by Bree Despain
“But you think it can be still?”
“I have never attempted it on a human before. It is extremely taxing, and dangerous if done wrong.” He studied Dad’s monitors like he understood what all the lines and numbers meant. “In your father’s condition, I think it is worth trying. If you will allow it.”
“Yes,” I said. “Please help him.”
“It takes two. I will need your help.” He gave me a soft, reassuring smile. He looked just like a priest consoling one of his parishioners. “You must have complete focus and clear your mind of negativity in order to be a conduit for your positive energy to pass into him. No negative thoughts or feelings. This must be a gift of love.”
I glanced over at Dad. A large brace supported his neck, and most of his swollen face was obscured by the oxygen mask. All I could really recognize of him were the creases of his closed eyes. He looked so utterly helpless. Why did he insist on going to the warehouse? Why did I let him go? What if I couldn’t do this? What if I wasn’t ready? What if I couldn’t open my mind?
Deep breaths.
Deep breaths.
I had to clear all those doubtful thoughts away.
“Show me what to do, then. I have to do something for him.” I held my hands out like the healing power was something tangible he could actually hand to me.
Gabriel pulled the hospital curtain partially closed over the glass observation window and door—I imagined to obscure an outsider’s view, but not draw too much attention by closing it completely. The nurses were letting me visit my dad’s room for only twenty minutes at a time, which meant we had less than ten minutes of privacy before someone returned to shoo us back into the waiting room. Gabriel took my hands in his and walked me over to my father’s bed. He placed my hands on my father’s shallow chest. The rise and fall of his breathing felt completely unnatural. Strained and thin.
“Your hands go here, over his heart. And mine go here.” He placed his hands softly over mine. “Clear your mind. Open a pathway for your positive energy to flow from your heart, through your hands, and into him. Negative emotions feed the wolf inside of you, but you must be able to push them completely away in order to do this. Deep breaths. Meditate. Clear your mind. Open your heart.”
I almost pulled my hands out from under Gabriel’s. “But what if I can’t do this?”
“I believe in you, Grace.” Gabriel had never said anything like that to me before. I’d started thinking of him as the world’s oldest skeptic. “You’re the girl who withstood the wolves. The Divine One, they say.”
“I don’t feel very divine.”
“You must try, for you father.”
I nodded. Gabriel pulled in a long breath and then let it out between his lips. I did the same. He closed his eyes. I did also.
“Concentrate on your love for him. Clear your mind of doubt, and imagine him becoming whole.”
Gabriel was still for a moment, but then his hands clasped tightly over mine. Heat swelled from his fingers and pulsed into my hands. I tried to picture my father well again, tried to call up memories of him from my life. The way he smiled. His patient voice. But as the heat swelled in my hands, growing with intensity, my memories flashed to the scene in the fiery corridor. The way my father looked, limp and lifeless in Talbot’s arms, when I found them. I couldn’t stop him from getting hurt, so what made me think I could actually help him now?
You’re too weak, my inner wolf snarled. You can’t help him. You can’t help anybody.
I winced. The heat radiating off of Gabriel’s hands was almost too much to bear. I gritted my teeth, trying to hold on. Dad needed my help. He went to that warehouse because of me.…
Images of the fire ripped through my mind. The sound of the explosion I heard over the phone. Words the nurses said. My father lying so still.
It’s your fault. It’s your fault. It’s your fault. It’s your fault.
No, I tried to tell the wolf’s voice. I didn’t tell him to go there. He insisted on going. It should have been me in the corridor. He shouldn’t have gone.
It’s his fault!
Gabriel cried out like he’d been stabbed with a sharp pain. His hands lifted off mine and the intense power dissipated with a sudden surge that made my eyes pop open from the shock. Gabriel stumbled away from the bedside, his hand clasped over his cheek.
“Are you okay?” I asked between panting breaths.
Gabriel moved his hand away from his face. The scar on his cheek looked like a fresh cut now, oozing blood. The once faded bruises on his jaw now looked fresh and painful, like someone had slammed a mallet into his face several times. Gabriel looked at his bloodstained fingers. “I need to take care of this,” he said, and staggered toward the door. “I am sorry. I thought you were ready.”
He left through the sliding door before I could ask him if he needed my help.
You did that, the wolf said in my head. I looked down at my father. What if I’d hurt him more, too? My fear was confirmed a few seconds later when one of his monitors started making a frantic beeping noise.
Two nurses rushed into the room. I felt numb, completely unable to react, as they pushed me away in order to get to his bedside.
ANOTHER HOUR LATER
I stayed outside the room, watching through the small opening of the curtained glass window, until the doctor was able to do something to Dad to make that horrible beeping monitor noise stop. One of the nurses told me I could go in for one more short visit, but then I must go home. I knew the drill from last year when Daniel had been trapped in one of those hospital beds. Even though the ICU had open visiting hours, I was still a minor, and I wasn’t allowed to stay here at night. I’d nodded and told her I would go, but it still took me another few minutes before I could tear myself away from Dad’s bedside.
I wanted to squeeze his hand to let him know I was leaving, but I hesitated, afraid my very touch might hurt him again. Instead, I left a note on the table by his bed just in case he woke up and I wasn’t here. I didn’t want him to feel as abandoned as I did at the moment.
I left the ICU and went out into the lobby. I started toward an elevator that would take me down to the main floor so I could leave the hospital. But I stopped in front of the closed elevator doors and stared at the triangular up and down arrow buttons—not knowing which one to push. Down would take me to the exit. Up would take me to the psych ward.
To my mom.
When Dad and I came into the ER from the ambulance, someone had asked me where they could find my mother. When I told him where she was, the man said they’d have to call Dr. Connors first and let him decide if my mother should be informed about what had happened.
The fact that she hadn’t come down here to see Dad yet didn’t bode well to me.
I knew if Dad had been awake, he would have told me to go visit her, just like he’d wanted me to visit Jude. I hadn’t seen either of them since I’d come home from the warehouse, and I knew Dad would have said something about how, by not visiting them, I wasn’t acting like myself. Just like April had.
The thing is, Dad had been my go-to parent for the last few years, but there had been a time in my life when Mom had been my rock. Back when I still wore pigtails and lived off of peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Back when I thought a mother’s kiss could heal any hurt, whether it was a wound of the flesh or of the heart. I longed for the days when I could bury my head against her side and she’d stroke my hair, telling me everything would be all right.
I’d spent the last year shutting her out. Keeping her away from my secrets. Maybe it was out of some noble idea of protecting her. Maybe I thought she was too fragile to handle it. Or maybe the real reason I’d kept her in the dark was because I worried that she’d be afraid of what I’d become.
But as much as I’d grown and changed recently, no matter how strong my powers made me—I knew now that I still needed her.
But would she still want me?
It took what little s
trength was left inside of me after the failed power transfer to muster up the courage to do what I did next: I stretched my fingers out to push the Up button, then waited for the ding of the elevator doors. As much as I dreaded what was about to happen, I knew what needed to be done. It was time to tell my mother…well, everything.
Chapter Eight
INSIDE OUT
UP THE ELEVATOR
An old beige phone hung on the wall outside the locked psych-ward door. A sign instructed me to pick it up and dial a number for assistance. “I’m here to see Meredith Divine,” I told the nurse who answered. I hung up the receiver as the door buzzed and swung open on a mechanical arm. I took a few steps into the ward and was greeted by a wide hallway with pale green walls, the smells of stale vending machine candy and ammonia, and another sign that read, high flight risk area. ensure door closes completely.
I did as I was told and watched as the large door closed behind me. I felt a sudden impulse to pull it open again—and make a run for the parking lot.
I can’t do this.
The handleless door locked with a heavy click. It was too late to turn back now. I’d have to visit the nurses’ desk to get the door opened again. I might as well ask about my mother.
I made my way down the hallway, passing a young woman perched on a bench that looked like it should have been replaced sometime in the 1980s. She braided a long lock of her hair in front of her face, rocking back and forth. I entered the main area of the ward and signed in at the desk. I could see a glassed-in room where a group of people sat in a circle of chairs. A man dressed in khakis and a button-up shirt seemed to be leading some sort of discussion. Everyone else was dressed in plain gray sweats, like the woman I’d passed in the hallway. Patients, I assumed.
“You said you’re here for Meredith Divine?” asked the woman behind the desk. Her name tag said latisha. Her eyes held a look of recognition in them when she said my mother’s name.
Before Mom started to lose it, she’d been a nurse at an outpatient psych clinic in Apple Valley, but sometimes she’d filled in here at the main treatment center, whenever Dr. Connors needed substitute staff. I’m sure there had been a lot of talk among the ward nurses about one of their own being a patient now. That kind of gossip would have killed my mother if she were fully with it. Reputation had meant everything to her.
I nodded. “I don’t have to see her, though … if this is a bad time. It looks like there’s a group meeting going on.”
“Nonsense, girl,” Latisha said. “Meredith isn’t in group, and a visitor is just what the doctor ordered.”
“Indeed it is,” Dr. Connors said as he came up to me. He held a clipboard in his hands and wore a long white coat over a sweater and slacks—the same sweater he’d worn to our family’s ill-fated Thanksgiving dinner last year. He smiled warmly down at me, but his eyes told a much graver story. “How’s your father doing? I called down to check on him earlier, but I’ve been unable to make it down there personally.”
“Same as earlier.”
“I see.” He cleared his throat.
“Has she asked to go down to see him?”
“No. I was hoping that…” He cleared his throat again and tucked a pen into the top of his clipboard. “Walk with me, Grace.”
I took a few strides in the direction he led me, until I realized we were headed toward the patient rooms rather than the visiting area. I still wasn’t sure I was ready for this. Dr. Connors glanced back at me expectantly. I swallowed my apprehension and fell into step with him.
“Normally, we’d have you meet with her in one of our visiting rooms, but I think in this case … it would be best if I were to take you to her.”
“What…” I bit my lip. “What exactly is wrong with her?”
Mom had always had OCD-like tendencies that amplified whenever things got stressful at home. Like, the worse things were, the more she had to make everything seem perfect. Then after Jude ran away, she really started to lose it. Like she’d developed her own designer brand of bipolar disorder—going from a manic overprotective mother bear when it came to me and my siblings to slipping into a zombie-esque state in which she was obsessed with doing nothing but watching news reports in hopes of spotting my missing brother in the background. She’d refuse to do anything else for days, and she’d totally lose all consideration for her children who were still home. Who still needed her. Dr. Connors had advised my father more than once that she might need more than counseling and medication—might need to be admitted—but she must have really snapped when I disappeared for my dad finally to have brought her to the main clinic. He’d known that she’d probably never forgive him for it.
Dr. Connors stopped in front of a patient room. A little card under the door number had my mother’s name on it. “I’ve known your mother for a long time. She was a godsend during my residency. However, as you’re probably aware, she’s always had a tendency to create a facade of perfection around her—a false reality, so to speak. It’s a coping mechanism. Yet as I gathered from our counseling sessions over the last year, that facade has been crumbling—and now, something, whatever it is, has torn apart her fake reality so completely, she can no longer cope at all.”
He pushed open her door and I saw her for the first time in over a week—yet I barely recognized her. She sat up in her bed, staring at what seemed like a black smudge on the wall, wearing gray sweats like all the other patients—but without a drawstring in the pants waist, I realized now—and slippers on her feet. Both items she wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing outside of the house in the past. Her normally beautiful hair hung stringy and unwashed around her face, which was so hollow looking, I wondered just how long it had been since she’d eaten anything at all.
“She hasn’t voluntarily left that spot since she got here,” he said. “She won’t go to group or eat with the others. She won’t even say a word to me.”
I swallowed hard. I’d lived through many of my mother’s bad days in the last year, but now she just seemed … vacant. “Will she ever get better?”
“Not until her mind can come to terms with her new reality—the true one—whatever that may be. What is it your father is always saying, ‘The truth shall set you free’? That’s what your mother needs to process: the truth. Whatever happened that caused this—it’s rocked her off her foundation. Until she can find her footing again, both mentally and emotionally, this is the only way her mind knows how to function.” He indicated her catatonic stare.
I nodded, as if I actually understood. So what Mom needed to do was tell her doctors she’s accepted the fact that her oldest son is a werewolf and her daughter is a superpowered demon hunter? Yeah, I don’t see that earning her a ticket out of the psych ward anytime soon.
“I’ll give you ten minutes alone with her. Short visits are best.”
I checked my watch, pretending I didn’t have much time anyway. A short visit was all I had the energy for. Maybe I don’t have the strength at all.…
“It’s good you came,” Dr. Connors said, and gave me a nudge into the room. He closed the door behind me. I felt trapped all over again.
Three eternal minutes ticked by on my watch as I stood there, not knowing what to do. Or what to say. Mom didn’t move. She didn’t even try to glance at me.
“Mom?” My voice sounded so awkward. I felt like I was talking to that smudge on the wall. I took two small steps closer to her. “Mom?”
No acknowledgment.
But maybe I didn’t want her to look at me. Dad had told her what had happened to me … about the curse … and maybe now she’d see me only as a monster. Maybe that was what she couldn’t accept.
“Mommy?” Tears pricked my eyes. “I don’t know what all Daddy told you, but it’s true. I know it’s hard to believe—what happened to Jude … and me. But I’m still your daughter. And Jude’s still your son. And he’s back now. And he needs you. We all need you.”
Nothing.
“James and Charity are st
aying with Aunt Carol—but they can’t stay there forever. And Dad’s been hurt. Really hurt. He needs someone to take care of him. But I have so much on my plate. I’m trying to find a way to turn Daniel back into a human. And Jude needs someone to help him, too. There’s a madman with a pack of demons that wants me dead, and another werewolf pack that wants me for heaven knows what reason. And then I’ve got my own pack of five—four—werewolf boys, who keep looking to me to be their leader … or mother … or something. But I don’t know how to do it all. And I can’t do it by myself. We all need you.” I stepped even closer. What I wanted to do was throw my arms around her and bury my head against her like I did when I was a child. Instead, I placed my hand on her thin fingers. “I need a mother. We all need one.”
She didn’t move. Not even a twitch of her fingers.
“Please, Mom. That’s who you are. That’s who we need you to be. That’s your reality, no matter how crazy any of this is. Be my mother. Please.”
Tears stung my face as they slid down my cheeks. Mom hated public crying just as much as I did, but I let them flow. She didn’t notice. She didn’t react. Just kept staring at that damn smudge. I don’t know how I’d thought this was going to play out, but in my imagination I thought she would at least care.
My muscles ached as I felt a deep rumbling surge up from a dark place inside my heart. The wolf in my head whispered for me to lash out at my mom—or at the shell of the woman who sat in front of me now. The impulse made me sick. I clutched at my stomach and took deep breaths, focusing on purging those emotions from my mind. I hadn’t come here to get angry. I’d come here to get my mother back.
I let go of her hand and left her room. Covering my tear-streaked face with my arm, I passed the nurses’ station and asked Latisha to buzz me out the door.
What I needed now was to get away.
I almost ran into an older couple waiting outside the elevator when I exited the psych ward. The woman leaned her weight into her husband, and he clasped his arm around her for support. I noticed she bore a striking resemblance to the young woman I’d seen when I’d first entered the ward. I wondered if these were that patient’s parents, and I couldn’t bear the thought of sharing the confined space of the elevator with them. Like I might absorb their pain on top of mine.
