CHAPTER 24

Mom

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IT’S ANOTHER ONE OF those quiet nights when both kids are gone. I’m getting tired of being alone. I realize the older they get, the less they are going to be home, and it depresses me. I didn’t sign up for alone. Ruth is off again with Josh. It seems she’s never here, and I guess I can’t blame her. Lucy is spending the night with her new friend. I turn in early from boredom and am sleeping soundly when the phone wakes me. It takes me a few seconds to blink away the grogginess, but as soon as I realize what time it is, my stomach turns. Only trouble comes at two in the morning.

“Hello!”

“Ms. Wilcox?” a girl’s voice questions from the other end.

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“It’s Lucy’s friend. I think you need to come and get her.”

“Why? What happened? Is she all right?”

“Well, she’s pretty drunk and she fell down the stairs. She’s hallucinating or something. She’s crying and yelling a lot. Like, a bunch of stuff we don’t understand. You really need to come and get her.”

I don’t think to ask about the adults who are supposed to be there or how they got alcohol. I don’t even get her to tell me what happened, just an address. Then I rip off the covers and check to see if Ruth’s home yet. She is, and I shake her out of bed.

“What? What’s wrong?” she gasps, scrambling to make sense of her surroundings.

“It’s Lucy.”

Ruth starts moving without needing an explanation, and I’m so grateful she’s back home after her night out with friends.

We get in the car, and I drive as fast as I can. When we get there Lucy is barely conscious. Her face is wet from tears or sweat, her hair disheveled, and a baseball sized bruise protrudes from her forehead. It’s the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen.

“How did this happen?!” I scream in the stairwell. I have one of Lucy’s arms around my neck and Ruth’s got her other, but one of the guys has to get her legs. She can’t even stand.

“Please, Ms. Wilcox,” the girl begs as Lucy mumbles something incoherent. “Just take her to the hospital. She’s acting crazy.”

I look over at my helpless daughter and have no idea what to do.

When we get to the car, the three of us manage to slide her into the backseat so she’s lying down. I don’t bother with a seatbelt. Ruth’s already in the front when I slide behind the wheel. In moments I’m driving down the street with no real knowledge of where I’m going.

“Where’s your cell phone?” Ruth snaps. She’s digging through my purse in a frustrated fury.

“I don’t know,” I whine.

She sighs and throws my bag on the floor. “You didn’t bring it with you?”

Tension radiates down my arms from a pinched nerve in my back. No cell phone. No GPS. We haven’t been in Glendale for that long, and I have no idea where the hospital is.

“Great!”

I drive, tears wetting my cheeks and look for a phone booth—do they still have phone booths? Street after street races by, and I pound on the steering wheel while Lucy lies there mumbling and groaning.

“I know there’s a hospital here,” I say. “We’re in the city. I’ve seen the signs near the high school.”

“We should go home and get the phone,” Ruth offers as I drive aimlessly.

I follow her instructions, but two blocks up I see that blue square with the white H on it. We arrive shortly after at the hospital, and I drive us into the ambulance bay.

“Help me!” I scream, drawing the attention of two concerned nurses. “My daughter needs help. She can’t walk.” One of the nurses sprints through the sliding doors and returns momentarily with a wheel chair. We pull her out of the backseat and plop her into it. She moans, and says something I don’t understand. Her head hangs over the back of the chair and her mouth slacks open. They wheel her to their nurse’s station, taking vitals and asking me what happened. All I can tell them is she’s been drinking and fell down the stairs. Ruth does her best to calm me as they examine her.

“Is she okay, though? She’s breathing, right?”

“She’s breathing,” the heavyset black nurse tells me.

“The bump on her head is bad,” the other one says, “but probably looks worse than it is. I’m more concerned about how drunk and out of it she is. I’m going to check her BAC and set up an IV with fluids until a room is ready.”

They transfer her to a rolling bed and park it in a hallway off to the side of the main patient wing. Beeps, chimes, and voices over radio mix with the complaints of the injured. Ruth and I sit on metal fold out chairs next to the head of Lucy’s bed waiting for her to come around.

I look at the machines, the bag of saline hanging from the metal pole, the blanket they’ve draped over her.

“I wonder how much this is going to cost?” I whisper.

My question gets Ruth’s attention. She pulls her knees to her chest, fitting her scrunched up body onto the small metal square of her chair.

“We’ll get them to write it off as a charity case,” Ruth says. “Don’t worry.”

“They can do that?”

She nods, but her eyes are on a woman with greasy grey hair being wheeled down the corridor. “Remember when Jenna from back home was in that car wreck?”

“Yeah,” I answer, thinking of the scar Ruth’s friend still has on her upper arm.

“Her Mom couldn’t pay so they just filed it as charity, and the hospital got a tax write-off.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s Massack. Everybody knows everything.”

The idea makes me feel better, but this isn’t Massack. I hope it’ll work.

We wait for over an hour for a room to open up, and Lucy stays unconscious the whole time. I just watch her breathe, reaching out to touch the blonde hair fanned out beneath her and the bruises on her swollen face. Every time the nurse passes, she tells me she’ll be okay, but I’m drained and empty as I sit and wait. Not just by the night, but by the whole journey from Massack to LA. It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. This was supposed to be our new start.

Lucy wakes me from my musing with a weak “Mom?”

I rush to her side and smile, but only with my lips. I can’t get the concern out of my eyes. “What happened?” Ruth asks, scooting into my chair so she’s closer.

“I don’t know...I had too much to...we were drinking. I think I fell, and I thought I was in San Jose again. I got scared, I guess.”

I nod. I can’t bring myself to reprimand her. All I see are the tears and bruises, all the hurt in her eyes.

“You’re okay now. We’re here,” I say, kissing her forehead.

* * *

The sun rises on our way home, blushing the sky rouge-pink.

“You feeling better?” I ask, reaching out to touch her leg.

She shifts under my hand, but smiles at me. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know about these kids, Luce,” I say, feeling the need to open up now that it’s all over. “I don’t think you should hang out with them anymore.”

“What?” she snaps.

I look away from the road to see her glaring eyes. They take me by surprise. I assumed this quiet drive home was a raw and vulnerable moment we were sharing, but she has already shut me out.

“It wasn’t them,” she insists. “It was me. I drank too much. I took it too far.”

“You shouldn’t have been drinking at all,” Ruth says from the backseat. “You’re fifteen.”

Lucy rolls her eyes.

“Well they didn’t force me. It was my choice.”

My lips press together in frustration. “There shouldn’t have been a choice. Where were her parents? You said there were going to be adults there.”

She pauses with her mouth open and shakes her head. “They were there. They were just sleeping.”

“Oh, yeah right,” Ruth mocks.

“Ruth!” I scold her before the two of them start fighting.

I glance at Lucy, trying to decipher the truth. It doesn’t matter. “Either way, that’s not a good environment. Nobody was supervising.”

“Supervising?” she starts yelling. “You never supervise me. Why now, huh?”

“That’s different. I have to work and go to school. You need to be responsible.” I can hear the whiny desperate tone in my voice, because she’s actually right. But what else can I do?

“Look, I just want you to be safe,” I concede.

“Fine,” she says, throwing her back into the seat. “But don’t tell me I can’t keep my friends.”

“Okay. Okay,” I sigh. “Just calm down.”

We drive the rest of the way in silence, and I can see Ruth shaking her head in the rearview. I’m still worried and mad, but I keep it in, locked behind the ever-present crease in my brow. When I pull the car into our spot, I turn the engine off and sit, feeling the urge to tell her I’m sorry. It’s backwards, but I can’t stand it when my kids are upset. I need to fix it, make them happy again.

Lucy turns to me, and all of her rage is gone. It’s amazing how quickly her eyes can turn. One moment they’re black with something terrifying, and the next they’re soft and searching like a scolded pup. “Sorry Mom,” she says.

I feel my heart unclench, releasing tight fistfuls of unease.

“It’s okay,” I say, and I dust her troubles under the rug, thinking that will be the end of it.