Stephen White - Blinded

The guy at the desk didn’t use a wheelchair as much as he wore one. It was hard to imagine him without the aged, rusting contraption that was pressing hard against his fleshy hips as he rolled back and forth behind the motel’s counter. A tiny color TV-maybe three inches across-hung upside down on a braided nylon rope around his neck. He was watching a game show, occasionally tipping the little television toward the ceiling and staring down in the general direction of his navel.

Wheel of Fortune? I wasn’t sure.

I tipped him ten bucks when he let me check out without paying for the few minutes I’d actually used the room.

“The way I see it, you’re not checking out. What you’re doing is unchecking in” was how he put it. “Where you off to in such a hurry?”

“Indianapolis, I think. Got a call, so I gotta go.”

“Never been there.”

“Me, neither,” I said. I turned to leave but had a thought, so I stopped and asked him, “You ever had a turducken?”

“Sure, sure.” He smiled so fast, his cheeks shook and his triple chin momentarily became one. “I have, I sure have. Three years ago. Thanksgiving supper. My aunt Totsy’s-she’s my daddy’s little sister-her place on the Delta. It’s a meal not to be missed, not to be missed.”

“This trip I have to take up north means I’m going to lose what may be my one and only chance to savor a turducken. And I’m beginning to think that’s a minor tragedy. Well, I do hope you have a good Thanksgiving, sir,” I said.

“I’ll be right here,” he said, as a way of letting me know he didn’t expect to enjoy his holiday much or get anywhere close either to a turducken or to a family gathering at his aunt Totsy’s on the Mississippi Delta. When he said “here,” he didn’t point at the office he was in or at his wheelchair.

What he did was, he touched his TV-on-a-rope.

A minute or two communing with Rand McNally left me with the impression that I could get to Indianapolis in ten to twelve hours of hard road time. I planned to drive for six, sleep for six, drive for six more, and then find someplace for lunch close to the RCA Dome.

By then Lucy should know something new.

And I might have a clue what I was doing.

Tuesday morning found Lauren solidly in hyperenergized zombie mode-think the Energizer Bunny meets Night of the Living Dead .

Her affected leg was no worse, maybe a little better. Less weakness. That was the good news.

But there wasn’t enough good news. Worry about Lauren and the future-hers, Grace’s, ours-stabbed at me incessantly, but she and I didn’t talk about it during the duration of the extended steroid fog. Neither of us once mentioned the bull elephant that had pitched a tent in our living room.

We’d made it through the night-me with little sleep, her with less than that-and thanks to Viv’s early-morning assistance with Grace, I managed to get to the office in time for my first appointment.

Tuesday’s workday was remarkable only for its normalcy. I spent an entire day at work feeling almost effective. Going home that evening, I faced the more daunting task of trying to be an effective husband and father in a home that was quaking from the aftershocks of illness and treatment.

Together-Grace and Lauren and I, with a full assist from Viv and the puppies-we made it. Wednesday morning came. The respite of a four-day holiday weekend was only one workday away.

How hard could that be?

The local media had begun feasting on the Storeys’ troubles. The morning TV news shows and the Boulder and Denver papers had pieced together most of the details of Gibbs’s and Sterling’s ties to Louise Lake. Now they were busy fleshing out the more lurid parts of the tale, including the details of the fruitless search of the Ochlockonee River and the revelation that authorities suspected that Sterling Storey might be involved in the deaths of three other women.

I anticipated that Gibbs would be overwhelmed by the public revelations. Reactive hibernation wasn’t out of the question, and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure she would show up for her early-morning appointment.

But she did.

“Not Safe House. I don’t want to go there, I just don’t think I’d fit in.”

That was actually Gibbs’s opening gambit, her first words after a perfunctory “good morning.”

Had I expected it? No, not really. Was I surprised? No, not at all. The insidious nature of battering caused the pendulum of hope to swing from reality to denial and back again. This was Gibbs’s denial talking. The way she introduced it told me that she had been busy having a conversation with me in her head and had just then decided to allow me to mouth my own lines. I was more than content to let her go on without me for a while, if she would.

“They followed me here. I’m sure they did. They were waiting outside this morning when I opened the garage.”

“They?”

“Those newspeople.”

I nodded. I could have encouraged her to go off on a rant about those newspeople, but I chose to look down the other path she’d offered. “You don’t think you would fit in at Safe House, Gibbs?”

“I’m not a battered woman.”

Arguing the point was a tempting option, but I made a quick judgment that it was neither the right issue nor the right time. Gibbs, I suspected, was protesting a different kind of “fitting in.” And the truth was that her rationalization wasn’t the real issue; her denial was.

Gently, I tried to draw her back. “But you are in need of a safe place to stay-you accept that?”

“I’m trying to be… cautious. Detective Purdy suggested it. Just in case there’s a chance that”-she took a moment to decide how she wanted to complete her thought-“that I might be in some danger. He said he talked to you, too. Right?”

I nodded. I reminded myself that it had been I who had invited Sam into this conundrum; I shouldn’t be too surprised that he was complicating it. At least his advice to Gibbs was sound.

“And now, with all the cameras, I can’t stay at home anyway. I can’t. I’m not even going to go back. I have some things in the car, and I have to find someplace else to stay.”

“What are you considering?”

“I was hoping you would have an alternative… for me.” She lifted her eyebrows. “Someplace besides Safe House.”

Were there other options? Of course. Many women in vulnerable circumstances turned to friends or family for shelter. I usually didn’t think that it was a good idea. “I think Safe House is where you belong. They know what they’re doing. It’s not just the shelter that they offer. It’s the support, the counseling, and their experience. Everything. They work well with the police. They’re the pros. When the stakes are this high, I think you go with the best.”

Watching her face as I made my speech, I realized that it was as though I hadn’t been speaking at all. She waited until the aggravating noise of my voice subsided before she said, “I’m actually thinking about going to a hotel. I’d be more comfortable there, I think. You know, more privacy?”

Not to mention a private bath, maid service, nice linens, room service, and maybe a chocolate on her pillow.

I stated the obvious: “Isn’t that the first place Sterling would look for you?”

“He’s dead, Dr. Gregory. Dead.”

I softened my tone a little. “Is that what you believe, Gibbs?”

“No, not really,” she said without any contemplation. “But it would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? For everybody?”

I didn’t respond. It wasn’t a tactical silence. I just didn’t know what to say. She leaned over and touched the handle on her purse. For a moment I thought she was going to grab it, stand up, and go. She didn’t.