She had woken up surrounded by cards, some nice and some with death threats.
Her father had been standing over her, and had slapped her upside the head when she had opened her eyes. “You are no longer mine,” he had said. “I am not your father. I have no children. I wish I had never met your mother, because she caused me nothing but trouble. Actually, I am glad I met your mother, because then Amadea wouldn’t exist. But you don’t to me anymore.”
And he had walked out of her hospital room.
Where she was shackled to the bed.
Then Amadea had staggered in, clutching the wound in her stomach that Christie had given her.
“I’m sorry, baby,” Christie said. “I’m so so so sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” Amadea said. “I wish you were a better shot. Then you’d have killed yourself. And I’d do it for you if the friggin cops weren’t here. You don’t deserve a trial. Actually, you do. One with ME as the judge, jury and executioner.”
She spat in Christie’s face.
“Thank you,” Christie said. “I needed that.”
Amadea collapsed onto the bed, clutching her stomach again. She had stretched over too far to spit into Christie’s face and had stretched the wound in her stomach. Christie tried to hug her but Amadea pushed her away, falling and landing on the floor, yelping in pain, dissolving into sobs, getting helped up by one of the police officers and a nurse and helped over to a wheelchair.
“Don’t get up again,” Amadea,” the nurse said. “It will break open if you don’t. Are you finished saying hello to your mother?”
One of the police officers turned to the other and sniggered. “I don’t know. Amadea, are you done?”
“She gave her mother a very touching farewell and I think she is done for now,” the other officer said. Christie was laying in bed bawling so hard she couldn’t speak.
“Why did you stab me and shoot yourself?” Amadea called from her wheelchair outside as the nurse helped her support the wound in her stomach with a rolled towel. “I guess you wanted to save the one bullet for yourself because it’s less painful for you. I got a knife, not a bullet. Bitch. I hope they put you down like the bitch you are.”
Christie calmed down enough to speak. She shouted at nobody in particular as the nurse pushed Amadea away in the wheelchair, “I just wanted the best! My standards are high and I only wanted the best! I ONLY WANTED WHAT WAS TRUE AND RIGHT AND GOOD AND PURE! And that’s to release people from their suffering!”
“You MADE her suffer,” one of the cops said, the one who had sniggered. “Are you happy? If I could still keep by job after doing this, I’d have shot you right here and now. I think all mentally ill people should be shot.”
“Amadea was mentally ill,” Christie whimpered. “She had autism. Maybe I should have used the one bullet on her and stabbed myself.”
“My daughter is autistic,” the cop continued. “And she’s not mentally ill. She’s different. And if my wife did that to my daughter, I’d shoot her, and damn my job; I’d have no one left to support anyway. My daughter would be dead or in a foster home and you’d be fuckin’ dead of course.”
Christie passed out.
Christie sat in court, listening to Amadea tell the judge, prosecuters and jury how Christie had chased her, how Christie had yelled at and sworn at her, how Christie had held her down and stabbed her. Christie felt betrayed. Didn’t Amadea know that Christie had been doing what was good for Amadea? The reason Christie had yelled and sworn at Amadea was because Amadea hadn’t been cooperating. Amadea had refused to stick her head in the water, or lay down on the bed so that Christie could do it with a pillow instead. Christie wasn’t being selfish; she had even given Amadea a choice as to how Christie would do it! She hadn’t given Amadea the choice of being stabbed, as she knew that would hurt too much. But when Amadea had refused to be still, like any mother that had no choice but to restrain or punish a kid for the kid’s own good, Christie had thrown the knife and gotten Amadea in the stomach. To disable her. Then Christie had knocked her out with a vase, to end the suffering. But, hearing the commotion, the neighbors had called the police. And they had come just as Christie had been getting her gun to shoot herself, thinking Amadea was dead. And that had been that.
This was no ordinary Christmas card; that Amadea knew.
It had a letter in it; page upon page of writing.
She was so curious as to who had written it that she skipped to the signature at the end.
Someone called Hettie. Hettie Masterson. From Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Something fell out of the letter onto the floor.
She picked it up.
It was a passport.
She opened it up.
It was her passport.
Something then fell out of the passport.
A note.
From her uncle Seamus.
Telling her all she needed to know.
She quickly read the letter, which confirmed it. Then she ran upstairs to pack.
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