Chapter 4
CHELSEA
Despite my slippery escape, or maybe because of it, the hospital agreed I was well enough to leave the next day.
Cass was there when the doctor told us, and before I could say anything, my phone dinged.
I picked it up to see in the few seconds since the doctor left Cass had sent a group text inviting every single living member of the Kelly clan to my room to help pack me up.
“We’ll take care of everything,” Cass assured me, squeezing my hand.
“I’m not completely useless,” I said, my voice coming a bit too tight. I was irritated she’d sent that text without telling me. Why couldn’t it be just me and her?
She pulled my blankets up, tucking them around my hips. “I know you’re not. But you need to take it easy for the next while—doctor’s orders. Just worry about getting dressed for now.” Then she breezed out, saying “I’m going to go get some boxes from the car.”
I sighed, leaning my head back against the pillow, conjuring the same image I’d been returning to since coming back to the hospital yesterday.
A patch of grass overlooking the quince.
A man, standing next to me, his mouth turned up in the slightest smile.
This memory, less than 24 hours old, had become my happy place.
A place no one could find me. Where no one stared at my face with shock or pity. A place I could breathe.
In my mind, I felt a rough hand taking mine… then my phone dinged again.
I blinked, the image disappearing, replaced by the dull walls of the hospital room, the buzz and beep of machines. The murmur of voices in the hallway.
I picked up my phone.
MIA: I ran into your brother. He said you’re getting out today?!?!
My stomach twisted. Mia was my best friend.
Sort of. She was the person I’d hung out with the most in the past year, mostly because we shared the same interest, singular—partying our problems away.
I’d been avoiding Mia, telling her the hospital wanted me to keep my visitors to a minimum.
That my family had claimed first dibs. It wasn’t even really a lie, but they wouldn’t have stopped me from having a friend visit.
But I’d been avoiding Mia. I didn’t know how to face her. Though I called her my best friend, she wasn’t really. I didn’t have close friends.
You just need to let people in, Cass said, like it was so easy.
Mia was sweet, but she was part of the life I was living before. A life I knew I couldn’t go back to now, not even if I wanted to.
Not when I looked the way I did.
Voices trailed in from outside. Cass had left the door open, though the curtain next to my bed was drawn, blocking anyone coming in from view. But I picked out Eli, Dad, and maybe Jude’s voice too through the cacophony of noise outside my room.
I set the phone down. Mia would have to wait.
As the boisterous voices of my family grew louder, a thick layer of dread closed over me like a sodden blanket.
Today would be filled with people. Yes, they were people I loved, but that only made me feel more guilty for wanting them to stay away.
Because once again I’d be sitting there like a useless lump while they buzzed around me doing all the things, not trusting me to do anything myself.
The fact that I did need some help now only made things worse.
Guilt, ever-present guilt, washed over me. I knew I was being ungrateful. But with everyone bringing me things they thought I’d need—toiletries, books, magazines, flowers—ugh, the flowers—it would take us all afternoon to get out of here. Then at home they’d all want to get me settled in…
I felt my anxiety rising as the voices grew louder.
What I wouldn’t do to run away once more.
To settle down on the grass on that ridge; or maybe, in the hammock I’d seen on Seamus’s porch.
To close my eyes with the sounds of the breeze sifting through the leaves of the trees.
Or the soft low clucks of the chickens pecking at their food.
Instead, I was going back to my apartment, where even though I lived alone, I knew I wouldn’t get to be alone.
I was supposed to be getting dressed. Maybe I could hide in the bathroom; extend my solitude here just a few minutes more.
My feet had just hit the floor when I heard the patter of little feet on the linoleum floor.
“Aunty Chessy?”
My heart lifted.
If there was one person here it felt like I’d actually be glad to see—who looked up to me instead of acting like I needed help—it was my nephew Jack, Jude’s four-and-a-half-year-old son.
It felt like he was the only person in this family who didn’t think they knew better than me about how I should live my life.
Pathetic, really, that in this family it was my dead Mom and a four-year-old who I was closest with.
“Jack! Over here, sweetie.” I grinned widely for the first time since I’d woken up as the curtain danced around, Jack searching for the opening. But my face ached at the shift in muscles.
That’s when I remembered.
“Wait!” I exclaimed, just as Jack pulled back the curtain.
The echo of the rings on the metal rod seemed to linger in the space around me.
Jude must have explained to him that I wouldn’t look quite the same as he remembered. But there was no way words could help a four-year-old fully conceptualize something like this. The black and blue bruises. The Frankenstein-usage bandage. The self-cut hair.
Jack froze, his hand still on the curtain. His expression went from exuberant to horrified.
“Jack, it’s okay,” I said. I should have smashed down my wild, newly short hair. Angled my face sideways, so he didn’t see the giant bandage first. I could have put on sunglasses or a brighter smile, or done something to look less terrifying.
For some reason, having Jack scared of me felt worse than anything else. “I know I look different, sweetie,” I said, my voice strained with the slightest hint of desperation. Please Jack. I’m safe, I promise. “But it’s still me—Aunty Chessy.”
But that only made it worse. His little face blanched. Then it crumpled. “I want my Daddy,” Jack said, backing up.
But it wasn’t his dad who appeared behind him. It was mine, carrying a backpack.
Jack turned around, clinging to his legs.
“He thinks you’re Jude,” I whispered, desperate not to make a terrible situation even worse. Jack hadn’t seen Dad in nearly a year, and even then, it was only at Mom’s funeral.
“Now, Jack,” Dad said.
I cringed. Dad was a stranger to his grandson. And when Jack looked up and saw it wasn’t his own daddy’s legs he was clinging to—
“Daddy!” Jack screamed. Then he took off. I pulled back the curtain to see Jude sprinting into the room, catching up his little boy in his arms.
Something sharp sliced through my heart. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure to who.
“Jacky, it’s okay!” Jude lifted his son in his arms, but as he did, he smashed his sneaker into the wheeled table next to my bed. It rolled hard into the wall, hitting my leg and sending my last hospital meal crashing to the floor.
Pain ripped through the stitches on my thigh, and I cried out.
“Peanut!” Dad exclaimed, reaching for me.
“No!” I said. Yelled. Dad had been gone for so long. He couldn’t just slip back into my life and act like I was still a little girl. “I’m fine.”
Dad looked so wounded I looked away, unable to face him now, too.
This couldn’t have gone any worse. I wondered, with horror, if this was my life now.
I stood up, turning my back on all of them. Hot shame burned in my chest at both scaring Jack and yelling at my dad.
“I’m so sorry Chels,” Jude said over Jack’s cries. He came around so I could see him. Jack clung to his dad, burying his face in his neck. “He’s just shocked. I mean… scared. Worried about his Aunty Chels.” He was fumbling for words.
Because I was cornered, I put on a smile. But I could feel how frail it was. “It’s fine. It’s probably better if we do a visit later when at least the bruising’s gone down.”
Then I brushed past them all, heading to the bathroom with my face down.
I slammed the door behind me. When I reached for the fresh change of clothes Cass had left for me on the counter, my hands shook.
I was halfway through pulling on my jeans when Cass knocked on the door.
“Chels?” Cass was back, her voice muffled. “You okay?”
They must have told her what happened.
“Yeah,” I said, straightening out my voice. “I’m fine. Just getting freshened up.”
There was a pause, then she said, “You sure?”
“I’m sure!” I snapped, buttoning my jeans and angrily pulling on my t-shirt.
Shit.
There was a long pause, during which I was flooded with shame. Awash with it. Cass had done nothing but help me. Doted on me, even.
“Okay,” she said softly. Then her shadow disappeared from under the door.
I slumped onto the toilet and allowed myself the indulgence of hot, angry tears. I rested my elbows on my knees and kept my hands over my mouth, muffling my sobs.
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t pretend things were going to be fine.
Outside, I heard Jude speak low with the others.
Then presumably he left with poor traumatized Jack.
I heard Cass directing the others to pack all the flowers in boxes.
I took in a breath, breathing in the antiseptic scent of the cleaner.
This was pathetic, hiding in the bathroom.
I was thrown back to being a little girl—when things got too loud, I used to hide in my closet in my room, my legs curled up against my chest. Sometimes I’d go outside to the trees behind our apartment.
Years later—right up until the accident a few days ago—I’d hide in the cacophony of bars and nightclubs, liquid courage letting me pretend I was gregarious.
Normal. Not terrified of the world. Getting out there, like everyone told me I was supposed to do.
But I wasn’t a little girl anymore, and I wasn’t that Chelsea anymore either.
Everyone underestimates quiet people.
That was Seamus’s voice.
They think they’re scared.