Chapter Twelve
Fatigue invaded every pore of her body. Charity covered her mouth for the umpteenth time as a yawn threatened to put her molars on display for all to see.
Not that there was anyone in the vicinity to see them, but still, proper manners had been grilled into her since birth, and she was hard-pressed to forget them.
Kolby was speaking with the orthopedic doc in the recovery room. Since she wasn’t family, she wasn't allowed through with him, but she didn't mind. Hospitals weren't her favorite place. Aside from that, she felt Kolby deserved some alone time with his mother.
Another yawn broke through, this one causing her jaw to pop from the sizable width her mouth opened to.
By her estimation, she’d been awake almost twenty-four hours straight.
She wasn’t twenty anymore, where she could stay up for days at a time and not feel the effects of no sleep.
She was pushing thirty and needed – and wanted – more than a few hours at a clip.
Just as her eyes were drifting closed, the wispy whoosh of the surgical recovery room doors sounded, and Kolby came through them.
Charity stood, disregarding her exhaustion.
“And?” she said as he came toward her. Since they were the only ones in the waiting room, she didn’t feel the need to keep her voice down or shoot for privacy.
“She’s still out from the anesthesia, probably will be for another couple of hours.”
“And the surgery? It went well?”
He nodded, then stifled his own yawn. “They put two pins and a few screws in her upper arm where she broke the bone. She’s gonna need extensive rehab to use it properly again. Her face is a mess. One black eye, her jaw is purple, and she’s got about a dozen little nicks and cuts.”
Charity nodded. “And her mental status?”
“To be determined. She needs a full psych eval. They estimate she fell at least six feet. Landing on her arm probably saved her head, even though she banged it on something. She was lucid in the ER. Flying high from her mania, but no signs of a physically altered state like a concussion would show. Just,” he shrugged, “her psych stuff.”
Charity laid her hand on his upper arm. “That’s good, then.
Listen, I texted Colleen while you were in with the doctor and told her there’d been an emergency and we came back earlier than expected.
I underlined that I’d notified the bride’s family, and they were fine with it.
They didn’t want any more photos, anyway, so our leaving doesn’t change things one way or the other.
I haven’t heard back from Colleen, but I don’t expect to until later this morning. ”
“That was good thinking, thanks.” He dragged his hands through his temples, weaving the hair between his fingers. Another yawn shot out of him.
“You want to stay or head back to Heaven?”
“Neither. I want to be close when she wakes up, but I don’t want to sit with her, fall asleep in one of those chairs,” he chinned the plastic waiting room ones, “and wake up with a back or neck ache.”
“So what’s the plan?”
He stifled another jaw-cracking yawn, then shook his head. Charity felt like doing the same to relieve herself of the punch-drunk-tired taking over her body.
“I figured I’d stay at the house so I can hop back here when she wakes up.”
“It’s close by?”
“About a mile. Which is probably why she figured in her manic state, getting to the hospital on her own was a better option than waiting for an ambulance.”
Charity nodded. “Okay. Come on. We can take your truck to the house. You okay to drive?” She held the keys up for him.
“Yeah. I’m good.”
He looked anything but.
When they got back into the truck, she figured she’d better come up with a way to keep them both awake until they arrived at his house. From the depth and frequency of his yawning, he could barely keep his eyes open.
“I knew a girl in college. Not a friend, really, but someone I saw a lot because we were on the same academic track, you know?”
He nodded.
“She was always quiet, kept to herself. Seemed shy more than anything. Like I said, she was a quiet one, until one day she wasn’t.
Started talking in class, interrupting the professor a few times.
Began a conversation with the girl next to her about.
..something. Asteroids hitting the earth, I think.
Something odd like that. The professor asked her to leave, which she did, still talking a mile a minute to no one in particular. ”
“What happened?”
“I heard later from someone who knew her roommate that she’d been brought to the school infirmary later that night after telling the roommate she was being watched by the FBI and government trolls because she knew things,” she put the word in air quotes.
"They admitted her to the psychiatric ward at the local hospital with a preliminary diagnosis of schizophrenia. I read about it after I found out, and it seems it hits people in their early twenties or thirties. The literature says it can be controlled with meds, but they have to be taken, else the symptoms come back.”
Kolby concentrated on the road for a bit.
At a stoplight, he turned to her. “My mom was diagnosed as bipolar and depressive when I was six.”
“Lordy, you were just a baby.”
For the first time, a tiny grin curved up one corner of his lip. “That accent,” he said, shaking his head.
She waited for him to continue.
When the light turned, he did. “We were living with my grandmother at the time because, well, we had to.”
He blew out a breath.
“I came home from school one day and my mom was crying. Like, heart-wrenching sobbing. Sitting on the living room floor just crying her eyes out. She wouldn’t stop.
I found out later the guy she’d been seeing broke it off with her.
The first of many guys to do that. Nothing I could say or do helped calm her down. ”
His voice caught. Charity laid a hand on his upper arm. “You were just a baby, Kolby. What could you possibly do?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head again.
“Make her feel better? Get her to stop crying?” He pulled a corner of his mouth between his teeth.
“The next day my grandmother had her committed after the emergency room doc she took her too said she was in a depressive, suicidal state and a potential threat to herself and others. He meant me.”
There was so much to unbundle in that she didn’t know where to begin. She decided on clarification. “Committed? You mean to a...?” She didn’t want to say it.
“Psych ward, yeah. Thirty-day hold in the county psychiatric hospital that stretched to eight weeks. Longest time of my life. After being released, she was different. Slower. Not so quick with a smile like she’d been.
I realized when I was older that was because of the meds they put her on.
Over the years, better meds have made her functional and able to express her emotions appropriately.
She could hold down a job, and did. Take care of herself, too. ”
He glanced over at her as he pulled into a darkened driveway on a quiet residential street.
“She’s been doing great.”
“And will again once she gets through this. Have faith in that. Have faith in her.”
He stared across the darkened cab at her. She wished she could see what was in his eyes.
After a moment, he cut the engine.
“I just wish I knew why she lapsed,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get inside and I can call car service for you.”
He pulled their bags from the trunk while Charity regarded the house.
It sat squarely in the center of a quiet street, a tiny, two-floor structure with gabled windows and white siding.
No porch, and a street level entrance, the front door surrounded on both sides by bushes that needed a trimming as much as Kolby’s hair.
He unlocked the front door, reached in to turn on the wall light, and stopped dead. Charity crashed into his back so hard she ricocheted back a few paces.
“What the...?”
“Jesus.” He dropped their bags at their feet.
Charity came into the entryway to see why he’d stopped and then slammed to one just as he had.
The front room – she assumed it was the living room because she spotted a couch and coffee table – was filled with shopping bags and online delivery boxes, unopened and strewn about the floor and on all available surfaces.
The bags all had top-tier store logos emblazoned across them and were filled with items. Plastic bags from a dollar discount store lined up along one wall.
Charity did a quick count. Twenty-five bags filled with items from plastic floral arrangements to books and household cleaning items. Three bags held six-liter bottles of bleach.
It hit Charity in that moment just how much Kolby’s mother’s mania had taken control of her.
She heard him release a breath and watched as his shoulders and neck slumped forward, his arms dangling, lifelessly, at his sides. The urge to pull him into her own arms and soothe away all the dark, sad emotions she knew were coursing through him was so strong, she didn’t even attempt to fight it.
“Kolby?” She placed a hand on his back and rubbed the spot between his shoulder blades.
Without turning he said, “When she gets manic, she shops. Incessantly.” Another sigh.
“Everywhere and for everything. Once, she bought a subzero freezer that was so big the delivery guys couldn’t get it in the house.
Most likely she’s maxed out her cards.” He dragged his hands down his face, then cupped his neck, his fingers threading together.
“I’m gonna have to return all this stuff. ”
“Not now you don’t,” she said, steel in her voice.
He glanced at her over his shoulder. Mouth set in a determined line, CarlieRae’s unbending iron will flowing through her like an energy-filled intravenous, she said, “Right now you’re gonna go to bed and get some rest. This’ll all be here in the mornin', the good Lord knows. We can deal with it then. For now, we both need sleep.”
His brows crashed together as he turned fully to her. “We? Charity, no. This isn’t your problem, it’s mine and—”
The steel hardened to titanium. “Accept help when it’s offered, O’Brian.
My Granny Quinlan is famous for sayin' many hands make light work and she ain’t wrong.
This,” her hand swept the room, “is too much for one person to deal with. You need help, so accept it, be gracious, smile, and say thank you very much.” When it looked as if his protest was starting up again, she pointed an index finger at him.
“No arguing. Now,” she picked up her bags. “Where’s the guest room?”