Amends

By Jim Caldwell

Kids reveal them.
Lovers share them.
Families have them.
Secrets bind us together like nothing else.

A heinous crime casts Meghan and April together after hours at a deserted transit stop in Chicago.The effect is two women forge an enduring bond. Both nurses by profession, they uncover each other’s deepest emotional wounds and heal one another in the process.
One wicked act ignites a friendship.
Will one unearthed memory extinguish or enrich it?

"Nothing weights on us so heavily as a secret."
-Jean de la Fontaine -
17th century French poet

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Caldwell
• Release date: Apr 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311580832

Jim Caldwell

In 2003, Jim joined a local writer's group for the enjoyment of sharing and critiquing his writing with others. Through various short stories, exercises and challenges, the experience led to the fulfillment of long held dream: to write a novel. He has since written four, three of which are published through Smashwords.com.Jim writes with his heart, putting on paper emotions that people experience, live and sometimes celebrate every day. He lives in Western Pennsylvania with his wife, two birds and a cat.

Book preview

I recently saw a quote on Facebook attributed to Vincent Van Gogh apropos to the experience in writing this book. The more I think it over the more I find that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. As enjoyable as fiction writing can be, there is an inherent need for encouragement and help. It keeps it from being the lonesome exercise that it is. Striving to be creative, I acknowledge all those special people in my life that love and affirm me, most especially my wife, my children, my extended family and friends. To all of you I dedicate this novel.

DISCLAIMER

This book is fictional in nature. The names, characters and situations are for the story and are not based on any real life names, characters or situations. Any resemblance to real life names, characters or situations is not intended and entirely coincidental.

Nothing weights on us so heavily as a secret.

-Jean de la Fontaine -

17th century French poet

Meghan

I toss my multi-colored change purse up on the bar and lay my key ring filled with a plethora of old and new keys beside it. There is a different bartender tonight. One that I don't recognize. Where's my boyfriend, Wayne? I ask, expecting a civil and complete answer.

Personal day off, his replacement replies with a curt nod. I ask if something happened in his family only to be cut off even faster with a what-would-you-like response.

His bluntness irritates me, which adds to the wretched day I have had at the hospital. Who is this punk, I'm thinking and ready to tell him so, when Cindy pats me on the shoulder. I give up on telling the jerk that I am far more of a regular here than he is, despite that he is getting paid and I'm just one of their best patrons. Give me two Guinness's and --. I'm further annoyed because he scowls at me with raised eyebrows and a smirk at the request of two beers at once. Is it just the prerogative of the male population to order two drinks at one time? I am so perturbed at his arrogance which increases my internal stress at the moment that I retort with and a shot of Jack Daniels!

Wayne would have known my need without asking and would have had the two eight ounce tumblers and the shot glass on the bar before I scooted onto the bar stool. Now I have a young shit sneering at me. Wayne would have spotted me coming in the door and knew me well enough to catch my frown, my saunter, my attitude to know whether it was a night to tie one on, or a night of vodka for the professional me. Most doctors, lawyers and Indian Chiefs who hold honorable positions in the community know how to drink. They claim it is not as easy to detect. So, if Wayne saw my face tonight and the slumped shoulders with which I entered Pasco's, he would have had my shot and beers ready long before this fart.

How are you doing? Cindy says as she slides onto the stool to my right. She hears my drink order and knows it means I'm distressed. Heavy duty day?

The worst, I say. The head nurse supervisor on the ICU quit on us today. Her mom is terminal and she took an indefinite sabbatical to be her hospice caretaker. Three aides from maternity called off all at once, and I had to fight with two others to double out in the nursery. Aides are the bane of an administrator trying to run a good ship. I swallow a large drink, half of the first glass as a consolation to myself for these problems I am relating to my sister.

"And to boot, I find out that my secretary has been shagging a few of the summer interns in the office. I know it's detrimental to his male psyche to be a secretary instead of the lead horse, but does he have to prove his manhood by laying people that are nineteen or twenty. He gets paid well as my executive and personal right arm, and I don’t care if he has to sleep with half of Chicago to substantiate his prowess as a man, just do it on your own time, your own turf and with people your age. Not on office time with young naive coeds. Now it's exploding.

One of them is claiming he forced himself on her in a maintenance closet. The shit hit the fan today. I had to suspend him. I may be ordered to fire him when and if this gets upstairs to the Board."

I console myself again by draining the glass, downing the whiskey, and starting on the second beer, while signaling to Mr. Know-it-all that I will need another round.

Cindy has been here before. She sees the situation and discreetly reaches for my keys and pockets them. I don't miss her action of concern, and I don't object or even react like I saw her confiscation move. It has been an unwritten contract since I almost put the Lexus and me into the Chicago River while under the influence.

She is one of three rescuers in my life working to keep me from injuring myself. Her best friend is a waitress here at Pasco's. I think I know who she is although I'm not quite sure. When it looks like I'm heading for a bender, Cindy is informed and appears out of the blue as though I had invited her to join me. However, tonight was a little different. She is dining with her husband, Mark, whom I adore and admire very much as a model husband and father to my two nieces. Cindy spotted me when I walked in and jumped to ask me to join them at their table. But my cravings led me straight to the bar.

The third white-knight in my life is my ex sister-in- law, Bernie. She's a sweetie if there ever was one, and in some ways closer to me than my own two sisters. She helped me the most from drowning myself with booze when Kerrie walked out with the neighbor across the street. Her sales career finds her entertaining clients many evenings at Pasco's and she has no problem taking the keys if need be. I love all my saviors even if I do think that they are wrong about me. I do not have a drinking problem. There are times when I get smashed, but always because I choose to, not because I have any kind of alcohol addiction. I've seen the losers in the dry out tank at Boyce Psychiatric where I did six weeks in my early internship for nursing, and I can tell you that I am no way like the sad cases I witnessed. I have control of my drinking and for the most part, stick to the high priced good stuff that relaxes me while allowing me to function well behind the wheel. It is true that I can now go through more gin or vodka than a few years ago, but that's because I have developed such a taste that desires more. But I'm in control. And that's what I cannot convince the three musketeers. The two that I know have confronted me to seek help. My answer: Help for what? They must both agree with me now because it has been a while since I had to fend off the problem- question. However, I do admit that the combination of Jack Daniels and Mr. Guinness is one time that causes me to lose control, manners, dignity and all inhibitions.

It was this Pittsburgh heritage drinking that caused me to lose my virginity after the Prom, as I recall. I come from a family of six kids, three brothers, two sisters and me. I was pampered as the youngest, in particular by my brothers. If any of them would have known that Danny Pelcs brought Iron City Beer in his trunk with full intent to get me juiced up and in my pants on prom night, they would have pummeled him in the blink of an eye.

But that is precisely what happened.

My dad offered me a shot and a beer the night of my graduation like a real Reillic from the North Side of Pittsburgh. I remember my mother protesting but to no avail. My other sisters were not treated to the mill worker's milk of a shot washed down with an Iron for their graduations. But they were more ladylike. I was more like my brothers as they wrestled me when I was a toddler, taught me to hunt at twelve, laughed when I would imitate them using the F-word, and joined me in that down-home tradition at my party.

I have dire memories of throwing up my guts in the backyard later that night in the pitch dark. I also recollect my oldest brother, Dale, coming out of the shadows where he was smoking the last cigarette of his second pack for the day. He laughed and cradled my swirling head. Welcome to our wretched family tradition, kid he said. At the time I didn't understand why he uttered such a negative adjective.

And I still don't.

My parents were hard workers. Dad labored as a millwright in Duquesne Works, up the river on the south side of Pittsburgh. Mom was home full time with the six of us, who spanned a total of nine years. A set of twin boys were smack in the middle.

We were regular church goers, and as far as I discerned, my dad was faithful to my mom. He had no time to be otherwise, working ten hours a day, sometimes longer if we needed the money from overtime. The union helped to better the working conditions and we survived, but we were taught to reverence the union bosses as much as the parish pastor.

My mom and dad fought often over his drinking, but with his back breaking toil, he deserved to drown the stress and physical pains from the struggle to raise us from low income northsiders to a more respectable middle class family. When we bought a house in the suburbs after I was out of high school (because my mom had been able to contribute to our finances by working in a day care), we thought we were rich.

It enabled my parents to offer Cindy and me something that the others were not able to attain: go to college. That explained how we both came to Chicago. My dad was super proud of me when I finished nursing school. I have my own personal RN, he would brag to his drinking buddies, for my old age.

And I was. Sooner than I planned.

Lung cancer claimed him at age fifty-two, and I had gone back to Pittsburgh for five weeks prior to care for and watch him die in the hospital bed in the living room of our ranch home. People said the cigarettes got him. Others gossiped that it was the booze because he also had complications with some sclerosis of the liver. But I convinced myself it was just his body being beaten down with hard work to give us a good life. I mean, consider all those carcinogens in the mill atmosphere that were worse perhaps than the Camel cigarettes; and then he didn't drink anymore than his contemporaries or his brothers, and none of them have died early. They have had cushy lives in offices as paper-pushers in some service industry. They didn't breathe the polluted air my dad did every day.

Dumbo brings my second round and not too soon. I was clinking the empty glass with my keys when Cindy invites me to join her and Mark for some dinner. I'm not that hungry tonight, I tell her as she hugs me.

Call me, she whispers in my ear and returns to their table. I wave her off, assured that I am in control. If I feel I can drive, I have learned to have a spare set for the car in the tiny colored change purse still lying on the bar. And if I feel I am too wasted, well, I might call.

Okay, Cind. Thanks.

I don't resent her or her tattle tale friend or Bernie. They are just trying to care, caught up in the theme of the day that thinks any little bit of alcohol impairs your driving ability. None of them realize how you build up a higher and higher tolerance level before impairment.

In a moment of surprise, I catch sight of him entering the restaurant and heading towards the bar. Straight away I switch my mode of operation for the evening. Leaving the second beer from round two untouched, yet downing the shot and finishing off the first brew, I scoop up the tab money from the bar, cram it into the small purse and stroll to Cindy and Mark's table.

Hey, changed my mind. I am a little hungry.

Mark kisses me on the cheek and pulls out my chair as I order a gin and tonic from the waiter and open the menu. Pretending to scan the plastic, laminated card, I watch over the top as he settles on a bar stool just a few feet from where I left a tall glass of beer intact.

Rick Lendier is one of those bachelors that any woman would kill for on that famous TV show. Tall, broad shoulders, talented and cultured, Rick is one of those guys that I wish would send a drink my way instead of all the horn-dog losers who think that a two dollar drink will win them a night in my bed. I would have sent one his way if I thought it would work the opposite. But he wasn't that kind. His reputation was that of an honest, upright and conscientious gentleman. Moreover, we were both professionals and there is a more discreet path to hooking up than the sophomoric games at a sports bar.

At thirty three, Rick is the youngest and newest member on the Hospital Board and well respected for his age. People complain that his father's contributions from the pharmaceutical firm that he owns had a lot to do with it. The son is his number one outside salesman. For that reason he is at our place often and I forever seek a way to talk with him whenever I can. I search for opportunities to cross his path, always pretending it is coincidence.

Because Jamerson is a large client, I know when he makes his sales calls to the doctors as well as the Board meetings.

I know a prize when I see one. I fell for him at first sight when he stopped at my office door the day he came for his initial conference. I walked him down the hall; poured him coffee in the lounge and struck up a conversation. My heart hadn't fluttered like that for more years than I care to remember. We hit it off. I grasp he fostered a relationship with me because of my position at Jamerson even though I had no input into what the physicians purchased from him. The closest we ever came to a date was conversing in the lobby coffee shop over a latte about a proposal I have to revamp the flow of paperwork through the emergency room. There is too much duplication and the system needs to be updated. Rick loves the idea and offered to discuss it and present it to the Board.

I know it wasn't a date in his mind, just business, but I savored that remembrance as the fantasy that it was. Face it; divorced for a little over five years, at thirty seven I am feeling the need of some kind of new commitment in life. He is younger, I know, but in your thirties, who cares who the older one in a relationship is.

I always hold out the dream that some spark could flare between us. I know I feel it on my side. All I need is the infatuation to stir his heart. I figure that I fan it by being as pleasant and open to his friendship as possible.

Excuse me, are you ready to order? The waiter stands beside me. Cindy and Mark are already eating. I have to select something from the menu while keeping my lookout perch for Rick and gain some composure to approach him in conversation. To be honest, this is the first time I have ever seen him in Pasco's, and believe me, I frequent this watering hole. My heart dances at the notion that we are both in a location outside of the workplace. I'm reveling in the belief that we may have a chance to chat more personal. I even fantasize going home with him if it would evolve into passionate talk.

I order a small plate of pasta, sip my mixed drink and shoot furtive glances towards Rick as he chitchats with some guy to his left. A college buddy? Someone from the hospital? Who cares? He is here tonight at Pasco's and so am I.

My alcoholic buzz dissolves into the professional drinker style. Perfect ending, I'm thinking, for such a bummer of a day.

"The girls