Before I Say Goodbye

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  I turned on the light, and the first thing I saw was Mom’s purse on the counter, her bottle of pain pills open, the white pills in a loose mound on the counter. Not again. At least there seemed to be none on the floor.

  I went to check on James, but he wasn’t in his room. He was probably with Mom, and I knew there’d be room for me, too, despite my outburst. Mom would take me in her arms and smooth my hair and whisper that she loved me, and I would believe it was true.

  James’s soft snores filled the room. I waited until my eyes adjusted to the dim moonlight filtering through the open window. Mom was curled away from James, her face toward the light, and she was lying so still that for a moment I thought she was already awake. I waited for her to hold out her arms.

  She wasn’t moving. I took several more steps. Her face looked odd. I leaned over her and heard nothing. I shook her. “Mom.” Then more urgently, “Mom, are you okay? Mom, wake up!”

  “What’s wrong?” James mumbled. “What are you doing?”

  “Mom won’t wake up.”

  “So? It’s night.”

  “She’s not breathing. James, go turn on the light!”

  He hurried to do as I asked, and even that had no effect on Mom. I didn’t even know if her heart was beating.

  Everything angled into sharp focus. If I didn’t do something, Mom was going to die.

  If she hadn’t already.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Dante

  My cell phone buzzed from the nightstand, and I came awake more quickly than usual since I had been in bed only a few minutes. I glanced at the number without recognizing it. There was no name.

  “Hello?” Next to me, Becca rolled over. I could see her open eyes gleam in the darkness as she waited to see who it was this time and if I’d be leaving. With meetings and dinner and all the bustle with the children, there’d been no time to discuss her trip. Except for what she and Allia told us at dinner, I had no idea how things had gone at the gardens or with Rikki.

  “It’s my mom,” came a strangled voice. “She wasn’t breathing. I called the ambulance, and they’re here, but—”

  “Who is this?” I demanded.

  “Kyle.”

  “Are they helping your mother?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “But I’m—James is really scared.”

  “I’ll be right there.” I was up and stumbling to the closet. Becca jumped from the bed to help me find my clothes. I shoved one leg into my pants and then the other as I explained. “It’s Rikki. Kyle said she wasn’t breathing. The ambulance is there.”

  “Oh, no.” Becca tossed me my shirt. “She had a scary episode on Friday night, too, but she seemed okay last night. I’ll wake Travis and tell him he’s in charge. You go ahead. I’ll come along in a minute.”

  “Okay.” I leaned in and kissed her. I loved her even more for being ready to drop everything and help me in my calling without any notice.

  The drive to Rikki’s was too long, though the clock on the dash said only a minute had gone by since I’d started the engine. The ambulance was still outside, as were a fire truck and a police car. Several neighbors stood on the sidewalk in front of the house. I nodded to them as I bounded up the few steps and pushed open the door that was already slightly ajar.

  In the back bedroom, Rikki lay on the bed, surrounded by four paramedics and two police officers.

  “Excuse me,” said an officer with dark hair. “Do you live here?”

  “I’m her bishop. I’m here for the kids. Is she going to be okay?”

  A female paramedic kneeling on the bed by Rikki’s head looked up at me. “She’s breathing but not conscious. We don’t know what’s wrong. We’ll transport her as soon as she’s stable.”

  “I think it’s her pills.” Kyle stood by the window, holding her little brother, who clutched her tightly, tears wetting his cheeks. “She always takes them when she gets home, but I saw her take them once, and they weren’t spilled. They’re all over the counter now.”

  My heart sank. Rikki, what have you done?

  Kyle’s comment interested the paramedic. “Were there a lot of pills missing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’ll need to take all her medications with us,” said another paramedic. “The doctor can look at the date and the dosage and how many pills are missing to see if it relates to her collapse. Could be she needs a different dosage.” His voice was calm and soothing, a tone I knew I needed to adopt as well, though the ten-year-old inside me wanted to shake Rikki awake and demand to know what she’d done.

  “I’ll get you the bottles.” Kyle put James down, but he started crying.

  “Come here, James,” I said, going to meet him halfway.

  He shook his head but then seemed to change his mind and came toward me. No, not toward me but toward Becca, who’d come in the door behind me. He started sobbing loudly, but Becca scooped him up and held him tight, whispering soothing things and rocking him until the tears lessened.

  There are a lot of good reasons why bishops need to be married, and I knew this was one of them.

  I followed Kyle into the kitchen, where she handed me an open bottle of pills. “They’re for her headaches,” she said. “She has really bad ones sometimes.”

  Four more bottles followed the first, and with each my trepidation grew. At least they all seemed to be prescribed medications. With Rikki you could never be sure. She’d never bothered with alcohol when I knew her, but even as a teen she hadn’t been able to understand why a little recreational weed was off-limits to me because of my belief in the Church. She didn’t understand why I cared if I gave my father one more reason to overlook or despise me.

  Kyle stood as though dazed, and in my mind she was Rikki as a young child—before there’d been any real differences between girls and boys. I put a hand on her shoulder. “They’re taking care of her, Kyle. They’re doing everything they can.”

  “She’s been acting weird. We had a fight. Maybe if I hadn’t—”

  “It’s not your fault. Come on. Let’s give them these bottles, and then you and your brother can come to our house.”

  “I want to go to the hospital.”

  “I’ll call you when there’s news.”

  “No. I’m going with you.”

  I had two daughters who often used that same stubborn tone, and I knew better than to argue—especially about this. “Okay, you can come with me, but I need to call someone first.” Becca wouldn’t want to drag James to the hospital or leave our children alone so long, and I didn’t want to take Kyle to the hospital alone without another priesthood holder. I pulled out my cell and called my first counselor Steve Mendenhall, who answered after two rings and promised to be right over.

  In the bedroom, the paramedics were moving Rikki onto a board they would carry into the ambulance. Her eyes fluttered, but she didn’t awaken. She looked far more frail this way, as though she might easily break.

  Becca’s hand was on my arm. “You go ahead. I’ll lock up here and take the kids home.”

  “Kyle wants to go with me. Steve’s on his way.”

  Becca studied Kyle. For a moment I thought she would try to talk her out of going, but instead she secured James with one arm and put the other around Kyle. “If you need anything, tell the bishop to call me, and I’ll be right there. I’ll come, anyway, when I can find someone to stay with James and the other kids. Okay?”

  Kyle nodded, her face crumpling as she buried it into Becca’s shoulder. For several long moments she simply sobbed while Becca held her. I felt grateful for whatever experiences they’d had in Saint George and at the police station that made Kyle able to turn to Becca for comfort.

  “I’ll go ask where they’re taking her,” I told Becca, swallowing the lump in my throat.
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  Outside, there was a growing crowd of neighbors and ward members. The questions started the moment they saw me, but I held up a hand for them to wait while I talked to the paramedics. After receiving the information I needed, I briefly explained to the neighbors what little I knew.

  “How can we help, Bishop?” Daren Godfrey asked.

  “We’ll let you know,” I said.

  “What about the children?” This from Julene Tuft.

  “Kyle’s going with Steve and me to the hospital, and Becca’s taking James home.”

  Steve had arrived, so with a few brief comments, I extricated myself and went to tell Kyle I was ready to go.

  * * *

  An accidental overdose of prescription medication was the diagnosis the doctors agreed upon. “The medication is a very potent painkiller,” Dr. Samuelson, one of the young doctors on call, told me. He was on the high council of our stake. Tall, thin, and stately looking, he was a good doctor and an even better man. “I can’t elaborate on her condition without her consent, but I will tell you that she must be suffering some major migraines or she’s been prescribed the wrong medication. When she’s a little more with it, I’m going to suggest a change to see if we can’t get her on something safer, though with her other problems, that may not work out. One thing for sure, if that little girl hadn’t found her and acted as quickly as she did, her mother would have died.” He sighed. “Some of her other vitals still aren’t all that great, and some of the blood tests look odd. I’d suspect drug abuse, but I don’t find anything like that in her system, though I’m still waiting for a few more tests.”

  “Let me know, okay?”

  Samuelson smiled. “I really won’t be able to talk to you about her condition, Bishop. Unless she gives permission.”

  “She will.”

  Except that I really didn’t know Rikki anymore. Had she taken the extra medication on purpose? If I asked her straight out, she might admit to it.

  “You can see her in about ten minutes,” the doctor added, “but only two at a time. She’s asking for her daughter.”

  Steve nodded. “We’ll wake her up and tell her, the poor thing. She’s been waiting all night.”

  “See you in a bit, then.” Dr. Samuelson strode from the room, his blond hair reflecting the fluorescent light overhead.

  I made my way toward Kyle, who’d fallen asleep on three chairs in the ICU waiting room. “Kyle,” I said, touching her shoulder.

  She jerked awake. “Is she okay?”

  I nodded. “She’s awake, and she’s doing much better. They’re going to let you see her in a minute. She’s still kind of groggy, though. They think she might have accidentally taken too much medication.”

  “I thought it might be that. She gets sort of goofy sometimes after she takes it. Once, she told me it’s like her brain stops working. She might not remember taking the pills. She doesn’t usually take them that early, I don’t think. Maybe she thought if she took some before we went to bed, she wouldn’t have the pain at night.”

  “Does she wake up a lot at night?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t ask how she knew. Anger boiled inside me. Rikki had said something was bothering Kyle; maybe I’d found out what. Rikki was going to hear a thing or two the second I felt she could physically handle it. Not from me, her bishop, but from Dante, the friend she’d grown up with. We’d told each other a million times that we’d never do to our children what our parents had done to us, but Kyle and James were suffering from her actions every bit as much as she’d suffered from her father’s. So help me, if she didn’t change her ways, I would act to protect her children. I’d told Kyle we were a ward family, and I’d meant it.

  “Will you go in with me?” Kyle sounded about six years old—exactly like her thirteen-year-old mother had sounded when she’d asked if she could sleep in my dad’s bushes.

  If I were a swearing man, I’d have made good use of a few choice words. As it was, I simply nodded. “Sure.” I thought a minute and then added, “Kyle, has this happened before? Your mother collapsing, I mean.” Kyle had shown remarkable calmness in the face of what had happened. If it was a repeat, Rikki might have a problem with substance abuse.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Becca mentioned that your mother sometimes leaves you and James with friends.”

  “Yeah. Sometimes.”

  “When was the last time?”

  “Earlier this year, but the time before that was longer, and only once more that I remember since James was born.”

  “How long was that?”

  Kyle stared down at the ground. “Three months?”

  “Three months? You didn’t see your mother for three months this year?”

  “No, that was the time before. This year it was six weeks. We stayed with one of my friends, and she came to see us a few times. She had a contract job that wouldn’t let her take kids. It was fine.”

  Her face didn’t say it was fine. “Is she going to have to leave again?” I asked.

  “No!” Kyle shook her head emphatically. “She said she’d never go again. She hated going. But . . .” I heard the uncertainty in her voice. “I think maybe she will have to eventually.”

  “Well, probably not with her current job.” That earned me a smile. Underneath her smeared makeup she was a frightened little girl. I hated the idea of children growing up frightened, but it was worse knowing Rikki was the one responsible for making Kyle afraid.

  “Can we go see her now?”

  “I’ll check and come right back.”

  I met Dr. Samuelson coming from the ICU, and within a minute he escorted us inside. The lights were much dimmer than I’d expected, though I should have remembered it was nighttime after all. Rikki lay in her bed, a fragile, tragic figure. My anger started to flicker out as it always had when I was with her, but I stoked it, egged it on. Righteous indignation. Someone had to tell it like it was, and that seemed to fall to me, in both my capacity as her bishop and as her once-best friend.

  “Mom!” Kyle ran to her and put her head next to her mother’s, her hand going around Rikki’s neck.

  “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “It’s okay. I know it was an accident.” There was a question in her voice.

  “Of course it was. These headaches, they just . . . I couldn’t remember how many pills I’d taken. They think I took two or three more than I should.”

  “You have to be careful!” Kyle drew back, a stern note in her voice. “The pills were spilled on the counter again. James could have gotten them.”

  Rikki’s brow creased. “Where are they now?”

  “We gave them to the ambulance workers.”

  “Just those? Not the others?”

  “We gave them all the bottles in your purse,” I told her.

  Rikki looked at me and then away. She grabbed her daughter’s hands. “They say you saved my life.”

  “I guess. It was scary.”

  “I know, baby.” Rikki pulled her head to her chest, and for a long moment no one moved or spoke. I felt like an outsider, which was a strange thing to feel around Rikki, because even after all these years, I felt I knew her like she was family.

  Which was also why I knew she was up to something. She hated living in Utah and had left the Church, making it clear she’d stopped believing, and now she suddenly comes back? Back to Utah, to church, to my ward? Maybe she was down on her luck and needed a place to stay, but selling the house, even for cheap, would have put her life back together, at least temporarily, and she could have gone anywhere. So why was she here?

  I suppose she could have found religion, but wouldn’t she have shared that joy with her children?

  I didn’t fool myself that she’d come back for any connection she and I had shared. Rikk
i knew my dedication to the Church and my family. If I’d chosen the Church at nineteen, she’d know my conviction would only be that much stronger now. Besides, she’d likely had many other friends during her life. So why was she here?

  Becca’s fears about her leaving the children to pursue some personal dream returned to my mind, but even after Kyle’s confirmation, I found that hard to believe. If that was the reason, she could have left them with other friends in another state. Better than uprooting them first.

  Unless she had no more friends.

  Ridiculous. People had always gravitated to Rikki.

  I vowed to get to the bottom of this—today—but not while Kyle was here. I cleared my throat. “Kyle, Sister Rushton texted me, and she’s on her way. Do you think you’d like to go home with her after you talk to your mom? You can see she’s going to be fine.”

  “Will you give her a . . . a blessing?”

  I was surprised she knew the terminology after so few Sundays—and even more amazed that she believed in it enough to ask. This miracle showed me once again how teachable young people really were. “Of course—if she wants one. I can see if they’ll let Brother Mendenhall come in here with us for a while. Your mother is supposed to have only two visitors at a time.”

  “Well, Mom?” Kyle asked.

  Rikki’s hand had fallen back to the bed, as though she was too exhausted to hold onto anything. “Yes, give me a blessing. It can’t hurt.”

  “It might help,” Kyle said.

  “Sure.” Rikki’s eyes were wide, but she didn’t seem to be focusing well.

  Kyle stared in dismay at her mother, rubbing her arms as though she were cold.

  “It’s the medication,” I told Kyle in a low voice. “She’s going to be out of it for some time longer. Stay here while I get Brother Mendenhall.”

  I asked the nurse if Steve could come in for a few minutes to assist with a blessing, and she went to get him herself. A short time later, Steve placed his hands on Rikki’s head to anoint her with the oil, and then I joined him to give the blessing. She would go home, I promised her, but there was something odd looming in my mind as I spoke, something just out of reach, something I could feel rather than see. “Take the opportunity to get your life in order,” I said, “and everything will be all right.”