Chapter 8
Byrdie
I’m drowning in questions.
Everyone wants something from me. The cops, doctors, nurses, and the friendly therapist who pops by with a smile and yet more questions I don’t intend to answer.
And them.
They hang around outside my hospital door. During visiting hours, they knock and ask to come in. When I don’t answer because I’m too busy staring at my white wall, they come in anyway.
They bring me things that they put away for me: magazines, candy, flowers, and clothes to change into when I’ve had enough of the backless hospital gown that I hate. They never seem to notice that I don’t eat any of the candy, flick through the magazines, or even look at the flowers.
Vonn sits in the chair closest to me. He tells me about the hotel they’re staying in and reminds me that if there’s anything I need, he’ll go right out and get it.
Nash brings me the most flowers and candy. I barely notice them when he sets them down on a side table. He brings magazines, too, and they’re slowly piling up, unread, in a towering stack on the table next to the plastic bag drip-feeding medication into me through a needle in my vein.
Makhi has the most questions, but he doesn’t ask them out loud. I see those questions in his eyes every time he looks at me. He wants to know if I hate him for slamming the door in my face and leaving me outside in a torrential rainstorm.
I nearly died in the desert because he chased me away, and I think he knows that.
His questions are the loudest, even though he’s silent as he stands in the back of the room during my visiting hours, his arms crossed.
I stay in the hospital for five days.
The doctors need that long to treat my severe dehydration and to soothe the sunburns and blisters from wandering for hours in the desert.
The burns on my feet are bad. Weeping, red, and painful.
I haven’t needed to walk yet because of my dehydration, which has given them time to heal and for my ankle to stop throbbing.
The therapist has stopped trying to talk to me. I’ve given her five days of silence, and she’s finally gotten the message. The cops gave up on me first.
Two officers stopped by soon after Vonn carried me into the Deming General Hospital. They were patient at first, almost friendly since I was so sick-looking.
“We just want to know who would leave you in the desert like that,” they’d said with their tiny notebooks open, pens poised to write whatever I told them. I’d given them nothing but silence.
When they filled my room with my questions, and my head started to throb, I showed them my back and waited for them to leave.
Their tones got sharp, and their patience soon ran out.
When they couldn’t find any evidence of a crime—since I wasn’t willing to talk—they left a card I haven’t picked up, and I haven’t seen them again.
Even though it’s the morning, it’s still dark outside my window when my door swings open and Vonn smiles as he steps inside. “Ready to come home with us?”
I look at him, and I don’t say a word.
His smile dims.
As he walks toward me, I see Makhi and Nash in the hallway.
Makhi tries to catch my eye.
I look away, focusing on Vonn, who perches on the side of my bed and takes my hand.
“The doctors want you to stay for another day or two for observation. It’s not a good idea.”
I look at his strong fingers grasping mine, not tempted to pull them away.
My hand is more tanned than his for the first time, though my skin is no longer dark red from the sunburn but a deep gold with peeling skin.
He’s from Texas. His skin is still darkly tanned as if he spends hours outside, even though he lives in a small town in Arizona and spends his days in Nash’s mansion.
“He could find you here,” Vonn continues when I don’t respond, dropping his voice to add. “If he had you registered as husband and wife, it would make taking you away from here harder.”
Alarmed, I look at him.
He must have been waiting for that because he slides his palm around the nape of my neck and presses a kiss on my forehead. “Harder, but not impossible. He won’t hurt you again. My word and my life, Byrdie. You’ll always be safe with me.”
My eyes burn, so I look away, back at my lap, and his hand grasping mine.
“Do you want to come back with us?” he asks quietly.
With so many questions buzzing around me, spoken at me, gone through me, that hasn’t been one of them.
I think about what I have in New Mexico.
Nothing.
Jeremiah had his acolytes bury my mom in his compound, a place I will never go to lay flowers on her grave.
Even that Jeremiah took from me. This place was never home, never my fresh start, or even where I wanted to be.
I followed Mom here because it’s where she wanted to be.
This was the place that killed her, and I’d be happy if I never set foot here again.
I nod once.
He kisses my forehead. “I’ll get a nurse, and the doctor can give you a final checkup before they discharge you. Nash got more clothes for you.”
He’s gone for what seems like seconds.
A nurse bustles in, bright and cheerful. She opens the blinds and chats nonstop as she checks the bag I’m attached to. The doctor, smothering a yawn, probably just starting their shift, walks in with a gruff “hullo,” and closes the door.
The final checkup is brief, and the doctor confirms that I’m well enough to go home.
The nurse helps me to change into the panties, a cotton sports bra, loose sweatpants, a t-shirt, and a hoodie that Nash left in a bag beside the door.
Everything is slightly too big, except the new sneakers, which fit me perfectly.
I don’t know if it’s because he bought my original size and I lost weight, or he purposely bought everything a size too big so the clothes wouldn’t rub against my still-healing sunburned skin.
Vonn pushes me out of the hospital in a wheelchair as the sun is rising in the distance.
Nash says the journey home will take a few hours, but we’ll stop halfway and stay the night in a hotel so the road trip won’t be too hard on me.
Makhi is somewhere behind me.
Vonn helps me into the back seat and buckles me up. Makhi slides into the back beside me, and I freeze.
Everything stops.
Without saying a word, Makhi gets out of the back, steps around Nash, and climbs into the passenger seat as Nash takes the seat beside me.
Sitting next to Nash is okay. He doesn’t have a million questions in his eyes when he looks at me. He didn’t slam a door in my face or kill me. And I know I’m not dead, I really do, but the feeling that he killed me won’t go away.
I don’t want him near me.
Vonn starts the engine, turns on the radio, and we start the long drive back to Massey, Arizona, and a mansion full of secrets.