Luke turned to his father, who was wiping a sheet of tears from his cheeks. The recent mayhem had dragged his father back into the wrenching memory.
The truth of his mother’s death had no place among his father’s recollections. Luke was accustomed to the burden of unshared secrets. He could carry another.
“Dad, we should go. Ben’s waiting for us.” He glanced over his shoulder at the pathologist, who was standing by his car at the base of the hill.
Ben had ferried Luke and his father to the cemetery. His friend had been waiting with Elmer amidst a crush of reporters when Luke walked out of jail that morning.
Luke winced at the sharp pain in his ankle when he raised himself.
As he started down the incline, he wondered at the perverse wickedness that commanded innocents to pay the price for wars they had no part in starting.
When he had walked halfway down the slope, Luke turned back and looked one last time at Kate Tartaglia’s grave.
“Any change?” Luke asked the red-haired nurse as he walked with his father and Ben into the hospital room at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital.
“I’m afraid not,” she said while taping an IV to Megan’s arm.
The top of Megan’s head was wrapped in a thick gauze dressing that extended down and over her right eye and ear. She lay motionless, unaware of the world around her.
Luke’s heart felt as if a clamp were tightening around it.
When the nurse completed her task, she smiled weakly in his direction and left the room.
Luke came around to the side of Megan’s bed and reached for her left hand. He lifted it and gave a gentle squeeze.
Her arm hung limp in his grasp. Megan had made little progress since coming out of trauma surgery the morning after her four-story fall. After stabilizing her at University Children’s, a transport team had rushed Megan to Saint Elizabeth’s, where CT scans revealed a brain hemorrhage, collapsed lung, fractured pelvis, and ruptured spleen. A team of seven surgeons had waged a twelve-hour battle against death during which her heart twice stopped beating.
She’d had a stroke during surgery and still wasn’t moving her left side. An EEG from two days ago had shown mostly disorganized brain wave activity. Megan had come off the ventilator and was breathing on her own, but she hadn’t uttered a word and only twice had opened her left eye for a fleeting moment. The only glimmers of mental responsiveness — if he could call them that — were her occasional bouts of agitation in response to sounds and spoken words.
Her doctors had said the usual things: The outcome of traumatic brain injuries was difficult to predict; Megan was young and her body still had significant regenerative capacity; and occasionally, patients recovered most or all of their physical and mental capabilities.
Luke knew the lines. He’d said them himself, usually to parents too anguished to hear his words. He also knew that most patients with injuries as severe as Megan’s never recovered, a prospect his heart was fighting mightily to push out of his mind.
Except for visiting Kate’s gravesite while Megan was in radiology for a brain MRI, he had been at Megan’s bedside since his release from jail earlier that day.
Sammy was at the same hospital, in the ICU on a ventilator. The knife tip had pierced his lung; half his chest had filled with blood before surgeons finally stopped the bleeding. They expected him to live but he remained heavily sedated.
The LAPD hadn’t been so lucky. Two SWAT officers had died at the scene — casualties of a war they had fought simply because it was their job.
“Dr. McKenna?”
Luke turned. A neatly dressed man with a briefcase was standing in the doorway.
Elmer was already shaking the man’s hand. “Come in, Mr. Sutton.”
The name was already familiar to Luke. He had called his father from jail and asked Elmer to find an immigration attorney to look into Frankie’s situation. To this point, all of the conversations had been between his father and Sutton.
“I’m sorry to come here like this,” the man said to Elmer, “but I need to talk to your son.”
After introducing himself, Luke asked, “Any news?”
“I got a judge to stay the boy’s deportation pending an asylum hearing in ten days.”
“And what exactly does that mean?” Ben asked.
“It means that Frankie’s not going back to Guatemala immediately,” Sutton said. “More than that, I can’t tell you. We’re just going to have to see how this plays out, but I think we have a decent case. We’re claiming the boy could be targeted by leftovers of that group—”
“CHEGAN,” Luke said.
“Yeah. I’m going to argue that he’s at risk and should be allowed to remain in the U.S. until Guatemalan officials can demonstrate that they’ve purged the bad guys.”
“Where is Frankie?” Luke asked.
“At an INS holding facility.” Sutton placed his briefcase on the arm of a chair and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “As soon as you sign these papers, they’ll release him.”
“Where will he go?”
“That’s up to you. You’re his guardian now. That is, until his status is cleared up at the hearing.”
“What?” Luke churned through the papers. “Me? Look after Frankie?” His eyes came back to the attorney. “Have you met this boy?”
“Your father told me that you’d accept temporary custody.”
Luke shot a glance at Elmer.
The old man shrugged sheepishly.
“This order is only valid for twenty-four hours,” Sutton said. “I have to get it over to INS with a signature by five o’clock today, or he’s going back to Guatemala tomorrow.” The attorney shrugged. “It’s up to you.”
Luke turned to Ben.
“Don’t look at me,” Ben said. “I got my hands full trying to house-break a teenage daughter.”
“What were you thinking?” Luke snapped at his father. “I can’t take care of Frankie…”
A soft cough came from Megan.
Everyone turned.
Megan’s right hand was twitching.
Luke stepped around her bed, cursing himself for raising his voice.
“It’s okay, Megan.” He rubbed her hand. “Everything’s okay.”
Her left eye opened slightly and her head swung slowly toward Luke. She wiggled free of his grip, and in an unsteady motion raised her right arm.
“I think she’s pointing at Mr. Sutton,” Elmer said.
Megan’s lips moved.
A moment later she made a breathy sound.
Luke glanced at his father, then leaned over Megan and placed an ear next to her mouth.
“Shut up,” she whispered in a slurred voice, “and sign the papers.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Philip Hawley, Jr. is a pediatrician and assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine. In writing STIGMA, he drew on his experience working among remote Mayan tribes in the rain forests of Central America.
You can contact the author through his website: www.philiphawley.com