Chapter 25
Twenty-five
Sometimes when you’re asleep, you wake up for no reason at all other than your body’s will, as if it knows something you don’t.
I blinked my eyes open, adjusting to the dim light of the moon that filtered through the window.
The space beside me was empty, and I felt a shiver rip through me as I’d kicked off all the blankets sometime in the middle of the night.
Hushed voices came from outside the door.
In my half-asleep trance I could barely decipher words, only emotions.
Anger. Hurt. I pulled myself out of bed, my body still trying to shake sleep out of me, and pushed the bedroom door open slowly.
The common area of the suite was empty, but the door to the balcony had been left wide open, filling the room with a cool salty breeze.
I shivered again and slid the door shut.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the bathroom door cracked open, with little streams of light spilling through the bottom. I moved closer to the door and was about to push it open when Stella’s voice rang clear.
“I don’t know.” Her voice cracked when she spoke.
“Stella, I need more help,” Alec replied, more calm and collected than Stella, but it wasn’t hard to pinpoint that something was wrong. “Can you please go wake them? Please.”
I couldn’t breathe. Alec’s words were like a string tethered to my body, pulling me closer until I pushed the door open slowly. Part of me was convinced none of this was even real, and my sleeping mind had been playing Inception-like tricks on me, still dreaming but making me think I was awake.
Stella stood with her back to the door, and Alec was crouched over a body leaning against the wall between the glass shower doors and the toilet.
Bloody towels were strewn across the bathroom floor, lying in puddles stained red.
The water in the sink was running. When Brooklyn came into view, my body went numb.
His face was pale, and I couldn’t tell if it was tears or sweat that rolled down his cheeks like tiny rivers, mixing with the blood that caked around his nose.
A mix of blood and sweat and bile stained the front of his T-shirt, and all the smells hit me like a freight train.
It smelled like death. My stomach churned, and I felt like I was going to be sick.
I went to step backward but my legs felt too heavy to lift and grounded me where I stood.
“Stella.” Alec’s voice remained steady. “Please. You’re only making things worse.”
She exhaled sharply. “Worse? How much worse do you think things could possibly get?”
Alec finally noticed me standing petrified in the doorway, his eyes wide and bloodshot and absolutely filled with panic.
“Much worse.”
Stella turned around to face me. Locks of her hair stuck to her forehead in sweaty clumps, and mascara streaked her cheeks in harsh, shadowy lines. “Nat . . .”
“What’s going on?”
It took me a moment to realize I was the one who had spoken. A knot made its home in my throat, and I was worried if I tried to speak again I’d choke on my own words. Silence bogged down the air. It seemed like time had stopped entirely.
“I got back a little while ago. I came into the bathroom to take my makeup off.” Stella choked back a sob. “I don’t know. I found him like this. I don’t know what he’s taken, or—”
She sniffed and turned away, like despite all of this she was still terrified of looking like she cared. That really was the problem, wasn’t it? We all cared too much, and it was killing us.
I stumbled forward into the bathroom and looked down at Brooklyn, his blue eyes wide and glassy, pleading and beckoning me closer.
The bathroom felt like it was getting hotter, the air stale and heavy.
I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping with every ounce of my being that when I opened them I’d be back in bed.
I balled my hands into fists, letting my fingernails dig into my palms.
But when I opened my eyes, Stella was still crying, Alec was still trying to catch his breath, and Brooklyn was still sitting on the bathroom floor, shaking and sweating and high. My palms stung as I released my shaking hands.
“Something’s wrong.” Alec’s voice penetrated the silence. “He’s cold. He’s really cold.”
Brooklyn’s body trembled, and his lips began to turn a sickly shade of blue. I tried to move forward but I had lost all feeling in my legs, in my arms, in my face. My head was spinning.
“What are you guys doing?” My voice shook as my nerves kicked into overdrive. “We have to take him to a hospital.”
Nobody would say the words, but I knew. Murphy’s Law—that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and everything was going wrong.
“Stella,” Alec said with panic rising in his voice. “Stella, stop trying to protect him. Go wake up your parents. Now.”
Stella nodded and exhaled a shaky breath. Without a word she backed out of the bathroom and bolted out of the suite.
Alec moved his gaze to me. “Call 911.”
I gasped for air. “I don’t have my phone.”
Silently, Alec slipped his phone out of the pocket of his sweats and handed it to me.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” the operator answered immediately.
I hadn’t been there when my mom had found my sister passed out in the bathroom because she hadn’t eaten in days and was continuously purging.
I never thought about that moment, and all the things my mom must have had to do and feel and suffer through on her own.
We never talked about it, but I realized it must have felt like this.
No matter what you do, there is some nagging feeling in the back of your mind that it might not be enough.
“Hello? Are you there?” the operator’s voice brought me back down to earth, the one place I didn’t want to be.
“Sorry, yes. My boyfriend, he’s unconscious.
I—” I could barely breathe. There was no point in denying it, as much as every neuron in my body wanted to.
There was still some sane, logical part of me that knew the longer I hesitated, the worse it was going to get.
“I think he is overdosing. Has overdosed. I’m not sure. ”
Alec had put a wet towel to Brooklyn’s head, whose mouth was now hanging open and his whole face going ashen, as if someone was sucking the life right out of him. I had to turn away, otherwise I might have never gotten the words I needed to get out.
“Okay, honey, paramedics are on their way.” Her voice was kind, and I swallowed my tears down. “Do you know what he’s taken?”
“I don’t,” I told her. “His nose was bleeding, and now his lips are turning blue. His whole face, it’s . . . please help.”
“Is he breathing?”
I looked wide-eyed at Alec, who shook his head.
“No,” I squeaked.
“Okay, you’re going to need to give him chest compressions. Can you lay him on his back?”
I nodded, completely unable to register the fact that she couldn’t see me. “Lay him down,” I told Alec.
As he lowered him to the bathroom floor, a deep, guttural wheezing sound came from Brooklyn’s mouth—the kind of sound you thought the monsters under your bed made.
“Oh god,” I choked the words out. I wondered if this was what drowning felt like. “Please, are they close?”
“A few minutes out,” she told me. “Are you with someone who can help?”
“Yes.”
“Have them do the chest compressions while you’re on the phone with me. They should be hard and fast but allow the chest to rise completely in between compressions. I can count them for you.”
I counted while she counted, and Alec pushed down on Brooklyn’s chest with his palms in time with the counting. Brooklyn made another one of those guttural wheezing sounds, like he was begging us to keep him alive.
You never think this kind of thing could happen to you. That’s why nobody’s ever really prepared. Who ever really assumes the worst? Nobody, until the worst happens.
I’d blacked out by the time the paramedics arrived, and things only started coming back to me in flashes as I drove with Stella and Alec to the hospital.
I remembered Brooklyn’s father lifting me up off the floor (but not how I ended up on the floor), I remembered seeing the table in the living room of the suite moved all the way to the wall by the television, and I remembered getting defensive with a police officer who showed up, as if somehow, nobody had done anything wrong.
That wasn’t true, but I must have thought that it was.
I’d curled myself up into a ball in the back seat of Stella’s car, watching the flashing of passing streetlights with bleary eyes.
I didn’t realize we’d even gotten to the hospital until I’d somewhat come to my senses in the cushy chair of the emergency room lobby.
It was almost 2 a.m., and we seemed to be the only people in the area with any kind of emergency, our various stages of distress and disarray only on display for each other.
Stella’s updo had fallen out, and streaks of makeup still decorated her face. I was in my pajama shorts and one of Brooklyn’s hoodies. Alec’s shirt was on inside out. Brooklyn’s parents had managed to get somewhat dressed, but the worse for wear showed the most on their faces.
We all sat in unbearable silence, because what could any of us have said that would have mattered? It felt like an eternity before a nurse came out from behind the stark-white swinging double doors.
“All right, I can only take family back to see him right now.”
“Are you serious?” Stella snapped with a kind of viciousness that came from somewhere deep and hurting.
Charlie put a hand to Stella’s forearm. “It’s okay.”
Stella squeaked out a sob as she clung to her father, dotting his gray T-shirt with wet spots. Then Annie looked back at me and Alec with tired eyes before following them back.