In the Way

I had her convinced that I was fine right up to the point where she asked me to put my hand on her head. "Which one?" I asked.

There is quite nothing like walking into a door. I have had my share of fists connecting with my face in those fifteen years you keep hearing me repeat so that I can impress you that I am a tough guy, but coming up against a wooden door reminded me what it felt like to get knocked out. I must have been out for a couple of minutes, give or take a couple, I suppose. Consciousness returned defying the laws of physics - sound preceding light. I heard my daughter calling out my name, asking me if I was alright, and I was telling her that I was perfectly fine when I remembered that I had to open my eyes.

It was only then that I discovered that we had two roofs, two doors - didn't I just bump into one, I asked myself - and two Nikkis. Ergo, my statement. Ergo, Nikki's insistence that we go see a doctor whether I might have a concussion. Ergo, me riding shotgun with ice pressed to my forehead as she deftly maneuvered my car through the traffic towards the hospital.

It was only when she stopped that I realized that we had come to the Memorial, and not the Community Hospital, which was where Rachel worked as a nurse. The Memorial was approximately the same distance from our home, but exactly on the other side of the circumference. I asked her why we had not gone to her mother's hospital.

"'Cos she is there," Nikki replied curtly as she pulled up in front of the trauma centre. An orderly rushed out with a wheel chair and seemed disappointed when I said I could walk. Nikki gunned the car as if she were in a race and headed towards the parking lot. She was by my side a minute later, giving us a precious few seconds just before the doctor showed up. She pulled my hand away from the bump on my forehead, wincing at the color. "How do you feel, handsome?" she asked me tenderly.

I reached out with my free hand and encircled her waist. "You take good care of me, kid." She smiled just as the doctor, a young, competent-looking, no-nonsense chap, announced his presence by gripping my wrist. The next few minutes went by in a blur as he went through the diagnostics I was already familiar with - pulse, pupils, heartbeat, breathing, response and balance. He spoke only after he had administered the morphine shot. "There's nothing a good nap shouldn't take care of," he said as he scribbled a note to my daughter. "It was your head that took the impact, but you certainly have a hard head, Mr. Kane."

"Yes, he does," my daughter agreed before I could say anything. "I think he cracked the door." The doctor smiled at her joke. Since I have a good sense of humor, I did not grudge the fact that the joke was actually on me - but what surprised me was the sudden irritation that my daughter should flirt with another man. For some reason, I knew immediately then that it was not the kind of feeling I would have as a father but rather as someone more... intimate. Was I actually getting jealous? Nah, I told myself, it was just her way of releasing stress. It meant nothing.

We were advised to remain at the hospital, however, for another hour, "just to be sure." I did not want to stay there any longer, but the doctor persisted and Nikki prevailed. The only compromise that I was able to wring from them was that I would not occupy any room other than the Visitors' Lounge. After I seated myself in the middle of one of the couches - Nikki was afraid I would fall off - I sent her off to fetch us something to drink. I had just picked up a Readers' Digest from the table in front and was about to read an article on household safety when I heard her say, "Oh, God, are you all right?"

Rachel had her hand on my head before I could actually register the fact that my wife was here. Her hand brushed against the welt on my forehead, which caused me to wince sharply. "Sorry," she said, taking her hand away as if my face was on fire. "Sorry, didn't mean to hurt you."

"Forget it," I told her, wanting her to put her hand on me again. That touch felt so good, so natural, but there was a part of me that was still instinctively angry with her, even though her allegations were not on my immediate recall. "How come you got here so quickly?"

"I was on the way when Nikki called," she said, setting her purse down on the table and reaching once again, hesitantly this time, for my face. "I asked the cabbie to turn around and floor it. What happened?"

"You slammed the door in his face," Nikki answered for me. Her hands were empty, which told me that she had seen her mother arrive before she had gone too far down the corridor. She stepped protectively between us and dropped down on the couch right beside me, one arm around my shoulder, the other on her thigh. "You did this to him."

Rachel just stood there and absorbed the accusation. She did nothing to stop our daughter. Her hand, which had been reaching out to me, dropped limply at her side as she said, once again and in a lower voice, "I'm sorry."

"Why are you here anyway?" Nikki asked. "Want to see the damage you've done?"

I laid a warning hand on her, whispering, "Nikki, cool it," but she did not heed me. "What's your problem anyway, you bitch?" The invective was hurled with almost frightening intensity, so loud that a couple of visitors who had been trying to ignore us reflexively looked at us. I have this mental image, a snapshot of the scene - me, with a book on my lap, sitting beside Nikki, her face raging, her wrist white and quivering, glaring at her mother who stood wordlessly, hands at her sides, eyes cast downward, accepting of all that her daughter had thrown at her.

"You called me," she said after a while. I wanted to reach out for her but found myself unwilling to do so. For some reason, I believed Nikki would see it as a betrayal - and of the two women in my life, I seemed to have made my choice clear. Rachel seemed to know it already. Nikki dug her fingers into my shoulder, as if acknowledging it. Rachel continued to speak, directing her words at our daughter. "You were the one who sent me a message saying that he had had an accident and was being admitted here."

"So what?" Nikki asked, still as belligerent as ever. "Why do you care?"

"I thought it was because of me."

"It IS because of you," Nikki told her.

"I thought he was hit by a car or something," Rachel said, her voice shaking.

"You mean you wished," Nikki said, making it sound as if it were a proven fact. Rachel shook her head without saying anything. Her eyes seemed to have welled up, a look I had last seen on her face at her mother's memorial service, and I was about to say something conciliatory when she turned around on her heels. With her back to us, she picked up her purse and pulled a Kleenex out of it.

"I'll leave you two alone now," she said as she walked away from us.

We did not stop her.

Instead, we watched silently as she made her exit, head bowed, shoulders shaking. Even at the distance, it was obvious that she was crying. I would have gone to her and forgave her everything if she had not made that last comment sound sinister, as if both Nikki and I had wanted to exclude her. It was yet another statement of hers that seemed to indicate that my relationship with my daughter was not as pure as it was supposed to be. Beside me, as her mother vanished from view, Nikki still simmered like a volcano threatening to erupt at any second. "Did you just hear what she said?"

I tried to placate her. "She didn't mean it," I lied, "Maybe she was spooked when she caught us kissing, and then thinking that I had a serious accident - it must have been the sudden shock and release of it all." I bit my tongue before I could add the part about Nikki's outburst being another reason she decided to leave.

"Come on, Dad," Nikki said, turning towards me with a pout on her face. "You are always sticking up for her even when she wouldn't do it for herself. Didn't you just see what I just saw? Didn't you hear what I just heard? She's out to destroy us, Dad. I don't have a fucking clue why, but she wants to pull us apart with all this incest nonsense." Something on my face revealed my skepticism, stopping Nikki in her tracks. There is a gradual dawn of realization on her face. "You know something about this, don't you? That stupid shrink actually told you why she's doing this."

I gave her a nod, remembering the cassette player I had stuck into my pockets. Absently, I ran a hand over it. Although hard to tell because of the fabric around it, there seemed to be no lasting damage despite my crash-and-burn. Nikki noticed the gesture immediately and placed her hand over mine. "What's that?" she asked, her voice going up a notch.

With her eyes boring into mine, it was quite difficult for me to generate a lie that would prevent her from finding out what her mother had told Dr.Chivago. Besides, I was no longer certain I had the right to keep her in the dark anymore - she had as much, if not more, riding on her mother's delusions as I did. She was not a child I could deceive with fairies and reindeers but an adult who had proven herself mature and responsible. Maybe there was something in it that she might pick up before I did. Daughters are supposed to be closer to their mothers, after all.

"It's a tape recording of your mother's session with Dr. Chivago," I informed her as I pulled it out of my pocket. "It kinda explains why your mother's been acting weird lately. At least, I hope it does."

"Have you listened to it?" she was asking before I had finished. "No, I guess not."

I admitted that I had listened to a part of it. "I shut it off the moment I heard her tell him that we are having an affair. What I do know comes out of the doctor's summary. He tried to explain why Rachel's been saying the things she did but I still find it hard to believe. He seemed to find it reasonable, though."

Without a word, Nikki reached into her purse and pulled out the hands-free kit she usually used with her phone. "Will these work with the model you have?" she asked me as she unwound them expertly. It was a good idea, one that I was proud to have had from her. There was still the better part of an hour to kill inside the hospital, and there were still too many visitors in the lounge. Neither of us wanted Rachel's accusations reach another ear if we could help it, and there was a sense of urgency between us that we ought to know why she was making the noise she did.

I had to turn the volume up to the maximum level to get a decent experience and compensate for the ambient noise that each of us could hear with our uncovered ear. "Just cue it up a little," she suggested. I obliged her, even though I was suddenly unsure whether I really wanted her to hear her mother's shocking statement. The tape started playing at the point where Rachel talks about intimacy issues for the first time. It felt embarrassing to sit there with my daughter and hear my wife talk about it with an absolute stranger but I kept my mouth shut. I had decided not to play the censor anymore.

Though I would glance at her quite often, Nikki did not, not even once, look at me. She was biting her nails, a habit she had quit a thousand times already, her eyes downcast and on the linoleum floor, her concentration evident on her face. There was a sudden intake of breath, sounding impossibly loud because of our proximity, when her mother said, "My husband is having an affair with our daughter." I watched her cheeks turn red; I could see those muscles pull taut. I was expecting her to say something but she did not, letting the tape play on instead.

I laid a hand on her shoulder, unsure of what to say if she looked at me. She saved me the trouble by squeezing my hand instead of turning to me. I tried to concentrate on what Rachel was saying, but Nikki's obvious discomfiture was distracting me. Maybe gazing at the floor should work, I told myself.

It would be unnecessary for me to transcript the tape when Dr. Chivago had paraphrased it already, but there were a few points he had left out when we had spoken earlier. I did not know if he did it deliberately, wanting me to hear it from her own lips, or if he had forgotten it amongst all the violence I had threatened him with. I did not care particularly one way or the other at the moment, though I did make a note to myself that I should have a word with him later. In person.

When Rachel said, "I have my own reasons for believing so," my ears perked up. Having been led to believe that she was being delusional because of her own unrequited feelings towards her father, I found it strange that Rachel should make this statement. Coming from Dr. Chivago, all that mumbo-jumbo seemed, at least, slightly believable - but it was definitely a stretch to believe that Rachel had diagnosed it herself before he had. It had to be something else, something he had not let on.

"Why do you say that?" his tinny voice asked in our ears.

There was a pause before Rachel answered. If shrugging was my specialty, hesitating seemed to be hers. She answered, in a lower voice I was able to pick up only because I had covered my other ear, "I read her diary."

At first, the import of her words was lost to me. It was only when Nikki gave a quick, guilty glance in my direction that I realized whose diary Rachel had been talking about. It was a stunning moment, one neither of us had even remotely anticipated. When Nikki mumbled something that I did not hear, I switched off the player and turned to her. "What did you say?" I asked her, as gently as I could, but I suppose I had chosen the wrong words because she seemed to withdraw into herself.

"I didn't think she knew," she said, slightly louder than a whisper, and I felt the breath knocked out of me. I had no idea if I had even entertained a hope that Rachel had been talking about someone else's diary, but hearing it straight from Nikki's lips gave me a jolt that rendered me speechless. Nothing in life ever prepares you for something like this. How long ago had it been? Had her feelings changed? Why did she feel that way? Did she really mean it when she had written it? I had so many questions to ask her, if only I could find the voice to do so.

Nikki looked at me again with a look that was both penitent and bold, and I instinctively knew the answer to one of my questions was yes. She had written it, and she had meant it. At least at the time when she had written it. There was something unapologetic in her expression that said that the only thing she was sorry about was that it was out in the open, not that she was having - or had them at one point of time - such feelings about me.

As soon as I had reached this conclusion, all those years of being on the job, of finding another avenue to pursue that would explain all the facts, gave me pause. Did I know what they were talking about, what my daughter was actually admitting to? Maybe I had jumped the gun again - it wouldn't be the first time that had happened now, would it? Maybe it was some other guy Nikki had written about, without using his name, and given her preoccupation with such matters, maybe Rachel had jumped to conclusions too.

"What exactly did you have in that diary, honey?" I asked her, running my hand through her hair in what I thought would be a fatherly gesture. "What did your mother find out?"

She did not say anything for a while, and I was about to repeat myself when she shook her head. "Can we go somewhere else, Dad? Somewhere private?" A moment later, she shook her head again. "No, we shouldn't. Dr. Patel said we should stay."

"So let's go to the car," I suggested. "We'll sit in the parking lot and you can tell me. Or we can go home. Screw him - there is nothing wrong with me."

"No, let's stay in the car," she said, getting to her feet and pulling her earpiece off. "Come on."

Neither of us spoke another word until we were sitting inside my vehicle, with the air-conditioner on high and the windows lowered just an inch. Whatever it was that she wanted to tell me, I did not want to force her into revealing. Her attitude worried me but I put it down to nerves. Maybe she was about to admit that she had lost her virginity to that pimply Jason she had been seeing a year ago, and was afraid that I would explode at the way he had treated her. It was bad news, doubtless, but I think I would have been slightly relieved if that had been what the whole issue was.

"Dad," she said, holding both my hands in hers, looking into my eyes steadily. Apparently, she had decided not to hide the truth - whatever it was - from me any longer. There was the same Kane determination on her face as I have been accused to have, by my wife, in another time when she used to comment on such things. "Promise me you won't get mad."

I made the promise I was not sure of keeping, especially if it involved the previously mentioned pimply teenager. So I added a clause at the end, 'at Nikki,' and felt better about it. The things fathers do...

"Dad," she said, stretching the word out into about three syllables. "I love you."

"And I love you too, sweetheart," I told her. No matter how much she had grown up, she was still my little girl. She still seemed to need the assurance of my affection.

"No," she said, and by now, you probably have an idea of what she is going to say next. I did not. I just sat there and listened dumbly as she explained, "I don't mean that kind of love. I mean, yeah, I love you because you are my father and all that, but that's not all. I don't just love you, Dad, I am in love with you." She waited for a reaction, which never came. "I have been in love with you for the last couple of years. When you took that bullet for me, I realized that no one could ever love me as much as you did, and you deserved all my love for as long as I am alive."

I had my mouth open, probably to say something stupid and inane like, "That's what Dads are for," when she held up a hand and stopped me. "I know, I know," she said, her finger moving towards my lips and shushing me. "You are probably going to say that it's your duty as a father to protect me, that you did this because you thought it was right for you to die if it meant that I would live. Maybe you even felt guilty because it was your investigation into that gang that led to the home invasion. Maybe you thought you had a chance and he would miss both of us."

Her words triggered my recollection of that moment when I had jumped in front of my daughter. Not her, I remembered thinking as I realized that the son-of-a-bitch with the gun was aiming for her, please don't shoot her. The bullet had slammed into my chest just as I moved into its line, reflexively firing my own automatic at the time, somehow finding the middle of the shooter's forehead. He was the last of the three thugs who had invaded my house in the dead of night, the two others having fallen already when I had outflanked them before being taken by surprise by the third man. It was the last case I ever handled because it had suddenly dawned on me that I could not risk putting my family in the line of fire again.

"I don't know why you did it, or why you think you did it. All I do know is that when I saw you crumple to the floor in front of me, I prayed that I would do whatever it took to keep from losing you. Even if it meant killing myself if... you didn't make it." She shivered as she said those words, her voice losing its steady cadence for a moment. I had no idea what to tell her. "When you were in the hospital, there was not a single moment that went by when I didn't wish it had been me beside you instead of Mom. Holding your hands, telling you that everything was fine, that I loved you, that I was waiting for you. I was insanely jealous of her for having that right."