41. Callie
41
CALLIE
I hear voices.
Faint, whispered conversation in a language I should know, but can’t make out. Two people. No three. Voices that fill me with warmth. That sound like music and home. That feel like smooth, rich honey and salty, ocean air. I see flames dancing on the backs of my eyelids. Strong, decorated fingers holding a lit match. Full lips. Secrets.
I listen more closely, deciphering words through the haze.
Weeks. Sleep. Recovery.
Go home , someone says. We’ll stay with her.
I want to be here when she wakes up.
Weeks. Sleep. Recovery.
I’m not leaving.
Warmth encases my hand. A familiar sensation, both soft and rough. My fingers squeeze, and I tell myself to squeeze back. I try. I try again.
Nothing.
“I’m here, Firebird.”
Green eyes. Lit matches. Full lips.
“I’m right here. I miss you, but take all the time you need, baby. I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
Loud music. Silver rings. White teeth.
“I love you, Calla Lily Sunrise James. I’m right here.”
Torren.
My throat aches.
I try to swallow to ease the pain. I feel like I’m swallowing sand. My chest burns, and all I want is water. Ice water. Gallons of it.
My eyelids are sticky and heavy as I force them open, but the light in the room burns, so I have to force them shut again.
“Fuck.”
It comes out more as a cough than an actual word. My voice sounds strange in my head, and my mouth feels like it was stuffed with cotton balls. I try to open my eyes again, this time more slowly, letting the light in bit by bit. It still stings, but less so, until I’m able to peer through my lashes into an unfamiliar room with cream-colored walls.
“Callie?”
I turn my head toward the sound.
“Glory?”
“Oh my god, Callie.”
She rushes to me with her arms outstretched like she’s going to hug me, but she stops just before she reaches me and drops her arms back to her sides. The tears streaming down her face fill me with immediate fear.
“Is Mom okay?”
My anxiety is punctuated by a beeping. It grows faster as my panic rises.
“Callie, no. She’s...she’s...”
Glory’s face contorts with pain, tears falling faster, and my only thought is my mother. Something happened to her. She’s hurt. She’s dead. I open my mouth to ask for answers, but then someone looms over me and everything goes dark and silent.
It’s late when I wake up.
I can tell because there’s no light filtering through the curtains on the window. I look around slowly, seeking out the beeping, and find it coming from a machine beside my bed. I squint at it. Listen again to the steady beeping.. .
Vitals .
The machine is monitoring my vitals.
The realization appears as though out of a fog, slowly taking shape around the edges. I’m hooked to a machine that is monitoring my vitals. I don’t recognize this room. I don’t recognize this bed...
I’m in a hospital.
I look around again. It’s dark except for the light seeping in from the hallway, but I can still make out some furniture. A chair. A couch. And...
I reach out and run my fingers lightly through Torren’s curls. They’re longer than I remember, and they stand out starkly against the shock white of my hospital blanket. I trail my fingers over his sharp cheekbone, to his jaw, then over his lips. They’re chapped and rough on my fingertips.
“Callie.”
Hot breath ghosts over my hand as his lips move with the whisper of my name. Then slowly, as if scared he’ll spook me, he lifts his head. His eyes land on mine, leaving only briefly to scan my face before they grow glassy with tears.
“Is this real?”
The child-like fear in his voice makes my heart break, and I nod as tears of my own fall.
“It’s real.”
Softly, his hands frame my face, green eyes jumping from feature to feature like he doesn’t trust me. Like he needs to make certain himself.
“It’s real,” I say again. “I promise.”
He kisses me, lips tasting like tears, and I kiss him back.
“I missed you. I missed you so fucking much.”
I nod, but I don’t speak. I don’t know if I missed him. I don’t know how long I’ve been in this bed hooked to a machine monitoring my vitals while he slept in my lap. I don’t know how much of what I’m remembering is just my imagination. I don’t know anything except...
“I love you.”
Torren whimpers. I feel his fingers trembling in my hair. He’s hovering, barely touching me, but I wish he would. I wish he would kiss me harder. I wish he would hold me.
“I love you,” I say again, louder this time, and it hurts. My voice sounds ragged and raw .
Torren releases a choked, breathy sob.
“I love you, Callie. So, so much.” He looks at me like he’s still waiting to find out this is a dream. Like it’s all one big prank. His eyes drag over my face, then up and down my body. “How do you feel? Do you feel okay? Does it hurt?”
I smile softly and shake my head. “What happened?”
He flinches and blinks before answering. “You were in an accident.”
I nod slowly. “On the I-10.”
His eyes go wide. “You remember?”
“Sort of. I remember driving home. I remember taillights. I remember slamming on my brakes and swerving, and then...”
I trail off as I remember something else...Glory...my mom...the pictures. My eyebrows shoot up with a gasp.
“Glory. Mom. Are they okay? Did something?—”
“They’re fine. Everything is fine. They’re both safe. They were never in any danger.”
I shake my head. “But the pictures? The text...”
Torren tilts his head to the side slowly, his eyebrows slanting harshly with concern. “What pictures?”
“I got a text. Pictures of Glory leaving the apartment. I just...” I furrow my eyebrows and sift through my muddled memory before finding what I’m looking for. “Glory always answers her phone, but she wasn’t. No one was. I wanted to check on them, but everyone was gone, and I couldn’t...I just thought...”
“That’s why you left...? Someone sent you pictures of Glory?”
Torren says it slowly, as if he’s confused. He’s trying to understand, but it makes me defensive. It makes me angry, and all the emotions I’d had when I got the text surge back through my system.
“Yes, Torren. Creepy pictures. Like she didn’t know they were being taken, and I didn’t know the number. I got them right after I saw the text from Glory of the flowers...oh god...”
I stare down at my bed, eyes frantically searching back and forth as if the answers will appear in my lap. Distantly, I hear the beeping from my monitor speed up, and I breathe. I breathe.
“We’d just had to evacuate the concert,” I say, trying not to panic, clawing for clarity. “I saw Glory had gotten flowers. Then I got this creepy text with pictures of her, and they weren’t answering their phones. I was worried, but everyone was busy. Sav and Levi and Red were on a video call, and Mabel was on the phone in her room, and you were in a meeting, and everyone was fucking busy, so I thought, you know, it’s late, so traffic is probably light. I could be there in thirty minutes. It wouldn’t take long. I was just worried. I wanted to make sure it was nothing.”
Despite my rising anxiety and the tense set to Torren’s shoulders and jaw, he continues to speak slowly. He rubs his thumb over my hand. His voice stays even, and I try to match his calm. I latch on to it and breathe.
“Your mom was asleep, and your sister was out with a boy. They were and are perfectly safe.”
“Oh, thank god,” I whisper. My body slumps with relief and my eyes sting. “Those pictures,” I continue, shaking my head. “The flowers. I just...I just needed to make sure. It’s not like I could have known that this would?—”
“No. No, I know. This isn’t your fault. You didn’t know there would be an accident. No one could have known.”
My thoughts begin a new spiral, this time focusing on my mistakes. I scold myself for being so impulsive. For overreacting. If I hadn’t left. If I’d have just waited. Hell, if I had taken a different route, I wouldn’t have been in an accident, and I wouldn’t be here. Instead of sitting in this hospital bed, I’d be going to tonight’s show with Glory and my mom.
Fuck. The show.
“What are you doing about the show tonight? Are you still playing?”
Torren’s face falls and his lips part, but he doesn’t speak right away. The longer he’s silent, the more my skin starts to prickle with anxiety. Then he shakes his head once.
“No. The shows were cancelled and will be rescheduled.”
In the silence that follows, I search his face. I note the scruff on his jaw when he’s usually clean-shaven. And his hair...it is longer. Then it dawns on me.
“How long have I been here?”
He swallows once before he answers. “Twelve days.”
“Twelve days?”
My jaw drops as I try to wrap my head around the number. That’s almost two weeks. I look back at his hair. Two weeks’ worth of growth. Has he not left? Has he been here this whole time?
“How?”
Torren’s face goes ashen and tears well in his eyes once more. I brace myself for the worst, but I don’t look away. “Tell me. I can handle it. Please.”
“The accident was pretty bad.” His voice cracks, and I track a tear as it slips down his cheek. He sniffs, uses the hand not clutching mine to wipe his eyes, and continues, slow and steady. “They had to cut you out of the Porsche and airlift you. You had head trauma and internal bleeding in your abdomen. They performed emergency surgery, and then they induced a coma to allow your body to heal. Then they took you out of the coma, and tonight you woke up.”
He trails off with a forced smile, but I can tell there’s more he’s not saying. There’s something he doesn’t want to talk about.
“You’re leaving something out,” I say slowly. His face tightens, and my stomach twists. “Just tell me, Torren.”
He jerks out a nod. “They were able to stop the internal bleeding, but...the accident... There were six other cars. You swerved, but the car behind you didn’t. The Porsche rolled twice and then was T-boned. The driver’s side took a significant impact. You’re lucky to be alive...”
“But?”
The pause is a physical pain that I can feel swelling inside my chest. I can hear it whooshing in my ears. When he finally speaks, it’s how I imagine the accident would have felt if I could remember it.
“Your left forearm and hand were broken pretty badly. They’ve already done three surgeries, but?—”
Torren’s voice fades into static as I realize I can’t move my left arm. I look down and find it wrapped and pinned into some sort of cage. And then, all at once, it starts to throb. Sharp, consistent pain radiating from my fingertips to my shoulder, to the side of my face. My head pounds.
“Oh my god.” I try to move my fingers, then gasp in pain. “Oh my god.” I whip terrified eyes to his. “Why am I only now...How come I couldn’t...”
“Pain meds,” he forces out. “Disorientation from the coma, I guess.”
A thought hits me that seizes the air in my lungs. A question so terrifying that I can barely form it on my tongue, but Torren knows. He can see it in my face, and when his tears fall faster, my whole world tilts on its side. I fist my right hand, tucking my trembling fingers into my palm, and force myself to utter the words on a shaky whisper.
“Will I be able to play again?”
His silence tells me everything I need to know.
It’s mid-morning when I wake again.
The sun is streaming into the room, illuminating cream-colored walls and ugly grayish-beige tile, and I’m alone.
All at once, the news washes back over me. A freight train of heartbreak.
Will I be able to play again?
Deafening silence.
They had to come sedate me. Again.
I clamp my eyes shut and try to focus on something else. I wiggle my toes. I flex the fingers on my right hand. I breathe in and out.
It’s fine. I’m alive. My family is safe.
It will be fine.
When my stomach cramps, I find a button next to my bed and push it. A nurse arrives immediately.
“Ms. James.” She smiles warmly. “It’s good to see you awake. Are you in pain?”
“I, um, I actually have to use the bathroom.”
“Okay. Would you like to attempt the restroom, or would you prefer a bedpan?”
I wince, then give her a weak smile. “Bathroom, please.”
She gets to work unhooking my arm cage and helping me into some sort of sling. It hurts like hell—my arm, my stomach, my head—and several times I feel dizzy because of it, but I’m determined to make it to the bathroom. The nurse helps transfer me and all my “accessories” to a wheelchair, then slowly, she brings me to the bathroom.
My legs are weak. I’m unstable on my feet, and each movement seems to shoot pain through every inch of my body, so I need a lot of help. The nurse must be able to tell that it frustrates me, because when she speaks, her tone is warm and encouraging. I’m sure she sees this a lot. Hell, I’m sure she sees worse.
“Take it easy, Ms. James. You’ve had several major surgeries. It’s going to take you some time to adjust.”
We have to be careful of the incision site on my abdomen. We have to be careful of the wound on my head. We have to be careful of the mess of metal and bone dust that is now my arm. I push through all the pain and make it to the bathroom, determined to succeed in this small, normal task that suddenly feels like climbing Everest, but the unexpected thing sends me over the edge is that I’m wearing adult briefs.
I start to sob.
I sit on the toilet, hooked to an IV bag with my ruined arm in a vise and three separate major surgical sites on my body, and I sob over the fact that I’m wearing an adult diaper.
Even the crying hurts.
When I’m washing my hand, I keep my head down and avoid the mirror. I focus on lathering soap through my fingers and over my palm, then let the nurse help get the back of my hand and wrist. Just before she wheels me back to my bed, I take a deep breath and look up at my reflection.
I blink. I blink again.
A part of my head has been shaved. White gauze and tape cover what I’m assuming are sutures. The hair that’s left is greasy and stringy, hanging around my shoulders. There’s also a bandage on my left cheek. I could feel it there when I woke up. I could even see the gauze from the corner of my eye, but I was so focused on everything else that hurt...
“Can you take this off?”
I glance at the nurse through the mirror. Her face gives nothing away.
“We can go ahead and change it.”
She puts on a new pair of gloves and steps in front of me. I watch her face as she peels my bandage off carefully. She cleans my skin, pressing gently, then steps out of the way, allowing me to finally see my reflection.
“It’s healing well. We can leave the bandage off if it’s been irritating you. ”
I don’t answer her as I stare at my reflection. There’s bruising and swelling on the left side of my face, and a laceration, maybe three inches long, slashes across my cheek. The skin around it is red and inflamed, but I imagine it looked even worse before someone with expert hands sutured it back together.
But still...
I clear my throat and tear my eyes away from the mirror to look back at the nurse.
“How badly will all of this scar?”
I almost want to laugh at the vanity in the statement. I’m lucky to be alive, but here I am worrying about scarring and sobbing over wearing a diaper. I bite my tongue on the urge to apologize, though. It’s a valid question. It’s an important question. This is my body, the only body I’m going to get, and wanting to know what to expect is normal.
“It will scar, but you had one of the best reconstructive plastic surgeons on it, so it won’t be as bad as you think. And as for your head, your hair will grow over it. In a few months, no one will even know.”
I nod and look back at the mirror. “Okay.”
She places her hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “I know this is a lot. It’s scary and feels overwhelming, but you’re going to get through it. Your fiancé brought in the best surgeons in the country to take care of you. No one who touched you after the initial emergency was anything less than top of their field. You’re in great hands, Ms. James. I promise.”
I stare at her through the mirror, running back over every word. I can’t bring myself to speak. I can’t bring myself to look back at my reflection, either. I nod instead and let her take me back to my bed.
Just before she leaves, I stop her.
“I’m sorry...I didn’t ask your name.”
“I’m Kim.”
“Thank you, Kim. You can call me Callie.”
She smiles again. “You’re welcome, Callie. Just hit the button if you need me.”
I watch as she leaves, pulling the door shut softly behind her, and then I sink back into my pillow, aching and more exhausted than I’ve ever been. I close my eyes and feel my body relaxing, surrendering to sleep, but just before I drift off, one word flashes behind my eyelids .
Fiancé.
Torren is here.
I can feel him sitting beside me. I crack my eyes open and see him reading a paperback book. I clamp my eyes back shut and turn away from him. I will him to go away. I’m not ready to see him right now.
“Callie?” His voice is soft at first, but it grows more urgent. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain? I’ll get Kim.”
“No!” I blurt out the word, but I keep my eyes shut and my face turned away. “Can you just...can you just leave?”
I hear him suck in a surprised breath, but he doesn’t speak. I can feel his eyes on me, though. I hear his footsteps round the bed, so I turn my head the other way.
“What’s going on?” His voice is calm again. Reassuring. Soft, and patient, and so much more than I deserve in this moment. It makes me feel worse. “Why do you want me to leave, Firebird? What’s wrong?”
Tears start to leak through my lashes and trickle down my cheeks. I sniff. I attempt to calm my breathing, but all I see when I close my eyes is my own reflection... My half-shaved head of greasy, dirty hair. My dull eyes sunken into my swollen, bruised, lacerated face. My battered, useless arm. I’ve got an eight-inch-long incision on my stomach. I was wearing a fucking diaper.
And the one thing that made me me —my ability to play the piano—is gone.
If I can barely handle the reality of it all, how can I expect him to?
“I don’t want you to see me,” I whisper finally. “I don’t want you to see me like this anymore.”
He doesn’t speak. Instead, I hear him round the bed again, and he takes my right hand in his. “Why not?”
I don’t answer. I can’t even bring myself to confess it.
Because I’m ugly. Because I’m horrifying. Because I’m not worthy of him.
Because in the light of day, if he sees what this accident has made me —what my stupid, impulsive decisions have caused—then there’s no going back .
I’d rather break my heart before he can. It will hurt less.
When almost a minute passes and I don’t answer him, I feel his knuckle notch under my chin.
“Look at me.”
I shake my head.
“Firebird, look at me. Please.”
Slowly, I open my eyes, blinking to clear them of the tears that were trapped behind my eyelids. I look into his beautiful green eyes to find they’re shimmering with tears of his own.
“I am not going anywhere. I am in love with you. I am not leaving your side, and you have never looked more beautiful to me than you do right now. Do you know why?”
“Why?” I whisper as more tears fall.
“Because you’re alive.”
“But my?—”
“Listen to me, Callie. I love you. I loved you before this accident. I love you now. I will love you after you’ve healed, no matter what that looks like. You, alive and breathing, that’s the most beautiful thing in the fucking world to me. Tell me you believe it.”
I sniff and laugh lightly, the sound strangled and tired. “Okay. I believe it.”
“Never ask me to leave again, okay? Not because of that. Promise?”
His thumb, calloused and familiar, rubs over my jaw. A feather’s touch, and I lean into it. I let myself feel it and draw strength from it. I let myself believe him.
“Promise.”