Saints and Sinners

by: Courtney

‘Pretty Woman’ ends and Charlie and Doug sit in silence for a moment. “Would you like to watch another movie?” he asks her.

She shrugs, “I don’t care. We can if you want to.”

“It doesn’t matter to me.” Doug tries to read her expression, but her eyes are still a mystery he has yet to solve. The complex emotions they hold within them seem too complicated to have seen only fifteen years on this earth. This thought saddens Doug as he looks at the girl. She notices his glance and looks over at him. He quickly breaks his forlorn stare and says, “Why don’t you go get some rest? That medicine Dr. Benton gave you has to have made you sleepy and you need your rest.”

She nods her agreement to this suggestion. She is getting a little tired. She gets up from the sofa, walks down the short hallway to the guest room and retreats behind the door.

Once inside the room, Charlie goes to the window and pushes back the curtains that conceal the mid afternoon, Chicago sunlight. It is already very cold outside. The days have been getting shorter lately and therefore the bitter cold of nighttime has been approaching even sooner. She always notices when this starts to happen. Cold is something she has become all too familiar with. It has penetrated her soul and become a part of her.

Today, as she looks out Doug’s apartment window, Chicago looks very different to her. This is part of the city she rarely sees and a part she is not familiar with at all. A young woman is walking home from the store with an armload of groceries. She climbs the steps of a quaint looking brownstone and retreats inside. Three children are playing hopscotch on a nearby sidewalk. Charlie can hear them laughing and shouting playfully with one another.

She turns away from the light-hearted scenes and sits solemnly on the bed. Her eyes are full of unshed tears as she stares up at the ceiling. “What is wrong with me?” she whispers to herself. She has never been good at showing how she feels. She has always kept her emotions down, where even she couldn’t find them. Now, as the tears spill down her cheeks and fall to her stitched up bottom lip, she cannot understand what is happening to her. ‘Where is this coming from?’ she wonders even as more tears begin to flow. She is unable to hold back any longer and a lifetime of unshed sorrows come rushing at her all at once. She stands from the bed and looks around, aimlessly, as though there is something to find, some answer hidden just beyond her grasp. But, there is nothing and she falls to her knees. The tears continuing coming so fast she is powerless to stop them. She crawls into the corner and curls up. Her bruised face rests on her knees as she shakes with an utter despondency she has never allowed herself to know before.

Doug watches as Charlie goes into the guest room. He can’t help but worry about this child. She came into his life as an annoyance. He hadn’t even wanted to be on that MedVan duty that day. After he and Carol got roped into it, he had been in a bad mood. Charlie’s appearance that day had not made any great impression on him. She was another poor street kid to feel bad for. He saw too many kids like her everyday. But, then, she had shown up at the hospital. And, the more times he spoke to her and treated her, the more he got to know her. She was quite remarkable to be only fifteen. She had a lot of potential and this realization was perhaps the most disheartening aspect of knowing her. Doug hated knowing there was a child out there who needed someone and nobody was there to fill that void. He remembered what he had felt like after Ray left. Seeing all those other kids with their dads . . . but, at least, he’d had his mom. ‘What must it be like to have no one at all?’

His thoughts of Ray start him thinking about his own son. He knows the boy is out there somewhere. He has always known. ‘I hope he’s not out there somewhere like Charlie.’ This thought slams down on his brain and he can’t think of anything else. Does he have a child out there in the world that is suffering the way that she is? He knows Charlie tries to act tough, but sooner or later a crack in that shell is bound to break her in two. Has his son seen the same pain Charlie has? Thinking of this brings tears to Doug’s eyes and he must blink them quickly away.

He sits there for a long while and reflects on all the mistakes he has made in his life. All the roads he could have turned on, but instead he chose a detour. A sidetrack that lead him away from his responsibilities and further into oblivion. ‘If it hadn’t been for Carol,’ he thinks into the silence, ‘I might have never found my way back.’ But, Doug knows that Carol is not the only one who led him from that dark path. There have been many others that caused him to see how he was ruining his future, throwing everything away. Charlie, for one, and Ray, his reappearance made Doug stop to think about things. Saving Ben had a big impact. And then there was Nadine . . . He would never fully relinquish his guilt for her death. She had been right here, right in this apartment. Staring absently towards the window, Doug sees Nadine’s pallid face as she looked when the time of death was called. How much she had made him think of Carol, lying there, barely alive, in the ER that horrible night. It could have easily been Carol to die, just as Nadine had. He still blamed himself for that, too. She has always insisted it had nothing to do with him. Mostly, Todd’s phone call was the trigger for her suicide attempt. Hearing from him had pushed her so far from reality. ‘But,’ he has thought so many times, ‘if I had only been there. . .’ If only.

God had given him a second chance that day. He had given Carol back to him. Then, it had still taken Doug three years to change his ways, to see all that he had been taking for granted for so long. Maybe he had saved Ben, and so many others, but would Nadine have died that night if he had changed three years earlier? If she hadn’t been with him that night, would her fate have been the same? There is no way to know, and that is the ultimate punishment for all of his sins. He can never be fully over the guilt and remorse of her death. Even the new Doug can’t forget who he had once been. ‘That’s how it should be,’ he thinks. ‘That way I’ll always know what I am in danger of becoming again.’

He looks at the clock and sees that he had been reflecting on his life for quite some time. It is almost seven o’clock. Charlie has been in bed for over two hours. She was supposed to take the antibiotics that Peter had prescribed at six o’clock. All of her time being exposed to the elements has weakened her health and he is afraid she might develop pneumonia if this continues. She already has a low grade fever and the prescription is a safety precaution. Doug goes into the kitchen and retrieves the pills from the counter top. He fixes her a glass of water and heads towards the guest room door. His knock is gentle, at first. This does not illicite a response, so he knocks again, this time rapping harder on the door. Still nothing, so he peeks inside. He can see the bed and it is still neatly made. Charlie had made the bed when she got up this morning and it didn’t look as though she had been back in it since. Doug pushes the door fully opened and steps into the room. The sun is almost completely set and the room is filled with dark shadows. He scans the room. He almost doesn’t see her curled up in the corner. It isn’t until he surveys his surroundings a second time that he notices her there. He rushes over and touches her arm. Her eyes are closed and he gently shakes her. She opens her eyes slightly, looking very disoriented.

“What’s wrong?” he asks as she stares up at him. He can see the tears still staining her swollen cheeks. Her eyes are puffy, like she has been crying for days.

She sucks in a long, labored breath and tries to speak, but the tears overcome her again. The short reprieve of sleep has not diminished the anguish that washes over her. She succumbs, again, to a wave of fresh tears and drops her head back down to rest on her raised knees. Doug is unsure of what to do. For a moment, he sits there, stunned. Then, almost instinctively, his arms wrap gently around the crying child. She shakes with unimaginable sorrow that brings tears to Doug, as well, and he fights them back. He holds onto her, gently stroking her hair, as she releases all of the pain she has bottled up within her. It seems to be never ending.

After what feels like a lifetime of tears, Charlie manages to gain control of herself. She stops crying and Doug pulls away from her to look into her swollen face. “Do you feel like talking?” he asks quietly as she wipes her cheeks with back of her hand. He grabs a tissue from the dresser and hands it to her.

“I don’t know,” her voice is strained and full of fear and confusion. He can tell that she is barely fighting back another wave of tears.

“Come on,” he rises from the floor beside her and helps her to her feet. He leads her over to the bed and urges her to have a seat. She sits and he sits down beside her. He looks at her, trying to decipher what has brought all of this on. She is staring at her hands, concentrating very hard on keeping herself together. “Charlie,” Doug begins, “talk to me . . .”

Her lip quivers as she turns to face Doug. “I don’t know . . . ,” is all she can say. She is just as confused as he is about her outburst. Doug looks woefully at her as tears begin to escape her eyes once more. He wraps his arms around her again and tells her everything will be alright. Charlie feels safe in his arms and let’s herself be comforted, something she has never let herself give in to before. He stays there with her for the rest of the evening. Eventually, she falls asleep and he lays her carefully down on the bed and covers her with a blanket from a nearby chair. He creeps silently from the room and goes to the kitchen.

Just as he is fixes himself a glass of water, the phone rings. It is 11 o’clock and he figures it must be Carol since he hasn’t heard from her all night. He picks up the phone and Carol’s voice greets him. She instantly detects that something is wrong and he tells her the situation with Charlie.

“Any idea what triggered it?” Carol asks, her voice full of concern.

“No, but I have had the feeling she was holding back a lot. I’ve never seen her upset, not in all the times I’ve been around her. She always keeps everything in check. After she was beaten, raped, nothing ever affected her the way it should have.”

“It affected her. She just kept it all inside. It was bound to come out eventually. I’m just glad you were there.” Carol’s words are very sincere and he knows she has seen some of the same pain as Charlie. She knows where Charlie has been and what she has been going through. Carol may have been a little older when she went through this, but her pain was just as deep and she felt just as alone.

“Charlie needs you right now,” Carol continues. “I’m going to tell Mark that you won’t be here tomorrow.”

“Carol . . .,” Doug begins to argue this but she won’t hear a word of it.

“No, she needs you. He’ll understand. The hospital will survive without you for one more day. This is more important.” Doug knows she is right, so he silences his protests.

“Where is she now?” Carol asks.

“She finally cried herself to sleep about an hour ago. I stayed with her a while longer to make sure she didn’t wake back up. I had just left her room when you called.”

“Well, would you like me to stop by on my way home in the morning?”

“No, I think we’ll be fine. You need to get some rest. Besides, Charlie has had a long night. She’ll probably sleep for a while.” Doug’s voice is laden with a mixture of worry and fatigue which Carol is well aware of.

“You get some rest, too, alright? You are no good to her if you’re exhausted.” She knows Doug too well. He’s always been a cowboy, especially when it came to kids. And, Charlie, well, she has always been a special case with him. He seemed to take an almost fatherly interest in this girl from her first time at the hospital. Doug may try to act like these kids don’t get to him, but Carol knows that they do. Even when his personal life was in shambles, the kids could always bring out the real Doug Ross. The one who hid from the world most of the time. The guy who cared and sympathized with every child from bee stings to bullet wounds. Yes, Carol knows him well, maybe better than he knows himself sometimes. She knows he’ll be in and out of Charlie’s room all night, checking on her, and that he will probably get very little sleep. But, being a knight in shining armor seems to have become his specialty as of late. Carol sighs, “Doug, promise me you’ll sleep tonight.”

He sighs as well. “I’ll sleep. I just have to check on her a little, that’s all. I don’t want her to wake up and be alone.” His voice becomes choked with emotion as he continues. “Carol, you didn’t see her tonight. She was a mess. I . . . I’m really worried about her.” He is very emotional right now and Carol knows that this is affecting him in a very big way. She is worried for Charlie, too, but, she can’t help but worry for Doug a little as well.

“Call me if you want to talk, okay? Don’t worry about the time, whenever you need me.”

“Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Carol. Good-bye.” Doug hangs up the phone and sits down at the kitchen table. He stares down at the table for a long time, not moving. Slowly, his resistance crumbles and he hangs his head in sorrow. Just then, a tear escapes his eye. Then another. Finally, he gives in and begins to sob. He cries for Charlie, and for Carol. He cries for his son, whose name he doesn’t know. He cries for Nadine and all of the other patients, acquaintances, friends, and family he has lost. And, finally, he cries for himself. For all of the things he has done that he’d like to change, all of the things he has seen that he had no control over, and all of the memories that will never go away. He cries for a long time, his tears cleansing away the pain and hurt that have built up.

As he leaves the table, he feels strangely better. Somehow, letting it all out has soothed him a little. He wipes his eyes and goes back to check on Charlie. She is sound asleep when he enters the room. He looks at her and thinks of their earlier conversation about where she would end up when she got better. He begins to think that her road to recovery may be longer than he thought, as he leaves the room. Moments later, he returns with a pillow and blanket. He can’t stand the thought of her waking up and being all alone. He curls up on the floor beside her bed and closes his eyes.

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