Around the Bend

by Britney King

  “Do you have plans tomorrow?”

  “Work stuff. Why?”

  “I thought we could go visit my dad. And take the kids. It’s been a few weeks…”

  He shook his head. “Jessica. I think you need to stop taking the children. Maybe stop going yourself for a while. I can see that it’s wearing on you.”

  She did a double take, her mouth agape. “He’s my father. I can’t just pretend he’s already gone.”

  “Isn’t he, though?”

  “Fuck you, Spence. That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  Spencer exhaled and placed his hand on her arm. She pulled away. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just that you haven’t been yourself lately. I think this whole situation is taking a toll on you, that’s all. And I mean this with all due respect, but it’s not as though he’ll know whether you’ve come or gone anyway. I don’t see what’s so wrong with having the kids remember him as he was. That’s how I want to remember him…”

  Jess crossed her arms. “The ‘situation’ you’re talking about is my father. Don’t forget that. Maybe you don’t understand loyalty, but I do.”

  The phone on the console lit up and rang so suddenly it startled Jess. Spencer eyed the phone and then grabbed it so abruptly that Jess watched as it slipped through his fingers in slow motion and fell onto the floorboard of the backseat.

  “Shit… Can you grab that?” He pleaded, straining into the backseat fishing with his fingers.

  She felt the car swerve slightly. “Spence!” He corrected the steering wheel. “Geez. Focus on the road… would you? I’ll get the phone.” She seethed. Always the damned phone… No wonder they were having such a tough time with their son.

  “I’ve been waiting on that call,” he uttered to her, or maybe just to himself, she wasn’t sure.

  She turned slightly looking in the backseat, noting that it was too dark to see anything. The ringing stopped and started again, and suddenly, she saw it behind the driver’s seat, nudged up against the left passenger door. It was after midnight. Who would call twice? Hopefully, it wasn’t about the kids…

  “Do I need to pull over?”

  Jess reached as far as she could. “No, I can get it,” she said feeling the seatbelt refuse to give any further.

  The phone stopped ringing and started again.

  “Jessica!”

  “I’m trying,” she said unbuckling herself to allow herself to reach further.

  Jess felt her fingertips graze the phone. “Ah. Got it,” she announced proudly.

  Jessica heard his sigh and then the screeching of tires. The screeching of tires. That would be the last thing she would hear for six whole days.

  And afterward, in her dreams, for many more than she dared to admit.

  Jessica awoke to her best friend whispering her name. She had thought she’d heard people in her room talking, but this was the first time she was actually able to force her eyes open.

  “Jessica. Oh, Jess. Wake up. Come on,” Addison whispered.

  She felt the familiar sensation of her hand being rubbed. Jess willed her eyes open.

  “Jessica! Oh, my God.” Unable to keep her eyes open, the light was too bright, she watched Addison reach for something through the slits of her eyes.

  Jess tried to ask what was happening, but she couldn’t speak. Suddenly, she started to panic, unable to move her wrists.

  Addison patted her arm and put her face close to hers so that their noses were almost touching. Jess couldn’t focus.

  “Jess. Jess! Calm down. Listen to me. I need you to stop fighting. You’re okay.” Addison glanced toward the door and then back at her. “Don’t worry… They’re coming.”

  Who is coming, she wondered.

  She could see Addison mouthing the words, but Jess wasn’t sure she could hear them being said. Something was wrong.

  And then, almost as though Jess had said it aloud even though she knew she hadn’t—she couldn’t, Addison answered, “You’ve been in an accident, sweetie. But you’re all right. They’re getting you all fixed up.”

  Jess’s eyes trailed down to her wrist. She attempted to pull her arm toward her face to get a better look, but it wouldn’t budge, and she couldn’t see straight enough to put it all together.

  “You’re on a respirator. The restraints are a precaution. So you don’t pull the tube out… We’ll get them off just as soon as the doctors get in here.”

  Addison pressed the button again. And again. There was a buzzing sound and then a voice. “I need a doctor in here now!” She heard her friend shout.

  An accident. The screeching tires. And with that, Jess faded back into the darkness.

  Chapter Three

  The next time Jessica opened her eyes, she thought for a moment she might be dreaming. Or perhaps dead. Maybe this is what heaven looks like, she considered for a second. Jess eyed the flowers surrounding her bed. There was every kind of flower imaginable. She winced, knowing instantly that she wasn’t dead as soon as she attempted to turn her head and the pain took over. And then Jessica remembered.

  It is funny how there’s always that moment just after you wake that nothing seems real, and you forget that something terrible has happened—when for the slightest period of time it seems that things are the same as before. In the moment right before you remember, all is peaceful and all is as it should be. It’s fleeting but sometimes these certain moments last longer than others. Some days, it might be minutes, while others it’s just a few seconds, when your mind tricks you and allows you this blissful reverie. If only you could buy those minutes, Jess thinks.

  She tried to move her legs and attempted to use her arms to push upright, but the pain was too much to bear. She shifted slightly and her eye caught something in the corner. Not something, she realized. Someone. Spencer. His eyes met hers and he looked relieved. She wanted to speak, but simply stared instead. Seconds passed, maybe minutes, before he set his laptop down and walked to her.

  “How do you feel?” he whispered.

  She shifted her gaze toward the flowers and nods at the pitcher of water.

  Spencer reached for a cup at her bedside, placed the straw between her lips, and watched her gulp down as much as she could before he pulled it away. “Not too much,” he said. “We don’t want you getting sick again.”

  Jess frowned. “How long have I been here?”

  “Fourteen days.”

  Fourteen days? Jess considered. That’s two whole weeks. “Where are the kids? How are the kids?”

  Spencer pursed his lips. “They’re fine. Your mother is with them. They know about the accident… that you’re hurt and have had a few surgeries but that you’re in here getting all fixed up and that you’ll be home with them soon.”

  “How many surgeries?”

  Spencer looked away as he spoke. “Three so far. But you’re doing great. The doctors are very pleased with how things are coming along.”

  Jess felt the tears sting at the corner of her eyelids. She knew her husband’s tone and what his unwillingness to look her in the eye meant.

  “Spencer?” He turned and Jess saw that fake smile she knew so well. “How long am I going to be here?”

  His smile faded slowly at first and then all at once. “I don’t know.” He sighed.

  And finally, they were getting somewhere, Jess thought.

  The following week went by in a foggy haze with more flower deliveries and more nurses than she could count. There were a few visitors here and there. Addison was there every day, sometimes twice a day, as was Jess’s mother. Spencer came in the evenings, and this became how Jess marked her day, based upon who was there and when.

  The days in the hospital that immediately followed the accident seemed to drag on as the pain increased ever more with each passing day. Jessica tried to stay on top of the pain, just as the doctors advised, but she didn’t like the way the drugs made her feel. Without them though, she found the nagging pain she endured was more than she could bear. The d
octors told her she needed to accept that it was going to take her body some time to heal and that she needed the narcotics to help facilitate the process. But Jess found it to be a double-edged sword as she was either in pain—or out of it all together, and she couldn’t be sure which was the lesser evil.

  In turn, she found that sleep was the only safe place, so she did a lot of it, and when she couldn’t slip into the oblivion she so desperately craved, she pretended to. At first, Jess loved having visitors come. It broke up the day and it was nice to have company for a little while. But as the days wore on, and the reality that Jess could do almost nothing to care for herself, the visitors only served as a reminder of how bad things for her actually were. They left. They went back to their lives. They exited the hospital. They were able to see the blue expanse of the sky and the leaves on the trees. All Jess saw were four white walls, pity, and flowers—who, like her, had been plucked from their lives and set upon a different path altogether.

  The more this new path was revealed to her, the more Jess found herself pressing the button attached to the automatic pump that delivered her pain meds. She began sleeping more, or at least pretending to, when Addison, her mother, or Spencer would visit, and before long, the visits slowed some. She still had yet to see her children, but that was because ICU didn’t allow children under the age of twelve to visit. She’d argued once with Spencer over this, knowing that surely a few strings could be pulled, but he refused, saying it was best that they see her when she was feeling a bit more like herself. Jessica hadn’t the strength to press the matter any further, for it was enough to try to make the pain go away. It wasn’t long before the lines became blurred, and she couldn’t determine which was worse—the physical pain she felt each day or the emotional pain of what she had become.

  Sometime in the third week of her stay, there was a fourth surgery, which would place pins in her right leg. Jess remembers wondering in the seconds before they put her under if she might be better off not waking up.

  Later, when Jess awoke, she felt the slightest bit of disappointment followed by an incredible amount of guilt. She quickly did a double take as she took in the two tiny faces peering back at her. Jess felt someone squeeze her hand. She shifted her gaze downward. Addison.

  “Hey, there.” Addison grinned. “We’ve got two people here who are very anxious to see their mom.”

  Jess studied her children’s faces. They looked so grown up.

  She reached up and touched her daughter’s face. Then she let her gaze shift to Jonathan, unable to ignore the worried expression he wore. She smiled. “Hey, you guys, wanna see how they fixed up my leg? They say I have so much metal in me that I’m practically a robot now.”

  Catherine’s eyes widened. Her face had gone pale. “There’s blood on the sheet.”

  A booming voice interrupted her. “Maybe some other time, Jessica. We can’t stay too long.”

  Jess turned to see Addison’s husband William standing above her bed and suddenly felt self-conscious.

  Addison stepped forward, placed her arms on Catherine’s shoulders, and pulled her close. What Jess wouldn’t have given at that moment to be the one comforting her daughter.

  “We sent Spencer to lunch,” Addison said giving Jess a knowing look. “I had William help me get these guys up here, but, unfortunately, he’s right—they won’t let us stay very long.”

  Jess swallowed.

  “We made these for you, Mommy,” Catherine said thrusting a stack of papers at her. Jess attempted to pick them up, but her hands weren’t cooperating. All at once, it was as though her arms were made of spaghetti. There seemed to be a disconnection from what Jessica wanted to happen and what was actually happening. William took the papers from Catherine and held them up, one by one so that Jess could take them in. Jess couldn’t help but notice the way her daughter beamed with pride as she described each drawing, and also the way that William carefully handled them, as though he were handling priceless pieces fit for a gallery. She took it all in, realizing then just how much she’d missed this. She missed her kids. She missed her husband, her family, and her friends. She missed the little things that made up the whole of her life. She missed the thing that only a few weeks prior she’d so easily taken for granted.

  Jonathan stepped forward interrupting her thoughts. He laid a notebook on top of her stomach. “I wrote this for you… I mean, I know you can’t read it now… but maybe whenever we get to come back, I can read it to you.” Jess looked into her son’s big, bright eyes and found herself lost in them. Recently, he’d seemed so grown up, hell bent on proving that he no longer needed her. But looking at him now with so much unspoken anxiety written across his face, she knew better.

  She smiled at her children, back at Addison, and finally at William, and she understood then that she had to do her very best to get back in the saddle and get home to them as soon as possible.

  Jess wanted to tell them that, to reassure them that everything was going to be okay and that she was grateful for second chances to get it right. But, in that moment, a simple thank you was all she could manage.

  Several days following the surgery, Jessica was transferred to an inpatient rehabilitation hospital where she had been assured they were more equipped to handle the rehabilitation process. She had hoped to go home to recover, but her doctors, and especially her husband, insisted the rehabilitation hospital was a more logical alternative. Jess still wasn’t able to sit upright for long periods of time due to a broken clavicle and broken ribs.

  She had not been out of bed, or even able to use the restroom on her own since the accident. But the doctors and therapists assured her if she worked really hard, it was likely she could go home before Christmas. This was the only reason Jess had agreed to continue to take the pain meds despite the fact that they made her feel so out of it. The drugs took away the pain, sure, but they dulled other things, namely her senses. She was forgetful and foggy. She was either on top of the world or at rock bottom. They numbed the pain, but they also numbed her. But without the meds, the world was a less colorful, quieter place.

  The children visited almost daily with their nanny, and those visits were always the highlight of Jess’s day. It was ironic, sad, and admittedly, a little funny how much Jessica’s relationship with her children had changed since the accident.

  Her family had always had help, but even still, she found herself so immersed in the nitty-gritty stuff, the day in and day out incessant decision making that life with children brings, she had a different perspective now that her sole focus had become herself and her recovery. She found joy in her kids again. She enjoyed hearing about their lives and their thoughts. Instead of the busy, rushed pace they all knew so well before the accident, now there seemed to be nothing but time. There was nowhere for her to go, and nothing to do, except the long, arduous process of learning to walk again, all the while, each step bringing her closer to the person she had once been. On one hand, she wanted to get back to being that girl. But there was also a part of her who wondered if the girl that she had been was truly as happy as nostalgia made her out to be—and whether now, in hindsight, if she wanted to go back to being that girl at all.

  The therapist eyed her. “I think it’s time, Jessica.”

  Her head pounded. Though this was their second, possibly third session, she sized the woman up as though she were seeing her for the first time. The therapist (this one for her mind, which they insisted was just as necessary as the others, much to her annoyance) was well dressed, short, and trim. Not exactly pretty, but not entirely unattractive either.

  “Well, I disagree.”

  The woman, whose name Jess had again forgotten (which, among other things, she blamed on the pain meds) jotted something down on the tablet in her lap and then met her gaze head on. “When do you think a good time would be then?”

  Jessica considered the question for a moment. “When I can walk,” was the answer she offered up, although ‘how about never’ was what she
really wanted to say.

  “And why is that?”

  Jess rubbed her temples. “Um… look Miss…”

  “Mason.”

  “Right. Miss…. Mason. As you can probably see, I’m not feeling well, and I’d really rather not discuss any of this with you today, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “This is a part of your recovery, Jessica. You know that counseling is a part of the deal here. And, as you probably know, the injuries you’ve sustained are not only physical in nature. Unless you’re superwoman, and let’s face it, none of us are, this has to have taken quite a toll on you.”

  Jess stared blankly until the woman shifted in her seat. “How are the children, Mrs. Clemens?”

  Jess cocked her head. “My children are fine.”

  “That’s great.” The woman jotted something else down on her notepad. “I see them here occasionally. And I’m glad to hear they visit so often. It’s good for all of you.”

  How would you know what’s good for any of us? You don’t know me. You don’t know my family, Jess wanted to shout and might have had her head not felt so foggy.

  “Miss…” Jessica blanked again before composing herself... “I really am very tired, and I have a full afternoon of actual therapy ahead of me, so if you’ll just excuse yourself—seeing that I’m unable to show you out since I’m stuck in this chair and all, well, I would really appreciate it.”

  “Mason. It’s Ms. Mason. And no, I’m sorry, but I will not... excuse myself.” The woman glanced at her watch and then back at Jessica. “We have exactly forty-seven minutes left in our session. And I have a job that I’m obligated to do during those forty-seven minutes. So, if it’s all the same to you, I will just sit right here.”

  Jessica tried to wipe the stunned look off her face, but was likely unsuccessful. For the first time in as long as she could remember, someone had actually told her no.