All Things New, page 22
“Right,” I say, remembering the stupid fit I had about it, but not the reason why. There probably wasn’t one. Just a need to make things difficult for him, in whatever ways I could. Shame prickles inside my stomach just thinking about it. I was so awful to him.
“Mom’s Buddhist now,” I say. “Did you know that?”
“I did not,” he says dryly.
My eyes well up with tears again.
“I was so lonely,” I whisper. “After you left.”
His arm sweeps around me and pulls me to him. “Oh, Bear,” he says, his voice breaking. “I’m so sorry.”
I press my face against his shoulder. He smells the way he’s always smelled, like Chapstick and soap. “It wasn’t just you,” I say into his shirt.
Dad pulls back to look at me. “What do you mean?”
“I prayed every day that my panic attacks would stop. I’d literally beg, over and over, ‘please, God, I’ll do anything, just make them stop.’” My eyes fill with fresh tears. “And now, it’s like, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. If I even believe in him anymore. I know you do, but . . . I’m not sure I believe there’s someone up there who can freaking ‘heal the broken-hearted.’ Someone who gives a crap how messed up we all are.” My voice catches. “Because right now it doesn’t really seem like there is.”
“Someone certainly gives a crap about you.”
“You don’t count.”
“I’m not talking about me.” Dad looks back at the stained glass window. “People don’t walk away from accidents like the one you had. That Escalade was going fifty miles an hour when it hit you. You hit a fire hydrant and spun out into a tree. The fact that you’re sitting here now, with scars, yes, but otherwise, still you — still able to walk and talk and breathe?” Now his voice catches. “Someone was watching over you, I have no doubt about that.”
you’re oh-oh-kay
“There was a man there,” I say quietly. “He came to my window right after it happened and just kind of talked to me . . . told me I was going to be okay. He was wearing a white coat, so I thought he was a doctor on his way home from work. But. . . no one else saw him there. The paramedics said I was alone when the ambulance showed up. There’s no way they wouldn’t have seen him.”
We’re both staring at the stained glass window now.
“I could’ve imagined him, I guess,” I say. “But I don’t think I did.”
Dad takes my hand. “I don’t think you did, either.”
We’re both quiet for a while, staring at the image of the angel, the brightest thing in the room.
“Do you think Marshall has one?” I hear myself ask.
“An angel?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know,” Dad admits. “I don’t know how these things work. But I know God cares what happens to him. And to you. I know he cares very much.”
Tears slip down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry you felt abandoned, Bear,” he says quietly, his voice breaking a little. “That’s on me. I should’ve been there for you, and I wasn’t. I let you down.”
My throat squeezes. “It’s okay,” I whisper.
“No,” Dad says firmly. “It’s not.”
Except right now it kind of is. I’m still sad about what happened, sad that he left, that we lost four years we otherwise would’ve had. But I’m not angry at him anymore. Because despite all the crappy things that happened after he left, because he left, I came out the other side. Yes, parts of me were broken that maybe wouldn’t have been. My confidence, my trust. The bones in my face. But even with all those broken pieces, because of all those broken pieces, I ended up here. In this terrible but somehow beautiful moment, holding hands with my dad, praying for a boy who can’t help but see kindness and courage everywhere he looks because kindness and courage are what he’s made of. Kindness and courage and hope.
“I forgive you,” I tell my dad then, and mean it. “So you left. So you aren’t perfect. Nobody is.”
Dad nods a little, but his eyes stay sad.
“Except me, obviously,” I deadpan. “I’ve been a completely rad human being for the past few years. Daughter of the decade, totally.”
This gets a laugh. “You didn’t make it easy, did you?” he says, nudging me with his shoulder.
“I learned from the best,” I say dryly, and then we look at each other and say “mom” at the exact same time.
“Have you told her what happened?” I ask him.
“Not yet. I came here as soon as I heard.”
“It wouldn’t mean anything to her anyway,” I say. “I haven’t even told her about Marshall.”
“Why not?”
I shrug. “I haven’t told her about much lately. She doesn’t ask.”
We’re both quiet for a few minutes after that.
“So . . . you ready to go back up?” Dad asks eventually. “I’m sure Hannah could use a friend up there.”
I fiddle with the Bible again. “I practically had a panic attack in the waiting room. I’m not what she needs right now.”
“How do you know what she needs? Have you asked her?”
I don’t answer. He knows I haven’t. There’s also the part he doesn’t know, the thing I can’t say. That I’m afraid of what I’ll see on her face now that this has happened. Not just bruises now, but deeper wounds made of loss and grief.
“Hannah does need you,” Dad says gently. “And if Marshall makes it through this, he’ll need you, too.”
if
I look back up at the stained glass window. “Please don’t let him die,” I whisper.
Dad squeezes my hand. “Amen,” he says.
Then he stands, and pulls me to my feet.
His hand stays in mine until we get off the elevator. I let go when I see Marshall’s parents. It seems unfair suddenly, that I’m clinging to my dad when they can’t even see their son.
Marshall’s mom sees us and smiles. “You found her,” she says to my dad.
“Any news?” Dad asks.
She shakes her head. “Not yet.”
“Where’s Hannah?” I ask.
Their mom blinks, then frowns. “She went to the bathroom, I think.” She looks over at her husband. “But that was a while ago, right?”
“I’m not sure,” their dad admits.
“I should see if she’s okay,” their mom says, and starts to stand.
“I’ll go,” I say quickly. She nods and sits back down. I look over at my dad. “You don’t have to stay,” I tell him.
“I know that,” he says, and sits.
The bathroom is by the elevator. I drop my eyes out of habit, mirror alert, as I push through the door, but then immediately force myself to raise them. To let it be no big deal that I see myself in the mirror, puffy eyes and tear-streaked cheeks, because the way I look doesn’t matter even a little right now.
There is no one at the sinks. One of the stall doors is hanging open. The other is shut.
“Hannah?”
No answer.
I bend over and look under the stall doors. No feet in either one. I walk down to the closed door, the handicapped stall. It’s locked.
“I know you’re in there,” I say gently.
There is a long pause. Then I hear the stall door unlock. When she doesn’t come out, I go in.
She’s sitting cross-legged on the toilet. Her eyes are swollen and puffy. Her cheeks are every shade of bruise.
“Hey,” I say. “How long have you been in here?”
She shrugs. “A while.”
“Your parents are worried about you,” I say.
She makes a sound in her throat and looks away. “I doubt it.”
And then I get it.
“This was supposed to be your day,” I say.
Her eyes fill with tears. “I’m an awful person,” she whispers. “My twin brother is having open-heart surgery right now and I’m pouting in the bathroom because no one asked about my stupid audition.”
“I don’t need to ask,” I tell her. “I heard it. I got there just as you were starting the first piece. You were amazing. Beyond amazing.”
Her expression changes from guilt to disbelief. “How could you let me play? If you knew he was in an ambulance, that he could die . . . how could you let me stay in there like that?”
“Because I knew you’d never get it back,” I say simply. “That moment, you on stage, being great. All interrupting would’ve done is ruin an amazing performance. And yeah, maybe we would’ve gotten to the hospital ten minutes sooner, but so what? It wouldn’t have changed anything with Marshall.”
Hannah’s eyes fill with fresh tears. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she says.
My own voice catches. “I know.” I sit down on the bathroom floor. We’re both quiet for a few minutes.
“I used to be so jealous of him,” she says finally. “When we were little. I probably would’ve hated him if he wasn’t Marshall and completely impossible to hate. Which is crazy, right? To be jealous of your brother with a heart defect. But I would’ve given anything to trade. To be the one my parents worried about all the time. Or at all.”
“You felt ignored,” I say, because I get it. It’s the way I felt after the twins were born.
“Ignored implies they knew I was there,” Hannah says flatly. “Try invisible.” Then guilt pinches her features. “Not that I blame them,” she adds quickly. “I get it. The kid with the issues always gets the most attention.”
not always, I think. But I know what she means, so I nod. “It still sucks to be the other kid,” I say.
We’re quiet again. This time it’s me who breaks the silence.
“Can we talk about the Adderall?” I ask gently.
Her eyes drop. “I never should’ve taken it,” she says quietly. “I know that. I just thought it would help me be more productive. And it did, at first . . . I’d take a pill and feel super focused. But then it stopped working as well, and when it’d start wearing off I’d feel all foggy and tired. Like I couldn’t function.”
“So you started taking more.”
She nods.
“How much more?”
She hesitates.
“Hannah. How much have you been taking?”
“Sixteen pills a day,” she says, staring at her hands. They’re shaking in her lap. “The bottle says to take two.”
I suck in a breath. “How did you even have that much?”
“Dr. I gave me two refills,” she says miserably. “I told the pharmacist I was going out of town and needed to fill all three at once. I figured I only needed it until my audition. I’d stop right after that.” Her voice breaks. “I wish I’d never started taking it. It was so stupid. But when Logan took the practice room, I got panicked . . . and I was just so desperate to get in, to get away from them. I would’ve tried anything.”
“To get away from who?” I ask. “Your parents?”
She lifts her eyes to mine. There is so much sadness in them, more than I expect. “You don’t know what it’s like. Feeling like you’re not an actual person, like you’re just this category in their heads, ‘the healthy kid,’ ‘the fine one.’ Like there’s no space in their lives for you to be anything other than that. The only time I ever get their attention is when I’m performing. And even then, it’s not like they actually see me. They see some version of me they invented that doesn’t even exist.”
but i do know what it’s like, I want to tell her. i can see it on your face. And it strikes me in this moment how fragile the soul is. How little it takes to leave a mark.
“I don’t know about your parents,” I say softly. “But I see you. I see how kind and loyal you are. How funny. How smart.”
“I haven’t been lately,” she says dully.
“That was the Adderall,” I say. “That wasn’t you.”
Her tears spill over. “I was such a bitch to him this week. He was having a freaking metal sponge put into his heart and I couldn’t be bothered to come see him. And now . . .” She shakes her head, can’t finish the thought. She doesn’t need to.
“So you didn’t see this coming,” I say. “That doesn’t make you an awful person. That makes you human. None of us knows what’ll happen next. Which, yeah, on one level is terrifying, because it means there will be lots of moments like this, moments when it feels like darkness is all there is. But just because we can’t see the light doesn’t mean it isn’t there, that it isn’t right around the corner. And just because we feel alone doesn’t mean we are.”
“I’m just so scared,” she whispers.
“I am, too,” I say. “And I’m scared to be anything but scared. I’m afraid to believe that he’ll get better, because I don’t want to be blindsided when he doesn’t. But that’s not what Marshall would do. Marshall would hope for the best at every second. He’d believe that everything would work out in the end.”
Hannah smiles a little. “That little optimistic shit.”
We look at each other and burst out laughing, and in the sound of it, I feel a weird kind of power. The kind that punches fear in the face.
“C’mon,” I say, getting to my feet, then reaching out my hand to pull Hannah to hers.
The bathroom door opens just as I’m sliding the stall lock.
“Hannah,” her mom’s voice says.
We both go still. Hannah grips my hand. My heart is in my throat.
“Yeah?”
Her mom appears in the stall door.
“He’s out of surgery,” she says. “They think . . . they think he’s going to be okay.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
It’s been forty-six hours since that horrible moment at the museum. Thirty-nine since Marshall came out of surgery, thirty-five since he woke up. His parents were with him when he opened his eyes late Saturday night. Hannah was asleep in a chair in the waiting room with me. I left when they came and got her, apologizing that only family was allowed, which made me feel super awkward because of course I didn’t expect to rush right in. “I’ll call you as soon as I have details,” Hannah said as I was leaving. His mom hugged me and whispered, “they’re lucky to have you,” and my throat tightened so quickly I couldn’t tell her she got it backwards, that I was lucky to have them.
I drove myself home from the hospital. When he left around six Dad offered to come back and get me when I was ready to leave, but I told him I was fine to drive myself. We both pretended he wasn’t beaming when he handed me the keys.
Hannah called just as I got home. The surgery went as well as it could have, she told me; they’d fixed the tissue damage and closed both holes in his heart. As long as his incision doesn’t get infected and he doesn’t develop any new clots, he should get to go home in a week, back to school in three. “He’s really gonna be okay,” she said at the end, her voice thick with relief, and from out of nowhere I had the thought he always was.
I slept late on Sunday, and when I woke up Dad was gone. @ church the note on the counter said. didn’t want to wake you. There were pancakes on the table, covered in foil, and juice he obviously squeezed by hand. Last year I would’ve resented him for the gesture, for trying to win me over with breakfast food, and the thought of how I would’ve reacted, how I did react, so often, crushes me with regret. I couldn’t see him, my own dad.
I see him now.
I called Mom while he was gone and told her about everything. The twins were at the park with Carl, so she wasn’t distracted for once, and it made me think of those afternoons before they were born when she’d pick me up from school and ask me about my day and then really listen when I told her. But then she asked how my scars were looking and whether I was ready to pick a date to have them “revised” by her plastic surgeon in June. The conversation ended pretty soon after that.
When Dad got home we drove to the mountains to go hiking. I didn’t want to at first, just in case Hannah or Marshall tried to call. But Dad insisted. “They mended his heart,” he told me. “Let’s spend some time on yours.” We were gone all afternoon.
This morning they’re moving Marshall out of the ICU to a regular room, which means I get to see him finally, this afternoon. Dad said I could stay home from school today, but I came anyway, early, to see Dr. I.
His secretary is eating a muffin at her desk when I walk in. “You’re back,” she says.
“Is he here today?” I ask, worried for a second that he isn’t because his office door is shut.
“Yep. Remind me your name?”
“Jessa,” I tell her. “He knows me.”
She presses the intercom button on her desk. “A student named Jessa is here to see you. She says she has a book of yours.”
A few seconds later, the office door opens and a man in a red sweater and jeans steps out into the waiting area.
“Hello,” he says.
“Hi,” I say, stepping to the side to let the man pass. He doesn’t move. I glance back at the secretary. “Um. Where’s Dr. I?”
She and the man share a look.
“I’m Edward Indelicato,” the man says. “Dr. I.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“I’m Dr. I,” he repeats. “This is my office.”
“I—I don’t understand,” I say.
where is dr. i?
“Judy, please hold my calls,” the man in the red sweater says. His secretary nods, staring at me, her mouth in the shape of a tiny “o,” muffin crumbs on her chin. “Jessa, why don’t you come inside my office for a few minutes so we can talk.”
I nod dumbly and go in.
“Sit wherever you’d like,” the man says when we’re in his office, shutting the door behind us. There are diplomas on the wall behind his desk, one from the University of Colorado and the other from Harvard Medical School, both in the name Edward James Indelicato, his name, this man’s, a man I have never seen before this moment. A man with thinning hair and bushy eyebrows and dandruff on his scalp. So who was the other guy?
I sit in a chair, avoiding the couch. I won’t be here long.
“You’re Dr. Indelicato,” I say, somehow managing to keep my voice steady.
there is an explanation for this, this is not a big deal
