Over Her Head

by Shelley Bates

  She nodded and climbed into the back of the ambulance. Then she hung on for dear life—in more ways than one.

  Susquanny Medical Center moved like a well-oiled machine, where every part knew exactly what it was supposed to do—every part but the mother of the patient. Finally, a nurse took pity on her fluttering around outside the locked door and led her away to a waiting room, where she sat her down with a cup of something hot that might have been tea or coffee—it was hard to tell—while Anna had her stomach pumped and her electrolyte levels balanced. Laurie had been to the emergency room before, of course—with a boy as curious as Tim, there were bound to be things like the fishhook incident last summer, and the broken leg when he was learning to ride his skateboard. But it wasn’t the same as coming in an ambulance, where triage was immediate and you didn’t have to wait for two hours while your child suffered.

  “Laurie.”

  She looked up at two voices calling her name. Colin came in from one direction and Dorinda Platt from the other. She stood and gripped her husband’s hand as she searched Dorinda’s face for a sign of . . . anything good.

  “Anna is going to be fine,” Dorinda said in response to that look, and Laurie’s knees buckled. Fortunately, she hadn’t moved far from the vinyl-covered sofa, and she collapsed into it like a marionette with severed strings.

  Dorinda sat on one side of her while Colin took the other. “Thankfully, she underestimated the number of capsules it really takes to shut down the human nervous system,” she said. “Her stomach has been pumped, and we have her on a drip so she won’t become dehydrated. The ER doc is having her admitted for observation overnight, but you should be able to come and get her in the morning.”

  “Can we see her now?” Colin asked. Laurie couldn’t speak. Her throat was closed with the effort to keep from bawling and waking up everyone within three floors.

  “They’re not quite finished, but I’ll see if you can see her for a few minutes. Then I recommend you head home and try to get some sleep.”

  That’s easy for you to say, Laurie thought.

  “We’re required to report suicide attempts to the police and to Child Protective Services,” Dorinda went on. “I just wanted to prepare you. You’ll probably be getting a visit from both agencies after they get the reports.”

  Laurie’s throat cleared with a vengeance. “CPS won’t take her away, will they?”

  “I can’t speak for them, but I can’t imagine they would. They’ll do a home inspection, though, and the police will be interested in the whys and hows.”

  “They already know the whys and hows,” Laurie said, unable to keep the rasp of bitterness out of her tone. “It’s this whole town thinking that she killed Randi Peizer, and no one being able to find out who really did it.”

  “God will make all things known,” Dorinda said softly.

  “Yeah, well, I wish he’d done it before Anna got ahold of that bottle of pills.”

  “Laurie,” Colin said.

  “Don’t Laurie me. I can’t believe it’s God’s will to take both Randi and Anna away.”

  “Seems to me it’s not,” Dorinda put in. “Your girl is going to be fine. Maybe it was a—”

  “If you say wake-up call, I’m going to get up and walk out,” Laurie warned. “God doesn’t use innocent girls’ lives as wake-up calls.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that,” Dorinda said calmly, and in some distant part of her brain, Laurie wondered if too many hysterical parents had given her the ability to be so unflappable and objective about the things they said. “I was going to say maybe it’s part of his plan to flush the guilty party out.”

  Laurie didn’t think much of that theory, either. Speculating about the will of God was a pointless exercise—like an ant trying to figure out why humans didn’t want him at their picnic.

  Dorinda glanced at the swinging doors to the ER. “They should be finished by now. Come on back.”

  Anna was in the third bay, behind a set of yellow curtains. Laurie’s heart squeezed in distress at the sight of her slender body on the bed with its backdrop of plastic tubing and monitoring instruments and flashing lights. Laurie had no idea what any of the equipment meant, other than it was helping to make her baby better.

  Anna’s eyes fluttered open when the rings on the curtains clashed as Dorinda pushed them back.

  “Hey, sweetie.” Colin touched her cheek while Laurie took her hand. “You’re going to be okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” Anna whispered.

  “It’s all right,” Laurie said softly. “Everything is going to be fine. You’re going to sleep here tonight, and we’ll come and get you in the morning.”

  “Nice way to get out of being grounded for the night.” Anna smiled at her father’s gentle joke, and her eyelashes slid closed.

  Laurie looked at Dorinda, who said, “She’s on a mild sedative. She’ll probably sleep now. You folks should go home and try to do the same.”

  “I want to stay here with her,” Laurie said. “Who should I talk to?”

  Dorinda shook her head. “I’m afraid not, Laurie. Please. The best thing you can do for her is to get some rest.”

  No matter what Laurie said to convince her, Dorinda wouldn’t budge. In the end, Laurie let Colin walk her out of the room and down to the hospital parking lot, where he held the door for her while she buckled herself in.

  “Dorinda’s right,” he said as he pulled out of the lot. “Things will look better in the morning.”

  Their daughter had attempted suicide. How was ten or twelve hours going to make that look better?

  But she managed to put a lock on her lips and simply nod instead of just blurting out every rebellious and angry thought that flickered through her brain. Great. At the advanced age of thirty-eight, it took an appalling week like this one to teach her discretion.

  Hardly any traffic moved on the streets, some distant part of her mind observed on the drive home. Everyone was settled into their postcard-perfect lighted houses, the only thing on their minds whether or not to raid the fridge again before bed.

  The silence yawned between them like a physical entity, and Laurie couldn’t bear it for another second. She was doing it again—using anger and sarcasm to beat away the darkness of fear. But this was not the enemy. This was Colin, her best friend, her partner, her lover. She’d known since the day they’d first kissed that he was an analytical, practical kind of guy. She was an emotional, dramatic kind of woman. Most of the time there was a time and a place for all of these qualities, and they worked pretty well side by side. But lately she’d seen his efforts to be reasonable as attacks on her.

  Maybe she was the one who needed counseling.

  Colin turned into the driveway and parked with the engine running. “I’ll go over to Mom’s and get Tim.”

  She should say something. They needed to talk out the fear and worry so that they could both sleep. But she was so tired it was an effort to lean on the passenger door and open it.

  “Okay,” was all she said as she left him and stepped into the house.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It wasn’t often their place was empty at night. Laurie moved from room to room, taking off her coat, dropping her purse on the counter, making sure the kitchen light was on for Colin when he got in.

  In their bedroom, she undressed and climbed into her flannel pajamas, as though even her skin needed something soft and comforting lying against it. Then she sat on the bed and, with the swiftness of a pouncing cat, the grief ambushed her.

  A soft pillow against her stomach was small comfort, but she toppled sideways and curled around it anyway, weeping her sorrow and fear and regret into the dark, feeling the pillow’s velvet cover go from fuzzy to damp to slick under her cheek, wishing Colin hadn’t gone to his mother’s, wishing he was there to hold her. And still she couldn’t stop. It was as though every tear, every shriek, every molecule of defiance she’d been bottling up for the last two weeks rolled out of her in a wave, pulli
ng her in, sucking her under in her own maelstrom of emotion.

  And the problem with catastrophic waves was that they held you under, churning and somersaulting and out of control, until their energy was spent and you could swim out.

  Laurie wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to swim again.

  It was just too hard. Death had brought this upon them all, but life was just too hard.

  Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.

  What was that from? Laurie grabbed a tissue from the night stand and blew her nose, hard. Then, hiccuping with the last of her tears, she gazed at the Bible sitting next to the tissue box like a silent reproach.

  Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.

  She picked it up and found the verses. The psalmist again. That poor guy had really had a hard time.

  Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us:

  then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul:

  then the proud waters had gone over our soul.

  That was it. The waters were over her head and she couldn’t—

  The phone rang and jolted her out of her meditation. “Yes?”

  “Lor, it’s me,” Colin said. “Tim has been upset all evening, and he doesn’t want to go home. Mom thinks I should stay over with him to see if he’ll calm down.”

  Oh, her poor baby. Her arms ached to hold her son and comfort him, to give him a little of what she needed so badly herself. This family just had to find its way back to balance again. “Okay.” Her shoulders drooped. “It’s probably better if he has a change of scenery right now anyway. Come by here first thing tomorrow and pick me up so we can go get Anna, okay?”

  “Will do. Tim needs to see that Anna is okay, so I’ll bring him, too.”

  “Good choice.” She took a deep breath. “I . . . I love you.”

  In the beat of silence, she heard his throat working, and tears welled again in her eyes. “Love you, too.” He cleared his throat. “See you in the morning.”

  Laurie hung up gently. If they couldn’t find comfort in holding each other, she’d have to make do with what she had. She picked up the open Bible and wandered down the hall to Anna’s room. The lamp on her study desk was the jointed kind architects used, but Laurie turned on the Tinkerbell lamp on the night stand. They’d lugged it all the way back from Disney World the summer before Anna turned five, and Anna had refused to give it up even when she was long past believing in fairies.

  Laurie sat on the bed and tried to find comfort in her daughter’s things, in the smell of baby shampoo and cherry lip gloss, in the jumble of clothes in the closet that mapped a girl’s journey to finding her own style. “BoHo or Classy?” asked the cover of Seventeen from the floor. “Goth or Geek?”

  Laurie remembered buying magazines and trying to figure out what kind of body type she had (which clashed with the one she wanted) and then what kinds of clothes could best enhance or hide it while still communicating her style. If she had a style back then. She couldn’t remember.

  Ping!

  The monitor of Anna’s computer was in sleep mode, but apparently the machine was still running.

  Laurie’s body still felt heavy, as though it would be too much effort to get up and turn the thing off. Her tired gaze returned to the floor, and her thoughts to the psalm she had just read.

  Maybe that was why Anna had gone into the bathroom and taken down that bottle of pills. The waters had gone over her head, too, and she couldn’t see her way to the surface. Was life just simply too much to bear, and she didn’t see any other way through except to check out and not try? At fourteen, how many choices can you see from that chaos under the waves?

  Randi Peizer had had no choices at all. The water had closed over her head, and she’d never come up again.

  The spiritual parallel stopped there. She and Anna could still fight their way to the surface. But how?

  The Bible in her lap felt the way it always had, the leather handled to a comfortable limpness, the gilt worn off the pages in the middle. Once, it had been her guide for nearly everything. Now it was an accessory she took to Bible study group, the way she grabbed her handbag and keys. When was the last time she’d read something just for the sheer comfort of hearing God’s voice in the words? When was the last time she’d opened it for counsel, or even prayed?

  Laurie couldn’t remember that, either.

  Her life was filled with religion—with Bible study group, with service, with friends all from the same church, with making sure Anna and Tim grew up with Christian principles. But what about under the surface? What was the core holding her together? Was God there, or was it simply an empty space with church activities packed tightly around it?

  Oh, Lord, have I replaced you with the church?

  Ping!

  She glanced at the computer and frowned. Downstairs, Colin’s grandpa’s mantel clock gave a single chime. Why was the computer pinging at one in the morning?

  She’d turn it off in a minute. Meantime, she located the psalm about the waters and read the rest of it:

  Blessed be the LORD, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth.

  Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.

  Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

  Well, there was a happy ending for you—and she could use one of those right now. Was it really possible that the One who had made heaven and earth could pay attention to her family’s problems and help them find a solution?

  Lord, give those girls on the bridge a shake and order them to tell the truth.

  There you go again, she heard Colin’s voice in her mind, telling people what to do. When talking to God, it was probably better to ask than to tell. But wasn’t that what she’d been doing all along? Effectively telling the Lord that he wasn’t doing a very good job of organizing things, and taking it upon herself to do it? And what had been the result?

  I’ve lost everything.

  Almost. Everything that she’d thought counted, anyway. She’d lost the trust of Glendale Bible Fellowship, and the friendship of women she’d known all her life. She’d lost Anna’s trust. She’d probably even lost her relationship with Nick, and her marriage was battered, if that crack in Colin’s voice was any indication—not to mention the fact that he’d rather stay at his mom’s house than come home and see this through with her.

  Surely there must be something left.

  Her gaze tracked down the page:

  As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people from henceforth even for ever.

  In other words, she had God. When all else failed, he was with her still. But was he?

  She could ask and find out.

  Tears thickened in her throat again as she bowed her head over the pages that, despite her neglect and hardheadedness, were trying to tell her something.

  Lord, are you there? Has it really taken all this to drive me back to you? Am I that stubborn and filled with my own self-importance that I abandoned you and took over the job of steering my own life?

  Please help me, Lord. I’ve got nothing else to work with here. I’m done. I’m at the end of myself. I know you can fill that space inside. Bring me back to you, please, and make me one of your own again. Please, Lord. You’re all I’ve got.

  Laurie had never felt so alone, so empty. And yet, wasn’t that the perfect condition to be in if you wanted to be filled with the Spirit? Motionless, she waited in the silence of the deserted house, feeling still and quiet for the first time in months. Maybe even years.

  That still, small voice. Maybe it needed a place like this to work. Maybe if she would just shut up and listen, God could tell her what she should do. God could open a way once he’d opened her heart. He was good at that. Look at the Red Sea.

  Ping!

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. Laurie cocked an eye at the sleeping monitor. What was with
these kids? If Anna was getting instant-message alerts when she was in total lockdown, there was going to be trouble.

  Excuse me a minute, Lord.

  She pulled out Anna’s desk chair and jiggled the mouse so the monitor would light up. When it did, little IM notes littered the desktop.

  JohnnysGrrl: Check ur mail yet? Good pix.

  B good or b sorry.

  What on earth was this? Both her kids’ e-mail addresses were sub-accounts of her own. Normally she wouldn’t invade their privacy by logging in and reading their mail or their IMs, but life was no longer normal. And what exactly was “B good or b sorry”? With just a few keystrokes, Anna’s mailbox came up and she was in. She didn’t even need a password.

  The first thing she saw was that every e-mail except the last few had been read, which meant Anna had been ignoring the rules. Half of the list was from kedgar254@hotmail.com. No surprise there.

  The other messages were from a variety of people with names like “edancer” and “mrsbloom” and “mwah.” At the top of the list were three from someone called “JohnnysGrrl.” Laurie opened the first one.

  Kelci sez ur on lockdown but Kyle sez ur reading mail. Got a present 4 u.

  The next one said:

  B good or b sorry, Poser2. As long as Im alright, ur alright. But if u fink, baby bro gets it. Proof coming.

  A 140KB image was attached to the most recent message, which said:

  See how ez? B good or maybe baby bro wont be smiling. Maybe he’ll hit his head like Poser.

  Laurie’s fingers felt cold and stiff on the mouse as she scrolled down and looked at the image. There were Tim and KeShawn on either side of Kate Parsons, who had a boy under each arm in a mock headlock. The boys’ eyes were crossed and their tongues lolled out as they mugged for the camera.

  Kate was smiling . . . and in her eyes was something that chilled Laurie to her core.

  Laurie had no idea where they were or when the picture had been taken, but the message was clear. JohnnysGrrl was threatening Anna and using her love for her little brother as leverage to keep her quiet.