If You’re Ready

1. Jeb

Chapter one

Jeb

“Cold black coffee again, or have you finally allowed yourself some joy?” My therapist’s most recent tactic is to try to get a rise out of me. Anything to make me feel some sort of emotion.

I glance at the clock in the corner of my screen.

The sun has risen and set one hundred eighty-two times since the day I fucked everything up. The same sun has seen a newborn’s first cry, a man pinning a white calla lily flanked with baby’s breath on his brother’s tux, a cake-cutting elementary principal at his retirement party. It’s seen the first spring blossom on a delicate crocus, short and close to the ground. It's seen fallen leaves, an early morning frost, and a bundled-up child soaring down a hill on his sled, the harsh wind whipping at his cheeks.

Time moves. Change happens. The world spins ’round.

I get it.

Life goes on.

“Always cold,” I reply to the unamused face on the screen.

I set the old Bugs Bunny mug on the coffee table with a clink.

I wrap myself up like a burrito on the couch, tucking my chin into the fluffy brown blanket that’s nearly as old as me. It isn’t the cute fuzzy teddy bear kind, but the scratchy kind that makes me wonder why my parents bought the blanket twenty-five years ago and why they kept it so long. My feet and ankles peek out when I bring the top of the blanket to my face. It was probably the perfect size when I was in the fifth grade, but now, on my six-foot-four-inch frame, it’s not quite doing it for me.

“I figured that.” Dr. June harrumphs. “How can you find joy with cold black coffee?”

I can't find joy with anything, let alone this grainy coffee. For me… the time between sunup and sundown drags on. Stagnant, monotonous, painstaking days. When darkness settles, I am not. I wake in either a hot sweat or a cold one. Sometimes, it’s accompanied by chills. On the rare day, hives.

Consistently, though, it’s with a general lack of sleep. My mind doesn’t allow it; rather, I’m treated to the sound of crumpled metal, the smell of burning rubber.

"Joy isn't something I'm looking for."

I don’t remember the accident, but the images I’ve conjured haunt me.

Thanks to years spent in an ambulance, accident scenes are readily available in my mind, so it’s really quite easy to recreate the scene from that day. I was in the southbound lane. He was traveling north. I crossed the line…

One day.

In a single minute, one day, my entire being changed forever. So as much as I respect Dr. June’s effort, it’s going to take a lot more than a quip to get me where she thinks I need to be.

The thoughts in my mind curve and swerve. My brain's a twisty, turning, jolty wooden roller coaster that almost stops… but doesn’t quite manage to. Puffing airbrakes pulse in time, trying to slow, but they don’t succeed. The ride starts again, making me sick. Making me wish I knew how to get off. Wondering if I’m meant to stay on forever. Cycle through these thoughts forever. Rollercoasters are only fun if you can abscond.

My stomach gurgles, and I try to remember the last time I ate. Was it lunch? Dinner last night?

I only noticed I’d lost weight when I heard my parents’ elderly neighbor, Mrs. Gladys, ask my mom if I was eating. She hounded my mom to spew the details, wanting to know precisely how much weight I’d lost. My mom changed the subject, asking how much she had gained. The tactic wasn’t what you’d call proper, but whereas my mom can’t figure out how to zap me out of this never-ending cycle of grief and pain, she can make a nonagenarian wish she’d kept her mouth shut.

If my weight isn’t a topic my mom would consider discussing with the neighbor, maybe she’ll talk about how I also lost my apartment—the one above Gotchya Coffee, where I'd happily enjoy hot coffee with cream and sugar. I fell in love with the view from the bedroom window as soon as I toured it. Because the road sits a little bit higher than the rest of Jubilee, the lights of the houses below pepper the night sky.

Someone else lives there now. I vaguely recall my dad telling me it was a retired couple visiting their daughter for a few months. I hope they enjoy the view. And the coffee. The short walk down to the Chetta River, and Station 17, too, not that the retired couple should list that as a perk like it was for me.

Station 17. My old home away from home is just a gray mark on my brain now. I no longer remember the smell of the bunk room or know which show the crew are bingeing this month.

“Jeb? Are you going to reply, or just stare blankly at the screen?” Dr. June tries, she really does. I don’t give her much to work with.

“Sorry,” I pretend to snap out of it. My eyes shift around the screen before landing on the windowsill to the right of where she sits. I visited her too-bright office one time, then demanded all of our sessions be online.

Leaving her question unanswered, I stare at the cold, textured bricks behind her desk. The same whitewashed red clay that covers the front of the fire house.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to ride an ambulance again. The scent of blood mixed with antiseptic is preternaturally stuck in my nostrils from the three weeks I spent in a coma before making my “full and miraculous” recovery.

A recovery that should have never happened.

“Jeb Baker.” She raises her voice an octave and runs her hands through her hair. “Pay attention to me. Please,” she amends.

“What's the question again?” I sip my cold coffee.

I’ve been seeing Dr. June since the month after I was released from the hospital. With arms full of ziti and salad and sticks of garlic bread and brownies, we treated the hospital staff to dinner and dessert to thank them for saving my life. The doctor who happened to come across the accident that autumn day on his way home from a round of golf received a Gold Certificate of Bravery from the hospital.

I’m sure Dr. June thought I’d be an easy case—already showing my face in public, making a little speech. That she might’ve relaxed in retirement knowing her last patient was healed and able to live a normal-ass life in the real world.

Except it was all for show. I was half out of it, full of medicines making me loopy.

A news crew came. A fucking news crew . For what? I’m the one who killed a man.

So there I stood, smiling a painful, phony smile, just trying to get through it without collapsing in grief. I shouldn’t have needed to thank the staff because I shouldn’t have been saved.

I vomited as soon as we stepped back out through those automatic double doors.

Every word I said that day was a lie. I shook hands with the doctors, nurses, and even the ER security guard. I read a script my mom wrote for me. Honor to be here… life-saving measures… best wishes… fast acting. I didn’t feel the need to ask if I sounded fake or unconvincing. I knew both were true.

“Are you done wasting my time? Are you ever going to fucking try?” She bangs her head against the wood table in front of her, her gray hair tousled from the movement.

Not going to lie, her erratic actions have me intrigued. Like I’m watching a trainwreck and can’t look away.

“I’m paying attention now.” I set my mug down and sink deeper into the couch.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she mutters against the table. “Why did I agree to one more case?”

See? It would have been better for everyone if I died in the accident. Rhett Pasquale should have lived. He should be marrying his dream girl this summer.

Every night, I close my eyes and wish for the same thing. To re-do October 7. Like a movie, I wait for a second chance.

Every day, my wish doesn’t come true.

Why should it, after all? Who’s going to warp time to grant me a wish after what I did?

Some people think hell is where you serve your penance. I’m here serving it on earth. A thirty-year-old living in my parents’ basement. Every bad thing that happens to me from now on in my life is warranted. I don’t even deserve to die; I deserve to rot here in the basement.

“I could be drinking a gin and tonic in a ski lodge, reading a smutty romance while my wife tries not to break a hip on the slopes.”

Me? I’d just as rather not have a job, too. It’s not like I’m paying to live here. My mom brings me food for it to rot in my fridge, and my dad doesn’t look me in the eye anymore—or maybe I don’t look at him.

Instead of canning me like they should have, Jubilee Fire Department were understanding when I told them I’d never be a functioning paramedic again.

The man whose life I stole was former military, turned financial officer. He had a fiancée, two cats, and a wedding date. He was an Eagle Scout, for fuck’s sake. I dropped out of Cub Scouts when I was seven because I didn’t like sleeping in cold tents.

“What should I try to do again?” I ask, and make a concerted effort not to sigh.

“You need a mental reset!” Her fingers grab chunks of her hair near her scalp. I stare.

It’s not your fault, Jeb.

How could you have known?

It was just some sort of fluke thing.

It must’ve been his time.

His time, my ass. If it was anybody’s time, it was mine.

“You need to have some sort of fucking breakthrough. Restart your brain. Pay attention. Try. For fuck’s sake, try!”

I can try all I want, but ultimately, I’m the one who consented to the physical. I’m the one who scheduled my appointment for right after work. Right after a stressful call. I’m the one who swallowed the high blood pressure medicine the doctor handed me, then experienced a bad reaction to it, seizing so violently I blacked out behind the wheel.

I’m the one who lived.

I’m not sure why they don’t just lock me up. Not only am I alive, but I’m also free. The family never pressed charges. They wholeheartedly believe it was an accident.

But, still. My actions are responsible for Rhett Pasquale’s untimely demise.

Dr. June throws her pen across the room, followed by a gold paperweight. When she stands and heaves her plush rolling chair away from the desk, I shut the laptop with a thud.

Eyes wide, I stare at my laptop.

My lips tilt downward and I can’t help feeling the slightest hint of… feelings? The irony of shutting out Dr. June’s outburst when she’s been working to crack me isn’t lost on me.

To me, the old Jeb died in the accident with Rhett. The new Jeb is breathing, but he’s lifeless. Numb, cold, spiritless.

I might be too far gone to help.