Chapter 27 #2
The hospital’s sterile smell bites my nose as our footsteps echo off the walls of the hallway.
We take her to the ER and wait for what feels like an eternity out front.
Aria repeatedly strokes my thigh with her hand to calm me down.
I hate this place. Ever since Mom’s death, I haven’t wanted to step foot in here, but, ironically enough, I end up having to come here pretty often.
Most of the time because of Camila. Sometimes because of me. And always because of drugs.
I have no idea when we got here. Meanwhile, we’ve seen a kid with a bad cut, an older woman with ingrown toenails, and four aggressive dudes smelling of booze come and go. But now it’s quiet, and I really wish someone would show up just so I wouldn’t have to listen to my own thoughts.
“Wyatt,” Aria whispers. She reaches her hand out slowly, almost cautiously, to run it through my short hair. “Everything’s going to be okay. I’m here.”
“But you’re not going to stay,” I say softly and close my eyes. “You’re here the whole time, and somehow not. I’ve got you next to me, and somehow I don’t. This is almost worse than all the time you were away.”
I hear Aria take a breath. Her fingers stop moving through my hair. She opens her mouth to say something but stops. Then she opens it again. “I’ve got to talk to you, Wyatt. About us. It’s…”
The door to the waiting room opens and interrupts her.
The doctor comes in; he has a tired yet alert look on his face.
He closes the door and looks at me. “It’s not as bad as we thought.
Any suspicion of date-rape drugs was ruled out by the blood and urine tests.
It seems that your sister became incapacitated not simply because of alcohol but also from being exhausted.
I am afraid she just really needs to rest. Could that be? ”
His words are like a knife to my chest. My limbs are cold as ice as I nod.
The doctor writes something down on his clipboard and then sticks his pen back into his white coat.
“But she vomited,” Aria says. “She was lying in it.”
“Her blood-sugar levels were rather low. It looks like she did not have anything to eat before she went to the party. It is not uncommon for someone with an empty stomach and that blood-alcohol level to react with nausea or vomiting.” He hands me a letter.
“I have written down everything here. We do not think keeping your sister here is necessary. I think Ms. Lopez will feel better when she wakes up in her own bed tomorrow morning.”
As if in a trance, I nod as Aria and I stand up. I hardly notice that she’s holding my hand.
Back in the car, I don’t say a word. I just stare out the window and stroke Camila’s hair.
“I’m a fucking terrible older brother,” I mumble when we reach downtown. My throat feels uncomfortably sore.
Aria looks back at me in the rearview mirror. “That’s not true, Wyatt. You’re doing your best.”
“No, I’m not. Camila hardly eats a thing and is getting thinner and thinner. She spends all her nights stripping somewhere after working at the ski hut. Just to drag herself to school afterward. And what am I doing? Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Well…” Aria turns on her blinker and takes a right.
“You can’t lock her in, can you? And I’m sure that you’ve talked to her.
Have brought up other options.” She interprets my silence as agreement.
“Camila’s got her own mind. Of course we’ve got to help her.
Of course we’ve got to think about how to make it clear to her that she can’t go on like this.
But you haven’t failed, Wyatt. You’re completely overwhelmed with the father role in your current life situation, sure.
But that doesn’t mean that you haven’t taken care of her.
That you haven’t constantly tried to approach her. ”
“But it wasn’t enough.”
“We’ll manage, Wyatt.” Aria stops in front of the B he said it’d be killer. ”
“Jake? Jake Frazer?”
Her question tears at my insides and presses down until there isn’t any air.
Nodding slowly, I look to the window. I can see my face in the glass.
I look like a ghost. “He didn’t want to stay long.
‘One, two beers,’ he’d said. He and his wife had to be at the pediatrician’s early in the morning.
But we went for it anyway; the other guys weren’t letting us off that easy to begin with.
I mean, things were really going off. At some point, his wife called and told him to come home because their child couldn’t fall asleep without him and was crying.
I was ready to leave, so I told him I’d give him a lift. ”
“But…” she stops, as if finding the error in the equation. “But hadn’t you been drinking?”
Everything inside me collapses. I just can’t anymore. I reflexively press my face against my upper arm. A whimper escapes, and as I catch my breath, I realize why: I’m biting myself.
“Wyatt, hey, hey, stop that. Don’t hurt yourself.” She pulls on my arm with one hand, gently but firmly, while drawing soothing circles over my back with the other. “Shh… Everything’s okay, Wy. Everything’s okay. You’re here with me. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
I shake.
“I was drunk. And high. But I didn’t think anything of it.
You’ve done this so often, and nothing’s ever happened, I thought.
We took off, and everything was fine, but it had rained, the streets were slippery, and I could hardly see a thing…
It wasn’t that far from the party in Breckenridge to the highway, just down the main drag, and everything would’ve been fine; nothing…
Nothing would’ve happened. But there was that cross street where a car was turning, everything was dark, and suddenly…
Suddenly…” My voice breaks. I can’t say it.
My body automatically goes into defensive mode.
I start bobbing back and forth, squirming, fighting against the memories, trying to keep them from touching me, but of course they do, of course they’re stronger.
Frantic, I press my knuckles against my closed lids and grimace in pain.
Aria puts her arms around me as I start to fall.
“Jake didn’t survive.” Her voice is just a whisper, but I flinch so violently it’s like she screamed.
I want to answer, to say something, to talk about it so that I don’t have to be alone with this weight anymore, this endless barrier, but it doesn’t work. Instead, I cover my ears with my hands, my eyes and lips shut tight while, for the hundredth time, I feel the brutal pain of that fateful day.
“Wyatt. Hey, Wy.” Aria slides up next to me and carefully pulls my hands down off my ears and presses them to her chest. “Wyatt, look at me.”
An uncontrollable trembling causes my lips to quake as I open my eyes. I can feel them darting back and forth in a panic and can feel myself breaking out in a sweat.
“The other car, coming from the cross street? It hit you?”
My nostrils flare and my eyes fill with tears as I swallow and nod.
“Then it’s the other person’s fault, Wy. They’re guilty. Were they convicted?”
I nod again.
“And you?”
I shake my head.
“Okay.” She takes a deep breath and reaches for my other hand before looking me straight in the eye.
“Now, listen to me very carefully. I want you to internalize what I’m about to tell you, okay?
” I look at her, waiting, agreeing. “You’d been drinking.
You got behind the wheel drunk that night.
That’s not good, and I’m not going to defend that because that kind of thing is indefensible.
But—and this is what you’ve got to keep in mind—even if it’s hard for you, even if you don’t want to believe it, you have to internalize it, over and over: you are not to blame.
You could just as easily have driven past that cross street sober.
Jake could have gone past it in a cab or with anyone else at that second.
It hit you because you were there, drunk or not.
You were simply there. It was a case of terrible, terrible luck, yes, but not your fault. Do you hear me?”
I look at her for what feels like an eternity. But then, I can hardly believe it—I nod.
“Come here,” she says, and puts her arms back around me. “Come on.”
And then she holds me in a way no one has ever held me. She puts her head on my shoulder. Hershey casts me a warning glance as if he knew what she’d gone through thanks to me.
I don’t know how long we sit there, listening to our heartbeats.
The sweet smell of her hair tickles my nose as we watch the dancing snow.
It’s like it wants to prove to us that everything’s not so bad.
As if it were saying, “Look at me dancing. Look at how beautiful I am and how, in my own way, I’m changing the world, doing something big. ”
They fall in order to shine. And maybe we can do that, too, Aria and I.
Maybe.