Swimming Through Clouds (A YA Contemporary Novel)

by Paulus, Rajdeep

  “Jesse. What are you doing out here? Get back inside. Don’t be stupid. You know the rules. And you know Dad’s punishment for this one. Whaddya thinking?”

  “I’m done thinking.” He spoke calmly. Too calmly. “I’m done.”

  And before I could respond, he stood up, moved to face me, spread his arms open and mouthed the words I’m sorry. Without blinking, Jesse fell back and off the roof.

  “No!” I screamed that one word till I ran out of breath as I scrambled up the roof, slipping and sliding on the snow.

  I screamed when I reached the peak and looked over to see his body on the driveway, in front of Dad’s car, a puddle growing under his head, and his left leg flipped awkwardly over his body. I screamed when I slid back down to the balcony and scrambled back into Jesse’s room. I screamed all the way down the hallway when I ran right into Dad’s chest. I pushed him aside and screamed as I stumbled down the steps out the front door. I screamed as I ran out to the driveway and up to my brother. I screamed as I bent down and gathered his limp body into my arms. I screamed and screamed and screamed and looked up to heaven and screamed some more.

  I saw Dad on the roof, looking down and shaking his head. Who knows, in disbelief? Possibly confusion? Probably rage. I rocked Jesse back and forth and rubbed his arms, wondering if by any chance this nightmare was playing inside my head and I was still asleep in my bed. That’s when I saw it. The paper crumpled up, now loosely held by his limp fingertips. My screaming turned to whimpering as I reached over to retrieve the note. The list. The seven words on Jesse’s final list. The seven words that literally pushed him over the edge. The seven words Dad transferred to me, since I did not stop Jesse. The seven words that sentenced us to maximum isolation.

  Zero

  E-mail

  Until

  You

  Get

  It

  Right

  I tucked the bloody verdict into my robe’s side pocket and resumed rocking him.

  “Jesse. Jesse. Jesse.” My words sputtered out as I wished for the impossible. “Don’t leave me, too. We already lost Mom. I can’t lose you, too. Jesse. Wake up, Jesse. Wake up. Wake. Up. Please. Jess. Please.” I pleaded with anyone, heaven, whatever or whoever would listen.

  Dad pummeled out the front door, running toward us while talking frantically into his cell phone. I could hear his words, but he sounded so far away.

  “There’s been an accident! Come quickly! There’s been an accident!” Dad yelled to the 911 dispatcher.

  All the sensations around me blended. The snow felt warm. Jesse’s body sounded loud. Dad’s voice seemed heavy. The blood on my hands felt cold. The snow tasted salty. My eyes felt numb. And the neighbors were falling.

  When the ambulance arrived, I rocked Jesse, confused at all the commotion. Why did the neighbors stare at me? The men in white and blue uniforms exited the blinking van and ran toward me. Déjà vu. They wanted to separate us. They wanted to steal my brother from me. The same way they stole Mom from us. Not happening. Not this time. I would hold on tighter this time.

  “No!” My crackling voice returned. “I won’t let you take him from me! I won’t! I won’t! I can’t.”

  In the end, the EMT staff pried me away from Jesse’s body, offering me a seat near my baby brother in the ambulance. I didn’t ask Dad. I just went, and Dad followed in his car. The whole ride over to the hospital, two EMT techs worked on Jesse, putting in lines, pumping meds into his veins, and performing non-stop CPR while I watched, digging my fingernails into my palms.

  By the time we arrived at Lakeland Community, the nearest hospital in St. Joe’s, Jesse started breathing...barely. Enough to give the team a little hope, and things moved at record speed the second the ambulance reversed into the ER entrance. The back doors swung open, and a team of doctors and nurses appeared, wheeling him away while throwing a plethora of medical words into the air. I only recognized the words surgery and spinal cord.

  The EMT driver helped me step down from the truck and escorted me to a couch in the waiting room outside the locked doors of the OR. Dad marched right behind us. He sat down on a different couch and put his face in his hands. We were together, Dad and I. But I felt more alone than I’d ever felt before. First Mom. Now Jesse?

  I closed my eyes and hit rewind. My mind replayed the scene over and over again. At times, I caught Jesse by his arm and convinced him not to jump. Other times, I held his hand, and we jumped together. And still other times, I raced up the roof and grabbed his hand, but his weight overcame me. Inevitably, his fingers slipped from mine, and he fell right before my very eyes. Reality exhausted me, so I dreamt of an alternative life. A life absent of chaos and loss and lists. The friggin’ list.

  I must have dozed off, because when I heard voices, they grew steadily louder like someone turned up the volume. The surgeon spoke with Dad. I wiped my eyelids with the tips of my thumbs and shook the grogginess from my shoulders as I rose up to hear their discussion.

  “The situation is difficult.” The surgeon—his name tag read Dr. Jenkins—broke the news to Dad. “His arms are remarkably not broken, but the fact of the matter is, he might never walk again, but once we drain the brain hemorrhage and the swelling wanes, he should be able to swallow and speak again. Just depends. Everyone responds differently to trauma.”

  “What are you saying?” Dad asked as if the doctor spoke a foreign language.

  “I’m saying that your son will have to take it slow. Only time will tell what kind of permanent damage both his brain and spinal cord might have endured from the fall. We did the best we could, but the healing process takes time. Just be thankful he’s alive, and we’ll take it one day at a time.”

  “Alive?” Dad reverted to his growling self. “You equate a mute paraplegic with being alive?”

  “Sir.” Dr. Jenkins put a hand on Dad’s shoulder.

  Dad shook it off.

  Dr. Jenkins spoke slowly. He seemed comfortable with Dad’s belligerence. “Sir, one day at a time. We encourage families in similar situations to take things one day at a time. We have counselors and social workers available if you need to talk further. I have other cases to attend to. The nurse will be out when your son is stable enough for you and your daughter to visit with him. We are all surprised that he’s alive. Very few people survive such head trauma from this type of fall. I’ll talk to you more shortly.”

  And with that, the doc turned and pushed through the doors marked “Hospital Personnel ONLY.”

  “Bull crap.” Dad said to no one in particular. “What kind of nonsense is this? And you’re gonna charge me for fixing him up enough to just lay in bed?”

  I backed up, repulsed by Dad and shaken by the prognosis, and plopped back down on the couch nearest me. Never walk again? Might never speak? My mind whirled in a hundred directions like the flurries outside the window. What did this all mean? Jesse was alive. Barely. But never walk or speak. I hadn’t thought of the in between. The stuff that lay between being alive and dead. In between stamped Jesse’s prognosis as fresh confusion flooded my already cluttered mind.

  Dad just stood there and stared at the OR doors. When no nurse arrived, he returned to his spot on the couch. Up to this point, he hadn’t said anything to me. Not one word. Not even looked my way. The tension stretched between us like a rubber band pulled to its max. I couldn’t think about going home. I closed my eyes to drift back to the last time I spoke to Jesse on the roof, when Dad’s voice startled me back to now.

  “Get up.” Snap! He stood over me, his eyes laced with red. Then he turned and walked out of the waiting room toward the elevators. “We’re going home.”

  Everything inside of me tensed. Like a tiger poised to pounce on Dad, one look at his eyes reminded me who the hunter was and whose hands held the gun. But how could I leave without seeing Jesse? I needed to see my brother and tell him in person that I was here for him. I would take care of him. Help him learn to walk again. Instead, we abandon him? What kind of stu
pidity was this? But that’s just it. The story of my life. And I knew better than to protest, especially in public. I swallowed the angry voices in my head, stood up, and followed Dad to the car.

  Like Humpty Dumpty, the surgeons attempted to put Jesse back together again. They even drilled a hole in his head to drain the bleed. I imagined the tube worked somewhat like a straw, sucking out all the awful memories of his yesterdays. Wishful thinking at best.

  After two weeks in the ICU, they moved my brother to Acute Rehab where he spent close to three months, relearning how to swallow and maneuver his weight since his legs refused to budge. Dad visited him daily, returning home to report to me like he was sharing Chem lab results: “No change.”

  I hated Dad for not allowing me to see my baby brother, so I called the hospital as often as I could from the school office during my lunch breaks. The staff seemed to feel sorry for me, the sister who’s brother tried to kill himself. So no one asked me why I didn’t have a cell phone like most teens, or why couldn’t I just use the phone at home.

  In that first month after the ambulance took Jesse away, I called every day. But the nurse always told me Jesse was asleep, but doing a little better each day. In February, a female nurse whose voice I soon looked forward to hearing, came on the line to answer my questions. Only then did I fully realize that not only might I never again see my brother walk. Would I ever hear his voice again?

  Never learned the name of the nurse who took the phone, but I’ll always remember her kindness. To help Jesse hear my voice and her patience to tell me what he was thinking. He must have written his responses down for her to read to me. Whatever the case, I never stayed on the phone long. Just long enough to let him know I was thinking about him. And I love him.

  April arrived and Dad woke up one morning and announced, “Enough.” He was tired of the inconvenience. So he pulled Jesse out of rehab against the doctor’s advice, and the ambulance brought Jesse home three months after that night on the roof.

  The medical staff assembled a hospital bed in Jesse’s room and detailed the home care, rehab proceedings, and mandatory follow-up directions. Dad signed the papers and ushered everyone out. With nothing more than a two-second, “Thank you,” Dad locked the door behind them, and before the ambulance left the driveway, I watched in horror as Dad tore the discharge papers to shreds. Like he was punishing the paper since he could no longer punish Jesse.

  And once again, my list changed. And the Internet connection—cancelled. So that’s how it had been for the last three months, while Jesse made little to no progress. Because Dad never allowed anyone in our house, convinced he could rehab his son on his own, Dad’s schedule flexible enough for him to come home for lunch almost daily to shower and change Jesse’s scrubs. But Jess didn’t progress. Just laid there. And days when I came home and the room didn’t smell of incense, Dad’s go-to choice for air freshener, Dad didn’t make it home. Perhaps a meeting ran over. Or he couldn’t be bothered.

  Whatever the case, I was strictly instructed to do everything aside from dressing my brother because, “Girls don’t look at naked boys. And naked boys don’t look at girls. No one looks at you naked. Understood, Talia?” It was not a question.

  “Yes, sir.” Because that’s the best response to Dad’s rules. The lawyer makes the laws. Breaks the laws. Then rewrites the laws so he looks innocent. That’s how Dad rolls.

  So the laws in our house simply rolled over to add Jesse’s list to my list. And that was that. Until the school called the house in June, demanding a home tutor visit all summer in order to bring Jesse up to speed academically.

  Dad said, “Thanks, but no thanks. We’re moving.”

  “We are?” I asked Dad when he hung up. I guess we were.

  Next thing I knew, move we did. Taking Jess’s hospital bed, his wheelchair, and our broken hearts to the Chicago burbs just before my senior year kicked off.

  Doctors predicted Jesse might never walk again, but his speech should return after the side effects of Traumatic Brain Injury waned. For months, no words left his lips. He does make one sound each and every night. He cries. Each and every night. He looks toward his bedroom window and cries. Eventually, he cries himself to sleep.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The weekend crawls by, and when I wake up Monday morning with fresh blisters on top of old scars, my arm is red, oozing, and still burning. I goop on the entire tube of A&D ointment, wincing as I spread it over every inch of skin and clumsily wrap gauze from my elbow to my wrist. Then I find a baggy, green sweatshirt to wear that doesn’t draw attention to the extra thickness. Every task takes longer than usual. Each time something, anything, contacts my arm, shots of pain fire up to my brain like arrows piercing the bull’s eye. Over and over and over again. Twenty minutes remain for me to finish my morning list, and neither Jesse nor I have eaten breakfast.

  My lips still sting from teeth bites. My ugly deformed lips. My right fist stops centimeters from smashing the bathroom mirror. That would create extra cleanup and additional chores to pay for a replacement. Time lamenting things I cannot change only blurs my perspective. I need to take care of Jess.

  If he doesn’t eat now, he won’t eat until Dad comes home for lunch. And Dad doesn’t always show up. So I quickly shove a bowl of lumpy oatmeal in his lap, apologizing for rushing off. Jess just glances down at my arm, his eyes saying the same two words he said to me that night on the roof. I’m sorry.

  I tell him, “Don’t be. Same old, same cold.”

  I have to get to school on time. If I’m late, I’ll draw unnecessary attention to myself. I side hug Jesse, leaving the remote under his hand and fly out the door with my backpack over the shoulder of my good arm. Lips freshly scabbed, arm on fire, stomach growling, I look forward to only one thing. Lunchtime.

  Lunch cannot arrive soon enough. I need distraction and little yellow squares pop up like granted wishes from an invisible genie. A genie named Lagan. Lagan knocks three times before noon with Post-it notes I find during morning classes. In first period, one sits curled up on my desk.

  It reads:

  Top of the mornin’ to ya. Looking forward to ‘conversation’ today at lunch. NLA-style of course.

  I flip the note over, and the back reads:

  “Nod/Look Away” in case you forgot.

  L

  In between classes, I spot one on my locker that says:

  Came up with 21 questions. You get two points for every question you answer yes, and no’s are three-pointers. When you get to 21, you win...another lunch date with me!

  L

  After Bio, I follow the smells of pasta and garlic bread to the lunch line. Handed another personalized cafeteria tray by a smiling volunteer, my third Sticky Note of the day reads:

  Sitting in my usual spot. Got your tray for u since u looked like u hurt your arm or something. I’ll change it up if you don’t like. C U now.

  L

  My gut contracts. I take the Post-it and return the tray. I thought I did a decent job at keeping my pain a secret. Thinking back to the morning, I wonder when Lagan picked up that my arm hurts. I decide I can handle this. I have lied about home my entire life. I have more excuses than pairs of unmatched socks when it comes to Dad. Sigh. Poker face in place, I walk over to the table next to Lagan’s and sit down in front of an untouched tray of food.

  “Thanks.” I let the whispered word fall in my lap.

  “No problemo,” Lagan answers, looking away from me.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see that he hasn’t eaten yet either. He lowers his head with his eyes closed momentarily. Then he looks up and picks up his fork.

  “Yo, L-Train! Thanks for saving us seats.” Two of Lagan’s basketball buds approach our table, but Lagan intercepts them before they put their trays down.

  “Sorry, dudes. Gotta keep my grades up so I don’t get kicked off the team.” Lagan pats his math book on the table next to his tray.

  “Coach would never drop you. Shoot. You’re o
nly the best point-forward Hinsdale has seen in like the last century.” The taller of the two fellas tosses in his opinion.

  “I’m not worried about the coach. If my parents see my GPA drop, Mom will personally escort me off the court. Not taking my chances. I’ll catch you guys at practice. Peace.” Lagan nods to the two, and they shrug shoulders before walking away to another table. All the while I’m staring at my tray, being what I am best. Invisible.

  I see that he brought me soup, yogurt, juice, and two slices of white bread. Untoasted. Do you notice my lips too? Who am I kidding? Who can’t tell there’s something wrong with me? I dismiss the voices in my head and say to my tray, “I’m ready for question number one. Going for twenty-one. Yes, I am.”

  “Alrighty then.” Lagan smiles, and the sight of that dimple greets me like than an umbrella on a rainy day.

  Just hearing his voice transports me far away from the wicked world in which I live most of my minutes. I just hope his questions will keep me here, and Lagan won’t snoop around my house of pain.

  “Question number one: Is your name really Talia Grace Vanderbilt, Talia meaning ‘dew drop from heaven’?”

  I nod to my tray, giggling softly to myself.

  “Great! Two points.”

  Two girls approach our table, and Lagan stops. The tall blonde with a hot pink hair extension clipped on her right side stops in front of Lagan and asks, “Is anyone sitting here, Lag-in?”

  “English assignment, Nadine. Sorry.” Lagan shrugs his shoulders.

  I glance up and see the other girl, the one with perfectly-crimped, shoulder length, brown hair, roll her eyes.

  Nadine clears her throat. “That’s cool. Let’s go, Stace.”

  I guess the brunette chick is Stacey. They walk past several empty tables before sitting down. Must be nice to be so popular. Can’t help but feel a little special that he didn’t ditch our sort-of conversation for his fan club co-presidents.

  Lagan shakes his head to himself. “Wanna know something funny?”