Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-One
The Blackridge Medical Center is like all the rest. The furniture is paisley-patterned and discolored in a way that can’t be intentional, and the linoleum floors of the pediatric unit are dotted with odd pastel circles.
Probably meant to make it cheerier. It only makes it feel like a hybrid of a hospital and a carnival.
I stand in the doorway of Margot’s room, eavesdropping on the conversation in the hall between my mom, aunt, and a doctor who looks far too young to be doing this.
Margot sleeps in the bed in the center of the room, with Jasper curled up like a cat on the stiff couch near the window. One of them is snoring. Probably Jasper. For such a small creature, he makes substantial noise.
“—should get the results of the chest X-ray within the next few hours. Regardless, we’d like to keep her until at least tomorrow to monitor. We need to make sure there’s no fluid left in her lungs.”
“What are we looking at when it comes to long-term effects?” Paige asks, folding her arms over her chest. My mom shoots her sister a withering glance but looks to the doctor expectantly. Like as much as she doesn’t want to think about it, she’s glad someone asked the question.
I think maybe that’s what love is sometimes. Sharing the heaviness with someone else.
“She’s lucky. Because your daughter pulled her from the water so quickly, Margot’s brain wasn’t without oxygen for longer than a minute or two. It could have been much worse. She saved her life.”
I know that should be some kind of comfort.
That I should be riding the high of relief.
Instead, all I can think about is how close I came to losing my sister.
How if I’d waited another minute to chase after her, I wouldn’t have seen her disappear under the water.
Wouldn’t have been able to pull her from the creek.
Those thoughts sit like a dumbbell on my chest.
A small, rough cough sounds behind me. I jump and turn to find Margot opening her eyes, pushing up onto her elbows in the bed.
I make my way to the bed, dropping down beside her. “Margot,” I say, taking her hand. Her fingers are still cold.
Margot squints, looking around the room. Her gaze lingers on Jasper on the couch, then returns to me.
“Hey,” she says, infinitely casual despite the circumstances. She looks at my hands, covered in bandages from where I cut my skin on the rocks. My feet, too, are bound with gauze, and I’ll be uncomfortable for a few days, but it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before. “Your hands.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “You’re the one in the hospital bed.”
“What the hell happened?” she asks. Her voice is rough.
“What do you remember?”
She frowns. Her gaze clouds for a beat. “I remember going to bed. And having this really weird dream.” She pushes to a sitting position. Her hair has dried in slick clumps, and even from a foot away, I can smell the muck and fish from the creek.
“I was in the backyard, and I heard this voice. I thought it was you.” She shakes her head. “I knew I had to follow it. Like something really bad would happen if I didn’t. Or something bad was happening, and I had to stop it.”
“A voice,” I say. “What did it say?”
Margot pauses. “It said, ‘Find me.’ ”
Cold spreads beneath my skin, like waves crashing over a shore. My mouth tastes like brine.
“Weird, right?” Margot continues. She clears her throat with considerable effort and coughs once more. “I don’t usually dream when I’m sleepwalking. But I don’t know, Jo, this didn’t even feel like a dream. It was like…”
“Like what?”
Margot gives me a half smile, but it dims. “It felt real.”
Panic leaps into my throat, and I am suddenly scrambling for an explanation that will turn my sister off this path. I don’t even know what the path is, but everything in me wants to steer her away from it.
Ingrid.
I need to talk to Finn. No more bullshit.
Margot almost died tonight. All because a voice urged her into the waves.
“Wait.” Margot straightens. Her gaze snaps to mine. “Who was with you? At the creek?”
“What?”
“There was a boy. At the creek.” Margot frowns. “He was right next to you,” she insists.
Heat rushes up my cheeks.
“You’ve been through a lot tonight. You should get some rest.” I pat her hand.
“I know what I saw,” Margot snaps. She stops. Softens. “I’m sorry. I know you’re probably right. But it felt so real. First the voice, and then that boy—”
“There’s my girl,” my mother’s voice calls from the doorway.
I push to my feet and give Margot’s hand a final squeeze before heading for the door to give the two a moment of privacy. In the hallway, Aunt Paige is sitting on one of the chairs, two cups of coffee in her hands. She gives one to me wordlessly as I sit down beside her.
“Is this—” I start.
Paige says, “Americano,” then takes a sip of her own coffee. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t dare give you anything with flavor.”
“Thanks,” I say, and take a long sip.
Paige sticks her cup between her thighs and bumps my shoulder with hers. The clock halfway down the hall tells me we’re nearing four in the morning.
“You doing okay, kid?” she asks.
I wave my bandaged hands. It’s a little difficult to hold my coffee with the gauze, but I make do.
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
I lean back. The chair creaks in protest. “Please tell me we’re closing the store tomorrow,” I say. “I don’t think I can be presentable in five hours.”
Paige lets out a humorless laugh. She shakes her head.
“You put so much effort into convincing everyone that you’re okay.
But it’s okay if you’re not. It’s actually normal.
” She sounds much younger, like the armor she’s picked up over the years momentarily slips.
“You’ve had a hell of a year, Jo. You’re allowed to be thrown by all of this. ”
Tears burn the backs of my eyes, and when blinking doesn’t force them away, I wipe them off my cheeks. “I thought I’d lost her, too,” I whisper.
Paige reaches for me, pulling me into her arms and rubbing my back. She ducks her chin against my head. I stop fighting the tears as they roll down my cheeks.
“You’re the reason Margot is alive. Right now, everything is okay, and we’re all safe.”
I open my mouth to protest, and it’s as if Paige knows what’s coming, because she continues, “And I know I can’t speak for tomorrow, or next week or next month. But right now, it’s okay. Let that be enough.”
I close my eyes. Another tear slips down my cheek, and I let it fall. “Okay,” I say.