Opposite of gray, p.9
Opposite of Gray, page 9
But Angi was already behind her, alerted by the crisis alarms on the machine. They pushed Lily out of the way as the medical team attended to his seizure. Mr. Wetzinger’s body shook and his eyes rolled back in his head, phlegm and foam spewing from his mouth. He flailed with uncommon force and violence; Lily could tell by the way the doctor glanced at Angi.
And then, as abruptly and unannounced as it had started, the seizure ended.
“He’s flatlined! I have no pulse!” said Angi. She ran to the wall and took the defibrillator down. The staff quickly gelled the paddles, stuck them to his chest, and shocked him.
Once.
And Lily watched from the corner.
And again.
And she watched from the corner.
And again.
“Once more,” said the doctor.
Nothing.
There was nothing in the room but the long whine of the monitor telling them that no, his heart had not restarted.
And they waited.
and
still
there
was
nothing.
After a beat, the doctor checked the clock.
“Time of death, 19:54.”
Lily stood in the corner, her lip shaking.
He was just talking to me.
He was just breathing.
What was he telling me?
That I could care for Cooper.
ThatIcannothelpCooper.
She stared at Mr. Wetzinger’s lifeless, limp body.
The room felt different from the first death she’d seen at Angels of Mercy. Maybe it was because this patient’s death had been unexpected. Maybe because this patient had no family present. Maybe because this patient’s antics wouldn’t be missed.
Or maybe it was because this time,
when the patient died in front of her,
he
actually
did
turn
gray.
Chapter 13: Lily
Massive heart attack brought on by a Pulmonary Embolism.
Those were the words that had been whispered in the room while cleaning up Wetzinger’s body. That’s what the more experienced attending staff supposed was his cause of death. Of course, it was only a guess, but it didn’t matter. Lily hadn’t paid attention and didn’t care what they said. She didn’t care what came back as the official cause. Lily would always think there was something more to it.
Something you just couldn’t write on a death certificate. A wholly unnatural explanation.
The evening Wetzinger died, Lily forced her shaking hands to text Cooper from the parking lot before she left work.
What? Wetzinger DIED?
Yeah.
You ok?
I need to think.
Did he turn gray when he died?
Can’t talk now. Just need to think.
Then she went home and crawled into a cave of herself. She didn’t talk to anyone for almost two days. She didn’t go online; she didn’t open the blinds for Frank, Mrs. Jones, or Fist, and she hardly remembered to feed Oliver, let alone herself.
But at 7 pm on the second day, there was a knock at her door and she’d opened it to find Cooper with a pizza and a two-liter bottle.
“Hey,” he said.
She’d let him in and he’d joked about not bringing ice because after all, he liked his pop warm, too. She’d laughed because he’d called it pop and not soda.
They sat on the floor of her apartment, eating pizza and tossing crusts to Oliver, who batted them around like toys. And with each piece of pizza, Lily splattered more details of everything that had happened at Angels of Mercy the last day Wetzinger had been alive.
That Wetzinger had been so quiet.
And different.
That Deevia wasn’t even his daughter.
And that yes, he’d turned gray when he died.
She told Cooper almost everything, except for the part where Wetzinger said she could care for Cooper but not help him. Lily had spent two days huddled under blankets on the couch, wondering what that meant.
And why he’d said it.
“You’re going to think this is really weird,” Cooper said, “but I think there’s somewhere you and I need to go.”
Lily wiped her face with a cheap napkin.
“To see a psychiatrist?”
“Ha, no,” he said. “We need answers—not to be told we’re crazy.”
“So where are we going to find answers?”
“I can’t help wishing that my grandpa was here to talk to us. I know he’d have a lot of answers.”
“But you said he died?”
“Oh, he did. Eight years ago. But I’ve been thinking.”
“Oh, God. You don’t want to do a séance or dig up his grave or—”
“No.” Cooper smirked and tossed another pizza crust to Oliver, who purred near his collection.
“Ok, then I’m confused. Where exactly do we need to go?”
And that’s when Cooper suggested the two of them head to his grandpa’s cabin in Northern Minnesota.
“Listen,” said Cooper. “I know it sounds weird. And totally forward. And it probably sounds like I might actually be a creeper or something. But the cabin was where my family hung out with my grandpa every year. It was his favorite place to be.”
“I’m not understanding. What’s the significance of the cabin in all of this Gray stuff?”
“The last year we were all at the cabin with Grandpa, there were some pretty significant things that happened. Especially the last night we were there.”
Oliver head-butted Lily with a pushy request for her to hurry with another crust, but she swatted him away.
“I mean, I need answers,” said Cooper, “and I feel like the cabin is the closest thing to my grandpa I’ve still got. I also feel like there is stuff hidden there that I just need to get to and go through. I already decided that I’m heading there next week. This whole Gray thing has gotten so out of control in my head since meeting you…”
“Sorry about that…”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, his voice softening. “I’m glad I met you. You taught me I’m not totally nuts. And that I’m not alone. And I’m really grateful for that. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“But I feel like even though some questions got answered, more questions got brought up, you know?”
Lily did know. She knew exactly what he meant. She’d spent the last 48 hours under a quilt, drilling those questions over and over in her head.
“So, I might sound like a creeper, but I also don’t want to leave you out of a trip to somewhere with answers for an issue we are both dealing with.”
“Potential answers.”
Yeah,” said Cooper. “Anyway, just think about it. No pressure.”
* * *
Making sensible decisions was an important part of adulting. Lily knew that. But agreeing to head out on a road trip with Cooper—was that a sensible decision?
Lily knew Cooper was a decent person. He cleaned up his messes at work, made his co-workers laugh, and always went the extra step before he was asked.
But did she really know him?
How much do you really know someone in the time span of six weeks?
He saw gray people. He had a goldfish in a shitty apartment. But… did he eat late at night? What time did he wake up? Did he carry cash? What else was in his wallet? What kind of music did he listen to on road trips?
And what if he was an axe murderer?
As Lily swung her duffle bag into Cooper’s trunk, she realized that to the average person looking in, this seemed ridiculous. Agreeing to travel over a thousand miles northeast with a coworker in search of answers about why people’s skin turned gray didn’t only sound like an irresponsible and poorly thought out idea, it could easily have been the plot for a horror movie.
“If we end up at an abandoned psychiatric hospital, I am not going into the basement,” said Lily.
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
“And I’m making sure I always charge my phone.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“And if we trip running through the woods, I will not lay there like a victim, ok?”
“Maybe watch where you’re going so you don’t trip.” He winked and put his last bag in the trunk. “Anything else we need?”
Lily shook her head. Her bag of chocolate caramel candies would carry her through to the next gas station fill-up, which on an 1100 mile trip, seemed the only way to count the miles.
She buckled in, imagining what answers might lie at a cabin in the deep woods of Minnesota. She was more excited than apprehensive, and the longer she thought about it, the harder it was to hear the little voices that questioned her very adult decision to agree to a road trip with a co-worker she’d known for a mere six weeks.
He sees Gray people. And that’s really all I need to know.
He saw the things she saw. Things that no one else did. It made him feel familiar to her in a way that no friend or family member ever had.
“I can’t believe Angi actually gave you two weeks off,” Cooper said, putting the car in drive and pulling away from the curb of Lily’s apartment. “You’re not even full time.”
“Pretty close to full-time if you count all the hours I cover for other people who don’t show up,” Lily corrected him.
Getting the time off had been a miracle, really. When Lily considered the possibility of a road trip laced with answers, the only thing holding her back was her job. She’d confidently approached Angi and explained that while she didn’t plan on leaving Angels of Mercy, she needed two weeks off to clear up some personal stuff in order to stay at Angels of Mercy.
And really, Lily had backed her into a corner.
“What was she going to do? Fire me, too? Then they’d have no one decent working as a CNA. It was let me take two weeks for mental health and know that I’m coming back, or fire me and start over from scratch again with someone else.”
Two weeks, that’s all, Angi had said, her eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion. And you’d better come back.
So she’d packed her bags, (quietly) asked her roommate to feed Oliver, and then set off on what she had decided was her first real adventure as an adult.
At 20 years of age.
Late bloomer.
“Are you really going back?” Cooper asked, cracking open an energy drink.
“Back to…what?”
“Angels of Mercy.”
“That’s the plan,” Lily said. “I don’t have any other options right now. And besides, it’s not a completely horrible job. They can’t possibly get another Mr. Wetzinger in there, right?”
Cooper swigged his energy drink and smiled.
“He was definitely one in a million.”
East Newman to Louann was a 16 hour drive and Cooper had tried to convince Lily they could do that in one day. But when Lily secured a two week reprieve from work, Cooper suggested they break the travel up a bit more. Still plenty of hours in the car, with a little built in freedom to stop along the way.
Lily had never been to Minnesota, and she found the pit of her stomach buzzing with the excitement of possible stops along the way. She promised herself she wouldn’t make Cooper pull over at every wayside rest spot. And she also promised herself she wouldn’t take too many pictures with kitschy random bits of Americana.
Wasn’t Minnesota home to the World’s Biggest Ball of Twine?
God, you nerd. Shut up.
No, she wouldn’t shut up. There was a certain excitement that came with a trip, and it sparked the brain alive. The miles between where you started and where you ended could be tracked in the millions of little thoughts that passed through your mind.
The memories.
The rabbit trails.
“You want to know something I thought about over the last couple days?” asked Lily. “Mr. Wetzinger’s first name.”
“Godwin?”
“Yeah. Remember how he was so stuck on wanting me to use his first name? So, I looked up the meaning. Godwin means friend of God.”
“Odd name for someone who seemed so…”
“Evil?”
“Yeah. But I mean, maybe it makes sense. They say the devil was a fallen angel.”
Lily unwrapped a chocolate caramel and popped it in her mouth. She offered one to Cooper, but he shook his head.
“I don’t know if I ever mentioned this,” said Cooper, “but when I was giving him his bath… man, that guy had a ton of tattoos. Never seen so many tattoos on someone.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, nothing much visible to the public, but the tattoos covered him everywhere else. And two of them on either side of his chest were supposed to signify the piercings at Christ’s crucifixion.”
“Ah.”
“And, because I was already angry at the point when he started explaining his body art to me, I told him that Jesus was pierced on one side, so basically, whatever his tattoos were supposed to represent were meaningless. I mean, who gets permanent body art without researching what they’re carving into it?”
Cooper exhaled sharply and shook his head as he looked straight ahead at the road. Lily considered his gaze.
“You came from a religious family, yeah?”
“Kind of. My dad was ultra-religious. Mom wasn’t at all. But my dad was also a tyrant, so his church is what we learned.”
“His church? Was your dad the pastor?”
“No, he just thought he was. Was your family religious?”
“Not even a little.”
“So, I’m speaking Greek to you with all of this.”
“Sorta.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Lily said, unwrapping another candy. “It’s what you know.”
Church was something Lily didn’t know. She’d never been an angel or a donkey or Mary in a Christmas pageant. Never received her first Bible in a fancy Sunday ceremony with cake and mints and punch. No hymns. No baptism. No kneeling at a rail for bread and wine.
And that always caught people off guard.
In her very first job interview at 16, her potential boss, one of the few her parents had okayed, had said, “Homeschooler? We need someone who can work Sundays…” and Lily had had to explain she wasn’t that kind of homeschooler.
I mean, she saw evil Gray people, for Christ’s sake.
“You still believe in it?” Lily asked.
“You mean church?”
“Yeah. And God. And the Bible. And everything else.”
Cooper squinted and lowered the sun visor as the car pointed east.
“I don’t know. Not in the way my dad taught it, that’s for sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, everyone in the family thought my grandpa was nuts for lots of reasons. So, one day Dad goes off about how his father is certifiably nuts, and you know the reason he gave for that? He said the only reason that anyone goes nuts is because they are removed from God.”
“Removed from God?” said Lily. “Wait. Like God removed them? Or they removed themselves?”
“Let’s see if I can get this right,” said Cooper. He cleared this throat dramatically and channeled a voice that Lily could only assume mimicked his father’s. “He was unworthy of God because he chose to be nuts.”
“Chose to be nuts?” Lily nearly choked on her candy. “That’s the most ridiculous and dehumanizing thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Removed from God is the same reason my parents divorced. I obviously couldn’t piece it all together when I was really little, but my mom had a drug problem.”
“Jeez, Cooper. I’m sorry—”
“Meh. She hid it as best she could from me.”
“That’s still no way to grow up.”
“The thing is, my dad never helped her. Never said hey, let’s try to get you off this shit or hey, let’s get you some counseling. Nope, she was addicted and that meant she was removed from God. She was unworthy of God because she chose drugs.”
“—and was therefore unworthy of your father?”
“Basically. So they split up when I was in third grade.” Cooper pulled onto the freeway. “Anyway, my guess is that if God is real, He isn’t anything like what my father made him out to be.”
Cooper pushed the gas pedal down, catching up with and then fitting into the flow of other cars. He gracefully weaved in and out of vehicles until he claimed his own spot on the highway with no one in his immediate view.
He set the cruise and relaxed in his seat.
“So this Godwin thing,” said Lily. “Do you think his name had anything to do with… anything? Why was it such a big deal that I called him that?”
“Who knows? It’s obvious you were the main focus of his attention. And it was probably a way to set you apart from the other staff.”
“Why did he pick me?”
“Why not?”
“It’s not like I was walking in there with stilettos and fake eyelashes and cleavage. I was in scrubs, for God’s sake, living on dry shampoo.”
“I don’t think that mattered to him,” Cooper said, then paused for a moment. “I don’t think that matters to a lot of guys, actually.”
Lily slowly unwrapped her last candy.
“There’s an energy about you, Lily. It’s refreshing. You’re honest. You give zero fucks. You’re amazing.”
“Ha. I’m also nervous and say stuff at the wrong times and—”
“Yeah, but who doesn’t?”
Cooper moved into the left lane to pass a vehicle on the right shoulder.
“You know what amazes me?” Lily said.
“What’s that?”
“You’re such a nice guy. Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
Cooper laughed and shook his head. “Who said I don’t?”
“Because you’re a nice guy and if you had a girlfriend, you would talk about her all the time.”
“That’s clingy.”
“You would have at least mentioned her by now.”
“Would I?” he grinned.
“Yeah, you would have, because you’re a nice guy. And I have a hard time believing your girlfriend would be fine with you going on a two-week trip with a female co-worker. Especially one she’s never met.”
“Hmm. Maybe she just trusts me?” he said.
