CHAPTER 30
Dear Mom and President Cleveland,
I have failed. I must be impeached.
Your son,
Grover Cleveland
Every hospital smells the same, like cotton balls dipped in alcohol sprinkled with death.
The doctors won’t let me back to see her. They say she’s not awake anyway.
I sit next to Madison in one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs, just breathing.
My clothes have dried and my hair hangs limp on my head. Limp. Like Cassie’s body was.
“Is she going to die?”
Madison twists her fingers together. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t want her to die.”
“Contrary to what you think, neither do I.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I was scared. I didn’t mean it.”
Madison places her hand on my back. “It’s okay.”
“Why have you put up with Cassie this whole time?” I ask.
Madison exhales a long breath and says, “We all have our crazy, Zander.”
“You don’t seem to,” I say.
Madison shakes her head. “I spent last spring break at the psych ward with my mom. It’s the fourth time I’ve been called out of school to deal with her. My dad gave up years ago, but I just can’t seem to.”
I try not to act shocked but I am. Madison just seems so perfect.
“I know what my thing is now,” I say. A smile grows on Madison’s face. “It’s Cassie.”
“Make sure you tell her that.” She stands up and motions down the hallway toward the cafeteria. “Do you want some coffee?”
“Coffee?”
“I figure since we’re not on camp property anymore, we can have a little pick-me-up.”
“Dori called coffee ‘life support.’”
Madison nods. “Today, that just might be true.”
“I’ll take two cups.”
“You got it.” Madison musters a smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes, which look bloodshot and tired. She pats my shoulder. “When she wakes up, make sure to tell her what you told me.”
“Which part?”
“The part where you said you don’t want her to die.” I start crying again, but nod at Madison through the tears. “Tell her I said the same thing,” she says over her shoulder as she walks down the hallway to get us some life support.
Hours pass. Kerry shows up at the hospital. He doesn’t look good. In fact, he looks terrible. His hair is matted to his head and his cheeks are splotched in red. Doctors come out and talk to him, and he nods and runs his hands through his hair and slumps his shoulders even more. I can’t tell what anyone is saying, and it drives me even crazier than I already feel.
The doctors pull him behind the big automatic doors they took Cassie through before I can even get out of my chair. Madison pats my leg again. Five cups of coffee sit on the table in front of us.
Kerry is gone for a long time—too long. My knee bounces uncontrollably as my foot taps on the ground. When Kerry finally comes back, he walks over and looks at the cups.
“We needed it,” Madison says before he can comment. Kerry nods.
“She’s stable.” When he says the words, my body collapses into itself. I go limp in the chair from holding on so strong. Blood rushes to my toes and I think I might pass out, but Madison grabs my hand and holds on tight. “They pumped her stomach to get rid of the pills. She’s got some bad bruising on her chest and a broken rib from the CPR compressions.”
“That’s not so bad,” I say.
Kerry looks at me wide-eyed. Clearly, he wasn’t finished. “There’s damage to her heart, Zander. To take that many diet pills with such a small body. And to live practically starved every day? She had a minor heart attack.”
“But she’ll be okay, right?” I sit forward in my seat.
Kerry shakes his head, like he can’t answer the question for sure. “I hope so,” he says. “I hope to God she’ll be okay.”
Madison calls the camp to let them know what’s happened, and Kerry talks to more doctors who say Cassie has to stay in the hospital for at least three days of physical and psychiatric observation. I wait in my seat until they tell me I can go in and see her.
Eventually, Kerry comes to get me. I stand up, like my feet are spring loaded.
“She’s sedated,” he says. “But you can go in and see her.”
It’s a different world behind the doors. People walk around in scrubs with charts. Nurses laugh as they chat over coffee. So many doors open to rooms with so many people lying in beds hooked to machines. I stare down the giggling nurses. Nothing feels funny back here.
“It doesn’t feel real, does it?” he asks.
I shake my head and look at Kerry. He sounds like he’s talking from experience. His eyes search mine and, for a moment, I see what I can’t believe I’ve never seen before—first Madison and now Kerry. He is broken, too.
When we both seem to acknowledge the moment, he says, “My brother, Charlie, was a total attention hog. He would do anything to make you notice him. I think that’s why he loved being on stage. He was the best actor in our high school.” Kerry rubs the back of his neck. “Later, I realized what he really loved was escaping reality.”
“Was?” I ask, noting his use of past tense.
“Charlie hung himself my sophomore year of college. He was seventeen.”
“Oh my God.”
Kerry leans back against the white hospital wall and glances down at me. “Charlie was complicated and he drove me crazy sometimes.” Kerry shakes his head. “Everything changed for me when Charlie died, and I knew what I was meant to do. I was already majoring in psychology. It just fit. I needed to save teenagers like him from making the biggest mistake of their lives.”
“So you founded the camp.” I sit back against the wall next to Kerry.
“If I could reverse time, I would tell Charlie that he’s not alone. I would tell him that even though he felt lost, if he just waited and didn’t give up, he would have found himself.” Kerry looks down at his open palms. “But he left me. And I never got the chance to say it.” He shrugs and smiles. “He would have loved Camp Padua.”
Kerry seems to shake off the moment between us. He stands up straight, becoming the leader I’ve seen him as all summer. He points to a room number. “Cassie’s in two seventy-one. You’ve got five minutes.”
I nod. I’d take one second if that was all he offered.
He places a hand on my shoulder before I walk through the door. “You’re a good friend, Zander. You saved her life.”
I choke on the lump in my throat.
“You’re a good brother, too. I guess we all have our crazy.”
Kerry gives me a half-hearted smile. “Thank you.”
I walk into Cassie’s hospital room. The electric machines hum, one counting Cassie’s heartbeat to an even rhythm. Another measures her oxygen intake. Even the computer hums.
I used to love these sounds. It meant life was still in my house. That Molly was still with me. I hate them now as I walk closer to Cassie. Today, they mean death.
I pull one of the doctors’ spinning chairs over to the side of her bed, next to her cuffed-down arms. I touch them. Cuffs won’t prevent her from hurting herself. They only prevent that for now.
I touch Cassie’s warm skin and wrap my entire hand around hers, feeling her pulse. It beats under my thumb.
She’s alive.
I bend my head down to the bed, like I’m bowing my head to pray. Like she’s my own personal saint and I need her for help. Only her.
“Please forgive me,” I say to Cassie. “Because I need you. I thought it was the other way around, but I was wrong. I need you.” I say it over and over again until Kerry knocks on the door and tells me my time is up. “And Grover needs you, too. And Bek. We all need you.”
“Time’s up.” Kerry leads me out of the room. He takes me back to the other side of the hospital. “And now, I think you need to head back to camp.”
I pull back from his grip. “I’m not going. Not without her.” Kerry looks tired, shadows circling under his eyes. “If it was your brother, would you have left him?” I ask. It’s low, I know, but it’s all I’ve got.
“Fine,” he says, throwing his hands up. He walks away and down the hall. I return to the seat that I’ve been parked in for hours. Cassie’s sweatshirt hangs over the back. I swing my legs over the side of the chair and rest. My eyelids start to pull downward, but I force them open. I nuzzle into the chair, covering myself in Cassie’s sweatshirt, and imagine what Kerry looked like as a young person and what Charlie may have looked like. I start to cry for me and for Kerry. And before my cheeks can dry, I’m asleep.
I wake up to Kerry’s voice. For a moment, I forget where I am, but as my eyes open and the white of the walls and the cups of coffee still sitting on the table come into view, it all comes rushing back.
I sit up quickly, my back sore from pressing into the wooden armrest while I slept. Kerry stands in the corner of the room, talking to a police officer.
“She has no family,” the cop says, pointing down at the folder in his hands.
“Isn’t there another option?” Kerry asks.
The cop shakes his head.
“What about her aunt?” I blurt out. They both look at me.
“Zander . . .” Kerry starts to say, but I cut him off.
“Cassie got a letter from her aunt. I heard her say it.” My face feels tight from all the tears that have dried there, like my skin is dehydrated. I’ve lost all the water in my body.
Kerry dismisses the cop and comes to sit next to me. “Cassie doesn’t have an aunt, Zander.”
“But she said she got a letter from her Aunt Chey.”
“Cassie got a letter from the foster woman she lives with named Cheyenne,” Kerry says. “Her school in Detroit informed me about it just yesterday.”
“Her school in Detroit?”
“Cassie comes to Camp Padua on a scholarship for kids who can’t afford to come to camp but who would benefit from it. Her school contacted me about it a few years back in hopes it might help her.”
“What?”
“Apparently, her foster parent, Cheyenne, can’t handle Cassie anymore and she’s sending her back,” Kerry says.
“Sending her back where?” I ask. My throat feels like it might close. Tears break from my eyes even though I didn’t think there was any water left in me. The world I thought spun in even circles is tilting on me. “Where are they sending her, Kerry?”
“To a group home for girls.”
“No!” I yell, gathering the attention of the police officer. “She’ll die there!”
Kerry looks around the hall and quiets me. “Zander, Cassie’s been in ten different homes over the past ten years. Not one has been able to keep her.”
“So people just give up on her? They just put her back into a broken system for broken people?”
“It’s her best option.”
“That’s not an option.” I point at Kerry. “That will kill her.”
“There’s nothing we can do.”
“But you said we could all be found. You said that.” I wipe tears from my cheeks. “I’ve been praying to Saint Anthony all summer. And now you’re taking it back? That’s what you’re doing to her. Cassie will be lost forever. You said you wanted to save kids like Charlie, but you’re killing her!”
I don’t wait for Kerry to defend himself. I run down the hallway toward the exit sign, unable to be in this hospital a moment longer. I can’t be in these concrete white walls with machines that keep people alive. This isn’t living.
I burst through the hospital doors and into a parking lot. Cars buzz by on the street. Everything around me is concrete. I don’t want concrete. I want camp. I want mosquitoes and trees and the sound of the water lapping on the beach of Lake Kimball. I want to hear Cassie make fun of Hannah. I want Bek to lie to me. I want Grover to kiss me and make this all go away. I want reality to just go the hell away.
I squeeze my arms around my chest as tight as I can. My breath comes in ragged pulls from the top of my lungs. The air is thick with smog and dirt and burned-out everyday life.
I scan the space around the hospital and find a tree. One lone green, leafy, alive tree in a sea of gray. I run toward it like it’s my only way to survive.
When I’m in its shade, I fall down to my knees. The tree’s full branches block the sun, and I curl up in the dirt. I pick a leaf off the ground and press it to my nose. It doesn’t smell like the leaves do at Camp Padua. I ball it up in my fist and it crunches and breaks too easily.
Nothing that lives stays whole.
Everything eventually breaks.
After a while, I force myself up off the ground. Even in the shade, the sun hurts my eyes. I walk around the block, my feet dragging along the cement. I feel helpless and I hate it.
But when I see a drugstore across the street from the hospital, my spirits pick up. I can’t go back into the hospital, not yet, but I can do something else.
I grab a basket and cruise the aisles of the drug store, quickly filling it with everything I need. When I get up to the clerk, he looks at me, concerned.
“You okay, miss?”
“No. I’m never okay.”
He shrugs, rings up my stuff, and asks for $15.74. I forgot things cost money out here, so I do the only thing I can think of. I tell him what happened. Every gory detail. My and Cassie’s mistakes. I tell him and the line of customers behind me. They all listen intently. When I get to the end, the clerk looks at me, shocked.
“I’m glad your friend is okay,” he says.
“Oh. She’ll never be okay. Her heart is broken now.” I shrug. “But she wasn’t okay to begin with so . . .”
The woman behind me in line hands the clerk a twenty-dollar bill and says, “Broken hearts can heal. I’m a doctor. I’ve seen it.”
“Thank you.” I smile at her and look at all the people forming a line behind me. “You know what? This has been the best group share-apy session I’ve ever had.”