by Jamie Kain
How could she know?
I hear footsteps coming down the hall toward us, and I look up to see Sin carrying a bottle of Coke and a bag of chips.
“Asha, come on.” He reaches out a hand to me.
So I do the only thing that makes sense now. I take his hand and let him lead me away.
Thirty-Nine
Rachel
Holy freaking hell, my throat hurts. I open my eyes and try to sort out where I am and why I feel like such crap. It all starts coming back to me. The day, AJ and David’s fight, the dinner, the confession to Asha, the pills, the darkness.
It didn’t work.
I must not be brain-dead, because I’m lying here thinking, right? And I can see that I’m in a hospital room.
I don’t know if I am disappointed or relieved. I feel like my brain is stuffed with cotton, like I can’t make it work at its normal speed. I close my eyes again against the horrible overhead light, and I am all of a sudden shocked at myself.
I screwed it up.
But I hadn’t planned it, and I wonder—I guess I will always wonder—if Sarah did plan it. Had she known ahead of time what she was going to do? I have spent all this time thinking no, she hadn’t. She’d done it only because of me, because of what I said, because of my betrayal.
Now though, now that I know how quickly life can seem not worth living anymore, I am not so sure.
Maybe, like me, she hadn’t so much planned her death as wandered into it after a few bad turns.
God, I feel like crap.
I hear the door open. “Rachel.”
It’s Lena’s voice. I look toward the sound, and she sits down on the edge of the bed. Her mascara is streaked like she’s been crying, and I see her eyes well up.
Like, all this grief is for me?
For real?
Hard to believe, but I am groggy from whatever the hell they’re pumping into the IV in my arm, and I do believe it.
“Can you hear me?”
I nod.
She takes my hand in hers. Her skin is cold, and I stare down at the big-ass diamond ring glittering on her finger.
“How do you feel?”
I try to croak out an “Okay” but my throat is dry, and talking hurts more than I expect. It comes out more like a whisper.
I look up to see her watching me. Was she the one who found me? I have questions but don’t feel like asking them right now.
“Oh, Rach, why?”
Where to start? I am so tired by this question, I close my eyes and hope she’ll just go away. I want her here and don’t. The sad thing is, I don’t know who else I’d even want at my bedside right now.
David? No.
AJ? Hell no.
Ravi?
Asha?
Krishna pops into my thoughts. It wouldn’t be so bad if he were here right now.
Instead, the door opens again, and Asha walks in. “You’re awake.”
She sits down on the edge of my bed. She looks like hell, like she hasn’t slept, and I guess that’s the problem. She hasn’t.
“You scared the crap out of me.” She places a hand gently on my thigh. “Please don’t do that again.”
My throat constricts then, and I just nod. I realize she is the person I want here right now, and I’m glad she is.
“Seriously, however bad things seem? It’s going to get better.”
Lena clears her throat softly. “Asha, do you mind giving us a little privacy? I need to speak with Rachel alone.”
Asha looks from Lena to me. I get a feeling maybe she’s worried about leaving me alone with our mother, but I am too tired to wonder why.
“This isn’t the time for any dramatic moments, Lena,” she says finally.
Lena simply stares at her, saying nothing, and I do start to wonder what’s already gone down between these two while I was taking my little vacation from life.
Asha sighs and gets up off the bed. “I’ll be right outside if you need me,” she says to me, and this, somehow, is the most comforting thing I’ve heard in a long time.
When we are alone, Lena bites her lip and gives me a long, meaningful look. “I feel like I did this to you. I know the news about my engagement wasn’t very well timed.”
All of me gets very still, wanting to hear what will come next. Maybe she is waiting for me to give her some response because she starts looking a little uncomfortable, but I still don’t speak.
Finally she says, “I feel like you always got lost in the shuffle. You deserved more from me, Rachel. I want you to know that I know that.”
I can’t keep looking at her. I look down at the ring again instead. White gold, solitaire cut, ridiculous bling on her skinny hand.
After a while she squeezes my arm, sighs, and stands up to go. I try to think of something to say, but I can’t think of anything now.
Apparently, neither can she, because she leaves without saying another word.
I lie there staring at the door, with its long, narrow window of people passing by, for I don’t know how long. When I am about to drift off to sleep, a guy enters the room with a clipboard in his hand. He is wearing a button-down shirt, a tie, and khakis, but no doctor’s white coat.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Raymond. I’m the psychologist here at the hospital.” He extends his hand for me to shake with my non-IV hand, and his grip is big and meaty.
He looks down at his clipboard for a few seconds, then back up at me. “So, Rachel Kinsey, how are you feeling?”
“Awful.”
He sits down on the chair closest to my bed and nods. “You had quite a close call there, didn’t you?”
I shrug.
“I’m here to talk to you about what happened and what drove you to attempt suicide last night. Do you feel up to talking right now?”
“Sure.” My throat finally loosens up enough for words. “Might as well get it over with.”
“Your mom tells me you lost your sister recently to an accidental death?”
This, I wasn’t expecting him to bring up. I have told Asha the truth, but telling the whole world that it wasn’t an accident freaks me out, so I say nothing.
“Can you talk to me a little about that?”
I think of how heavy this secret has been to carry around, and I think of Krishna again for some reason, how he seems to see through me, and how good that feels. Maybe that’s how I want it to be from now on—me completely see-through, hiding nothing.
“I was there when it happened.”
“That must have been very hard for you,” he says softly.
Yeah. Hard. That’s one word for it. “The thing is, it wasn’t an accident.”
Now that I’ve said it aloud, there’s no taking it back, and I feel more relieved than I expected.
“What do you mean by that?”
I take a deep breath. “She jumped. I saw her do it. And I couldn’t tell anyone. I was too afraid.”
He nods and scribbles something on his clipboard. “Tell me more about that.”
How do I tell this guy the whole messy story? I can still see the scene so clearly in my head—when I try to go to sleep at night, when I wake up in the morning, it’s always there.
So I just tell him.
I tell him about me and David, and the hitchhiker, and the hit-and-run, and how Sarah had been driving, and how I was talking to her that day on the trail, making her feel worse and worse about what she’d done.
By the time I have said it all out loud, I am stunned at myself, at all the decisions I could have made along the way to change things.
I could have been a good sister for once. I could have left things alone with David when I’d seen how he wanted me. Then they wouldn’t have been arguing that night driving home from the coast, and Sarah wouldn’t have been distracted, and she wouldn’t have killed Brandon.
And after, even after all that had happened, I could still have chosen not to be a raging bitch about the whole thing. I could have tried to help Sarah instead of hurting her more.
“It sounds like you’re carrying a heavy burden on your conscience.” Dr. Raymond makes another note on his pad.
“No shit,” I whisper.
“What do you think you could do next to relieve some of that burden?”
“I guess I could let the police know about the accident, but then that would get David in trouble.”
“Do you believe we should have to face consequences for our actions?”
“I just tried to kill myself, didn’t I? That seemed like a good consequence for totally fucking my sister’s life.”
“Perhaps David needs to face the consequence of covering up the accident. Would you agree?”
I shrug. “I guess that’s not my problem.”
“You’re right, it’s out of your hands. And for yourself, perhaps there’s a better outcome than you committing suicide?”
I say nothing.
“What do you think that might look like?”
I’m getting kind of sick of the psychology talk, which reminds me of the stupid sessions Lena use to make us attend after the divorce. But I think of Krishna then, of what he would do right now, and I decide he’d go along. He’d cooperate. He wouldn’t tell this guy to go screw himself.
So I go along because Krishna is maybe the first person I’ve ever met who makes me feel totally quiet inside.
“Maybe I try to make up for what I did wrong?” I finally say.
“Can you think of any ways you might go about doing that?”
“I guess … tell the police what I know? And tell my family.”
“That sounds like a good start. Anything else?”
I try to imagine what my life’s being okay would look like, but I can’t. I just picture me feeling like shit, knowing I have to live with the fact that Sarah’s life ended because of me. I didn’t like her when she was alive, but now that she’s gone, all I can see is what a petty, selfish brat I’ve been all along.
“I don’t know.”
“Who are you closest to in your life?”
“No one.” The truth is like slapping myself in the face.
I’m not close to anyone because I’ve treated everyone around me like crap. But I think of Asha, and I guess she’s the one, however not-close we may be.
“No one at all? Not even a family member?”
“Maybe my little sister, Asha, but, like, we’re not really close.”
“Is that something you’d like to change?”
Fuck this, is what I think. And then, no, that’s the kind of thinking that got me here in the first place. I want to do something different.
“Yes,” I say.
“Do you have any friends?”
“Not close ones. I’ve been too busy with guys.”
“Tell me a little more about your relationship with Asha.”
And I do. I tell him the whole sad tale of our lives leading up to now. As I talk, the obvious trend emerges—the middle-child cliché—that I have always been jealous of how close Asha and Sarah were. I always wanted that kind of sisterhood with them, and I always felt like the odd one out. By the time I am done talking, I know what I have to do.
I couldn’t be a good sister to Sarah, but maybe, if Asha can forgive me, I could work on not being such a bitch to her.
Forty
Sarah
I feel Rachel near.
She is a soft breeze rustling my memory.
Then nothing.
She is gone again.
Brandon is still at my side. We are outside now, in the shade of a building, sorting through a box of toys that belonged to Asha.
My sweet little sister. She is not the squeaking, furry mouse toy or the wooden blocks with the paint chipped and fading. She is not any of these old bits of the past, yet I feel as if to let any one of them go will be to lose her forever. I touch each one, hold the toys close, reverently as if cradling a newborn baby in my hands.
Brandon watches me. “It’s not me you’re here for,” he finally says.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not here for me.”
I look at him, surprised now, because I remember I did feel as if I had someone to find, as if I was here for a reason.
“I’ve been waiting for you. But you, you’re waiting for someone else.”
He’s been waiting for me. I take this in. “How did you know?”
“Know that you’d be coming?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Rachel,” I whisper. “She’s not coming.”
“Who’s Rachel?”
“My sister. She was there when I died.”
“I guess that’s the thing—we wait for the ones who saw us pass on.”
Pass on. Such a strange phrase, I used to think. I hated when anyone would refer to the possibility of my passing on from cancer. And now, I see it is truer than I ever imagined.
We do pass on.
“She’s not coming,” I say again.
He nods, as if he agrees, even though he can’t possibly know. And I put down the toy block I’ve been holding, the letter A.
She’s going to be okay.
Maybe they all are. I don’t know. And that’s the thing—I have to stop wondering, because it’s not my business anymore.
Leaning forward, I kiss him softly. So soft it might not have happened at all.
The light around us grows brighter, and brighter still, until everything around me begins to fade away. I feel Brandon’s hands on mine, and then I feel them slip away. It’s not a sense of loss though that fills me.
It’s light, peace, a feeling of forever.
Forty-One
Rachel
My first day home from the hospital, I am not sure who I am anymore. I feel as if I have been hollowed out with a rough tool, and an inflated, jittery balloon is in my chest where my heart should be. I am raw inside. Everything hurts, but if you asked me to point to what’s bothering me, I can’t.
Lena, put out by the idea that she has to be around watching over me, making sure I don’t try to off myself again, is downstairs in the kitchen slamming cabinet doors, rustling around. I can hear her talking on the phone, making some kind of plans.
I fall asleep, and sometime later I wake up and hear Ravi’s voice downstairs. Our father, who was apparently in New York for a business meeting when the shit went down, has flown back here and is downstairs?
Yes, he definitely is.
I hear Lena sounding annoyed again. Then the front door slams, her heels click-click to the car, and I hear the sound of her car driving away. I don’t bother getting out of bed because of the raw feeling, and I am so, so sleepy. I cannot imagine what the fucking point is of anything at all. I shut out whatever dumb advice the psychologist gave me because it’s all too much right now, and I put my head under the pillow and wish the world away.
But after footsteps on the stairs, and a tapping on my door, Ravi’s voice is calling for me, and then his weight is on the edge of my bed.
“Rachel, my sweet girl.” He rubs his hand along my shoulder.
He has not called me his sweet girl in forever. I lie still, waiting to hear more.
“I got here as soon as I could. I’m sorry it took me so long.”
My response is to keep breathing, in, out, in, out. It’s all I can think to do.
“How are you feeling?”
Something about his tone wakes me up a little. “Like shit.”
He laughs. “That’s my girl.”
When he pushes the pillow aside from my face, I let him, and I can see he’s been crying. His eyes are red and puffy, the way they were at Sarah’s funeral.
I wonder how much he knows now, but that’s not a question I have the energy to ask or even wonder for long.
“I’m going to stay here tonight. I can sleep here in your room, or downstairs on the couch, wherever you’d like, okay?”
This idea, of my dad sleeping here to watch over me, more than anything else that has happene
d since the day Sarah died, levels me. Would knock me down flat if I weren’t already lying in bed.
I feel so much grief I can hardly catch my breath to brace for it. I let out a strange, desperate sound as it hits me.
He rubs my shoulder some more. “Does that mean you want me downstairs?” he says in his signature wry tone, so much sweeter than I deserve.
“No,” I manage to choke out.
“You want me to sleep in your room?”
The state of my throat, closed off to words now, forces me to nod yes.
“Good.” He sits there for a while, not saying anything. Then: “I’m going downstairs to find some tea. Can I make a cup for you too?”
I nod again, and I feel his weight disappear from the side of the bed. His footsteps trail out my bedroom door and down the stairs. I guess he left my door open because a few minutes later I don’t hear anything but sense the presence of someone in the hallway.
It’s Asha, I guess, because who else would it be? I don’t have the energy to look, but whoever it is keeps standing there, so finally I peer over my pillow, and I see my sister standing in the doorway, her arms crossed, her eyes hollow and tired looking.
“Hi,” she says, but doesn’t step inside.
I guess she’s waiting for an invitation. I can’t remember the last time I allowed Asha to set foot in my bedroom, but when I look back at the past ten years, during which we went from being sisters to enemies, I can’t quite imagine what she did that was so awful. I know she didn’t deserve to be shut out. Maybe I did, but not her.
“You can come in.”
I remember now how she acted at the hospital—concerned, protective—and I wonder if she’s always been that way and I just never noticed.
I wonder who she is. And who I am, this strange, new postapocalyptic creature who can’t get out of bed.
Pushing myself up onto my pillows, I sit up with a great effort and wrap my arms over my chest, draw my knees up close. Asha sits down on the part of the bed that’s empty now. She grabs a throw pillow and leans back against it, making herself at home.
Then she says nothing, and I am so grateful to have her there, silent, not trying to turn this into some kind of fucking lesson or sisterly moment or whatever.