Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
My little sister yells my name a second before she flings herself into the emergency room bay.
Camryn, brown hair wild around her face and wearing a pajama top that reads No Drama Llama , rushes to my bedside. Her gaze slides over me, frenzied. “Your neighbor called. Not the busybody who watches everyone, the other one who knows Dad. Nancy." She assesses me head to toe. "Are you ok?”
It hurts to speak. I touch my throat, hoping she gets the message, and offer a thumbs-up.
Her eyes flare. “You can’t speak? But your throat is ok, right?” She grabs my hand with one of her own, shaking it over the clean but worn sheet. “You could speak if you had to?”
I nod again, more emphatically this time as a scene from The Little Mermaid dances somewhere in the back of my mind.
“Thank God.” Camryn glances at the ceiling, dropping my hand to park prayer hands in front of her chest. She looks back at me. “Nancy told me your house caught fire.” Tears shine in her eyes. “She said the flames went into the sky.”
Cam waits for me to confirm Nancy’s assertion, but I was too busy being inside the house to know what it looked like from the outside. If I could speak, I’d say that, and then Camryn would give me a dirty look. I settle for shrugging, and the doctor who examined me when I arrived strides into the bay.
“How are you feeling, Ms. Burke?” Dr. Booker assesses me with a quick glance. He’s young, handsome, and no-nonsense.
“Ok,” I rasp.
Camryn steps to the end of my bed. She smiles shamelessly, forgetting what she’s wearing and the state of her hair. “Can you tell me more about what happened to my big sister? It hurts her to speak, so I’m still mostly in the dark.”
I’d roll my eyes if they didn’t feel like someone poured hot desert sand in them.
A smile tugs at the corner of the doctor’s mouth. I’m not surprised. Camryn can charm the skin off a snake, according to our father.
“Your sister was in a house fire. She experienced smoke inhalation, but I wouldn’t call it an injury. The only prescription for it is time and rest.” He looks at me. “I’ve seen much, much worse, Ms. Burke. You’re very lucky.”
“Thank you,” I manage haltingly.
He nods at me. “Thank goodness for firefighters.” Glancing at his wristwatch, he says, “Discharge might take some time, so hold tight.”
Camryn comes back to my side as the doctor walks from the room, sweeping the curtain closed as he goes.
“Stop,” she commands, frowning.
My hands lift in confusion and innocence.
“Don’t judge me for flirting.” Her eyes drift down to my chest. “You’re the one who’s not wearing a bra.”
After I'm discharged from the hospital, Camryn drives me to the house we grew up in. It’s not far from where I live (lived?), just over the invisible line that separates Phoenix from Scottsdale.
She hasn’t moved out, despite graduating from high school a year ago. She doesn’t go to school either, choosing to spend her time working at the locally owned coffee shop a few miles away. Sometimes I wonder if the reason my dad hasn’t either forced her to go to college or kicked her out is because he doesn’t realize she still lives here. He buries himself in work, and his vision tunnels. He might know she’s present, but he doesn’t actually see her.
“Home sweet home,” Cam announces when we walk inside the ranch style home. My legs haven’t stopped feeling like sticks of Jell-O, and by now I’m upright only by sheer force of will.
“Remember,” Cam says, shuffling past me. “You don’t have a bedroom here anymore.”
My dad didn’t keep my room intact when I left for college. Within a few months of me moving out of my childhood home and into my dorm at Arizona State University, the four walls I’d grown up in transformed into a home gym. Carpet ripped up, and squishy yoga mat material laid down in its place. He installed a mirrored wall, and added everything a person could need to either get or stay in shape. He’d been dating Patricia, a personal trainer and fitness blogger. She was beloved by women who were squarely in their mid-life reawakening, fresh from the death of their first marriage and ready to rediscover the woman they’d lost when they became wives and mothers.
Patricia was nice enough, but Camryn and I knew better than to put too much stock into the relationship. Not shockingly, we were right. They lasted eight months. To my knowledge, Dad still uses the home gym, albeit with less frequency.
My father has an aversion to being single. If asked, he’d scoff and say this is untrue. I don’t know how he denies it, given all the evidence to the contrary. Evidence being women . No opinions here, just cold hard facts. I think he doesn’t want to face how lonely he is since our mom died, and denying the symptom also denies the underlying illness.
The fourth bedroom in the house is an office, not that my dad ever uses it. He’s constantly traveling for work. Currently he’s in Japan.
The urge to call him sweeps over me, and I voice it to my sister.
Camryn shrugs. “Why? He won't jump on the next flight and come home.”
She’s right.
Camryn gives me fresh pajamas that don’t smell like smoke and lets me use her expensive cream face wash. I’ll shower tomorrow. My hair is tied on top of my head, the lingering scent of smoke clinging to my bound tresses.
Camryn pulls back the covers of her queen size bed and crawls to the far side, making room for me. “Snuggle time,” she mumbles, yawning.
I get in beside her, worry settling over me like the comforter I’m wrapped in. Does Sabrina know about the fire? Did someone call her? The police? Were the police there when I was carried out? I can’t remember. What about?—
“Go to sleep, Baxter.”
A wisp of a laugh rushes between my lips. Baxter was the name of our neighbor's adopted rescue dog who had an affinity for humping my calves. Camryn called me Baxter as a joke, and the name stuck. She rarely uses it anymore, and I think I know why she’s using it now. Comedic relief can soothe near-tragedy. And what almost happened tonight?
It would’ve been tragic.
In the tiniest voice, Cam whispers into the darkness, “You’re the only mother I’ve ever had, and you could’ve been gone. Just like that.”
Around the lump building in my throat, I say, “I didn’t, Cam. I’m still here, and I’ll still be passively aggressively trying to make you go to college, and finding flaws with every guy you date.”
She sniffs. “And telling me you hate my shoes.”
“You always choose the ugliest shoes.” The words barely make it out before I'm crying.
Heaving sobs contort my face and fill my chest. Camryn rolls over, pulling me in to her. She holds me and lets me cry. At some point we fall asleep, our roles reversed. So many nights we fell asleep with me holding her this same way.