General Fiction posted February 26, 2024

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Tina reveals the truth to Alan

A chapter in the book What We See

What We See - Chapter 14

by Jim Wile

Background
A high school teacher wrongly accused of sexual assault reinvents his life.

Recap of Chapter 13: After spreading his father’s ashes in his old hometown, that night Alan hears a female voice screaming for help in the county park that borders his backyard. He climbs the 10-foot-high fence and sees a man stomping on the belly of a girl who’s lying on the ground. He knocks the man out and discovers that the girl is Tina Cassidy, his accuser in the assault three months before. The man was her boyfriend, Tony Armand. Alan goes back to his house to call for an ambulance because Tina was badly hurt in the attack. The ambulance arrives, and he rides with her to the hospital, where she is immediately taken to surgery.

After four hours of waiting, the surgeon updates Alan on her condition. Her mother has still not made an appearance yet, despite both Alan and the hospital trying to contact her. The doctor informs Alan that Tina lost the baby she had been five months pregnant with and that she also had a ruptured spleen from the attack. The pregnancy was a complete shock to Alan. He is then shown to the recovery room to see Tina.

Chapter 14

The doctor told me the recovery room was on the left, halfway down the hall. I thanked him for all that he did, and he left. As I started down the hall, Ginnie came out of a room in front of me. I remembered that Tommy had told me she was working the night shift tonight.

“Alan? What are you doing here?”

“Hi, Ginnie. I’m here for a… uh, friend of mine who was badly injured tonight. She’s just come out of surgery and is in the recovery room now. It was pretty bad.”

After a beat, she said, “I’m sorry to hear that. Listen, Alan, I’m in a hurry right now. Your friend’s in good hands. I have to go. Bye,” and she walked swiftly away.

That was a surprise, running into Ginnie like that, and a little bit awkward too. I didn’t have much time to think about it because I soon arrived at the recovery room, and a nurse led me to Tina’s gurney. She was sitting up and sipping a drink. She put the drink down on the rolling tray table and looked up at me.

“Hello, Tina.”

“Mr. Phelps. The nurse told me you were still here. I can’t thank you enough for saving me tonight.” Her voice was soft and labored.

“That’s okay, Tina. How are you feeling now?”

“Very weak and tired, but not too much pain. I guess the pain medicine is doing its job. Mr. Phelps, I have something to tell you, but I’m so tired now, it probably won’t come out right.”

“That’s alright. Why don’t you just sleep now?”

“Will you please stay with me? I don’t want to be alone.”

“I’ll stay until they tell me to leave. Just sleep now.”

“Thank you,” she said softly, and drifted off to sleep.

I sat there with her for an hour while she slept. Her nurse was in and out a few times to check on her and told me it wasn’t necessary for me to stay, but she didn’t send me away, so I stayed with her. Her mother still hadn’t come.

Soon, an orderly came to wheel her to a private room. I remained with her. I was hoping to run into Ginnie again, but I didn’t see her. It was 2:30 AM, and I was tired myself. Tina continued to sleep for another couple of hours until her nurse came in to change her IV and to see if she could swallow a pain pill. She came fully awake then and looked at me.

“You’re still here. You are so nice, and I’ve been so mean to you. The doctor said you probably saved my life tonight. And after everything I did to you, you’re still being nice to me.” She started crying then and reached out her hand to me.

I took her hand and squeezed it, and she really started sobbing. “It’s okay, Tina. Don’t worry about that right now. It’s okay,” I said as I tried to comfort her. We stayed like this for a while, with me telling her it was okay while gently holding her hand in both of mine. Gradually, her crying subsided and then stopped. I handed her the small box of tissues that were on the rolling tray. She took a few and blew her nose.

When she had finally composed herself, she looked at me and said, “Mr. Phelps, you’ve been so good to me, and I don’t deserve it. You even lost your job because of me. Everybody thinks you’re a pervert now. I’m such a rotten person, and I feel so guilty. I owe it to you to tell you the whole story.”

She shuddered then and paused to collect her thoughts. “I’ve been going with Tony Armand since last Thanksgiving. Over the Christmas break, when my mother wasn’t home, which is most of the time, we started having sex. He usually wore a condom, but one day he didn’t have one. I knew it was risky, but we went ahead anyway. By the middle of January, I missed having my period. I didn’t worry too much about it because they’re not always that regular, but in February, I missed another one, and I started feeling nauseous in the morning. I bought one of those early pregnancy tests, and it was positive. I told Tony about it, but he didn’t want to hear it. He told me I should get an abortion. He was hoping to get a football scholarship at college, and he didn’t want anything messing that up.

“I didn’t know what to think about it. My mother taught me that abortion was wrong, but I wasn’t ready to have a baby. I’m only 16. I was having too much fun to be tied down with a baby, so I decided I would get the abortion, but I didn’t have the money for it, and Tony didn’t either. I didn’t want to tell my mother about it… “

She stopped then, and I saw her eyes start to tear up again. She reached for her cup and took a drink of water. After a few seconds, she continued.

“Now comes the bad part. I thought I loved Tony and would do anything for him, so we came up with this plan to get the money, and that’s where you came into it. I was going to seduce you into having sex with me, and then in a month I would tell you I was pregnant and figured you’d give me the money for the abortion. If you refused, I would threaten to tell on you. But then you turned me away. Tony was furious. He blamed me for not trying hard enough to get you to have sex with me. He told me to go back and try again, but I said it wouldn’t work, and maybe I should just have the damn baby. We started arguing, and he grabbed me. I kneed him in the balls, and he was so angry that he grabbed me around the neck and began squeezing. He finally realized he was strangling me and quit. That sobered him up, and he said he was sorry and that we’d figure something out.

“We smoked a joint to settle down, and then I left.” She stopped, and I could see the tears well up again. She took another sip of water.

“Take your time.”

In a bit, she said, “This is the part I really feel awful about.” She paused for a few seconds before resuming the story. “When I got home, I decided to take a shower and go to bed. Right then, my mother returned. She got a whiff of the pot Tony and I’d been smoking—probably on the clothes I dumped on the floor—and when I got out of the shower, she saw the bruises around my neck. I didn’t want to tell her about being pregnant, or Tony, or anything, so I made up a story that you had done it. It was a terrible thing to do to blame you for my problem, but I had to think fast, and this is what came out.”

I looked away then. I was shocked by what I was hearing, but I looked back and told her to continue.

“Mom was so angry that she said the two of us would go to Mr. Pinkham the next day and tell him all about it. She thought you were a pervert, and she was going to demand that you be fired. You may not know this, but Mom and Mr. Pinkham are going together. That’s probably where she is now—at his house. She spends a lot of nights over there.”

“Okay, why don’t you tell me about tonight?”

Tina resumed her story. “You were fired, and time went by. I still thought about getting an abortion, but I just didn’t have the money and eventually made up my mind what I would do. I was five months pregnant by now and really starting to show. I couldn’t keep it from my mother any longer. I called Tony yesterday and told him to meet me at the park last night, and I would tell him what I was planning. He agreed. So, we met at the park down by the pavilion. I had no idea where you were or that you lived near there. I told Tony that I was going to have the baby because it was too late to have an abortion. I was starting to feel some movement inside of me. It was a little person in there, and I just couldn’t get an abortion now. I told him I would tell my mother about everything and beg her forgiveness for lying about it. I would have the baby and give it up for adoption.

“Tony didn’t want any of this to come out because he was worried about his scholarship. He was really angry at me and grabbed me to try to ‘shake some sense into me,’ as he said. I told him not to touch me, but he kept shaking me, and I called for help then. You must have heard that, because in a few seconds I heard you say, ‘What’s going on?’ Then Tony threw me to the ground and started stomping on my belly, saying, ‘This is how we’ll take care of it.’ I screamed, and then you were there, and Tony was on the ground, and you were kneeling beside me.”

She stopped then and began crying again. A nurse passing by must have heard her crying, and I saw her stop at the partially open door and look in.

“And all that stomping on me killed our baby, Mr. Phelps,” she managed to say between sobs. She reached for me then, and I took both of her hands in mine.

“I’m so sorry that happened.” I held her hands for a while as she continued to cry. She drank some more water and began to settle down again. When I looked toward the door where the nurse had been to let her know that everything was okay, she was no longer there.

Tina looked at me and said, “And after everything I did to you, you were the one who saved me. How’s that for irony?”

She was right about that. What a story. Like something out of a novel.

“Mr. Phelps, I don’t get why you’ve been so nice to me after I ruined your life. You saved my life tonight, and I didn’t deserve it for what I did.”

“Oh, Tina. Of course, you deserved it. You’re just a kid. You made some bad choices, but that’s what kids do. It’s a hard lesson, but hopefully you’ll learn from your mistakes, and maybe you’ll become a better person for it.”

She shook her head. “I’ll try. I’m going to tell my mother everything. Maybe you can get your job back.”

“Well, that’s a nice thought. You said you think your mother is at Mr. Pinkham’s house? Maybe you should try calling her there. I’m sure she’ll want to come see you. I’ll stay with you until she gets here if you get ahold of her.” I put the phone in front of her. She thanked me and said she knew the number for Pinkham and began dialing.

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CHARACTERS

David (later Alan) Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985.

Earl Pinkham: The principal of Grove Park High School where David teaches

Suzie Cassidy: The school secretary and mother of Tina Cassidy

Tina Cassidy: A 16-year-old high school sophomore in David Phelps's class

Bobby Harken: David's friend and fellow teacher

Archie: David's orange tabby cat

Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan.

Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse.

Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St.

Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street.

Tony Armand: Tina Cassidy's boyfriend and the father of her baby. He is a star football player at Grove Park High.

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Tina reveals the truth to Alan

A chapter in the book What We See

What We See - Chapter 14

by Jim Wile

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