by Morgan Black
“Listen, I said that you could just go to the bathroom on your own. You don’t need to talk to me anymore.”
“Skye?”
I sat straight up, panic written all over my face. It wasn’t Deidre at the other end of the line, it was my mother. Someone who I spoke to maybe only once a month, not someone who called me out of the blue. If she was calling, something was wrong. Very wrong.
“Mom?”
I could hear stifled tears on the other end of the line. “Skye, is there anyway you can get away from work? Your grandfather, he’s not well. And he’s asking for you.”
Not well. That was Connecticut speak for dying. The people are so prim and proper up there that they just didn’t say it. “What’s going on, Mom? What’s wrong with Grandpa?”
She sighed heavily. “I’d rather tell you in person.”
I tore the blanket off of me, and walked into my bedroom, opening up drawers, and starting to grab clothes. “Tell me now. How bad is it?”
I was terribly close to my grandfather as a child. There were summers at the cabin that he owned up near Bear Lake. I could remember sitting on the tire swing and going out over the water. Carefree summers like nothing could ever go wrong. Suddenly, they seemed so long ago, so far away. I hadn’t been that carefree since.
“He’s asking for you,” she sighed again, this time I wondered if she would be able to find the words. “He wants you and Leia to come see him.”
I dropped the shirt that I had just pulled out of my dresser, and fell down onto the edge of my bed. Slowly, I melted down into a crumpled pile on the floor. Leia. No one said her name, not anymore.
My twin sister and I had been absolutely inseparable since birth. We had done everything together. We joined cheerleading, and then ballet, and then we took art lessons, but that didn’t last long because I wasn’t very good at it. And, by the time that we were in high school, we were spitting images of one another, all the way down to matching tattoos. But, then things started to change.
Leia became distant and withdrawn. She started seeing a therapist regularly, and they prescribed all sorts of medications for depression and anxiety. The pills made her crazy. She spent hours scribbling down her thoughts and feelings inside these leather bound journals that my parents would buy her. It was terrifying when I would read them. Suddenly, I was also going to a therapist, and my family was doing family therapy twice a week. We were barely keeping our heads above water. My parents were happy in their marriage, but their twin prides and joy were falling apart at the seams. And, then, there was the night of our sixteenth birthday. I remember every second of it, no matter how many times I tried to block it out. But I couldn’t. Not her screams, not the men in the white coats taking her away.
I’d barely spoken to my sister after she was put into the Connecticut Psychiatric Institute. I went to visit her a couple times, but she refused to see me. And, then, when she was nineteen, she checked herself out, and didn’t give a forwarding address. My parents and I hadn’t heard from her in a little over three years. I had no idea where she was, or who she was. Not anymore.
“Skye? Skye are you still there?” I realized I’d had gotten lost in my own head, and I hadn’t responded. “Honey, I think I lost her,” I heard her tell my father.
“Hello? Skye? Are you there?” My father’s voice rattled me back into the present.
“I’m here. Sorry. Dad? Is Grandpa really that bad?”
“Yeah, baby, he is.”
Shit.
I clutched onto the bed for support, and pulled myself back up onto it. My legs were still shaking too much to stand on. “Are we really going to look for Leia? I mean it’s been so long since we’ve tried.”
My parents had hired a private investigator right after she checked herself out. They looked for over six months, but they found nothing. Eventually, they came to my parents, told them that she had probably legally changed her name, and they weren’t going to find anything about her. She was gone. It devastated my parents. They fought for a while, and I stayed away at school, getting closer and closer with my sorority sisters and blocking my family out. The girls never asked about Leia; they didn’t even know that she existed. Sloan didn’t even know I had a sister, and she was practically one of my best friends. I had hidden it for so long, so well. But, now that it was back at the forefront of my mind, it was crushing me from the inside out. I had lost a sister. I was that missing girl from Connecticut’s twin. And, when people would see me sometimes, they would recognize her from the flyers. That was the worst. The look of joy on their faces that they had helped find this missing girl only to learn that she had an identical twin sister. It was awful. And it was why, after college, I had decided to stay down here, and not move back home. Besides, we had friends and other family that still missed her. It wasn’t fair for me to be floating around with her face, living my normal life. I wouldn’t do that to them.
But returning home for Grandpa? I would do that in a heartbeat. Finding Leia? That was another story.
FOUR
I looked out my car window at the stark white building in front of me. I hated hospitals. They made me so uncomfortable. Every time I walked into one, I wondered if this is how Leia felt. Like she was trapped in some white-walled prison, with squeaky clean smiling nurses, and doctors who couldn’t remember your name. At least, that’s how I felt about the Connecticut Psychiatric. Every time I was there, people would smile at me, and tell me how well she was doing, but then she refused to see me. And, then, I would see the doctors with shifty eyes, holding a chart and talking about how she was refusing to take her meds in hushed whispers when they thought I was out of earshot. They had no idea whether she was doing well or not, not in those first six months at least. But by the time I graduated high school, I had stopped visiting her. It was my fault that our relationship had fallen apart. Not hers.
But maybe this place would be better. Bayside Hospital was where people got better, babies were born, good things happened to people. Maybe this was where Grandpa would walk out of. A girl could dream.
I walked through the glass sliding doors, and asked the receptionist where Room 203 was. Another thing I hated about hospitals, they were so damn confusing. Follow the blue line until it turns into the red line, and then when it hits the green line, you’ve gone too far. So, somewhere on the red line was my grandfather’s room. Luckily for me, my dad was sitting outside of it, in one of those uncomfortable chairs that they made you wait in. I sat down next to him without saying a word.
“Hey, kid. Grandpa’s inside. He’ll be happy to see you. So will your mother.”
I didn’t come home very often, but they didn’t push the issue. I think it was hard enough to see my face, and not think of Leia, without me being around them 24/7. “How is he?”
He shrugged his shoulders. He looked like he had just come from work. The tie around his neck, and a button up collared shirt, with black pants were his regular work attire. He was a manager at a local car dealership, and was very successful. We had grown up living a completely comfortable life. I still wondered sometimes what had set Leia off, because it couldn’t have been our family. We’d been so normal, until we weren’t.
“He’s not good. The doctors only give him a few weeks, if that. He’s talking about your grandmother a lot, how he misses her. And, when he’s not talking about her, he’s talking about you and Leia. He really wanted to see you, kid. I’m really glad you came.” He wrapped his arms around me in a hug, and I smiled as I breathed in the scent of the cologne that he’s worn since I was a baby. He felt safe, like home had once felt.
As I pulled away, I started questioning him. “Why didn’t anyone call me sooner? I thought he was in remission.”
My grandfather had lost my grandmother only five years ago, when he was dealing with horrible depression after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. But, somehow, she was the one to go first, heart attack. So, he moved in with my parents while he was going to chemo, and, as far as
I knew, he’d never moved back out. They’d sold his house almost two years ago when they announced that he was in remission. But, he still couldn’t really live alone anymore. My parents had a huge home, perfect for him to move in to, and they could still feel like they had their own private life apart from him. I know my mom didn’t want him to be alone, and I didn’t blame her. A part of me felt like, after I left for school, this gave them another person in the house, someone to take care of. Especially after they had lost Leia.
“He was. And then, all of a sudden, maybe three weeks ago, he started feeling really low again. We took him in for some blood work, and suddenly this was it.”
“But that was a couple weeks ago, Dad. Why did I just get a phone call today?” I had driven directly here after packing my bag as fast as I possibly could.
“We didn’t want to worry you, well your mother didn’t.” He shook his head, he was looking older. He had gray hairs I hadn’t noticed last time I was home. But that was months ago, probably Christmas.
“Skye,” I heard my mother’s voice, and looked up. She was just emerging from the hospital room. She looked tired, and her eyes had dark circles lying beneath them. I felt sorry for her. I stood up and I wrapped my arms around her. “I’m so sorry, Mom. But you should’ve called me, I could’ve been here sooner.”
She pulled away, and put her hands on either side of my face, her forehead against mine. When I looked into her eyes, I saw my own. Both Leia and I looked just like my dad, except for eyes, dark green just like my mother’s. Same eyes as my grandfather, too. Her side of the family must have some pretty strong genes. “No, we didn’t want to bother you. You’re living your life! We’re so proud of you.”
I guess this wasn’t a good time to mention that I just lost my job and the only reason I was here was because I wasn’t allowed to be there. No, that could wait for another day. “How is he?”
She smiled at me, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “He’ll be happy to see you, sweetheart. He’s been asking about you.”
It took a deep breath, my shoulders heaved with the weight of what I felt like was the world on them. I broke away from my mother, and walked into the room, expecting to see my grandfather hooked up to machines and tubes, but the expectation and the sight were two very different things. He lay motionless in the bed, and I hoped he was only sleeping. His skin was wrinkled and leathered from years of working outside in his garden. I remembered that garden fondly. We spent summers making it beautiful, something we could all enjoy together. He taught me about soil and weeds, and all the prettiest flowers names. He made me feel special, like that was our secret. I hadn’t grown anything in years, we still talked once a week on the phone, and I would send him pictures online of flowers we used to grow but I didn’t inherit his green thumb. Without his help I was useless in my garden, which was mostly a window box I attempted keep alive. Every week he would ask how it was doing, and I would lie and tell him it was great. He had been lying too, I realized. I was angry with him about that. Someone should have told me, I would have come sooner. It was probably my fault though, I racked my brain for a moment that one of them let slip he was sick, or even just not feeling well. But I came up empty. They had specifically hidden this from me. Probably thought I couldn’t handle the stress.
I studied the rest of him, hopeful to find some shred of wellness. His short cut hair was stark white against his dark tan skin. He had a blanket pulled up underneath his arms, and tubes attached to practically every part of him from the chest up. I watched as medicine pumped into him through an IV. Probably something to keep the cancer at bay, or maybe he was far enough that it was morphine just to keep him comfortable. I didn’t want to know. I sat down in a plastic chair next to his bed, and I reached out for his hand. When I held it between my own, he squeezed.
“You’re here,” he said in a gravelly voice that I didn’t recognize.
“Of course I am. How are you?”
He coughed and it sounded raspy, like he was struggling to breathe. “I’ve been better. I don’t have a lot of time, Skye.”
I shook my head. “Don’t talk like that.”
He sucked in another deep breath. “I will talk how I want to. An old man deserves that. But I need something else.”
I knew what he was going ask before he did, but it was still hard to hear. “What do you need, Grandpa?”
“I need you to find your sister.” Another cough, and wheezing breath.
“What?” I couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“I need you to find her.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start. You know that we have no idea where she is.”
He nodded. “You go back to where it ended.”
I thought about it for a moment. Where was the last place she’d been? “Connecticut Psychiatric? You want me to go to the hospital? She hasn’t been there in three years.”
“I don’t care. You start there. You have to.”
I paused, not sure what to say. I didn’t want to go back to that place, it scared me.
“Promise me you’ll try.”
I couldn’t say no to a dying man, and he knew it. “I promise. But you have to promise me something.”
He nodded. I guessed he was unable to speak.
“You don’t die until I get back.”
He squeezed my hand tightly and a small smile played on his calloused lips. “Promise.”
FIVE
If you would’ve told me, even two days ago, that I would be sitting in a hospital waiting room searching my laptop for some crumb of evidence that my sister still existed on social media, I would’ve laughed in your face. But, here I was, hunched over my laptop that was dying for some good Wi-Fi, looking on the page that my parents had set up for her when she went missing. The comments had stopped more than six months ago. I looked for some trail of proof, someone who posted often, or updated pictures of her, but there was nothing. People had given up. I had given up. But, somehow, Grandpa had held onto the shred of hope that he would see her again before he died.
I remember the first time that they told us he was sick. Leia and I were twelve, and we didn’t really understand how bad it was. I remember my mother crying, a strange sobbing into my father’s shoulder while he told us the news. They thought he was going to die then too, but he was stronger than that.
More than anything, I remember how quiet it was. The only thing that I could hear was my mother’s crying. Leia and I sat on the couch, and she grabbed my hand, squeezing it tightly as if to say that it was going to be okay. But we were kids, we had no idea if he would even make it another week. So, we had our parents take all of us to the cabin. I watched as he and my grandmother sat on rocking chairs at the dock, looking out over the water. They were probably contemplating their fate, wondering whether or not he would make it through chemo. Leia and I watched them from the porch. We were never more than twenty feet away from them for the entire week. But, we could tell when they wanted their space, quiet time for just the two of them. They had this beautiful love that seemed like it would last forever, and the world was just ripping that away from them.
“Do you think he’s going to die?” Leia whispered to me as we roasted marshmallows over a campfire one evening.
I shook my head. “No, he’s strong. He can make it through anything.”
“Even cancer?”
I stayed strong in my resolve. I was a pretty confident kid. “Even cancer. He survived World War II, so he can survive this.”
She smiled in the darkness.
It wasn’t long after that that he started the chemo. And, within six months, he was in remission. I prayed that he would go into remission again this time, but after I emerged from his room and told my parents what he wanted me to do, the doctor came and spoke to us.
“I think you need to start to consider hospice. Just make him comfortable at this point.”
My mother trembled, holding my father’s hand up to her chest. “How long do you think he
has?”
He set his lips into a thin line, taking off his glasses, and wiping them on his white lab coat. “A couple weeks? Maybe. I mean, he is a fighter, for sure. He wasn’t supposed to make it last time. Or the time before that, really. But there’s nothing more that we can do for him here, its spread too far.”
My grandfather had come out of remission three times, and this would be his final. So, I pressed all the buttons that I could find linking Leia to other people on the Internet, but I came up empty. Wherever she was, she didn’t want to be found. I found a comment by Connecticut Psychiatric, the hospital that she had stayed in for most of our teenage years.
We miss you!- was all that they had said. I wondered if they’d actually remembered who she was. There was nothing about that place that made me want to go there, but it was the first step in looking for her. I didn’t know where else to go. I shut my laptop and pulled out my cell phone, walking to my car. I would have to go the next day to start my search. I figured that Sloan was worried about me since she texted a few times, and called once or twice, but I’d ignored her. I had to explain. I sat down in my car, feeling the release of no longer being in the stark hospital building. God, I hated it in there.
Her bubbly voice answered after only one ring. “Skye? Where the hell are you? I came to your house after work with wine. But you weren’t there. Where did you go? Vacation?”
Vacation would be nice. “Not exactly. I’m at home.”
I could hear her sigh on the other end of the line. “I don’t think I’ve heard you talk about home in a year. What caused you to go there?”
“My grandfather’s sick. He doesn’t have a lot of time.”
“I’m so sorry, Skye. Jesus, you’re having a terrible day.”
“You have no idea. There’s also something I need to tell you. I won’t be back for a while.” I took a deep breath before I told her the truth about Leia. All about her psychiatric stay, and how she been missing for the past three years. About how now I was tasked with finding her after all this time.