Mr. Imperfect(33)

"WHAT'S THAT ON YOUR HEAD?"

"It's called a halo. It keeps my head still while my back gets better."

"Like angels have?"

Supine in the hospital bed, Marion smiled at her son through a mirror  set up for the purpose. "Yes, except theirs isn't made of metal."

"They'd be too heavy to fly," John Jason said, an authority since the emergency helicopter flight.

He moved in for a closer look and Kezia threw out a restraining hand.  The other was useless, in a fiberglass cast from hand to elbow. "Not too  close, honey, remember what I said."

He scowled at her. "You go 'way."

"Don't talk to Auntie Kez like that." Marion's voice revealed the strain  of the visit, John Jason's first since the accident. Kezia held the  little boy's mutinous gaze, her own flashing a warning, a plea. Please,  please, please be good for your mummy's sake. Hate me later all you  like.

He turned away and buried his face in his aunt Sally's skirts. "This is my real auntie," he muttered.

Marion's sister, Sally, three hours off the plane from Australia, looked  over his head at Kezia. "I told you it was counterproductive to let him  see her like this."

"Who's her? I may be flat on my back but I still have an opinion and  this was a great idea." The forced cheer in Marion's reply made Kezia  ache for the effort it must be costing her. Surely, Sally could see her  sister needed things made easier, not harder?

"Besides-" Marion reached out a clumsy frozen hand, feeling for her son's soft hair "-I wanted to see my boy."

John Jason grabbed her hand and held on. "I thought you were dead, Mummy." He wailed into Sally's skirt.

Over the previous week none of Kezia's reassurances had carried any  weight. To John Jason she was still the monster who had dragged him away  from his unconscious mother, shoved him into the bar and locked the  door. Abandoned him to terror. To save Marion's life, she had forfeited  her godson's trust.

"No, baby." Marion's voice was tender. "Not dead, just too sick for visitors."

"I want to go home," he cried. "I want my rat." He and Kezia were staying at a motel within walking distance of the spinal unit.

"Hasn't Roland been writing every day?" In the mirror Marion smiled at  Kezia, who forced herself to return it. Don't thank me for small favors.  Not when I'm the reason you're lying here. But all that mattered now  was shielding Marion from every anxiety.

So her friend didn't know that her son loathed his godmother and  accepted her ministrations under sufferance. She didn't know that Kezia  was using the money Christian had left for the hotel's renovations to  pay for a private room and the best specialists. And she didn't know her  partial paralysis might be permanent.

The only reality Kezia had allowed into that quiet hospital room,  redolent of the jasmine she'd entwined around Marion's pillow, was that  John Jason needed to see his mother.

"Roland is having bad dreams," he told her now. "He wants me to go home  and play with him." Roland's so-called nightmares had helped Kezia to  finally persuade Marion to let her son see her hooked up to drips and  monitors with a traction halo drilled into her skull and her right ankle  encased in plaster.

"But, honey, Auntie Kezia said you liked the hospital day care." Kezia  stiffened, knowing the mention of her name would provoke resistance. It  did.

"I hate it," he said, and glowered at his nemesis, who bit back a  denial. It would only stoke the little boy's opposition. Instead she  opted for guerrilla tactics.

"Let's go to the vending machine," she suggested brightly. "You can have whatever you want."

John Jason cast her a hostile look but the lure was too strong. "Two  things," he demanded. At her nod, he skipped to the door with a wave to  his mother.

"He's fine," Kezia reassured Marion in a low voice, but though her  friend smiled, her eyes were full of anxiety. "Really. He likes day care  and the staff spoil him at the motel."

"How can you look after him with your arm in plaster?" Sally challenged  from the other side of the bed. She'd been like this at school, too,  verging on antagonistic.

"We manage." Kezia kept smiling at Marion, giving no hint of how  difficult that managing had been while her arm still needed a sling.  Only when her smile was returned did she face Sally. "And this is  fiberglass-much hardier and lighter." Holding up the arm encased in  virulent flourescent pink, she tried to break the tension. "John Jason  chose the color. Like it?"                       
       
           



       

Sally wouldn't play. "Now that John Jason has family here to look after  him, there's no reason for you to manage any longer. In fact, the sooner  you leave, the better off we'll all be."

Marion gasped. "Sally!"

"She's the reason you're in this state." Sally eyed Kezia with contempt.  "And she's terrified you'll sue so she won't let the doctors tell you  you're facing permanent paralysis. Well-"

"Shut up, Sally." White-faced, Kezia stared at Marion.

"It's all right," her friend said quietly. "I already suspected, so you can stop trying to protect me."

"Protect you!" Sally's tone was incredulous. "Are you crazy? Her negligence is responsible for-"

"Auntie Kez!" John Jason swung impatiently between the double doors. "Come, come, come!"

"-you being here. And if you think I'm going to let someone with her safety record look after my nephew-"

Marion interrupted the tirade, her face tight and drawn. "Don't force me to choose, Sally. You won't like my choice."

"Come with the money," called John Jason from the door. "Mun … e … e. Mun … ee."

"You don't have to choose, Marion," Kezia said, forcing herself to speak  calmly. "We're both here for you, aren't we, Sally?" No answer. "Aren't  we?" Put your sister first, now.

"Yes," Sally conceded, but her eyes promised retribution.

John Jason flew back into the room, seized Kezia's good hand and towed her to the door.

"I'm coming, I'm coming. I have a few errands, so I'll come back later,"  she called as cheerfully as she could over her shoulder.

Marion murmured her assent; Sally said nothing.

When they reached the vending machine, Kezia's hands trembled so much,  she had to give her purse to John Jason. As she watched him press his  face against the glass front, trying to make his choices, she wished her  own were as simple.

Sally was right. It was Kezia's fault. Yet she knew she could be of most  help to Marion and John Jason if she stayed and weathered Sally's  antagonism.

Pulling up a greasy green vinyl chair, she sat, exhausted by the  cumulative strain of the previous week. Had it only been-she glanced at  the date on her watch-six days since the accident?

In this intense limbo of fear and hope, she couldn't even recall her old  life. An image of Christian flashed into her brain; viciously she  tamped it out. The collaborator in her crime.

One of the specialists walked by on his rounds and smiled in passing. On  impulse, Kezia reached out a hand and stopped him. "You said the spinal  swelling should have gone down enough by now to determine-" she glanced  at John Jason, but he was absorbed in the vending machine "-whether  Marion's condition is permanent?"

To her surprise, his eyes shied away from hers. "I'm sorry," he replied  formally, "but Marion's sister has instructed us to restrict our  briefings to family. Why don't you ask her for information?" With an  embarrassed nod, he strode away.

John Jason motioned her over. "I want a packet of M&Ms and a Coke."  He paused, obviously waiting for her to veto the Coke, but still dazed,  Kezia helped him put the money in the slot and punch the right buttons.

She was being pushed out and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it without embroiling Marion in more unpleasantness.

They walked back to the motel where Kezia made John Jason eat a sandwich  and fruit before she opened his chocolate. Lost in thought, she patted  his head as she gave him back his treat. He jerked away, reminding her  that two people hated her guts. If she included herself, that made  three.

Their room in the Ambassador Motel was on the ground floor. Sliding  doors opened onto a trellised concrete patio and Kezia flung them wide,  suddenly desperate to release the pungent odor of motel cleaning  products and breathe fresh air.

The trellis was overgrown with jasmine, lending a welcome dimness to the  room's seventies decor of tangerine, tan and purple. She picked a fresh  replacement for Marion's pillow, knowing she'd hate the smell by  association for the rest of her life once this was over, then put a  protesting John Jason down for a nap and made herself a coffee.