by Roy, Deanna
Corabelle gasped, turning to me, her face so white I could not imagine she still had blood in her veins. I jumped up, but the man was latching the sides down. The minister paused as he saw me.
Corabelle jerked her hand from me. I had failed her. She had only asked this one thing, and I hadn’t followed up, hadn’t spoken to the staff.
“Sit down, boy,” my father bellowed.
But the roar in my ears drowned out everything but the fact that I didn’t belong here, didn’t deserve that boy, or Corabelle. I had nothing to offer anyone but incompetence or rage. The minister tried to go on with his blessing, but I couldn’t listen to another word. I took off down the aisle, stripping off the foul jacket and leaving it on the floor. The tie was so tight on my neck that I jerked it off, discarding it by the door as I pushed through.
I needed to get away. I couldn’t bear Corabelle’s distress over the coffin, my father’s condescension.
The Camaro sat waiting for me, firing up with an easy twist of the ignition. I squealed out of the spot, no idea where I was going, but the clanging in my head didn’t start to ease until I was outside the city, the desert stretching in every direction. The blankness of the scenery and the long stretch of empty road suited me. Nobody to piss me off. Nobody to let down. Nobody anywhere near me at all.
~*´♥`*~
I’d lost control that day. Control of my temper. My actions. My responsibilities.
The ICU was quiet except for the humming of machines, soft beeps, and the whir of Corabelle’s ventilator by my head. It didn’t sound like Finn’s, I remembered that now. His had been more metallic, like the choppy blades of a helicopter. Hers was a soft wheeze in and out.
The sheet beneath her arm was wet. I had been crying. Stupid.
No, not stupid. Normal. It was normal and fine, and I shouldn’t hear my father’s words, “Don’t be a damn sissy,” as he smacked me across the top of the head. I should forget his lessons, his ridicule, no longer let it penetrate.
He had rarely actually hurt me. I don’t think the town would have stood for beatings, black eyes, or real injuries. His form of discipline had been a hard shove or a hearty backhand, enough to knock me around but just light enough for witnesses to shrug it off as “family business” rather than “call the cops.”
Maybe it was the attitude that hurt more, the indication that I was a failure in everything, that even if something was going right, I’d eventually screw it up.
I had given him too much power. As a little kid, maybe it made sense. He was my father, big and important and in a position to tell me what to do and when to do it.
But now, he was nothing. I didn’t see him, talk to him. I had no reason to be like him at all. I didn’t even have to know him.
How much could we escape our past? Corabelle and I had been trying, ever since that first day on the beach when I drew that line in the sand and she stepped away from our history and into our future. Now here we were, and everything about this place we’d landed in was so much like where we’d been that I could scarcely bear it.
At least the business with Rosa was behind me. Her cousin was surely right. Rosa needed a champion, and I’d simply been the easiest target. I’d figure out a way to block her number. Tijuana was in my past, like my father. I’d spend the rest of my life trying to fix all the screwups I’d made in the first eighteen years. The disappearing act. The vasectomy. The father rage.
I had to believe I could do it.
The sheet had already begun to dry. I laid my head back down, shifting so that I leaned against the bed frame, still mostly hidden if someone just glanced over. Weariness began to take over everything else.
16: Corabelle
The second time to awaken in the hospital was far worse than the first. My mouth hurt, lips bruised, like I’d been struck in the face.
My lungs were cement blocks, heavy and stiff. Every breath was a struggle but the air was strange, sweet almost, and cold. Something tickled my nose and I lifted my hand, feeling the tube running inside my nostrils. I was on oxygen.
“She’s coming around,” a voice said, female but low, and I pictured Large Marge from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. My eyes seemed glued together. I blinked, trying to clear them.
“Here, honey, let me get a cloth,” another female voice said, this one lighter and higher, and I envisioned a perky young nurse in a white cap and starched uniform.
The sounds weren’t right for my room. Too many machines, too many beeps. “Where am I?” I asked, my voice horrid and croaky.
“You’re in ICU,” the deeper voice said. My gown shifted at the neck, exposing skin to the air. “I’m going to take another listen, then we’re going to roll you to X-ray to check on your progress.”
“How long have I been here?”
“About 24 hours.”
Something cool touched the skin of my chest. I wanted to rub my eyes, get the gunk away so I could open them, but only one hand was free. On the other I could feel the weight of an IV and the length of a tube across my shoulder. “What happened?”
“You had a complication called pleural effusion, where fluid gets trapped in the lining of your lungs. You went into respiratory arrest.”
She moved what I assumed was the disc of a stethoscope to another part of my chest. “Can you breathe deeply for me?”
I tried to focus on drawing in a breath, but the sharp pain was so acute that I gasped and let the air out too quickly.
She placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “That’s okay. Relax.”
The hand and the disc withdrew and now a warm cloth covered my eyes. The lighter voice said, “We’ll get this cleared up.”
I was a mess. Another day gone. Definitely not going to class tomorrow. I wondered if Gavin had tried to come back. Tears pricked my eyes.
The cloth withdrew. “Try to open now.”
I blinked, still feeling the stickiness, but now my lashes were willing to part. The room was dim, and two women stood over me, one in a white coat, the other in sea-green scrubs.
“We want to see where we are with the effusion,” the doctor said, and I was able now to match her voice to her body. No Large Marge, but she was definitely tall, stately, and older than I expected, her gray hair tight in a French twist. “I’m Dr. Adams. I’ve been with you since you came to ICU. Apparently you went on a little expedition and collapsed?”
That’s right. The bereavement room. The pacifier. I nodded. “Is Gavin here?”
The doctor looked over at the nurse.
“She must mean the young man we found sleeping by your bed last night,” the nurse said. “Dark hair, brutally handsome?”
He’d been here! “Yes.”
“He’s in the waiting room. So are your parents. We haven’t let them back.”
“Are they — fighting?”
The nurse patted my arm. “They are worried about you.”
The doctor picked up an iPad and tapped a few things in. “You’re going to X-ray. I’ll come by later today and we’ll see how you look. Hopefully we can get you back to a regular room again soon.”
“Thank you,” I said.
The doctor moved beyond the curtain.
“Will we go by the waiting room?” I asked the nurse.
“No, we have a back way.”
My face must have fallen, because she said, “If it looks good, you’ll be able to see him.”
“Is my phone here?”
She shook her head. “All your things are with your parents.”
Great. Thankfully I had a pass code on the phone or they might have deleted anything Gavin wrote.
“I’m going to load up a few items,” she said, clamping my IV to the side of the bed, “and we’ll be on our way.”
I closed my eyes, still fighting the heaviness of my chest, wishing I would just get better. But Gavin was here, had been with me. He wasn’t gone. I didn’t care where he’d been, just that he was back.
17: Gavin
We’d been si
tting in those chairs all day, but nobody had spoken a word.
Corabelle’s parents sat in the far corner of the ICU waiting area, her mom knitting and her dad reading the newspaper for what had to be the tenth time.
I had given up on contacting her when I sent a message and heard her phone chirp from her mother’s bag. Rosa had messaged me three times too, but I’d found a way to make her ringtone silent and the messages automatically move to a buried folder, so I didn’t notice her anymore.
The nurse who’d found me sleeping on the floor by Corabelle’s bed had been nice about it. She led me out into the waiting room and said the staff would let me know if she could be visited.
The doctors never spoke directly to me, but the waiting room was small enough that when they stopped by to update Corabelle’s parents, I could hear. I knew she’d been put on the ventilator only as a precaution, to help her lungs, and that it was coming out sometime today.
I felt utterly helpless.
Jenny breezed through the door, pausing to look around, then hurried toward me. “Oh my God, how is she?”
Corabelle’s parents looked up, watching us, eyes on Jenny’s vivid pink mop, wild and unrestrained above her green coat. She looked like a Pez dispenser.
“Still in ICU.”
“You said that in your text. But really. What happened?”
I shrugged, but didn’t miss the way Corabelle’s mom stiffened, her knitting needles still. She knew something about what had led to the relapse, or complication, or whatever the hell it was. “Ask her parents. They had me thrown out.”
Jenny followed my line of sight to the Rothefords. “Huh,” she said, her voice low now. “I can see where she gets her looks, but what is with the geektastic dad?”
I stifled a laugh. “He’s very teacherly, isn’t he?”
“Is he?”
“Nah. Banking or accounting or something like that.”
“I can see it.” She turned back to me. “I thought she was getting better.”
“She was. Sitting up. Walking.” And responding, I thought, remembering the night after I snuck back in. Damn. Hopefully that hadn’t put her over the edge.
Jenny propped her black fuzzy boots on a chair across the aisle. “She was pretty upset at you yesterday. You weren’t responding to her texts. She seemed to think she was getting out, but you had her keys.”
“She was in ICU when I got here.”
“What happened to you yesterday?”
I looked beyond her to the wide desk of the ICU, flanked by doors. No way was I telling Jenny about my jaunt to Mexico. “Work, stuff. I came when I could.”
She unzipped her puffy green coat. “So what’s the story with you and the parents?”
“Not too friendly.”
“They still mad about your exit strategy?”
“Probably from now till the end of time.”
Jenny tugged a turtle-shaped backpack onto her lap. “Can’t blame them.” She unzipped a pocket and withdrew a shiny packet of chocolate-covered espresso beans. “For Corabelle. She goes nuts for these.”
I took the gift, tied in a bright ribbon that Jenny had decorated with the words “Cora Pumpkin Spice Frozen Latte Dish Room Wallbanger.”
I had to laugh. “Nice.”
“Kiss her for me.” She leaned over and mussed my hair. “But probably not until you’ve had a shower. Dude, you would scare small children.”
Her words made me think of Manuelito on the porch, holding his green truck. I had to swallow before I forced a light answer. “Scaring small children is my specialty.”
Jenny jumped up. “Let me know if she gets back in a room. She was out cold the first time I came. I missed her whole lucid period.” She took a few bouncy steps away, then turned back around. “You all—” she said loudly, getting the attention of the whole room, “should help those people,” she pointed to Corabelle’s parents, “and this guy,” she aimed a finger at me, “remember that they have something in common. A girl in there.” She thrust her hands over her head to gesture to the ICU.
With a fierce nod, she loped out of the room.
Corabelle’s dad looked ready to pop, his face was so red. “Who was that?” he asked.
“Don’t shout so,” Mrs. Rotheford said. “Gavin, come over here.”
I unfolded myself from the chair and moved down the row to sit opposite them. This was unexpected. “That’s Jenny. She works with Corabelle at the coffee shop. They also take astronomy together. We all do. The three of us.”
“She seems very…original,” Mrs. Rotheford said.
“Loud,” Mr. Rotheford added.
“Both. She’s good for Corabelle. Keeps her from getting too serious.”
Mrs. Rotheford set down her knitting. “I’ve been wondering something.” She glanced over at her husband, who was staring at his newspaper as if I didn’t exist. “Why is it that Corabelle is working at a place like that? She had such a good job in New Mexico.”
Hell. More questions that I shouldn’t be fielding. I was a Class A bullshitter, though. “She needed a break from all that pressure. Slinging beans is easy work.”
“At least she has scholarships,” Mr. Rotheford said, surprising us. “Hate to think how much debt she’d be in if she didn’t.”
So they didn’t know any of it. Why Corabelle had left, that she’d lost everything. I didn’t blame her. For a girl like her, the pride her family felt was everything. I was lucky I had no such constraints.
Time to make good on the promises I’d made on the floor of the ICU. I leaned over and fished Corabelle’s keys out of my back pocket. “You guys might want these. I went over there and took out her trash and checked on things. But at work I can’t get to my phone, grease and all.” I held them out. “You are up here all day.”
Her father took the keys greedily, clutching them in his fist. I felt the power shift again, like I had when I’d let him stand over me. I recognized that he needed to feel some control, since so much had been taken away from us.
A nurse wound her way through the chairs. “Are you all the Rothefords?”
“We are.” Corabelle’s father gestured to himself and his wife.
“I’m Gavin,” I told her.
“Ah, so you’re the young man she keeps asking about.” The nurse smiled. “She’s doing fine. I think the doctor updated you?” At their nod, she went on. “We should see her moved back to a regular room tomorrow if tonight goes well.”
Mrs. Rotheford let out a relieved sigh. “Can we see her?”
“I have the doctor’s okay to let you in for just a few minutes.”
All three of us stood up, but Corabelle’s father shot daggers at me. “He’s not—”
Mrs. Rotheford squeezed his arm to cut him off. “He’s like family.”
The nurse nodded. “It will be fine.”
We followed her out of the waiting room and through the pass-code door. The curtains were still as I remembered, and Corabelle lay with her head just slightly elevated near the center.
Mrs. Rotheford stumbled when she saw all the monitors, and I knew exactly how she was feeling after last night. At least they had been spared the big blue tube snaking into her mouth and the wheeze of the machines.
“Hi, Mom,” Corabelle said, her voice cracked and weak. “You guys look terrible.”
“Not half as bad as you,” her dad said.
Her eyes rested on me, then back to her father. “You call a truce?”
I came around the opposite side and knelt next to her. “Don’t worry about us. You doing better?”
“I’d rather be in astronomy.”
“Now I know you’re delirious,” I said. “I better call a nurse.”
She lifted her hand to smooth back my hair. “You look like you slept on the floor.”
I glanced up at her parents, who stared at her like she was going to disappear any minute. “You heard about that?”
“It was quite the talk of the nurses.” Her eyes grew wide and
she sucked in a breath, then coughed weakly. Her next breath was wet and rattling, and seemed to take all her strength to pull in.
I took her hand, and she squeezed it.
Her mother held on to her other arm above the IV. “You shouldn’t talk,” she said. “You still have a long way to go.”
Corabelle nodded and closed her eyes. “No more taking off down hallways.”
I frowned. What was she talking about?
Her parents looked shaken and guilty. Something had happened. I lifted her hand to my lips. “I’ll be right here. I’m not leaving for a minute.”
She opened her eyes again. “I know.” She turned her head to her dad. “Be nice to him, please?”
Mr. Rotheford nodded, his eyes glistening. “Of course, baby.”
“You used to be close.” Her voice began to trail off.
The nurse came up behind us. “Let’s let her rest. You all should take a little break and go home. There won’t be any more visiting her until tomorrow.”
I laid her hand back on the bed, clenching my jaw to keep from getting too emotional.
Her parents, ever obedient, followed the nurse right out, but I lingered as long as I could get away with, until she stood in the doorway and said, “It’s time.”
Mr. and Mrs. Rotheford waited out by the desk. When I came out, he passed me Corabelle’s keys. “Seems like you’ve been taking care of things.”
I held the heavy ring in my palm. “I have tried, sir.”
“We’ll see you tomorrow, I trust?”
“Absolutely.”
“All right then.” He turned to the door and walked with his wife over to the elevators.
I stared at the keys and the silver butterfly on a chain that held them together. I wasn’t sure what had made him change his mind. It felt like that moment in the parking lot of the funeral home, when I was screwing up, walking out, and he had told me I could do it, I could help his daughter.
I would not let him down.
18: Corabelle