Please, not this.
“She has to enlarge the font of her emails to read them,” Bradley said. He looked back and gave me an apologetic look. I turned my head away; I couldn’t bear to meet his eyes.
“I was tired,” Alex said, sounding angry now, almost belligerent. “God, I mean, I’d been going through a hundred emails. That’s all it was. My eyes were tired.”
The doctor pulled a small light out of the breast pocket of her white coat.
“Look up,” she said, aiming the light into Alex’s eyes. “Now left. Right. Into the light.”
She kept the light on Alex’s eyes for another minute. “Do you have any other symptoms?”
“No,” Alex said, at the exact same moment that Bradley said, “Headaches.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have not known what was happening between my own sister and the guy I loved?
“How often?” the doctor said.
“A couple times a week,” Alex said. “It’s stress. I have a lot going on. Look, I’m not drunk, and I’m not going blind. Go pick on the other guy, okay? This was his fault.”
“I’m going to order an MRI,” the doctor said. “Just as a precaution.”
Alex sighed. “Come on, do you really think it’s necessary? Look, maybe I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe I glanced down for a second or something.”
“We just want to be extra safe,” the doctor said.
“Alex,” Bradley said. He kept his eyes on her. It was as though I wasn’t in the room, as though he’d already forgotten about me. She stared up at him, and something passed between them. It was like they had a whole conversation without saying a word.
“Okay,” she finally said. “Okay.”
“We’ll send you up to Imaging now,” the doctor said. “You might have to wait a bit, but they’ll squeeze you in.”
“Now?” Alex said, her voice suddenly tight.
“You might as well get it over with while you’re here,” the doctor said, putting a hand on Alex’s shoulder. Her expression was kind, much kinder than it had been earlier. My God, she couldn’t think there was something seriously wrong with Alex’s eyes, could she? The room tilted and spun again. Too much was happening too quickly.
“It’ll be easier than coming back next week,” the doctor said.
Alex wrapped her arms around herself and nodded.
“Is there any way I could have a blanket?” she asked.
“I’ll have a nurse bring one in,” the doctor said. She squeezed Alex’s shoulder and left the cubicle. The police officer followed her without a word.
“Here,” Bradley said. He yanked off his pullover and tucked it around Alex. This time he didn’t look apologetically at me; the only expression on his face was concern. For Alex. A knot that felt as big and hard as a golf ball formed inside my throat, making it hard to swallow.
“These hospital gowns suck,” Alex said.
“Yeah,” I said. It was practically the first thing I’d said since I’d gotten there. I was so shocked I felt numb. Too much was happening, and I was shutting down.
The movie, I suddenly remembered. I’d thought Alex was flirting with Bradley. My God; she really couldn’t see the words on-screen.
“Linds?” Alex asked. “Come with me for the MRI?”
I nodded. “Sure.” What else could I say?
“Look, this isn’t the time, but there’s stuff I need to talk to you about,” she said. “I’ve been trying to catch you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve just been really busy.”
“I know, I know,” she said. “Work, right?”
I glanced fearfully at Bradley, but he didn’t betray me.
“Yeah, the usual,” I said.
The nurse bustled into the room with a blanket and draped it over Alex.
“Ooh, it’s heated,” she said.
“Nothing but the best,” the nurse said. “I’m a fan. Love your show. I watch it all the time. Is your cohost really as cute in person?”
“Promise you won’t tell?” Alex said. I could see her slipping into celebrity mode; she tossed back her hair and smiled her bright TV smile. How could she do it? I wondered. Was that what so many years in front of the camera did to you? Did it teach you to shut off your true feelings as easily as if you were flipping a switch?
Because right about now, that was a skill I’d kill to have.
The nurse nodded eagerly.
“He has a hair transplant,” Alex stage-whispered. “You can see the little lines of seedlings on his scalp when you’re up close.”
“Oh, man, you just ruined my fantasy.” The nurse laughed.
“Sorry,” Alex said, winking. “You’ll have to go back to Brad Pitt like everyone else.”
An orderly entered the room with a wheelchair.
“He’s going to wheel you up for your MRI,” the nurse said. “It’ll be a snap. Ready to get in the chair?”
Alex pushed aside her covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her toenails were painted hot pink, and her legs were smooth and lightly tanned. Even here, even under these circumstances, Alex moved as gracefully as a dancer.
No wonder Bradley had chosen her, I thought dully. Who wouldn’t?
“Bradley? Wait for us here?” Alex said.
He nodded. “Whatever you want.”
I walked alongside as the orderly wheeled us to the elevator and took us down to the basement. He left us in a little room after conferring with the nurse at the front desk.
“This is a crazy time to tell you this,” Alex said. “But I’m not engaged anymore. Gary and I broke up a few days ago. I wanted to tell you, but—”
“But you couldn’t reach me,” I said. Alex had called twice in the past two days, but I hadn’t returned her calls. “Have you told Mom and Dad?”
“I was on my way over there when that asshole hit me,” Alex said. She shook her head. “I know they’re going to be upset. They love Gary. God, I keep thinking about that engagement party. There are so many people we have to tell.”
I bit back the question hovering on my lips—“What happened?”—because I didn’t want to know. Or maybe because I already knew. Alex and Bradley were together. If they weren’t already, it was only a matter of time.
I’d thought it would be just as bad if Alex had been playing with Bradley, but I’d been wrong. This was worse. So much worse.
Alex was looking at me, waiting for me to say something.
“Things seemed so good between you and Gary,” I finally said. “You looked so great together.”
“Do you know how many people told me that?” The words exploded out of Alex so fiercely I almost recoiled. “How great we looked together? It’s like everyone thought we should be together because we looked the part. I think . . .” Alex’s voice softened, as though what she wanted to say next was the hardest part. “Oh, shit, I think maybe that was part of why Gary loved me, too.”
She ran a hand over her eyes, then began massaging her temples.
“We looked like we should fit,” she whispered. “But we didn’t. We never did, no matter how much I tried to make us.”
I stared at her. This wasn’t the Alex I knew. No quips or sharpness; she was telling me her real feelings, opening up, just like May had advised me to do. If it had been anyone but Bradley, this moment might’ve been a turning point for us. We might’ve even become sisters in every sense of the word. But the dark, ugly seed of my jealousy had grown into something hard and gnarled, something that pushed up between me and Alex.
“I loved Gary,” Alex said. “I thought I did, at least. But something was missing. We never talked. We did stuff together all the time and we always had fun, but when we were alone, we didn’t have much to say. Not like with—” She cut herself off.
“With Bradley,” I said flatly.
Alex looked down. “I know you guys have been friends forever. I never thought of him as anything but your friend. But then when
he was taking photos at my engagement party, we kind of connected.”
At your engagement party, I thought bitterly. Nice timing.
“I kept wanting to tell you about it,” Alex said. “But it wasn’t ever the right time. And nothing’s really happened between us.”
Yet, I thought. God, why did Alex always do this to me? Why couldn’t things ever be simple between us? Here we were, waiting for an MRI to tell us if there was something wrong with her eyes, and I was filled with so much jealousy and anger and shame that I felt like I was about to explode. How could I despise my sister when she was at her most vulnerable?
“I know it’s kind of weird, because you and Bradley were so close,” she said. “But he said nothing ever happened between you two.”
I felt her eyes rove over my tight camisole, my loose hair, my face. “You really look amazing, you know.” Her voice grew questioning. “Anyway, you’ve got that guy in New York. Don’t you?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Oh, my God. So many misunderstandings. So many crossed signals. The story of Alex’s and my relationship.
If I said no—if I said I didn’t have anyone in New York, and that it was Bradley I loved, would you leave him alone? I wondered. Or would you decide your happiness was worth more than my misery, like when those seniors wanted to stuff me in that locker?
“Lindsey?”
I nodded. Just once—it was more like a head bob—but it was enough for Alex. What else could I do? Bradley didn’t want me. It was bad enough that my heart was broken; at least I could try to salvage the shredded remnants of my pride.
“I knew it!” she said, grinning and looking relieved. “I knew you were just being secretive. So are you ever going to tell me about him?”
The nurse saved me.
“Alexandra Rose?” she called.
I stood up and wheeled Alex over.
“Follow me,” the nurse said. She led us through another door, into a sterile-looking room with a white machine that was shaped like a giant donut in the middle. “You’re going to lie on this table. It’ll take about half an hour. Any problems with claustrophobia?”
“If I say yes, will you go instead of me?” Alex joked. The nurse didn’t even crack a smile.
The technician, a young Latino guy, came into the room and pressed a few buttons. He barely even glanced at Alex and me.
“Cheerful bunch,” Alex said, rolling her eyes at me and grinning broadly. “Do you all moonlight at a funeral home?”
She was trying to joke, but something was off. Her voice and gestures were almost manic, her jokes forced. She must be terrified, I realized with a jolt. I’d been so locked in my own misery I hadn’t seen it. Of course she was terrified; who wouldn’t be?
“Remove all your credit cards from your wallet and leave them outside,” the technician instructed us. “Otherwise they’ll be demagnetized.”
I fumbled for my wallet as Alex did the same thing. I collected our credit cards and put them in a little plastic tray just outside the MRI room.
“Please stay still, miss,” the technician said. “We’re going to center you on the table and hold your head in place with this mask. Are you comfortable?”
“About as comfortable as Hannibal Lecter,” Alex said as the technician fitted her head into a gray plastic mask attached to the table. “You don’t have any fava beans handy, do you?”
The technician looked at her strangely, then he made a few adjustments to the mask covering Alex’s forehead, pinning her head into place. Could this really be happening? I wondered. Could the doctors actually think something was wrong inside Alex’s brain?
“Lindsey?” Alex asked. Her voice sounded far away and shaky. “Can you do something for me?”
“Sure,” I said, feeling awful that my immediate thought was, Please don’t ask me to go get Bradley for you. Alex paused, then asked, “Will you hold on to my foot?”
I hesitated for a second, surprised, then I reached for her left foot, the one closest to me. It was ice-cold. After a moment I automatically began rubbing it, trying to get some warmth into it. When was the last time I’d touched Alex? I wondered, staring down at her foot. Had it been a year? Two? Hard to imagine we’d spent the first nine months of our lives doing slow somersaults around each other as we grew toes and eyebrows and fingernails.
“Very still now,” the technician said. He looked at me. “Miss, you’ll need to step back.”
“It’s okay, Alex,” I said. I let go of her foot and moved a few feet away. “You’re doing great.”
The machine made a surprisingly loud noise—like someone hitting a pipe with a hammer—as the table slid into the center of the giant donut and Alex disappeared from view. We stayed like that for what seemed like forever as the machine took endless cross-section pictures of Alex’s brain.
“Okay, you can get up now,” the technician finally said. “Wait until the machine slides back.”
“I’m free to go?” Alex asked as she sat up. “So everything’s okay?”
“Back to the ER,” he said. He was busy at a computer now, printing out the scans of Alex’s brain. “I’ll send these to your doctor so she can review them.”
“Can I at least ditch the chair?” Alex asked.
“Hospital policy,” the technician said. Alex sighed and hopped in the chair. I wheeled her to the door, and we started down the hall. But when we were halfway to the elevator, something made me glance back over my shoulder. The technician was standing in the doorway, looking at Alex. Funny, but I hadn’t noticed how soft and long-lashed his brown eyes were. They were like a deer’s eyes.
As he stared at Alex, his right hand began moving—to his forehead and then down to his heart, to the right side of his chest and then the left side.
“Why’d you stop moving?” Alex asked. “Pop a wheelie and let’s roll.”
I couldn’t answer; I couldn’t speak.
The technician was making the sign of the cross. He was sending Alex a silent prayer.
Twenty-three
I DON’T KNOW HOW any of us managed to sleep that night. After the ER doctor urged Alex to come in the next morning for a consultation with a neurosurgeon, after Alex stared at her and demanded to know exactly what she saw in the MRI, and after the doctor weaseled out of our barrage of questions by repeating, “I’m not qualified to make a diagnosis,” we finally left the hospital.
We drove Bradley home first, and I waited in the car while Alex walked him inside. She wasn’t gone for more than five minutes. It seemed like an eternity. I leaned back against the driver’s seat headrest, trying to escape my relentless vision of the two of them standing in Bradley’s living room, holding each other.
When Alex came back to the car, I asked, “Should I take you back home?” I frowned. God, the entire world had careened upside down tonight. Was that even her home anymore?
Alex shook her head. “Can I stay with you at Mom and Dad’s? I don’t want to be alone. Gary’s out of town, and I haven’t moved out yet.”
“Of course,” I said, even though I desperately did want to be alone. But in the hierarchy of emotions, my pain over Alex and Bradley couldn’t compete with Alex’s terror. Even I knew that. Bradley did, too; I’d seen the conflict play over his face when she’d jumped out of the car after him to walk him inside his house. He hadn’t wanted to hurt me, but how could he push away Alex? Somehow I’d managed to give him a brief nod, to let him know I understood what he needed to do.
“I don’t want Mom and Dad to know anything,” Alex said now. She took a deep breath. “Not until we know.”
We’d been at the hospital for hours, and now it was close to midnight. The roads were empty and slick from the light rain that had fallen while we were in the ER. Everything felt surreal, as though we were on a deserted movie set where the houses were nothing but pieces of painted cardboard and the trees were made of papier-mâché. We drove through the darkness, watching our headlights flash against the streets.
“Think
that’s Dad’s raccoon?” Alex asked, breaking the silence. She pointed to an animal scurrying by on the side of the road.
Dad had been waging an all-out assault against a raccoon that had a fondness for his trash. He had set up motion-sensitive lights, invested in two different kinds of trash cans, and was talking about building a fence before I finally bought him a three-dollar bungee cord and secured the trash can’s lid.
“I swear that man was one step away from buying a shotgun,” Alex said. “What are the odds that he’d shoot off his own toe?”
“About even,” I said. “But in a few years, the story would’ve been that the rabid raccoon wrestled the gun away and shot Dad before they fought to the death.”
Alex tried to smile, but she couldn’t pull it off. I tried to think of something else to say, but I came up empty. She turned to stare out the window. We drove the rest of the way in silence, each of us locked in our own thoughts.
“I’ll make up some excuse for why we have to leave tomorrow morning,” I said as we crept inside quietly so we wouldn’t wake our parents. I handed Alex one of my T-shirts to sleep in.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked. “Some tea?”
“I think I’m just going to sleep,” she said. “I’m exhausted.”
“Take my bed,” I offered. Dad had inexplicably taken over Alex’s bedroom as an “office” on the day he retired, so there weren’t many sleeping options. I grabbed a pillow off my bed to take to the couch.
“Linds?” Alex hesitated. I paused, my hand on the doorknob, and turned back to her.
“Stay with me?” she finally asked. “The bed’s big enough for both of us.” She gave a half smile. “I swear I don’t snore.”
What could I say?
“Sure,” I replied.
I lifted up one side of the covers and climbed in, and Alex got in on the other side. She fell asleep so quickly it was like she’d been picked up and dropped into it, but I lay awake for hours as images tormented me: Bradley’s face when he told me he was involved with someone else; Alex’s and Bradley’s hands side by side on the white hospital sheet; the technician’s fingers moving across his chest as he looked at Alex.
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