60
Jessa
Over the past two days in the hospital, some of the feeling had come back to my forearms and hands.
If I really made the effort, I could lift the blue-lidded hospital water jug with a straw stuck in it to my lips for a sip. But so far, I couldn ’ t feel much below my belly button. I couldn ’ t pee on my own. I couldn ’ t move my legs or feet more than an inch. I ’ d taken the worst of the impact from the heavy, wet dirt—and what turned out to be a massive battery—that had crashed down through the opening in the plywood. I was still too afraid to look at my own body beneath the hospital sheets, looking away whenever the nurse came to change my bandages.
The impact had fractured my L1 vertebra, “ A critical junction between the thoracic and lumbar regions,” the specialist had told me, which meant nothing to me. I only remembered it because Lisa wrote it down, and I knew she was planning to Google the shit out of it as soon as she got home. “ We ’ ll figure this out, Jess,” she had said more than a dozen times.
I remembered her saying almost the exact same thing right before my pre-trial hearing. That might have annoyed me before—my sister trying to be optimistic and swooping in to save me from the fallout in my life once again. But instead, I just felt grateful. And loved. And like this time, things would be different.
Yesterday when she came to visit, she told me that Sophie had asked lots of questions about what happened to me and the kids on the bus. She ’ d also asked whether I would be okay.
I decided to let myself feel loved for that small but significant gesture, too.
The doctor said there was a reasonably good chance I ’ d regain sensation and movement, once the swelling in my lower spine subsided and the damaged nerves healed. She talked about something called “ spinal shock,” a temporary paralysis due to the trauma of the injury. It was a waiting game at this point.
Instead of reading into the dark possibilities between her carefully worded optimism, I let myself feel the hope of it, imagining myself feeling a tingle in the soles of my feet again, gripping the rubber handles of a walker to drag myself around for physical therapy, taking steps again on my own.
When I wasn ’ t closing my eyes trying to project my hopes into the future, I was fully giving in to less healthy uses of my time—scrolling on my phone with clumsy fingers. The police had been gracious enough to return it to me from evidence since it wouldn ’ t be needed for the investigation, once they ’ d verified that I had nothing to do with the kidnapping. To be fair though, I didn ’ t have much else to do.
At first, I just wanted to make sure all of the kids were okay. And they were. Every single child had survived, with only minor injuries, dehydration, and exhaustion. A few of them were still in this same hospital with me right now.
Everyone ’ s blood-oxygen level had been dangerously low when the FBI and police finally broke through to the buried bunker, and there were a lot of headlines screaming about how we ’ d been minutes from certain death if the puzzle pieces hadn ’ t clicked into place exactly the way they had. I reread those articles again and again, feeling shivers down my spine—that stopped at my damn L1—thinking about Sage ’ s determined digging, Bonnie and the other kids holding the mattresses and that bucket. The way Sage had run for help and told the police everything she knew. The way those police had already been nearby, sent by Sheena Halverson. The way one of the kidnappers had finally found his conscience and pulled the excavator over to dig us most of the way out just in the nick of time.
This morning ’ s headline—published on all the major news sites only twenty minutes earlier—shouted that they ’ d found and arrested twenty-year-old Andy McQuain. He ’ d tried to pawn the “ Rolex” with a distinctive broken clasp—and faux branding to anyone intimately familiar with expensive watches—at a high-end reseller just outside Boise.
The FBI was already a step ahead, having shared Andy ’ s photo and an example picture of the watch with every reseller, pawn shop owner, and watch broker in the state of Idaho.
The owner called the police the second the guy stepped in the shop. When he tried to run, one of the police dogs tore after him, leading to a chase that had been caught on video. So not only was he now in jail on charges of felony kidnapping, battery, and attempted murder with aggravating circumstances—which could carry the death penalty in Idaho—but the video of his pathetic attempt to escape from the dog outside of the pawn shop had gone viral and was the top-watched video on YouTube.
Big news outlets outside were covering every aspect of the story. And Andy McQuain was now, without a doubt, the most hated man in America. So much so that they ’ d had to move him into solitary confinement for his own safety the first night he spent in jail.
Reading that was enough to make me smile for a very long time.
It was strange reading about myself in third-person again, too.
There were no secrets about my past anymore. I ’ d become an internet celebrity overnight in a way that obliterated any press coverage my previous trial had received. And this time, my mug shot and Gary ’ s scathing commentary about my character weren ’ t the focal point of the articles. At least, not the articles hitting the news post-rescue. For a while there, I found out I ’ d been the prime suspect.
Some people thought I was a saint for keeping the kids calm and safe, given the circumstances. Other people were furious that I ’ d misled Bright Beginnings, using my maiden name to skirt the out-of-state background check. Still others dug up those old articles about my sentencing and connected them to the recently fired prosecutor back in Utah, and a defense lawyer who had recently lost his license over sketchy closed-door deals and pressuring clients into taking unfair plea deals. That had been my lawyer.
They were saying I never should have gone to prison. That my case of self-defense was more than arguable.
There was a Facebook group that had popped up called “ Save Ms. Jessa. ” I ’ d already gotten calls from five different attorneys offering to help me overturn my conviction pro-bono.
The attention and the offers of help were a little overwhelming. I hadn ’ t called any of the law firms back yet. However, underneath the overwhelm, I felt those prickles of hope.
Grimacing, I focused my attention on lifting my phone to the bedside table without dropping it. Then I took a deep breath and grasped the unopened envelope with my name scrawled on the front that had been sitting there since yesterday afternoon.
I already knew who the note was from—the nurse who delivered it to me had told me. Sheena Halverson, Sage and Bonnie ’ s mom. But I was afraid that reading that note would make me feel more vulnerable than seeing my photo and life story and all of the overwhelming comments in the “ Save Ms. Jessa ” Facebook group.
Before I could chicken out for the umpteenth time, I fumbled with the mercifully unsealed envelope flap, pulled a single folded sheet of paper onto my lap, and started to read.
Dear Jessa,
My daughters have said your name more times in the past two days than I can count.
It ’ s nearly two a.m., and I have written and rewritten this note in my head a dozen times. To tell you how sorry I am that I imagined the worst of you, when all the while you were protecting my babies the best you could. To tell you a story about a toddler in a red hoodie who was swept into the ocean on the Oregon Coast—and the mother who swam toward what looked like self-destruction to try and save her child. And most of all to tell you thank you from the bottom of my heart.
“ Knock, knock!” came the muffled voice from outside the door, and I looked up from the letter with a start.
My stiff fingers dropped the note to the floor as I flinched and nudged my chin against my hospital gown to wipe the tears as best I could. “ Come in! ”
The door opened wide to reveal Lisa ’ s smiling face.
“ I ’ m sorry it ’ s so early,” she said. “ But somebody wanted to see you before school, and I thought we ’ d better hustle over here.”
A shorter, slighter figure shuffled a few inches forward into the open doorway.
Soph. My Soph.
The hospital room melted away, and all I could see was her. My baby, who was no longer a baby. She wore a lacy purple shirt that showed the freckles on her arms. Yellow shorts that looked brand new. Her hair styled into a low ponytail and bangs, with a familiar cowlick. My chin trembled, but I didn ’ t dare blink for fear she ’ d suddenly disappear like a mirage.
“ Hi,” she said shyly, her pink cheeks turning pinker as she studied me where I lay in the hospital bed.
“ Hi,” I managed to reply, terrified that I was going to scare her away by breaking into loud sobs at any moment if I said more.
Sophie took a step toward me. Then another, until she was just a few feet away. She glanced back at Lisa, who was pretending to talk to a nurse at the doorway, her face and shoulders turned slightly away from us. But I could see by the slight shaking of her jacket that she was crying, too.
If this were a movie, she would have called me Mom for the first time in three years, run to me, thrown her arms around my neck and told me she loved me.
Then I would have told her how she was all I ’ d hoped to see again when I was down in that bunker.
Instead, carefully, like I was trying not to startle a baby bird, I pointed to the chair beside my hospital bed with a trembling hand. “ You can sit there if you want?”
And, like watching a tiny miracle unfold before my very eyes, the corners of her lips turned up and she nodded, then sat down beside me.
And it was more than enough.