J. Wachowski - In Plain View

I went back to the room and lay down on the second bed. When pressure ratchets my world down to an impossibly narrow range of positives, my body hums with something that’s a cross between dreaming and a downhill bike ride. I’m hollow inside. My chest echoes with each heartbeat. My eyes burn the world to a soft-focus haze. As a kid it felt like going to heaven, the empty quiet gave me such relief. It still gives me relief, although it never lasts.

My head has been trained to keep busy. All my work is broken into increasingly smaller increments: quarterly, monthly, weekly. Critical. Six minutes.:30 seconds. Out.

One one-thousand,

Two one-thousand,

Three one-thousand,

drip.

Lists of things undone began to crowd my mind. I’d have to cobble together the final piece for the satellite feed tomorrow, tomorrow night latest. Network does not stop for me. Maybe Ainsley could bring the equipment to me so I wouldn’t have to leave Jenny.

A small noise, soft as a lover’s altered breath, came from the bed beside me. Jenny twitched. Her chin thrust up, then froze stiff and still. Without warning, her eyes snapped open. She looked straight up at the ceiling.

One step put me within reach. I touched her wrist with my fingertips.

“I was pretty worried about you.” My voice sounded like I smoked a pack-a-day.

Jenny blinked. I had no idea how blank-faced a child could look. I rubbed up and down her forearm, warming her skin, keeping her with me. The blank face melted as I watched, first the mouth sagged, then the eyes welled with tears.

There was that look again, the one I’d seen flash across Curzon’s face-need.

I was it.

Me? The thought echoed between my awe and panic for two, three, a dozen heartbeats. Is this what a woman feels like when she becomes a mother? When someone hands her a baby and just like that, who she’s been and who she must become are measured in the eyes of her child?

I dropped the guardrail on the bed and dragged her as close to me as the rubber tubes and strapping would allow. Something started beeping. I ignored it.

“We’ll figure this out. We’ll figure something out. You hear me?”

Her head bumped against my shoulder. I pulled back so I could see her face. Her eyes had rolled back and the whites were all that was visible. Her body shook from inside. It lasted just long enough for me to register what was happening.

Before I could panic, the nurse was standing there. “She’s had another seizure. It’s not unusual.” After checking the monitors, she helped me straighten Jenny in the bed and smooth her covers. On the way out, she added, “Why don’t you try to rest, too?”

“This is me-resting.”

As soon as the nurse was out the door, I crawled into bed with Jenny on her tubeless side. She was so slight, it was easy enough to shove her over and make a little room. I put one arm around the top of her head and propped the extra pillow behind me. Our bodies touched all down the side.

I couldn’t create the white calm of resting. It was too quiet. When I was a kid I used to pray at times like these, repeating words of comfort over and over. Without thinking, the lonely perjury of a please God slipped out. Once upon a time, I was a good Catholic girl. Until I grew up and saw what havoc it wrecked on the people around me. Total abstinence has been my answer. No more guardian angels. No more saints. No mass. No confession. No absolution. And no prayer. Still sometimes, I crave it like a junkie-just a taste of heaven, so to speak.

Listening to Rachel the other day had whetted my appetite for some reason. I thought of the pictures I’d taken of the Amish, their faces turning away even as they saw my camera. I would never use them without consent. I snapped those pictures for myself, to keep, to look at later. Sometimes pictures help me figure things out.

I got my first camera when I was eleven. Took pictures of everything-my sister’s baby toys, the tree stump in our yard, the rust on our Pinto wagon, my mom in front of the sewing machine, my dad in his work clothes, my dad on the floor. I kept them all. When things got worse, I took more. I kept those, too.

This is what I know about pictures-they can be like water, sixty percent of you, if they get inside your head. With all the things I’d seen in my career, my contents label must read at least that much in human toxins.

What had Jenny seen that had led her here?

Was it something in me?

“Want to watch a little TV?” I whispered.

The mumbling of late-night syndication emptied my head at last. Politics and laugh tracks and Old Navy, still promoting their sale. Commercial breaks-the modern consumer’s mindlessly repeated prayers.

This is what I know about words-they can be like air, everything and nothing. Hot enough to choke. Cold enough to bite. Invisible but absolutely necessary.

Why couldn’t I find the words Jenny needed?

Did I even have them in me anymore?

I drifted off, comforted by a little girl’s even breathing and the modulated sound of happy, grown-up voices coming from the television.

I’m not sure how much later the faint trill of my phone had me up and scrambling. I grabbed for my messenger bag, trying to answer it quick, before the nurses caught me with my cell phone still turned on.

“O’Hara?” Gatt’s gravelly voice was even rougher than usual. “Did you send Ainsley off on a shoot alone?”

“What?” It took me a minute to organize my head. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

“I’m not paying you to send the kid out by himself, O’Hara,” he said, in a voice rising in volume with every sentence. “I’m paying you to work with him.”

“I am working with him. He’s on a shoot for me.”

“And you are,” Gatt finished the question himself, “-in bed?”

I was sitting on the edge of Jenny’s hospital bed actually. No way was I ready to tell that to him. Personal problems are not welcome in my workplace. “Get to the point, Gatt. What are you asking me?”

“I just got a call from my sister. She wants to know why Ainsley is out there on his own, when he’s only done two shoots in his frigging life. So my point is this-get your ass out of bed and supervise him, or you can assume I won’t be requiring your services any longer. Got it?”

“Got it,” I said. He hung up. I hit Phone-Off.

The door swooshed and Tonya entered, her footsteps soundless. Her green neon track suit glowing loudly. “Hey baby,” she said. “How’s it going?”

“She’s asleep. They said she’ll probably sleep through the night.”

“Tell me everything. What happened?”

The recap didn’t take long. I remained sitting on the edge of the bed, the phone in one hand. Tonya stood towering over me, eyes shifting between Jenny’s monitor equipment and her face. As I filled her in, her frown deepened, then she added the slow head shake and the crossed arms, and finally, the mmmghh of disapproval.

“And to top it off, Gatt just called,” I said.

“The new boss?”

“Right. He told me not to come in tomorrow if I don’t go out and hold Ainsley’s hand for a simple dawn pick-up shot. One lousy shot!”

“Shh.” Tonya pointed at Jenny.

“The man didn’t even ask me for the details.”

She must have followed my line of sight. “Does he know about Jenny?”

“No.”

“You should tell him.”

If anything, my feelings now were even more complicated. I could barely admit it to myself, much less aloud to my boss. I was ashamed.

“You need this job, Maddy.”

“I know it.”

With helpful enthusiasm, Tonya said, “Go. Check on Ainsley. I’ll stay here with Jenny.”