43. Ellie
Ellie
The hospital my mother is in is exactly the same as it was when they wheeled her in, frozen in time. Even the nurse at the station is the same. All the way down to the green tea drink.
Except this time, my mother is awake on the other side of the door instead of breathing through a machine.
I stand in the hallway with my hand flat against the wood and I can't make myself push.
"Hey." Cyrus's voice is low behind me. He traded the suit for a black button down and slacks, because Cyrus's version of casual has always been a little bit different from the rest of ours. "We'll be right here the whole time."
They're all here, of course. I asked them to stay outside when I first went in, so I don't overwhelm her, but their presence means more than I can say.
Tank's hand finds my arm. He touches me so lightly, even now, like he's afraid I'll break. He brings his other hand up and signs. You got this, brave girl.
I nod because I don't trust my voice, and then I push the hospital room door open before I talk myself out of it.
Mom looks smaller than I remember even from when she was admitted. The hospital gown swallows her whole and now that she's not decked out in designer, it hits me just how thin she's gotten.
There's still an IV taped to the back of her badly bruised hand. The ventilator's gone, though. She's breathing on her own.
"Ellie." Her face takes a few seconds to catch up to the light of recognition in her eyes. Then she reaches for me with the hand that doesn't have an IV sticking out of it. "Oh, baby. You came."
"Of course I came." My voice comes out stiffer than I want it to. I cross the room and I don't know what to do with my hands, so I take hers. Her fingers are so cold and her grip is weak. "How are you feeling?"
"Tired." She laughs, the sound thin and watery. "The doctors explained what happened. They said I… they used some word. An accident with the medication."
The word is overdose.
She knows perfectly well what it is, I just don't think she wants to face it.
My mother, for all her faults, is not a stupid woman.
She's smart enough to play dumb when the occasion suits her though, and I find myself wondering if that's going to be her strategy when I finally confront her about the letter.
But not here. Not while she's lying in a hospital bed and only just started breathing for herself a couple of hours ago.
Her eyes dart to the door and the corners of the room. "Where's Todd? Is he…?" Her hand tightens around mine. "Ellie, is he angry?"
The fear in her voice mists down the fire that's burned inside me ever since I found that lipstick in her drawer.
Because I know that fear. I lived with it myself for years, every single day since she started dating Todd. I lived with the constant questions dictating my every move.
Is he angry?
Did I do something wrong?
What's the price going to be this time?
It's the same fear that made me rearrange my face before walking down stairs, the same fear that had me squirreling away pills in wall cavities and under sinks.
I can be furious with her, and I am furious with her, and still feel my heart break when she asks if she's about to be punished from a hospital bed.
"No." I sit on the edge of the mattress, careful of the tubes. So many fucking tubes. There are tubes sticking out of her hand, her arm, her nose. "Mom. You don't have to be afraid of Todd anymore."
She blinks at me. "What do you mean?"
"It's all over the news." I pick my words carefully and decide the version on the news is the only version she's ready for.
"There's an investigation. Todd was doing some really shady shit with his campaign money, and he had connections to people he shouldn't have been connected to.
It all broke this morning. His political career is over.
Everyone he knows is already running the other direction.
" I squeeze her hand. "He's gone, Mom. He left.
He's not coming back to that house, and he's not coming here.
If anyone finds him, it'll be to haul his ass into a prison cell. "
Her face cycles through every emotion I've ever seen on it over the last two decades. "Gone," she repeats, as if the word doesn't fit right in her mouth. She gives a strangled, thin laugh and brings a trembling hand to half-cover her mouth.
"Gone," I repeat.
"But the house. And my things!" Her free hand flutters to the gown at her throat. "What am I supposed to do if he's gone?"
"You're not going back there." I keep my voice steady because one of us has to be.
"Not right now. You're going to get better first and then we'll worry about the rest. The doctors want to keep you here a while, and after that...
" I make myself say it. "After that, you're going somewhere that can help you.
With the pills, the drinking. All of it. "
Her hand goes still in mine and her pupils get wide. I've worn that look myself, recently. It's interesting to see it from the other side.
And it gives me new appreciation for what my boys went through, watching me like this. Trying to save someone who's so fucking desperate to swallow the poison that's killing them.
"I don't have a problem, Eleanor."
"Mom…"
"I just had an allergic reaction," she continues, trying to sit up. "The doctor said—"
"The doctor said you overdosed." It comes out as gentle as I can make those words be.
"I know, because I have a problem too. Or at least I did.
Benzos, ever since I was fifteen." Her eyes go wide and I push through it before I lose the nerve.
"I just spent weeks going through withdrawal, Mom.
Shaking so hard I couldn't even hold a glass to my lips and throwing up until there was nothing left.
And you know what? It was still so much better than those pills. "
She shakes her head. "No. No, I would have known if you had a problem like that, I… it was for your anxiety, your OCD," she protests. "They were prescription, you're making it something it's not."
"I had a seizure once, in your bathroom," I tell her, keeping all tone out of my voice. "Todd told you I fainted from skipping meals."
"That's not true, it didn't happen like that." Her voice turns sharp, the shaky meekness bleeding out of it. "I don't know who's gotten in your head and told you that's what this is, but you never had real problems, Ellie. I would have known."
Maybe she did. Maybe we both knew, deep down, but we didn't ask the right questions because we didn't want the answers. I have to live with that, and now, so does she.
"I needed help, Mom. But you weren't in a place to give it," I say as softly as I can.
Her face crumples and I keep going, because she needs to hear it from someone who's lived in the same hell that's killing her.
"It got bad. Really fucking bad, and in another few months, maybe even weeks, I would have ended up right here in this bed just like you.
But I got help first. People who care about me made sure I got clean, even when I screamed at them and hated them for it.
And I'm going to make damn sure you get the same thing. "
"Stop." She turns her face toward the window. "Stop it, you're… You don't understand, it's not the same thing."
"It's exactly the same."
"It is not." Her voice climbs again, the sound fraying. She pulls her hand out of mine and presses it against her chest. "Your father." She stops and swallows, her eyes going wide again. "Has your father called to check on me? Has he… does he even know I'm here?"
There it is, right on time.
Even now.
Even with a needle in her arm and her husband's name on every news channel in the state, and her only daughter standing right in front of her, telling her she almost fucking died, all she can think about is him.
The man who left us both without a second thought and never looked back.
The man who sent back her letters unopened after she sold herself, and me, to protect him.
I don't know why yet, but I know she did it. I knew the moment I saw that letter that whatever she "took care of" came at a cost and the cost was me.
The frustration boils up so fast I can't stop it. "No, Mom. Dad hasn't called."
"Maybe he doesn't know—"
"He doesn't care." The words come out hard and flat, years of swallowed truths finally surfacing like bile in the back of my throat, spilling out over my tongue.
"He never gave a shit about either of us.
He had a whole other family the entire time I was growing up, and the second his real wife found out about us, we got dumped in a trailer park and forgotten.
That's who he is. That's who he's always been, Mom.
" My eyes sting and my voice breaks. "Why are you still waiting for that man to save you? "
"Don't you dare talk about your father like that." She's shouting now, weak as it is, her face flushing the only color it's had since I walked in. "You don't know what we… You don't know anything, Eleanor."
The door opens.
"Everything okay in here?" Jinx leans in, carrying himself with his usual easy charm, but his gaze is sharp and protective as it goes straight to me. Jinx might not be the biggest of the group, but he's always been fiercely protective. My fairytale prince in golden armor.
My mother turns toward him and her anger stutters into confusion. "Taylor?" She squints. "Taylor, from the trailer park? What are you… Why are you here?"
And then the rest of them come in behind him, because they were never going to stay in that hallway once they heard her yelling at me. Tank fills the doorframe. Cyrus comes in with his hands in his pockets and Kade limps in last, one eye still swollen half-shut and moving like his ribs hurt.
My mother's mouth falls open.
I watch her eyes move across all four of them and snag on Cyrus first, the "estate manager" who poured her water and held out her chair, and then on Kade, AKA Aiden Winthrop. I see the second the realization hits.
Four boys from the trailer park, all grown up, all here standing around my hospital chair like they belong to me.
She knows exactly who they are.
The guilt that crosses her face is so naked, it makes my stomach drop, because guilt means she remembers. Guilt means she knows what she did, even through the drug haze and the medically induced coma.
Somehow, I think it would be easier if she'd forgotten. Then I wouldn't have to ask the hard questions, because there would be no point.
But refusing to ask the hard questions is how I got into this bullshit in the first place, and I'm done. It's just not the time right now, not while she's still too sick to even know she's sick.
"Why do you look so surprised to see them?" I ask quietly.
"I'm not." She recovers fast, the way she taught me to, and pulls a wobbly smile onto her face. "I'm not surprised. I'm… I'm happy. I'm so happy they're here, baby. Look at you. All of you. So grown up." Her eyes won't quite meet mine. "It's wonderful."
It's a lie. We both know it's a lie. The drafts are folded in my jacket and the truth is sitting plainly in the room with us. All I'd have to do is reach into my pocket, lay the damning evidence on the white hospital blanket and watch her face fall apart for good.
But I don't.
I look at her, small and gray and scared and lying to me even now, and I make myself breathe. Five in. Five out. Tank shifts behind me and I feel the warmth of him at my back. The others stay close but give us space, ready to pull me out the second I want it.
Not now.
My mother just clawed her way back from a coma.
Whatever she did to me, whatever years she stole, I'm not going to make her give an account for it before she's even fully sobered up.
The drugs might be mostly out of her system from her time in the hospital, but she's still fragile.
Still in danger of running right back to the bottle if something pushes her over the edge.
I can't fix her and confront her in the same breath.
First she gets clean.
First she gets out from under Todd's shadow and learns how to stand up in a world that doesn't have him in it, the same way I'm learning.
Then, when she can take it, I'll lay every forged page in front of her and make her look at what she did.
"Yeah," I say finally, and I take her cold hand back in mine because Kade is right. It's the people you love most who can hurt you like nothing else. "It is. We're all here, Mom. Get some rest."
She smiles like she believes me, and I let her.
For now.