by Devon Ashley
Breath escaped me. We’d been friendly through the weeks, comforting one another with touch. Our faces had come close but never this close.
A sudden jolt of electricity practically fried my brain out, shattering my train of thought.
Brady…
What was I doing?
This was Brady’s brother.
…but in a way, I could look at him and see a completely different person. Their skin tones were slightly different, as were their eyes. Not just in color but in expression. Brady’s were always filled with such laughter, always instigated the same reaction from me. But the set peering at me right now were so serious, yet loving all the same. And as much as I tried, I wasn’t able to break the hypnotizing way they held me in place.
My feet were the first thing to react, and they took a surprising step back. Owen’s hand fell away, his eyes analyzing my every move, gauging my reaction.
I licked my bottom lip, swallowed to wet my throat. My mouth opened and I willed myself to say something. Anything. But what got me out of my daze was the ring coming from my pocket. I shook myself awake and stumbled to pull it out. Sarah. I denied the call and looked back to Owen. He was still waiting for me to give him something, but he seemed to realize the chance for a positive reaction had run its course.
My phone emitted two tones, alerting me to a text message. I let out an annoyed sigh. How the hell could her timing be so impossibly bad? I didn’t know what I wanted to say to Owen, or what I wanted to feel. But now he had this look on his face like nothing was going to recover this moment.
When the phone rang again, I accepted the call, hardly taking the time to even notice it was Sarah calling again. Frustrated, I immediately shouted, “What? I just can’t right now!”
“Tessa, it’s your grandma.”
That was all it took to break me. Tears flooded my eyes – like I knew. I just knew. From the tone in Sarah’s voice to this feeling deep inside me. Something had gone horribly wrong.
“What happened?” I choked out. Owen was on me in a flash, pulling the phone from my hand and hitting the speaker button before Sarah got her first word out.
“I think it’s her heart. EMS is enroute.”
“What? How do you know that?” I cried.
“The paramedics were eating dinner at the bar. I was right there when their radio went off for your address. They said the person had chest pains.”
“We’re coming,” Owen answered.
Once again I was stunned still, but Owen took my hand and pulled me into motion, running all the way back to the car and guiding me into the passenger seat before getting in himself.
My heart was pounding, arms wrapping around my body and tightening their hold. Owen peeled out of the parking spot, speeding all the way back to town, both of us completely silent.
It was Brady all over again. Please be okay. Please be okay. I couldn’t lose Nana too. Not Nana.
I was first to fly out of the car and slam into the back door of the shop, but my trembling hands couldn’t get the key into the lock. But Owen was right there, taking it from me and getting it done. I burst past the door and straight through the shop, shouting out for Nana. Bright lights were glittering outside the front shop windows, begging for attention. But as I slammed into the front door the ambulance was already pulling away.
“NO!” I shouted, slapping my palm hard against the door. My hand instinctively went for the knob, suddenly realizing they had broken the locking mechanism getting inside. “Wait!” I screamed before I could even step all the way outside, taking several steps to chase after them. But they couldn’t see me. Couldn’t hear me over the sirens as their wails filled the air down a darkened Main Street, past the few shop owners who had ventured outside their homes out of curiosity for one of their own.
Tears streamed down my dewy cheeks. Wait… I felt so exhausted. So defeated. So worried.
“Come on,” Owen softly commanded, his fingers slipping in to crisscross with mine. “Hospital’s not far. We can catch up.”
The endless stream of lights dazed me, numbed me. From the eighty-four orange street lights between the shop and hospital, to the rhythmic dance of red and blue way out in the distance, to the florescent light in the corner of the waiting room that continually flickered, fighting for life the way Nana was somewhere beyond those magnetic double doors.
It had only been ten minutes since I chased Nana in here, held back by one of the male paramedics as they pushed her quickly through to someplace I wasn’t allowed to go. Owen was surprisingly quick to catch up and take over restraining me, considering he still had to park the car after I threw myself out of it as he drove by the emergency entrance. Nana’s face had been smothered by something that pumped air into her manually by one of the paramedics, making me deathly afraid she had already passed on. I needed to see her, needed to know she was okay.
Please let her be okay.
Images of Brady flashed through my mind. Of his lifeless body the day he died, and I suddenly pictured Nana’s face pale and expressionless, her spirit passing on from this life just as his had. I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to him, to kiss him one last time. And now Nana was in jeopardy of doing the exact same thing.
My grip on Owen’s shirt intensified and his arms tightened around me even more. My breaths had finally calmed, no longer raspy and hyperventilating like they first were when she was completely out of sight, but I was still far from okay.
I had no idea how long we sat there like that. People came and went, welcomed beyond the double doors I was so rudely pushed away from. At one point Sarah appeared and kneeled before me, but I was too dazed to understand her muffled words. She gave up and picked up the clipboard of paperwork neither of us had touched, and tried to fill it out as best she could. As much as I appreciated that, I didn’t care about their stupid paperwork.
When they finally came for me, I was the only one allowed to go into the intensive care unit to stay with her. The room was so cold and white, sans the blue blanket atop her sheets and matching throwaway plasticware on the table. Her heart had failed, but not before she managed to call 9-1-1. Technically, she was dead on her bedroom floor when the paramedics found her, but they brought her back to life and kept her going. After running an angiograph, they took her in for surgery to put in a coronary stent. Now it was time to play the waiting game and see how well she handled it. Either she was going to wake up again…or she wasn’t.
The vibrating phone on my lap shocked me awake. When did I fall asleep? I roughly rubbed my hands across my face to wake up.
Besides the repetitive beeps of Nana’s heart monitor, it was eerily quiet. And thanks to the windowless rooms and generic circular clock on the wall that neglected to tell you AM or PM, it was impossible to know if it was night or day. All I knew was it was nine-thirteen.
My most recent text was from Sarah – Come out. You need to eat. Apparently it was PM, so Nana had now been in this hospital for an entire day. I wasn’t really hungry, but I did need to move around, so I blindly obeyed her request, ignoring the numerous texts and voice messages which came before. I was in no condition to go through them right now. I kissed Nana on the cheek and softly told her sleeping body I’d be back.
The waiting room was mostly empty, but Sarah wasn’t the only one I recognized. Clarence rose when he saw me. He was spry for an old man, reaching me faster than Sarah did, who held back once she realized he was coming for me, too. I had forgotten I had asked Rose to contact him when she and Helen stopped by today. Sadly, his number was only in Nana’s phone, which was back at the house.
“Clarence!” He embraced me in a quick hug, and judging by the intensity of his grip, he was in desperate need of it. So was I, for that matter, and I wasn’t against holding it a little longer. “How long have you been here?”
He released me and took a step back. “A few hours. I tried calling you. Left a message.”
God, I felt so bad, and my mind immediately remembered the backlog o
f calls and texts sitting on my phone. I needed to address those soon, if it wasn’t too late. “I’m so sorry. I was asleep.”
“It’s okay. I understand. I tried to get in to see her but they’ll only allow family.”
“Yeah,” I admitted miserably. “Sorry. Once she wakes up and gets out of ICU they’ll let her have visitors.”
“How’s she doing?” he asked fearfully.
I released a heavy breath. “Well, she’s breathing on her own, so that’s good. But she still hasn’t woken up.” He was quiet, and his eyes drifted to the floor. He seemed incredibly lonely. I began to wonder if he’d been successful at convincing his daughter to move back home yet. He was a kind, caring man, certainly one who didn’t deserve to feel alone. He also appeared weary. “Why don’t you go home and get some rest? I’ve got your number now, so I can call you if anything changes.”
He was reluctant, but surely he realized it didn’t do him or Nana any good to stay and wait inside this hospital room. “You’ll tell her I stopped by?”
“Of course!” I gently rubbed the back of his shoulder. “Thank you for coming. It means a lot to me.” I tried not to let the tears seep out before he mumbled, “Goodnight,” and headed out.
I wiped away the few tears that managed to escape and went to meet Sarah. She gave me a weak smile before embracing me with a gentle hug that I was slow to let go of.
“How are you?” she asked. I shrugged silently because she already knew the answer. “Come on,” she said, picking up the brown bag she brought with her. “Let’s find the cafeteria.”
A few minutes later we were sitting on opposite sides of a booth in the dining room where only four of the tables were occupied, the food court already shut down for the night. Sarah began pulling one thing after another out of her bag.
“I wasn’t sure what you’d eat, so I brought a selection.”
Loaded baked potato soup, Caesar salad, fried mozzarella sticks, a club sandwich on wheat and a chicken burrito. “Thanks,” I mumbled, mindlessly taking the bottle of water she offered. I grabbed the soup and the fried cheese, because those were the only two speaking to me. Sarah took the burrito.
“Was that your grandma’s boyfriend?” I nodded numbly. “Good looking guy,” she said casually. “Has she woken up yet?”
I shook my head. “Doctors think it could take a few days. They said it wasn’t uncommon for someone in her condition to stay unconscious to heal so she doesn’t stress her body even more.”
From that, Sarah’s expression seemed to become a little more troubled, not unlike my own, hearing the words directly out of my mouth. We both took to eating a few bites of our food in silence.
“Just so you don’t worry,” she began, “Owen fixed the door to the shop so it’s not open or anything for anyone to just walk through.”
I immediately buried my forehead in my hand. “I completely forgot. Oh my God.”
“He also fixed the one at the top of the stairs. I guess they had to break through both to get to her.”
Sarah rummaged through her purse before coming out with a set of keys she slid my way. “Here. You’ll need these to get in. You should go home. Shower. Take a nap and get a change of clothes.”
I aggressively shook my head. “No. No way I’m leaving her for more than a few minutes at a time.”
“Can’t someone else sit with her?”
“They won’t let anyone but family in there. Who am I going to call?” I huffed and spat, “My mom?”
Sarah knew enough about my mom’s antics as of late that she knew not to question bringing her in.
“Okay. I’ll just bring you some fresh clothes in the morning then.”
“Could you grab my phone charger too? It’s about to die.”
“Yeah, sure. Just text me with whatever you need. If I can’t do it I’ll get Rory or Owen to.”
My head continued with the mindless shaking. “Not Owen, okay? He’s already done enough.”
That got her attention, and unfortunately, Owen wasn’t a topic that was off limits between us.
“What’s going on? Why can’t Owen help? Not to sound jealous or anything, but he’s like your closest friend lately. You two are tight now.”
I quietly groaned as I pushed the half eaten bowl of soup away.
“Tessa?” she urged with a tone that made it sound like I’d be in trouble if I didn’t cooperate.
“It’s nothing,” I lied. “I just think a few days apart would do us some good. Get some space.”
Her chicken burrito officially returned to the foil packet it came from. “Why on earth would you need some space? You two have totally needed each other to get over–” My eyes shot north in a direct line of sight to hers, making her pause. “–to heal” she corrected, “from your loss. You’ve been good for each other. What could you possibly need a break from?”
I silently mulled it over.
“Did something happen?”
My lips were reluctant, but finally they moved enough to let the words softly escape. “He kissed me.”
My eyes pinched harder, waiting for the backlash to begin, but all I got was, “Is that all?”
I was still trying to squeeze my eyes shut when a momentary act of bravery got a slit of light to break through. She sat there looking a little dumbfounded. Not at all the expression I was expecting. “Is that all? He kissed me!”
“Yeah, I heard you. But to be honest, I kinda figured you two were already…you know.”
My jaw fell open, slightly astonished by that.
“I’m sorry, Tessa. It’s just you guys have been together for a while now. I figured you just wanted to keep your tryst secret, is all. That’s why I’ve never teased or asked.”
“You thought I was having a secret relationship with Owen? He’s Brady’s brother!”
“Yeah, I know. But…”
“But what?”
Sarah’s mouth flattened into a straight line. “You seem kind of good for each other. Since you’ve been there for each other, it’s like you’re what’s keeping the other alive. We all just kind of figured–”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “You all? Does everyone think this?”
“Well, yeah. Kinda,” she mumbled.
I closed my eyes to the world again. Oh my God, oh my god, oh my God. “Oh, my God,” I finally mumbled aloud. “My boyfriend is dead and all our friends think I was screwing around with his brother this whole time.”
“Well, not this whole time,” she rebutted.
“Why aren’t you mad?” I asked dumbly.
“Well….don’t get me wrong. It’s not conventional. But everyone can see how you’re each saving the other in some way. We’d rather have you together and happy than apart and miserable.”
I couldn’t believe this. Here I was still grieving a little – and Owen too – and everyone else thought we had moved on not only in life but with each other. I just couldn’t believe it. “We’re not together. We’re just friends. Yesterday was the first time he’s ever kissed me.”
“And I take it you weren’t okay with that?” she asked cautiously.
My hands had twisted a paper napkin so much it was finally tearing into tiny pieces. “I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “I just wasn’t expecting it. And now with Nana… My head aches too much to even figure it out.”
Sarah allowed me to sit in silence from there, giving me a rundown on her and Matt, even Rory and the two different guys she’s dated recently. Part of me felt glad for them, but the other part, the more awful part, felt jealous that fate hadn’t done anything to rip their lives apart like mine.
When our food was as eaten as it was going to get, we cleaned up our mess and headed out. I hugged her goodbye outside ICU and thanked her for all she’d done. I tried to give back the keys so she could get my things, but she turned them down, stating Owen still had the other set for that very reason.
I murmured hello and gave the nurses a weak smile as I passed, closing myself off on th
e other side of the sliding glass door for room number six.
Nana was lying peacefully in bed. At least I hoped peacefully, given what she’d been through. Her face seemed relaxed, as if the pain killer mixing with her saline drip kept her that way. I sat down beside her and took her hand in one of mine, the other using my fingers to comb through the tangles in her hair.
“Oh, Nana,” I said softly.
Sitting there watching over her made so many childhood memories come rushing back. Nana reading to me every night, even when I insisted on hearing Alice in Wonderland over and over again. The birthday cake she’d always make me in July even though my birthday was in February. All we could eat ice cream sundaes every Sunday evening. She’d always said she wasn’t spoiling me, she was just more accommodating than most.
She was probably spoiling me, but I firmly believed she was just trying to make up for what I was lacking the other ten months of the year. It was, after all, still the only birthday cake I got each year.
Memories kept flashing through my head and it was difficult to keep the tears from pushing their way through. And looking down at the frail woman she had become made the seriousness of this so much worse. Focusing on the wrinkled hand I was gently stroking with my thumb, I quietly told her, “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I wasn’t supposed to find you after all these years just to lose you again. You know I have no one else. No dad. No siblings. No aunts or uncles. You know all too well what a disappointment Mom is. You’re the only family I have, so you can’t leave me yet. I’m not ready. I don’t have anything figured out.” I swept the moisture off my cheeks, but they just kept coming. “I know it’s selfish of me to ask, but please don’t go. Don’t leave me to do this by myself.”
I groaned upon wakening. It took me a moment to remember where I was. In ICU. In a horrible chair that twisted your body into knots if you slipped down and fell asleep in it. Which unfortunately is exactly what I did. I sat up in pain, my lower back pulsating with aches that seemed to radiate outward and make my entire body feel lethargic and miserable.