No Hiding in Boise Read online

  How did he manage to lose his house key? Wouldn’t it be on the same key chain as his car key? I wrap my robe around myself and consider that he probably lost all his keys and had to get an Uber ride home. This would be just like him. He lost his phone last month, still owes me $500 for the replacement I bought him.

  “Damn it, Jed,” I mutter again.

  I can see the outline of him through the frosted glass window alongside the front door. I flip the lock and say, “You lost your—”

  I stop.

  It’s not Jed.

  It’s a cop.

  Two, actually. The other is standing by the black squad car.

  My heart sinks. I know that’s a common phrase, but I feel something inside me actually free-falling. My knees buckle.

  The cop standing in front of me is young, Jed’s age. He clears his throat.

  “Ms. Ketcher?” he says.

  I shake my head.

  I don’t want to be Ms. Ketcher.

  “Are you Joyce Ketcher? Jed Ketcher’s mother?”

  I just keep shaking my head.

  The other cop, an older man with deep-set eyes, walks over, stands alongside his partner. I stare at their shoes—so shiny.

  “Was he in an accident?” I ask. My voice is strange, high-pitched.

  I imagine Jed skidding off Interstate 84 in his twelve-year-old Ford Mustang, the car I bought him for his sixteenth birthday. I imagine the car flipping. I imagine him unconscious, upside down, held in place by his seat belt—god, I hope he wore his seat belt. I imagine someone driving by, spotting him, calling 911. How long was he by himself? Is he okay?

  “There was a shooting,” the older cop says, interrupting my thoughts.

  A shooting?

  I cover my mouth with my hand. I am a caricature of someone receiving shocking news.

  “At a place called Ray’s Bar, outskirts of downtown,” he says.

  Jed must have stopped in for a beer after the movie. He isn’t much of a drinker, or not that I know of, but every so often a six-pack of Coors will show up in the fridge.

  “Did he get shot?” My question comes out as a shriek.

  The cops look at each other, as if deciding who will bear the burden of breaking the news. That’s when I know that, yes, he was shot.

  “Is he alright?” I ask. Another shriek.

  I notice my neighbor across the street. He is getting his paper, or that’s what he was doing. Now he is just staring. I am a spectacle.

  “I’m afraid it appears he took his life, Ms. Ketcher,” the younger cop says.

  I feel faint. Am I dreaming this?

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “The shooter shot him?”

  The older cop reaches out, touches my forearm. That’s when I realize my arms had been flailing about.

  “Ma’am,” he says.

  I’m already crying.

  “Ma’am,” he says, again. “We have reason to believe your son was the shooter.”

  ANGIE

  THERE ARE TWO HOSPITALS in Boise: Saint Luke’s and Saint Al’s. (As a kid, I thought that was the saint’s name—Al. I was well into my teens when I learned that Al was short for Alphonsus.) I think of Evie any time I’m on the Connector and drive by Saint Al’s. I gave birth to her there. That’s my only experience with the hospital … until now.

  I am not prepared for what I see when I get to the Intensive Care Unit. I don’t even recognize Cale. At first, I’m convinced I’m in the wrong room. His head is wrapped in a turban of white gauze. His face is swollen, his eyelids purple. There are so many tubes taped to his face. A blue, snakelike one connects to what I’m fairly certain is a ventilator. It’s only when I peek under the sheet covering his legs that I’m sure it’s him. He has a birthmark on his knee, a brown spot that looks like an upside-down heart. This is Cale. My stomach feels like it flips over on itself, gets twisted.

  One of the nurses comes in as I’m peeking under the sheet. I quickly drop it, feeling silly for needing to confirm my husband’s identity. Shouldn’t I know it’s him on some intuitive level?

  “You must be Cale’s wife,” she says. She’s young—twenty-something, maybe early thirties. It’s both strange and comforting to hear her refer to him by name, as if she is a friend caring for him.

  She removes one of the IV bags, hangs a new one. There are so many machines, multiple screens displaying information that means nothing to me.

  “I am,” I say.

  “I’m Nicole. It’s nice to meet you.” She gives me a warm smile. “Dr. Harris will be in to talk with you in a minute. He’s the neurosurgeon.”

  This mention of the neurosurgeon, along with the head bandages, confirms that Cale was shot in the head. I don’t even want to ask Nurse Nicole for details; I don’t want to hear it said aloud.

  I stare at the braces on Cale’s feet, wondering if he broke his ankles somehow. I can’t help but picture him scrambling to get out of that bar, bullets from a deranged man’s gun flying in all directions.

  “They’re to protect his heels,” Nurse Nicole says, as if reading my mind.

  “His heels?” I ask.

  “From bedsores.”

  It hits me that they expect him to be lying here, immobile, long enough for sores to develop on his heels.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “And the sleeves on his legs are what we call SCDs—sequential compression devices. They help with blood flow.”

  I nod, attempt a smile to show some appreciation for this information, for any information. I watch the sleeves on his calves tighten and then release. They hiss when they release. This noise and the noise of the ventilator will become the soundtrack of my life now.

  “I’ll be back in a little bit, but the doctor will be in shortly.”

  Nurse Nicole leaves, and I stare at the body of my husband. I watch his chest rise and fall. I reach for his hand, squeeze. It is warm. There is no squeeze in return. When I release it, it falls to the bed, limp.

  “Mrs. Matthews?” a man says.

  I turn to see a fifty-something man in blue scrubs. His cheeks are sunken; he looks gaunt.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I’m Dr. Harris,” he says.

  He shakes my hand and motions to a chair for me to sit. There are three chairs, lined up against the wall. They are chairs more appropriate for a corporate conference room. I sit in the middle one. He seats himself on a rolling stool and crosses his arms over his chest.

  “Your husband sustained a very serious head injury,” he begins.

  I nod. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “It’s hard to say. Let me explain.”

  He rolls closer to me on his stool, almost too close. I lean back in my chair. He proceeds to give me a short lesson in brain anatomy, explaining how the brain is divided into two hemispheres made up of four lobes each, with each lobe serving different functions.

  “Typically, outcome is poorer for those with extensive bullet tracts, those that pass through both hemispheres or multiple lobes,” he says. “A bullet that damages the right hemisphere can leave the patient with motor and sensory impairments on the left side, and vice versa. Other things like memory, speech, and vision are controlled by both sides of the brain. So what I’m saying is that the best-case scenario is when an injury is limited to one hemisphere. That means the patient may be impaired but still able to perform functions at some level, depending on what lobes are damaged.”

  When he says “perform functions,” I imagine Cale in a wheelchair, unable to talk. I imagine drool on his chin. I think of a woman I follow on Instagram who posts about the daily care she gives her husband who was rendered paraplegic by a car accident. I think of how I told my best friend, Sahana, “I don’t think I could do that.” I think of how she’d said, “You could if you had to. People can do all kinds of things when they have to.”

  “So what’s the scenario for Cale?” I ask, not sure I want to know.

  “Well, unfortunately, he sustained injury to both
hemispheres,” he says. “The bullet entered the right side of his head, went through four lobes, and came to rest on the left side of his brain.”

  He pulls out a scan of what must be Cale’s brain and shows me the track the bullet took.

  “Is that the bullet?” I ask, pointing to a dark spot on the scan, a spot in the shape of, well, a bullet.

  “Yes, we had to leave it where it was. That’s not uncommon.”

  Not uncommon.

  As if he sees this all the time, as if all kinds of people are walking around with bullets in their heads.

  “There was a lot of swelling when he came in, so we performed a craniectomy.”

  “A what?”

  He looks irritated that I’m requesting details.

  “We removed part of the skull to relieve pressure.”

  “You removed part of his skull?”

  I’m sure I look horrified. I can’t help it.

  He gives me a tight-lipped smile of pity—not pity for my situation, but pity for my stupidity, it seems. “I know it sounds bad, but this is what needs to be done to treat the swelling.”

  He speaks with such condescension, as if talking to a child. I guess it’s true what they say about surgeons being assholes with God complexes. I hate this man with a rage I’ve never felt for a stranger before.

  “So now what?” I ask, keeping my tone even. He is responsible for Cale’s brain; I have to be nice.

  “Now, we wait,” he says. “The first seventy-two hours are critical. His pupils are responsive to light, which is a sign there’s no further swelling in his brain. That’s a good thing. We need to keep an eye on his ICP and—”

  “His what?” I interrupt. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck if this jerk is irritated with me.

  “ICP,” he says, with that talking-to-a-child voice again. “Intracranial pressure.”

  “I’m sorry, this may be a stupid question,” I say, playing the dumb woman because I know that’s what he wants me to be, “but you’re saying he’s in a coma then, right?”

  “Yes. We have him on sedation medications to keep him comatose. We need to give his brain time. We’ll be doing CT scans to assess the damage, then see about taking him off the medications.”

  “And then he wakes up?”

  He gives me that pitying smile again. “It’s not like in the movies,” he says. “Waking up is a process. And he might be a completely different person if he wakes up.”

  “If?”

  He leans forward, officially invading my personal space.

  “Look, in my experience, gunshot wounds like this have a ninety percent mortality rate.”

  I flinch at this, at his phrasing. I’ve worked in advertising for years, writing copy, putting a positive spin on all kinds of negatives. Why couldn’t he say “a ten percent survival rate”? Why does he have to be such an asshole?

  “Even if your husband survives this, he will not be the same person he was before.”

  I stare at his hands. He has no wedding ring. He seems like one of those married-to-the-job types. The gauntness implies he can’t even be bothered to care for himself, let alone a wife.

  “We will give him the very best care we can,” he says.

  The words sound forced, like a line he was instructed to say in a seminar about how to comfort patients’ loved ones. Maybe some other wife complained about him to the hospital’s HR department and he had to undergo sensitivity training. If so, it didn’t do much good. Or maybe anybody in my situation is impossible to comfort. Maybe I’m just looking for someone to hate.

  He stands from his stool. Clearly, he expects the information he has given me to be enough. Clearly, it is not enough.

  I stand from my chair. “Wait,” I say. “What am I supposed to do?”

  He looks at me, seemingly baffled by the question.

  “Am I supposed to stay here or go home or … what am I supposed to do?”

  I feel the tears coming despite my attempts to keep them at bay. They are making me into the type of person he probably hates to deal with.

  “It’s really up to you,” he says.

  He starts to walk away.

  “I have a baby at home. I can’t … I don’t know what to do.”

  He turns at the doorway, lets out an audible sigh. “You can go home to your baby. We will give him the very best care we can.”

  There’s that line again, practiced, rehearsed.

  When he leaves and it’s just me with Cale again, I feel more alone and helpless than I’ve ever felt in my life, like I’m smack-dab in the middle of an ocean, at night, clinging to a buoy.

  I turn back to Cale. I’m angry—at Dr. Asshole, but also at Cale. I know this makes me an awful person. It’s just that this didn’t have to happen. If he’d just been in bed next to me, he would be fine. We would wake up and watch the morning news together, shaking our heads at the reality of a shooting just minutes from our house.

  I go to his bedside. I touch his hand again. It reminds me of touching Evie’s hands when she is sleeping deeply, the way I can lift them to my lips and kiss them without her stirring. Her day care teacher told me I should trim her fingernails when she sleeps so she won’t protest.

  I make a mental note to text her day care to say she won’t be there today. And my boss.

  “Cale?” I whisper.

  A part of me expects a response, muffled by the tubes and bandages. The only sound is the beeping of the machines, the hiss of the ventilator and compression sleeves.

  “What were you doing there?” I ask.

  I wipe my eyes with my sleeve.

  My phone buzzes with a text from Aria.

  So? What’s going on?

  I text her back a succinct version of reality—shot in the head, surgery, coma, waiting. Three dots appear on the screen and remain there for a while; she doesn’t know what to say. Nobody is going to know what to say. Everyone is going to wonder why my husband was at a dive bar on a random Thursday night.

  She texts back:

  He’s strong. You’re strong. We’ll get through this.

  This is what my life will be consumed by now—platitudes, clichés, messages of hope. I will receive “thoughts and prayers” from Facebook friends I barely know. Someone will start a meal train or a GoFundMe page. I will have to express gratitude for all this, because that’s the right thing to do, but I will be exhausted and doubtful and scared. I will want to be left alone. I will resent the insistence that I trust in God and his plan. But I will have to hide that resentment. I will have to put on a “brave face,” be optimistic. This will be my life now.

  I text back:

  Is Evie awake?

  She replies:

  No. Should we come there when she wakes up?

  I do not want Evie to see Cale like this. Even though she’s not even two years old and likely won’t understand that it’s her father lying in the bed, she will understand something is wrong. She will feel the tension in the room. She will be scared.

  Evie adores Cale. She’s oblivious to the fact that fatherhood seems to be an obligatory performance for him—look at me, throwing my daughter up in the air. It’s no wonder he’s exhausted; anything that doesn’t come naturally is exhausting. But Evie doesn’t know it’s hard for him. She can’t tell that when he sits with her and plays with blocks, every muscle in his body is tense. She doesn’t know that when she goes to bed, I bear the brunt of his downcast mood, a mood he won’t even acknowledge: “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Nothing,” he snaps. I do this for her, of course. I do this for the bliss of her ignorance.

  I text:

  No. I’m coming home soon.

  After all, there’s not much for me to do here, except continue to stare at him and whisper questions that he can’t answer.

  TESSA

  I DON’T GET HOME, to our apartment, until evening, nearly twenty-four hours after starting what I thought would be a routine shift at the bar. I haven’t slept or eaten. I have sipped water, mostly because peopl
e—Ryan, police officers—keep putting paper cups filled to the brim in front of my face.

  The police wanted to know everything I saw, even though I didn’t see much of anything. I couldn’t describe the shooter. I couldn’t even say for certain if the shooter was a man or a woman. The person was wearing all black—or maybe it was just so dark in the room that it appeared the person was wearing all black; I couldn’t even be decisive about that. I couldn’t say if he—assuming a male—acted alone. They wanted to know how many pops I heard. I had no idea. Ten, maybe? A hundred? They wanted to know when I went to the storage closet. I had no idea. They seemed frustrated, though they kept saying, “Teresa, you’re doing great.” I couldn’t take them seriously; nobody calls me by my full name.

  “You should really sleep,” Ryan says.

  We are sitting on our couch, just staring at the TV that isn’t on. He has made me a cup of tea, but it just sits on the coffee table, over-steeping.

  “I don’t know how I could possibly sleep,” I tell him.

  I reach for the remote control, but Ryan stops me.

  “Not sure you should be watching TV,” he says.

  I look at him, confused.

  “It’s all over the news,” he explains.

  This hadn’t occurred to me. You see these stories all the time—shootings in movie theaters and grocery stores and schools. You don’t ever expect to be the story.

  “Seriously, Tess, you need to sleep.”

  “I don’t know how to do that,” I tell him, getting irritated. He wasn’t the one hiding in a storage closet, listening to a horror show a wall away. He doesn’t know what I need.

  He stands from the couch. “Stay here,” he says, holding out one “stop” hand to me, as if I’m a dog. “I’ll be right back.”

  I curl up on the couch, hugging a throw pillow against my chest. My phone buzzes with a text message. It’s my mom.

  Just heard about the shooting there. Is that close to where you live??

  She wouldn’t even think to ask if I was okay. I’ve never been a bar-going type. She has no idea I work at Ray’s. We haven’t talked much. She’s back in Oregon, in Bend. That’s where I’m from. She’s living with her boyfriend. To be honest, that’s one of the reasons I left—the boyfriend. It used to be just me and her, against the world. Then she met Rob. Then he was eating cereal at our kitchen counter in the morning. I guess I couldn’t expect my mom to stay single forever. She deserves to be happy. Like I said, I’m a brat.