Chapter 41
Hunter
B eep, Beep, Beep.
The machines hooked up to the woman I love are too familiar, and it’s near impossible not to feel transported to another time, in this very hospital, with the similarities.
The damn waiting.
“Open your eyes for us, Ponygirl. We need you,” I whisper from the rolling chair I’ve nestled as closely as I can to the hospital bed. I’d climb up in there and snuggle her the way I know she likes if the nurses didn’t keep checkin’ up on her every five seconds.
It’s comforting to know they’re here and paying attention, but it’s concerning that they need to be with her so often.
None of that is surprising when you consider the way she was brought in…who knows how long she had been injured prior to being cared for. Katie never got the paperwork Devyn was on the way to bring her. It didn’t take long before the sirens reached the courthouse, and the judge ordered a recess since the opposing counsel never made it to the courthouse either, stuck behind the wreckage like half of town.
The other car was damaged too, and the passengers unconscious like Dev. The doctors informed us as of yesterday that if she’d continued to bleed any longer, recovery might not have been a possibility.
At this point, they say her recovery is entirely up to her.
“Stay with us, Ponygirl.”
Ten Years Ago
B eep, beep, beep.
The beeping is loud, but it gets quieter as we run alongside the gurney. I get one final glimpse of her, one last squeeze of her small, limp hand before I’m forced to stop. I hang alongside the counter and shout past the guards stationed by the ICU doorway.
“Dustin, text me as soon as they say something, please, man!”
“I will,” he yells back. “Hey, she loves you, even if she can’t say it right now. We all do. You hear me?”
I grind my teeth. That’s what he says. But Mr. and Mrs. Campbell said the opposite when they blamed me for the wreck and all but shoved me out of the way as soon as they got here.
Like she isn’t mine and I’m not hers.
He walks backward now, jogging almost, turning his head back to check he’s still following them as he shouts his last words to me, words he can say all he wants, but I’ll never agree with.
“None of this is your fault.”
Then he’s gone. The doors swing shut, and I watch my best friend follow his parents and the medical team as they wheel Devyn away from me.
My heart thunders, my fingers gripping the edges of the nurse’s desk that blocks me from going farther than this spot right here. The beeping in the distance that fades to nothing the farther they travel down the winding hallways of the hospital mocks my patience.
Helpless, that is what I feel.
I said I’d protect her, and instead I may have ended her life. And not just hers. Our daughter’s.
Tears fall from my eyes, hard and fast. Our little girl. Gone in an instant.
I shut my eyes tight and hunch over the counter, my sobs waning to nothing more than slopping hiccups over a drenched sleeve, until a nurse comes and puts her hand on my shoulder.
She’s older, maybe sixty. I wouldn’t know. There aren’t many older people in my family who stuck around long enough for me to ask their ages.
I wanted something different for our daughter. For us. I wanted to be that family man who hosted breakfasts with Santa and fall festivals on the farm for the whole town one day, with my family by my side, passing on generations of togetherness. Something I never had. Might never have again.
I wipe my face on my other sleeve, but it’s right soiled too, so I just yank the whole thing off and ball it in a wad, tossing it to a seat by the water cooler.
The kind but militant woman offers me a tissue, and I take one, wiping my face and moving to an empty set of chairs. She sits in the one opposite me and waits patiently, her lips pursed, and hands clasped over one knee.
“Well,” she finally says, “I don’t know about your girlfriend’s injuries because I’m not involved in her medical care. And I wouldn’t tell you if I could due to HIPPA constraints,” she adds with a wink, “but I do know anyone traveling down that hallway needs the staff’s full attention. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I nod, taking a few more tissues from her, and then just grabbing the whole box when she arches an eyebrow at me. She wants me to calm down and stay out of the way. That much I do understand.
But she hasn’t left yet.
“Well, are you going to tell me about her or just sit there and sulk privately?”
I snort at that. I never had a grandparent around, and Aunt Sarah was never this blunt with me about anything, but I imagine this is what she’d be like if my mom’s mom were alive right now. Mom had a bit of sass to her bite too, from what I can remember. And maybe that’s what has me opening up to this strange woman I just met.
“She was pregnant,” I say, watching her face soften. “The baby was…they couldn’t save her when they pulled Devyn free.” I pause, recalling the long shards of metal and wood, the whole chunks of vehicle and signage imbedded into her middle. Grief pools over me, so I slam my eyes shut. But the grief is there too, seeping into thoughts and private moments that are supposed to be just for my brain and the thoughts I choose to think.
It sliced through her womb and up her chest. I’ve seen it. It’s burned into my mind like a curse.
“What if they can’t save her?” I grind out, crying to the nurse…Rosemary, her badge reads. But it doesn’t matter her name. For what it’s worth, she’s a stranger in a waiting room. And I’m just the fuckup boyfriend who wasn’t allowed to go back with family.
“Things don’t always work out how we imagine they might,” she says sadly. But that’s not supposed to be what the wise old stranger says in the story. The fuck? Where’s the encouragement or words of sudden understanding?
Where’s my solution to all this?
“So, what? I do nothing? You don’t understand. It’s my fault. It should be me on that table dying!”
“But you aren’t,” she says, “and what you do with that is entirely up to you.”
Present
B eep, Beep, Beep.
Devyn’s machines haven’t stopped beeping since I got here. But I’m told that’s a good thing. It measures her breathing. She’s been out of it for two days now, concussed.
The doctors say she sustained a traumatic brain injury. Along with a total shoulder tear and several minor injuries that needed stitching.
She’s stable, and I feel a wave of relief wash over me every time I hear that word.
But she hasn’t woken up yet.
I won’t forgive myself if she’s not the same when she does.
I’m the reason she was on the road. Again.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, brushing soft yellow strands away from her face. A deep cut runs from the top of her ear to the bottom of her chin on the right side of her face now, and I count the stitches.
Ten.
That’s just the one side. I feel another round of tears welling up in my eyes, and I wonder how much a man can cry before he depletes his sources. Is there a limit?
There never seems to be one for my tears, nor her scars.
I know she can’t hear me, but I need to get the words out of my head, so they’ll stop their torment, even if I’m the only one who ever hears them spoken. Speaking them aloud makes them real.
“This is my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” Dustin’s voice blares in from the hallway. I turn, giving him a look that tells him I’m not in the mood for anything even remotely related to sarcasm, and he nods as I rise for a hug.
“It’s not your fault, Hunter. You’re my best friend. She’s my sister. I don’t want to see anything happen to her any more than you do, but I also can’t sit by and watch you blame yourself all over again for something you had no control over.”
I back away from him and scrub my hand down my face, shaking my head in disagreement.
“You say that, but the only reason she was driving there so quickly was because of that marriage license, and you know it. And the only reason for that was me.”
Dustin shakes his head. “No, my friend.” He smiles sadly, wrapping his arm around me and hauling me out toward the hallway. “The reason for that was not you. The reason is right there.” He points his finger into the waiting room where Ellie is waiting anxiously on the small bench by the fire extinguisher, her legs crossed at the ankles where her foot bounces uncontrollably.
“Papa!” She cries when she sees me, running into my arms and knocking me off balance as I wobble to catch my footing on the slippery white floors.
She wastes no time, wiggling her way out of my hold and throwing me a look of alarm, her eyes red-rimmed and shiny, and my heart breaks even further for the pain she feels.
I feel it, too.
“ Let me see her!” she says, running into the hospital room, shoving her way through anything and anyone in her path until she gets to Devyn. We run after her, Dusty and I, but she’s too fast. We’re only to the doorway by the time she’s pressed her body against the gurney.
She leans on her tiptoes to see, and gasps when she takes her in. She’s pale, stitched up and bruised, lying unconscious on the hospital bed, lips cracked and dry, hooked to those fucking machines.
I feel the grief drape over me like a coat, the guilt a searing belt, secure and snug as my head rings terrors through my skull.
She’s barely alive again. Because of you, she’s barely alive.
And I can’t bear it. I swing my arm out in front of Ellie and scoop her into my arms, holding my hand over her eyes.
“You don’t have to look. I’m so sorry.” But she shoves away.
“I need to look, Papa.”
Her red eyes burn, pleading with me, and she’s right. This child standing here who was once just a handful of flesh and bones, not even mine, handed to me in a room much like this.
She didn’t even have a name.
A tear rolls free, and I nod at her, this young woman before me now. One who stands tall and brave for what she believes in. Who is not asking but telling me what she needs.
“Okay,” I agree, releasing her.
The room falls silent, except for the beeping of the machines and the soft padding of Ellie’s footsteps across the tile floor.
Dustin stands by my side, his arm around me, as we watch Ellie approach the bed, her miniature boots scuffing the sterile floors with chicken shit dirt clods in their wake, and a smile tugs at my lips, just slightly. Devyn wouldn’t have her hospital room any other way.
I notice that Ellie a bouquet of sunflowers in her left hand, and her tattered up diary in her right that she doesn’t bother setting down as she hoists herself onto Devyn’s bed, crawling in beside her and snuggling her, just like I wanted to do, and that brings a smile to my lips.
They fit so well together like that, my two girls. Cradled together like it was always meant to be.
Please, God, make her well.
It’s the only thing I can manage when I see the two most important pieces of my heart outside my chest like this.
“Devyn, you can’t leave us. You have to wake up, do you hear me?” Ellie whispers, kissing Devyn’s cheek softly and shoving herself up to a sitting position.
“You were right about the sunflowers,” she says, sniffling through tears and snot and wiping her arm across her face. “It didn’t matter if it was blue or green or even yellow light. It didn’t matter about the soil or the water.” She holds the sunflowers up as if Devyn can see them, and a spastic laugh bubbles from her throat. “No matter what I did to the baby sunflowers in the shed, the minute I transferred them to the fields with full sunlight, they all bloomed. They just needed the right conditions.”
She leans over on her knees and lays the sunflowers down on the table beside them, settling back down next to Dev, and I realize minutes later that my eyes are blurry because I’m crying. Full out. Watching an interaction that could be their last.
God, it can’t be their last. I say prayer after prayer while I watch them.
Please do not let this be their last.
“You were right about Jonathan, too. He does like me.” She makes a face that’s a mix of disgust and excitement and squeezes Devyn’s hand. “Just like you were right about the silkies and the ducks, Dev. You were right about it all.”
She starts to cry now, softly at first, but soon it’s picked up to heavy waves of tears until she’s gasping, hyperventilating. “Please, D-evv-p—please—wake.”
“Maybe you should take her out of here,” Dustin suggests, but I’m already one step ahead of him, leaning in toward Ellie to scoop her back up, but she swats me away.
“ No, Papa, no!” she screeches, yanking her body away from me and curling her fingers back around the edges of the hospital bed. She drapes her body over Devyn and sobs into her. “You have to wake up, Devyn. You have to! You were right! Polly is a better mother because she’s there! She wants to be there! That’s what it was all along.”
“Ellie, please, baby, you need to give her some space to heal. Let’s just—”
“No! She’s going to wake up. She’s gotta wake up. Wake up, Devyn! Wake up! You’re my silkie. You’re my Polly. Wake up, please. You’re my Polly !”
“Eleanor!” I scream at her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her so she snaps out of it and hears me. She quiets, her eyes wide, lips trembling as she shakes, her breath coming out in short, rapid spurts.
I look into her eyes, wild and full of fear and that same grief that plagues me.
“Breathe,” I tell her.
And she does.
We breathe together just like that. Next to Devyn. We try to match her breathing.
Soon, I’m cradling Ellie while we wait for Devyn to wake, all of us breathing together. And in a way, it’s soothing.
“It should be me in that bed,” Ellie suddenly says, which has me sitting straight up.
“Why would you say that? It couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“I heard Uncle Dusty tell the police officers she was taking a paper to the courthouse for my custody. I know about the marriage certificate too. I listen in on just about every meeting with Katie, just so you know.”
“You aren’t in that bed, though. You know that? Devyn made a choice and had an accident. But do you think she would have made another choice where you were concerned? Because I can tell you she wouldn’t. She’d choose you, Ellie. I know that about her.”
My strong-willed wild child stares back at me with eyes full of questions. Ones it’s my job to teach her the answers to. Ones I need to face myself.
Because you can’t just place blame on yourself, sulk, or wonder what would have been. This little girl in my arms is proof enough that you never know what lemons life will throw you…or in this case, what bit of life Lemon will throw at you.
Go figure, Devyn isn’t lucid enough for me to tell her that pun and swat me for how stupid it is, but maybe this is how we come full circle.
Or maybe the circle is never filled because it’s not over. Life isn’t done throwing us curveballs or turning our worlds completely upside down. Fate might have some hold on us, but what we do in the bits in between that fate is what makes us stronger, wiser, braver. And if we’re lucky, it makes us happier .
“Life doesn’t always work out how we might imagine, Ellie.” I wipe her tears and repeat the words spoken to me so long ago, words that held very little meaning until now. “But what we do with that fate is entirely up to us.”
“You really did get spiritual, didn’t you?” a weak voice rasps, and we both jump.
“Devyn!” Ellie shouts, leaping from my lap and wrapping her arms around Devyn’s neck, straddling her. “You’re awake! I knew you’d wake up. I just knew it!”
Her eyes scrape over to meet mine, accompanied by a smile that warms my heart.
She’s okay.
“I heard what you said, too, Ellie.” She runs her hand across Ellie’s cheek, smiling.
“And if I’m your Polly, you , sweet girl, are my Chuck.”
Tears fill their eyes, and even though it’s something I thought I’d never see, both of my girls let them roll freely, willingly.
“Is that all right with you? If I become your mother? If we become a family?”
“Yes!” Ellie shouts, jumping up and down on the bed to the point I have to remove her for Devyn’s safety when an IV pole gets knocked over and the day nurse comes bustling in shouting curses our way.
“Oh, she’s awake! Doctor Bennett!” She turns to us, inclining her head and clicking her tongue. “She needs to be seen by the doctor now, okay? We’ll call you two when she’s clear for visitors.” She smiles impatiently, shooing us out the door.
“Ponygirl,” I call to her before it shuts. “You’re prettier than a princess. You’re a queen.”
She laughs, a slow, weak laugh, but it’s a laugh, nonetheless. A vessel for hope and a new beginning.
And it’s beautiful.
Something like a birdsong or a ride on a midday trail. Like the light on a lake that ripples with the water when your fishing pole gives. Like rain on a summer garden and blossoms on trees.
I look at Ellie, her hands curled around thick, sturdy stems that hold the bravest, brightest flowers in the field, and I smile.
We just needed the right conditions to bloom.
That’s what we are.
Something like sunflowers.
Something like us.