Chris Mooney - World Without End

He suspects the nurse has taken it away. As punishment.

The nurse is a lumpy woman with lacquered gold straw hair tied behind her head with a blue elastic, her face a constant, severe grimace the look of a woman who believes that life and everyone she has known or met have secretly conspired to keep her down. When she came in here earlier, her eyes were cold and detached as her plump and doughy fingers checked his bandages and changed his IV line. Finished, she shot him a look of such disgust, it made him feel like that piece of waste that stubbornly refuses to be flushed down the toilet.

But he is still gripped by the hope that she will believe him. Steve Con-way is young; hope is plentiful. Each foster home brings another possibility, another chance to prove himself. This new one, the Merrill home, has lasted longer than the others, and each day when he wakes up in his own room and in his own bed and looks out the back window and sees the backyard with its jungle gym and swimming pool and hears the noise coming from downstairs -where Samantha Merrill is getting breakfast ready for him… it's like a sunrise in his heart, soft and warm.

The nurse was busy making notes on his chart when he felt the words burning inside his throat. He wet his swollen lips and ran his damaged tongue across the coarse bridge of stitches and took in a deep breath to force out the words.

"I didn't do it."

The nurse ignores him and keeps on writing.

"I didn't do it," he says again.

"So stop looking at me like I'm a nobody."

Her eyes move up from the clipboard and sight him, they seem tender now, maybe even concerned for his plight, and for a brief moment he believes that the truth has penetrated her callused skin. Then her eyes harden, and when she places the chart back down at the end of the bed, he knows that she is just like all the other adults in his world, people who need to label the sick and unfortunate and different, people whose worlds are defined by the boxes into which they place people like himself. The nurse leaves the room without a word. He is alone again, alone with the truth that burns inside his skin and begs for release and understanding, the truth useless because of who he is.

He stares at the ceiling, knowing he can't afford to look out the window. Seeing what's out there… he is strong, but the sight of it will destroy him. Instead, he looks at the IV line attached to his hand, the bag and its clear liquid sending pain medication into his system. Three of his ribs are broken, his left eye is swollen shut, his lips are stitched, his nose is broken, and a line of surgical staples runs across the back of his head where the skin had been ripped open by one of Todd Merrill's many violent kicks. He had heard the word concussion tossed around by the doctor. All of it is meaningless.

The pain medication has deadened his physical discomfort, but it is useless against his rising anger at the unfairness of what has happened, and it cannot stop the inevitable event that looms on the horizon like a storm cloud.

The door swings open. He expects to see Nurse Bitch Face or the lardo cop he had spotted earlier outside his room. It's Samantha Merrill, Todd's mother. He is taken aback by the sight of her. Hope rises.

The door shuts. Mrs. Merrill stands in front of the door, her thin body masked in a blanket of soft gray light. Her black hair, threaded with gray, is pulled back into a tight bun she always wears her hair this way and the fine, porcelain skin along her face is patted with makeup and stretched tight against the bone of her jawline. She is bundled up in her long cashmere overcoat; her gloved hands hold an expensive purse. Everything about her is expensive and elegant, almost regal, the kind of older woman who can partake of the finer things in life but doesn't brand her good fortune and higher status into your skin with condescending stares or demeaning words. She is above no one and treats everyone she meets as an equal.

"Hello, Stephen." Her voice isn't angry; it's warm and inviting, just like it was on that first day when she brought him to her magnificent Newton home and took him upstairs to show him his bedroom. The memory is overwhelming, so quick and sharp, he feels a sting in his good eye followed by a slight wetness. He blinks it away, knowing he can't afford to indulge in his emotions. Concentrate. Don't give up hope yet. You've still got a chance.

Samantha Merrill walks up next to him and then unbuttons her coat. He sees the gold cross pinned to the lapel of her black suit jacket, and when she sits down on the bed and adjusts her scarf, he notices the string of elegant antique pearls draped across the cream-colored fabric of her blouse. The pearls, he knows, were a gift from her great-grandmother. He looks away, his eyes burning, knowing he shouldn't feel ashamed.

"I didn't do it," he blurts out, and his voice breaks. He feels weak and disgusted with himself for a reason he can't pinpoint. This wasn't his fault. But knowing the truth doesn't help purge the feelings.

Mrs. Merrill sits down on the bed and stares down at him, her eyes remote as her attention retreats inside to weigh an important decision.

He can smell her perfume, a clean, fruity aroma that reminds him of standing in an apple orchard on a crisp, fall day. He notices that she has not taken off her coat. Her hands remain gloved.

"Stephen, remember last Sunday's sermon when the priest talked about lying."

He nods. He has attended church with the Merrill family every Sunday morning she had even bought him a nice span coat to wear; it made him look like one of her sons. Now it hangs in his closet back in his bedroom, and he thinks that he will never wear it again and his eyes well up with tears.

"You know God can see into our hearts, Stephen. He knows when you're lying. You can go to hell for lying. It's a mortal sin."

"I wouldn't lie to you or God." It hurts to talk, hut what hurts even more is suffering alone with the truth.

"I didn't do it."

"Stephen."

"I said I didn't do it."

"Stephen, I found in your pocket my diamond stud earrings, which were a gift from my mother, and these." She taps the pearls strung across her neck.

"They're not worth anything, but they hold a great deal of sentimental value to me."

He is shaking his head, he is frightened, he is drowning. He grabs the truth and fights against the suffocating tide of feelings. He has been a tough scrapper all his life, and he isn't going to give up now. Not with the truth on his side.

"I don't agree with what Todd did to you he should never have hit you like that, and he's going to be severely punished for it, believe me,"

Samantha Merrill says. She takes in a deep breath and then adds, "But I can understand Todd's anger. He thought he was protecting me and the family."

"Todd's a liar and a thief," he says.

Samantha Merrill looks like she has been slapped. Her eyes grow wide in surprise and horror and then she recovers and her eyes narrow with a hard light. He is on dangerous ground. Samantha Merrill is an understanding and patient woman she has opened up her home to him in a way he could never have dreamed but the one thing that he has learned during these months with the Merrill family is that Samantha Merrill will not, under any circumstances, tolerate anyone speaking badly of her two sons, Todd and the youngest one, Jarrod.

It doesn't matter. Samantha Merrill needs to hear the truth.

Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it frightens us, but she needs to hear it and accept it.

"Todd was inside your bedroom," he says.

"I caught him with a handful of money and your pearls. I told him to put them back, and he told me that he was going to beat me up. When I tried to run outside he caught me and started kicking me and I couldn't move because he's so big."