Matthew 48
My wife is almost unrecognizable as I hold her limp hand in mine. It reminds me of a night, not so long ago, when I sat by the side of her hospital bed. The night we found out she was carrying Jeremy’s baby. Now, she is unconscious. There are tubes and monitors everywhere. It is nearly five in the morning when, from somewhere in my dozing brain, I sense that she’s awake. I sit up, startled to find her watching me through the eye that isn’t swollen shut.
“Oh, thank Jesus,” I murmur, pulling her hand to my face so I can feel it against my cheek. “I’ve been so, so scared, Julia. You’ve been unconscious for hours. They didn’t know if …” my voice breaks off and I start to cry.
“David?” she whispers.
I look up and wipe the tears from my face. I need to get myself together. This is not the time to fall apart.
“He’s fine, Julia. He’s at home, asleep in his own bed. Trudy is there with him. She insisted on staying on the couch in the nursery.”
I see her battered face loosen with relief.
She mouths the next word, “Nat?”
I nod.
“She’s going to be fine. She feels incredibly guilty, but she’s okay,” I assure her.
Julia closes the one eye and frowns for a moment, gathering the strength to ask the next question. I squeeze her hand. “The baby is fine, Julia.”
She looks at me again, a look of total bewilderment crossing her battered face.
“She has a strong heartbeat.”
“She?” she croaks.
I nod and she tries to smile, but stops, wincing with the pain of the effort.
“Yes, our daughter is going to be fine. They don’t know how, but she’s fine. I told the doctors that she’s obviously a fighter, just like her mother.”
I give her a moment to let this miracle soak in before I tell her the rest.
“Jeremy is dead, Julia,” I say at last. If she’s surprised by this news, she doesn’t show it. “He smashed his head in when the two of you fell down the stairs. Thank God Trudy came in when she did, or you would have died there, too.”
It’s clear that the IV drugs are kicking in again as Julia fights to keep her focus on me and what I’m telling her.
“He was begging her to help him,” she mumbles.
“Who? Trudy? No, baby. You were unconscious. Jeremy was already dead when Trudy got to the house with David. She called the police.”
Julia is shaking her head as if she doesn't agree with this version of events.
“Sweetheart, you had been beaten so badly by the time you went down the stairs, I doubt you ever regained consciousness after you hit the floor.”
“How bad am I?”
“The doctors say you have a fractured skull, a broken jaw and nose. You also have three broken ribs and one broken arm, incase you hadn’t noticed.”
I guess she hadn’t noticed, because she seems surprised to find a cast on her right arm.
“I won’t lie to you,” I explain softly, “you’re looking a little rough right now. You’re going to need some plastic surgery down the road. And the broken bones are going to be a challenge, especially with you being pregnant. They have to be careful about the heavy-duty pain meds.”
Her one good eye wells with tears.
“I tried, but he was just too strong …”
“I know, Julia. I know. You didn’t do anything wrong. You convinced him to not to take David, didn’t you?”
She looks away.
“Julia, look at me, Julia,” I command more sternly than I intend to, but I know she needs to hear this.
She turns her disfigured face toward me once again, and I lean in close so she won’t miss a single word I’m about to say.
“I know what you did. I know that you threw yourself at him so that he would fall down the stairs. You knew that he would take you down with him. You didn’t know if you would survive the fall. And, if you did survive, you didn’t know if you’d lose the baby.”
I use my thumb to gently wipe the tears from her cheeks.
“I know you, Julia. Through the haze of the pain and the fear, you realized the only way to protect David once and for all, was to make sure Jeremy was dead. And when the opportunity presented itself, you decided it was more important for Jeremy to die than it was for you to live.”
Even as I utter the words, the tears are slipping down my face again. I take her hand, already in mine, and press it to my damp cheek, holding it there against my face as I speak again.
“You were willing to give your life for our son. And now, thanks to you, this nightmare is over. Jeremy Corrigan will never hurt us – or our family – again.”
From underneath her bruised and swollen flesh I see the faintest flicker of the woman I have loved nearly every day of my life. It’s going to be a long, rough road back, but, in my heart, I know that we are going to be just fine.
****
Julia is sedated and resting comfortably when Tony pops his head into the room. He gives me a look that asks if she’s okay. I nod and smile, then get to my feet and follow him out into the hallway.
“You told her everything?”
“I did. But, she’s in pain and in shock. She’s got some processing to do when her head’s a little clearer.”
He nods thoughtfully. “Oh!” he says, suddenly remembering he’s holding a cup of coffee in his hand. “I almost forgot. This is for you. Hospital coffee sucks.”
“Thanks, man. How are things at the house?” It suddenly occurring to me that I have no clue what kind of a three-ringed circus is unfolding in my living room.
“The coroner took him away hours ago. The police stayed on for another hour taking pictures and asking a bunch of questions. It’s relatively quiet now, though you’ve got a houseful. Maggie came out from the city so she and Brett could be with Trudy and David.”
“How is Trudy?”
It’s not a question I’ve wanted to ponder, but I know I should. She has, after all, just lost a son. He may have been an evil fuck, but he was her child.
“She’s a rock, Matthew. She was serving coffee to the cops with one hand and shooing them off your oriental carpet with the other. David slept through everything. That kid is something else.”
That makes me smile. He’s always been a heavy sleeper, thankfully.
“Well, man, I can’t thank you enough …” I start to wrap-up our chat so I can get back in to Julia. But there’s something else on Tony’s mind. I can see it in his expression. “What is it?”
“I don’t quite know how to say this. It’s just that …”
“What, Tony? Please, just tell me,” I grumble, feeling the anxiety creep back into the pit of my stomach.
He looks down at his feet uncomfortably, then back up at me. “Matthew, I’m not going to give you too many details here, because the less you know, the better. But, there is something you really do need to be aware of.”
I realize I’m holding my breath as I wait for him to drop the other shoe.
“It’s Jeremy,” he continues slowly, softly. “It’s the way he died …”
“Wait, didn’t he fall down the stairs? With Julia?”
“Oh, he definitely fell down the stairs.”
“Okay, then what, Tony? You’re not making any sense.”
Tony’s eyes dart around the hallway to make certain there is no one close enough to overhear us.
“Okay, so, when I got to the house, Jeremy was at the bottom of the stairs. And he was dead.”
“And …?” I coax, trying not to be irritated by this long, drawn out complication, whatever the fuck it is.
“And he wasn’t dead when he hit the bottom of the stairs.”
“So, what? You think he bled out or something?”
“I think he would have survived the fall. I think he did survive the fall, but Trudy … helped him along. To the other side … if you know what I mean.”
I don’t. I just stare at him, perplexed, so he continues.
“She wanted to make sure Jeremy was good and dead before she called the police. She wanted to make sure there was no way he was going to get put back together by the doctors like some fucking Humpty Dumpty.”
I hear Julia’s hoarse whisper in my head.
“He was begging her to help him.”
The light bulb in my head finally goes on.
“Wait, wait, wait, you think that his own mother just let him die?”
He looks down at the floor again.
“Holy shit. You think … you think Trudy killed him?” I whisper, incredulously.
He leans in even closer to me and drops his voice.
“Let’s just say, the baseball bat you had in your garage? It’s now a pile of ashes in a drumfire that I lit on the other side of town. After I scrubbed it down with steel wool and pickled it in bleach, that is...”
I can only stare at him.
“She didn’t tell me what she did,” he continues, “and I didn’t ask. But there it was on the floor when I got there. All bloody. I got rid of it for her.”
“Jesus …” I murmur to myself. “So … what does that mean?”
He shrugs.
“I don’t think it means anything for you guys. My best guess is that Trudy had some unfinished business with Jeremy and she settled it tonight.”
I think about that for a second. Even Jeremy’s own mother knew that he had to die, or there would never be peace for any of us. Just as Julia sacrificed herself for her son, Trudy Corrigan sacrificed her son for the rest of us. Given the same set of circumstances, I don’t know that I would have – that I could have done either of those things.
What an extraordinary pair of women.