. It was what she did. She
read. She read everything. So on the day that Sister Katherine
requested she recite a specific passage, in Latin, Antonia stunned
the whole class by obeying perfectly. Sister Ursula sat off in the
corner of the room, smiling proudly to herself. Sister Katherine
was furious. She accused Antonia of trying to humiliate her in
front of the class. For punishment she was made to kneel on a cane
pole, in the front of the class, for the remainder of the school
day.

Together, Josephine’s antics and Sister
Katherine’s hostility made daily life a puzzle for Antonia. She
never knew what each new day would hold for her. But by the time
the girls had completed their first year, Sister Ursula had decided
to put an end to all of it.

One rainy day, just after lunch, the girls
were all sent to their rooms to study. Josephine was not in the
mind to study. She wanted to be outside. The rain always brought
the frogs. Josephine loved to chase frogs. She was bouncing up and
down on her bed, watching Antonia read. Josephine stopped bouncing.
She picked up one of her books and threw it at Antonia, hitting the
girl in the shoulder.

“What did you do that for?”

“I don’t know, just felt like it I guess.”
Antonia went back to reading, as if nothing had ever happened.
Josephine started bouncing once again and when she had her dresser
in her sight, she stopped. An idea came to her. She pulled out the
drawers of her dresser and started to climb up to the top.

Antonia looked up from her book. “What are
you doing?” she asked.

Josephine ignored her as she made it to the
top and stood on the dresser, facing her bed. Josephine jumped.
With her arms out stretched, she played like she was flying. She
landed safely on her bed.

Antonia was uncomfortable with this new
activity

“You are going to get hurt Joe, stop it.”

“You are going to get hurt Joe, waa waa waa.”
Josephine repeated sarcastically. “What do you know about getting
hurt?” Josephine kept talking as she climbed back up the dresser.
“Can’t get hurt reading a book, now can ya?” And off through the
air she went again. Antonia put her book down and looked at her
friend. “I know what it feels like to get hurt Joe, and you are
going to get hurt. Please stop it.”

“Make me, if you are so worried about my
getting hurt. Make me stop. I dare you.”

Antonia was concerned, she knew Joe was going
to get hurt. She knew it with every fiber of her being but she
didn’t know how to stop her. She got up off of her bed and walked
over to Joe’s dresser.

“Please, Joe, come down from there. Please.”
Antonia was looking up at Josephine. Pleading with her eyes as much
as her words.

“Please, Joe. Please.” Josephine repeated
again, sarcastically.

Josephine brought her hands to her face, in a
mock show of fear. Then she quivered her knees and threw her arms
out to the sides, in a display of tightrope walking. “Oh no,” she
laughed, “oh, no Antonia, I’m gonna fall. Help me, Antonia, help me
please...” but as she said her last line, the statue that claimed
ownership of the top of the dresser started to rock.

Josephine tried to grab it before it went
crashing to the floor. The statue escaped her grasp and fell to its
doom, with Josephine following. She landed with a thud and a crack,
which Antonia was sure, came from Josephine’s arm. What followed
was perhaps the single worst memory Josephine had from St. Agnes.
She had not thought of it since, pushing it as far back in the
recesses of her mind as she was able.