Forks

Trigger Warning: Discussion of a school shooting.

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It didn’t feel real.

Suddenly time was this very present animal. Even the pretty voice on the car radio knew it. The drive to the hospital was mostly a blur but “One, two, three, one, two, three, drink,” she sang before talking about swinging from chandeliers. I couldn’t focus.

One, two, three…

I don’t remember most of the drive.

Now I’m sitting here, getting most of the information I know from the tv in the waiting room. A few bits from the other people talking amongst themselves in the tight seats across from me. The police hadn’t come to talk to us.

They said it was the first school shooting in this area. Like we should get an award for being one of the few holdouts.

I can’t breathe. I keep having these flashes of memory. When Sean was born. His first steps. First birthday. First day of high school. Yelling at him for not cleaning his room. What was the last thing I said to him? Oh God,...what was the last thing I said to him?

I couldn’t remember. Was it I love you? I suddenly can’t think of anything I’ve ever said out loud to my kid.

"...bringing the death toll to four. Among those killed was a longtime faculty member described by students as well-liked and deeply committed to her students. Eleven others remain hospitalized, while the suspected shooter is listed in critical condition after an exchange with responding officers.”

One, two, three…

"...the school remains under lockdown as investigators continue interviewing witnesses. We'll have more updates throughout the evening as families await further information."

They told me he’d been shot in the back. My baby.

The woman sitting next to me looked as scared as I did. Her eyes were red and puffy. Her leg was shaking up and down nervously.

“Is your kid here from the—” I pointed to the tv.

She looked at me with the strangest look. She was wringing a tissue in her hands so hard I was surprised it hadn’t ripped.

Cautiously, she nodded. “They called me at work.”

I nodded. “Same.”

“I couldn’t find a parking space.”

I huffed. I had a hard time too. It was funny that I felt connected to her over that and not because our kids were in the hospital together.

“Is yours serious?”

She understood what I was asking. She seemed hesitant. I realized she may not want to talk.

“I’m sorry if you’d rather not—”

“No,” she started. “No, I just…the nurse said she was hit in the head. But I don’t…I don’t know.”

“This is crazy. They should be telling us more.”

“They don't know more,” she said quietly.

I rubbed my hands together. They were freezing.

“How old is she?” I asked.

“Seventeen.”

“Sean's seventeen too.”

“That's a good age.”

I laughed once. “Is it?”

“No.” She managed a weak smile. “But it's the age she is. So it feels like the best age in the world.”

I understood exactly what she meant.

The waiting room fell silent for a moment. Someone was crying near the vending machines. The television droned on.

“My daughter still leaves every cabinet door open,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“Every cabinet. Every drawer. It's like she's physically incapable of closing anything after she opens it.”

I looked at her for a moment before turning back to the institutional beige wall.

“Sean leaves dishes in his room,” I said. “Like a hoarder.”

A smile cracked through her exhaustion.

“Forks. We never have any forks because they’re always in her room.”

I snickered. “Why do they do that?”

“God forbid I go into her room to get them without her permission. I found one in the bathroom once.” We both laughed at the ridiculousness of it. “Her father and I have a secret stash hidden away just in case.”

For the first time since arriving, she looked like somebody's mother instead of another terrified stranger.

“Kids are disgusting.”

“They really are.”

The smile disappeared from her face.

“I'd give anything to find another fork in the bathroom.”

The words hit me square in the chest. I nodded because I couldn't trust my voice.

Anything.

I'd give anything to yell at Sean for leaving wet towels on the floor.

Anything to tell him to turn his music down.

Anything to have one more stupid argument about absolutely nothing.

“She's a good kid,” the woman whispered.

I looked over.

Tears were rolling down her face now.

“People think teenagers don't need you anymore, but they do. They still come find you when they're sick. Or when they have a bad day. She still climbs into bed beside me sometimes when something's wrong.”

My eyes burned.

“Sean’s at an age where he never asks me for any help except for a ride or for money. I’m just the stupid old person who he lives with at this point.”

She smiled through her tears.

“They never really stop being your baby.”

“No.”

“No, they don't.”

The television volume rose as a commercial ended.

"If you’re just joining us, a shooting at Fairfield High School rocked our community earlier today…"

Neither of us looked up.

“I keep thinking about this morning,” she said. “I keep wondering if there was something I should have noticed. Something I should have said differently to her.”

“You can't do that to yourself.”

“Can't I?”

“No.”

Her gaze drifted toward the door to the surgical bays.

“You love them the best you can. That's all anybody does.”

She started crying harder. Not loud or dramatic. The kind of crying that looked painful.

Did I love Sean the best I could? I thought so. I hoped so. All I could think about was what it would feel like if I had to go home without him. How do you go home to someone’s shoes sitting on the floor? His sweatshirt hanging over the chair. His unmade bed. The smell of him still in the house. How could the house still smell like him if he was gone? And what would happen if it started to fade?

I had this horrible, intrusive thought that I would put his pillow in a sealed bag. And years from now I would occasionally open it to get a smell of him until it was gone and then—he’d really be gone.

I couldn’t breathe.

One, two, three…

The television changed segments.

"...authorities have now identified the suspected shooter as seventeen-year-old—"

The name barely registered. I wasn't listening. Not really.

Then a photograph appeared on the screen.

A smiling family picture. A teenage girl standing between her parents. Her father had an arm around her shoulders. Her mother smiled at the camera.

The woman beside me stopped breathing.

I recognized the face from the photograph. For a second, my brain refused to understand what I was seeing. The woman who couldn't find a parking space. The woman with the secret fork stash. The woman who'd just told me her daughter still climbed into bed when something was wrong.

The woman who would give anything to find another fork in the bathroom.

Her daughter shot my son in the back. Four people were dead. More injured. A teacher wasn't going home tonight. Something hot and ugly surged through me, desperate for somewhere to land. I wanted someone to blame. I wanted to hate somebody.

Her.

What did she do? What didn’t she do? Where did the girl get the gun? How could she let this happen?

"...described by neighbors as a quiet student—"

I wasn't looking at the screen anymore.

I was looking at her.

She looked exactly the way I felt. Terrified. Broken. Waiting for someone to tell her whether her child was going to live or die.

I thought about the forks.

God, what a stupid thing to think about at a time like this.

Forks in a bathroom. Cabinet doors left open. A girl stretched across her mother's bed after a bad day. The ordinary little pieces of a life that never make the news. They’ll never know about that. Or care about it.

I couldn't make sense of what she'd done. Her mother seemed normal. I expected her to have horns. To be evil in some way to make it all make sense. But there was nothing. No sense to make.

Beside me, her hands shook so hard the tissue finally tore.

And suddenly I knew that hating her wasn't going to help Sean. It wasn't going to bring back the people who died. It wasn't going to change what happened inside that school. All it would do was create one more broken thing in a room already full of them.

Slowly, I reached over and took her hand.

She looked at me, her eyes widening with surprise.

Neither of us said anything. What was there to say?

Somewhere beyond the double doors, our babies were both in surgery. Neither of us knew if we would get them back.

So we sat together.

And we waited.