Original Ending

Noah had had enough of arguing with Maggie and the harder his step-daughter pushed things, the closer he got to the edge of losing his temper. Maggie had overslept and missed the bus. Now he was going to be late for work making sure she got to school on time.

“Why won’t you just relax, Dad?” she said. “I don’t understand what the big deal is!”

“The answer is still no, Maggie. You’ve already seen the movie twice.”

“But I love the ending! Please! It’s just a couple hours on a Friday night!”

Noah heaved a sigh and worked his way around a slow elderly driver.

“It’s never just a couple hours,” he said. “You’ll come home and be on your damned phone until three in the morning talking about the movie, the boys you saw, your stupid teachers, then you’ll sleep until ten and lose half the day before you start on your homework. Your mother and I are firm on this. You are not going out Friday night.”

“All my friends are going! Their parents aren’t giant squares like you and mom.”

“We don’t care what your friends’ parents let their kids do. Your are our daughter and your school work comes before everything else. Your final history essay is due Monday and you haven’t even started the outline yet. It’s a third of your grade, Maggie.”

“It’s not fair!”

Fair. Noah laughed ruefully. “You have a lot to learn about what’s fair in the world, young lady. It’s not like in the movies where you get what you want in the end. Life isn’t fair.”

The stop light ahead of them flipped to red and Noah braked. It held on for forever, seemingly taking his step-daughter’s side as she refined her argument about going out with her girlfriends. Noah’s hand cramped on the steering wheel as his anger mounted.

The light turned green and he shifted his foot from the brake to the accelerator, pushing his 17 year old step-daughter firmly to the passenger seat.

“Whoa, Dad! Take it easy!”

Noah opened his mouth, drew a harsh breath, but before he could say a word Maggie screamed. His head snapped to the right in time to see the grille of a red and gray Chevy Silverado fill the passenger window. Noah jammed the accelerator to the floor but it was too late. The pickup’s blunt snout plowed into his daughter’s door. Glass shattered and the shriek of rubber tires and rending metal drowned out her scream. The world lurched sideways as their Corolla pitched left and rolled onto its side then onto its roof, spinning like a top.

Maggie stopped screaming. Maggie stopped everything.

~~~

Noah stared at the cop’s feet as he sat on the edge of the hospital bed, his arm in a sling. Black leather shoes with heavy rubber soles, the toes polished to a mirror shine.

How had he gotten to the hospital? Ambulance. He remembered that. There had been two. He had gone in one and they had taken Maggie away in the other. He glanced around small cubicle, blue curtains drawn tight. He was alone there with a pair of cops.

“Where’s Maggie?” he asked. His voice sounded so small. Had he even spoken out loud?

A pair cops had squeezed themselves into the cramped Emergency Room cubicle with him. One of them, a young woman with auburn hair pulled back into a tight bun, stood at the foot of his bed with her small hands resting on the bulky gear clipped to her duty belt. She was so tiny in that bulletproof vest. Her partner, older and male, lead the interview.

“Mr. Byrd?” He tapped Noah lightly on the shoulder. “Mr. Byrd.”

Noah’s head pounded. His arm screamed at him. The goddamned painkillers the nurses had fed him were useless. Where was Maggie? Had they taken her to a different hospital? Where was she? Why wouldn’t anyone tell him what was going on? He had to call Georgia. He had to call the insurance company, too. Had to book a loaner, had to call his wife. He already thought of that. Had he called her already? Noah couldn’t remember. He couldn’t think. His mind was slippery as an egg on a nonstick skillet.

“Mr. Byrd.”

Noah glanced up. Constable Marleau was printed across the cop’s name tag.

“I’m sorry…” Noah said. “I’m sorry…what did you say?”

“Where were you going with your daughter when the accident happened?”

“To…to school.” Noah’s mind felt clogged. Thoughts were sluggish, like walking through mud.

“Maggie woke up late,” he said. “She’s always late. Maggie spends too much time on her damned phone at night with her friends and she can’t get up in the morning. She missed the bus so I had to drive her to work. I mean school. I can’t think straight.”

“It’s all right, Mr. Byrd. We can follow-up with you later on this.”

“We were arguing…Maggie was arguing back. I was being the uncool step-dad.”

“What were you arguing about?”

“Some movie she wanted to see with her girlfriends. She was ignoring her school work and her mother and I grounded her so she could spend the weekend working on it.”

“Is she good at school?”

Noah smiled. “The best. She wants to be a lawyer. She’ll be a good one, too, all the debating she does with us.”

The cop scribbled a few things on his pad. The pen looked like a toothpick in his massive hand. How could he write with that thing? Noah’s eyes flicked up to the cop’s face. He had a kind face for such a brute. Kind and old. No, not old, but older. And wide. The face of a man who eats too much greasy food and never exercises enough to work it off. Middle age spread. 

“Where’s Maggie?” Noah asked.

“The doctors are with her,” the female cop said. Her name tag read Const. Wilson.

“What…happened? Who hit us? He came out of nowhere. He must have been going eighty when he hit us. Can I talk to him?”

“No, Mr. Byrd.”

“I need to get his insurance information. Can I press charges?”

Const. Marleau glanced at his partner.

“Mr. Byrd, you need to rest for now. Don’t worry about the accident.”

“It was an accident. This wasn’t an accident. He ran that red light and plowed straight into us. He was probably texting. Was he texting? I want to press charges.”

Noah couldn’t focus. He babbled. He was sliding through the present like he was drunk but much too alert at the same time. 

“I’m afraid you can’t press charges, Mr. Byrd,” Const. Marleau said quietly.

A red flare of anger arched up through Noah’s mind. “Why not?”

Const. Marleau flipped his notebook closed and clipped his pen into his shirt pocket. He slid the notebook into a pocket in his vest and cleared his throat.

“It was an accident, Mr. Byrd. The man who struck you was Carl Jenkins. He was 73 and the truck belonged to his son’s junk hauling business. Mr. Jenkins wasn’t texting.”

“I’ll sue his son. Someone has to pay.”

“I would advise against that, Mr. Byrd.”

“Someone has to pay!”

Noah winced at the spike of pain that lanced through his head.

“Mr. Byrd,” said Const. Wilson. Her blue eyes were wide and sad. She looked almost too young to be a cop. “Mr. Jenkins is dead. He wasn’t texting. He wasn’t distracted or drunk. He was on his way to a job site to haul away some trash. The best we can tell is that he suffered a massive heart attack at the wheel just as he was pulling up to the light. His was foot jammed against the accelerator when we pulled him out of the truck.”

“Where’s my daughter?” Noah asked. He shook his head but the fog wouldn't clear. “I want to see Maggie.”

“You can’t right now, Mr. Byrd. I’m sorry. The surgeons are working on her.”

“How is she?”

Constable Marleau’s expression was grave. “We’ll let the doctors talk to you about that.”

The cops left and Noah sat on the edge of the hospital bed. Time did not so much as pass as slide by in frames and fragments, like a poorly edited art house film. Hospital sounds. Beeps. Shouts. A cool female voice paged codes over the PA system.

Georgia burst through the blue curtain that enclosed Noah’s small cubicle. Noah said some words but she ignored him, flung her arms around his neck and squeezed so hard it hurt. She sobbed into his neck and held on for dear life.

~~~

Noah was lying down when the curtain opened again and a doctor finally came into the little cubicle.

“I’m Dr. Ackehurst,” he said. He was tall and dark. “I’m Maggie’s surgeon.”

Georgia sprang to her feet. Noah struggled to sit up, but the painkillers kept him pinned to the bed.

“How is Maggie?” Georgia asked.

Dr. Ackehurst hesitated a moment. “Are you Maggie’s mother? Mrs. Byrd?”

“Yes. This is Noah, her step-father. How is our daughter? No one will tell us anything.”

“We’ve been working on her, trying to stabilize her for surgery.”

“How bad is it?”

Dr. Ackehurst’s serious eyes moved from Georgia to Noah and back to Georgia. He hesitated, as if looking up the consoling bedside pap he’d learned in medical school, then settled for the truth.

“Maggie is in rough shape,” he said. “She’s touch and go. The pickup struck your car square on the passenger door and Maggie took the brunt of the hit. She'ss in very critical condition.”

“How bad is it?” Georgia repeated.

“We noticed an organ donor card in Maggie’s wallet. Were you aware that she had registered?”

Georgia stepped backward, her hand over her mouth. “What? What are you saying? How fucking bad is she?”

Dr. Ackehurst sucked in a breath, combed his fingers through his dark hair and said, “We’re going to do our best, Mrs. Byrd, but she is in a very precarious state. Your daughter has suffered incredible trauma to her entire body. Her right arm, shoulder, and collar bone are in pieces as is her pelvis. Her spine is severed in the lumbar region. If she pulls through the surgery, she’ll never walk again.”

“If?”

“Maggie is bleeding internally. We’ve stopped the worst of it, but we have to get that fully under control before we can work on repairing the fractures.”

“But you can save her, right?” Noah asked. He felt like a naïve fool as soon as the words left his m outh.

“I wish I could give you a positive prognosis, Mr. and Mrs. Byrd,” Dr. Ackehurst said. “I can’t guarantee the ending you’re both hoping for. Before I go, do I have your final consent for organ transplant?”

Georgia nodded silently, stunned to silence. Noah shut his eyes.

~~~

Maggie’s bedroom still smelled like her, even three weeks after her funeral. 

It was Noah’s refuge, a place he retreated to when the present closed in around him. He and Georgia endured the bitter suffering of parents losing their child in the prime of her life. Noah’s heart broke in half and he limped through the funeral, senseless as a robot. Afterwards, on Georgia’s insistence, he had started seeing a therapist.

“You haven’t shed a single tear,” she had said. “It’s not normal.”

Noah agreed. It wasn’t normal. He had too many to tears to shed and he held them in check like a dam holding a reservoir at bay. If he relaxed for a second, if he allowed a single crack in the dam, the deluge would sweep him away.

“It’s survivor’s guilt, Noah,” his therapist had said. “Why me? Why did I get to live and not my Maggie? You’re not alone with these thoughts.”

Not alone.  The words offered little comfort. Noah had never felt so alone in his life. He moved through fog day after day, numb but for the grief and guilt that weighed him down hour upon hour.

Maggie’s favourite stuffed bear Mr. Jones gazed up at Noah from amid a congregation of bears and cartoon characters arranged against her pillows. His huge eyes brimmed with sorrow. Noah picked him up and cradled him on his lap. 

“I miss her, too,” Noah said and stroked the bear’s head.   “I’m sorry, little guy. There was nothing I could do.”

Mr. Jones’ blue irises circled black pupils fogged by a patina of fine scratches. He was a scruffy old bear, beat up and flattened and tattered in places, but he was still her favourite.  His brown fur, pilled after years of sleeping tucked under Maggie’s arm, was worn thin in places. Amid the almost new stuffed characters piled on the bed, he was the old man, the most beloved sage of Maggie’s animals. Noah wondered what secrets Maggie had confessed to Mr. Jones over the years. 

Georgia rapped on the door and stepped inside. Noah set Mr. Jones back among his congregants.

“This came today,” Georgia said softly. She handed Noah an envelop.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A letter,” she said. “It’s from the parents of the girl who got Maggie’s heart.”

Noah took it and unfolded the letter.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Byrd,

Thank you for agreeing to let my wife and I contact you. We cannot imagine for an instant the heartache you must be suffering at the loss of your daughter. Please accept our deepest condolences and prayers. We don’t know much about Maggie’s life or the happy times you shared, but they must be precious memories, even more so now.

My wife and I want to express our deepest gratitude to you and especially Maggie. Evelyn, our daughter, had been on the heart transplant waiting list for three years and even though we fought to remain optimistic, her time was running out. Life is precious and your daughter understood that. She gave our Evelyn a beautiful gift.

We are so grateful your daughter Maggie registered as an organ donor and we are grateful to you for the final consent. Our words seem so small for the depth of feeling we have, but we wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much.

You and Maggie will remain in our thoughts forever.

Ken and Beth Scrivens

Noah folded the letter and handed it back to Georgia.

“I thought you might like to read it,” she said. 

“I have to go,” Noah said. “I’m going to be late for my appointment.”

“I thought it was a nice gesture,” Georgia said, following Noah out of Maggie’s room. “I thought it might help you to know that that girl has a second chance thanks to Maggie. It helps me.”

Noah could only nod and hold up the dam.

~~~

Dr. Holland’s office was quiet and dim, the grey walls and black book cases lit by a floor lamp in the corner and a lamp on the end table beside Noah. He sat in the corner of the deep leather sofa and leaned on the arm as Dr. Holland waited for him to speak.

“How are you today, Noah?” Dr. Holland asked finally. 

Noah shrugged and told him about the Scrivens’ letter.

“That was some good news,” said Dr. Holland. “Don’t you think so?”

Noah nodded. “Sure. They still have their daughter. I still lost mine.” Noah chewed on his thumbnail. “It’s not fair. That’s what I said to Maggie before the truck hit us. Life isn’t fair.” 

Noah’s eyes burned and he blinked rapidly. He shook his head and swallowed through a tight throat. 

“It wasn’t supposed to end this way,” he said. “Not for her. She wanted to see a God damned movie and the last thing she heard me say before she died was Life isn’t fair.”

Noah couldn’t hold up the dam any longer. He was exhausted and he broke down and sobbed for ten full minutes, sobbed like a baby until snot ran from his nose and mixed with his tears. He sobbed until he was an empty bottle rolling in a gutter. Noah yanked tissues out of the box on the end table, blew his nose, and mopped his eyes. 

“I want to rewind this movie,” he said when he recovered himself. “I want to play the alternate ending where Maggie goes to the movies and stays up all night on her phone texting her girlfriends. I want that happy ending, doc, but I'm stuck here replaying the original ending over and over.” 

Noah balled up the tissue and flung it across the room into the bin next to Dr. Holland’s desk. 

“Life isn’t like the movies," he said. "There's no balance, no redress at the moment of deepest crisis. There’s no understudy to take over, when the lead can't go on."