little packets handed over.
“Otherwise, I won’t need to see you for ten days to two weeks. Just call my office and schedule an appointment. Of course, if there is increased redness and swelling, I’d like to see you right away.”
He stood aside and took my good arm to help me get off the table. The blankets slid off to reveal my bloody martial arts uniform. I flushed with embarrassment.
“I knew you’d been a cop, but must you clean up crime in Hyde Park single handedly?”
Tom chuckled and tucked my good arm under his and headed for the door.
“Come on, Wonder Woman. It’s been a long day for both of us.”
I had the immense satisfaction of watching Helmet Hair’s face as I was escorted out of the ER by a surgeon. And I loved the feeling of his tall frame bending solicitously toward me as we walked to his car.
I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. Then I snapped them open. How did he know where I lived?
Oh, for Pete’s sake, Kristin. That’s the kind of question you ask in junior high. I closed my eyes again and smiled a little at the memory of middle school gossip and going with boys in cars.
Good ole pain medication.
“Are you smiling or grimacing?” Tom broke into my thoughts.
Tom glanced again at me from the driver’s side.
“Not a grimace. Not in pain. Thanks for asking.”
And for the rest? I just needed to get home, get into my own bed and forget this day ever happened.
5
Your silence today is a pond where drowned things live
I want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun.
Adrienne Rich, “Twenty-One Love Poems,” The Dream of a Common Language
The shrill ring of my cell phone jolted me out of the pain meds-induced sleep I’d had for . . . I glanced at the time displayed on the cell . . . five hours?
What the hell? Who was calling me at 6:30 in the morning on my cell?
I thought about ignoring the call, but I didn’t give out my personal cell number to that many people. I picked it up and the number displayed on the screen was a university number. Better answer. I pressed ‘ok’ and held the phone to my ear.
“Kristin? Kristin?”
Margaret Lester’s voice was tight, like she was controlling herself with effort. We did not have good news here.
She barely waited for my affirmative grunt.
“Ah-seong Kim has been found drowned in Mendel Pond. I’m there now. Could you come right over?”
The words were business-like but the tight voice was veering toward panic.
I fought my way up through the haze of the medication and too little sleep. I’m never at my best first thing in the morning anyway, at least before an infusion of caffeine. I ran my hand over my face and tried to focus. What had she said?
My lack of response shredded Margaret’s fragile control.
“Kristin! Please! Students are starting to come to the Union for breakfast and the police have sealed off the west entrance of the cafeteria. They’re all just hanging around, looking, talking, crying, even though the cops keep ordering them to move on.”
Margaret’s shrill voice drilling into my ear had the simultaneous effect of waking me and starting to give me a headache. Okay. Okay, my brain said. Now for my mouth.
“Hang on, Margaret. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
I pressed end and swung my legs over the side of the bed. The movement jarred my arm. I’d slept in the sling as Grayson had advised so I’d move it less. But it hurt like stink.
Well, no pain pills for me. I tried to think. Tylenol, maybe. Then clothes. Then coffee. Then Carol and Giles. Oh, how I wished coffee was first.
I stumbled into the bathroom and managed to locate some Tylenol. I gulped three down and eased out of the sling. I used my good arm to get my clothes off. I’d not bothered with changing last night. I looked down at the bloody martial arts uniform on the bathroom floor. I lifted it and stuffed it down into the bathroom trash can. I’d get another.
I gingerly eased a loose sweater over my head and drew the sleeve carefully over the bandage. It wasn’t easy to position the sling again, but with a little help from my teeth I got it pulled into about the right place. Pulling up sweatpants didn’t require teeth, but it was awkward. I shuffled into slip-on low boots, got my purse and my cell and made my way to the kitchen. The blessed auto-brew coffee machine just required a one-button tap to start, and in seconds it was gurgling. I hovered over it until some had dripped into the pot. I pulled the pot out and poured some into a travel mug and took a minute to gulp it down despite the risk of scalding my tongue. I sipped more slowly and called Carol’s cell phone. I didn’t have the energy to troop up two flights of stairs to their apartment. She answered with her soft, kindly voice. I explained briefly, leaving out the drowning, just that there was a problem with a student on campus and the Dean of Students had asked me to come. I did ask her not to tell the boys, just that I had to go into work early. As I was finishing saying that, she walked into the kitchen and gently gave me a brief hug on my good side. Then she wordlessly took my mug, topped it off and handed it back to me. The little kindnesses in life help us get through. I leaned my cheek down and rested it for a second on her brown cap of hair. She helped me get one arm in my trench coat and belted it securely so it closed over my arm in the sling.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said.
Carol didn’t smile.
“Are you up to this?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
I picked up my coffee and my purse and headed out the door toward the part of the campus that contained Mendel Pond.
I walked the three blocks to campus. It was ridiculously tiring. As I approached the entrance to the main quadrangle, it began to rain lightly. Great. At least I had the coat wrapped around me, but where the sweater was exposed in the front was getting wet. Wet and cold. I started to shiver.
The flashing red and blue lights of four Chicago police cars and about four more university police cars around the quad reflected crazily off of the wet ivy covered pale stone of the surrounding buildings. Mendel Pond was in a cul-de-sac created from the backs of Myerson, where my office was, and the student union. Directly behind the pond to the north was one of the high walls that ran between buildings. The walls were topped with spikes, hundreds and hundreds of spikes topped with balls. They always reminded me of German Christmas ornaments.
A stone arch cut through the wall with a monumental gate, probably thirty feet high, made of elaborate bars, convincingly medieval. “Crescat scientia; vita excolatur” was spelled out in an ironwork banner arching above the gate. It was creepily reminiscent of the pictures of the ironwork banner above Auschwitz, only this didn’t mean “Freedom
