Yes, he’d done quite enough for his family; they were far better off without him.
What he hadn’t counted on was the pain. An aching emptiness that robbed him of his ability to think or feel or sleep. Even his ability to practice medicine. Of course, all that changed a few days after Hayley’s accident, when he first discovered the pills.
For years he’d known about them. A number of med-school students lived on them, popping them between class like so many jelly beans. Med students and—once he started practicing medicine—several doctors, too. Doctors who’d started on the meds to lessen the stress, the anxiety that came with the job. A few of them, doctors Peter knew personally, couldn’t stop, couldn’t get through the day without the magic of Vicodin or Percocet.
“Aren’t you worried?” he’d asked one of his colleagues once, half a dozen years ago. “You know the risks . . . you more than the patients.”
“Listen, Peter, I have one bit of advice for you.” The doctor had lowered his voice, a fine layer of sweat on his brow. “Don’t start, okay? Don’t ever start.”
Another time he’d asked a different doctor what the attraction was. “They’re addictive; they’ll kill you.”
The man’s response haunted Peter to this day. He’d squared his shoulders, leveled his gaze at Peter, and said, “Without them, life will kill me first.”
Five days after Hayley’s drowning, Peter knew exactly what the man meant. By then he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t think. Couldn’t live a minute of life without replaying the scene in his mind and changing the ending:
He’s watching baseball with DeWayne when Hayley and Maddie rush into the living room and ask him to take off their life jackets.
“Girls.” He would grin at them, raising a single finger in their direction. “Now what did Mommy say?”
The girls would give up, aware of their mother’s rule, and Maddie would do the talking. “Keep the life jackets on.”
“That’s right.” And Peter would walk the girls into the bathroom, find a towel, and dry them off so the jackets wouldn’t drip water in Aletha’s kitchen. When he’d rubbed the water off, he’d kiss their foreheads—first Maddie’s, then Hayley’s—and tell them to go have cake. “But whatever you do, keep the life jackets on.”
Or a different scenario:
Maddie and Hayley come into the living room and ask to have the life jackets off, and Peter agrees. “But only while you’re eating cake. If you want to swim again, you need the jackets. Otherwise you can’t go in the backyard at all.”
Twenty minutes later, Hayley would scamper into the room carrying her life jacket. “Here, Daddy. I wanna swim again.”
Or still another possibility: fifteen minutes would pass. Not twenty or thirty, but fifteen. And he’d realize it had been too long since he’d seen the girls. “Just a minute,” he’d tell DeWayne. “I’m going to check on the girls.”
He’d trot up the stairs and find them playing with Barbies, Hayley pouting against the far wall. He would drop to his knees and hold his hands out to her. “What’s the matter, Hayley . . . why so sad?”
And she would come to him and wrap her arms around his neck, peering at him with those big blue eyes of hers. “I wanna swim, and Maddie won’t go with me.”
“Maddie wants to play with the girls, but I have an idea.”
“What?”
“How ’bout we get your life jacket on and I take you out in the pool. I’ll sit at the edge and watch you swim, okay?”
The story lines were endless. Playing over and over in his mind until he thought he might go crazy. Why hadn’t he listened to Brooke in the first place, kept their life jackets on just in case they went back outside? Couldn’t he have been more clear about the importance of staying inside as long as the jackets were off? Wasn’t there something else he could have said, something more specific that would’ve kept Hayley from going outside? And why had he sat there so long watching television when he had no idea where the girls were? What would it have hurt for him to check on them, offer to take Hayley swimming so she wouldn’t have to go alone?
He had no answers for himself, and that only added to the pain. A constant buzzing in his brain, a breathless, pounding ache that knew no end. Once that first week he’d tried drinking. He bought a fifth of vodka and drank half of it while watching SportsCenter.
The drink numbed him for sure, but it also knocked him out. When he came to the next morning, vomit covered his bedsheets and the pain was worse than ever. It was the next day at work that he hit on the idea of pain pills. At two o’clock that afternoon he had visited Hayley again and checked her charts. Her brain-scan results were horribly poor, pointing to a vegetative life. It was the first time he’d been forced to realize the truth about the accident.
Hayley was gone forever.
He would never again see her playing with her doll on her bedroom floor, never hear her singing songs with Maddie, never see her run or skip or write her name. She was gone.
As he left the hospital that day, he had turned into the pharmacy and found his old friend behind the counter. The rest had been little more than a blur.
The medicine didn’t make him feel loopy or inebriated the way the vodka had. Rather it gobbled up the anxiety. Peter knew it was working because the next day—his first full workday under the influence of painkillers—he noticed something that hadn’t happened since Hayley’s drowning.
He’d gone fifteen minutes without thinking about it.
Fifteen minutes that felt like a lifetime, and a strange giddy feeling rose up in Peter. If he could take an occasional pill now and then and limit his visits to Hayley, he might get through an hour or two of life the way it used to be.
Even with all his medical training, Peter couldn’t believe the slippery slope he’d been on since that first day. How one pill a day had become two, and two had become four, and four had become more than he cared to count.
He blinked and the recent past collided with the present. Why wouldn’t the key fit into the front door, and how long had it been since he’d had a pill? Finally—after four attempts—Peter slipped the key into the hole and the door opened. He stumbled in and dropped his things on the chair. These days he carried a bottle in his pocket, but now it was empty. Something he hadn’t noticed until he was halfway home from work.
That was okay; he’d planned ahead. Weeks ago he’d made up another patient name, had the pharmacist fill another prescription, one he could keep at home in case of a moment like this. In case he was suddenly out of pills.
“Okay . . . where are you . . . ?”
The kitchen swayed and the floor buckled beneath his feet. Betty had warned him about this. She was his head nurse, his right hand at the office. A week after he started taking the pills she’d walked in on him as he was taking one. Her face had gone pale and she’d politely stepped out of the office.
But later she had come to him and told him how it was. “My son was addicted.” She kept her voice low, not willing to betray his secret. “You need more to make it work, Dr. West. More all the time. And before you know it, you’re hooked and it’s too late. My son said the floor would move beneath his feet if he didn’t get his fix.” She searched Peter’s face. “I know you’re going through a hard time, but please . . . don’t make it worse.”
Her words had come too late.
This past week he’d been taking one pill every hour on the hour. The whole time he convinced himself that he was okay as long as he wasn’t taking more than one. But four pills over four hours was a problem, no matter what he told himself.
He tried to hold steady, tried not to sway, but the kitchen floor wouldn’t stay still. The vitamin cupboard was at the far end of the room near the stove, and in that moment it felt like a world away. Peter held his hands out and took small shuffling steps until he was close enough to grab the edge of the counter and use it to keep his balance.
“Where are you?” He shouted the words, and the sound of his
voice banged against his conscience, amplifying the steady, searing pain in his head. With a quick grab, he opened the cupboard door and swept his hand across the first shelf. A dozen bottles fell onto the counter, and his fingers fast-danced over them, searching the labels, looking for the pain meds.
The room began to spin and he felt himself shaking harder, faster. His heart raced and he wondered, Is this it? Would he die right here in the kitchen? He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them the room was no longer spinning.
Reason interrupted the moment.
He was a doctor; he had taken classes on pain management, hadn’t he? He could think of something else, outlast the pain at least until he found the pills. His heart rate slowed, but then picked up speed again. He knocked another row of bottles off the second shelf and searched them with quick, frantic movements.
Vitamin A, calcium, vitamin C . . .
His legs were weaker than before, and without any sense of control, he dropped to the floor. Tears filled his eyes. “Help me!” He still wore his dress shirt and tie, still had on his white jacket, but his mind wouldn’t tell him what do next. “Help me . . . I need the pills . . .”
It wasn’t a prayer really. He hadn’t spoken to God since that awful day in Hayley’s hospital room. But he needed help from somewhere, whoever or whatever was willing to give it to him. Then, in that instant, he spotted something on the floor, tucked against the floorboard. An amber bottle with a white label, half full of pills. A bottle of—
Could it be? Was it?
He snatched at the bottle and tried to read the label, but his hands were moving too hard for him to get a good look. That and the fact that the floor was still moving. With every ounce of his remaining strength he used both hands and his knees to steady the bottle. Then—and only then—could he read the label and see that . . .
Yes! Yes, he’d found them.
It took another minute to remove the lid and struggle to his feet. He had two pills beneath his tongue minutes before he found the strength to pour a glass of water. At first—weeks ago—the taste had been bitter enough to make him gag. But water wasn’t always available when he needed a pill, so he’d learned to take them dry.
By the time he brought the water to his mouth, the pills were long since dissolved, their effects already playing out through his system. “Steady, Peter . . . stay steady.” He gripped the edge of the kitchen sink and waited.
Three minutes, five . . . seven . . . ten.
And gradually, moment by moment, everything was right with the world.
The kitchen floor no longer spun, the walls were stable, and he gave a shake of his head. A shudder passed over him as he considered what might have happened if he hadn’t found the pills. But no matter; at least he’d found them.
Sweat dripped down his face, so he took off his white coat, his tie, and white button-down shirt. Even his undershirt felt too hot, but he left it on. He didn’t like the way his ribs stuck out when the shirt was off.
He looked around and realized the mess he’d made near the vitamin cupboard. Crazy, he told himself. Crazy to get that bad off. He was picking up everything, putting the bottles back where they belonged when the clock caught his eye. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He wasn’t hungry; the pills took care of that, too. But he needed to eat. Otherwise he wouldn’t have the strength to get through another day.
A quick tuna-fish sandwich and an apple—that would take care of the food problem. He ate without tasting a bite, and then headed into the TV room and flipped on ESPN. It was football season—Peter’s favorite. He sat motionless, his mind numb from the meds, content to be consumed with midseason statistics and predictions about who would make the play-offs. Two hours passed and his hand began to twitch. First a little, then enough so that both arms were shaking.
This time he was ready.
He pulled the bottle of pills from his pocket and popped two more. Now that he’d done it once, two pills wasn’t a problem, not really. Not when he’d waited two hours between doses. What was the difference? One pill every hour or two pills every two hours. He wasn’t addicted, of course not. An addicted person would need more per hour, right?
Once the pills began working, his arms fell still against his body and he grew tired. Too tired to leave the chair or do anything but hit the remote and turn off the television. He could sleep in the recliner; he’d done it often that month.
It wasn’t until he was almost asleep that something occurred to him. He hadn’t thought about his family once that entire night, not since his last appointment at work. No images of the wife he’d pledged a lifetime to, or the father who had walked out of his life when he was just a boy, or the cheery little Maddie who had always played checkers with him.
And most of all, not a single thought about Hayley and how she should’ve been upstairs dreaming by now, tucked into her own bed next to her favorite doll. Her blonde hair should’ve been fanned out across the pillow, that precious smile of hers still on her lips.
It should’ve been that way. If only it weren’t for him.
Chapter Thirteen
Ashley visited the hospital as often as she could, and her time there had brought about something neither she nor Brooke had expected.
After a lifetime of being related, the two sisters were finally getting to know each other. But even then, most of the time Ashley tried not to talk about Peter. What advice could she possibly offer about staying with the person you loved? Especially after she’d just ended things forever with Landon Blake?
Forever love wasn’t her territory; it was Kari’s.
Still, she looked forward to the occasional nights when she’d leave Cole with her parents and Maddie and head for the hospital to spend a quiet evening with Brooke. Ashley would stroke Hayley’s hand, and she and Brooke would get into the kind of conversation the two of them had never had before Hayley’s accident.
The night after Thanksgiving was one of those nights.
November was almost past, which meant Hayley had been in the hospital two months. Her progress seemed tedious and slow, at least to Ashley. Brooke had become the optimist in the group, believing she was seeing movement in Hayley’s fingers, certain that Hayley was tracking her around the room with eyes that were supposed to be blind.
Hayley was asleep when Ashley arrived, so she pulled up a chair next to Brooke and leaned back, searching her sister’s expression. The hum of the machines in the background was strangely comforting, and the nurses had dimmed the lights in a way that relaxed Ashley, made her feel even more talkative.
“You okay?” Ashley searched her sister’s eyes.
“Yes.” She shrugged and looked at Hayley. “I keep thinking tomorrow will be the day she wakes up and tells us she’s okay.”
Ashley bit her lip. “It could happen.”
“I know.” Brooke smiled but it fell short of her eyes. “I’m praying for it every day.”
Hayley began to stir, and soon she was making the strange and constant moaning sound that accompanied her waking moments. And while that aspect of her recovery hadn’t changed, for weeks now she’d been able to stop crying whenever any of the family talked to her.
The crying grew louder. Brooke looked at Ashley and nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Are you sure?” Ashley was excited and anxious all at once. Hayley’s medication made her sleep much of the day, and Ashley hadn’t seen her awake for the past few weeks. Usually Brooke was the one who went to her when she needed comforting.
“Yes. It’s good for her to remember more than me.” Brooke smiled. “See if you can make her laugh. That’s her newest thing.”
Ashley stood and leaned against the rails that ran along Hayley’s bed. “Hey, little girl, it’s me. Aunt Ashley.”
The sound of Ashley’s voice had an instant impact. Hayley stopped crying and blinked. Ashley watched her, hating the way the child opened and closed her eyes, each movement painstaking and deliberate, in slow motion. Further reason to believe tha
t the brain damage she’d suffered was very serious.
As Hayley woke up, she held her arms out in front of her, both hands stiff and turned outward. Next, her right leg kicked straight up in the air and stayed there, bouncing a few inches in either direction.
Ashley placed her fingers on Hayley’s right calf. Her small muscles were hard and stiff. Ashley massaged them, the way she’d seen Brooke do. Almost immediately, Hayley’s leg relaxed enough that it returned to its position on the bed. Oh, Hayley, you’re so different. Ashley kept her thoughts to herself.
Tears blurred her vision, but her voice was happy, upbeat. “Hey, silly girl, where’s your smile, huh?”
Again in a way that was painfully slow, Hayley turned her head and looked at Ashley. Not at her face or at the space near her, but right into her eyes. Ashley sucked in a quiet gasp and shot Brooke a look over her shoulder. “Hey, come here. You have to see this.”
“I know.” Brooke smiled. She joined Ashley at the side of the bed and stared at Hayley. Even before Brooke began to talk, Hayley shifted her gaze to her mother. “That’s what I’ve been saying. Looks like she can see you, doesn’t it?”
“She can; I swear she can!” Ashley gripped the bed rails and uttered a giddy sound. “Brooke, I can’t believe this; look at her! She can see; I have no doubt.”
Brooke took Hayley’s stiff fingers and worked her thumb into the child’s palm, relaxing her little hand some. “I keep telling her doctors that, but in here they don’t see me as a professional. They think I’m a delusional mother, believing what I want to believe about Hayley’s condition.”
“Hayley . . .” Ashley tried again and waited until her niece looked her way. Then Ashley made a goofy face, one that always made Cole laugh. “That’s right, silly head; where’s your little smile?”
And right then Hayley opened her mouth and laughed! Not the normal wind-chime laughter that had been her trademark before the accident. But a series of short breathy sounds, the way Edith at Sunset Hills laughed. Still, it was something. It meant Hayley could hear Ashley and that she knew what was being said. Also, that somehow she understood she was being played with, and that it would be an appropriate time to laugh.
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