Hold Me Like a Breath

by Tiffany Schmidt

  “I still want details, so if you have time this afternoon, come back over.”

  “Sure.” And as soon as I knew where Carter had gone, as soon as I gave him a piece of my mind, as soon as I shook off this cape of dread and unease, I’d gladly rush back to ask her opinion on almost-kisses, blurred boundaries, and Garrett-Carter-Garrett-me.

  Chapter 8

  Garrett and Carter didn’t follow Mother, Father, and his second-in-command, Miles Banks, into the dining room as we assembled for lunch. Garrett’s older brothers, Mick, Hugh, and Jacob, were there. His father, Al, too. And Nolan, his hair flopping onto glasses I suspected were purely cosmetic, part of his “academic costume” like his sweater vests and tweed, elbow-patched jackets. He looked, as always, like he was about to moderate a spelling bee or launch into a debate. At least he was seated by Mother’s left and not mine. Why had he been in so many meetings lately? Maybe if I was lucky Father would decide he was invaluable to the Business—freeing me up for school. Based on the way Father clapped Nolan on the back and smiled at him, I might be onto something. Now I wished I was sitting closer so I could eavesdrop. I frowned as Jacob pulled out my chair.

  Business had been spilling into meals more and more often. I rarely saw Father without a flanking of Family members. Lately it felt like he belonged more to them, to big F Family, than to us, his little f family. I didn’t like the way that creased his face—wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and across his forehead instead of laugh lines around his mouth.

  When Father picked up his fork, everyone began eating and chatting. I played with my food.

  “You’re awful fidgety, Penny-Pea. Is something making you nervous?” Al Ward paired his question with a slow grin, and I shivered. He had been the center of my childhood nightmares. It didn’t matter how many times Father reassured me that his job was to protect us, Al was the wicked dragon, the evil sorcerer, and all the villains from my fairy-tale bedtime stories. He’d only gotten scarier since Keith died and his wife left him.

  But I’d promised Garrett I’d cover for him, so I laughed like the idea was ridiculous. “No. Of course not.”

  I hacked at my salad like it was the toughest bark, or like my knife was made of paper. It wasn’t until I put a mangled bite in my mouth that I noticed Garrett’s brothers were watching me too. And in between their speculative glances, they looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. They knew something, but which something: the almost kiss? That Carter was AWOL? Garrett’s forgotten gun? The secret errand?

  The questions made it impossible to swallow my food or participate in conversation.

  Mother clucked over my lack of appetite, then turned to Father. “Penny said they all enjoyed Once Upon a Mattress. Should I get tickets for us?”

  He frowned at his plate. “I’d like to, but it’s not a good time.”

  “Oh?” said Mother.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Things are a bit tense right now,” said Miles Banks with a gentle smile. It was the same expression he always used with me. Whether he was inviting me to join him and his basset hound, Thumbelina—I named her—for a stroll around the property, or complimenting my haircut, or asking about my classes.

  “Tense because of the Everly incident?” I tossed the question at them and waited for the reaction to their porcelain doll not being as ignorant or complacent as they wished.

  The silence stretched like taffy, gluing people’s eyes to their plates.

  Finally Father demanded, “How do you know about the Everly incident?”

  “Nolan may not be the best tutor in the world, but I do know how to watch the news and use Google.”

  “Penelope Maeve!” exclaimed Mother, while Nolan coughed into his water glass.

  Hugh didn’t even try to cover his laughter. Jacob choked on a mouthful of bread. Mick whacked him on the back—probably harder than necessary, since his brother’s eyes widened with each blow. Miles was suddenly fascinated by his napkin, and Father’s face was turning pre-fury red.

  “I apologize. That was rude,” I muttered.

  “You’re quite forgiven,” replied Nolan with a magnanimous nod that made me want to insult him again.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. Mother absolutely forbade anything electronic at the table, so I let my butter knife slip from my fingers. It clattered against the edge of my plate and then continued its free fall to the floor. Manners dictated leaving it—ignoring it—but being impolite provided a moment of privacy. I bent over, using the split-second I fumbled beneath the tablecloth to read the screen.

  Can’t find him. U?

  Mother graciously covered my faux pas by saying, “The whole Everly thing is tragic. But I’m not clear on the connection to us seeing a play.”

  Al Ward raised a finger. Father nodded at him. “The Feds can’t ignore this, ma’am. I don’t want you all out in public more than absolutely necessary.”

  There went Korean barbecue, doughnuts, and all my opportunities for summer freedom. Al had just given Mother the perfect excuse for all her nos.

  “May I please be excused? I’m not hungry.” I stood, and the men did too.

  “But Penny, you didn’t eat breakfast …”

  I waved off Mother’s concern. “I have a headache. I need some air. I’ll eat later.”

  “Do you want company?” she offered.

  “Oh. Um, no. I’m going to call Kelly.” And once I was outside, I did make phone calls, but not to the vice president’s daughter. I called Garrett.

  When he said he still hadn’t found him, I dialed Carter again.

  I walked toward the gate as I called, nodded to Frank, the guard on duty, then continued inside the perimeter. My phone rang against my ear—the noise joined by a faint song in the distance. One that grew louder as I walked up the lawn’s slope toward the blind spot Father had been complaining about during breakfast two days ago. A tree limb had taken out a camera during the last summer storm. It dangled on wires, its lens pointed at the sky.

  “Pennies from Heaven.” Carter’s not-as-funny-as-he-thought ringtone for me.

  And then I saw his shoes. The loafers he’d been wearing last night. Saw the soles of them through the fence.

  They were attached to a body. There was blood.

  And then I was falling to my knees, crawling across dirt and rocks to reach him. And there was my blood. My ineffective arms pulling and yanking on the sharp iron scrollwork that separated me from Carter. The red tips of my fingers clawing at the gravel. My tongue bitten as I screamed some wordless howl that meant both this isn’t real and get up, get up now, Carter. It did nothing. Changed nothing.

  And then I saw nothing. Nothing at all.

  Chapter 9

  There was a delay between the moment I woke up and the instant I remembered. Not a long delay. Just the length of time it took for me to realize I was in the clinic. Why hit like a collision—dwarfing the pain in my body with mental screams of anguish.

  When Dr. Castillo, Caroline, and Hugh Ward rushed into my room, I realized they weren’t mental screams. I was screaming.

  “No!”

  There was a needle in Dr. Castillo’s hand.

  “Carter!”

  An IV line in my arm.

  “Please, please, please!”

  My parents weren’t there.

  “Tell me he’s okay. Tell me!”

  Caroline’s eyes were wet. Her lips were white. She shook her head.

  “No. Lie to me. Just lie to me. He can’t be—”

  Then whatever was in that needle entered my bloodstream and erased truth and delusions along with consciousness.

  In my dreams, I was swimming through blood. It filled my mouth, ran into my ears, blurred my vision. It was my blood. Carter’s. Kelly’s—and every other transplant recipient’s. It was the donors’ blood: the ones the Family recruited to sell a kidney for a retirement fund, or trade part of their liver for a year of college tuition. The ones who sold their blood and marrow as often as we
’d allow to pay their mortgage, and the ones who lived with one cornea because they’d rather keep gambling than see through both eyes. The families who sold the cadavers of their loved ones for living expenses or for a memorial service. Or the ones with big-time debt who paid by donating skin—Carter had told me once that with skin grafts it was more painful for the donor than the recipient.

  Carter.

  He was with me sometimes. Always too far away to reach. And the closer I got to the surface, the farther he slipped. Sometimes it seemed as if I would escape, breathe air instead of blood, but then there’d be a flash of silver, a burning in my veins, and I was pulled back by a crimson undertow.

  When I finally broke through it was with a gasp so powerful it propelled me into a seated position. I was still in the clinic. My arms from the elbow down were invisible beneath thick swaths of bandage. One of them was cradled in a large hand. I traced this past a starched cuff and up an arm clad in a white button-down shirt. Garrett was seated in a chair beside my bed wearing a tie. The hand not under mine held a bag of frozen corn to his face.

  “Princess?” He dropped the bag to reveal an eye ringed in watercolor shades of pink running into purple darkening to navy blue.

  “He’s dead.”

  Garrett swallowed and pulled his chair closer. Swallowed again. “I couldn’t find him. I couldn’t find him anywhere … I should’ve been with him. I could’ve …”

  Garrett had seen me cry dozens of times over tantrums and imagined tragedies, but I’d never seen him cry. Not even when his mother left. Now he carefully lowered my bandaged hand and dropped his head in his palms. There was a weight to his grief, to the shaking of his shoulders. This was real. I wasn’t going to wake up and forget the sounds of Garrett’s pain.

  And it broke me.

  Carter would never walk through the clinic door with a bouquet of lilies and make a joke about me being “idiot-pathetic.” He was never going to Skype in to say good night and complain that his business classes were useless for the Business or that the girl in his French seminar was immune to his charms. He wouldn’t run interference with Mother or sneak me out for midnight drive-through. He wouldn’t be here today. Tomorrow. Ever.

  My tears started as a whimper. It was too inadequate a sound, too insignificant. Grief felt like it should be roared, screamed, bellowed.

  I reached with bandaged hands for Garrett, my movements clumsy but demonstrating what I couldn’t say: hold me so I don’t fall to pieces. So I don’t drown in the memories of all that blood. I wanted to be held tightly, gripped so I knew I was still something solid to cling to.

  But of course he couldn’t. That he touched me at all was testament to his pain. Gentle hands went around my waist, and his face leaned lightly against my stomach as he cried on the stark white sheets. My tears dripped onto his hair. My bandaged hands rested on his back.

  “Please let go of my daughter.”

  Father’s words may have expressed a request, but his voice didn’t allow for any disagreement. It was a tone of steel and blood and threat.

  Garrett’s reaction was instantaneous. I barely had time to snatch my hands off his back before he was ramrod-postured with a mask of professional alertness. A horrible, flawed mask of splotchy skin, tear tracks, and a black eye.

  Mother was beside Father, but he stepped away to lean out the door. “Darius, I need you to examine Penelope for new damage.” His face hardened as he turned back toward the room. “Garrett, join me in the hall.”

  Dr. Castillo’s typical white coat was replaced by a black suit jacket. I looked at Father’s back—suited. At Mother’s black dress. At the jacket Garrett had left behind on his chair. He’d been wearing a tie.

  “The funeral,” I said. “You were at the funeral.”

  Mother nodded. Her lips pressed so tightly I didn’t know if she’d ever speak again.

  I’d missed it. I’d missed days. I’d missed my chance to say good-bye.

  I could hear snatches of conversation through the door; I listened between Dr. Castillo’s directions to sit up and raise my arms so he could unfasten my hospital gown and inspect my back and abdomen. Vigilance. Threats. Security. Failure.

  “Does this hurt?” he asked as he examined my skin.

  “No.” I could’ve told him that Garrett hadn’t bruised me, but they needed to see for themselves. Right now I wouldn’t argue. Especially since, once the sheets had been drawn down, I could see the damage I’d done. My knees and calves were buried beneath gauze. Wrinkling my forehead, I felt a bandage I hadn’t noticed before and had a blurred recollection of banging my face against the fence.

  I wished it were worse. Bad enough to obliterate the pain in my head, heart, stomach. An ache like I’d never experienced before—but Garrett had.

  Garrett’s brother died.

  I didn’t know I’d spoken the words aloud until Mother stepped closer, straightened my blankets, and retied my gown with soft fingers. “Yes, he did.” She touched my hair and turned to Dr. Castillo. “She’s okay?”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “She’s not in any danger. The cuts on her fingertips and knees, and the one on her forehead, have all clotted. The bruises have stopped expanding, and she’s had an infusion, so her counts are well above a hundred thousand. I’ll take another blood sample tonight to see if she’s maintaining that level or needs more.”

  I flinched. While I’d been sedated and stabilized, she’d had to fear for one child while mourning her other.

  “I hadn’t eaten, Mother. Nothing the whole day—and the shock …” I shut my eyes and forced those images away. “That’s why I fainted. Please don’t worry about me. I’m okay.” I looked to Dr. Castillo for agreement.

  He patted my pillow. “Rest up, Penelope, and you can sleep in your own bed tomorrow.” Then he left the room, letting in more of Father’s lecture.

  “How could you be so irresponsible again?”

  “Dear, please stop.” Mother’s voice was enough to make Father pause, put out a hand, and catch the door before it swung shut. He and Garrett were framed by the opening and backlit by the hall lights. “He didn’t harm her. And before you say anything else you might regret, remember security on the clinic is four layers thick—that I counted—which means it’s probably more. Personally, I’d rather Carter’s best friend be in here comforting Penny than standing guard outside her room so she woke up grieving and alone.”

  Father’s posture changed in ways it hurt to watch, the muscles of his shoulders and neck rearranging from a tight line of threat to a slump of sorrow. “You’re right. Garrett, my apologies. Thank you for being there for Penelope.”

  “Always, sir.” His injured eye looked puffier. I couldn’t tell if it was swelling or crying—and didn’t know why no one was asking him how he’d gotten hurt. Protecting me?

  No. If so, the red lights above all the rooms would be illuminated. Dr. Castillo would be commencing evacuation procedures if there was any hint of a security threat.

  Mother placed a hand on Garrett’s shoulder as she passed him his jacket and the bag of frozen corn. “You should go get some rest, and make sure to keep ice on that eye.”

  “I can stay.” He wrapped his fingers around the metal side rail on my bed.

  If I spoke up Father would consent. But did I want him to? Garrett told me he’d find Carter. He hadn’t. I had. And I’d been too late.

  I looked away from him.

  “The service is over. Mick will be coming shortly. You can stay until he arrives, then go.” Father’s voice was still stern but laced with exhaustion.

  “Dear.” Mother’s eyes skipped from me to my father to Garrett and back to me. “I think, since Garrett will need a new assignment now, I’d like him to be placed with Penny—as much as possible.”

  “We can talk about this later, Abigail.”

  “Yes, it’s simply that … I know he’ll look after her.” She turned impassioned eyes on Garrett. “You would look after my little girl, wouldn’t you?”


  His voice was thick with emotion when he answered, “Of course.”

  “You’ve always protected Penelope—sometimes been more careful with her than … than he was.”

  “Abigail, this is a Business decision—”

  She ignored Father. No one ever ignored him. “And you’ve been through this before. Having lost Keith, you know what she’s feeling. I think you’d be good for her.”

  She finally turned back to Father, her voice and posture breaking. “I think he’d be good for her, and I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be there for her when I can’t—”

  Her voice muffled as he put his arms around her and she buried her head in his shoulder. He was holding her tightly—as tightly as I’d wished to be held. Patting her back, squeezing her shoulder. And looking haunted, like at any moment he might break down too.

  “Garrett, for now we’ll follow my wife’s suggestion: you’ll be assigned to Penelope. You and I will meet to discuss this further, but for the rest of the day, go.”

  Garrett gave each of us a nod. His eyes lingering on me for an extended second before he nodded again.

  I heard him exchange terse greetings with Mick in the hallway and then it was quiet. The quiet of my parents having no idea what to say to me. Or each other. The quiet of a grief so thick it was like a fog that settled and separated us, creating three people each suffering alone.

  Chapter 10

  I wished I could do karate. Or wrestle. Work out with a punching bag. Something. Anything that involved taking all these too-large emotions inside of me and turning them into physical violence that left me too exhausted to feel. Too exhausted to hurt in any way but sore muscles.

  My soreness was confined to the pinpricks of the daily CBCs Mother requested. My results were no longer posted on the clinic’s whiteboards, and Dr. Castillo stopped smiling, joking, or letting Caroline handle my blood work.

  Mother fussed over every bite I put in my mouth, every new shadow that ringed my eyes. Fussed and fretted—then abruptly excused herself to go break down in private.