Regret is the Punishment novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Burn Unit

Jerome's mother slaps Sue in a waiting room full of people, Sue tells the crew and the chief the whole truth, and Darla wakes up saying she called.

Jerome did not say a word to me on the lawn.

He lifted Darla in the gray blanket and ran for the ambulance, and two of his crew ran beside him.

I started after them.

A firefighter I had known for nine years stepped in front of me with his arm out.

"Not now, Sue," he said.

His eyes were red from smoke and something else.

"That's my daughter."

"I know whose daughter it is."

The ambulance doors shut.

I stood on the grass with my sister's number ringing in my ear, watching the lights go down the lane.

Over the roof of our house, the fire went on.

I got to Lakeview Children's forty minutes later, in my sister's car.

There was soot on my cardigan from a lawn I had never made it across.

The burn unit waiting room had twelve chairs and a muted television.

By the time I walked in, it was full.

Half of Engine 4 was there in their boots.

Two other families sat with children's coloring books in their laps.

Wanda was in a chair by the window with a blanket around her shoulders.

She stood up when she saw me.

"Wanda," I said. "Please. Is she alive?"

The slap cracked across the whole room.

My head turned with it.

The television, the vending machine and the coloring books all went quiet.

"You were with a man," Wanda said.

She was shaking.

"The neighbor told me. She called you fourteen times. Fourteen. Your child was upstairs breathing smoke and you were out there with him."

"Mom," a voice said behind me.

Jerome's voice.

He had come through the double doors in a clean gray T-shirt somebody had lent him, with his hands still black to the wrist.

He didn't look at me.

He looked at his mother.

"Sit down," he said.

"She let the engine sit in the road, Jerome. Four minutes. I counted them from the lawn."

"I said sit down."

Wanda sat.

Then he turned and looked at me for the first time since the grass.

I had imagined that look for months, in the dark, whenever I lay awake.

I had never imagined how quiet it would be.

"How is she?" I asked.

"Second degree on both arms and her back. Smoke in her lungs." His voice didn't change at all. "They don't know yet about the rest."

"Jerome, I am so sorry."

"Don't."

He walked back through the doors.

The room went on staring at me.

I could have sat down in the corner and let them stare.

That would have been easy.

I would have done that a month ago.

But the five men from Engine 4 were standing by the vending machine.

One of them was the lieutenant who had stood up at our wedding.

He was watching me.

I walked over to them.

"I need to tell you what happened on Harbor Lane," I said.

"Sue, this isn't the time," the lieutenant said.

"It is. You were in the cab and you lost four minutes. You deserve to hear why."

None of them said anything.

I made myself keep my eyes up.

"I was in my car at the bottom of the lane."

"A man blocked me in with his truck. I was there to end an affair with him."

Somebody breathed out through his nose.

"He wouldn't back up and I wouldn't reverse. I heard your horn the whole time."

"My neighbor called me fourteen times, and I didn't pick up once."

The youngest of them looked at the floor.

"The delay is on me," I said. "It isn't on Jerome and it isn't on you."

"I'll say that to anyone who asks, and I'll sign it."

The lieutenant studied me for a long moment.

"The chief is in the family room with the fire marshal," he said at last. "Say it to him."

I said it to him.

I said it in the little family room, to a gray-haired chief and a woman with a clipboard, with every ugly word in it.

The chief wrote it down without a flicker.

When I finished, he said, "You understand this will be in the report."

"Yes."

"With your name."

"Yes."

He looked at me over his glasses.

"Go sit down, Mrs. Hildreth."

I sat in the waiting room for six hours.

Nobody sat next to me.

A little after midnight, a nurse in pale blue scrubs came and crouched in front of my chair.

"The father says you can see her for one minute," she said. "Through the door. Not in."

I stood so fast the chair rocked.

Darla lay in a bed far too big for her, with white dressings from her wrists to her shoulders.

An oxygen mask covered half her face.

Her braids had been cut off at the ears.

Jerome sat on a stool by the bed with his back to the door.

I put my hand on the glass.

Darla's eyes opened.

They found me through the glass, and she pulled the mask down with one bandaged finger.

Her voice came out.

"Mommy," she whispered. "I called you."

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