Chapter 28
Life on land
I make it onto the earlier flight, probably because I sobbed to the gate agent incoherently until she rebooked me. I try to call my mom one more time, but she doesn’t answer. I leave her a message with the details of my flight.
The plane hurtles into the night sky. The man next to me nods off, his head dropping towards his chest. I hug the window, pressed to the side of my seat. Only when the flight attendant asks me nicely what I would like to drink do I realise that I have just been sitting, staring out the window, for the better part of an hour.
‘Um,’ I fumble.
She rattles off options. ‘We have water, soda, coffee, tea, wine—’
‘Wine,’ I interject. ‘Red wine, please.’
She sets down a flimsy plastic cup and I take a big sip, the acidity tingling the back of my throat. I resist the urge to knock it all back at once. I stare at the screen in front of me some more. Nothing is playing. I watch the flight tracker blip, flickering in and out. I alternate between staring out the window and falling into fits of sleep. I’m too shocked to be angry, and I’m too numb to be sad. That will come later.
My mom picks me up from the airport, and we drive straight to the hospital where my dad is waiting for us. As soon as I breathe in the cold Columbus air, I want to turn around and go back to Australia. I miss it already. I feel like I’m being pulled back to it, even from this far away, and I don’t think it’s just because it’s a balmy summer there and the icy dead of winter here.
My mom fills me in on the way. I learn that Millie’s surgery had gone well, better than they hoped even, but things took a turn the second day she was back home. She had a bad fever and chills, which she dismissed as post-surgery exhaustion. Eventually, my Mom called the doctor, just to check and see if Millie’s symptoms were normal. They ended up rushing to the hospital because the doctor thought it sounded like Millie had a blood infection, which she did. The infection overwhelmed her body, her blood pressure dropped so low that the only way to stabilise her was to keep her overnight and for a couple of days.
Mom retells it with a shaky voice.
‘She’ll be OK,’ she says, and I don’t know if she says it more for herself than for me.
‘Thank God you called the doctor,’ I say, gently placing a hand on her arm.
Mom starts to cry, which pulls me out of the reverie I’ve been living in for the past twenty hours. My flight to Dallas, my connection back to Columbus, I had remained perfectly stoic the entire time. I watched movies that I didn’t pay attention to and could hardly remember the plot of. I read and reread the same chapters of my book. Now, sitting in my mom’s old Toyota Highlander, I feel my veneer start to crack.
‘I bet it was so scary, Mom,’ I manage to say, although I’m starting to sniffle. I start to cry. She reaches over and squeezes my hand.
‘She’s doing better now. Her blood pressure is back to normal, and she only has a low-grade fever.’
I feel some of my terror start to ebb, but I know I won’t feel relieved until I see Millie myself. ‘That’s good. Is she resting? Can I see her when we get there?’
‘She might be asleep, but we can go in. Visiting hours are from nine to six and . . .’ she pauses and checks her watch ‘ . . . we should arrive right at nine.’
I turn on my phone in the last ten minutes of our drive, expecting Hugh to have messaged me. He hasn’t. I feel rejected and disappointed and hurt. I try to ignore my own feelings, but it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that he didn’t text me to ask about Millie, or if I got home safe. How could I have interpreted his feelings so incorrectly? Why did I believe he really cared about me? I want to throw my phone out the window.
I stare at my phone, relief that Millie is OK giving way to anger. The one thing I really wanted to bring for my sister, the proof she’s been searching for, the reason she sent me on this trip to begin with, Hugh took away from me. Feeling angry with him is better than giving in to the wave of sadness threatening to overwhelm me, so I lean into it, glowering out the window. I don’t want to keep thinking: What if? What if I was honest? What if I didn’t ask Hugh to sign that stupid dive log? Would he still like me? Would I still feel like we had something I’ve never felt before with anyone?
My mom hates silence, so she breaks it after about two minutes. ‘I haven’t even asked you about the trip. I’m sorry everything has been so hectic at home. And you had to come home early—’ She breaks off mid-sentence, glancing over at me with wide eyes.
‘Mom, it’s fine,’ I reassure her. ‘I didn’t have anything to stick around for anyway.’
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, which is not her usual MO, and I know she can hear the underlying sadness in my answer.
‘Did something happen?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘You didn’t find the fish?’
As soon as she asks, it hits me that no one has asked until now. Not her, not my dad, not Millie, which must mean that Millie was really sick, otherwise she would be texting me herself or begging them to do it.
‘I did actually,’ I say, ‘but I don’t have any proof, so it doesn’t count.’
My mom claps her hands together. ‘Millie will be so happy! This is just the news she needs.’
‘But, Mom,’ I say, my voice bordering on a whine, ‘she won’t be happy. I didn’t get any proof , my sightings are worthless.’
‘Surely someone else saw it too?’ she asks brightly.
I know she’s hoping desperately for something to lift Millie’s spirits, but her question feels like a dagger to my heart. I force myself to shake my head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I mumble.
We pull into the hospital and park, making our way through a maze of garages and elevators and hallways until we meet up with my dad in the waiting room. He’s pacing back and forth.
‘Hi, pumpkin,’ he says, greeting me with a bear hug. I surrender to his smell, which has been the same my whole life. For the first time since I landed, I don’t feel trapped to be back in Columbus. I feel relieved.
‘Millie doesn’t quite look like herself,’ he says, pulling back from our embrace and squinting at me. There are deep lines of worry across his forehead, and his hair looks like he hasn’t combed it in days.
‘OK,’ I say. My voice echoes, sounding small in the hospital hallway.
‘Well . . .’ He pauses, checking his watch, which he’s worn for as long as I can remember. It’s gold and chipped around the edges. ‘We’re right on time. Visiting hours just started.’
I gulp. Now that I’m here, I am overcome with nerves. I drag my feet as I follow my dad towards Millie’s room. There’s a folder outside with her name on it. I try to wriggle behind my mom, but she sidesteps me, forcing me forward.
‘She’ll be so excited to see you,’ Mom reminds me under her breath. She nudges me inside.
Everything smells like disinfectant. The tiles on the floor are scratched and beige coloured. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead.
‘Hi, honey,’ my dad says, pulling up a chair next to the bed. Millie’s reclined underneath hospital blankets. Her skin is pale, and her cheeks look gaunt, like she’s lost ten pounds since I’ve last seen her. Her chest is bandaged, and the gauze is visible under the neckline of her hospital gown. Her eyes are closed.
There are tubes hooked up to a machine that beeps next to her, fluids running into her arm from a bag next to the bed.
I choke back a sob. I’m not sure if I’m relieved that she’s OK or terrified of the condition she seems to be in. Mom squeezes my hand.
‘Millie,’ she says, stepping closer to the bed and resting a hand on my sister’s forearm. Millie stirs this time, awakening slowly, clearly disoriented.
Her eyes find mine right away.
‘Hey, you,’ she says. Her voice is weak and hoarse.
‘An—’ My dad gestures to an empty seat and I take it.
‘So?’ She coughs after she asks me, and my mom passes her a glass of water.
My parents exchange a confused glance, but I know exactly what she’s asking about. ‘I saw one,’ I tell Millie, leaning closer to her. ‘I don’t exactly have proof yet, I still need to get the dive log signed, but they’re alive, I promise.’
Millie rests her head back onto the pillow. ‘I knew it,’ she says. She starts to smile but her lips are chapped so she stops mid-grin, bringing a finger to her bottom lip. ‘We’ll figure out proof later. I may just have to go and get some myself.’ She smiles again, smaller this time, and her eyes get caught in a blink, fluttering closed for a couple seconds before she opens them again.
‘Sorry.’ She yawns. ‘This stuff makes me so tired.’ She gestures at the IV stand next to the bed. ‘Was it everything I promised?’
‘Everything and more,’ I reply.
I spend the next hour recounting my trip, making sure to eliminate any mention of Hugh. Millie awakens slowly, listening intently, her eyes glued to mine the entire time. All I do is talk about the dives, our instructors and the weather. I talk about Miguel, his flirting and his dancing. I explain how Vanessa always kept us in line. I know that Millie will freak out about Hugh if I tell her, so I keep that part of the trip to myself.
Millie asks a couple of questions about the reef conditions, the quality of the boat itself and the dive instructors, but mostly she stays silent, her eyes half closed, totally absorbed in my story.
‘I love Pippa,’ she says when I mimic Pippa’s British accent. She wrinkles her nose when I describe Derek, and she gasps when I recount seeing the shark on the night dive. After an hour of talking non-stop, Millie yawns and the nurse gives our family a meaningful look.
I remain seated in the chair. I’m not ready to leave Millie’s side, even though she’s falling asleep. Her eyes are closed and her hand twitches next to her.
‘She looks OK,’ I whisper to my mom.
‘She’s better than yesterday. They should discharge her tomorrow.’
‘They said she shouldn’t go back to work for a couple weeks,’ my dad says, ‘she has to go home with IV antibiotics and visits from a home health nurse.’
‘Oh no.’ I know how important it was for Millie that no one at work knows about the surgery. ‘What is she gonna tell them?’
‘She has to tell them the truth,’ my dad says grimly.
Millie groans from her bed, cracking one eye open. ‘I haven’t figured out what to do yet.’
I reach for her hand and squeeze it. ‘They’ll understand.’
‘I wish I didn’t have to tell them and you could go to work in my place. It seems to have served you well so far.’
I roll my eyes. ‘I can’t hold a candle to you, and you know that,’ I reply.
‘You seemed pretty good at doing it in Australia.’ Millie shrugs her shoulders. ‘Maybe no one will know that it’s you underneath a lab coat.’
I laugh. ‘Sure, Millie. I’ll quit my job and do yours instead.’ I’m laughing, but I start to picture going to Millie’s place of work instead of my own and feel a twinge of jealousy followed by a surge of hope. What if . . .
‘I’m gonna have to tell them, aren’t I?’ Millie says.
At that moment, the nurse bustles in, shooing us out of the room.
‘We’ll come back in the afternoon,’ Mom promises Millie as we scurry out. We make our way back through the maze of hallways and into the parking garage. Mom makes multiple references to how badly I must want a shower, which I do, but she calls attention to it so many times that I check myself in the car mirror, wondering how awful I must look.
Now that I’ve seen Millie, all I can think about is seeing Murphy. I’m so excited my body is buzzing. But as we near the house, I realise I’m not sure if the idea of working in Millie’s lab has something to do with my excitement.
She couldn’t have been serious , I remind myself. Although there’s a nagging voice in my brain again asking me: Why not ?