Unbroken

by Jasmine Carolina

  I struggle to steady my breathing and calm myself as I crouch next to Dalis.

  She screams when I touch her, and I pull her into a tight embrace, her tears soaking my shirt. I turn swiftly to Cason, who is finally on his feet, his eyes wide, disoriented, and afraid as he took in the scene before him.

  “Cason,” I whisper. “Call the police.”

  I cradle Dalis against me as her entire body wracks with sobs. She shakes violently, her face buried in my shirt. Her hands lay limp and lifeless, and I smooth her hair down, trying to calm her. I take her hands, holding them in mine softly as I pull the both of us to our feet. She stands up shakily, hesitantly, and I try to lead her outside. Her steps are short and calculated, but she allows me to lead her away nonetheless.

  I sit her down on the porch steps, then pull her into an embrace again. I am not sure what happened, but I have a damned good idea. My heart aches at the sight of the broken girl, someone I love as much as my own sister, sobbing uncontrollably. I hold her tightly as she hiccupps, her breathing becoming less and less erratic by the second.

  “Sabrina, I had to shoot him,” she sobs, lifting her head to look at me. “He was going to kill him. I couldn’t let him kill him.”

  I nod, my heart breaking a little more with every word that she speaks. All I can do is hold her until the police come, until someone comes to finally end this nightmare of theirs once and for all.

  …

  I DON’T ALLOW MYSELF TO break down until we’re in the waiting room of the ER, wrapped in Henry’s arms as I shake, scream, and sob. I know I’m not the only one who loves him, who cares what happens to him. But right now, I’m the one with the most to lose.

  My baby is the one with the most to lose.

  God, he doesn’t even know…God.

  Lifting my head from Henry’s chest, I reach in my pocket, knowing there are calls I need to make, the first being to his best friends. They’re heading out of town, and I need to get in touch with them before they do. There are so many people to contact, so many people who love and care about him the way I do. There’s Nickayla and Colin and the Quinns and Eddie and Alice Hastings and even Michele. So many people care about him. So many lives were touched by his, and not a single one of them are here.

  I have to make just one phone call, because the snowball effect that comes with giving knowledge to Nickayla Quinn is honestly astonishing. Everyone who needs to know about Brody’s injuries will know. And at least once I finish this call, I won’t have to make anymore. The thought of telling her that her best friend is in the hospital is hard enough.

  But I do it because I have to.

  And because I would hate her for the rest of my life if she were in my position and didn’t call me.

  I dial Nickayla’s number and, like clockwork, she answers on the second ring.

  “Hey, Bree, what’s up?” she asks.

  The sound of her voice, so chipper and blissfully oblivious hits me hard, and I start to cry all over again. I’m struggling, trying to talk through my tears, trying to talk through all these emotions coursing through me, but I can’t get a single word out. Henry tries to take the phone from me, but I won’t let him. I have to tell her. I have to be the one. Oh, God.

  “Sabrina. Please, calm down. What happened? Sabrina. What happened?”

  She’s yelling, demanding that I tell her something, but I can’t even gather all my thoughts.

  “Brody…it was…it’s my birthday…he…he wasn’t…he wasn’t there…I…I tried to find him…his dad…h-h-his dad…” My voice breaks and I start to sob even harder. “Blood…there was…there was so…so much b-blood…N-Nickayla…”

  I hear her own anguished cries on the other end. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

  I shake my head, unable to say any more. She’s screaming too, and I recognize her pain, because it’s my own. It’s my own. And now I’ve given my agony to her. I hate the pain I’m causing her, the grief I hear in her voice.

  Whar’s worse is, I can’t comfort her because I can barely comfort myself. I don’t know the extent of his injuries or how long he’s going to stay here. I don’t know if he’s going to make it. That makes all of this a million times worse.

  Not knowing.

  Waiting.

  Hoping.

  Praying.

  I pray for a miracle, for him, for me, for our child. I pray even though I don’t know if it’ll work. It’s all I can do right now.

  “Hello?” Colin’s voice comes on the line. “Sabrina?”

  My tears are coming full force, and I start to shake against Henry. He’s kneeling in front of me, wrapping me in his arms. But it’s all wrong. It’s not supposed to be him. It’s supposed to be Brody. I’m supposed to be wrapped in Brody’s arms.

  “Colin…” I manage to choke out.

  “Yeah, Sabrina. It’s me. What’s going on?”

  I can’t get the words out. My heart hurts. Everything hurts. I hate having to be the one to make this call, having to break this news, when I barely want to deal with it myself. I choke on my sobs as I listen to Nickayla’s pain on the other end of the phone. She’s inconsolable, and so am I. This agony is far too much to bear.

  “Sabrina, what’s going on? Please talk to me!”

  He’s demanding so much of me. But he doesn’t know that I can’t give him what he wants. I can’t…because if I tell him what happened, that’ll make it real. That will mean that his father tried to kill him. That will mean that the love of my life could die at any moment. That will mean that my baby’s father’s life hangs in the balance.

  I can’t bring myself to say the words. I can barely bring myself to think them.

  I hiccup, continuing to cry. “You…you have to…turn around. It’s…it’s B-brody…Please.”

  Seconds later, my cell phone is pried from my hands and I try to stand up, but I fall to my knees. Henry barks orders and directions into my phone, telling Colin where we are, and then he’s on the floor in front of me, dragging me into his lap. I curl into a ball, trying to make myself small, trying to make myself disappear. And I cry.

  And I cry.

  And I continue to cry, even when it seems like there shouldn’t be any tears left in me.

  Every time I hear the beeping of the doors open, I look up, hoping that it’s a doctor, a nurse, anyone to tell me what’s going on. But no. It’s more people coming into the waiting room. Waiting to find out who’s lived. Waiting to find out who’s died. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

  The doors beep again and I look up to see my parents walking in. The minute my mother sees me, she rushes to my side. Henry lifts me and deposits me on the empty seat, then finds himself somewhere else to sit. My mother sits beside me, grabbing my head and guiding it to her shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m sorry,” she croons, emotions coating her own voice. She smooths my hair down, trying to soothe me, but there’s absolutely nothing she can do to make this okay. Her anguish is clear in her tone. She loves him, too. I think she loved him from the very day I brought him into our home. And now she has to bear the thought of potentially losing him. “Tell me what I can do, Sabrina, honey. Tell me how to make this better for you.”

  I shake my head because there’s nothing she can do. She can’t rewind time to make him decide not to go into that house. She couldn’t have forced his father to put the bottle down. She can’t magically bring his mother back to life. She can’t do any of those things, and those are the only things that could fix any of this right now.

  I don’t know how I’m keeping myself afloat, how I haven’t completely broken into a million pieces yet. But what I do know is that I’ll try to hold myself together for Brody. Although it’s the hardest thing in the world to force myself to exhale, to breathe when my entire reason for breathing is hanging in limbo, I do it.

  Well, I try to do it.

  It’s no easy feat.

  I don’t know what to say. With each second that passes without any news or knowledge about
Brody’s condition, I deteriorate even more. I’m falling apart piece by piece. I just need to know that he’s okay. That he’s going to make it. That against all odds, he will fight and beat this thing that tried to kill him.

  But I can’t force myself to believe in any of that because I saw him. I saw how bad it was. And I don’t know if anyone—even someone as strong as the man I love—can withstand a beating this brutal and bounce back from it.

  I’m afraid.

  I’m afraid that I’ll never see him again.

  I’m afraid I’ll never laugh over his bad pronunciation of Spanish words again.

  I’m afraid I’ll never feel his arms around me again.

  I’m afraid this is the end for us.

  “I…I can’t…b-breathe,” I whimper. “It’s bad, M-mom. It’s…it’s r-really…really b-bad.”

  …

  THE SIGHT OF MY MOTHER brings me to my knees. Earlier today, I was ready to pop the big question, and ask Sabrina to be my wife. But in front of my mom, I’m a little boy again.

  There are no words to describe how I feel about seeing her again after all these years. I don’t know what it means.

  “Mom, what are you doing here?” I ask. “What happened to me?”

  She drops to her knees gingerly, and she places her hands on either side of my face. She stares at me long and hard before she wraps her arms around me. I collapse against her, weak at the sight of her. She is home. She feels like home.

  She still smells the same. She loved to wear Estee Lauder while she was alive, and that’s the scent I carried with me in the early days following her death. It’s the scent she wears right now as she holds me like I’m a small child all over again. She looks the same, too, except she’s not sick. She’s healthy and beautiful and radiaint…she’s just the way I remember her.

  “I miss you so much, Mom,” I whisper.

  “I’ve missed you, too, baby boy. Everything is going to be okay.”

  I nod, storing the sound of her voice in my memory for safekeeping. I don’t ever want to forget this, to forget the way she sounds. I started to fear, for a while, that I was beginning to forget her. But I know now that I never could. All the little minute details about my mother come rushing back to me as she continues to hold me.

  “What am I doing here, Mom?” I ask. “Am I dead?”

  She pulls away from my embrace to look me square in the face. “No. But you’re hanging by a thread, Brody Michael. What the Hell were you thinking going in that house alone?!”

  I stare at her in confusion. “First of all, I didn’t know ghosts, or apparitions, or whatever you are, could curse. And second of all, I wasn’t alone. I had Cason and Dalis with me.”

  She throws her head back in a humorless laugh. “First of all, darling son of mine, I’m dead, so I can say whatever I want. Second of all, dead or not, I’m still your mother, so watch your tone. And third of all, let me rephrase. What the Hell were you thinking going into that house with your twelve year old sister who is about the size of a nine year old, and your fifteen year old brother who has never fought a day in his life?! Did you have a death wish?”

  Hearing her scold me is amusing and harrowing at the same time. It’s amusing because it makes me realize just how muhc I’ve missed her. It’s harrowing because, well…no one likes getting yelled at by their mother. Not even me.

  “I wanted your ring. I wanted to propose to Sabrina for her birthday,” I whisper, feeling guilty.

  I still don’t know where I am, or how I got here. I don’t know how to get out, or if I even want to get out. All I know is that I’m here and my mom is here, and she’s the only person I’ve ever felt safe with besides Sabrina.

  Sabrina. God, she must be so worried about me. I remember her calling me, but I couldn’t pick up my phone. I’m physically incapable of lying to her. If she had asked me where I was, I would have had to tell her. And that would have led to a shitstorm of epic proportions that I don’t even want to think about.

  I do want to see her, though.

  “Where is she?” I ask Mom. “Can you take me to her?”

  She nods before placing her hand on my shoulder. “Sure. But I want you to know, you may not like what you see. I’m trying to mentally prepare you now for what you’re walking into.”

  THIRTY ONE

  IT DOESN’T TAKE LONG TO locate Sabrina, who is shakily making her way to my room. I watch as she stops in the doorway, taking a deep breath as she makes her way over to my bed.

  I stumble backward at the sight of my battered, beaten body. My face is barely recognizable; the right side of my face is incredibly swollen, my lip is busted, my eye is blacked. My head is bandaged up, and my eyes are closed.

  Sabrina sobs as she collapses into a seat next to my bed and grabs my hand. She pulls it up to her mouth and presses a kiss to my hand as tears spill over her eyes. She holds my hand against her cheek and closes her eyes.

  I turn to stare at Mom, and she’s smiling sadly.

  “She’s beautiful, baby boy. She’s a lucky girl,” she says.

  I shake my head. Mom doesn’t even know the half of it. If she knew what this girl has done for me in all this time, she’d know it’s exactly the opposite.

  “No, I’m a lucky man. The luckiest,” I respond quietly.

  I can’t even lie. The sight of my own body in this vulnerable state is sobering.

  But the sight of Sabrina, still in that dress I requested she wear for her birthday, my letter jacket thrown over her shoulders, and her Butterfly You Chucks on her feet…it breaks my heart. Her eyes are red and puffy from crying, and her hair is all over the place, which is so unlike her. She looks like a lost woman, like everything in her world has been ripped away from her.

  “What am I doing here, Mom?”

  My mother places a steadying hand on my shoulder and smiles at me. I get lost in her, trying to commit her appearance, her voice, her scent, her anything to memory. I don’t want to forget what I loved the most about her, and I certainly don’t want to forget this chance I’ve been afforded, this chance to see her again.

  “That’s up to you. You have a choice. You can return home to your family, or you can come with me.”

  Her words strike me, and I shake my head in blatant refusal.

  This is not a choice I want to be saddled with. I don’t want to choose between life and death, going and staying. I don’t want to make a choice between the two women I love the most in the world. It doesn’t seem fair to have to make that choice when either way, someone loses out. And the sad part is, no matter when this had happened, the choice would have been equally as difficult to bear.

  I don’t have time to reply, because Sabrina takes this opportunity as one to speak. As usual, I’m hanging on to every word she says from the moment she chooses to open her mouth.

  “The…the doctors say you can hear me. I don’t know if that’s true, but whether it is or not, I can’t imagine not talking to you in a time like this. I can’t imagine leaving you alone when you need someone so badly.” She sniffles, running her thumb over the back of my hand. “I don’t know where you are, and I don’t know if you have a choice of whether to stay here or go…on, but…but I’m hoping I can convince you to choose the former rather than the latter.” She tilts her head upward and tears spill over her cheeks. “I know you’ve spent your life thinking love isn’t real. And you’ve spent your most recent years thinking that it’s impossible for anyone to love you. But that’s just not true, Brody. If you go out into that waiting room, you will see tons of people who love you, waiting to hear that you’ll be okay, waiting to hear that you’ve woken up. Literally, everyone is here, babe. The Quinns—all of them, my family, Colin and his family, your friends from that pizza place we go to all the time, your old buddies from the baseball team, Eddie and Alice Hastings, even your grandparents…they’re all here and they’re all hurt and they all love you and they’re all in limbo, waiting for you.” Sabrina sighs, and I feel my heartstring
s pull at the sight of her pain. “And then you come in here…and you have me. I know it’s not much, but I have loved you from the moment I saw you, Brody Durham. And I’ve waited for you to come to your senses, to love me the way I love you. And it doesn’t seem fair that we should only get so little time to share that love with each other, after so much time spent waiting for each other. It doesn’t seem right that a love like ours should end here, when we both fought so many demons to even make it this far.”

  She bends forward, resting her head against the mattress beside me. Her sobs intensify as she clutches my hand to her chest. I turn away, unable to watch her break any further. This is unbearable. I’ve spent so much time trying to shield her from pain like this. Her pain is my pain. Her heartbreak is mine. Her tears are mine. And when she comes undone, so do I.

  She looks up, grabbing her iPod out of the pocket of my letter jacket and places it on the bedside table.

  Taking my hand once more, she tries and fails to suppress her cries. Her words are shaky and emitted through whispers, but I hear them loud and clear. “I found out today that I’m pregnant, Brody. We’re pregnant.”

  At her words, I fall to my knees.

  Pregnant?

  That’s a word I didn’t expect to hear for a long time…but today of all days? When I’m literally in limbo, unsure of whether I’m about to die or wake up to the girl I love…I have no strength left in me.

  “This isn’t how I expected to tell you, babe. I—I wanted to do something special for when I gave you the news that you’re going to be a father. But I can’t hold it back. I need you to know that we’re here and we love you and we’re waiting for you. And I need you to know that I understand if you feel like you need to go. I understand if you need to move on, and leave the pain this world has caused you once and for all. But I…we…your baby and I…we really, really need you to stay.”