A Year Without Autumn

by Liz Kessler

  Mikey’s lying in a bed in the middle of a dark room. He looks tiny, swamped by monitors and machines with dancing lights, jagged lines darting up and down on a computer. Autumn’s beside him, leaning over and holding tightly on to his hand. She looks up when we come in, and I rush over and wrap my arms around her.

  “Oh, Autumn, I’m so sorry,” I say.

  Just then an alarm bleeps beside the bed, and I turn to the nurse, panicked. The nurse pats my arm. “It’s OK. The beeping is just to give us information. There’s nothing wrong.”

  Nothing wrong? My best friend’s brother is lying on his back in a hospital bed, an IV sticking out of his hand, a brace around his neck, bandages on his head. Nothing wrong?

  Tears rush into my eyes, spilling out, flowing down my cheeks. I can taste salt as they run into my mouth. Mom’s standing next to me, and I grab hold of her hand.

  “We can talk to him,” Autumn says. “He’s asleep at the moment, so he won’t reply. But they’ve said he can probably hear us. They’re taking him away for some tests in a bit.”

  “Sometimes it can help the patient to hear voices of their friends and family,” the nurse says.

  I nod as she backs away from the bed, leaving the three of us huddled around Mikey’s bed.

  I don’t know what to say, and I feel so stupid at the thought of speaking to Mikey while he’s lying there like this. I try to remember what I normally talk to him about. Computer games? TV shows?

  “Hey, apparently there’s going to be a new Star Trek soon,” I say. I look at Autumn and clear my throat, suddenly scared and empty. I’ve got no words.

  “It’s OK,” Autumn says, trying to smile. She squeezes my hand, and I feel even worse. She shouldn’t have to be looking after me!

  Just then the doors open again, and Mr. and Mrs. Leonard come in.

  “Oh, Abby,” Mom cries, rushing over to throw her arms around Autumn’s mom. She’s wearing jeans and a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. It falls loose as they part, but she doesn’t adjust it. “I’m so sorry,” my mom says.

  Mrs. Leonard just looks at her blankly for a minute. “Not your fault,” she says eventually, her voice thick and dark. It sounds so lifeless, like one of those electronic voice machines. She stares down at her son, two solitary tears making wet tracks down her pale face.

  The nurse comes up to us. “I’m sorry. We can’t have this many people in here at the same time.”

  “I’ll come out with you for a minute,” Mrs. Leonard says as Autumn’s dad pulls a chair as close to the bed as possible and sits down, lifting Mikey’s hand. “My baby boy,” he says, his voice choked and raw as the nurse leads the rest of us back outside.

  Dad and Craig are sitting across the corridor, reading a comic together. Craig jumps up when he sees us.

  “Take him away for a bit, would you?” Mom asks.

  Dad picks up Craig’s hand. “Come on, big fella. Let’s go find the candy machine.”

  Mrs. Leonard looks blankly over at me as we watch Craig and Dad disappear down the corridor. “Where were you?” she asks in the same electronic voice.

  “I — I don’t know,” I say.

  “We waited for you. Waited nearly twenty minutes. Looked for you as well. Thought you’d disappeared into thin air. But you know how Autumn feels about horseback riding. So we went. We had two places booked, and Mikey really wanted to give it a try, so we let him. Just like his sister. He always loved to try something new. . . .” Her voice dies away. “Loves,” she corrects herself. “Not loved. It’s not as if he’s dead!”

  The word lingers in the air. Dead. No, he isn’t. And he won’t be, either. However impossible it is, I know what happens — and even though there isn’t much I can give them to help at this time, I can at least offer this.

  “He won’t die,” I say quietly.

  “That’s right,” Mom says, clutching her friend’s arm. “You’ve got to be positive, Abby. There’s no point fearing the worst.”

  “No, I know,” she replies in a dead voice.

  “Has a specialist seen him yet?” Mum asks.

  Mrs. Leonard nods. “They’re just waiting for the machines to be free, and then he’s going for some scans.” Her voice breaks as she struggles to continue. “They’re doing everything they can to speed it up, but they’ve got a couple of other emergencies.” Her voice cracks on the word. “He wasn’t too bad at first, but now he’s asleep — oh, I just can’t help worrying.”

  “I should have been there. I should have been there,” Mom says, almost to herself.

  “Don’t blame yourself. You’re here now.”

  “Oh, Abby.” Mom pulls her close.

  “They’ve told us not to give up,” Mrs. Leonard says, tears rolling onto Mom’s shoulder. “They said the next twenty-four hours are critical.”

  “He’s not dead,” I say again. “He’s not going to die.”

  Mrs. Leonard pulls away from Mom. “Thank you, love. We need to believe.”

  I can’t bear to see her like this, thinking her son’s going to die when I know he isn’t. I don’t know how much comfort it would be if she knew the truth, but at least I know a year from now he’s alive. “I don’t just believe it,” I say. “I know it.”

  I think about the last time I saw Mrs. Leonard in that dark condo. “It’s going to be hard,” I say. “But he’s not going to die.”

  “Do you really believe that?” she whispers as Mom puts an arm around her shoulder.

  “I know it.”

  “Thank you.” She squeezes my arm. “You’re right,” she says. “We’ve got to have faith.”

  I want to tell her it’s not just faith; I really do know for sure what’s going to happen! But of course I can’t tell her that. It’s hard enough trying to convince myself it’s true.

  Mom suddenly grabs her stomach again, wincing as though she’s been punched. This time she completely doubles over.

  “Lydia?” Mrs. Leonard’s forehead creases up as she looks at Mom. “Are you all right?”

  Mom nods, gasping with pain. “I’m fine,” she says.

  “Lydia.” Mrs. Leonard looks seriously at Mom.

  “It’s nothing,” Mom replies. “It’s hardly important right now. All right?” But then she winces again and seems to be struggling to breathe.

  “That’s it. I’m getting a doctor,” Mrs. Leonard says. She rushes over to the reception desk and talks to the nurses. A moment later, they’re by Mom’s side. Mom’s doing this really weird fast breathing thing and can hardly speak.

  “Mrs. Green, we’re going to get you to a bed,” one of the nurses says.

  The other one turns to me. “Can you get your dad, dear?”

  I run up the corridor in the direction that Dad and Craig went earlier. Around a bend at the end of the corridor, I spot Dad ambling back toward me with a chocolate-faced Craig.

  “Dad! Come quickly — it’s Mom!” I say.

  Dad grabs Craig’s hand and runs toward me.

  It all happens really quickly after that. Mom’s already on a gurney by the time we get back to them. Dad hands Craig to me and disappears up the corridor holding her hand as she’s wheeled off somewhere.

  “Stay here,” Dad calls back over his shoulder. “And don’t let Craig out of your sight.”

  Just then there’s more beeping from inside Mikey’s room. This time it’s louder, and it doesn’t stop. His dad runs out at the same time as one of the nurses rushes in. A moment later she’s back on the reception desk, pressing a button on the wall. “Doctor to CCU. Code blue. Doctor to CCU.”

  And then they’ve all gone. Mom and Dad have disappeared around one hospital corner, and the nurse has joined my best friend and her family, sitting on the other side of a hospital door. Two doctors come running around the corner and up the corridor. They don’t even see me as they burst into the Critical Care Unit.

  I do the only thing I can do.

  I stand in the corridor, hold tight on to Craig’s hand, and let the t
ears run freely down my face.

  As soon as we get back to the condo, Dad switches on the TV. Mom’s still at the hospital. The doctors said she might have gone into early labor, and they wanted to keep an eye on her.

  “Can I watch the kids’ channel?” Craig asks, settling on the floor with his cars.

  “After the news,” Dad says.

  I make some tea while Dad watches the news and Craig drives his cars all over the furniture. I work in silence. My mind’s too full of impossible questions for me to say anything out loud. And Dad certainly won’t have any of the answers, so there’s no point in trying to say anything.

  “Jenni!” Dad leaps off the sofa. “Jenni, come in here!”

  He’s turning up the TV as I join him in the living room.

  “It’s the local news,” he says. “Look.”

  There’s a close-up shot of a young woman with a horse, holding it by its bridle. They’re standing by a river. The horse nudges her with its head while she’s talking. It’s got a dark-brown nose with a thin white stripe running all the way down. The woman looks serious.

  “. . . all completely devastated,” she’s saying. “Angus has never done anything like this before. None of our horses have.”

  The camera switches to a man in a suit. Young and angular, he holds a microphone close to his mouth as he speaks. “And what happened next?” he asks earnestly.

  I edge closer to the television, sitting on the floor, mouth open, right in front of the screen, gawping silently at it. I feel like Craig. Dad’s standing silently behind me.

  “We were on a trail ride,” the woman says. “We were crossing a river near Mile End Farm when it happened. Angus was galloping so fast toward the edge of the field that he didn’t even see the river. Just stumbled down the bank, throwing the child off in the process.”

  “What state was the boy in?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. We all thought he was fine. He got up, almost right away. He said he’d hurt his head a bit, but other than that, he said he was fine. So he rode back on my horse with me, and another staff member led Angus back alongside her horse. We went nice and slowly back to the stables.”

  “So when did you realize it was more serious?”

  The woman pauses and the camera moves in closer on her face. “When we got back,” she says. “I helped him off the horse, and he couldn’t stand up. He lost his balance — then he was sick.”

  “And that was when you called the ambulance?”

  The woman nods. “We would have taken him ourselves, but Bob — the other riding instructor — had taken the Jeep, and we’d come back early from the ride, so none of the parents had arrived yet.”

  Back to the interviewer. “And I believe there was an issue with the ambulance?”

  The woman’s face flushes. “There was a mix-up with the address. There’s a Moorfield Stables on the other side of town. We’re Moorside.” The woman looks down. “Some of the parents had started to arrive by that point — but we kept thinking the ambulance would be there any minute, so we kept waiting for it. I should have double-checked,” she says. “I should have called them as soon as it happened. I should have done everything differently.”

  The camera zooms in even closer on the woman’s face. There are tears in her eyes. After a pause, it pans across to the interviewer. “Michael Leonard has been taken to Westchurch Hospital, where his symptoms have worsened. His condition has been described as critical.”

  My throat closes up.

  “Doctors say the next twenty-four hours will determine what this young boy’s future is to hold. This is Pete Travers for the evening news.”

  The room suddenly feels dark. Dad switches off the TV, but we both keep staring at it, as though perhaps it’ll come back on and tell us there’s been a mistake.

  The only noise is Craig whizzing his cars along the radiator and flinging them over the edge to crash onto the floor.

  I’ve been lying in bed for hours, but I can’t sleep. I can’t stop my mind from whirring and spinning. It’s like a carnival ride going around and around too fast to jump off. The thoughts all crowd together: Autumn in the future, lifeless and tired; her mom like a zombie; Mikey in the hospital — all of it awful, and all happening the wrong way.

  Everyone older, then younger again. What happened? How did it happen?

  Stop!

  I try a relaxation exercise that Mom once showed me. Focus on my breathing, on the breath coming into my body cold, leaving it warm. Close my eyes, let my tummy swell . . . in . . . out. In . . . out.

  It’s helping. She has lots of these exercises. She’s been using them with the pregnancy. She thinks it helps the baby stay calm.

  That’s another thing! She’s already had the baby. Or she had — or she will. Which is it? I’m jerked awake again, with the thoughts tumbling on top of each other. It’s no use. I’m not going to get to sleep.

  I switch on my bedside lamp and glance across at Craig. He’s sprawled out on his back, arms above his head, breathing in deep grunts, stuffed animals spread out on the pillow, with his favorite, Monkey, lying next to his cheek.

  I slide open my bedside drawer and pull out my diary. I write:

  I’ve had the most horrific day of my life. In fact, I’ve had the two most horrific days of my life — both on the same day!

  I write down everything that happened, every single event of the day: going to Autumn’s condo and that woman being there, the old elevator, the man telling me to go downstairs, seeing Autumn and her mom in that dark room, rushing to the hospital — everything. I pour it all out, pages and pages of it.

  It’s only when I stop writing and read it back that I realize something. As a shiver slithers through my body, it comes to me. The moment it all changed.

  I know how it happened.

  The second a hint of daylight breaks into the room, I’m out of bed. I’ve spent the whole night lying awake staring at the ceiling, waiting for morning. At least, it feels as though I have. I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke up sweating from a bad dream. I was running after Autumn, but she kept running away from me. She ran around a corner and disappeared. When I caught up with her, she’d turned into Mikey. He was laughing as he ran and looking back at me over his shoulder. He didn’t know that he was heading toward the edge of a cliff. I kept trying to warn him, but he couldn’t hear me. Mom was at the edge of the cliff, holding a baby in the air. Any second, Mikey was going to run into them, and all three would go over the cliff — and then I woke up.

  I shake the dream out of my head as I get up. I’d wanted to go out as soon as I’d realized what had happened, but I couldn’t. On top of everything, I simply didn’t have the nerve to go chasing answers in the middle of a pitch-black night.

  Craig’s snoring softly. He shuffles and turns over, kicking his quilt to the floor. I lift it and gently place it back over him. Then I get my baggiest jeans and the biggest T-shirt I’ve got out of the dresser and slip them on. The alarm clock’s red lights catch my eye: 6:51.

  There’s a note on the living-room table.

  Hospital called in night. Mom’s gone into labor!

  Look after Craig. Will be back as soon as poss.

  Dad xxx

  She’s a month early. Is it OK to go into labor so soon? I silently pray that she’ll be OK — and then I realize I know she will be. I’ve seen the baby!

  Look after Craig. Does that mean I have to stay here?

  No. I have to do this. I have to know for sure. And I won’t be long. I scrawl a note for Craig and put it next to Dad’s.

  Craig, just stepped out to get a few things. Get yourself some breakfast and watch TV and I’ll see you soon. Love, Jenni xx

  I slink out of the house like a burglar, silently closing the front door behind me, and head for Autumn’s building.

  The lobby is empty. It looks the same as it’s looked every day, the same as it looks every year. The marble walls, the fountain trickling out behind a glass
panel, the archway to the first-floor hallway. The elevator. The one we’ve always used. And next to it, the other one: the one that’s never worked. Until yesterday.

  I walk toward it and catch my breath. My heart’s thumping hard in my chest as I step carefully inside and slide the doors closed behind me, slicing away the light. I can’t see the buttons properly. I fumble along the walls, the numbers slowly growing clearer as my eyes get used to the dim light. My body is alive with prickles zinging up and down, lighting up every nerve ending in my back, my neck, my arms.

  I know it’s impossible. I know it can’t be true. But I also know it is true. It happened; there’s no other explanation.

  The elevator didn’t only take me up a floor — it took me up a year as well.

  What if Autumn had lived on the third floor and I’d gone up two floors to see her? Would it have taken me forward two years instead of one?

  Perhaps another year on from that awful time, things will get back to normal. Perhaps we’ll all be happy again.

  I need to know.

  The buttons are clearly visible now that my eyes have gotten used to the gloom. As I stare at them, I know there’s only one way to answer the questions shooting around my mind.

  With a shaking arm, I reach out, and press the button marked 3.

  The elevator stops. I drag the doors open, run to the hallway, and check the condo numbers: 310, 311, 312 . . .

  I run down the stairs. At the second floor, I pause and look down toward Autumn’s old condo. Before I’ve even thought about it, I’m marching along the hallway. I’m not going to wimp out this time. I need to ask some straight questions — and I need some honest answers.

  I stop outside unit 210. My chest feels as though there’s someone inside it, banging their fists on my ribs. I knock three times on the door, and a second later it flies open.

  “It’s you! I knew you’d come back!” Mrs. Smith smiles broadly and grabs me. She pulls me toward her, squashing me in a tight, bony hug.

  I pull away. “What’s that about?” I ask, stepping back to look at her. Is she older? It’s hard to tell. She’s wearing different clothes but —