by S. Massery
I wipe at my face, but the tears keep coming. I finally sit next to him. Take his hand.
He lifts my hand and kisses the back of it. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
There’s a thousand pound weight on my chest. Slowly, I lie next to him. I curl my arm over his chest and lay my head on his shoulder.
He smooths my hair.
Wipes my cheeks.
He brushes my hair back from the cut on my forehead, and I feel his sharp intake of breath.
“That’s nice stitching,” he says. “Good as new, yeah? Both of us.”
“You—” I close my eyes. “No. You’re not good as new. You’re in a hospital bed. Your arm, your lung—”
“All will heal.”
“It’s my fault,” I whisper. “And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”
The guilt overwhelms me, and I choke on a sob. He hugs me closer. I fall apart, but he keeps whispering words I can’t make sense of. It’s okay, and We’re all right. But those are just things you say to make someone feel better.
I deserve to feel bad about this.
To be shipped off to a different foster home. To never see them again.
It would be a just punishment.
Fair.
So this? This is a goodbye.
This is putting my heart in a blender because I deserve pain over any form of happiness. Caleb knew that, made sure it was drilled into my head. Even my mother knew it—it’s why she left instead of choosing to fight for me.
He lets me cry into his chest without complaint. Eventually my tears will run out, but the grief is endless.
I sit up. Lenora comes farther into the room, a box of tissues in her hand. She offers me the box, and I take a few, dabbing at my eyes.
And then I force myself off the bed and go to the window, then suck in a deep breath. The weight is still there, crushing me.
“You should get rid of me,” I say to the glass. We’re on the fourth floor with a decent view. The hospital is the tallest building around. There’s the neighborhood, then a stretch of forest, and there my line of sight ends. “I’m no good. A danger, even.”
“Why would you say that?” Lenora asks.
“For the past three months, I’ve been…” I close my eyes. “Harassed? Stalked? I don’t know. By someone I didn’t know. But then on Sunday, they—”
“Margo—”
I spin around. “It’s my fault. They hit our car to get to me. And you were hurt because of me.”
I rub my chest. I can’t breathe again. My heart takes off, galloping out of control.
My fault, it chants with every beat.
Lenora guides me into a chair. “I think you’re having a panic attack.”
My fault. My fault.
I gasp, but I can’t seem to get any air. Black spots flash in front of my vision.
—what did you do, Margo?—
This wouldn’t the first time you destroyed a family.
“Breathe, honey,” Lenora says.
And then Robert is in front of me, his hands on my cheeks.
“With me, now,” he says. “In and out.”
“You shouldn’t be out of bed.” Lenora strokes his hair back. Her other hand is on my shoulder.
I take a moment to appreciate them both.
They’re grounding.
“Margo,” Robert says firmly. “We’re not sending you away. Len said you’re staying with the Blacks until I’m well enough to go home. It should be any day now, right?”
He sucks in a noisy breath, holds it, then blows it out.
I mimic him, and cool, sweet air rushes back into my lungs. We keep going until my heart has slowed. My hands shake, but I mask it by smoothing out my pants.
“We’re not giving you up,” he repeats. He uses the arm of the chair to lift himself off the floor. He makes it almost all the way straight before he doubles over.
“Robert!” Lenora yells, grabbing his arm. “What’s wrong?”
“My chest is on fire.” He coughs into his hand, then grimaces at it. One of the monitors behind his bed starts beeping.
I hadn’t realized he was still connected to them.
A second later, a nurse rushes into the room. “Robert, what are you doing out of bed?”
She guides him back into it, making sure everything is in place. The monitor is still going crazy. He rubs at his chest, shaking his head.
“My chest is on fire,” he gasps.
He coughs again, and blood sprays across his blankets.
The nurse leans over and hits a button while Lenora and I watch in horror. The air drains from the room. His face goes deathly pale, and his eyes roll back a moment before he seems to go unconscious.
Lenora and I are shuffled back against the window as a team pours into the room, surrounding him.
He jerks, and they flatten the bed.
“Someone get them out of here,” one of the doctors calls.
A nurse separates and herds us out, down the hall.
“What’s happening?” Lenora demands.
“Looks like a complication with his chest tube,” she says. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any more information than that.”
She shows us to a waiting room and just… leaves us there.
Lenora’s hands go to her head, pulling at her hair, and she lets out a strangled cry. “Death can’t take you, too,” she whispers.
Oh god.
Why is it only just now occurring to me that her daughter died in a car accident?
I slip my arm through hers, drawing her hands away from her head. Slowly, as if I not to frighten her, I thread my fingers through hers.
She squeezes, turning away from the doorway and toward me.
“He’ll be okay,” she tells me.
It’s a bravado.
He might not be. He might…
I close my eyes and hold on tighter. “I’m so sorry.”
She cups my cheek until I look at her. “It isn’t your fault, Margo. This…” She shrugs. “All we can do is wait.”
Cindy and Jeff, my last foster parents, would’ve urged us to pray about it. They thought God could fix everything He wanted to—and if things had a shitty outcome, well, at least we learned a lesson.
Utter bullshit.
Time moves slowly after that.
I take off my jacket—I had forgotten I was even wearing it—and fold it over the arm of a chair. I sit and contemplate reaching for my phone, but my hands are trembling too badly.
Lenora paces by the door, occasionally peeking into the hallway.
And finally, minutes or hours later, a doctor comes to see us.
“We just finished testing. The surgeon decided to rush him into emergency surgery,” she says. “He has a pulmonary embolism. A blood clot in the lung. This particular kind he has can be quite severe.”
“Was it because he got out of bed?” I ask from the corner of the room, covering my face with my hands. Still, the words slip out before I can stop them.
Lenora shakes her head. “No.”
“The PE could’ve been caused by a number of things. We also discovered that the site of the chest tube had become infected.” The doctor clears her throat. “Was him getting out of bed the cause? Probably not. There’s no way to know for sure, so you shouldn’t think it was because of you.”
I bite my lip. Part of me doesn’t want to accept that dismissal of blame.
I can’t let it go.
“How long is the surgery? Is he… did you catch it in time?” Lenora asks.
“Removing the blood clot is a minimally invasive surgery. The surgeon is going to remove it and also clean out the infection. We’ll update you once we know more, but we caught it. That’s the important part.”
Lenora lets out a long breath at the same time my entire body shudders.
The doctor leaves, and Lenora spins toward me, joy written across her face.
“Hear that? He’s going to be okay.” She falls into the seat next to me. “Thank God.�
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“How do you do it?” I ask.
She tilts her head and raises her eyebrow.
“I mean… the emotions. Everything in the past week. How are you still standing?”
She lets out a little laugh. “I’m still standing?”
We’re quiet for a moment.
“No, I’m still… I’m functioning. You’ll be surprised at how much you can endure before you shut down.” She blinks at the ceiling. “But, I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to scream. Every single moment he was in the ICU. Even now.”
I exhale.
“Love can be a beautiful thing,” she tells me in a low voice. “But it can also be a terrible burden.”
My eyes burn. My thoughts jump to Caleb. Of course they do.
“Is it better to be alone?” I ask.
She considers my answer, and in this moment, that’s what I appreciate the most about her. She doesn’t bullshit me—I’m practically an adult. She’s never tried to make me feel younger than I am. Sure, she’s still a parent. But it’s different.
“There are epic love stories that end in tragedy,” she finally says. “And then there are people who just float at the baseline of emotion. No love, no loss. I think it’s better to experience it all. Everything good and bad and terrifyingly ugly in this world. Otherwise, we’ll just walk around numb, and what kind of life is that?”
Love, loss, tragedy.
“And besides, who’s to say every story ends in a ball of flames? Some surpass time.” She wraps her arm around my shoulders.
I surprise myself by leaning into it, resting my head on her shoulder.
“I’m scared.”
“Why do I think you’re not just talking about Robert?” She hums.
“I don’t want to fall in love with Caleb if he’s just going to break my heart,” I whisper. “I don’t want him to… string me along or mess with me.”
She taps my bracelet. “What’s the story with this, if you don’t mind me asking?”
I snort. “When we were nine, I basically talked Caleb into pretend marrying me. It was just braided thread back then, nothing… substantial.” I twist it around my wrist. “I lost it at one of the foster homes, but I think Caleb was the one who stole it back. It was my own fault for not wearing it, but I didn’t want it to break. He gave it back to me at the masquerade ball.”
“Before he told us the lies about our daughter.”
“Yeah.”
“The nine-year-old Margo was ready to commit.” She chuckles. “If only we all had the courage that kids do.”
“Well, that was before I broke his heart, and he broke mine,” I mumble.
She twists toward me. “If you listen to anything I say, I hope it’s this. Hearts heal. Scars fade. Memories of the past… they don’t last very long, either. If you love him, love him with everything you have, and I promise it’ll be worth it.”
I blink back tears. “Is that how you feel about Robert?”
“Absolutely. We may not seem like it at times, though.” She wipes at her own cheeks. “Time has worn us down. But we put work and love into our relationship every day.”
“It’s funny… I never got to have a conversation about relationships or sex or love.” I roll my eyes. “Mom and Dad had a weird, angry relationship. The Ashers weren’t the best role models, either. And the foster families…” I laugh under my breath. “None of them really had their shit together. Some pretended, of course, but we saw through it.”
“I’m sorry you’ve had to go through that,” she says.
She glances at her watch and jumps. “Oh, dear. You’re going to be late to therapy.”
“You’re going to make me go? Now?” I stand and go to the opposite wall. “I want to stay here.”
She’s quiet. “You’re right. You should be able to stay. But…”
I whirl around.
“You should talk about how you feel to someone objective.”
“Can’t we move it back?” I plead. “At least… later today, tomorrow, something?”
Lenora watches me for a moment, then brushes her bangs out of her eyes. “Let me make a phone call, okay? How about you get us something from the vending machine.”
She hands me a few dollars, shooing me into the hall.
My whole body is numb. I walk down the hall and around the corner to the little alcove of vending machines. I get each of us a coffee and a granola bar, then trudge back.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, like someone is watching me.
I spin around, but the hallway is practically empty. Just a nurse walking away from me, pushing a cart, and another woman in scrubs at the nurses’ station.
I back away from that spot, rounding the corner. I get the same feeling again and turn, coffee sloshing through the little hole in the lid.
“Fuck, ow.” I set down the coffee and shake out my hand, wincing at the red spots that already appear on my skin.
The hallway is empty.
Thoroughly spooked, I grab the cup and rush back to the waiting room.
How was it so busy not too long ago, and deserted now?
Lenora grimaces. “She wasn’t happy about rescheduling until I explained why. Interesting woman.” She takes the coffee and granola bar with a smile. “I think you’ll actually like her. She’s… sassy.”
“A sassy talk therapist,” I repeat. I tear into my bar. “I guess I’ll just have to catch her next week.”
“Angela told me she got you a new phone?”
Subject change.
“She gave it to me when she dropped me off. I haven’t looked at it.”
Lenora nods. “Well, maybe you should set it up and see if someone wants to come by. Riley or Caleb…”
“Is that okay?” I ask. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“It isn’t intrusive for you to have someone to support you,” she says quietly. “God knows the whole family was here when Josie—”
I watch her out of the corner of my eye. I don’t want to ask, but at the same time…
“They brought her here?”
“She was cold,” she whispers. “By the time they found her. It was an unusually cold night, so her temperature was too low. I guess you can’t declare someone dead until they’re…”
Warm and dead. I’d heard that on a television show or two.
“Yeah,” I mutter, just so she doesn’t have to say it out loud.
How awful? Knowing they were warming up your frozen daughter just down the hall, and she probably is already dead—but who really knew?
“I’m sorry you’ve had to be back here,” I say.
She waves me off. “It was a long time ago. Robert and I were very different people.”
“Funny, I used to say that about Caleb and me.”
“You should call him.” She presses her lips together. “You’ve been staying with his…”
“Friend’s family,” I supply. “Is he technically a foster, too?”
She shrugs. “Benjamin Asher left behind an odd will, I heard once. It was all Rose Hill could talk about. His disgraced wife and scorned brother.”
My eyes go wide. “What?”
“I’m not too sure about the details—Robert and I were still getting our feet wet in town. My first big job was transitioning the Asher firm over to Prinze Industries, but we were still in the city at that point. After a successful merger, my company paid for our relocation.”
“Oh, wow. So, you knew Caleb’s dad?” And you never mentioned he was dead?
“I only met him twice. Once to discuss his future at Prinze Industries, and the second time when he signed the paperwork.” She shakes her head. “That wasn’t long before…”
“But back to the will…”
“Oh, yes. It was all over town—especially my coworkers, honestly, they’re gossiping fools—that Benjamin had left everything to his son.”
“Are you sure?”
She laughs. “Not in the slightest.”
I mull it over. Taking it with a grain of salt, even if Caleb’s dad had left him most of what he owned, it was still a sizeable chunk. And it would explain his uncle’s fury. And his mother’s… His mother’s what? She’s been missing from the story this entire time.
“I think… I will make that phone call.”
She nods.
I fumble with the phone. My hands are steady now, thanks to the granola bar, and I unlock it with my usual password to find that everything from my previous phone has already been loaded onto this one.
Suspicion gnaws at me, but nothing seems unusual about it.
I dial Riley’s number, not trusting a text message.
“Margo?”
“Yeah, hey.” I clear my throat. “Um, could you come to the hospital? If it’s not too much trouble?”
“I’m at Eli’s. I brought your schoolwork, but he said you were going to therapy. Are you okay?”
I wince at her concern. It’s nice—it’s normal—for a friend to worry, but I don’t want to have this conversation over the phone.
“I’ll explain when you get here.”
“Okay,” she says immediately. “I’ll be there in ten.”
I let out a sigh when the phone goes dead.
Lenora has resumed pacing.
“It’s getting dark out,” she comments. “Nice of them to give us a window.”
Winter in New York… The days have been getting shorter. Soon we’re going to be covered in snow and darkness.
I shiver. “I’m glad I’m not learning to drive anytime soon.”
She squints at me. “Huh?”
“Driving in the snow… doesn’t sound like a good time.”
“You don’t—” She smacks her forehead. “We’re idiots!”
“What…”
“Margo, what a complete, total, awful oversight on our part.” She winces. “I’m sorry, I should’ve realized it when your foster sister came by and boasted about her learner’s permit.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I mumble. My fingers find their way to my wrist, and I have to stop myself from scratching at the scab. “I just, you know, plan on learning eventually. Or at least taking the test and hope I pass.”
She scoffs. “No, absolutely not. As soon as this is all sorted, we’ll put you in driver’s ed.”
My eyebrows go up. “Just like that?”
