by K. L Randis
“I’m sure you’re dying to talk to Meg now, though,” he said, kissing my forehead one last time. “Let’s lock up and you can head out.”
Chapter Sixteen
“MEGAN DESIREE PETERS!” I yelled.
I pushed open her front door, ready to throw a bottle of wine at her head. “Jackson told me everything!” I said, annoyed that I had to stop for a moment to kick off my shoes. I didn’t want her to have a head start at finding a place to hide. “I am your best friend and you hid this from me? The apartment? His phone calls? Who are you even?”
The living room light was on, the TV muted to the weather channel as per every night Meg cooked dinner. I charged into the kitchen. “If you think for one second I’m going to let you not explain to me, in every agonizing detail, the contents of your conversations…”
I walked into an empty kitchen. A full pizza box was on the counter and our usual bottles of wine , waiting for our slumber party to begin.
“Ohhhh okay so we’re hiding, great. I’ll just yell loud enough for your old lady neighbor to hear and she’ll have to call the cops then BECAUSE WE HAVE SOME SERIOUS FRIEND CODES VIOLATED HERE!”
Meg was a child at heart. I walked down the hallway, knowing she was likely crouched down in her office or bedroom, waiting for me to walk in so she could scare the shit out of me. I clicked the light on in her bedroom and glanced around. “You literally have the same size apartment as me plus an office space, Meg. You know I’m going to find you in the next twenty seconds and kick your ass.”
Her office was empty too, and my cheeks flushed wondering if I had been yelling to myself the whole time because she ran out to grab more wine or appetizers for when we got the drunk munchies later on.
“Okay then, good talk,” I whispered to myself.
As I left her office I heard a faint tapping at the front door. “Ohhhh I would tackle her if she wasn’t carrying things,” I said, running to the front door and pulling it open. “YOU HAVE SOME SERIOUS EXPLAINING TO—” I gasped, covering my own mouth so I would stop shouting. “Oh, Mrs. Jameson, I’m so sorry I thought you were Meg!”
“Interesting way to greet a friend then,” she said, peering inside. “I’m assuming you guys have been fighting all night based on all the commotion?”
“Not yet,” I murmured. “I just got here.”
“Lover’s quarrel?”
“In a way,” I replied tactfully. “If there’s nothing else you wanted to ask?” I said, beginning to close the door.
“That’s all, wanted to make sure everything was okay. Tell Meg that if she’s to keep the dog she brought home today she needs to tell the landlord about it or someone else will,” she sang.
“A dog?”
“Now dear, I may be old and partially deaf but I know what a full grown dog sounds like from above me. I’ve lived in small apartments all my life and if it’s going to be thudding around all hours someone might complain, that’s all I’m saying.”
I closed the front door as she walked away. “Meg’s allergic to animals,” I whispered to myself, peering around. I checked the bedroom and office for a dog cage and when I didn’t see one I unlocked my phone to call her as I made my way into the bathroom. “You can run but you can’t hide,” I said as it rang.
I slipped and was on my back immediately after walking through the doorway. My phone flew to the other side of the bathroom, and I could hear Meg’s ringtone echoing off the walls as my head throbbed. Bringing my hand to my face through the dizziness, I screamed at the blood that was pouring down my sleeve.
I grabbed my elbow, frantically using my fingers to search for a gash. I felt nothing, but the blood I was lying in started to soak through the back of my shirt. I forced myself up on to my elbows to get a better look at what happened. I had to figure out where I was bleeding.
That’s when I saw Meg.
The razor blade was at her left side. A slit the length of a post-it-note, traveling from her inner right wrist toward her elbow, was pooling blood around her. She was mouthing something, but the room began to spin and I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Her back was pressed against the vanity and she was slumped over like a ragdoll, her cheek pressed against the floor. Hollow eyes looked through me.
“Meg,” I said, half-whispering.
I shuffled over to her, afraid to stand up with the dizziness. My phone was lying an arm’s length from Meg’s foot, abandoned. Suddenly weighing as much as a kettle bell, I picked it up. Trying to connect the pieces of gore soaked pandemonium surrounding me, I vaguely remember pressing 9-1-1.
“Nine-one-one what’s your emergency?”
“Sixty-two Orchard Lane, she’s bleeding heavily and I need an ambulance—I need help!”
I put the phone on speaker and left it on the floor, moving inches from Meg’s face, our cheeks practically floating in the blood around us.
“Meg!” I said again, grabbing her face, my own tears unknowingly adding to the mess around us.
Her voice was so soft I had to strain to hear her. “You’re early. You’re here too early.”
My eyes widened. “You’re going to be okay, Meg. They’re coming. They’re going to help you.” The operator was growing impatient on the phone in the background as I ignored her statements to remain calm and answer more questions.
“They couldn’t help her,” Meg whispered, closing her eyes.
“You stay here! Open your eyes and stay here, damn it. Open them!”
A slit of white looked out at me. “Pip, it’s my fault. Cheryl.”
“Oh Meg, no.” I looked around the bathroom, trying to look for an intruder or anything that would explain the slice down her wrists other than a suicide attempt. “You can’t leave, you did everything for her. Everything.” I reached above our heads and grabbed a towel that was dangling. It fell over our faces and I propped myself up on one elbow, wrapping the towel as hard as I could around her wrist as she faded again. I lay back on the ground again, face-to-face with her, and rested her wrist across my temple to keep it elevated.
“Cheryl,” Meg said.
“You did all you could. You couldn’t save her. No one could. Please don’t leave me, I need you. Phoenix needs you. You can’t leave.”
Meg’s eyes fluttered and she mouthed something I couldn’t make out.
“You don’t have a dog,” I said through tears. I had to keep her alert. “Crazy Mrs. Jameson thought you had a dog because she heard a commotion up here but that was just you, wasn’t it?”
Meg said nothing.
“I know you blame yourself for Cheryl, I know,” I said, lightly petting her head with a blood soaked hand. “You can’t do that. You’re not responsible for her choices anymore Meg, you have to know that.”
“It hurts,” Meg said.
“I know,” I said. “Help is coming.”
“No, it hurts,” Meg said again. “My heart…it hurts.”
Tears blinded me. The reality of the chaos surrounding us choked me, until I heard the familiar sound of Meg’s ringtone going off again. I grabbed at her pockets, not entirely sure how I knew it would be Jackson on the other end.
“Jackson!” I cried into the receiver, losing all self-control hearing his voice. “It’s Meg…please help us!” I was sobbing so uncontrollably at that part that I lost my grip on her phone, watching it slide from my hand and bounce away on the floor. My inability to reach it and give him more details without putting Meg’s arm down caused him to start screaming into the other end. All he could hear were my cries. I hugged Meg with one arm, pulling her closer to me and burying my face in her hair.
The smell of blood gagged me. My ears started to hum, a high-pitched squeal taking over, a sound I had become all too familiar with when I had anxiety attacks. My breaths deviated from Meg’s long and shallow ones.
I didn’t hear the bangs on the front door.
I didn’t notice the paramedic prying my hands away from my best friend’s limp body.
I can’t
recall the name of the paramedic who wrapped me in a towel and led me outside.
I remember Jackson’s face, his legs thrusting him full torque to the ambulance I was sitting in, his car door wide open. He was ghost-white, staring, and rushing into the unknown…something he had done so many times before.
Chapter Seventeen
“I was calling to make sure you were okay,” Jackson said, rubbing opposite thumbs together. He was leaned forward in a hospital chair next to Meg’s bed. “I was calling to make sure you were okay,” Jackson repeated. Rubbing his fingertips over his mouth.
“You couldn’t have known, no one did,” I said.
They had her on oxygen since they had to intubate her when she was brought in but they removed the tube late that morning. The nurse suggested all of her family and friends visit in case things went south. She had lost twenty-eight percent blood volume by the time she was admitted. I had spent a few hours in a bed myself when they first brought us in, coming down from a panic attack. A combination of blood and adrenaline set me off somehow.
Dylan switched on and off with me visiting at the hospital, keeping Phoenix far away. We agreed we only wanted her to remember Aunt Meg in the way she should be remembered: alive.
“Meg isn’t the kind of person to tell people when she’s feeling down, not outwardly,” I responded.
“I know, that’s what makes it so much harder. Why do you think she did this?”
“Cheryl,” I said sadly.
“She blames herself? She died of a drug overdose didn’t she? She couldn’t have prevented that.”
“She felt responsible. Cheryl asked for help for months from the VA doctors. She was admitted twice in two months for failed overdose attempts. They sent her home from the hospital when she outright told them she didn’t feel ready to go home.”
“Meg heard her tell them that?”
I nodded. “She was there to pick her up, they said they had no other choice but to send Cheryl home since they held her for the maximum time they were required to. Short of walking outside and shooting up again, there was nothing else they could do.”
“So what did she do?”
“She went home and shot up again. That time, she didn’t come back.”
We listened to the monitors buzzing around Meg for a few moments in total silence.
“PTSD,” Jackson said, finally.
I nodded. “Cheryl saw things I don’t think most people could ever prepare themselves to see. She was in situations fresh out of high school that even seasoned veterans would want to erase from their memories. She did the best she could when she got back, but something was just…”
“Different,” Jackson said, finishing my sentence.
“She got lost, and she just couldn’t find her way back.”
Jackson nodded, exhaling. “I know that feeling.”
“Then you’ll understand why Meg feels responsible. She felt like she had to be Cheryl’s voice. She feels she didn’t fight hard enough for her to get treatment. Meg saw what VA services they provided her and it was nowhere near enough to what she actually needed to get better. She fought hard for her. She made calls, got referrals, took her to doctor appointments and meetings. She complained to anyone and everyone who would listen about how poorly they were treating her addiction. The system seems so broken.”
“Is that why you spent time with me? ‘Cause you knew I was in the military and you wanted to make sure I got the services I needed if I needed them?”
The question caught me off guard, especially considering he had no idea how bad I knew it could get. The tone in Jackson’s voice made the hairs on my arms stand up.
“No, Jackson. That’s not why I wanted to spend time with you.”
“Then why?”
I moved closer, taking his hand into mine and caressing the top. “I think you know why…don’t you?”
Meg groaned, turning her head to the side and we both looked up, expecting her to open her eyes. We held our breath, watching the rhythm of her chest fall and rise under the blankets.
“I consider her the first friend I made when I moved into town, did you know that?” he said
“I didn’t,” I admitted. “Meg didn’t seem to know you well at all, the day she tried to hook us up, actually.”
“Well, we weren’t really friends then. It’s not like we grabbed burgers and checked out the pier together or anything, but she listened. I would sit at local bars for hours. It was hard to find a bar on the east side that wasn’t packed full of people but at The Inlet I could sit and think for a while without being bothered.”
“Meg let you sit and think?”
“Not for long,” Jackson said, laughing. “She wouldn’t shut up once she knew I was receptive to small talk every once and a while. There was always a guy or customer to complain about. The damn salt wasn’t white enough for her one time, I swear it.”
I laughed, remembering the first night Meg and I met and how we became instant friends. Our bubbly personalities and inability to shut our mouths once alcohol was involved fused a bond no sword could break.
“Meg and I only really became friends after she tried to set us up on a blind date that day. I had only gone to The Inlet a few times before that, maybe once or twice after I started working the volunteer program. Some other bartender was there back then. Sydney? Sue?”
“Yeah, Susan,” I replied. “She’s the owner but you usually only see her there for lunch hours now. She hired Meg to get more of a break.”
“That’s right,” Jackson said, wagging his finger at me and leaning back in his chair to tuck his hands behind his head. His lips peeled back to expose a handsome row of teeth and his nose crinkled just around the edges.
He’s gorgeous, Meg wasn’t wrong.
“You okay?” Jackson said.
“Yep, totally fine. I’m—I was just thinking…”
“I gave a vial of sand to a stranger there once. I didn’t even know them.”
“You did what?”
“Yeah I know it sounds dumb. I used to carry around a vial full of sand from my time in Iraq,” Jackson said, giving me the first real glimpse into his past as a Marine. “It helped ground me sometimes, to reach into my pocket and feel it there. It reminded me it was real, that I didn’t imagine everything I’m trying so hard to forget. I was sitting at The Inlet one day, just about a week before we met. I had been working the volunteer program at the nursing home for a few weeks at that point. Your mom was the one who taught me to stop holding onto the parts of my past that didn’t make me a better person. She also told me to do one good deed a day, she asked me almost every time I visited. So, one day I gave your mom the vial of sand from Iraq. It made her so happy, it lit up her face in a way I’ve never seen before. From that day on I started giving vials of sand to people who, I thought, needed some happiness. I’d take the sand right from the beaches here and fill them. I saw a woman having lunch with a friend at The Inlet one day and I asked Susan to put it on her tray of food before she brought it over. I finally let Iraq go, and it felt so good that I wanted to do it over and over again.”
My eyes widened. “Jackson that is the sweetest thing that—wait…you lied to me. You knew who I was the day we met racing on the beach, then.”
“What? No, I didn’t.”
“Jackson, you gave me that vial of sand. I was sitting there having lunch with Meg when Susan brought our food over so you must have recognized me fr—” I clasped my hands over my mouth, literally preventing myself from speaking anything more.
“No, it wasn’t you. I gave the vial to Susan and pointed to a woman who I thought looked sad but it wasn’t you, it was…” He trailed off, looking into my eyes as if they would reveal the answers I was trying to bury. “It…it was…it was…you, wasn’t it?”
“Jackson…” I started.
He nodded slowly, the pieces falling together in his head. “Why were you were about to say that I must have recognized you at The Inlet that day? I just fi
gured you looked familiar to me because of the pictures you mom showed me, but now…”
His eyes searched my face, looking at the hands still frozen over my mouth. I could feel a bead of sweat trickle between my breasts as everything I had tried so desperately to keep from him started to unravel.
“Let me explain, Jackson…” I whispered, pulling my hands away from my mouth and clasping them together in front of me. I had unintentionally jogged his memory by telling him I was at The Inlet that day and that he must have recognized me. I watched the connections ignite in his eyes.
It seemed like hours before I saw Jackson blink. His forehead had a way of producing a single deep crevice horizontally across his face when he was deep in thought. That moment was no exception. “The hospital,” he said at last. “It was you at the hospital, the nurse who helped me. It wasn’t a dream.”
Meg’s monitors exploded with an orchestra of noise the moment Jackson spoke, and they scared me just as much as they excited me.
Meg could hear us, she was waking up.
“Jackson,” I said, keeping my eyes on Meg.
“You were in my room,” he said with widened eyes. “You were there. You saw me when I was…when I was...” He opened his palms to exemplify the emptiness he must have been feeling.
“I was going to tell you,” I said.
“When?!”
“I don’t… I didn’t have a specific time in mind.”
“So you weren’t going to tell me at all. You were going to pretend that we met racing on the beach? Was that going to be our story? When friends would ask at future dinner parties or when we grew old together and our grandkids wanted us to retell the story of the day we met which one were you planning on telling? How you took care of me in the psych ward or how we tried to beat each other in a race on the beach?”
“I deserve every bit of anger you’re feeling right now, but for Meg’s sake let’s keep it down so she—”
“Ugh, is that why you kept me around!? Was I some kind of charity case or project for you? Did you get extra credit from your boss for treating me outside of work? Was it a bonus if we slept together?”
