maybe two doses of Children’s Tylenol and one of Children’s Advil left.
“Christopher, have you been taking medicine on your own?”
Christopher just lay on the bed, looking out the window at the night sky. He said nothing. Christopher’s mother figured he must have been hiding this from her. How long had he been sick? And why would he fake being well just to go to school? Didn’t kids usually do the opposite? Christopher’s mother sat her son up in bed and gave him the Tylenol. She could feel that the pillow was already hot under his neck, so she instinctively turned it over. She put him back down on the cool side.
“Honey, I’m going to make dinner now so you can have your pill. You just rest, okay?”
He just lay there. Not speaking. Not moving. Christopher’s mother quickly headed downstairs. She opened a box of Lipton chicken noodle soup. His favorite since he was a little boy. “I like the small noodles, Mommy.”
Stop it, Kate.
She shook her head. She would not let herself cry. Be strong. Weak doesn’t help. She threw in some frozen vegetables for extra vitamins. She set the timer on the microwave for five minutes. Then, she took out the bread, butter, and cheese. She started the grilled cheese sandwiches. “I like mine brown, Mommy.”
Stop it right now.
As the food cooked, Christopher’s mother pulled out the bottle of aripiprazole. She quickly read the directions. It could be taken with or without food, but he was so sick, she wasn’t going to risk him throwing up the one thing that could help him. The one thing that might make the voices go away. “Daddy passed away.” “What does ‘passed away’ mean, Mommy?”
Stop crying, God dammit.
But she couldn’t. She could not stop her eyes from tearing any more than Ambrose Olson could stop his eyes from filling with clouds. She forced herself to read the directions. She saw the side effects for children. Fatigue. Sleepiness.
“He’ll get some sleep. He needs to sleep,” she assured herself.
Headache. Nausea. Stuffy nose. Vomiting. Uncontrolled movement such as restlessness, tremor muscle stiffness.
Your son is crazy like your husband was.
Christopher’s mother kicked the cabinet. She kicked the hell out of the kitchen. She had been awake for over two days now. She wouldn’t let herself sleep. She just held her son while he drooled on himself because no one knew what was wrong. This whole God damn system. A bunch of greedy people who will give away a child’s bed so they can charge another person’s insurance thousands of dollars a day for the same fucking bed and no fucking answers.
Stop crying, you God damn cunt!
DING.
The timer on the microwave went off. Christopher’s mother looked around, confused. She’d set the timer five minutes ago. Where had the time gone? She took the soup off the stove. She flipped the grilled cheese sandwiches, seeing that they were the perfect shade of brown. She put it all on a tray along with one single aripiprazole pill. She poured a nice cold glass of milk to wash it all down. Emily Bertovich stared back at her from inside the refrigerator as she closed the door. Christopher’s mother wiped all evidence of crying off her face, then went upstairs, fully prepared to feed her son the way she had when he was a baby.
But when she got to his bedroom, Christopher was gone.
“Christopher?” she said.
Silence. She put down the tray of food and medicine. She rushed to the bedroom window. She looked at the snow in the backyard. There were no tracks. Only a couple of deer chewing on the evergreens in the Mission Street Woods.
“Christopher?!” she screamed.
Christopher’s mother raced to the bathroom. Images of her husband ran through her mind. Memories she kept locked away like an extinguisher in a glass case. Break in case of emergency. The day Christopher went missing. The day she came home to find her husband silent in a bathtub and her son crying next to it.
She opened the door. He wasn’t in there. She moved to her room. To the other bathroom. He wasn’t in there either. She ran down the stairs. To the living room. Was he watching television? No. Was he in the backyard? No. The garage? The kitchen? The front yard? He was nowhere to be seen.
“Christopher Michael Reese! You get out here right now!”
No answer. She looked at the door to the basement. It was open. She rushed down into the darkness. She turned the corner and flipped on