CHAPTER FIVE
HOLDEN
Being sick was a lesson in patience. Not sick, I guess, but injured. The swelling on my brain had caused a small amount of damage, the pressure of the blood killing off a few brain cells I guess I didn’t need that much because I didn’t feel different.
The doctors had explained to me what injuries the accident caused, the bruises and bumps on my body that were nothing compared to my head. They’d said I was lucky for surviving an accident as bad as the one Jack caused. Anger had filtered through me to know it was his car that came careening at full speed in my direction despite the inclement threat of weather.
Regardless, I was the same. I was healing and getting better. But then everything went black. I don’t remember the seizure. I just knew that in one minute I was sitting on my bed wondering when they would finally release me, and in the next I was surrounded by nurses in colorful scrubs and concerned doctors in white coats.
It’s fortunate how the brain protects you from remembering the pain of your body when everything threatens to shut down.
I wish it would have protected me from remembering what came next.
Dr. Lucas Silva was a good guy, not too old for being a neurologist, with just a tinge of silver peppering the brown hair at his temples. He had a wife and three daughters, all of which were older than me, two of whom were becoming doctors like him, while the third wanted to be a stay at home mom. We’d spent a lot of time talking to each other over the weeks that I’d been stuck in bed, several weeks that made him believe he should be the person to tell me.
When he walked into my room, I didn’t even realize it had been twelve hours since I’d had the seizure, and I hadn’t seen or heard from my family. Seizures can do that to you, leave you confused and struggling with the concept of time. Dr. Silva told me the confusion was normal. It was everything else he told me that wasn’t.
“Hey, Holden. How are you feeling?”
Wrestling my way out from under the covers, the tubes and hoses and monitors, I smiled as the good doctor grabbed a seat and dragged it to sit beside my bed. Normally, he wore a smile, was always ready with a corny dad joke or some other ridiculous comment that would make me grin. However, this moment was anything but normal.
“I’m okay,” I answered, “ready to get out of here if you’ll just sign the damn papers.”
Laughter was painful beating up my chest and throat, but not as bad as it had been when I first woke up from the accident. Every day, I’d begged Dr. Silva to sign off and discharge me home, and he’d been so close to doing it before the seizure.
He didn’t laugh in return.
Wringing his hands over his lap, he cast his gaze down to the floor, mentally preparing himself to meet my eyes again so he could tell me the news. “Listen, I have something I need to say to you and I wish I could tell you to stay calm when you hear this, but I can’t. Typically something like this would be done by social services, but I couldn’t let you learn this from a stranger.”
I would have sworn my heart stopped beating in my chest if the heart monitor hadn’t kept beeping steadily above my head. “What’s wrong? Did the seizure cause more damage?”
He shook his head, regret pulling at his lips until they were a thin line of sorrow. “No, Holden, this isn’t about your health. It’s about your family.”
I saw all of them in that moment and in response to that one word. I saw my dad tossing me up in the air when I was just a kid, heard my mom laughing loudly and singing out of tune as she drove down the highway with me in back before life and money altered our existence. I saw my sister the most. I saw her dancing, and smiling, I saw her crying and getting mad. I saw her chasing after me with chubby legs back when she was so tiny we couldn’t believe she would ever become big and strong.
“What about my family?”
“There’s no delicate way to say this, so I’ll just be blunt,” his eyes tracked up to me, asking for permission, begging me not to fall apart at his words. “Your family was in an accident last night. After your seizure, after they heard -“
Sometimes being blunt is just as hard as dancing around the point. There’s never an easy way to give bad news.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, Holden, but your parents didn’t survive.”
Sobs should have poured out of me to hear the words, great gasping wails that shredded my throat and tore me apart from the inside out. But instead of the pain that should have taken hold with punishing fingers, I felt cold numbing claws clenching my throat, a question frozen to the tip of my tongue that I was terrified to ask.
Don’t let her be...
Dear God, tell me she’s okay...
She was dancing in my head again, sunbeams radiating down to where she was so light gravity couldn’t contain her.
“Deli?” I whispered, the sound broken and without weight. Dr. Silva’s brows pulled together, confusion clouding his gaze.
Clearing my throat of the shards of glass shredding it apart, I spoke louder. “Delilah. My sister. Is she okay?”
Dancing.
Spinning.
Twirling.
As large and bright as those sunbeams, until tragedy came down in a crash of clouds to smother her.
The doctor’s expression shadowed. “She survived the accident.”
My body melted against my pillows, relief rushing in to massage away the tension, the flood of gratitude a heavy blanket warming my bones.
“She’s here, Holden. But, she’s in critical condition.”
The tears finally spilled down my cheeks, tiny drops of soul-crushing sorrow leaking out to dot the sheets beneath me. “What happened?” I croaked.
“They were in a car accident on the way to the hospital. That’s as much as I know. Trauma surgeons are working on your sister now. She sustained internal injuries. They have to stop the bleeding before I can assess her for brain injuries. Before a team of doctors can run her through tests and determine how badly she was injured.”
While my mind processed what he was telling me, another question crawled up my throat. “My parents? Did they suffer?”
Reaching out, he touched my hand. I pulled away, too cold, too shaky to accept that small comfort.
Sighing, Doctor Silva answered, “They died on impact. They didn’t suffer.”
It was another small gust of relief, a gust that blew the panic away and carved a channel through me wide enough to allow the torment of loss to come flooding in.
My parents were gone.
I would never speak to them. Never hug them. Never prove to them that I could make them proud. That they had been enough to raise a good man, despite not being wealthy like the rest of Tranquil Falls.
It was all my fault.
If I’d made different decisions that day.
If I’d controlled myself and hadn’t fought.
The channel of pain stretched wider, scraped away until it was as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon.
Another thought hit me, as heavy and out of control as a bolder bouncing through that channel, wrecking the walls and splitting me wider. “Delilah’s legs,” I breathed out. “Her spine, her arms, her body. How broken?”
All I could imagine was a baby bird fallen from the nest, her wings twisted and without feathers. She couldn’t dance without her legs. She wouldn’t be able to fly with broken wings.
I couldn’t draw in enough air to formulate a complete sentence, to ask him an intelligible question. He understood what I was asking regardless. I assumed doctors were used to comprehending the incoherent ramblings of terrified family members.
“The orthopedists will assess the damage to her bones and muscles as soon as the trauma surgeons are finished stabilizing her. We’re doing everything we can, Holden. We’re fighting to save her life.”
The words were meaningless in that moment, sand escaping through the fingers of my clenched fist, the images sweeping in and blowing out before I could grasp on to them to make sense of it.
“I need to see her,” I breathed out, each word becoming harsher, more firm, more powerful. Sitting up, I started pulling the blankets away from my body, reached for the IVs to rip them out of my arm. Panic had grabbed ahold of me once again and it was crushing me within its skilled fingers.
“I need to see her!”
Dr. Silva surged forward, his hands gripping my arms to keep me from freeing myself of all the medical equipment that had turned into a hunter’s snare, trapping me in place.
“I need to save her!” I begged, my voice practically screaming, my emotions so out of control that thought had dissipated into meaningless whispers, the adrenaline pumping through me taking hold, refusing to let me go.
“Holden, I need you to calm down.”
His voice was broken through by the alarms on the machines, the rate of my heart climbing too high, too fast. A nurse rushed in, her face stricken when she saw me struggling against Dr. Silva. He said something that sent her away, but I didn’t hear the words spoken.
“Please,” I begged, “you have to save her. You have to go in there now and make sure she’s okay. I can’t lose her. I can’t lose everyone.”
I would deal with the loss of my parents later. At that moment, every drop of energy I had belonged to my sister.
The nurse came rushing back a minute later, a syringe held in her hand. Looking at Dr. Silva in question, she received some silent instruction and ran to stick the needle into the port on my IV. The alarms on the machines were still screaming, my heart rate, my blood pressure, my vitals a chaotic mess.
Pushing me back against the pillows, Dr. Silva spoke softly. “We’re giving you something to help you relax. This panic isn’t good for you.”
A floating sensation was instantaneous, but I fought it. I raged against it. I wouldn’t let it take me under while Deli needed me. It plucked at my ability to move, stole my ability to think, but still I fought it, for my dancer, for my sister, for the baby bird who was twisted and broken, who needed me to lift her up from the tall grass and teach her to fly again.
The drugs were too strong, the current too swift as I was dragged under, my muscles relaxing, my body becoming boneless. “Please, Doc,” I pleaded, my words slurred and soft, “please save her. I don’t care what she needs. If it saves her, you can take it from me. My heart, my lungs, my kidneys, whatever she needs. Just rip it out if it will heal her. I don’t care what it does to me.”
The last thing I remembered was Dr. Silva’s face, a blurry image that came into focus before going out again. The last thoughts in my head reached for my sister, for that broken bird, for Delilah.
. . .
They must have kept me unconscious the entire time they worked on Delilah. By the time I came to again, the sun was rising over the horizon outside my window, a new day being born despite the fact that my parents were no longer alive to see it. The reality sunk deep inside me, but I shoved it aside, promised to deal with it later. Just as soon as I knew my sister was alive and safe.
Dr. Silva must have known I’d come around and instantly panic. He had a nurse stationed in a chair near my bed, her friendly eyes peeking away from the crossword she was doing to stare at me as soon as my eyes were open. I recognized her instantly, a pretty younger woman with skin the color of coffee. Her black hair was pulled back into a bun, her cheery yellow scrubs a pretty color against her skin. She’d always been nice to me.
“Good morning, Mr. Bishop. How are you feeling?”
My voice was hoarse. “Delilah?”
The nurse’s lips pulled into a grin, her head shaking with mild disbelief as she stood from her seat. “Dr. Silva knew she’d be the first thought on your mind and he gave me permission to wheel you down to see her if you promise to be a well-behaved young man and not rip the IV out of your arm.”
Happiness surged through me, the cold fear disintegrating beneath its warmth. “She’s alive?”
Rounding my bed, the nurse helped me escape the tangle of my blankets. “Yes, Mr. Bishop, she’s alive, but she’s in the critical care unit and she’s not awake. We can’t disturb her, but if you promise to keep your voice low and gentle, you can talk to her and let her know you’re there with her.”
I would promise her anything to get to my sister. She was alive. She was breathing. Who cared if she was awake yet? Deli was strong like me. She would wake up like I did.
Although it only took a few minutes to wheel me between my part of the hospital and Deli’s, it still felt too long. The hallways looked the same, long corridors with the same equally spaced doors, a nurse’s station set in the middle of each, the staff waiting and ready to begin their rounds or jump into action for an emergency.
The temperature inside this place was frigid, always frigid, and the antiseptic smell grew stronger as we rounded the corner from my wing to approach critical care. What had been hallways with small windows and large brown doors became hallways with large windows and larger glass doors, small desks set outside each room where a nurse could sit and watch monitors, could look inside the room and keep an eye on the patient while giving them some sense of privacy, too. I remembered being in this hall in the weeks following my accident. I wondered if my parents and Deli had run through here feeling panicked and scared much like I felt now.
Deli came into view, and if not for the nurse shoving me down by the shoulder when I tried to stand, I would have run in that room, shoved my way past the two doctors, just to be by Deli’s side.
She was tiny in that bed, itty bitty, and she was bruised, battered, covered in all the same tubes and monitors they’d used on me. Was she as scared when she saw me as I was to see her? Did she cry as easily? Did she fall apart while staring wide-eyed at a swollen face, a bandaged head, at the machines above my head monitoring the beat of my heart and the rate of my breath?
Was she scared when she saw that a machine was breathing for me?
I knew I was.
“She looks bad, Mr. Bishop. I know that. But you have to remain calm for her. I can’t let you run in there with the IV dragging behind you. Especially not with Dr. Silva standing inside.”
The thought came and went that I should rip the IV out and tell them all they could go to Hell. Deli was my sister. She was all I had left. But Dr. Silva turned just then, his eyes locking to mine, exhaustion riding his shoulders. Walking out, he approached us on unhurried steps.
“Holden, I’m sorry, but your sister hasn’t woken up yet. She’s going to be here for a while. We stabilized her, but we still need other specialties to examine her. I have a battery of tests I want to run, and -“
“Is she going to live?” I interrupted, none of the other stuff mattering to me as much as the end result. “Just tell me that.”
His expression fell. “We’re hopeful. But it will take time.”
Time. He needed time. I had all the time in the world at that moment. Whatever he needed, just as long as Deli would be okay. But he would also need something else: money.
Panic gripped me again, the realization that my parents weren’t here to help me. I had a sister in critical care, no income to speak of and two people to have cremated or buried. I was the adult now. Just me.
“I’m checking myself out.”
In chorus, the nurse and Dr. Silva objected. “No, you’re not.”
Closing my eyes, I took a breath, opened my eyes and met Dr. Silva’s gaze. “The Thorne’s paid my dad enough money to cover my hospital bills in here for two months. And that’s all I have. I’d rather it go to Deli. I’m alive. She’s the one who needs it now.”
“Holden, no. You need to be watched a little longer. You just had a full seizure-“
“I’m checking myself out. I’m not changing my mind. You’re going to save my sister.”
Glancing back at the nurse, I asked, “Am I allowed to go in and see her?”
She nodded and wheeled me in, Dr. Silva following in behind us, still angry I wouldn’t stay. His anger meant nothing to me. I was doing the right thing. I was taking care of Deli.
She didn’t move the entire time I was with her, she didn’t respond to my voice, didn’t open her eyes. They wheeled me out again when I stopped whispering finally and laid my forehead on the side of the handrail and cried. Dr. Silva followed us back to my room, giving me one more warning before I checked myself out against his advice.
“I’m going home,” I explained again, trying not to raise my voice because I knew he was doing what he believed was the best thing.
After looking at me long and hard, he relented, his shoulders withering with defeat. “If you leave, you can’t stay here, Holden. Not while she’s in critical care. They have strict visiting hours.”
I hated leaving her, but I would if it meant I could afford everything she needed for them to save her life. “I’ll go home and come back for visiting hours.”
“How are you going to get there? It’s freezing outside and you don’t have clothes.”
“I’ll walk in this stupid gown. Whatever it takes.”
His expression soured more. “At least let me call you a cab. And we can get you some scrubs to wear home.”
“Whatever it takes,” I repeated.
Giving me a clipped nod, he left. I was unhooked from the IV within the hour. Once the papers were signed and the warnings were given, I stopped by Deli’s room one more time. She was being prepped for a test, so I couldn’t go in.
The cab ride home was silent.
So was my house when I walked up the sidewalk that cut through the lawn. It was bright like my family was waiting at home. But I knew it would be empty. They hadn’t taken the time to turn off the lights when they left to come see me. They’d left too quickly.
Using my spare key that we kept hidden under a pot, I let myself in, dropped the key on a hallway table and turned the corner to look in the kitchen.
Their dinner still sat on plates on the table.
My fist met the wall beside me, my desolation complete with the sight of what they’d left behind.
I hit the wall five more times, and the scream that poured out of me was insane and unholy.