by Nancy Rue
Sully closed his eyes. Pray for Demi. This could be her cruelest spring ever. Who said that? Who said April was the cruelest month?
Dude, pray.
He breathed, long. Let the thoughts come . . . the prayer thoughts . . . Light of the World . . . blaze through the darkness . . . the darkness cannot put You out . . .
—Except the red lights—the flashes—swallowed by the night— by the inky blackness.
He cupped his hands to his face, pulled the Light to himself. Sometimes if he said it out loud . . . “You are the Life-Light. Be my Light to live by—shine through me to her.”
—You can’t help me, Sully—she says you can’t help me—I have to listen to her.
“You are the Life-Light—bring me into the Light.”
—Turn into the slide! Don’t hit the brakes, baby.
—The red lights—flashes of alarm—spasms of panic.
Come on. “Every person who enters, You bring into the Light.”
—or out—out and into the black—in long silence from the shrieking skid—lights gulped away—
“No—into the Light.”
“Sullivan?”
Sully bolted out of the chair, across the office, into the fading light of the garage. Demi—how much had she heard?
How much had he said?
She was backlit in the big doorway, hand on the metal frame, peering in.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Were you on the phone?” She moved her thumb toward the Jeep. “I can wait, if you want.”
“Absolutely not,” he said. “You ready to go to work?”
With a nod she passed him and went straight to the office. In the doorway, she turned and surprised him by smiling. “You coming?” she said. “I have to get this done, Dr. Crisp.”
Light shone in her eyes. The red ones lurking in the back of his thoughts winked out. By the time he got to his chair, Demi was pulling something from her purse.
“I brought this again,” she said. “If this is going to happen, I have to do the homework.”
Sully looked at the family photo she propped against the rock paperweight on his desk. The pixie-haired girl smiled obediently at him.
“Have you been talking to her?” Sully said.
Demi gave him the wry look. “No. I can’t bring myself to do it”
“How come?”
“In the first place, I don’t know when and where I’ll have the chance. There are three of us living in a space big enough for one five-year-old. Jayne already knows I talk to myself in the bathroom mirror.”
Sully grinned at her. “Doesn’t everybody?”
“Do you?” she said, and then shrank behind a raised hand. “Sorry—I shouldn’t ask you personal questions.”
“Demi—relax. You’re focused on your stuff now. You aren’t going to do anything inappropriate.”
She studiedly recrossed her legs.
“Demi.”
She looked at him.
“Trust yourself.”
No word could name the look that worked its way from her throat to her eyes. Sully watched in wonder what he always waited for in therapy, the moment of a genuine shift in feeling.
“It’s hard,” she said finally.
“It is for almost everyone. And most of the time it starts before you’re even five years old.” He nodded toward the picture. “By the time you were that age, you were probably already questioning yourself.”
Demi grunted. “Are you kidding? I don’t remember when I wasn’t. ”
Sully turned his gaze on the posed woman in the center of the photo. “No help from Mom?”
Sully watched the tiny lines at the corners of her mouth harden into stiff threads.
“Do we have to talk about her?” she said.
Sully felt himself smile sadly. “Not today, but sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with her if you want to get better.” He leaned back. “I’m going to let you make the rules on this one. Tell me what you think is important about your mom helping you.”
“She didn’t ‘help’ me, Sullivan—she told me what to do in no uncertain terms—until the day she died.”
Demi brushed her hand across her mouth, as if she were making sure the words had—finally—crossed her lips. Sully was still sorting out the last phrase, one that didn’t really surprise him.
The mother died, too, and obviously left unresolved issues boiling inside her daughter. Another life trauma, and once again, Demi neglected to mention it.
Sully leaned toward her, arms on his thighs. “I don’t think you realize how much you went through in your life before your affair.”
She frowned. “I’ve known a lot of people who’ve lost their mothers to cancer.”
“How old were you?”
“Thirty-five.”
“And how were things between you when she passed?”
For the first time Demi stared at the picture. Her face worked hard.
“Demi,” Sully said softly, “you’ve come too far to hold back.”
“We had an uneasy truce,” she said finally. “I brought the kids out here to see her every summer. Rich would’ve come, but I didn’t ask him to. She was horrible to him.”
“But you still came.”
“She was my mother.”
“And?”
“She would have made my life miserable otherwise.”
“How so?”
“I wouldn’t have been able to live with the guilt. She was alone— my brothers stayed away.”
“It was all up to you then?” He scooted as close to the edge of the chair as he dared.
She squeezed herself in, opening and closing her hands against her knees. “I guess so.”
“You guess?”
“No—I know! She said it—she said she’d suffered three heartbreaks already, and she couldn’t take any from me. It was up to me. It was always up to me.”
She whipped her face toward the picture, hands still clawing at her kneecaps.
“Right this minute,” Sully said, “what do you want to do?”
“I can’t.”
“I think you can.”
“I want to tear her right out of that picture and rip her into a thousand pieces like she did me—but I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s wrong!”
“To be angry because someone put a burden on you as a child that no adult could possibly bear? That’s wrong, Demi?”
She put her hand to her mouth.
“Let it go.”
“I hate what she did to me! I hate it! I just—”
“Go ahead.”
She snatched up the picture. “I hate what you did to me!” she said between her teeth. “No—I hate you! I was an innocent kid.” The teeth parted, the voice teetered. “I was an innocent, and look what you did to me. You have no right!”
“What about that little girl?” Sully said. “Can you help her?”
Her eyes brimmed. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“What if she were Jayne and someone was telling her she was responsible for the happiness of an adult who didn’t know how to deal with her own pain?”
“I would tell her—”
“Then tell her. Tell Little Demi.”
Demi looked down at the picture, and Sully watched her gather. Slowly a finger came up to touch it.
“Don’t listen to her, sweetie,” she said. Her voice was tender as baby skin. “You’re a child, and that’s exactly what you need to be. She can go to other grown-ups. You just be a kid.”
She cried, the loose, free kind of weeping that he savored in his office. These were the tears that healed.
“What does she want you to do now?” Sully said.
“Little me?” She looked back at the picture. “She wants me to let her sit and cry because her daddy isn’t there for the picture. She misses him, and she’s not allowed to miss him.”
“Then let her miss him,” Sully said. “It’s okay.”
He couldn’t always predict how a person would respond to the first encouragement to parent herself, but Sully knew what Demi would do. He knew she would press the picture to her chest and cross her hands over it and rock forward in an act of purest maternity. He sank back and closed his eyes and let her cry.
Your Light has come, he prayed.
Light that will blink out in the darkness if you can’t stop it. Red light—
“Oh—I’m sorry.”
Sully jerked forward. A disco version of something vaguely familiar erupted from the floor next to Demi’s chair.
She yanked her cell phone from her purse. “I have to take this— it’s my daughter.”
She slipped through the doorway, phone to her ear, talking in the same gentle tone she’d used for her own child-self.
Sully churned around the office. All this stirring up in Demi—that was triggering the flashbacks. Perfectly normal with the anniversary coming up, and too many late nights working on the car.
“Sullivan—I’m sorry.”
Demi was in the doorway, face still tear-streaked, mascara dried in pools beneath her lower lashes.
“I have to go,” she said. She picked up her purse and hung it on her shoulder without wasting a move. “Audrey’s bleeding. I have to get her to the hospital.”
“You okay?”
“I have to be.” She went for the door, but she stopped there. “Can I . . . ?”
“Call me—yes,” Sully said. “We need to follow up.”
She gave him a firm nod and crossed the garage, shoulders resolute. The first shadows of dusk absorbed her.
After the Jeep whined away, Sully wandered, restless, over to Isabella, who looked buffed and expectant. Maybe the flashbacks meant it was time to take her out and get on with it.
Maybe, because he could think of nothing else to do.
CHAPTER THIRTY - TWO
An ambulance, lights still twirling, blocked the emergency entrance when we pulled into Harrison Medical Center, driving my anxiety up several more notches. A trauma ahead of us meant we’d have to wait forever for Audrey to be seen. Miscarriages weren’t usually considered urgent—except by the women they were happening to. Audrey’s quiet crying hadn’t stopped since I’d picked the girls up at Sherman Heights.
“You take her in,” I said to Jayne now. “I’ll park and meet you.”
Jayne climbed out, still with one hand on Audrey like a lifeline.
“You have your insurance card, Audrey?” I said.
Jayne poked her head back in. “Got it,” she said. “Come on, Aud—lean on me.”
I sat, white-knuckling the steering wheel, and watched my waif of a daughter support the wobbly figure as they made their way to the door.
Someone put a burden on you as a child that no adult should have to bear.
Was that happening to Jayne? I shoved the car into gear and wheeled around the ambulance.
Audrey was already in a curtained cubicle when I got inside, and Jayne was helping her into a too-often-washed gown that inevitably gaped open. Her vertebrae poked insistently at the skin of her narrow back.
“I’ve never been in a hospital before,” she said. Her voice was frail.
“I had stitches one time,” Jayne assured her. “It’s not that bad. They give you Popsicles. Well, I was, like, ten . . .” She trailed off and licked her lips. “That was lame,” she muttered.
“It was perfect,” I whispered to her.
“Okay—looks like we have a few too many people in there.” A ponytailed nurse in a top printed in teddy bears breezed in. “You the mom?”
“She’s like a mom to me,” Audrey said and wrapped her fingers around my arm.
“Are you eighteen?” The nurse didn’t look up from Audrey’s chart.
“Yes.”
“We’re good to go then. You’ll need to wait in the waiting area.” She gave it a beat too long before she finally glanced at Jayne. “Where the chairs are.”
Jayne begged me with her eyes.
“I’ll come out in a minute,” I said. “How about you get us some hot chocolate?”
She nodded, glared at the nurse’s teddy-beared back, and hooked her arm around Audrey’s neck.
“Love you,” Audrey said.
“Love you more,” Jayne said.
The nurse patted the examining table and nodded Audrey toward it. Now glaring at the teddy bears myself, I put an arm around Audrey’s waist and boosted her up.
“After I examine you, she can come back in and give you support,” the nurse said.
Audrey’s frightened eyes went to me as she lay back on the table. “Support for what? Am I going to lose my baby?”
I stroked Audrey’s forehead. “You know what? Whatever happens, we’ll handle it, because we’ve got God.”
“And you.”
She closed her eyes and let the nurse slip her feet into the stirrups. Her fingers were still raking my arm.
Nurse Ponytail settled onto a stool and peered into Audrey.
“Ever had a pelvic exam before?” she said.
Audrey shook her head. Her face paled, leaving the dark eyes big and soulful as a puppy’s.
“It’s easier if you relax,” I said.
“No need—done.” The nurse tapped Audrey’s knees. “You can scoot back now.”
“Am I losing the baby?” Audrey said.
“Doesn’t look like it.” Nurse Ponytail peeled off a glove and dropped it deftly into a waste can. She had yet to make eye contact with either of us.
“You’ve spotted some, but you’re not dilating—I don’t see any fetal tissue.” She pulled off the other glove and went for the sink. “The doctor will give you the final word,” she said over running water. “He’ll be here in—well, he’ll be here.”
“You can bring the other one in,” she said over her shoulder as she sailed out.
Audrey devoured me with her eyes. “Does that mean I’m not having a miscarriage?”
“I think it means it’s hopeful,” I said.
She sighed, and I watched her settle her face. “Okay. I can hope.”
Her fingers loosened on my arm, but I didn’t move away.
“You know what’s weird?”
“I know a lot of things that are weird,” I said dryly. “What are you thinking of?”
“I was so scared when I found out I was pregnant—like, I didn’t know what to do. But I’m even more scared about losing her.”
“Her?” I said.
“I think she’s a girl.” Audrey reached across herself, plastic hospital bracelet dangling on her tiny arm, and put her hand against my cheek. “And I’m going to name her Demitria Jayne.”
I pressed a kiss to her palm.
Jayne slipped in sideways through the part in the curtain. “The nurse said I could come in till the doctor comes.” She rolled her eyes. “I bet she doesn’t give anybody Popsicles.”
“Will you two be okay?” I said. “I have to make a phone call.”
“Don’t leave me, Jay,” Audrey said.
But I wasn’t two steps outside the curtained cubicle when Jayne was on my heels. “Mom!” she whispered.
“Everything looks okay, Jay,” I said.
“No—I wanted to tell you.” She stopped me with a grab at my sleeve and looked furtively over my shoulder.
“What?”
“Dad is here.”
I tried to keep the Demi-on-top-of-things face in place, but Demithe-firefighter’s-wife trampled her.
“What’s wrong—is he okay?”
“Mom!”
I turned to look at Jayne, who trailed me toward the front desk, where I hadn’t known I was going.
“It’s not him, Mom,” Jayne said. “One of the other firemen has something that’s no big deal. Dad’s just here with him. I saw him in the hall.” She rubbed my arm. “Chill, okay?”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay. Chilling.”
I kissed the top of her head and let my heartbeat stop battering my eardrums
. Of course. They didn’t bring serious burn victims here— they were air-flighted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Wives were called immediately.
“I thought you’d want to know he was here.” Jayne lowered her voice to a whisper. “In case you didn’t want to run into him.”
That sliced through me.
Okay. Call Mickey, I told myself. I could trust that instinct.
“Go back to Audrey,” I said. I headed outside to use my cell.
Oscar answered their house phone and immediately turned to mush on the other end of the line before I even finished explaining.
“We’ll be there,” he said. I could practically see his plump chin quivering.
“It isn’t an emergency,” I said, but he’d already hung up.
Only when I went back into the building, still folding my phone, did I second-guess myself. Did Audrey need Mickey here, telling her once again how much trouble she was causing? Maybe I should rehearse what I could say to them to stave off a full-out assault.
Or maybe I could just pray.
The thought came to me in a whisper, and I turned to it. I could pray. And I could love. I could trust that.
I slipped back to the waiting area and found the only chair not occupied by a taut body. The pain, the anxiety, the anticipation of sorrow hung over the place like an odor, and I sat down in the midst of it to pray over that part that belonged to me. When it refused to separate from the rest, I breathed it all in.
I hadn’t prayed like that in months.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been there when I heard my name like no one else could say it. Before I even raised my head, I felt Rich above me.
“Hi,” I said. “Who got hurt?”
“Baynes,” he said.
A young rookie, if I remembered right.
“Is he okay?”
“It’s minor.”
His tone brushed me aside. Wrong again. How dare I even bother him . . .
“I was just asking out of concern, Rich.” I stood, annoyance shooting up between my shoulder blades. “I need to get back.”
“To that girl.”
I paused and turned my head slowly back to him. “That girl,” I said.
“Jayne told me she’s pregnant and she’s living with you.” His eyes cut down to slits.