Chapter 5 Simi
Five
Simi
The last thing I expected to see when I got to the hospital was my indomitable sister lying in the critical care unit, her face covered with an oxygen mask and tubes connecting her to all sorts of machines.
She’s even thinner than I remember. It looks almost like there’s no body under the sheets attached to her ghostly pale face.
“She’s going to be okay,” Prem says.
He has no way of knowing that. “I don’t think she’s ever been okay a day in her life,” I say, because right now none of my usual filters, the ones that separate words into speakable and unspeakable, are working.
His arm around me tightens.
It should be comforting, but I don’t think I remember what comfort feels like.
“They said it’s not serious.”
“Then why the hell is she in critical care, Prem? I’m a nurse. They don’t put anyone in the CCU without it being bloody serious!” I pull away and start pacing.
“Simi?” He tries to follow me but trips over his own feet and stumbles.
I grab his arm and steady him. “I’m sorry,” I say, not wanting to apologize. Not wanting anyone here right now. Because no one needs to witness how I’m going to shake my sister until her bones rattle when she wakes up.
What the hell, Rupi? Why can’t you let me live in peace? I came five thousand miles to get away from your drama!
My thoughts are so unfair, they fill me with shame.
Her face the last time I saw her spins in my head.
We said such ugly things. I knew what she was doing.
Rupi pushes people away as a matter of habit, but that day she’d pushed hard.
Because she wanted to get me to safety. Her love is forged from iron.
I don’t know anyone else who would do the things she’s done for me. It’s all too intense with her.
As with the rest of our lives, that last fight went exactly the way Rupi wanted it to: with her taking care of everything, with her making saying goodbye easier for me.
If something happens to her, what am I going to do?
Too many memories rush through my brain.
The times she pulled me close when I cried, fed me when I was hungry, even though it meant pretending she was full when she hadn’t eaten, when she squeezed her palms into my ears so I wouldn’t hear the screaming fights that usually started a few months after a new stepfather came into our lives.
What do you think Ma is looking for? I asked her after our mother had introduced us to the last in the Parade of Dads.
The perfect punishment, Rupi said. By that time, the Rupi I grew up with was already gone.
She was particularly upset about Glen, Husband Number Four.
I, on the other hand, had to admit he was my favorite of the lot.
Unlike the others, he didn’t make my skin crawl or make me shake with terror.
Rupi loathed him. She refused to be in the same room as him.
He never pushed her, never lectured her to be nicer like every other person in her life.
I never understood how she was so resistant to his kindness.
Losing him had felt like the extinguishing of all hope.
Punishment for what? I asked.
Us. For Dad leaving us behind. We are how she gets to punish him.
It was the one thing Abha Naik did a great job at: punishing us to punish Husband Number One, the father I never met.
He left her with nothing but the roof over our heads.
Every day she went to work, cooking in people’s homes, then came back with the weight of her rage and made his daughters pay. And Rupi bore the brunt of it.
“Tell me what happened,” I ask Prem again as we walk to the waiting area.
“I rushed over as soon as Tom called. When I got here, she was in bad shape. You didn’t answer your phone, so I called Preeti.”
“I know all that.” When Preeti woke me from my nap with the girls and told me it was an emergency, I was in the car headed to the hospital the moment the words your sister left her mouth. “What happened after you met her?”
“Not much.” He looks away, breaking eye contact for a quick second the way he only does when he’s nervous. “It was barely a few minutes before she fainted.”
“What did she say to you?”
“She looked really sick, and, well . . . um . . .” His fingers fidget.
I take his hand and squeeze reassuringly when what I want is to scream Just say it!
“She looked . . . She looked destitute . . . like she’d been living on the streets.” That can’t be true. My heart squeezes. “It was clear that she was really sick.”
I press a hand to my chest, wanting to quell the restlessness raging there.
“I tried to get her to see someone in the hospital, but she dragged me outside. She seemed, I don’t know . . . scared. She didn’t want to be at the hospital. She was desperate to leave. Then she fainted, and I didn’t know what to do but to carry her in here.”
This is bad. There’s only one reason why Rupi is scared to be in a hospital, and I’ve been doing my best to avoid talking to her about it for the past two years.
More secrets on top of secrets. All the things she’s made me swear never to speak of. The only way to keep a secret is to never say the words out loud. To never even think them.
“Are you angry with me, Simi? Did I do something wrong?”
I hate that he asks me that. Not because a person should know for themselves when they do something wrong and not rely on someone else to tell them, but because I made him feel like this, lost and guilty, when none of this is his fault.
It’s Rupi’s fault. Of course, it’s mine, too, but as always, it’s her taking the actions and making the choices with everyone else being left feeling lost and guilty about it.
“You did nothing wrong. Of course you had to bring her into the hospital. You could hardly leave her passed out in the parking lot.” Obviously she needed a hospital, given that she’s currently in critical care.
My god. My sister, my only living relative, is in critical care.
Just as the enormity of that sinks in, a nurse walks up to us. My insides go cold. I imagine the very worst news. She’s gone. She has six months to live. She’s going to be stuck in this vegetative state for the foreseeable future.
“She just woke up, and her vitals are looking good,” the nurse says.
“Her blood pressure and heart rate fell too low and weren’t stabilizing, so we had to monitor her.
She’s okay now. They’re moving her to a regular room.
They’re going to keep giving her fluids and electrolytes.
Once she keeps some food down, they’ll let you take her home.
Just a nasty bacterial infection from something she ate. ”
My legs buckle in relief. Prem holds me up. “Thank you.” I lean into him. “Can I see her?”
“Of course. I’ll take you to her room. Oh, and we need ID and insurance information to get her registration completed.”
“Someone stole her bag,” Prem says. “She didn’t have ID on her when I brought her in.”
“Okay. We’ll need something, at least a Social Security number and emergency contact information. But we can wait until you’ve seen her,” the nurse says. “No rush.” She leads us to Rupi’s room and leaves us at the door.
Rupi blinks when she sees me. For one second her exhausted eyes brighten with heartbreaking relief. Time stops. Then rushes back into her eyes as rage as she comes back to the present. “Who brought me here?” she demands, trying to sit up.
I rush to her side and try to get her to lie down again, touching my sister for the first time in five years. “Hold on, Rupi. Calm down.” It’s funny that those are my first words to her.
“What the hell is wrong with that guy?” Prem is standing behind me, and Rupi glares at him like she’s going to strangle him with the tubes from her IV.
She pushes me away and sits up and starts pulling at the electrodes stuck to her chest and yanks at her IV.
I still her hands. “Stop. You’ll hurt yourself. Stop being so dramatic. You’re not Ma!”
She freezes. “That’s below the belt.”
“It would be if you were not being totally unreasonable right now. You can’t just start yanking out your IV. The darned thing goes inside your vein. You’re not in a soap opera!” It’s such a nonsensical thing for me to have to say out loud that a laugh spurts out of me.
A smile breaks on her gaunt face.
For one brief second, we’re back in a different time. A time when laughter saved us.
This is not that time.
“You were just in the CCU,” I say, every hint of laughter gone. “You almost had a cardiac episode from your electrolytes falling too low. What the hell is wrong with you? How long did you go without eating?”
The laughter is gone from her, too, replaced by her go-to emotion: disdain. Tinged with something new: a hint of what has to be panic. “Stop being jealous of my skinniness for just one second, and listen to me. I need to leave this hospital right now. I cannot be here.”
“Why?” I ask, though I already suspect the answer. I need to know exactly how bad things are.
She gives me her best sneer, then throws one at Prem. “Because places like this need paperwork. Do I look like I have any paperwork on me?”
“They don’t need it this second. We can get your paperwork later.”
“Hah,” she says. “Get it from where?”
“From your home.”
“Home?” There’s an edge of hysteria in her tone. “You mean my mansion on the Gold Coast? Sorry, I had to put that on the market because”—here her voice turns to a hiss—“I just love having nowhere to go!”
“Hold on,” I say, sliding a glance at Prem, whose gaze is bouncing between the two of us in utter confusion. “What are you saying right now?”
“What the hell do you think I’m saying, Einstein?” Her angry eyes shoot rage lasers at me. “All I own in the world is lying on this damned bed. And that includes any paperwork.”
So, I was right.
Oh god.
“Don’t give me that look,” she says. “Don’t make this about you. This isn’t a poor-Simi moment. It wouldn’t have come to this if this friend of yours hadn’t broken his promise. It’s his damn fault.”