by Kyla Stone
“Opioids?”
“Why don’t we have a seat?” Dr. Sandeep says, gesturing at the seat opposite her. I sit down. “Your sister was at risk for hypoxic brain injury, when the brain is deprived of oxygen for too long. Symptoms include mild to severe impairment of balance and coordination, senses such as hearing and sight, and thinking, concentration, and memory. Liver damage is also a concern.
“However, we are hopeful the long-term effects will be minimal. You reached her in time. She’s extremely lucky.”
There’s not enough oxygen in the room. “She knew it could kill her.”
Dr. Sandeep shakes her head. “I don’t know her motives, Miss McKenna, if that’s what you’re asking. Do you think she was trying to end her life?”
I rub my temples with my knuckles. “We’ve been through some rough stuff. Our dad just died. My mom committed suicide, but that was years ago. Lux is really angry. Her behavior has been—erratic. And tonight—” I swallow. “She was sending me these weird texts, and I just thought—I just knew.”
“Child survivors of suicide are five times more likely to commit suicide themselves. You should consider in-patient treatment for your sister, for possible suicidal ideation and addiction. We have a psychiatrist who will see you during rounds tomorrow. He’ll give your sister a psych eval, and then he’ll have more specific suggestions for you.”
I clear my throat, blinking rapidly. “Thank you.”
Dr. Sandeep glances at her watch. “Your sister is in room 313 when you’re ready to see her. I believe she’s sleeping now. We have a chapel on the third floor, in case you’d like to use it.”
I stand alone in the glassed-in room for several moments after the doctor leaves. Did Lux really want to die? Did she do this to herself on purpose?
You already know, a voice whispers inside my head.
I take a deep, steadying breath and walk out into the waiting area. Eli is gone. There’s a text on my phone. He’s grabbing some food in the cafeteria. Want some blueberry muffins? I send him a smiley emoji and message that Lux is okay. For now.
I don’t want to disturb her if she’s sleeping. She needs her rest. She’s alive, and safe. For now, that’s enough.
I need to get away from the florescent lights, the harsh antiseptic smell of the hospital. I head up to the third floor.
There’s only a small sign on the door designating the chapel, and I walk past it twice. I open the door to a room about the size of my bedroom, with two rows of five wooden pews separated by a narrow aisle that leads to a bare table at the front. A cross hangs on the whitewashed wall behind the table. Wall sconces give off a soft glow.
I’m alone. I slip into the last pew on the right-hand side. My eyelids are weighted down. I’m drained of emotion, physically exhausted, my body screaming for sleep. It’s past two thirty in the morning.
Thoughts and images flit through my mind: my mother’s face turned toward the light coming from a window, so beautiful, so tortured, those fathomless eyes I could never read. Dad lying in his bed, his closed eyelids bruised purple, his mouth slightly opened, his thick cheeks sagging against the pillow. And Lux, so small, so vulnerable, crumpled in the hallway after Mom’s funeral.
What did Lux think about every time she snorted or sniffed or smoked or whatever she did? Did she think about her family? Did she dwell on all the painful, ugly things and let that drive her toward oblivion?
I understand the lure of forgetting, the appeal of drowning out whatever sorrow or guilt or responsibilities threatened to overwhelm her. I’ve felt it myself.
Were things that bad for her? Or was it our mother’s blood flowing through her veins that drove her to it, a defective gene or faulty chromosome passed to the next generation?
I groan and rest my forehead against the back of the pew in front of me. Only hours earlier, I was ready to leave her behind for good. Lux decided to do the same thing. And she almost succeeded.
Almost, but not quite.
Thank you. I’m not even sure whom I’m thanking. God? This is a church of sorts, after all. A chapel for the desperate. How many promises were made in this room, how many deals, pledges, and pacts offered, if only so-and-so would live? I’ll never drink or smoke or steal or cheat on my wife again.
This is a room for bartering souls and sins.
But it’s not only that. There is a quiet, a calm, a serenity here. Dad believed. Did he find peace in the end? Or was he racked with guilt even with his last breath? What about Mom? Love wasn’t enough to save her.
I grip the pew and lift my head, gazing at the simple wooden cross hung on the wall. It seems like an easy thing, choosing to believe. I want to believe there’s more, that there’s somewhere better than this, a place free of grief and pain and endless, aching sorrow. I long to have faith in something more than my own pathetic, broken soul. Please save her. Save us.
Our past is a sea of wreckage, a ship smashed on the rocks. We’ve both lost more than anyone should ever have to lose. We’re both orphans, bloodied and bruised. Survivors.
But we are not completely adrift. We have each other. We can find Polaris, the North Star, the only fixed point in the infinite sky.
It can guide us home.
42
Lux
I wake up fast, like someone grabbed me by the hair and yanked me from a dark underwater womb up into harsh, blinding sunlight. I gasp and sit straight up. The IV pulls taut in my arm, the needle stinging as it tugs against my vein.
I’m in a hospital bed, a thin blanket bunched around my waist. The other half of the room is cordoned off by a crinkly curtain hanging from a track in the ceiling.
Lena sits beside me in a blue plastic chair. “Finally awake?” she asks, closing the pages of a magazine and placing it on her lap.
I lift my IV-free arm and scrub my hair back from my face. My teeth are furry. My greasy tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. Everything about me is stale and unwashed.
“How do you feel?”
“Awful. Like I’ve been run over by Dad’s eighteen-wheeler.”
Lena smiles grimly. “You look almost that bad.”
“Thanks so much.”
“You can breathe okay? Everything’s working properly?”
“Mmm, yeah. What happened?”
Lena stares at me without blinking. “You mixed opioids with alcohol.
You overdosed.”
When I try to think back, the memories are blurred, disjointed. Acid spikes up the back of my throat. I feel sick. “How long have I been out?”
“Since last night.”
“Oh.” It seems like it’s been days since the party. “What about Phoenix? Does she have food?”
“I’ve been feeding her and doing the kitty litter. She literally tried to bite my toes off. That thing’s not a pet. She’s feral.”
“Half-feral,” I say groggily. “I’m taming her.”
Lena’s jaw tightens. “We can talk about that later. What happened?”
I shake my head, waves of dizziness washing over me. I ease back against the bed with a groan, trying to shift into a comfortable position. “I wasn’t thinking, obviously.”
“You could’ve died.”
“I know.”
“Were you trying to?” Lena asks, her voice trembling.
“No. Of course not.” But my head is thick with fuzz and half-formed thoughts. A memory agitates the corners of my mind.
“I found you, Lux. I was there.”
“You found me?”
“You sent me some crazy texts. I was worried. You were unconscious, barely breathing.”
My throat burns. “Why does it hurt to swallow?”
“They pumped your stomach.” Gray smudges rim Lena’s eyes, her unruly waves flattened against her head. She looks like she hasn’t slept in days. “Lux. You nearly—” She sucks in a breath. “You almost died. How could you—?”
“Sorry to disrupt your perfect life by, you know, almost dying.”
�
��That’s not what I meant.”
Every bone in my body aches, my throat burns, and my brain is clogged with cotton balls. It hurts too much to think. I don’t want to
think. I don’t want to know. “I get it, okay? It’s my fault. It’s always my fault.”
Lena’s lips press into a thin line. “You aren’t even listening to me.”
What else did I expect? She’s always letting me know just how much of a screw-up I am. And she’s right. I always have been, since I was ten years old. “I get it, Lena. You don’t have to rub it in.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“You always push me away. Even now, when you nearly—”
“Just stop it, okay? Can you please just stop?” I curl clumps of blanket into my fists. Shame and longing twist inside me like battling snakes. Half of me is desperate for her presence, craving her love and attention. The other, bigger half wants to push her aside and run away as hard and fast as I can.
Except I can’t. I’m trapped.
The machine next to me beeps incessantly. The murmur of nurses’ voices filter through the opened door. On the other side of the crinkly white curtain, someone snores.
The smell of other people’s sickness stings my nostrils. A headache pounds against my skull. I just want to close my eyes and sleep, sleep for days. Maybe forever.
Lena is silent for a long moment. She tears strips from the magazine in her lap. Little pieces fall to the floor. “You’re right.”
“I just can’t right now.”
“No—I’ve been too hard on you. I was just so …” Competing emotions flit across her face. She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You really scared me, Lux. I thought—I thought I’d lost you.”
“I’m right here, very much alive.”
“I just—I need to know if you’re okay.” There are tears in her eyes.
My gut clenches. My first instinct is to lie, but for some reason, I don’t. I can’t. “I don’t know.”
Lena hesitates, then nods. She stares down at her hands. “I’m here, Lux. Okay? I’m right here.”
A nurse knocks on the open door and bustles into the room. “You’re up. Excellent. How are you feeling?”
I rub the heel of my palm against my eyes. I feel like I was buried alive and had to claw my way back to the surface. “I’m still breathing. Score one for small victories.”
“I’m Nurse Gibbens. Have you urinated on your own yet?”
Lena stands up quickly. “And that’s my cue to go.” The nurse chuckles and checks my IV.
I don’t think I’ll ever laugh again. Fear and anxiety tighten my throat. I don’t want her to leave. I’m terrified of being alone. “Where are you going?”
Lena looks down at the magazine she’s twisting in her hands. “Home.
I’m dead on my feet. I promise I’ll come back first thing in the morning. We’ll talk more then.”
I swallow hard. Something inside me whispers, Don’t leave me! But all I manage to say is, “Okay.”
Lena touches my hand, then walks out of the room, her thick red hair swinging down her back. I watch her leave.
That empty, hollowed out feeling returns, howling inside me. The memories are there, submerged just beneath the surface.
I don’t want to remember.
I don’t want to know what I’ve done.
43
Lena
Lake Michigan shimmers in the sunlight like the shards of ten thousand mirrors. The strong breeze nips at my exposed skin and tugs my hair across my face. I tighten my cardigan around myself and dig my bare toes into the cold, wet sand. It’s hard to believe it was snowing only a few short weeks ago.
In Michigan, spring sneaks up on you. It’s the second week of April and seventy degrees, but the wind is chilly. A few other families are scattered down the beach, everyone playing in the sand, avoiding that gorgeous, freezing water. We have an entire section of the beach to ourselves.
Lux is still in the hospital, but she’s stable. She’s alive. I feel like I can relax for the first time in weeks. I carry my Nikon, snapping pictures of everything.
I fill the viewfinder with image after image of the glittering water, the orange sun in the blazing white sky, the beach grass clumped on the dunes, the seagulls pecking at the sand along the shoreline. And of course, Hadley and Eli.
Hadley sits on her plump bottom a few feet back from the waves. She’s wearing a knit sweater already caked with sand as she gleefully waves a shovel in each fist, her laugh like a burst of sunlight shattering the sky. My chest nearly cracks open from the haunting beauty of that sound.
“She brings happiness wherever she goes, doesn’t she?” I say, walking up to Eli. He’s sprawled on a pink and purple Tinker Bell blanket.
“She really does,” he says. “Take a break. You haven’t sat down yet.”
I sit, my blood buzzing with the awareness of how close my body is to his. I open the picnic basket I brought, the same one Mom used to bring on our midnight picnics. My stomach twinges.
“I brought a few things.” I pull out potato salad, PB and honey sandwiches, grapes, and chocolate chip cookies.
Eli pops an entire cookie in his mouth. “These are gangbusters! Are they homemade?”
“Yeah. And the blueberry crumb cake you liked from that magazine at the hospital. I made you some to take home to your mom.”
“Are you serious right now?”
I spent the morning baking. I wanted to say thank you, to show him how I felt. “It’s no biggie, really.”
He pulls a sand-covered package of Doritos out of a beach bag stuffed with towels, sunblock, and brightly colored sand toys. “This is all I brought. A meal fit for a king.”
“Doritos make great dippers for the potato salad.”
“Seriously, Lena. This spread is amazing. You didn’t have to do this.”
I shrug, my cheeks tingling. “It’s my pleasure.”
Eli takes a huge bite of PB and honey sandwich. “No, I assure you. The pleasure is mine.”
I grab a handful of grapes. “You’re welcome.”
Eli takes a grape out of my hand, his fingers barely brushing mine. Heat creeps up my throat. I’m not used to someone so close to me, especially not someone like Eli. I have no idea what we are, if we’re anything at all. I remember how he stood up to Floyd, so strong, so confident, so protective. My mouth goes dry.
“This Tinker Bell blanket is amazing.” I rub the sand-covered fleece. “The pinks and purples really bring out the color of your eyes.”
He grins. “I’m partial to Dora the Explorer and Doc McStuffins, too. Very flattering color combinations.”
“You have exquisite taste.”
“Why thank you. I’m also a fan of country music, the Green Bay Packers, and Bill’s infamous mushroom burgers.”
“Okay, I take it all back. The Packers? Seriously?”
“Don’t knock ‘em. I’ll be a Brett Favre fan ‘til the day I die.” Eli stretches out on the blanket, leaning back on his elbows. The breeze blows strands of black hair across his eyes. We watch Hadley run back and forth on the beach, grabbing clods of wet sand and flinging them at the water.
“Don’t throw sand in anybody’s eyes!” Eli calls after her.
“There’s like, nobody within one hundred feet of us.”
He shrugs. “All the books say I need to instill good habits while she’s young.”
Hadley dashes up to us. She shoves one hand into the Doritos bag and grabs two cookies with the other.
“Hey!” Eli says.
Hadley giggles and scampers away, shoving both cookies in her mouth at the same time.
“Good habits, huh?”
“We’re starting tomorrow. Obviously.”
My phone buzzes in my sweater pocket. I pull it, shielding my eyes to read the number. It’s from my advisor. Again. Over the last several days, Dr. Wells has left me several concerned voicemails. I was ineligible for the awar
d and my chance at the internship due to my very noticeable absence at the gallery show. Why did I tell him I’d be there if I was just going to flake on him? He embarrassed himself in front of the board, et cetera, et cetera.
My stomach tightens. I hate that I’ve disappointed him. He’s a good man, a great mentor. Will he even still want to mentor me next semester?
I put my phone away and sigh.
“Are you okay?”
“The gallery. I missed it. I lost the competition, the prize money, the internship.” I made my choice. But still, that burning ache beneath my ribs won’t dissipate. My dreams are disintegrating beneath my fingers.
My throat thickens. I lift my camera again to hide my face, the scalding heat behind my eyes.
Eli puts his hand on my arm. “I felt the same way when I dropped out and lost my athletic scholarship. It sucks. But that doesn’t mean your life is over. Or even your art.”
“I know that. I’m just afraid …” My voice trails off. I don’t know how to explain it. I stare at Hadley through the viewfinder. “I don’t want to turn into my father. I can’t. He gave up his own dreams when I was born. So did my mom, for that matter. When I was a kid, I always felt like I was the reason for their unhappiness.”
Eli snorts. “Now that’s hubris if I ever heard it. And you said I was the one with the enormous ego.”
I lower the camera to glare at him. “And that’s funny?”
“Okay, not funny. But one act, one choice, doesn’t determine a person’s entire life. Your father could’ve gone back to school in the evenings. It wouldn’t have been easy, but it could’ve been done. He could have joined online photography groups, submitted to competitions. Geez, he should’ve at least taken pictures for himself, for his own joy. He didn’t have to quit altogether.”