CHAPTER 39

Ruth

––––––––

MAYBE IF I HAD stayed, I think to myself. Maybe she would have been home more. I would have noticed she was on drugs. Maybe I could have talked her out of it.

As I sit by her bedside in our apartment, I can’t stop blaming myself. She says she’s feeling better, but I’m not leaving just to have her sneak out the window and disappear. I’ll sit here day and night until she’s over this.

After Mom’s pleading phone call, I dropped everything to get here. I could hear it in her voice. Things were different. Desperate.

Lucy was awake when I barreled through the door, but she was ghostly thin, the sockets of her eyes shadowed with the hint of death. She sat at the kitchen table, wrapped in towels and nibbling the corners of a piece of bread as Mom brushed her wet hair.

She told me the story of lying on the bathtub floor, praying she’d live through her last fix. Her rock-bottom moment.

I can only picture it. I wasn’t there.

The roots of her hair wet with sweat, eyes rimmed with red, damp air clinging to the shower walls as she lay in a mildewed puddle of bad choices.

I’m just glad she’s alive. I’m eager to talk to her, to convince her it’s time to get her life together, but I’m also worried it won’t come out right or she won’t listen. She’s been sleeping a lot, so I’ve had time to think about it.

When she stirs I reach out to let her know I’m here.

“Hey,” I whisper.

“Hey.”

I’m still not used to the way her face has elongated with weight loss.

“Can you eat?”

“Maybe.”

“What should I get?”

“Toast.”

Mom peeks in, like she has every ten minutes for the last hour.

“I’ll get it,” she says.

I nod and Lucy sits up.

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

“Almost normal.” Her voice croaks, and she reaches for her water, wincing as she sips.

“Normal enough for me to ream you for being an idiot?” I raise my eyebrows at her, hinting at a smile. I’m only half-teasing.

She attempts a laugh. “Yeah. All right. Let’s hear it.”

I sigh. I want to yell at her, scream that she could have killed herself, but she already looks so defeated.

“You could have died. I don’t know what I would do if that happened.”

“Be relieved.” She laughs.

“No,” I say, hurt she thinks that. “You do drive me crazy. I really want to hate you. I mean, believe me, I’ve tried. But I can’t.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

I shove her shoulder. “Oh shut up. You know what I mean. I love you.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I love you, too.”

I move from the kitchen chair I’ve been using into bed with her, and we both lean against the back wall.

“I just wish you’d get your shit together already.”

She pulls her knees up, making a little tent with the covers. “I will. I want to. This time I really want to.”

“So, I’ll help you.”

“How? You’re leaving.”

“I have three weeks. I could stay with you until then.”

“Okay.” She nods, accepting my offer, but doesn’t smile.

“What? You don’t think it’ll work? Three weeks is enough to detox and get straight, right? I’ll stay with you every night.”

“And then what? I can’t stay here. I can’t live with Mom and Mendoza. He has a key to the apartment you know? Eventually it’ll get to me. I’ll leave, and it’s only a matter of time before I’m back in it.”

I know she’s right. In the silence, I shuffle through alternative options. I can’t trust anyone else to see her through this. I abandoned her once, and look what happened.

Only one idea stands out as feasible. It splits my heart in half to think about it. I haven’t worked up the courage to cancel my Long Beach plans. Everything is still set up for me to attend Cal State, just in case. I could stay.

“We’ll figure it out.”

I sleep next to her for that first week, or at least try to sleep, but my choice has me up, counting pros and cons, shunning the quiet plea of my heart.

There are a thousand reasons I should hate my sister, and only one reason I don’t. We bleed the same blood. That single genetic factor ties me to her in ways science can never explain. It doesn’t mean I love her. In fact, I’m sure I don’t. It’s something deeper than love, some nagging thing I can never be rid of. Whatever it is, this link that keeps me chained to her, it comes from being tied together at the soul. No matter how many times I try to pull free, it holds us together—always.

I must have fallen asleep because I wake up to a mound of disheveled sheets next to me. It takes me a few blinks to clear my eyes before I sit up in a panic, realizing she might be gone, not just in the bathroom. At first my heavy sigh is the only sound in the quiet space, but soon I hear her breathing.

She’s writhing on the floor next to the bed, curled up in a ball.

“Hey,” I whisper through her incoherent murmurs. She was getting better. This doesn’t make sense. “What’s going on? Are you on something?”

I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, and abandon the covers.

Her mumbling turns into moans of agony as she clutches her stomach and rolls back and forth under our grandmother’s old quilts.

When she doesn’t acknowledge me, my brow sinks in the same way Mom’s does.

I growl out a frustrated sigh. “Will you tell me what’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know...” she whimpers.

When I realize she’s not on drugs, the bitterness in my heart melts into worry. I kneel down in front of her, forgetting all her wrongs, forgiving all her faults.

“Where does it hurt? Is it from the drugs?”

She sobs, but doesn’t answer.

I glance at the red digital image of the bedside clock. It’s late, but Mom’s still at work. Saturdays she doesn’t come home until around 2am.

“I’m calling Mom,” I say, hoping she’ll answer.

With each ring I beg her to pick up, but she doesn’t, which leaves me to figure out what to do.

Lucy’s moans continue, rushing my indecision.

“Um. Okay. I’m taking you to the E.R.” I tell her.

She stays curled, but nods her head.

I’m in a t-shirt and underwear, so I throw on my wrinkled sweat pants and grab my purse.

“Can you stand?” I ask, helping her up. She’s doubled over as I half carry her to the used Nissan my grandparents got me for my 18^th birthday.

In the car, her chattering teeth keep me tense. I don’t turn on the music, so we both sit in the cold quiet, silently urging the lights to change green.

When we get to the hospital they make us wait in the bright white waiting room. It’s full of broken souls and slovenly dressed monsters sleeping on rows of chairs. I hold Lucy close as we walk, protecting her from the room of zombies and germs. I wish I didn’t have to touch anything.

She sits next to me and leans into my shoulder. Her trembles make me glare at the woman forcing us to wait. The receptionist is chewing gum and picking her nails while my sister sweats out some kind of poison. Lucy could be dying and this woman is more interested in her fucking nail polish.

“Lucy Wilcox.”

The relief I feel at the sound of her name loosens the knot in my stomach, but it cinches up again as they leave us to wait in a different, smaller room for an imaginary doctor. After an hour, I’m sure he doesn’t exist, and if he does, I already hate him.

Lucy has withdrawn inside herself, keeping whatever pain she’s in locked behind her tightly closed eyes.

A nurse with teddy bear scrubs and a thin brown ponytail comes to check on us.

“How are you feeling?” she asks without looking at her. She hones in on the computer screen designated to our temporary cubicle.

Lucy doesn’t open her eyes. “Still feels like I’m going to throw up from the pain.”

“I’ve got something for that.”

She sticks a needle into the clear plastic IV tube and it flushes into Lucy’s veins. The nurse slides the curtain closed, and I watch her white sneakers rush away below the hem of it.

In the time it takes me to text Mom our room number Lucy jumps up into a sitting position, like she’s been startled out of a dream.

“What?” I ask.

Her eyes are wide and fearful. They dart back and forth as she looks around the room, like she’s a scared child searching shadowed corners for ghosts.

“Are you okay?”

“I have to get out of here.” She keeps biting her lip. Her chest heaves in anxious breaths.

“What’s going on?” She pulls the tape off of her IV.

“What are you doing?” I’m too shocked by her sudden coherent insistence that at first I don’t try and stop her.

When she rips out the tube, I gasp and jump to my feet. “Whoa. Whoa. Lucy. Stop.”

I try to grab her wrists, to stop the rough tugging at the monitors and IV wires she’s tangled in, but she won’t even look at me.

“How do you know they’re helping me? What if this is poison?” She pushes the shiny metal IV pole and it crashes into the computer cart. “Where are my clothes? Never mind. I have to get out before they catch me.”

“Lucy!” Her face is beaded with sweat, her eyes rabid. She’s always been stronger than me, and despite my trying to hold her on the bed, she gets away and yanks the curtain open.

“Help!” I scream, but a male nurse is already running toward us. He catches her under the armpits and our nurse is right behind him.

Lucy’s screams are visceral and chilling.

I stand back in helpless horror and watch as the male nurse holds her down on the bed while the other prepares another needle.

“Please, Ruthie,” she begs me through throat-scratching sobs, tears sliding into her hair. “Please!”

“It’s a reaction to the Reglan,” the male nurse tries to explain through her cries. “I’ve seen it happen before. She’ll be okay.”

Whatever they inject her with instantly calms her, though she’s almost catatonic. Her arms and legs hang haphazardly to the sides, but she manages to turn her head and look at me.

“Don’t go to Boston.” Her eyes close. “Will you stay? I need you. I can’t do this without you.”

I don’t even need to think about it.

“Okay,” I say, brushing her tousled hair to the sides of her face. “I’ll stay.”