I’d lost control that day. Control of my temper. My actions. My responsibilities.
The ICU was quiet except for the humming of machines, soft beeps, and the whir of Corabelle’s ventilator by my head. It didn’t sound like Finn’s, I remembered that now. His had been more metallic, like the choppy blades of a helicopter. Hers was a soft wheeze in and out.
The sheet beneath her arm was wet. I had been crying. Stupid.
No, not stupid. Normal. It was normal and fine, and I shouldn’t hear my father’s words, “Don’t be a damn sissy,” as he smacked me across the top of the head. I should forget his lessons, his ridicule, no longer let it penetrate.
He had rarely actually hurt me. I don’t think the town would have stood for beatings, black eyes, or real injuries. His form of discipline had been a hard shove or a hearty backhand, enough to knock me around but just light enough for witnesses to shrug it off as “family business” rather than “call the cops.”
Maybe it was the attitude that hurt more, the indication that I was a failure in everything, that even if something was going right, I’d eventually screw it up.
I had given him too much power. As a little kid, maybe it made sense. He was my father, big and important and in a position to tell me what to do and when to do it.
But now, he was nothing. I didn’t see him, talk to him. I had no reason to be like him at all. I didn’t even have to know him.
How much could we escape our past? Corabelle and I had been trying, ever since that first day on the beach when I drew that line in the sand and she stepped away from our history and into our future. Now here we were, and everything about this place we’d landed in was so much like where we’d been that I could scarcely bear it.
At least the business with Rosa was behind me. Her cousin was surely right. Rosa needed a champion, and I’d simply been the easiest target. I’d figure out a way to block her number. Tijuana was in my past, like my father. I’d spend the rest of my life trying to fix all the screwups I’d made in the first eighteen years. The disappearing act. The vasectomy. The father rage.
I had to believe I could do it.
The sheet had already begun to dry. I laid my head back down, shifting so that I leaned against the bed frame, still mostly hidden if someone just glanced over. Weariness began to take over everything else.
16: Corabelle
The second time to awaken in the hospital was far worse than the first. My mouth hurt, lips bruised, like I’d been struck in the face.
My lungs were cement blocks, heavy and stiff. Every breath was a struggle but the air was strange, sweet almost, and cold. Something tickled my nose and I lifted my hand, feeling the tube running inside my nostrils. I was on oxygen.
“She’s coming around,” a voice said, female but low, and I pictured Large Marge from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. My eyes seemed glued together. I blinked, trying to clear them.
“Here, honey, let me get a cloth,” another female voice said, this one lighter and higher, and I envisioned a perky young nurse in a white cap and starched uniform.
The sounds weren’t right for my room. Too many machines, too many beeps. “Where am I?” I asked, my voice horrid and croaky.
“You’re in ICU,” the deeper voice said. My gown shifted at the neck, exposing skin to the air. “I’m going to take another listen, then we’re going to roll you to X-ray to check on your progress.”
“How long have I been here?”
“About 24 hours.”
Something cool touched the skin of my chest. I wanted to rub my eyes, get the gunk away so I could open them, but only one hand was free. On the other I could feel the weight of an IV and the length of a tube across my shoulder. “What happened?”
“You had a complication called pleural effusion, where fluid gets trapped in the lining of your lungs. You went into respiratory arrest.”
She moved what I assumed was the disc of a stethoscope to another part of my chest. “Can you breathe deeply for me?”
I tried to focus on drawing in a breath, but the sharp pain was so acute that I gasped and let the air out too quickly.
She placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “That’s okay. Relax.”
The hand and the disc withdrew and now a warm cloth covered my eyes. The lighter voice said, “We’ll get this cleared up.”
I was a mess. Another day gone. Definitely not going to class tomorrow. I wondered if Gavin had tried to come back. Tears pricked my eyes.
The cloth withdrew. “Try to open now.”
I blinked, still feeling the stickiness, but now my lashes were willing to part. The room was dim, and two women stood over me, one in a white coat, the other in sea-green scrubs.
“We want to see where we are with the effusion,” the doctor said, and I was able now to match her voice to her body. No Large Marge, but she was definitely tall, stately, and older than I expected, her gray hair tight in a French twist. “I’m Dr. Adams. I’ve been with you since you came to ICU. Apparently you went on a little expedition and collapsed?”
That’s right. The bereavement room. The pacifier. I nodded. “Is Gavin here?”
The doctor looked over at the nurse.
“She must mean the young man we found sleeping by your bed last night,” the nurse said. “Dark hair, brutally handsome?”
He’d been here! “Yes.”
“He’s in the waiting room. So are your parents. We haven’t let them back.”
“Are they — fighting?”
The nurse patted my arm. “They are worried about you.”
The doctor picked up an iPad and tapped a few things in. “You’re going to X-ray. I’ll come by later today and we’ll see how you look. Hopefully we can get you back to a regular room again soon.”
“Thank you,” I said.
The doctor moved beyond the curtain.
“Will we go by the waiting room?” I asked the nurse.
“No, we have a back way.”
My face must have fallen, because she said, “If it looks good, you’ll be able to see him.”
“Is my phone here?”
She shook her head. “All your things are with your parents.”
Great. Thankfully I had a pass code on the phone or they might have deleted anything Gavin wrote.
“I’m going to load up a few items,” she said, clamping my IV to the side of the bed, “and we’ll be on our way.”
I closed my eyes, still fighting the heaviness of my chest, wishing I would just get better. But Gavin was here, had been with me. He wasn’t gone. I didn’t care where he’d been, just that he was back.
17: Gavin
We’d been sitting in those chairs all day, but nobody had spoken a word.
Corabelle’s parents sat in the far corner of the ICU waiting area, her mom knitting and her dad reading the newspaper for what had to be the tenth time.
I had given up on contacting her when I sent a message and heard her phone chirp from her mother’s bag. Rosa had messaged me three times too, but I’d found a way to make her ringtone silent and the messages automatically move to a buried folder, so I didn’t notice her anymore.
The nurse who’d found me sleeping on the floor by Corabelle’s bed had been nice about it. She led me out into the waiting room and said the staff would let me know if she could be visited.
The doctors never spoke directly to me, but the waiting room was small enough that when they stopped by to update Corabelle’s parents, I could hear. I knew she’d been put on the ventilator only as a precaution, to help her lungs, and that it was coming out sometime today.
I felt utterly helpless.
Jenny breezed through the door, pausing to look around, then hurried toward me. “Oh my God, how is she?”