Wrenching her hand free from Midge’s grasp, Lula lowered her head and stared into her lap. She felt like a teenager being scolded for breaking curfew. She’d behaved horribly, and she deserved to be punished. But why did the punishment have to be death?
“We can’t begin to understand what you’re going through. But we love you, and each of us is suffering in our own way. Yell at me if you want to get it off your chest. I’m tough. I can take it, much better than those precious daughters of yours.” She pushed back from the table and stood up. “I’m right next door if you need me. I’ve always been here for you and always will be. You can count on that.” Once again Midge reached for Lula’s hand. She pressed the slip of paper with Gladys Guzman’s contact information into her palm and folded her fingers around it. “Call her, Lula. Brooke shouldn’t be the one nursing you and doing your laundry and cleaning your house. Lizbet left here earlier with tears streaming down her face. And poor Phillip’s been out in the garden all day in the scorching heat because he’s too afraid to come inside.”
Lula’s head shot up. “That’s absurd.”
“That’s the truth.” Midge drew an imaginary X across her heart. “He told me so when I came in. Don’t waste what time you have left. Talk to your daughters. Tell them things they don’t already know about you. Give them advice on marriage and raising children. Show them how to set a Thanksgiving table, Lula style. Be strong for them like you’ve always been strong for me. Don’t let them think you’re a shrew. Let them see your lovely soul.”
#
Lula waited until Midge closed the door behind her before getting up from the table and moving to the window. She watched Midge and Phillip in the garden. Phillip listened attentively, his shoulders slumped and his brow furrowed, while Midge did all the talking, her lips flapping away as she recounted the tongue-lashing she’d given Lula. Her husband nodded his head from time to time in agreement with what she was saying.
Lula agreed with Midge as well. She’d hit a nerve on many counts. But her head hurt too much to think about how she wanted to spend her last remaining days on earth. Lula sat back down at the table and buried her face in her hands.
Phillip found her that way a few minutes later. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I have another headache. The tumor is beating against my skull like a drummer in a marching band.”
He walked over to the lineup of prescription bottles beside the refrigerator. “When is Brooke coming home? She’s the only one who knows what medicines you’re supposed to take when.”
“She should be home soon. She just went for a walk.” Lula forced herself to smile despite the pain.
He noticed the slip of paper Midge had left lying on the table. “What’s this? Who is Gladys Guzman?”
“Just some home care nurse Midge recommended.”
She tried to grab the paper from him, but he stuffed it into his pocket. “I’ll hold on to it in case we need it in the future.”
Lula let him keep the paper. She was too tired to argue. “Are you hungry? Midge brought over some pasta salad with shrimp in it.”
“Let me shower first.” He bent over and kissed her cheek before leaving the room.
“I’ll have it ready when you come back down,” she called after him.
Lula sat at the table until she heard the shower turn on overhead. Shuffling over to the refrigerator, she removed the plastic container of shrimp and pasta and then rummaged through the vegetable bin until she found a large ripe tomato. She scooped pasta and shrimp onto two plates, added a couple of slices of tomato, and sprinkled on some Jane’s Krazy Mixed-up Salt. When the pill bottles caught her eye, she opened the junk drawer for a pair of reading glasses. Although she didn’t recognize the names of the medicines, she could read the instructions. Once a day for depression. One capsule at bedtime. To control seizures. As needed for pain. She popped the lid off the bottle of painkillers, shook out a pill, and swallowed it with water.
Phillip returned to the kitchen a few minutes later, smelling like Dove soap and wearing a fresh pair of khaki pants and a plaid button-down shirt. He saw the plates on the counter. “Shouldn’t we wait for Brooke to eat?”
“Who knows when she’ll be back. She probably ran into some friends.”
They took their plates to the family room and turned on the TV to 60 Minutes. Lula took a few bites of the pasta dish, but the pain in her head had curbed her appetite. Halfway through the show, she returned their plates to the kitchen and placed them in the dishwasher. She reached for the as-needed-for-pain bottle and popped another pill. The medicine had made her feel drowsy, but it had done little to relieve the pain. She glanced at the clock. Brooke had been gone for an hour and a half. She would be getting hungry soon. Lula took a bowl of vanilla ice cream and two spoons to the family room, but the cold food only increased the throbbing in her head.
Phillip expressed his concern for Brooke several times during the remainder of the show. He even tried to call her twice, but she didn’t pick up. “Maybe she met some friends for dinner,” Lula suggested. “Although I don’t understand why she wouldn’t call to let us know.”
He nodded at the shoulder bag hanging from the back of a chair across the room. “Isn’t that hers? I doubt she would go to dinner and not take her purse.”
“True. Maybe she stopped in to see Lizbet.”
Phillip nodded, his face relieved. “I bet that’s it. Lizbet seemed upset when she left earlier. Brooke probably went over to check on her.”
Lula felt a tinge of guilt knowing she was responsible for upsetting Lizbet. She dozed off at the beginning of the next program and woke an hour later to the sound of Phillip’s cell phone ringing on the table beside him. When he answered the call, she heard Lizbet’s frantic voice from across the room. “Daddy, it’s Lizbet. I just got a call from Roper Hospital. Brooke was taken there by ambulance. I’m not sure what happened. The nurse said she was attacked, but she didn’t have any information on her injuries.”
“Attacked? Good Lord.” Phillip rubbed his balding head. “She went out for a walk hours ago. When she didn’t come back, we thought she might be with you. How did the hospital know to contact you?”
“I was the last person she called from her cell phone. I’m on my way to the hospital now.”
“I’ll meet you there.” He hung up and shoved the phone into his pocket. “That was Lizbet. Brooke has been in some sort of an accident.”
“I heard.” Lula winced at the pain in her head as she struggled to sit up.
“I need to get to the hospital,” he said, standing. “Do you want me to have Midge or Georgia come sit with you?”
“Don’t be silly. I can stay home alone by myself.”
He appeared unconvinced. “Should I help you upstairs before I go?”
“I’ll be fine. You need to get to the hospital.” She walked him to the door and patted his shoulder when he kissed her cheek. “Please call me when you find out more about Brooke’s condition.”
She locked the door behind him, refilled Pooh’s water bowl, and started toward the front of the house. She stopped at the sight of the pill bottles lined up on the counter. Desperate for relief from the pain that seemed to be getting worse instead of better, she shook two painkillers from the bottle and then dropped it into the pocket of her housecoat. Crawling on her hands and knees, she made her way up the stairs and collapsed in bed. But she couldn’t sleep from worrying about Brooke. She blamed herself for the attack or the accident—whatever had happened to her daughter. Just as she’d done to Lizbet, she forced her to flee the house in anger. She was a mean woman, a pitiful excuse for a mother. She was a shrew. The more she worried, the more the pressure built up in her head. She wanted to saw off the top of her skull and let the brain matter erupt like a volcano. When she could stand the agony no longer, she groped for the bottle of sleeping pills beside her bed.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Lizbet
Flipping on her hazard lights, Lizb
et sped to the hospital through the quiet downtown streets, running red lights and blowing past stop signs. She could make no sense of how this had happened to her sister. One minute they had been talking on the phone, discussing their mother’s erratic behavior, and the next minute Brooke was mugged. What else could possibly happen to their family?
She was checking in with the receptionist when her father arrived at the emergency room.
“How is she?” he asked Lizbet.
“I don’t know, Dad.” Lizbet had been standing at the counter watching the young woman search her computer for five minutes. She glanced at the receptionist’s name tag. “Diane can’t seem to find Brooke’s information in her computer.”
“The name is Horne.” Phillip jabbed the counter with his pointer finger. “Spelled H-O-R-N-E. First name is Brooke. If you can’t find it, get someone who can.”
Diane sat up straight in her chair, her brown eyes huge behind the round yellow eyeglass frames that made her look like an owl. “Yes sir.” Her fingers moved faster over the keyboard. “Here she is.” She reached for the telephone. “I’ll let the nurses’ station know you’re here.”
Phillip reached over the counter and snatched the receiver out of her hand. “I don’t want to wait for someone to come and get me. I want to see my daughter now. Which means you need to take me to her.”
Lizbet’s jaw went slack as she stared at her father. She’d never known him to be so aggressive. He’d been through so much the past few days. The pressure was obviously getting to him.
With an exaggerated eye roll, Diane stood up and came around from behind the counter. “Follow me, please.” She marched them through a set of double doors and down a hall to Brooke’s treatment room.
Brooke was sitting up in bed holding an ice pack to the back of her head and speaking to a policeman while a nurse cleaned her bloody knees. Phillip rushed to her side. “Honey, are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine, Dad.”
“I’m Officer Diaz,” the policeman said. “Your daughter is a lucky lady. She accidentally ventured into the wrong neighborhood. It happens all the time, but the outcome is usually a lot worse. She was just finishing with her report of the incident. If you’ll give us a few more minutes—”
Phillip’s hands shot up. “Don’t let us interrupt.”
“As I was saying,” Brooke continued, “a man stepped out from an alley and approached me from behind. I caught only a glimpse of him. He was a white man with dreadlocks, about my height, in his late twenties. He shouted at me to give him my money. When I told him I wasn’t carrying a purse, he hit me over the head with a hard object—a piece of pipe or something—and shoved me to the ground.”
Lizbet noticed for the first time that Brooke’s hands were bandaged in gauze. She’d probably skinned them when she tried to break her fall.
“He must have knocked me out,” Brooke said. “Because the next thing I knew, two EMTs were lifting me into an ambulance.”
Officer Diaz finished making his notes and flipped the page back on his notepad. “Okay then, that should be all for now.” He handed Brooke a business card. “If you think of anything else, please give me a call.”
On his way out, he passed an attractive middle-aged doctor coming in—Dr. Peggy Walters, as she introduced herself. “Brooke experienced quite a blow to her head. She doesn’t need stitches, but she has a nice goose egg at the base of her skull. I’ve ordered a CT scan to make certain she doesn’t have a fracture or any intracranial bleeding. They should be in to get her momentarily.” The doctor asked to speak to the nurse who was tending Brooke’s knees, and they left the room together.
Lizbet approached the bed. “Where on earth were you? When you and I were talking on the phone, you told me you were over by the market. I guess that was only a few minutes before this happened.”
Brooke shook her head. “Honestly, I’m not sure where I was. Way north of the market, I know that much. I wasn’t ready to go home, so I decided to walk over to our new apartment. I got turned around, and the next thing I knew I was in a really bad neighborhood.”
Her sister was indeed a lucky young lady. Didn’t they already have enough drama in their lives? “You have to be more careful, Brooke. Especially at night. There are a lot of unsafe streets in downtown Charleston.”
“I know.” Brooke looked over at their father, who was white-knuckling the bed railing. “I’m sorry, Dad. Worrying about me is the last thing you need. Speaking of Mom. Where is she? You didn’t leave her home alone, did you?” No one had actually mentioned their mom, but she was very much on all of their minds. Lizbet was ridden with guilt for the things she’d said to her mother earlier.
The color drained from his face. “What else was I going to do? I was worried about you.” He removed his cell phone from his pocket. “I should call her. She’ll be worried.” He clicked on a number and held the phone to his ear. After several long seconds, he lifted the phone away and stared at it. “Nothing’s happening.”
“Let me see it.” Lizbet took the phone from him. “That’s because you don’t have service in here.” She handed him back the phone. “Try walking down the hall a ways to see if you can get a connection.”
Lizbet waited until her father left the room. “You realize you could’ve been killed, don’t you?”
“I don’t need a lecture, Lizzy.”
“I’m not lecturing you. The thought of losing you when I just got you back in my life scares the hell out of me.” Lizbet sat down on the edge of the bed. “You can’t stay in that house, Brooke, not with Mom acting like a deranged lunatic. Why don’t you move in with me? We can take turns going to the house and sitting with Mom. I’ll talk to Heidi and see if she’ll let me have some time off. You’ve been dealing with everything all by yourself. I want to do my share.”
Brooke picked at the gauze on her hand. “I did a lot of thinking while I was out walking.” She looked up and smiled. “Before I got mugged.” She returned her attention to her bandage. “Mom is really scared and taking it out on us. And I get that. I’ve come to terms with her never accepting me as gay. I’m sad Sawyer will never have a chance to know the real Mom, the awesome things about her that we love. But there’s nothing I can do to change that. I can handle her illness. I just need to be stronger. Suck it up. My boss has been understanding. She’s agreed to let me wrap up my job from here while I take care of Mom. I need to do this, Lizzy, for Mom and for myself.”
Lizbet studied Brooke’s face, noticing for the first time the dark circles under her eyes. Who was this person, her sister? She was growing to admire her more and more every day. Whether she realized it or not, Brooke possessed their mother’s strength, although her strength manifested itself in different ways. Hers was a quiet, determined force whereas her mother came across as loud and sometimes obnoxious in her staunch beliefs. Despite all the sadness in her life, Lizbet once again felt a warm glow at the prospect of spending her future with her sister. She had much to learn not only from Brooke but also from Sawyer. She only hoped she didn’t disappoint them.
“Then count me in,” Lizbet said. “I’ll pack my things and move back into the house. We’ll see this thing through together—until the end.” When she held up her hand for a high five, Brooke pressed her bandaged palm against hers.
“I’d like that very much.”
They were still sitting there, studying each other with their palms pressed together, when Phillip returned to the room. “I need to get home. Your mom’s not answering her phone.”
#
The attendant wheeled Brooke off for her brain scan, leaving Lizbet alone with her thoughts in the eerie silence. The things she’d said to her mother earlier filled her with remorse. She’d gone too far. If something happened to Lula, it would be Lizbet’s fault.
When she grew tired of being alone with all her concerns, she wandered the halls in search of a cellular connection. Her father’s phone rang several times before going to voice mail. “Dad, it�
�s me. I’m still at the hospital with Brooke. She’s getting her scan now. How is Mom? I’m worried. Please call me back when you get this message.”
She stayed at the end of the hall in the service zone until she saw the orderly bring Brooke back to the room. Her doctor arrived a minute later. “Good news! There is no sign of a skull fracture or bleeding on the brain. Because you were knocked unconscious for a period of time, we have to treat you for a concussion.” She handed Brooke a pamphlet on concussions. “Expect to feel drowsy for a few days. You most likely will experience headaches and sensitivity to light. Keeping the screen time to a minimum will help. Nausea, vomiting, dizziness are all normal. I’ll have your release papers ready in a minute, and you can be on your way.”
Brooke rolled her eyes. “Just what we need—another head case in the house. Will you put this in your bag?” She handed Lizbet the pamphlet. “Have you heard from Dad? I’m worried about Mom.”
“That makes two of us. He didn’t answer his phone. I left him a message, but he hasn’t called back.”
They were walking to Lizbet’s car in the parking lot when his call came in. “Your mother was passed out cold when I got home. Several sleeping pills were scattered on the bedside table next to the empty bottle. I have no idea how many she took. I called the rescue squad. I’m following the ambulance to MUSC now.”
Lizbet increased her pace. “Okay, Dad. I’ll take Brooke home and meet you there.”
“What happened?” Brooke asked as they climbed into the car.
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