Sparkle City
Kelly Kenyon
Sparkle City
Kelly Kenyon
Copyright 2012 Kelly Kenyon
Sparkle City
My reflection looks rugged, run down, lifeless, as if the last eight years of working in the ER have finally caught up with me. I run my hand along my unruly auburn tresses to smooth down the fly-aways, the metal from the cuffs glinting in the bright fluorescent lighting. They hadn’t given me a chance to change out of these contaminated ceil blue scrubs. The unclean state of my clothing makes my skin crawl. There is a quarter sized spot of blood dried onto the outside corner of my pocket. It’s disgusting. I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want it touching me. I try to ignore it, but I can feel that spot of blood, dried as it may be, seeping through the cloth and absorbing into my skin underneath despite the protective layers. I feel like Lady Macbeth. Out damn’d spot!
I stare into the mirror, my hazel eyes willing someone to enter. Perhaps this mirror is like one of those optical illusion posters. If I stare at it long enough maybe some hidden design will emerge; perhaps the shape of the person staring back at me. They are there, watching, analyzing. Building a case. No one comes; not yet. Apparently I’m not a Jedi. They want to watch me squirm just a little longer. Force some kind of emotion out of me that I’m not capable of showing. I just killed a person; surely they want to see me sweat. Luckily, seeing what I see day after day has taught me how to keep emotions in check or rather how to turn them off completely. Until today that is.
My hair is still a mess and the bags under my eyes are dark and swollen. They feel heavy with the weight of stress. They remind me of Erin, a girl I once knew in high school. She came in yesterday with a jagged laceration above her right eyebrow, two black eyes and a hyphema in her right eye. It was the blood in her eye that scared her; she was worried she might go blind if she didn’t get it taken care of. Dr. Allen examined her and concluded the bleeding was minimal and there would be no permanent damage. It would heal in approximately five to six days. The laceration required sutures. She wasn’t worried about that. Said she’s got plenty of scars, what’s one more? Doctor injected the area with lidocaine and sewed her up. He offered her a scrip for Vicodin. She refused. That’s all she needed was more narcotics for him to get his hands on.
She tried to tell me she had fallen down the stairs. Typical excuse. Those stairs must have really had it in for her this time. I hear something new every time she comes in. She got it from playing softball. A door hit her. I gave her my stern look, the one I use on my kids when they are telling an obvious lie, except she doesn’t giggle like they do when they are caught. “You don’t have to stay you know? You are worth so much more than this, Erin.” I told her.
“But how do I leave? He’ll never allow it…” She didn’t try to deny the abuse after that.
I nodded. I couldn’t give her the answer. She took the pamphlet I handed her with the number for a domestic abuse hotline on it, folded it, and tucked it away in her purse with a heavy sigh.
“He’s in jail tonight,” she said, “He’ll be out soon. His mom always bails his ass out. He’ll be home by morning.”
I gave her the same talk about packing up and leaving. “Get some friends, call your mom, your dad… get out tonight. If you don’t, the next time you might be coming to us in a body bag.”
Staring into the mirror at the puffy, dark crescents under my own eyes, I can’t help but wonder if she took my advice this time. I knew her mom hadn’t heard from her in a very long time. Occasionally I’d run into her at Kroger. Her mom, Kathy, is the one who told me about Erin’s situation; the whole unfortunate story. She married young, had two babies by this man, got beat all the time and always went crawling back as if it were her fault he hit her. I just nodded and said, “How awful, I hope she gets out of that situation soon”. Same old song and dance I see all too often at the ER. It’s hard to feel sympathetic for those women. I just don’t understand why someone would want to stay with another person who hurts them so badly.
My eyes drift from my disheveled reflection to the clock ticking on the wall above the door. It was guarded by a white steel wired cage and firmly bolted to the wall. My guess is to protect it from being ripped down and stomped to pieces. I can see how some people might get a little irritated sitting here in this dank room, the stale smell of sweat lingering in the placid air. The ticking of the clock counting down the minutes before some detective in a brown tweed jacket would come in with his partner to play good cop, bad cop. I’m not irritated. The rhythmic ticking is oddly relaxing to me.
I rub my eyes trying to keep them from shutting against my will. I had already worked three twelve hour shifts since Friday. Today was supposed to be my day off but the new girl called in sick so I covered her shift too. I could always blame this whole mess on extreme exhaustion. It would work just as well as temporary insanity, right? My husband could vouch that I get extremely pissy when I’m sleepy, disoriented even. He’d tell the detective there are only two times to steer clear of Tris; when she’s tired and when she’s PMS-ing.
I wonder if they would blame what he did on mental illness. It seems in situations like this, they always lean towards the insanity plea. Take a look at James Holmes. Well, maybe my mind’s a little sick too. Too many years of sewing limbs back on and setting broken bones. Too many lives lost, young and old, at the hands of reckless drivers, domestic abusers, drug overdoses, suicide. Maybe I just finally snapped under the pressure.
My elbows dig into the cold, worn tabletop as my head gets heavier in my palms. If someone doesn’t come in soon I am going to fall asleep and never wake up. I wonder if they make every one wait this long before they rip into them with a barrage of questions? Why’d you do it, Tris? Did you have any help? Did the voices tell you to do it? Maybe they haven’t decided what to do with me just yet. What I do know is that every time I close my eyes, the events of the day begin to replay over and over. I don’t want to relive it; not ever. I’m done. After today it will be time to find a new career. Spend more time with my babies, travel with my husband, work on my tan. Take a long ass nap. That is, if they don’t lock me away for the rest of my life.
My heart skips a beat thinking the next time I get to hug my children it may be in the visiting room in Roseville Penitentiary. I’ve always been one to think logically before acting out; not this time. Today my emotions got the best of me. The rage reared her ugly, fiery red head and black horns. Every mother sitting at home watching the evening news right now is secretly wishing they too could have had a chance to rid the world of this ugly beast. That monster was burning in hell because of me, but now three children may never see their mother again.
How do I get away with this?
I begin to wonder if there is a media circus camped outside yet. Reporters are like vultures; where there are corpses they are there circling above waiting to swoop down and steal whatever innocence the victims may have left. Will they want to interview me? Do they even know what happened yet? Will they portray me as a hero or a villain? Maybe I’ll be offered a book deal; I’m sure it would make a pretty damn good story. Seems everyone cashes in on tragedy these days. How much did Casey Anthony get out of her book deal? I’d surely make more; I didn’t kill anyone who was innocent.
Just as my eyes close, my body jerks back to attention. The door opens and he staggers in, feet lazily dragging across the linoleum, a cup of coffee in one hand, a manila folder in the other. He plops his ass heavily in the seat across from me, tossing the folder onto the table in front of him. The smell of stale coffee and Marlboro’s follows him into the room, nauseating me. He takes a sip, cautiously slurping the steaming liquid so not to burn his lips, looks at me long and hard, and then takes another noisy sip of his coffee. His eyes are a dull, lifeless gray.
Like me, he has seen a great deal or horror in his line of work and it shows on his pale, weathered face. His mousy brown hair is dusted with gray at his temples. In the reflection I can see a bald spot forming at the crown of his head. I was wrong; he does not wear a tweed jacket. In fact, he has no jacket on at all. Just a white button up shirt, dried yellow sweat stains under his thick arms.
He doesn’t bring his partner along, if he has one. This interrogation is going to be either all good cop or all bad cop. Several minutes go by without him moving, or saying anything at all. He is assessing me. Finally he puts his hand out, motioning with his fat, sausage fingers. I get it, laying my hands out to him wrists up. He inserts a tiny silver key into the cuffs and removes the shackles. I instinctively rub my wrists just like a criminal in one of my shows would do. I find a little humor in this, but I keep it to myself.
“Thanks.” I say still rubbing my wrists. The cuffs were so tight there are red indentations in my skin. “That was so not what I imagined. Fifty Shades is a bunch of bullshit.” I muse.
A smirk tugs briefly at the corner of his lips. “Your husband said you were a smart ass. Guess he was right. I’m Detective James Aldrich, and you are Triscia Cald…”
“Tris…Call me Tris” I interject.
“Ok, Tris. You work at St. Francis’ in the Emergency room, correct?”
“Yes, that’s correct, Detective.”
“Bad day for everyone, Tris. But that doesn’t change the fact that we need to find out exactly what happened today. Your friends at the hospital aren’t giving us a damn thing. Honestly, I don’t blame them. Probably, if it were me, I’d do the same. If it were my partner or one of the other cops… well, my lips would be sealed too.”
“Am I being accused of something, Detective? Should I have a lawyer present?” I ask, my eyes widening with fear.
He sighs heavily, “You certainly have the right to have a lawyer present, but I just have some questions for you. You know… to paint a better picture of what happened today. Tell you the truth… I’d rather not be here right now. I’d love nothing more than to send you home, go home, hit the hay myself. It’s been a long day. A long day…” he runs a hand over his heavily whiskered face. “But I can’t do that. I have to follow the rules. Protocol. You know how that goes, don’t you Tris? Gotta finish all that paperwork. So what do you say we get this done and over with?”
Sleep would be great right about now; maybe Dr. Allen can call in a scrip for Prazosin to help drown out the nightmares I am inevitably going to have. They prescribe it for PTSD patients; I definitely think I could qualify for that. “Don’t you need to get out the tape recorder, or do the security camera’s all have audio now?” I ask glancing at the looming black camera in the corner. He impatiently draws in a breath, holds it for a beat then lets it out slowly through his open mouth, blowing the stench of cigarettes and coffee into my face. I cringe, lean back in the cold metal folding chair and cross my arms over my chest guardedly. “Where should I start, Detective…”
“How about starting at the beginning of today, Tris? Say, seven am this morning?” he asks in his deep, Northern Michigan accent.
“Ok,” I reply, hesitating to continue. How much should I tell him? What does he know already? “It was a pretty slow moving morning, you know… until the shooting.” I explain, reaching back into my memory for the earliest events I can remember from today. It seems like ages ago. It’s hard to think of anything else but the carnage that trumps all other goings-on. Her little face will be burned into my memory forever. Right there along with nine-eleven, and Columbine. I try to find a good place to begin, but there really isn’t one.
