Gem, Himself, Alone, page 19
Riker found Gem, not in his bed, but slumped in a wheelchair in his room, a strap holding him in place to keep him from sliding out to the floor. Riker thought at first that this was just a measure to keep Gem from getting bedsores and that his condition was no different.
“Gem?”
Gem’s head lifted at Riker’s greeting, and Gem looked directly at him. Riker was startled by his reaction.
“Oh, you’re awake. Hi. How are you feeling?”
Riker looked into the bruised, dark hollows of Gem’s eyes. Gem rubbed a hand across his forehead. He stared at Riker as if he were trying to remember who he was.
“It’s Riker. You remember me?”
“Where am I?” Gem demanded. “I’m not here.”
Riker sat on the edge of the empty bed.
“You’re at the hospital,” he said slowly. “You’re here to get better. Do you remember what happened?”
Gem’s eyes went around the room. He looked at Riker again.
“At juvie?”
“You’re at the hospital. You remember when you were at juvie before you came here?”
“Where am I?” Gem asked plaintively. “At juvie?”
Riker stared at him helplessly, at a loss as to how to get through to Gem. Gem put his hand to his throat. The bruises had long since faded, but Riker still remembered them as clearly as if it had just happened. A tear traced down Gem’s cheek.
“You remember,” Riker said. “You… miss him.”
“I can still feel it,” Gem said. He ran his fingernails down his throat as if trying to find the noose to loosen it and pull it off. “Don’t let me die!”
“You’re not dying. It’s gone. It’s not there anymore. I promise.”
Gem stared at him. He blinked a few times, more tears running over his pale cheeks. “It’s too late.” His voice was as hollow as his eyes. “I’m dead.”
Riker couldn’t deny that a part of Gem had died. The boys had been more a part of each other than even conjoined twins. They were psychically bound together.
The neurologist had said that he was surprised that Gem could even function with the abnormalities they could see on his CAT scan. The psychologist had said that each filled the other’s deficits. Together, they had formed one complete personality.
So how was Gem to function without that other half?
“I can’t imagine what it must feel like,” Riker said. “It must be like a soldier who has lost a limb. Or two. To be missing that part of yourself.”
Gem’s eyes fixed on Riker. “Myself,” he whispered.
Riker nodded. “Yourself.”
Gem put his hands up to his face, sobbing.
Riker was still there when Ives did his rounds. Ives looked over the record of the fifteen-minute intervals since he’d been there last.
“He’s been crying for a long time,” Riker said. “Can you give him something to settle him down?”
“Aren’t you the one who was so concerned about getting him off of the sedatives in the first place?”
Riker shifted uncomfortably. “Well, yes… of course… but I just wanted to be sure… It can’t be good for him to be so upset.”
Ives shook his head. “On the contrary. It is very good. He needs to feel the loss before he can process it and grieve properly. He’s not trying to harm himself now. Tears are the best we can hope for.”
Riker looked at Gem’s red face and eyes. Then Ives blocked Gem from Riker’s view as he conducted his examination.
“Do you want to lie back down?” Ives asked.
Gem nodded his head, snuffling. The doctor unbuckled the strap that kept Gem from sliding right out of the chair and helped him transition from the wheelchair to the bed, Gem shuffling his feet and leaning on the doctor for support.
“There. Do you want to sleep, or do you want to visit some more?”
“Sleep.”
“Alright. We’ll see you another day, Mr. Riker?”
Riker stood up. “Yes. I’ll be back. Do you think…” Riker dropped his voice to a whisper. “Do you think he’s getting better? He’ll be okay?”
Ives gave a slight head-shake. “It’s a long road. He’s barely taken one step. Let’s take it one day at a time.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“WHAT EXACTLY IS it you expect to accomplish?” Gordon asked after Riker recounted the details of his last visit to Gem. Gordon shuffled through the papers in his in-basket, seeing what was getting urgent. He threw most of it back. “Under the deal that the DA made with Gem 2, Gem 1 is immune from any of the charges relating to Raphael’s death and the crimes committed while he was with the Rippers. Are you hoping to uncover other charges?”
Riker stared at Gordon. “What?”
“Why are you going to see him? Do you expect him to confess to other crimes?”
“No. This isn’t about charging him with anything. This is about… helping him deal with his loss.”
“He isn’t anything to you. He’s not family or a friend. He’s just a kid. A gang banger that up until now, you were doing everything you could to put behind bars.”
“He is locked up. He’s where he belongs. I’m just trying to help him.”
“Because…”
“Because he hasn’t got anybody else. He doesn’t have any family. Who knows what happened to his mother. Buried as a Jane Doe somewhere, I suspect. His grandmother is gone. His brother is gone. He doesn’t have anybody. Just… me. I feel sorry for him.”
Gordon picked up his coffee and had a sip. “You’re doing a lot more than I would ever be inclined to do. And he does have someone. The girl. Bethany.”
“She’s doing whatever she can for him too, but she’s just a kid. Hopefully, we can get through to him.”
“And what? Cure him? So that they release him back out onto the streets?”
Riker hadn’t even considered what would happen to Gem if he got better. In the back of his mind, he had thought that once Gem was better, he’d be sent back to juvie again. But of course, that wasn’t true. The ink was dry on the deal with the DA. When Gem was well enough to be released from the psych ward, he wouldn’t be going back to juvie again. He would, Riker suspected, go straight back to the Rippers. And he would continue the course of violence he had followed before.
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
But that day was a long way off. Like Dr. Ives had said, Gem had a long road to go down, and none of them knew how quickly he would complete the journey or even if he would finish it.
Gem was a little better every time Bethany went to see him. A little more life returned to his eyes. A little bit more purposeful movement. His eyes weren’t looking quite so dark and hopeless as they had in the beginning. He had lost a lot of weight, but he was starting to eat again. Starting to be more aware of the passage of time and the rest of the ward around him. He was no longer confined to his room but was able to frequent the common areas and, if he wanted to, visit with the other patients.
“Gem…?”
Gem had been watching the TV, but at Bethany’s call, he turned his head. He looked at her wistfully. How long had it been since she had seen him smile?
“Bethany. You came.”
“Of course I did,” Bethany confirmed. “Where do you want to visit? Here? In your room?”
Gem looked around suspiciously at the other patients. “Too many ears,” he observed. Bethany didn’t reach over to help him get to his feet, even though he moved like an old man with an inner ear problem. Still getting his sea legs. She stood back to give him room and then walked beside him, letting him lead the way.
“You’re looking a lot better,” she told him.
He looked at her, his mouth moving, but nothing coming out. Eventually, he spoke aloud.
“I haven’t… seen myself… for a long time,” he said. “You say… I’m looking better?”
Bethany hesitated. It was the slightly stilted language that she had come to recognize as an attempt to communicate with her about his twin. He wasn’t talking about not having a mirror to look at his own face. He wanted to know how the other Gem was.
But he knew that his twin had died. Those first few days after awakening, he had repeated it over and over again. I died. I’m not here. I died.
“Gem…” Bethany touched his face, trying to make it clear that she was talking about him, not his twin. “You are looking better. You are not looking so… worn.”
He touched her fingers, then touched his face, like it was something foreign and unfamiliar. He explored it with tentative fingers.
“My face.”
Bethany nodded. “Yes.”
He dropped his hand. “I need to see myself,” he said urgently. “I have to make sure… I’m okay.” He looked around the corridor. “I… can’t… find myself… here.”
“No.” Bethany felt tears coming to her eyes. She swallowed, trying to keep her voice calm and reassuring. “Your twin is not here. Gem… he died. You know he died.”
“I am still here,” he insisted. He touched his face again, with both hands, this time, squeezing and pressing it to prove its solidity. “I am here. But… it’s empty. Where… is… me?” he pleaded.
Bethany hugged Gem. She kept a tight rein on her own emotions. She had to be strong for him. She had to help him find his way through.
“You are here. But he… your other self… is gone.”
“No.”
“Yes, Gem. You know it’s true. They said you felt it when he died. You felt him pass out of this world.”
“No! No. I am still here!”
“He is in your heart. He’ll never leave you completely because he will always be in your heart. The two of you shared something… very special. A bit of your souls.”
“Not gone!” Gem insisted. He shoved a laundry trolley sitting in the hallway, making it ricochet off the wall with a loud crash. “Not gone. I can’t live. Not without… myself.” He grasped at Bethany’s words. “My soul!”
Nurses and orderlies were coming to see what the ruckus was about. Bethany tried to wave them back, knowing they would just upset Gem more.
“Gem… when Honey died, I felt the same way. I didn’t think I could live without her. I didn’t know how to go on without her. Even though we had been apart, knowing she had died just about killed me. I said it couldn’t be true. I didn’t want to believe it. I kept going to sleep, thinking that maybe when I got up in the morning, it would all just be a dream. But whenever I woke up in the morning… she was still dead.”
“I am not dead!” Gem howled. He punched the wall, and Bethany heard the sickening crunch of the bones in his hand against the cinder block. The wing had been solidly built with psych and violent patients in mind, not with drywall that would be destroyed by a few blows.
The orderlies and nurses descended on Gem. He was no match for all of them at the same time. Especially not with his dominant hand out of commission. In just a couple of minutes, they had restrained him, jabbed a needle into the back of his thigh, and carried him back to his room. Gem was not completely unconscious, but lay there moaning, unable to respond to anything around him.
One of the orderlies began to connect the four-point restraints. “Just until we can treat his hand,” he assured Bethany.
“What happened?” an Asian nurse asked Bethany, stepping too close to her, inside her comfort zone.
Bethany took a step back and held up her hands, trying to maintain some distance, physical and emotional. “We were just talking… He says his brother’s not dead. But he knows he is.”
“He is in denial. It’s normal.”
“It’s normal? None of this is normal. Gem is not normal. He’s… special. You can’t understand the kind of relationship he had with his brother.”
“He still has to go through all the stages of grief, just like anyone else.”
Bethany looked at Gem, unable to move in the bed. She wiped her eyes. “You take care of him, please. He’s very important to me. I want him to come back to me.”
The nurse nodded. “We will do our best.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Dietrich could see by Bethany’s eyes that she had been crying again. She’d obviously been up to the hospital to see Gem. He passed her a beer. Bethany startled, looking away from the TV she’d been staring at in a trance. She looked for a minute at the can he was holding in front of her face and eventually took it.
“Thanks, D.” She gave him a wan smile. “I guess I could really use something tonight.”
She didn’t have more than a sip of it, though, before setting it to the side.
“How is he today?” Dietrich asked. Not because he wanted to know. Gem was, as far as D knew, broken beyond repair, and of no further interest to the Rippers. But because he knew it was the only thing that Bethany would be able to talk about and he wanted to talk to her. Until she had talked about Gem, she wouldn’t be able to move on to any other topic of conversation.
“Not good today,” Bethany said. “I mean… I guess he’s getting better… he’s moving in the right direction… or at least moving. But I don’t know… I really don’t know how he’s going to get over this.”
“From what I hear… he’s not. So why are you still hanging out with him? He’s where he belongs. With all the other nut jobs. Let them take care of him.”
“I can’t just leave him there, without any family or friends. That would be cruel.”
“It’s not doing any good, you going back there all the time. Is it?”
“I don’t know… I think he’s happy to see me. He knows who I am. He tries to talk to me about how he’s feeling.”
“But he can’t do anything for you,” Dietrich said. He touched her hand. “Don’t you want… someone who can return your affection?”
Bethany pulled her hand away from his. Slowly, not like she was offended or disturbed by his touch. It just wasn’t what she wanted.
“I’m not looking for reciprocation right now,” she said. “I know it’s going to take a long time before he’s all better. Before he can get out. If he ever can.”
“Then why not focus on someone who is available? You don’t need to shut yourself off from the world, just because Gem is off his rocker. Live your own life until he’s better, or forget about him.”
Bethany shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. She knew he would rather she turned her attentions to him, and she was trying to let him down gently. “Right now… I need to be there for him.”
“Can’t you be with him and still… take care of your own needs too?”
She shook her head.
Dietrich sighed. “Then why exactly are you still hanging around with the Rippers?” he demanded. “Sunnyboy’s debt’s been paid. You’re not seeing anyone else anymore. Why haven’t you moved on?”
Bethany stared at him, a crease between her eyebrows. She looked truly bewildered. “I… don’t know. I never thought of what else to do.”
“Go back to school. Get a job. Marry the nutcase and have nutty little babies.” Dietrich shrugged. “What’s the point in hanging around with a bunch of bangers on their way to jail or the morgue when you could actually have a life?”
* * *
As Bethany drew closer to Gem’s room, she could hear him shouting. That wasn’t unusual lately. Everything seemed to set him off. Dr. Ives was working on mood stabilizers, but Bethany understood that it would take days or weeks for the drugs to reach their full effect. Then they might find that they didn’t work and had to be scrapped. Then they would try something else. She knew it was a slow process and wished they could just find the magic cocktail that would work and allow Gem to move forward.
“It’s your fault!” Gem was shouting.
Bethany peeked in the door and saw that Riker was there. He didn’t appear to be bothered by Gem’s accusation. Whatever was going on, he was taking it calmly.
“If you hadn’t arrested me, it would never have happened!” Gem pointed out. Bethany swallowed. There was only one thing that Gem could be talking about.
“I had to arrest you,” Riker said. “That is my job. To get criminals off the street. I can’t just stand by and let juvies rob banks and drug stores and terrorize and murder. You know the law. You knew you were breaking it and could get arrested for it. You both knew.”
“You’re not supposed to arrest me when I have an alibi,” Gem maintained, his tone aggrieved.
“I broke your alibi. I did what I had to, Gem. I’m sorry for the choice that your brother made, but it wasn’t my doing. I would much rather see the two of you behind bars than him dead and you here.” Riker shook his head, mouth twisting into a grimace. “I can’t understand why he would make that choice. I know why he wanted the deal. He wanted to keep you out of prison. But suicide…”
Gem choked, his face red with fury. “It’s not fair! You took everything I had!”
“I didn’t make that choice. Your twin did. He could have chosen to fight the charges. Or to serve his time. He didn’t have to do what he did.”
But Gem was not listening, completely shutting out everything that Riker was saying. He didn’t accept that his twin’s death was beyond Riker’s control.
“It was you!” He threw a punch at Riker, hitting the cop square in the chest with his casted hand. “It was you! Your fault! You couldn’t leave me alone!”
Riker shoved him back. “You’re mad. I get that, Gem.”
“Now you can’t fix it! You can’t take it back!” Gem’s voice broke. He threw another punch at Riker, again connecting, and again being pushed back.
“He’s dead,” Riker agreed. “That’s way outside of my jurisdiction.”
Gem gave an incoherent cry of frustration, pelting Riker with both fists. Instead of pushing him away this time, Riker grabbed Gem and pulled him against his body, restraining him in a bear hug so that Gem was unable to keep hitting.
“No!” Gem cried. “No, no, no!” He gasped for breath. “You took everything I had!”
Riker saw Bethany standing in the doorway. He jerked his chin, inviting her in.
