Wild Alabama

by Everly Hansen

  Wild Alabama

  By Everly Hansen

  Copyright © 2019

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  BEFORE

  I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. Like the time my dad's flight to NYC got canceled on the morning of September 11. The day Mr. Morrison's dog jumped over his gate so he was twenty minutes late for work - and an elderly lady passed out at the wheel and drove right into his Laundromat. The time I was three years-old and my mom made a split second decision to go through the Burger King drive thru for Whoppers instead of going inside to eat at the local Chili's the evening an estranged husband open-fired and killed six people. Those decisions, those naughty dogs, the lost shoes, the missing keys. All those minutes, seconds even that end up putting us out of harm's way for whatever reason. So when the time came that my minutes, seconds, nanoseconds of little things went wrong and put me off schedule so I arrived at Becky Polada's "End of Summer Pool Party" half an hour late, I had it in the back of my mind that maybe I was better off. Surely there was a reason my hairbrush had seemingly vanished, my right shoe took a field trip into the laundry room, and my car wouldn't start until the fourth turn of the key.

  And I suppose there was.

  But it wasn't a car accident or creepy Kenny LaMur trying to undo my bikini top.

  My minutes and seconds didn't keep me from harm's way that day. In fact, it led me to it.

  ONE

  I only agreed to go to Becky's pool party to try and salvage my friendship with Melissa. She had been distant ever since she got her new boyfriend, Tad, last year. They ate lunch together, they sat at the football games together, and she stopped walking home with me after school so she could get rides with him. Typical drifting with a new boyfriend, I told myself at first. But I had the feeling things were worse than that, especially when she sat next to me at graduation in May (since it was in alphabetical order), but she didn't say a single word to me.

  Tad was out of town with his brothers, so I jumped at the opportunity to spend time with Melissa at the party. The music was great, the dance moves were as good as I could make them, the boys were cute, and the drinks were strong. Melissa and I hung out, sipped margaritas and made fun of the boys' pool hair. For a few minutes, it was like nothing had happened between us. Until Tad texted her and she turned into mush and spent the next twenty minutes with her phone in her face. The only other person I had been close to in school was Ellen, but she was in Denver for college orientation.

  "I'm getting another drink," I announced. Melissa didn't even bat an eye. I sighed and wandered near the pool where a large white gazebo held a table of random liquors. I poured another margarita, light on the mix, and then hung around the pool instead of walking back to my boy-obsessed friend. I made small talk with a couple of girls from my Photography class and started to enjoy myself again.

  And then it started to rain.

  I don't mean a nice Sunday afternoon drizzle that made you ache for tea and a cozy blanket. I mean hard, heavy, could barely see two feet in front of you rain. Most of the crowd headed underneath Becky's covered deck, some huddled in the gazebo to stay close to the booze. But it was Charlotte, our Class President, who announced that she thought it would be fun to swim in the rain, so a bunch of people got in, myself included. I got on the shoulders of a football player and played Chicken with Charlotte and her boyfriend. My crush since fifth grade, Taylor dunked me playfully under the water where the roar of the rain quieted. Charlotte was right; it was fun. Until the lightning.

  Loud cracks of thunder made the sophomores who snuck into the party squeal. Lightning flashes made people, including Melissa, run inside. I should have followed them. But by the time I thought, Hey, dumbass, get out of the water when it's lightning and touched my feet back onto the concrete slab surrounding the pool, it was too late.

  Crack!

  Flash!

  The feeling of every bee in the world stinging me at once.

  Darkness. So much darkness.

  I never saw a light or any of my relatives who had passed away. I didn't even get to see the slightly chunky but very adorable Saluki we had until I was 14. When I came to, sputtering and choking on pool water, Becky was screaming, "Oh my GOD, my mother is going to kill me!" while an overweight paramedic leaned over me with a satisfied smirk.

  There was no sign of Melissa.

  I was loaded into an ambulance and rushed to the hospital where I endured hours of machines, X-Rays, and needles.

  My heart had stopped for fourteen minutes, I was later told. I, Pippa Wilder, had been struck by lightning and was dead for fourteen minutes. "You're very lucky," the nurses and doctors said. Something told me maybe they were wrong.

  TWO

  "You scared the shit out of me, Pippa," my mom said as soon as she burst into the hospital room. They had met with my doctor as soon as they arrived, and I was grateful for that because my mom's panic level was probably a three down from an eleven. She grasped my body and awkwardly turned me in the bed to look me over. I could smell liquor on her breath. I winced at the pain. "I was playing Candy Crush one minute and the next I get a call from freakin' Becky Polada that you died in her pool." She wiped a few stray tears away and sat on the edge of my bed. She let out a shaky breath.

  "She drank gin the whole ride here," my dad said, going through my bag of belongings.

  My parents were more like cool roommates. They had me young, so I felt like we all kind of grew up together. Lame as it may be, they were my best friends.

  "I wasn't driving, Hal," my mom said with an eye roll. She was good in a crisis, always calm and quick on her feet, but when she took my hand I noticed how clammy her palms were.

  "Still a lot of alcohol," he muttered. He held up my phone and frowned a little. "I think I can put this in rice and save it." My dad, forever neutral in any situation. You could never tell what he was thinking or feeling. He would've made a great CIA agent.

  "What happened? Why the hell were you in the water during a storm?"

  "It was like a freak accident, Mom. We were all swimming and then bam."

  "What kind of bam?" my dad asked. "Went towards the light bam? Saw great-grandma Winnie bam?"

  "No. Just...bam. I don't know. Nothing happened. I saw nothing."

  "Well, that had to be disappointing, " my dad said. He religiously watched shows about the afterlife. It was probably a huge bummer to him that I had no "Jesus came to me" speech for him.

  "I'm just glad you're ok," my mom said. "Can you even imagine what I would have done if you had died in Polada's pool? Annie would have talked about it at every PTA meeting and every book club Thursday."

&
nbsp; "You would've had to kill her," I joked.

  My mom looked off in the distance a little and nodded slowly. "Probably."

  I closed my right eye as a stabbing pain flooded behind my socket. The lightning hadn't done any internal damage that they could find, but I was expected to have pain, bruising, burns, and probably scars from the bolt. The pain subsided and a chill overtook my right side, leaving all the hairs on my arm sticking up.

  "Do you need a nurse?" my dad asked worriedly.

  I blinked hard and cleared the slightly blurry vision that came and went. "No. No, I'm okay."

  "The doctor said I could stay with you overnight," my mom said.

  "Okay," I said.

  "It'll give me time to catch up on Breaking Bad," my dad said.

  "Don't you dare go past season four, episode seven without me," my mom warned. She turned back to look at me. "Do you need anything?"

  "Is Melissa out there by any chance? In the waiting room?" I asked. "She was at the party with me."

  "I didn't see her. I haven't heard from her." My mom stroked my hair for a second. "Are you two still having problems?"

  "I guess so, yeah."

  My mom's lips pressed together tightly and I could tell she was holding back some comments. Melissa hadn't been her favorite person in a while, ever since she insisted my mom's views on global warming were total BS and blocked her on Facebook as a result. As an open-minded person, my mom was less than impressed.

  "Are you hungry?" my dad asked.

  "Yeah, actually. Starving." I was nervous about the party, so I had eaten lightly all day. The tests had taken hours and it was well past dinnertime.

  "What do you want? I can go to the cafeteria or go pick something up."

  They struggled to make ends meet for most of my childhood; eating out was a real luxury in our family. Nowadays, my dad worked for some fancy engineers, my mom had a popular lifestyle blog, and their money issues were slowly disappearing. I worked as a cashier at the local grocery store and tried to contribute to bills when I could.

  "Papi's sounds good," I said. Papi's was our local Greek restaurant. I could always go for their Dolmades.

  "A Gyro does sound good." My mom nodded at my dad.

  "They have a new sampler platter, too," my dad said as he gathered his things. "I'll be back."

  Half an hour later there was a sharp knock on the door that startled me and my mom, and in walked a doctor I recognized from the CT booth. He had very McDreamy-like hair and a confident air around him. He picked my chart up and flipped through it.

  "Hello, Pippa," he said. "I'm Dr. Washington. I'm taking lead on your case. This is more my area, so Dr. Robthart is focusing on his other patients. Your chart looks good. Considering the placement of the strike and that you were down for fourteen minutes you should really consider yourself lucky, Pippa. You should make a full recovery without any kind of complications."

  "When can she go home?" my mom asked.

  "I'd like to keep her overnight as a precaution. But after that, she'll be free to go." He snapped my chart shut and put it back. He put his stethoscope in his ears and gave me a quick exam. "Heart sounds good. Excellent. How's the pain?"

  "The morphine helps," I said.

  Dr. Washington nodded. "Can't expect a lightning strike not to hurt, eh? I'll make sure we send you home with something for the pain and the blisters. Showering and clothes won't be pleasant for a while. But, you'll heal. That's the important thing to focus on. Let me know if you have any questions, okay? This is actually something I have personal experience with."

  I raised an eyebrow.

  Dr. Washington paused and then raised the left sleeve of his white coat. There was a noticeable pink scar in a pattern that made me think of the old tree in my backyard. It twisted around his arm as far up as I could see. My mom gasped quietly.

  "What's that?" I asked.

  "This is something that you will probably have after your burns heal. I was struck by lightning nine years ago."

  "Wow," my mom said. Without asking, she reached out and traced part of the scar. "Oh, honey, this will make a fantastic blog series."

  "Mom," I groaned.

  She apologized for invading Dr. Washington's space and scooted back on the bed a little.

  "Did you die, too?" I asked.

  "I think my heart may have stopped during the strike, but I was never out like you were. I flew twenty feet across a field and then walked myself to my truck and drove myself to the hospital. The ground got more damage than I did, but I walked away with a pretty epic scar."

  "Mine will be more epic, won't it?" I looked down at the bandages on my body.

  "You definitely have more surface area covered by burns. So, yes, you will probably have a pretty substantial scar. There are options with lasers nowadays. I even know some people that get flesh colored tattoos to cover their scars."

  "Probably the only kind of tattoo your father will approve of," my mom said with a chuckle.

  Dr. Washington smiled a little, paused and looked to his left, and then looked back at me. I glanced at a quick shadow in the room and blinked hard. His eyes narrowed every so slightly and then he cleared his throat.

  "Well, we'll have a nurse keep checking your vitals. I'm on call tonight so if you need anything I'll be here. I'll check in with you in the morning, alright?"

  I nodded.

  "Thank you, Doctor," my mom said.

  "Try and get some rest," he told me before leaving the room.

  My mom fanned herself. "Whew lord. That man can give me a sponge bath on any given day, do you hear me?"

  I shook my head slowly at her. "I am your child."

  "Dr. Washington. Wash. Get it?" My mom grinned.

  "You're a married woman," I told her.

  When my dad showed up with Papi's we ate in silence and watched a re-run of FRIENDS on the TV. I picked at my food, half because of slight nausea and half because of my thoughts about the party, Melissa, the storm, and the itchy IV in my arm.

  "Are we mad at the rice?"

  I looked up and saw my parents staring at my plate. I noticed I had picked at my food so much that I had dug through the Styrofoam plate.

  "Just thinking," I said.

  "About?" my dad asked.

  "Life, I guess."

  "Well, you did die today," he said with a nod. "I'm sure it's brought up all kinds of things. Maybe we should look into a therapist when you get out of here."

  "Therapy? No, I'm fine. I'm just processing. I don't have PTSD."

  "That might be what someone with PTSD would say," my dad pointed out.

  I groaned and set my food to the side. "Can I just get a minute to myself? Please?"

  My parents exchanged a look and then picked up their food.

  "We'll go eat in the cafeteria," my mom said. "Text us, okay?"

  I nodded and watched them go. I popped a Dolmades in my mouth and picked up my phone. I sent a text to Melissa explaining what happened and then checked my Facebook. There were a lot of pictures of the drinks at the party, and a lot of selfies. Melissa posted a picture of her and Tad with the caption "Missing my bae while at this lame-o pool party." Gross.

  I had thirty comments on my page about the strike. Some asked if I was okay, others asked if I had smoke coming out of my ass. Instead of replying to everyone individually I updated my status explaining yes, I had been struck by lightning, no I was not still dead, and, yes, I would be okay.

  My phone chimed with a text.

  I heard was Melissa's reply.

  What kind of reply was that? No 'OhmyGod are you ok??' or 'I'm on my way.' I grit my teeth and typed a long, slightly passive aggressive reply. My thumb hovered over Send, and then I deleted every word. I just couldn't say the things I wanted to say. I didn't want to be rude. My mom always told me that was something I should get over. I wanted people to like me so I avoided confrontation and tried to keep everyone happy.

  I settled on asking her if she was going to come up to
the hospital.

  Twenty minutes later I had finished half my food, my parents were back in the room, and my phone had been silent.

  THREE

  I was back home with a room full of flowers and cards, and an almost certainty that I was losing my mind. I kept losing things. Objects seemed to move around. Little things, too. Things that made me second-guess if I had done them or not. Had I put the dish soap on the counter instead of on the edge of the sink? Did I put my hat on my bed instead of the rack behind my bedroom door? Had I left my window unlocked even though I could have sworn I locked it before I left the room?

  Maybe the lightning had scrambled my brain and they just missed it on the scans. Doctors were wrong sometimes, right?

  I was eating pizza my dad ordered (extra cheese, extra black olives), trying to ignore the fact that my phone was buzzing very infrequently. I texted Melissa that I was home and told her a bit about what was going on, missing objects included. Her replies were few and far between. I texted Ellen who always replied fairly quickly. I held back sharing too much with her though because we were good friends but we weren't best friends. It wasn't like growing up with someone and sharing a history and inside jokes. The things Melissa and I had.

  "Pippa?"

  I looked up from my spot on the couch and at my dad. He looked concerned as I stared off in space. He looked concerned a lot lately.

  "Yeah?"

  "Have you seen my keys? Your mother's car won't start again so I have to go pick her up from her book club."

  "I put them on the hook," I said.

  "Well, they're not there now."

  I blinked and craned my neck to see the key hook by the door. His hook, marked with a sticker of a cape for Super Dad, was empty. "What? No. No, I put them back. I swear."

  "Okay," he said slowly. "I'll check upstairs."

  A couple minutes later I heard the keys jingle and my dad muttering, "Why the hell were they in the bathroom?" before he told me goodbye and left.

  I knew I put the keys back on the hook. I didn't even have to think about it anymore, I had been doing it for so long. It was something I did automatically when walking in the door along with putting my purse on my hook and my shoes in the red plastic bin underneath the key hook. How did they end up in the bathroom?