Tattoos: A Novel Read online

  As far as I could see the place had once been a small apartment building that had been converted into an End of Life facility. There were other facilities, but after I’d done my research I’d found the this place was the most reasonably priced one, that also seemed to take good care of the patients. The building was old but was kept spotlessly clean, not that Joanna would have complained after where she’d been spending her days and nights. I moved to the front desk and gave them my name. The receptionist nodded, picked up the phone and dialed. A minute or two later a twenty-something Hispanic man with a shaved head, a sturdy build and a ready smile, greeted us.

  He led us down the hall. The place was much bigger inside than the exterior suggested. We took an elevator to the third floor and he showed us to the room where she would be staying. The space was small, containing only a hospital bed with crisp sheets, a small television, a worn wooden desk with a matching chair and a tall oak dresser. What struck me about the room was that the bed made it appear a little like a hospital room, but the furniture gave it a homey appeal.

  A good sized window with heavy mint green curtains, faced the brick wall of the adjacent building. It wasn’t an ideal view but it was better than being stuck between dumpsters. I knew Marilee had given me free reign with the money in the bank account, but I didn’t want to abuse her good will. Even so the place was by no means cheap.

  I’d already given them a deposit for two weeks.

  “I’ll get her care worker,” the man whose name tag said Carlos, said. He smiled and left. Throughout the whole taxi drive and even now, Joanna had slept. I didn’t know when she’d eaten or drank anything last, but they’d told me that if she needed it the facility was set up for intravenous infusions and feeds. I laid Joanna on the bed and washed my hands at the sink, even so her smell clung to me. I knew I’d have to go back home and shower before I did anything else. I glanced down at Joanna, watching the quiet rise and fall of her chest.

  “Hello,” a voice said from behind me. I would have been lying if I’d said I wasn’t relieved to have someone there to help Joanna. Even I hadn’t known how terrible her state of being had become.

  The woman who looked to be in her forties, had a plump frame a kind face, and glasses perched on the tip of her nose. Her brown eyes studied me over the top of the lenses.

  “Mr…”

  “Jax,” I said quickly. I wasn’t a mister anyone, not by a long shot. “This is Joanna, I already told them everything I knew about her. I’m sure there’s a lot that I don’t know.” My eyes drifted back to Joanna, oblivious to our presence.

  “I’m Leticia. I’ll be Joanna’s care worker for the duration of her stay.” I couldn’t help but think that duration of her stay was a nice way to say until she died. She gazed down at the clipboard in her hands then looked back up at me.

  “It says here that you’re not a relative or even a friend.” She cocked her head as if she couldn’t quite believe that I was paying for a stranger’s care.

  I nodded. When I didn’t say anything she pulled a pen from the bun on top of her head.

  “It also says that she is a former prostitute who is in the last stages of AIDS.” Once again I nodded. In my mind, admitting Joanna to the End of life facility had seemed a lot more black and white than the stark truth of it all. I knew she was going to die soon, it wasn’t like you needed to be a doctor to see how bad off she was. In fact I was actually surprised that she’d managed to outlive Fred.

  But saying things like dying, last stages of life, and knowing that she was terminally ill, had been just words until right then. Joanna wasn’t a name on a list or a patient in this place, she was a person who’d had a shitty life. Nothing could fix that. I kind of felt like I was putting a Band Aid on a gaping wound.

  “You’re doing a good thing for her,” Leticia said as if she’d heard my doubts.

  “I did nothing,” I said, shaking my head.

  Up until that very moment I hadn’t actually thought that I was going to drop her off there and wait for time to take its course. I’d wanted to believe in magic that I knew didn’t exist, the kind that could make Joanna well again and give her the life that everyone on the planet deserved. One where parents took care of you and where you didn’t have to sell your body to eat. I wanted Joanna to have been loved and cared for, and everything that we needed as human beings. But that had been all dreams. I knew what I was doing was the only thing I could do, but it felt like nothing at all. I hated the limitations that we had as humans, and that not every story had a happy ending.

  “Do you have everything you need from me?” I asked, itching to get out of there. Away from the place where people went to die.

  Leticia nodded. “I have your number. I’ll call you if I need any other information.”

  She paused and met my eyes with hers. “I’ll let you know when she passes.”

  I swallowed a few times, once again shocked at how truly broken I felt. I knew that the Peace Project was a good thing, but I hadn’t realized the toll it would take on my emotions. More than most people who didn’t see poverty on a daily basis, I’d thought I’d had a handle on what it was like to have nothing, but I didn’t. In fact I had no idea how it felt to be so broken, I hoped I never did.

  Unable to do anything until I had a shower, I grabbed a bus back home. Grey clouds had gathered overhead and promised more snow. To make matters worse the wind had picked up, raking frigid fingers over my body. I wasn’t sure if I was cold because of the weather or because of my regrets about Joanna. Either way I needed to not only get clean and change my clothes, but also warm up.

  When I saw the sign on the door that said BUSY, I knew Gran was with a client. I was more than familiar with the drill. When she was doing a reading I had to pretend as if she wasn’t there at all.

  I slipped past the kitchen, congratulating myself for passing through undetected. When I’d showered and changed I tried to leave the same way I’d come, unnoticed. I knew that wasn’t going to happen when I saw Gran standing in front of the door. I was more than shocked to see that her client was still there, a spread of Tarot cards splayed out in front of him. The man who seemed to be in his mid-thirties, with spiky bleached blond hair and who was dressed in a navy business suit with a burgundy tie, studied what must have been a flame card he’d just done.

  Flame cards were one more divination tool Gran used. They were basically cue cards that were passed over the flame of a candle. Much like tea leaves, the soot marks left behind were studied for hidden images, and what Gran called messages. In my opinion they were just black smudges, but who was I to argue.

  “I wanted to apologize for my behavior last night. I know I scared you and for that I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice.

  “No probs Gran, I’m sort of used to the weirdy moments you have,” I said with a chuckle. She narrowed her eyes as if she was ticked, then shrugged.

  “I don’t claim to be anything less,” she said. I grinned, hugging her for a few beats then I released her.

  “I’ve got to run,” I said. I was just about to leave when her face went slack and her eyes glazed over. I’d only seen this kind of thing happen to Gran a few times before and it had never been good. Much more intense then any minor blip where she blanked for a few seconds, these episodes or what I pegged as her messages of doom were downright scary.

  After she’d had a few incidents where her face would go stony and she would stare straight through me as if she were blind, I’d insisted she go to the doctor. Subsequent to a battery of tests and way too many bills, the doctor had diagnosed her with TIA’s or Transient Ischemic Attacks. He’d explained that for some reason the blood supply to the brain stopped for a few seconds, it was like having a mini stroke, but the symptoms only lasted a few minutes.

  When it happened a person could have numbness and tingling on one side of the body, dim vision and slurry speech. Gran never told the doctor the whole story though. Because when she had one of her “attacks” she’d say t
hings. One time she’d said that a guy from my school, a known stoner was going to overdose. It hadn’t seemed that far of a stretch when it had happened. When she’d had one and predicted the caretaker of our apartment building was going to be killed in a car accident by tools, I’d thought she’d been crazy. That was until we’d heard that he had died in a car accident when he’d braked too fast and his tool box that had been sitting in the back seat had smashed into his skull, killing him instantly.

  There were even more instances of when she’d been right, and none of her predictions were the kind you wanted to know about.

  “Be prepared for when the darkness comes and the other shoe drops. Death is close for more than one.”

  Her voice was much louder than normal, carrying through the apartment.

  A shudder travelled down my spine. Cold sweat drenched me despite having just showered. I didn’t know what to say or do because this message seemed to be for me. Before I could respond, Gran blinked as if she’d rewound and was back to the spot she’d been at, when the message of doom had hijacked her brain.

  She looked confused as if she’d woken up in a different place. When her eyes came to rest on her client she seemed to reconfigure her surroundings. In my opinion the client looked a bit on edge after Gran’s mini outburst. The card he’d been studying so intently just moments before, had fallen to the floor at his feet. She shot him a weak smile, which he returned but his smile was so much more diluted than hers was. It didn’t take a psychic to see that he wanted to get the hell out of there. Without another word Gran tapped her fingers on my shoulder absently and walked away. Halfway back to the table she stopped and turned to face me.

  “Will I see you for dinner?” she said.

  She already looked steadier but I felt just the opposite. Her warning had more than thrown me off my stride. Even if there hadn’t been any history with her messages of doom her bizarre behavior would have still freaked me out. Rather than get into what had happened I decided that I’d drop it, for now at least.

  “Yeah, see you then,” I said. I wanted to forget the one sentence Gran had told me. I knew I couldn’t because if history was any indication of the future, something bad was coming.

  18. Marilee

  Mortified didn’t come even close to describing how embarrassed I was when the whole team to caught Jax and me together. Even so I tried to brush it off as if that kind of thing happened every day.

  “I guess we should knock next time,” Dr. McClaren said. He tilted his head toward Jax who was just on his way out the door. I knew Jax had only planned on dropping by for a few minutes, but I wished we’d had more time together. In fact if I’d had my way he’d never have left me.

  He’d filled me in on the details of his day, like he always did, and from what he’d said it might well be one of the worst days of the Peace Project.

  I felt guilty that he was doing all the leg work, dealing with the emotions that came with the people he helped. Yet I knew it was impossible to be there. My immunity was crap after the chemo. It had been a bit of a stretch to go to the bar with Jax, in a public place, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

  Besides if I was being honest, despite the fact that the risk of contracting HIV was insignificant, being around someone with full blown AIDS like Joanna, the next person on the list, felt daunting.

  “We have a bit of good news for you Marilee,” Dr. McClaren said, bringing me out of my thoughts. He flipped up the top of the metal clipboard in his hands then looked up at me. “Your blood counts have bounced back quicker than we’d expected, so you can start your next cycle of chemotherapy any time soon.”

  I was speechless for a few seconds. News about my health hadn’t been stellar lately, so this came as a surprise.

  “Do you mean that I could start before Christmas?” I said.

  Dr. McClaren nodded. “You don’t have to start early if you feel it’s too close to the holidays, but I wanted to give you the option all the same,” he said. I had to admit that the news left me in a quandary of sorts. One part of me wanted to just go ahead and have it early to get it over with. The quicker I was done with my cycles, the sooner I’d be home, or at least I’d hoped so.

  “How many days will it be?” I asked.

  Dr. McClaren moved closer to the bed. His entourage of students, resident doctors and interns, who always seemed to look at me as if I was a specimen on display at a museum, were close on his heels.

  “This course will be shorter than last time since it’s a different chemotherapy drug. So if you started soon you could potentially be done your cycle before Christmas. But remember Marilee nobody knows how you’ll react to the medicine, or how ill you might feel.”

  I pulled my legs up beneath me and sighed. I liked the concept that the amount of days would be shorter, but the uncertainty of my response to the chemo left me wary.

  “You don’t have to decide anything right away. Of course I’ll have to discuss this with your parents too. If you prefer we can just leave everything as is, and start the next cycle in early January,” he said.

  The mention of my parents agitated me. I didn’t want them to have the final word on my treatment. I was sure if they had their way they would prolong my stay just so they didn’t have to deal with me. I might have been paranoid, but in the time that I’d been in the hospital I’d got the distinct impression that Mom and Harold did just fine without me, maybe even better.

  “I want to do it now,” I blurted out.

  Dr. McClaren seemed surprised by my response, but he nodded all the same.

  “I still have to talk to your parents and get their consent…” he started to say.

  “I’ll call them and give them a heads up and also let them know that I want this,” I said. Already the wheels were working in my mind about how I could get them to sign off on the early chemotherapy. I figured if I approached them first then I could make the decision swing in my favor. I could build a case for it being the best choice. Besides, if I had the chemo early then going home for Christmas with them, not that the offer was even on the table, would be impossible. As soon as I thought about going home for Christmas I remembered my plans with Jax.

  He’d seemed sincere when he’d invited me but he hadn’t mentioned it since, so maybe he’d forgotten, said it on the spur of the moment. It didn’t make sense to arrange my life around something that might not even happen.

  “Okay Marilee, if that’s the way you want to do it then I’ll get the ball in motion and call your parents later today,” he said.

  His smile was warm and gave me the security I needed to stay firm. Dr. Mc Claren left the room. His posse followed, their voices a low murmur as they talked about me. As soon as they’d left a sick feeling worked its way into the pit of my stomach. I was glad to move forward and be another step closer to being cancer free, but I also remembered the horrible things the last round of chemo had done to my body.

  I wasn’t deluded into thinking that the second time around was going to be any better than the first, in fact it might be worse. Yet I knew that today or tomorrow or even next month I’d have to start the next round. Postponing the inevitable was stupid. I had to suck it up and move forward, that way I could put everything behind me.

  Jax and I could finally have a normal relationship, one that didn’t involve, hospitals, doctors and cancer. We could go places and do things that regular teenagers did. Our one night out had shown me how good life could be with him. It had made me want more times like that. The only way my life was going to move in that direction was if I did what was hard, so I could eventually get better.

  I punched in Jax’s number, hoping that I could catch him before he got too busy with the list. His phone went directly to voicemail which meant one of two things, it was turned off or dead. Knowing Jax, it was probably dead since he was notorious for forgetting to charge his phone. I’d never met a guy that was so focused on certain details and so flaky about others. But that was Jax, a study in co
ntrasts. His quirks only made me love him more. No matter how inconvenient they might be at times.

  19. Jax

  The Peace Project had taken longer than I’d expected. I wasn’t surprised, I’d had a lot of ground to cover. Number twenty on the list was the easiest of the day since it was none other than our neighbor Tazleo.

  On his last drug bender he’d bailed on paying his bills and because of this he’d lost his power and cable. Since his water and heat were included in the rent at least he still had those amenities. Even so, it made for tough times when he tried to make a meal for himself or more importantly, watch Oprah reruns. I’d managed to get his power turned back on and paid his arrears, but getting the cable television back was another story.

  Tazleo had a crappy history with the cable company. Since it wasn’t and essential service they could be a little stickier than the power company about restoring the service. Only after I’d paid a full year in advance had they agreed to turn it back on. A part of me felt a little guilty for spending Marilee’s money on something as trivial as cable television, but I knew Tazleo well enough to understand that more times than not, the only thing between him staying clean and using again was Oprah.

  His body was already wrecked from all the years of abuse; I had no idea how many more benders he’d survive. If Oprah was going to keep him off drugs then it was money well spent.

  I was drained and more than relieved to walk through my apartment door. I’d never done so many people on the list in a day, or a week for that matter, but with the holidays just around the corner I needed to get as much done as possible. Gran had been more than patient with me bailing all the time, but I knew that she’d have a canary if I tried to do it over the holidays.