Chapter 19 #2
“You guys are back late,” I said as Dad dropped his carry-on bag and tossed the car keys on the counter. I leaned against the island, plate in hand, and I nibbled cautiously at the corner of a roll, bracing for molten sauce. “Was your flight delayed?”
“Yes,” Mom grumbled, making a beeline for the wine rack. “Some kind of mechanical issue. We sat in the airport for six hours.”
“Yuck,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “I’m sorry. That sucks.”
“Your sympathy is deeply appreciated,” Dad said with exaggerated cheer. “It was a very trying ordeal for the both of us.”
Mom shot him a look as she uncorked a bottle of red. “Don’t listen to your father. He happily parked himself at a bar and drank beer while watching ESPN all day.”
Dad ignored this. “Our setbacks didn’t end there though. Honey, tell her about the detour we had to take coming back from the airport.”
“Oh, right.” Mom’s mouth tightened as she poured herself a glass. “Do you remember that intersection I hate? The one where we were almost plowed over back in May?”
I grimaced. “Hard to forget.”
“There was a major accident there this afternoon, and it was still being cleaned up. We had to take Pickering all the way down to Taft Street just to avoid the backup. I hope nobody was hurt, but...”
“Maybe the city will finally cut down those trees?” Dad offered.
Mom hummed noncommittally and took a sip of wine.
Deciding my food had probably cooled enough, I popped another pizza roll into my mouth. The center was still icy.
“So how was your trip?” I asked as I slid my plate back into the microwave.
Before either of them could respond, my phone vibrated against the counter, and Trixy’s name flashed across the screen.
“One second.” I wiped my greasy fingers off on my pajama pants and answered. “Trixy, hey. I’m sorry about earlier, I—”
“Cara?” A man’s voice cut in gently. “This is Rowan. Trixy’s cousin. We met a few months ago. At my farm?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “I remember. Chainsaws tend to make a lasting impression.”
The joke didn’t land, and the silence that followed felt deliberate. A band cinched around my ribs, refusing to loosen, and I knew in my gut that something was wrong.
“Why are you calling me from Trixy’s phone?” I asked, my voice suddenly thin. “Is…is everything okay?”
There was a pause.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this,” Rowan said. “But Trixy’s been in an accident.”
* * *
It was jarring to be at the hospital for a reason that had nothing to do with cancer.
The Mayo Clinic and my disease were so tightly entwined, I’d lost sight of the place’s overall purpose beyond the narrow bubble of my life.
The sudden reminder that other people came here for reasons unrelated to mine made my skin prickle with an unease I couldn’t name.
I swallowed it down anyway; it was the least of all the emotions pressing in on me.
Today, I was here for Trixy.
When I stepped inside her room, the strangled sob that left my mouth was unavoidable.
Trixy had always been unbreakable in my mind, the kind of person who absorbed hits and kept going, which made the sight of her now all the more harrowing.
The unforgiving fluorescent lights laid everything bare: the bruises blooming across her face, the cuts scattered along her skin, the plaster casts swallowing her leg and right arm.
Two days had passed since the accident. I hadn’t been allowed to visit while she was in the ICU, and if this was how battered she appeared after forty-eight hours, I couldn’t imagine what she must have looked like when she was first brought in.
“Cara, that better not be you I hear crying.”
The voice was rough, but unmistakably Trixy’s. I froze in the doorway with my hand curled around the frame to keep myself upright. Her eyes remained closed, lashes dark against sallow skin, but the faintest hint of a smirk twitched on her lips.
“This is a tear-free zone,” she added.
A breathy laugh slipped out of me, the sound wobbling as it broke the spell that glued my feet to the floor. Trust Trixy to crack a joke from a hospital bed.
“I’ll try,” I said, swiping at my cheeks as I crossed the room. “That’s a tall order given the state of things.”
Trixy only grunted in response, but when I dragged a chair from beneath the window and situated myself at her bedside, her eyes cracked open.
“Hey,” I said as our gazes finally met. I tried to smile and felt it tremble. “How’re you feeling?”
She considered the question, lips pursing as if she were doing a serious internal inventory. “Like I got decimated by a speeding bus…” she said. Then, after a beat, “ Oh, wait.”
Despite myself, a weak huff escaped me. “Glad to see your terrible sense of humor survived.”
“Barely,” she muttered.
The laughter drained away as quickly as it had come. “Trixy,” I said, my voice catching. “I’m so sorry.”
Her eyes narrowed immediately. “Don’t,” she warned.
“But if—”
A sharp sting bloomed on the tip of my nose. I yelped, more startled than hurt. “Did you just flick me?”
“Sorry,” she said unapologetically, tucking her uninjured arm back under the blanket like a criminal hiding evidence. “I had to stop your downward spiral before it picked up momentum.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks, equal parts embarrassment and indignation. “I’m not spiraling.”
“Yes, you are.” She gave me a look I’d learned long ago not to argue with. “Here I am, wrapped in enough bandages to get cast as a mummy in some low-budget, direct-to-DVD horror movie, and you’re already making this about you? Hard pass.”
Her words landed heavier than the flick to my nose.