Chapter Twenty-One
Blurry black words. Tissue thin paper splattered with tears. The Bible was lying open on a chair when I got here, the corner of the page folded down. An invitation, or maybe an omen. I couldn’t not pick it up. Someone had underlined the fourth line of Psalm 147. My eyes caught the words and held.
He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.
WHEN?!? I felt like screaming. FREAKING WHEN WILL HE DO THAT?!? I flung the Bible across the room instead. Then I went over to where it landed and got down on my knees and prayed. I’m not sure what I said.
At some point I got up and walked over to this chair, sat down with the Bible open on my lap, and looked up at the stained glass window. My eyes have been there ever since.
I have no idea how long I’ve been sitting in this chapel. Minutes, maybe hours. I’m cold and my butt is numb but as long as I’m in here I won’t know what’s happening upstairs, and that’s reason enough to stay.
The heavy door opens behind me. Reflexively, I snap the Bible shut.
“Hey, Bear.”
daddy
“How’d you know I was here?” I ask, not turning around.
“When you didn’t come home this afternoon I called Marshall’s cell,” Dad says, and then I hear his footsteps on the chapel’s hardwood floor. “His father answered, told me what happened. He said you went to get coffees for everyone and never came back.” He sits down on the chair next to me. “I had a feeling I might find you here. It’s where I hid out when you were in the hospital. The only quiet place.”
“Is he—?” dead, that’s what I want to ask, is the boy I think I love dead? But my lips won’t form the words. “Was it the clot? Did he have a stroke?”
“No, Bear. He didn’t have a stroke. The device they put in Marshall’s heart caused some of his cardiovascular tissue to erode,” Dad says carefully. “Which basically just means that the wall of his heart wore away where the device was attached, creating a new, much bigger hole. They’re trying to repair it now.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Is he gonna die?”
Dad hesitates. My own heart clenches.
“I don’t know,” he says finally. “From what his father just told me, he’s got really excellent doctors, and they’re doing the best they can.”
“He was fine this morning,” I whisper. Tears roll down my face, drip off my chin. “I mean, I guess he wasn’t. But I thought he was.” I look over at my dad. He’s looking up at the giant stained glass above the wooden altar in the front of the chapel. An angel mosaic made of thousands of tiny pieces of colored glass. I’ve been staring at it since I came in, thinking about the way my front windshield cracked in the accident, into a thousand small pieces just like that.
“Do you believe in them?” I ask.
Dad glances over at me. “Angels?”
I nod.
“I’d like to,” Dad says.
me too
“How come you don’t go to church anymore?” I ask. “You used to go all the time.”
“I still go,” he says. “Just not lately. I wasn’t sure you’d be up for coming with me, after you so dramatically vetoed the Christmas Eve service last year.”
“Right,” I say, remembering the stupid fit I had about it, but not the reason why. There probably wasn’t one. Just a need to make things difficult for him, in whatever ways I could. Shame prickles inside my stomach just thinking about it. I was so awful to him.
“Mom’s Buddhist now,” I say. “Did you know that?”
“I did not,” he says dryly.
My eyes well up with tears again.
“I was so lonely,” I whisper. “After you left.”
His arm sweeps around me and pulls me to him. “Oh, Bear,” he says, his voice breaking. “I’m so sorry.”
I press my face against his shoulder. He smells the way he’s always smelled, like Chapstick and soap. “It wasn’t just you,” I say into his shirt.
Dad pulls back to look at me. “What do you mean?”
“I prayed every day that my panic attacks would stop. I’d literally beg, over and over, ‘please, God, I’ll do anything, just make them stop.’” My eyes fill with fresh tears. “And now, it’s like, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. If I even believe in him anymore. I know you do, but . . . I’m not sure I believe there’s someone up there who can freaking ‘heal the broken-hearted.’ Someone who gives a crap how messed up we all are.” My voice catches. “Because right now it doesn’t really seem like there is.”
“Someone certainly gives a crap about you.”
“You don’t count.”
“I’m not talking about me.” Dad looks back at the stained glass window. “People don’t walk away from accidents like the one you had. That Escalade was going fifty miles an hour when it hit you. You hit a fire hydrant and spun out into a tree. The fact that you’re sitting here now, with scars, yes, but otherwise, still you — still able to walk and talk and breathe?” Now his voice catches. “Someone was watching over you, I have no doubt about that.”
you’re oh-oh-kay
“There was a man there,” I say quietly. “He came to my window right after it happened and just kind of talked to me . . . told me I was going to be okay. He was wearing a white coat, so I thought he was a doctor on his way home from work. But. . . no one else saw him there. The paramedics said I was alone when the ambulance showed up. There’s no way they wouldn’t have seen him.”
We’re both staring at the stained glass window now.
“I could’ve imagined him, I guess,” I say. “But I don’t think I did.”
Dad takes my hand. “I don’t think you did, either.”
We’re both quiet for a while, staring at the image of the angel, the brightest thing in the room.
“Do you think Marshall has one?” I hear myself ask.
“An angel?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know,” Dad admits. “I don’t know how these things work. But I know God cares what happens to him. And to you. I know he cares very much.”
Tears slip down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry you felt abandoned, Bear,” he says quietly, his voice breaking a little. “That’s on me. I should’ve been there for you, and I wasn’t. I let you down.”
My throat squeezes. “It’s okay,” I whisper.
“No,” Dad says firmly. “It’s not.”
Except right now it kind of is. I’m still sad about what happened, sad that he left, that we lost four years we otherwise would’ve had. But I’m not angry at him anymore. Because despite all the crappy things that happened after he left, because he left, I came out the other side. Yes, parts of me were broken that maybe wouldn’t have been. My confidence, my trust. The bones in my face. But even with all those broken pieces, because of all those broken pieces, I ended up here. In this terrible but somehow beautiful moment, holding hands with my dad, praying for a boy who can’t help but see kindness and courage everywhere he looks because kindness and courage are what he’s made of. Kindness and courage and hope.
“I forgive you,” I tell my dad then, and mean it. “So you left. So you aren’t perfect. Nobody is.”
Dad nods a little, but his eyes stay sad.
“Except me, obviously,” I deadpan. “I’ve been a completely rad human being for the past few years. Daughter of the decade, totally.”
This gets a laugh. “You didn’t make it easy, did you?” he says, nudging me with his shoulder.
“I learned from the best,” I say dryly, and then we look at each other and say “mom” at the exact same time.
“Have you told her what happened?” I ask him.
“Not yet. I came here as soon as I heard.”
“It wouldn’t mean anything to her anyway,” I say. “I haven’t even told her about Marshall.”
“Why not?”
I shrug. “I haven’t told her about much lately. She doesn’t ask.”
We’re both quiet for a few minutes after that.
“So . . . you ready to go back up?” Dad asks eventually. “I’m sure Hannah could use a friend up there.”
I fiddle with the Bible again. “I practically had a panic attack in the waiting room. I’m not what she needs right now.”
“How do you know what she needs? Have you asked her?”
I don’t answer. He knows I haven’t. There’s also the part he doesn’t know, the thing I can’t say. That I’m afraid of what I’ll see on her face now that this has happened. Not just bruises now, but deeper wounds made of loss and grief.
“Hannah does need you,” Dad says gently. “And if Marshall makes it through this, he’ll need you, too.”
if
I look back up at the stained glass window. “Please don’t let him die,” I whisper.
Dad squeezes my hand. “Amen,” he says.
Then he stands, and pulls me to my feet.
His hand stays in mine until we get off the elevator. I let go when I see Marshall’s parents. It seems unfair suddenly, that I’m clinging to my dad when they can’t even see their son.
Marshall’s mom sees us and smiles. “You found her,” she says to my dad.
“Any news?” Dad asks.
She shakes her head. “Not yet.”
“Where’s Hannah?” I ask.
Their mom blinks, then frowns. “She went to the bathroom, I think.” She looks over at her husband. “But that was a while ago, right?”
“I’m not sure,” their dad admits.
“I should see if she’s okay,” their mom says, and starts to stand.
“I’ll go,” I say quickly. She nods and sits back down. I look over at my dad. “You don’t have to stay,” I tell him.
“I know that,” he says, and sits.
The bathroom is by the elevator. I drop my eyes out of habit, mirror alert, as I push through the door, but then immediately force myself to raise them. To let it be no big deal that I see myself in the mirror, puffy eyes and tear-streaked cheeks, because the way I look doesn’t matter even a little right now.
There is no one at the sinks. One of the stall doors is hanging open. The other is shut.
“Hannah?”
No answer.
I bend over and look under the stall doors. No feet in either one. I walk down to the closed door, the handicapped stall. It’s locked.
“I know you’re in there,” I say gently.
There is a long pause. Then I hear the stall door unlock. When she doesn’t come out, I go in.
She’s sitting cross-legged on the toilet. Her eyes are swollen and puffy. Her cheeks are every shade of bruise.
“Hey,” I say. “How long have you been in here?”
She shrugs. “A while.”
“Your parents are worried about you,” I say.
She makes a sound in her throat and looks away. “I doubt it.”
And then I get it.
“This was supposed to be your day,” I say.
Her eyes fill with tears. “I’m an awful person,” she whispers. “My twin brother is having open-heart surgery right now and I’m pouting in the bathroom because no one asked about my stupid audition.”
“I don’t need to ask,” I tell her. “I heard it. I got there just as you were starting the first piece. You were amazing. Beyond amazing.”
Her expression changes from guilt to disbelief. “How could you let me play? If you knew he was in an ambulance, that he could die . . . how could you let me stay in there like that?”
“Because I knew you’d never get it back,” I say simply. “That moment, you on stage, being great. All interrupting would’ve done is ruin an amazing performance. And yeah, maybe we would’ve gotten to the hospital ten minutes sooner, but so what? It wouldn’t have changed anything with Marshall.”
Hannah’s eyes fill with fresh tears. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she says.
My own voice catches. “I know.” I sit down on the bathroom floor. We’re both quiet for a few minutes.
“I used to be so jealous of him,” she says finally. “When we were little. I probably would’ve hated him if he wasn’t Marshall and completely impossible to hate. Which is crazy, right? To be jealous of your brother with a heart defect. But I would’ve given anything to trade. To be the one my parents worried about all the time. Or at all.”
“You felt ignored,” I say, because I get it. It’s the way I felt after the twins were born.
“Ignored implies they knew I was there,” Hannah says flatly. “Try invisible.” Then guilt pinches her features. “Not that I blame them,” she adds quickly. “I get it. The kid with the issues always gets the most attention.”
not always, I think. But I know what she means, so I nod. “It still sucks to be the other kid,” I say.
We’re quiet again. This time it’s me who breaks the silence.
“Can we talk about the Adderall?” I ask gently.
Her eyes drop. “I never should’ve taken it,” she says quietly. “I know that. I just thought it would help me be more productive. And it did, at first . . . I’d take a pill and feel super focused. But then it stopped working as well, and when it’d start wearing off I’d feel all foggy and tired. Like I couldn’t function.”
“So you started taking more.”
She nods.
“How much more?”
She hesitates.
“Hannah. How much have you been taking?”
“Sixteen pills a day,” she says, staring at her hands. They’re shaking in her lap. “The bottle says to take two.”
I suck in a breath. “How did you even have that much?”
“Dr. I gave me two refills,” she says miserably. “I told the pharmacist I was going out of town and needed to fill all three at once. I figured I only needed it until my audition. I’d stop right after that.” Her voice breaks. “I wish I’d never started taking it. It was so stupid. But when Logan took the practice room, I got panicked . . . and I was just so desperate to get in, to get away from them. I would’ve tried anything.”
“To get away from who?” I ask. “Your parents?”
She lifts her eyes to mine. There is so much sadness in them, more than I expect. “You don’t know what it’s like. Feeling like you’re not an actual person, like you’re just this category in their heads, ‘the healthy kid,’ ‘the fine one.’ Like there’s no space in their lives for you to be anything other than that. The only time I ever get their attention is when I’m performing. And even then, it’s not like they actually see me. They see some version of me they invented that doesn’t even exist.”
but i do know what it’s like, I want to tell her. i can see it on your face. And it strikes me in this moment how fragile the soul is. How little it takes to leave a mark.
“I don’t know about your parents,” I say softly. “But I see you. I see how kind and loyal you are. How funny. How smart.”
“I haven’t been lately,” she says dully.
“That was the Adderall,” I say. “That wasn’t you.”
Her tears spill over. “I was such a bitch to him this week. He was having a freaking metal sponge put into his heart and I couldn’t be bothered to come see him. And now . . .” She shakes her head, can’t finish the thought. She doesn’t need to.
“So you didn’t see this coming,” I say. “That doesn’t make you an awful person. That makes you human. None of us knows what’ll happen next. Which, yeah, on one level is terrifying, because it means there will be lots of moments like this, moments when it feels like darkness is all there is. But just because we can’t see the light doesn’t mean it isn’t there, that it isn’t right around the corner. And just because we feel alone doesn’t mean we are.”
“I’m just so scared,” she whispers.
“I am, too,” I say. “And I’m scared to be anything but scared. I’m afraid to believe that he’ll get better, because I don’t want to be blindsided when he doesn’t. But that’s not what Marshall would do. Marshall would hope for the best at every second. He’d believe that everything would work out in the end.”
Hannah smiles a little. “That little optimistic shit.”
We look at each other and burst out laughing, and in the sound of it, I feel a weird kind of power. The kind that punches fear in the face.
“C’mon,” I say, getting to my feet, then reaching out my hand to pull Hannah to hers.
The bathroom door opens just as I’m sliding the stall lock.
“Hannah,” her mom’s voice says.
We both go still. Hannah grips my hand. My heart is in my throat.
“Yeah?”
Her mom appears in the stall door.
“He’s out of surgery,” she says. “They think . . . they think he’s going to be okay.”