In Plain View

Just like that, I’m gone.

I don’t even know what happened next. Honestly. I couldn’t tell you. My brain reverted to something lower than lizard-level function. I was all the way back to spineless protoplasm.

Next thing I know, Curzon’s pushing himself back, eyes locked on me. The look on his face-oh! I’m not Maddy. I’m like food.

I’m survival.

I’m it.

Nobody’s ever looked at me like that. Every small hair on my skin lifted. I stood there like an idiot, mouth gaping, lips burning.

Which is right about when I realized Curzon’s cell was ringing, and here comes a nurse shoving her way through the door. I shuffled sideways, the sheriff and I still staring, not even blinking.

“Somebody’s phone is ringing,” the nurse said, glancing back and forth between us. “They will kill you dead if they catch you with that thing turned on anywhere near the telemetry machines. Sign outside says all phones off.”

“Turning it off. Right now.” Curzon pulled out his phone. Breaking the law every now and then was a law- enforcement perk, after all. “Sheriff here.”

The nurse bustled around the room, checking Jenny’s gadgets for her temperature and pulse, while I focused on getting my own vital signs back into the normal range.

“Christ, you gotta be kidding me. Who responded?” Curzon asked. He continued staring at me while listening. “On the way.” He snapped the phone shut. “I’ve got to go.”

“Okay,” I mumbled like a half-wit. “Thanks-”

For everything? The words stuck in my throat, blocking some key artery and causing my face to flush with heat. Junior high social gaff #101.

Curzon raised his hand once again and pointed at me.

You.

He turned and walked out.

I stood there. The nurse did some fiddling with Jenny’s IV. She told me they were pushing fluids to help her body flush the toxic stuff faster. I lay down on the second bed and watched it bubble and drip, counting the seconds, measuring out increments of guilt and confusion.

One one-thousand,

Two one-thousand,

Three one-thousand,

drip.

One-not again,

Two-not today,

Three-not now,

drip.

Jenny slept on. When the ten o’clock news started, I went looking for a can of pop and called Tonya. She was out, so I left a message with the bare bones of what had happened. I knew she’d probably come flying out to the hospital as soon as she heard it, but there was no holding back on this kind of info.

I went back to the room and lay down on the second bed. When pressure ratchets my world down to an impossibly narrow range of positives, my body hums with something that’s a cross between dreaming and a downhill bike ride. I’m hollow inside. My chest echoes with each heartbeat. My eyes burn the world to a soft-focus haze. As a kid it felt like going to heaven, the empty quiet gave me such relief. It still gives me relief, although it never lasts.

My head has been trained to keep busy. All my work is broken into increasingly smaller increments: quarterly, monthly, weekly. Critical. Six minutes.:30 seconds. Out.

One one-thousand,

Two one-thousand,

Three one-thousand,

drip.

Lists of things undone began to crowd my mind. I’d have to cobble together the final piece for the satellite feed tomorrow, tomorrow night latest. Network does not stop for me. Maybe Ainsley could bring the equipment to me so I wouldn’t have to leave Jenny.

A small noise, soft as a lover’s altered breath, came from the bed beside me. Jenny twitched. Her chin thrust up, then froze stiff and still. Without warning, her eyes snapped open. She looked straight up at the ceiling.

One step put me within reach. I touched her wrist with my fingertips.

“I was pretty worried about you.” My voice sounded like I smoked a pack-a-day.

Jenny blinked. I had no idea how blank-faced a child could look. I rubbed up and down her forearm, warming her skin, keeping her with me. The blank face melted as I watched, first the mouth sagged, then the eyes welled with tears.

There was that look again, the one I’d seen flash across Curzon’s face-need.

I was it.

Me? The thought echoed between my awe and panic for two, three, a dozen heartbeats. Is this what a woman feels like when she becomes a mother? When someone hands her a baby and just like that, who she’s been and who she must become are measured in the eyes of her child?

I dropped the guardrail on the bed and dragged her as close to me as the rubber tubes and strapping would allow. Something started beeping. I ignored it.

“We’ll figure this out. We’ll figure something out. You hear me?”

Her head bumped against my shoulder. I pulled back so I could see her face. Her eyes had rolled back and the whites were all that was visible. Her body shook from inside. It lasted just long enough for me to register what was happening.

Before I could panic, the nurse was standing there. “She’s had another seizure. It’s not unusual.” After checking the monitors, she helped me straighten Jenny in the bed and smooth her covers. On the way out, she added, “Why don’t you try to rest, too?”

“This is me-resting.”

As soon as the nurse was out the door, I crawled into bed with Jenny on her tubeless side. She was so slight, it was easy enough to shove her over and make a little room. I put one arm around the top of her head and propped the extra pillow behind me. Our bodies touched all down the side.

I couldn’t create the white calm of resting. It was too quiet. When I was a kid I used to pray at times like these, repeating words of comfort over and over. Without thinking, the lonely perjury of a please God slipped out. Once upon a time, I was a good Catholic girl. Until I grew up and saw what havoc it wrecked on the people around me. Total abstinence has been my answer. No more guardian angels. No more saints. No mass. No confession. No absolution. And no prayer. Still sometimes, I crave it like a junkie-just a taste of heaven, so to speak.

Listening to Rachel the other day had whetted my appetite for some reason. I thought of the pictures I’d taken of the Amish, their faces turning away even as they saw my camera. I would never use them without consent. I snapped those pictures for myself, to keep, to look at later. Sometimes pictures help me figure things out.

I got my first camera when I was eleven. Took pictures of everything-my sister’s baby toys, the tree stump in our yard, the rust on our Pinto wagon, my mom in front of the sewing machine, my dad in his work clothes, my dad on the floor. I kept them all. When things got worse, I took more. I kept those, too.

This is what I know about pictures-they can be like water, sixty percent of you, if they get inside your head. With all the things I’d seen in my career, my contents label must read at least that much in human toxins.

What had Jenny seen that had led her here?