Second Chances Eden
Second Chances
Eden
Margot Thomas is such a dead ringer for her sister that it seems Brooklyn has risen from her deathbed and walked across the room, tearstained and travel rumpled.
When she bursts into the emergency department, I intercept her almost immediately.
“Margot?” It’s silly to ask; she is clearly Brooklyn’s twin. But I’m trying to be helpful. “I’m Eden Barrow. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I got here as quickly as I could. Have you heard anything?”
It’s only then that she realizes I’m holding the children’s hands.
With a relieved sigh, she drops to her knees with a giant sob and yanks them to her.
They merge into a single being for a moment, all of them crying.
She reassures them, and they fall apart for her in ways they haven’t for me.
She is their aunt. She is security and safety. I am still a stranger to them.
People are watching us. It is clear something dreadful has happened.
The looks, the stares, the whispers. Emotions run high in an emergency room, yes, but this .
. . this is something more, and they all know it.
A woman in the corner makes the sign of the cross.
That’s good. Brooklyn is going to need all the help she can get, in this life and the next.
Finally, Margot stands, wiping her pretty eyes. She wears her hair differently—it’s a shade darker than Brooklyn’s, with fashionable bangs. She gives off a more bohemian vibe than her preppy, uptight sister. “Sorry. It’s been a horrible few hours.”
“Don’t apologize. There’s no more news. She hit her head on the curb and has a deep laceration above her ear, so they stitched that up.
She’s been in and out of consciousness. They don’t know if there will be permanent damage.
” I cast my voice low. “They’re more concerned that she stays with us through the night.
The attending physician would like to speak with you. Shall we go find her?”
Margot stands. The children cling to her like limpets. “Thank you. Thank you for taking care of them and for keeping me updated. I know you need to get back to your life. Can I pay you for your time?”
“Goodness no.” It comes out louder and sharper than I mean. “I just mean, anyone would do the same. Really, it’s no bother. I’d like to stick around. I feel responsible, and you can use a hand with the kids. They’re pretty traumatized.”
She’s too upset to argue. I lead her and the kids through the doors, and we hit the elevator. Brooklyn’s been admitted; her room is on the second floor. We wind through the anonymous hallways until I find the family room.
“You get settled, and I’ll let the nurses know you’re here.”
She nods with gratitude, collapsing into the too-firm tan vegan-leather sofa, gathering the kids to her like chicks under soft, downy wings. “Thank you, Eden.”
It’s been a long time since I was comforted like that.
The doctor arrives, wearing scrubs and clogs, dark hair in a chin-length bob, and says her name is Dr. Christie.
She is kind and gentle, speaks to us quietly, but in terrifying terms, most of which neither of us truly understands.
The gist of it, as far as I can gather, is that in addition to the head laceration and some bumps and bruises, Brooklyn has a severe concussion.
There is some swelling on her brain. They are monitoring it closely.
The doctor won’t give odds, just says they are cautiously optimistic that with time, she will be okay.
“How long, do you think?” Margot asks.
“Assuming the swelling doesn’t get any worse, maybe a few days. The first twenty-four hours are the most critical. She’s young and healthy, and we started treatment right away. Fingers crossed.”
“Can I see her?”
“She’s asleep right now. She was pretty out of it, but agitated, which is to be expected, so we gave her a light sedative. She’s scheduled for a second series of CT scans to make sure we aren’t missing anything. If anything changes, I’ll let you know. Try not to worry. She’s in good hands.”
When the doctor leaves, I hold Margot while she falls apart, then hold the children while she puts herself back together again.
I understand more than most the horror of having a sister who is hurt, who’s died.
How life fractures into before and after, how easy it is to despair, to lose hope.
Being a twin makes it all that much harder, I think.
It’s not unusual to feel like half of your own body is being torn away, but for Margot, it’s like she’s lost part of her soul, too.
Finally, late or early, I can’t tell, a nurse stays with the children, who are asleep on the sofa under a fuzzy blanket, holding on to each other for dear life, sweet things, and they let us in her room.
Together, we watch Brooklyn sleep. Dream, too, if the rictus grimaces and short cries are any indication.
She wakes and looks around in terror, then disappears, again and again.
She is bruised, her head wrapped in gauze, leads and lines running to and from her body.
It’s frightening. I don’t know if she’s going to make it.
In her fugue state, Brooklyn calls for people and apologizes. She babbles and falls silent. Her eyes rarely open; when they do, it’s disconcerting—one eye is nearly black inside, a vermilion sclera from the accident.
The nurses pull Brooklyn from her dreams again and again, from the twilight where she exists under the sedative, neither waking nor sleeping, to try to keep her conscious.
She moans in pain, and the nurses shoo us out of the room while they do another exam.
Margot lingers, crying, then disappears into the hall.
I find her leaning against the wall, breathing deeply. Square breathing, like you do for a panic attack. Her head is back, the thick shearling coat she’s been wearing abandoned on the floor by her booted feet. She swipes a hand under her eyes and looks at me. “This sucks.”
“It does.”
“Seeing her hurting like that, it’s awful. She can’t move without screaming. How long will that last?”
“They’ll get the pain under control. It’s only been a few hours since the accident.”
“When we were little, and one of us got hurt, we’d tell each other fairy tales to distract from the pain. We’d disappear into some woods or cross an ocean or run from a wolf or become princesses locked in a tower, and we’d forget about the hurt. Next time they let us in, I’m going to try a story.”
“I think that sounds like a great idea.”
We feed the kids. We decide it’s best if they don’t see their mother like this. If she takes a turn for the worse, we’ll let them in, but for now, it will be better this way.
When they let us back in, Margot slips to her sister’s side. She leans down and whispers in her ear. After a few moments, Brooklyn visibly relaxes. They stay like this, symbiotic, until Margot takes her sister’s hand and squeezes it, then stands up, rubbing a crick in her back.
“I think she’s asleep.”
“She is,” the nurse says, pleased. “Go get some rest yourselves, okay? It’s going to be a long few days as she starts recovering.”
“She will recover,” Margot says to me in the hall. “I know it.”
Their relationship is awe inspiring. Margot is the sister whisperer.
I didn’t always get along with my little sister.
We certainly weren’t as close as Brooklyn and Margot seem to be.
She was younger, a pest, an entitled beauty.
Our parents cut her slack in infuriating ways, letting her do things I was forbidden to at her age.
Her relationship with Andrew was all-consuming for all of us from the moment they got together.
But she was my baby sister, and all I wanted was to protect her.
To keep her safe, to keep her from harm.
She spent a lot of time pushing me away.
She was stubborn, and independent, and wanted to forge her own path.
And of course, her and Andrew’s love was a reinvention of the emotion.
They were the only two such lovers who’d ever existed in the universe.
She was so young when she fell for him; the emotions of a teenager are so oversize.
They’ve never experienced them before; they don’t have any reference points.
First loves are always overwhelming. Once, after an argument with our parents about how sanctified their love was, how they were going to be together forever, I slid my battered copy of Romeo and Juliet under her door so she could see it wasn’t anything special, what she was experiencing.
They weren’t the first. They certainly wouldn’t be the last.
That pissed her off to no end.
So yes, our teenage relationship was a bit fractious.
Maybe I was a little jealous of her—I mean, can you blame me?
I only wanted the best for her. I encouraged her to focus on her studies, to work on having agency, a life away from Andrew.
When he left her to go to the Air Force Academy, she practically shriveled up.
He was a drug to her, and in her withdrawal, she perhaps started to understand the cost of her obsession.
That she’d lost all her friends. That her family barely knew her anymore.
That she’d made herself Andrew’s second skin, a malleable and compliant vassal.
It made her physically sick, which was difficult for our whole family.
And him—he encouraged her slavish devotion by giving it back to her in spades, both in the form of love, and in the form of hurt.
You know that song, about showering the people you love?
James Taylor, I think. Well, she showered him, that’s for sure.
It was fun for him at the start, to have all that adulation.
But she loved him too much. Too hard. Cloying.
Overwhelming. He couldn’t deal with the pressure.
It drove him away. That’s why he went almost all the way across the country for college.
You know how no one in a relationship loves the other as much at the same time. Andrew never loved Chloe like she loved him. He loved her, don’t get me wrong, but he hated her, too. She was just too much for him.
In the end, he didn’t love her anymore—who could? Her obsession drove him mad, and then she got pregnant, and that’s when he was well and truly trapped. He knew once there was a child involved, he would never be rid of her.
When I saw her body lying so still, when I realized what happened, how she’d been punished for her devotion, I knew he would have to be stopped one day.
Because he’s the kind of guy who will attach himself to a woman and love her to death.
He will love and mate and even marry, but when he’s had enough . . . she is in trouble.
If Chloe had listened to me, she wouldn’t have died. It’s as simple as that. Now, as I hold vigil for Andrew’s new wife, all I want to do is make sure Brooklyn is safe from him, too.