by Amie Knight
Adrian was sitting on the porch in one of our rocking chairs, his sketchpad in hand, when I pulled into the driveway. I couldn’t help the goofy smile on my face as I walked up the front steps. I was so in love with this amazing man. And he knew it. His brow was furrowed in concentration while he drew, his eyes intent, his hand sure. He sometimes let me peek at what he drew. Pictures of Lori, Miranda, and even Lori’s cat, Patches. My favorites were his landscapes though. The cotton fields around our homes. The creek behind our property. I’d never seen a drawing of me, and I’d been too shy to ask for one, but I was hoping to get at least one someday. His drawings were amazingly vivid, and sometimes, he added a splash of watercolor to add dynamic. Adrian was brilliantly talented, gorgeous, and all mine.
He must have felt my intense stare, because he looked up at me and set his sketchbook on the porch. He patted his lap, so I popped down and wrapped my arms around his neck.
“How was your day, Sunshine?” he grumbled into my neck.
“Busy but good, but it’s better now. Whatcha drawing?” I asked.
He ran his nose along the spot where my neck met my shoulder and inhaled. “Something beautiful.” He hummed while sprinkling my shoulder with long kisses.
“Me?” I asked, batting my eyelashes at him.
“Maybe.” He chuckled. “Maybe it was the sunset.” He laughed a little harder.
I hopped off his lap, grabbed my keys out of my purse, and opened the front door. Adrian followed me in, close on my heels. We spent the evening doing what we usually did. We made pizzas and ate them on the couch, washing them down with ice-cold Coke while watching TV. I was washing up in the kitchen when Adrian called me from the sofa.
“Come here, Ainsley!” he yelled.
I rolled my eyes at the dishwater in the sink. The older Adrian got, the higher handed he became. It didn’t always make me happy when he was pushy, but I had to admit that it was all kinds of sexy.
I dried my hands on a dish towel. Then I made my way to the living room and faced the couch. Adrian patted his slightly open thighs and slouched down a bit farther into his seat. I quirked an eyebrow and gave him a bored look. I was anything but bored. I was ready to move on to the main event, but a girl has to play a little hard to get.
“Straddle me,” Adrian said bluntly.
My face heated at his words. Bossy.
“You know there’s probably medication for that,” I said as I climbed over his legs and pressed my bottom into his lap, because while I was playing hard to get, I was not dumb.
“For what?” he asked right against my lips. He moved his mouth to my neck, and I stifled a groan.
“For the clear case of bossiness that you can’t seem to get rid of.” I’d attempted to answer with snark, but with Adrian’s open mouth pressed to my neck, it had come soft and airy.
“I have all the medicine I need right here,” he said as he grabbed my ass in both hands and rocked my core against him.
He claimed my mouth in a harsh kiss and snaked his hands under my shirt and up the sides of my stomach. He ran his hands up and in, and I felt my back bow under his touch, urging his hands closer to my breasts. He rubbed a thumb over each nipple, and I groaned into his mouth.
I was caught up in the moment when my phone rang from the coffee table, startling us both.
“Fuck,” Adrian breathed against my mouth.
I smiled at him and then looked at the clock. Eleven p.m. It was late for someone to be calling, and I was worried Lori needed a ride home. I reluctantly left Adrian’s lap and picked the phone up to a hysterical Miranda.
Adrian pulled up to the emergency room entrance, and I jumped out before my pickup had even come to a complete stop. I assumed he went to find parking while I ran inside and made my way to the front desk.
“Lori James. I’m looking for Lori James. She was brought here by ambulance just a few minutes ago. I need to see her,” I huffed at the nurse behind the hunter-green counter. I leaned on that ugly counter, trying to catch my breath and gain a little sanity. I needed to keep it together or they would never let me see her. And I needed to see her to know she was okay.
The young nurse, whose name tag read Sandy, turned to her computer screen and clicked a few buttons on her keyboard. She peered up at me behind her glasses. “She’s here, baby, but the doctors are working on her right now. You’re Jessica’s girl, right? Your momma came down as soon as they brought her in. She’s back there now. Do you want me to go get her for you?” she asked.
Her sad smile made my skin tingle with dismal awareness. I didn’t like the pity in her gaze. It made me acknowledge that something terrible might be wrong with Lori.
The doctors were working on her. What the fuck did that mean? It sounded bad. Oh, God. Please. Please let her be okay. My stomach churned. I nodded at the nurse. Yes, I needed my momma right now. Right this minute. She would make this better. She would tell me Lori was fine and we could all go home. Together.
I was vaguely aware that Adrian had approached the desk and put his arm around my shoulders. The nurse told us both to make our way to the waiting area while she found my mom for me. I felt dazed as Adrian steered us toward the waiting room. Everything looked foggy and thick. Like I was in a dream. No, like I was in a nightmare.
The waiting room was completely empty save for one red-haired girl in the corner, crouched over, with her head in her hands. I raced over to Miranda and sat down next to her, wrapping my arms around her shaking body.
She choked out barely comprehensible words though her deep sobs. “Ainsley. She wasn’t breathing. She wasn’t moving.” She leaned up and grabbed the tops of my arms with her hands, her grip tight, almost to the point of pain. But I needed them there, to keep me grounded. “Her lips were blue, Ains. I tried to save her.”
She had tried to save her? Hysteria shot through me like a bolt of lightning. Was Lori gone? No.
“Nooo. What do you mean you tried to save her?” I sounded accusatory, but I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t know what had happened. I needed to know. “Miranda, fucking answer me! What the hell are you talking about?”
She looked shocked. Her red, tear-stained face and quaking body almost stopped me from speaking my next words.
“Did you save her or did you not? Tell us what the fuck happened. Now!” I shouted.
Miranda flinched at my harsh tone and buried her head back in her hands, rocking back and forth. I should have felt terrible about the way I was treating her, but I couldn’t because I was operating on pure dread and absolute terror.
I was being pulled out of the seat next to Miranda before I knew it. Adrian sat down in the seat I had occupied and then pulled me into his lap, cradling me like a baby. Then he wrapped his arm around Miranda and pulled us all close together.
“All right, girls. Let’s just take a minute and calm down, okay?”
Adrian was the voice of reason, but I felt unreasonable, mad, and totally fucking unhinged. I needed answers right that minute. But Adrian knew me too well. He squeezed me tight and brought his lips to my ear.
“Breathe, Sunshine. Miranda loves you. You love her. Breathe,” he urged.
So I took deep, aching breaths, but the more I breathed, the more stuttered my breaths became until I was nothing but a hiccoughing, sobbing mess desperate for air. We all wrapped our arms tighter around each other, all of our foreheads touching. I couldn’t help but notice the absence of one sweet-smelling head, and the agony of it felt heavy in my stomach.
“I found her in a bedroom upstairs at the twins’ house. I had been looking for her. I wanted to keep an eye on her for you guys. I guess I didn’t do a good job.” Miranda’s whispered words quietly tumbled around between the three of us all pushed so closely together.
Her sharp breaths gave her anxiety away, so I pulled her even closer to me. So close that we couldn’t see each other’s faces. So close that our tears and our pounding breaths became one.
“She was lying on the floor. I knew something
was wrong. Her leg was at an odd angle. God. Her lips. They were cold and blue. I called nine-one-one. Ainsley. Please.” She squeezed me tighter to her. “I had never done CPR before in my life. But I tried so hard for her. I tried while the operator talked me through it. I was so scared, but I swear I tried my hardest, Ains. I did it because I love her too, ya know? Please don’t be mad at me. I tried so hard.” Her words broke off on a jagged cry.
Adrian’s shuddering body against my own frightened me. He was usually the strong one in situations like these, but the reality of what might be happening was shaking even him to the core. We were all a mess and needed somebody, anybody, to tell us what the hell was going on with Lori.
“Kids.” My mom’s voice pierced through our huddle.
We broke apart, gathering around her, waiting for answers. She looked pale, her eyes red and swollen. She was visibly shaken. I held Adrian’s and Miranda’s hands in my own and braced myself for bad news.
“The doctors have done everything they can for Loralie. She is in critical condition. We don’t yet know what happened or why she wasn’t breathing when Miranda found her, but my suspicion is drugs or alcohol. They have tested her, so we will know soon enough.” My momma’s sad eyes cut to Miranda. She rubbed her palm along Miranda’s cheek. “We owe you a great deal tonight, honey. You may have saved Lori’s life.”
I dropped Miranda’s hand and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close into my side. “When can we see her?” I asked.
Apprehension flittered across Momma’s face. She looked weary and emotionally drained, but also like she was dreading taking us back to Lori. “I can take you back one at a time to see her. I’ll take you back first, Ains,” she said.
I broke away from Adrian and Miranda and grabbed Momma’s hand. We made our way through two big, red doors and down another hallway. Before Momma opened a door at the very end of the hallway, she turned to me and said, “Ainsley, I don’t want you to be scared when you see her. Lori doesn’t look like herself. She is hooked up to a lot of machines right now. It’s overwhelming, so I wanted to warn you first, okay?”
I nodded and clenched my hand tighter around her as she opened the door. I really appreciated my mom’s warning, but nothing, absolutely nothing, could have prepared me for the horror of what lay before me.
I blinked hard and long, trying to make the image go away, but it was burned into the back of my eyes, inescapable. Lori’s small, tan body partially reclined in the hospital bed. Her lifeless and slack body wrapped in a sea of white all the way to her chest. Her limp hands lying a little too perfectly on her stomach, IVs in both. So many wires coming from beneath the sheet, attached to too many machines to count. Her loose mouth holding a large tube attached to yet another, larger machine. Her swollen eyes closed. Her expressionless face. Her thick and shiny, brown locks held up in a bun at the top of her head. I felt and heard a whooshing in my ears, and a wave of dizziness slapped me in the face. There were too many beeps. Too many machines. It was like a bad dream. This couldn’t be real.
I was still holding my eyes closed when I felt the results of my grief leak down my face. Immediately, I was enveloped in warm arms and the sweet scent of lavender. Usually, that smell grounded me. Usually, those arms made everything right. But, at that moment, they served a different purpose. They let me crumble. They let me fall down. All the while holding me up.
“It’s okay, Ainsley. We will get through this. We will. For Lori,” she crooned at me.
It was truly the first time in my life that I didn’t believe my Momma. Her words sounded deflated and flat to my ears. It wasn’t that I could necessarily hear a lie in them. It was that they didn’t have the same ring of truth I usually heard from my mom’s mouth.
I pulled out of Momma’s embrace and choked some courage down. I pulled up a hard, wooden chair with red vinyl cushions to Lori’s bedside and sat down. I grabbed her soft hand in my own and gripped it. Nothing happened. Not a flutter of her eyelids. Not a twitch of a finger. The only movement that resonated from her slack body was the up and down of her chest. The more I watched, the more I noticed that it coincided with the whoosh of the giant machine attached to her mouth. Fright gripped me from the inside out.
“Is she not breathing on her own?” I asked my mom, who was sitting on the other side of Lori, holding her other hand.
“Not enough. The doctors are hoping that, once whatever is in her system works its way out, she will wake up enough to breathe on her own. For now, she needs help breathing through the ventilator,” she answered.
“And how will they know if she is breathing on her own if she is on this machine?” I asked.
Maybe she was breathing on her own now, but no one knew. I didn’t want her on this damn machine. I wanted her breaths like I needed my own. Open your fucking eyes, Lori.
“They’ll reduce her oxygen from time to time to see if she is breathing on her own.” She paused then went on. “Ya know, Miranda probably saved her life tonight. Her chest compressions kept Lori’s heart beating until the paramedics got there and took over.”
I didn’t like how my mom was using words like probably and may have when it came to Lori’s life. It was pushing me over the edge. I snapped out, “So, what if she can’t breathe on her own ever again?”
Mom’s face fell, and she flinched like I’d slapped her. I immediately felt bad for asking so harshly, but I needed to know the worst-case scenario. And I needed her to tell me. From her mouth. But she didn’t. She got out of her chair and smoothed Lori’s hair back into her bun. She kissed her on the forehead, turned on her heel, and left the room.
I listened to the machines, praying for her hand to clench mine back. I begged God for another chance to hear Lori’s voice. I promised Him that I would go to any party Lori wanted me to if only she would wake up. I’d let her listen to her rock music in my beater truck. I’d take my savings for college and buy her that guitar she had been begging Momma for. I made all kinds of promises to the big Man upstairs. And then I became angry at Him. How could He let this happen to her? She didn’t deserve it. How could He let this happen to me and Momma? Didn’t He know our love for her? Didn’t He know that this would destroy us?
I promised and I blamed. I begged and I cursed. I prayed to Him in one breath and spurned Him in the next.
Minutes bled into hours, and hours turned into days with not one iota of improvement from Lori. I was locked in Hell and Loralie held the key. I desperately needed her to wake up and release me. The doctors told us that her tests had come back with gross amounts of alcohol and prescription pills in her system, the quantity and combination deadly and almost instantaneously heart-stopping. They didn’t know how long she’d been out before Miranda had found her, nor did they know how long her brain had suffered without oxygen. They couldn’t tell us if she would ever be able to breathe on her own. They didn’t even know if she would ever wake up. And, if she did, they didn’t know the extent of her brain damage. They didn’t know anything. And it was a fucking walking agony. Wake up and let me out.
The nurses had given up on keeping Adrian, Miranda, and me out. The three of us and Mom sat around her all day and night. We couldn’t bear the thought of her coming to without one of us there. On nights when Momma forced us to go home, Adrian stayed at my house, tucked into bed with me, wrapped around me too tight, like he thought I might disappear. And maybe he was right. Because, with every day that passed, I felt a little of myself fading away.
On the third day of Lori’s hospitalization, I got tired of looking at her dirty, greasy hair. She would have been mortified about anyone seeing her like that. So Momma and I reclined her bed flat and washed her hair in one of the ugly, beige tubs hospital rooms are riddled with. I trimmed and filed her nails. I carefully shaved her legs and continuously applied ChapStick to her dried and cracked lips, which were separated by the vent. I wanted her to look like her beautiful, gorgeous self when she relieved us from this misery. And she would, because w
e all had hope. Isn’t that what every made-for-TV movie teaches us? Every novel? Every good story? You hope and you pray and you get your happy ending. But this felt way too much like real life.
The doctors hadn’t said that there was no way she would wake. They hadn’t said that it was a hopeless case. They had thrown us those tiny kernels of optimism like a farmer feeding his chickens, and we’d eaten it right up. Because we had to. There wasn’t a choice.
On the fourth day, Adrian and I were at her bedside while Momma was eating in the cafeteria. I was looking at my phone when Adrian suddenly jumped.
“Ainsley! I think she is waking up,” he exclaimed. “She’s squeezing my hand. She seems to be bringing it toward her body, too. Go grab a nurse.”
Once again, hope reared her fickle head, and I frantically rang the nurses’ button on Lori’s bed at least a dozen times. I was giddy. She was moving. She was going to wake up.
The nurse came in, held Lori’s hand, and waited for a squeeze. When it happened, she left the room to call a doctor. Adrian and I were beside ourselves with relief until the doctor came in and broke the devastating news that Lori wasn’t waking up. He informed us that her reaction was called posturing—an involuntary reflex. And, worse, that it indicated severe brain damage.
The next few days proved even more challenging because Lori’s feet and ankles turned and bowed in. Her fists tightened to what looked like the point of a pain, and her wrist turned inward and up. With every twist, squeeze, and eye flutter, our hope soared and then completely tanked. The posturing was getting worse, but we clung to faith that she would wake. We could deal with brain injury. We would take care of her. I’d stay home from school and stay with her all day, if only she’d wake up.