by Anna Adams
“She’s in his room, but he’s not?” Mrs. Carleton dusted a table stridently. “That’s different, but he has worried about taking her outside since the accident.”
“I’ll look for him in a few minutes. I have to make a phone call.”
The other woman went about her business. Beth went into Van’s office to get the phone from his desk. Dialing Campbell’s number, she went outside, onto the porch. He finally picked up as she turned the corner on the verandah to the back of the house.
“Eli, I told you, I can’t—”
“You called him? Campbell, I’m so glad. Did you make plans already?” For once, she hadn’t needed to remind him this was his weekend.
“Beth.”
In the time he took to say her name, she recovered her grasp of reality. “Did you tell him you couldn’t pick him up again?”
“Not yet, but you tell him for me. I hate to disappoint him.”
“You hate to? But it’s okay for me to do your dirty work? What did you talk to him about?”
“Do you have to know every word that passes between me and my son?”
“Right now, yes. No matter what you think, something is wrong with him, and you’re not helping.”
“He just called me, and he sounded fine. Give the guy a break.”
“Thanks, Campbell. Great advice, as always.”
“I don’t have to take this.”
“You do have to help take care of your son. Why don’t you want to see him?”
“I told him already, but I’m about to start a new job.”
“A new job?” That fish story had lost its luster years ago. “You quit again.”
“Quit? I’m moving on to something better.”
Story of his life, and pointless to call him on it. “You’re working this weekend?” What a joke. He’d never take a job that interfered with his precious weekends. Too many parties to attend—where he mooched off the friends he’d managed to keep.
“You always assume the worst.”
She went farther around the porch, not wanting even Mrs. Carleton to hear. Her shoes thudded as if she’d suddenly gained fifteen pounds. The weight of anger.
“You quit another job because they were garnishing your wages for child support. How is paying to help keep Eli in clothing and food some kind of an option for you? Why don’t you want to keep him safe and put a roof over his head?”
“I’m not perfect like you.”
“If I were perfect, I’d never have fallen for your game.” She took a deep breath. “This gets us nowhere, and I have to find Eli. You won’t be paying child support this month and you won’t be picking him up this weekend?”
“I told you, I can’t.”
“You’d better be careful. Your son is feeling doubt about everything in his life. What will you do if he stops believing you love him? How long do you think I can cover for you?”
She hung up before he came up with another daydream to pass off as the truth. Talking to him grew more pointless with each passing month. His skull had to be as thick as the delusions he harbored to keep from hating himself.
AFTER HIS MOTHER clicked the phone off, Eli did likewise. He set the extension on the desk, staring at the receiver. Feeling nothing.
Plenty of nothing. Which was worse than being sad. Maybe it was the biggest sadness.
He left even Lucy behind as he stumbled to the door. He had to go.
Outside. Somewhere. Had to find more darkness than the closet or the blanket.
At the top of the stairs, he stopped, surprised to see the open front door. Static had cut in and out on his mom’s side of her talk with his dad. She’d been outside, trying to hide the truth about his father.
He’d always known. Some place inside him that held on to all the sadness he couldn’t stop feeling.
At the door, he searched from side to side.
She wasn’t there. He ran down the porch stairs and headed down the driveway. The woods. Bushes and flowers and stuff. Plenty of places to crawl inside.
But he turned the curve in the driveway and heard keyboard keys, clicking fast.
Aidan was typing away on his laptop on the cottage porch. Right beside him, he had a glass of something that made Eli lick his lips. He’d never been more thirsty.
“Hey, Aidan.”
“Hey.” He stood up. No smile. He didn’t want company, either.
Tears twisted Eli’s gut. Men didn’t cry.
His own father hated him, never wanted to see him. It just piled up and piled up, hurting. And now his dad wouldn’t even help with the one thing he wanted most. Eli couldn’t see an end to his problems.
“What brings you down here?” Aidan asked.
“I don’t know.” He swallowed. It was hard to do. “What are you doing?”
“Work.” He crossed his arms. “So I can’t talk long. Did you tell your mother you were coming?”
The equivalent of “go talk to your mom.” The same thing his dad always said. Aidan kicked a pile of gravel. He drove everyone he liked away. No one wanted him around anymore but his mom.
“Eli? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He plastered a big smile on his face and backed away from the porch, giving the glass whose outside was speckled with water one last look. “I’m going to play in the woods.”
“Do you have friends coming?”
“No.”
“Call someone.”
“Now you sound like my mom.”
Eli ran through the gravel, snickering as it flew up from his heels. With any luck, it’d fly up onto the porch and hit that guy’s laptop.
He ran into the woods.
WHAT KIND OF MAN chased a needy kid away—even when that was what his mother wanted? Aidan lasted about ten more minutes at his laptop before he shut the lid, cursing.
Beth was wrong. If Eli needed company, he couldn’t turn the boy away. He wasn’t crying wolf. He needed help, and a few minutes of Aidan’s time wouldn’t hurt him or break Nikolas Enterprises.
He followed Eli’s path through the woods. Even since he’d arrived in Honesty, the weather had warmed and the plants filled out. The shrubbery seemed to close in, bunching up to keep out intruders.
A sudden crack stopped him. Another pellet gun?
A groan got him moving again.
He found the clearing quickly. To his horror, he also found Eli on the ground, a broken branch looped with his leather belt beside him. The other end of his belt was around his neck.
Two tarnished letters emblazoned the buckle, CT. It was his father’s belt and plenty long enough to strangle him if that branch had been long and strong enough.
“Eli.” He dropped to his knees, staring at the boy’s blue face. The cold, wet ground penetrated when no thought would come.
Eli’s chest was still. So still he reminded Aidan of Madeline.
Not again. Not again.
“Son?” He tilted the boy’s head back—gently. What did a broken neck look like? “No one else dies on me, Eli, so you’d better start breathing.”
The child’s airway was clear. Aidan started CPR.
As he stopped breathing to apply pressure to Eli’s chest, he yanked his phone out of his pocket and dialed 911 before tucking it between his ear and shoulder.
An operator answered. He kept pumping. “Get an ambulance out to the cottage at 1544 Post Road. Tell them to listen for me yelling. A boy’s tried to hang himself, and I’m giving him CPR.”
Letting the phone drop, he breathed for Eli again. As he straightened to pump, he started yelling. Beth’s name.
Again and again.
A woman screamed close by. He turned his head toward the sound. She couldn’t see them yet through the damn trees, but she knew.
“Beth, over here.”
He breathed again. Beth burst into the clearing, reminding him oddly of the night he’d first arrived.
With leaves in her hair and horror in her eyes, she ran at them, collapsing at her son’s side, h
er face wet.
Aidan pushed her hands away. “His neck,” he said, and started breathing again.
“Let me.” She shoved at his shoulders. “Your heart.”
He finished the breathing cycle before he answered. “I’ll stop if I feel anything. Pick up my phone. See if anyone’s still there.”
She shook her head, staring at her son. “Make him breathe. Make him breathe!”
As if Eli heard her, his chest expanded, on its own.
“Eli?” Thank God. He leaned over the boy’s face, praying for the warm whoosh of air moving out of his lungs.
“He did it again.” Beth lay on the ground, curving her arm around her son’s head. “Keep on, baby. Breathe some more.” Her voice could not have been sweeter, more filled with kindness. “You have to live, buddy. Please want to live.”
The small—too small—surely he’d never looked so small before—chest rose again.
“I think he’s doing it. I’m going to the driveway, Beth. Make sure he doesn’t stop.” He picked up his phone. “Are you there?”
The woman who’d answered him before said hello again.
“I can give you details now. Is someone coming?”
“Yes, sir. An ambulance is on the way. Did I hear you say Eli is breathing on his own?”
“How did you know it was Eli?”
“Do you think anyone in this town doesn’t know who lives at 1544 Post Road?”
“His mother’s still with him. I’m going to wait by the driveway so they’ll know where to stop.”
“You left Beth alone?”
“I didn’t want to leave either of them.”
“HIS NECK IS FINE. Nothing broken.” Brent looked up from the tests he’d run again. “I don’t see anything in his bloodwork.”
“How do you know? They took two days before.” They stood outside the glass-fronted ICU room, but Beth couldn’t take her eyes off her son who had an oxygen line in his nose and barely took up half the bed. A growing boy shouldn’t look so tiny.
“This was an emergency. You saw Dr. Drayton? What did you think?”
She clenched her fingers around the counter. Brent had asked her out to the nurses’ station to talk while the staff was busy with patients. “If you bring him over here, I’ll tear him apart with my bare hands.”
Brent had the decency to blush. “I thought he might be okay because he can come across as a father figure.”
“Or a troll,” Beth said.
“How about Dr. Lester?”
“I loved her. Eli thought she was too much like me.”
“And that was bad?” He wrote something and glanced at his watch before making another note.
“According to Eli.”
“Let me call Maria Keaton then.” Brent tried to reach for the phone. It was too far away. “You can talk to her before she sees Eli. If you’re dead set against her, we’ll find another therapist, but we need to find someone soon.”
Beth nodded, unable to think. She felt pain from head to toe, some crazy physical reaction to what had happened. She hated to think how Eli must feel, and she could do nothing for him.
At the end of the white-tiled hall, one of the double doors swung open. An orderly pushed a patient on a gurney through. Behind him, Aidan stood, his hands at his sides, still in a state of shock.
Beth ached for the man who’d saved her son’s life. “Who will we find, Brent?” Aidan would know someone. He’d be able to drag some specialist from Timbuktu if Eli needed it.
“I don’t know. Meet Maria and then we’ll worry about what comes next.”
“But is he going to be all right?” She shuddered in the hospital cold, grabbing her friend’s sleeve, leaning hard on the counter to keep from falling.
“Physically, yes, but we have to keep him here for a few days. He needs constant supervision, and then we’ll see what Maria says about psychotherapy. Sometimes, talk takes care of the problem if the therapist is capable, but I’d like to start Eli on an SSRI for the present. We can wean him off as he responds to treatment.”
“SSRI?”
“A selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Basically, they make more serotonin available in the brain, which eases a patient’s depression.”
She dropped both hands on the Formica surface. “Eli’s not just a patient. He’s the boy you’ve known all his life. Don’t you back away from him behind that patient talk.”
“I wouldn’t.” He pulled her close across the counter and she felt better for a moment. “Sometimes I have to sound like a doctor.”
She stepped back to search his face. “I’ve heard those drugs can cause suicidal feelings.”
“They can help, too. Right now, I think we need to try them. The combination of meds and talk therapy often helps children. If Eli doesn’t need the drug, or if he tells us the bad feelings are worse, we’ll take him off.”
“And this Dr. Keaton knows what she’s doing?”
“She’s probably the one I’d choose first.”
“Then why did you put her last?” What if they were too late to help Eli?
“I didn’t want to influence your decision.” He hugged her again, one-armed. “Which makes me feel like an idiot. Let me call her.”
“Okay.” She looked toward those double doors again. “I know Aidan isn’t eligible to visit since he’s not family, but he saved my son’s life.” She’d never forget the sight of him working desperately to breathe for Eli.
She pressed one fist into her impossibly tight chest. If she had any courage she’d admit she also needed Aidan’s compassion. She just wanted him near.
“I’ll bring him in later. Right now, you’re enough for Eli.”
She nodded. Pushing away from the counter, she flattened her hand on the glass door to open it. A chair stood in the corner. Beth lifted it and then set it down close to Eli’s bed.
Perching on the hard seat, she folded her son’s hand between her own. His felt cold and unresponsive.
They’d given him something to make him sleep because he’d started crying and couldn’t stop on the way to the hospital. Beth pressed her cheek to their hands and breathed in the scent of uber-clean sheets.
She closed her eyes. The better to pretend she wasn’t crying, too.
“MRS. TULLY?”
She looked up, blinking because her eyes were swollen and dry. A young girl stood in front of her wearing a skirt about as wide as a seat belt and a snug-fitting T-shirt. With her hair in a loose knot, she looked about sixteen.
But she had knowledge in her eyes—and sympathy without the sour flavor of pity.
“I’m Dr. Keaton.” She shook Beth’s hand. “Would you like to step outside for a moment?”
Beth’s gaze snapped to Eli. He looked the same. A small frown drew the faintest line on his forehead. “Is something else wrong with my son?”
“I’m the psychologist Dr. Brent suggested. You were supposed to meet with me on Monday.”
“I know.” Beth nodded, reluctant to leave Eli alone. “You sounded concerned. I thought something might have happened while I was asleep.”
“No problem. Could we go as far as the hall? You’ll be able to see him.”
“Okay.”
Dr. Keaton held the door and then closed it firmly. “I hope you won’t think I’m rude, but I suggest you see someone, too, Mrs. Tully. You’re in shock.”
“When my son doesn’t need me.” Beth searched for her spirit. Normally, such a suggestion would have insulted her. “Brent told you what happened?”
“Yes, when he called.”
“How old are you?” Beth straightened her own shirt. “I’m sorry for being rude, but you look too young to help anyone, and I can’t handle any more—trouble—Dr. Keaton.”
“You can keep calling me that if you like. I use it to make patients and their families remember I’ve finished my training and been in practice for nearly ten years. I’m probably older than you, and my name is Maria. I have excellent credentials, which I’m
happy to share with you. Brent says you’ve turned down his other two options?”
Maria Keaton might look like someone’s baby sister, but she sounded calm and certain. She gave Beth a sense of hope.
And Beth could imagine Maria, right at home on a skateboard.
“I’d like you to try with Eli as long as he’s happy with you after he wakes up.”
“The E.R. physician—” Dr. Keaton looked at her palm, on which something was written in blue ink “—Dr. Galt, tells me he gave Eli a sedative, but your son should wake soon. He’s going to be fine.”
“Fine?” Beth tried not to overreact. Calm was one thing. Too much confidence could only hurt her son. “He tried to kill himself. Failing won’t make him less eager to do it.”
“We’ll soon find out why and we’ll give him safer tools to handle the things that bother him.” Dr. Keaton reached into her back skirt pocket and tugged out a stack of business cards. She flipped through a few before she pulled one out. “My numbers are on there, Mrs. Tully. If you want to talk, I’m available any time of the day or night. You matter to me as much as Eli because you’ll be part of his getting well.”
“You don’t sound a lot like the other doctors.”
“I’m glad.” Her smile was as serene as a prayer.
“And you look like the younger sister I never had.”
“I can help your son, and I have no rules other than ethics, so I’ll try whatever he needs. I once had a breakthrough with someone your age on a climbing wall.” She swished her ponytail over her shoulder. “Scared the crap out of me, but my patient faced her whole life as we went over the top.”
Beth had never coped well with arrogant people, and the doctor was, in a strange, kind way. “What happens next?”
“When Eli wakes, I’ll introduce myself and ask if he wants to talk about anything. I’ll tell him I’ve informed the hospital staff they’re to call me the second he needs me for any reason, and we’ll start building trust in each other. Mrs. Tully, you’re staring at me.”