There Will Come a Time (25 page)

I look down at Hanna now, head back, mouth open, hair hanging limp.
Not like this. She can't die like this.
My body has broken out in sweat. My pulse is racing too fast, beating so hard it's pounding in my head. I have to stop and rest, laying her down on the ground.

I scream out, “Help!”

This time there's no echo because we're out in the open on the side of a cliff with only brush and rock surrounding us.

I scream again. “Help!”

No one answers. No one is coming for us. Hanna is going to die. I get down next to her on the ground. She's going to die in my arms. Hanna's staring at me. She tries to speak, but it's gibberish. I take out my phone again. I have a faint signal. One bar. I dial 911.

An operator answers. “Nine-one-one, how may I be of assistance?”

“I need help. I've got a diabetic. Her sugar's low. She's in trouble. I'm hiking at Echo Mountain Trail. Can you send an ambulance or something?”

The operator on the line asks for my location again and I tell her. She keeps asking me questions about Hanna's condition as if we have all the time in the world and wants me to stay on the phone with her until help comes. I tell her I can't wait, and I keep the phone on but put it in my back pocket, figuring they can track it or something. I help Hanna to her feet and kind of throw her over my shoulder. I start running down the trail.

Please, God. Please, God.
I say over and over in my head.
Not like this. Not again.
I'll do anything.
I start making deals, even though I know the chances of God needing to make a deal with me are slim. I still offer anything, everything I have. My car. My bass.
I'll never play music again, or, wait, I'll play for church, every Sunday.
Please don't let Hanna die.

I zigzag back and forth down the dirt trail, ignoring the pain in my knees. Hanna is not going to die. I can do this. I press through the burning and the exhaustion in my limbs. The sun is now up and everything is bright, but my mind takes me to where it is dark.

•  •  •  •

It's night. I'm upside down in the car. It takes me a few moments to understand what has just happened. We've had some kind of an accident. My head hurts and I reach up to touch the pain. It's wet and sticky with blood.

“Grace?” I say, and turn toward her. She's upside down too, but crunched up, her head touching what was the ceiling of the
car, and curved inward toward her chest. Her eyes are open.

“Grace? You okay?”

She doesn't say anything. She just stares. Something about her gaze makes me sick to my stomach. I don't think she's breathing, so I wait a couple of seconds, watching her chest. It doesn't seem to move. I unlatch my seat belt and try opening the door. I have to kick it a few times until it opens and I crawl out and over the broken glass.

“Are you okay?” A man runs toward me. He's bending down in my face. “Are you hurt? I'm so sorry. I didn't even see you.” He helps me to my feet.

“My sister,” I barely make out.

I push past him to get to the passenger side. Her door is bent and busted as if someone took a huge fist and rammed it into the passenger side of the car. With the man's help, I open it and get inside next to her. She's still looking at something.

“Grace.” I unlatch her belt and fall on her.

“Wait. Should you move her? The ambulance is coming.” There's fear in his voice, but I ignore the man and keep pulling Grace until she comes free from the car.

“How is she? Help is coming.” He yells into his phone, “The Colorado Street Bridge. I don't know. There's two of them. One's not moving.”

I sit on the asphalt and hold Grace so she's looking up into
my eyes. There's blood, lots of blood oozing from her head. It wets through my jeans where her head rests. I keep waiting, waiting for the breath.

“Is she breathing? Oh God. Oh God. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

“Grace. Grace, don't leave me.” I smooth some of her dark hair from her face, but her eyes are vacant and tell me that she's already gone.

•  •  •  •

In the distance, I hear sirens. I hug her to me and stumble toward the sound. I break through the bottom of the trail and into the street.

“Help me! Help.” I fall onto the asphalt with Hanna, confused for a moment because I thought I was holding Grace.

A couple of EMTs rush up to me and grab Hanna.

“She's diabetic,” I force out.

“We got her,” one of the EMTs says.

They give Hanna a shot of something right away. As I watch them work on her, I can't slow my breathing. My hands are tingly and I feel light-headed.

My body shakes, as if it's chilled to the bone, but I'm drenched with sweat. I try to ask the EMT who's with me a question, but my teeth chatter too much.

“She's going to be okay,” the EMT says, and puts a thin blanket over my shoulders.

Something cracks in the deepest part of me. I try to hold it together, but I'm not strong enough. The feeling rises in my throat. I try to cough it out. My eyes fill and the drops fall, running down my face. I wipe them away, but they keep coming. It's like a dam has been removed. I can't hold them back.

“You carry her all the way down?”

I nod. He sits next to me and pats me on the back.

“You did good. You saved her life. But your body's in shock. You'll come out of it. See this bag? I want you to take some deep breaths for me. It'll help you stop hyperventilating.”

I can't hold the bag because my hands are shaking too much, so he holds the bag to my lips. I breathe in as slowly as I can and follow it with a slow breath out. I do this a couple of times and it helps. But it doesn't stop the tears. And the tears make it hard to breathe.

“I'm—I'm sorry,” I stammer.

“Nothing to be sorry about. You've been through a trauma. Crying is a way of releasing some of the tension. If you need to—”

I bend over and throw up right on his feet.

“Yeah, I was just getting to that.” He pats my back in a soothing rhythm. “That's okay. You're going to be fine. She's going to be fine. You did the right thing. Everything's going to be all right.”

The EMT helps me into the ambulance next to Hanna. She's lying down, strapped to a gurney. She moans and opens her eyes. I see she hasn't left me like I feared. The ambulance begins to move, and I remember this scene, but it's Grace on the gurney. I've got a bandage around my head and the EMT is telling me to lie back down, but I'm not listening. I'm telling him to get out of my way, that I've got to get to my sister. Her eyes are closed. Why are her eyes closed? She's got all kinds of tubes in her arms and she's wearing some kind of mask that's too big for her face. I can't see her. He finally lets me hold her hand. It's cold, so cold, but I hold it tightly, warming it with my own. I ignore the smell of the blood that's all over me and her and the ambulance.

Hanna's trying to say something. I move close and take her hand. She smiles at me through her mask.

“You're going to be okay,” I tell her.

She's speaking again, so I bend my head toward her.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

My forehead touches hers and some of my tears streak her face.

D
ad and Jenny come to the hospital. Dad grabs me in a violent hug. Jenny is a little gentler. Their terror and relief almost kills me.

“When I got the call . . .” Dad starts but can't finish.

“I know, Dad. I know. I'm okay, just in shock.” I tell them about Hanna getting low and me carrying her down the mountain.

“Is she all right?” Jenny asks.

“I think so. She was coherent during the ambulance ride, though we didn't talk much. She rested.”

“Proud of you, son,” Dad says. He squeezes my arm.

I suddenly have to get out of there. The idea of spending any more time in the ER is too much for me. I keep thinking about the last time I was here. My back was against a wall, blood
all over, not wanting anyone to touch me, not even Dad and Jenny when they came rushing up to me, waiting to hear what was happening with Grace behind one of the doors. I couldn't tell them that she was already dead. How could I tell them that?

“Yeah, well, can we go? I've got to go get my car.”

“The car can wait,” Jenny says. “Want to see Hanna?”

“No,” I say. Even the smell of the hospital is getting to me. “I need to leave. It's this place. . . .”

As if my dad gets it, he says, “Sure, of course. Let me clear you with the doctor.” He goes to the nurse's desk.

“That must have been scary seeing Hanna that way,” Jenny says.

Thinking about Hanna almost dying, I start to feel the pressure build behind my eyes. I shrug, afraid to speak about it because I'll start crying again.

Jenny takes my hand. “Is Hanna's mom here?”

“Yeah, she's with Hanna.” Hanna's mom rushed all frantic into the waiting room. She saw me and I told her what happened. Before going to see Hanna, she hugged and thanked me for saving her little girl's life.

Dad returns to us. “We're good to go. You were never admitted or else it'd take forever to check you out. So we can leave, or if you want to say good-bye to Hanna first, we can wait.”

“No, I'm good.” I can't face Hanna yet. Everything's just too close and jumbled and confusing.

We leave the ER in a chain, with me in the middle and Jenny's and Dad's arms linked through mine. Normally I'd mind all the attention, but today I don't. Today it makes me feel loved and I need that.

Dad drives us back to the trail's entrance so I can get my car. He starts to insist that he drive and I ride with Jenny, but I tell them I'm fine for the hundredth time and that I'd really like to be alone.

They look hurt, so I assure them, “It's nothing personal. I need to, you know, clear my head. Please.”

Jenny and Dad exchange a glance.

Dad says, “Keep your phone on.” He tries to keep the worry out of his voice, but I hear it.

“Of course.”

They pull away, and I sit for a few moments in my car. The street is almost lined with parked cars, a direct contrast to the morning. I can't believe it was only a couple of hours ago that I was parking and Hanna and I were beginning our hike. How quickly everything can change. Hanna will be hurt that I didn't see her in the hospital, even though she knows I hate hospitals. But I push that thought away.

I debate calling Sebastian, but decide not to bother him while he's working. What would he say anyway? Sorry?

I start the car and head over to the bridge. I walk along the
path and marvel again at this small piece of nature tucked in between freeways and buildings. It's different during the day: all flowers and gnats and people walking dogs, not shadows and ghosts. I prefer it, though, in the peace of the night when so many cars aren't buzzing by.

I climb to the top and walk along the bridge itself. There's a break in the traffic, so I step off the sidewalk and out into the road. I bend down close to the asphalt.

The stain is still there. The part they missed when the cleanup crew tried to remove it after the accident all those months ago. The spot of blood. Mine or my sister's or both, it doesn't matter whose. We shared the same blood type. It's our blood. I run my hand along the rusted color, as if some of it will come off.

Cars start to honk at me. “Get out of the road!” one driver yells as he maneuvers around me. He's right. I'm crazy to be here. I run to the pedestrian walkway before someone hits me.

I sit on the cold concrete bench, leaning forward with my hands folded in front of me.
Oh, Grace
, I think.
It should have been me, or at the very least I should be with you.
Why do I get to live? There's this overwhelming pressure for my life to mean something. I must have been spared for a reason, right? What if I don't live up to the expectations? What if I fail in my choices and my life is some regular, boring life?

My leg shakes. Grace used to hate it when we were younger and I sat behind her in class and put my foot on her chair and bounced it. She'd say she was experiencing her own personal earthquake. Grace usually insisted on being right and wouldn't budge until you gave. She was very practical, a bottom-line thinker. I used to drive her crazy with not wanting to make a decision until the last minute. She was always planning. She was always humming. She could always make me laugh or talk sense into me. I think about how much I need her and how hard life has been without her.

I want Grace back. I want things to be the way they used to be. I want to know what I'm supposed to do now. I want someone else to figure it all out. I don't want to be left with some stupid to-do list. Four down, only one left to go. I thought there'd be some closure completing it, like if I did all the things on the list I wouldn't miss her so much.

But I still miss her. And the pain of her death hasn't left. It's not as raw as it used to be, but it's still deep, embedded like a dull knife. If only I could remove that blade, maybe the pain would lessen.

“I'm so sorry,” I whisper.

The words repeat in my mind, but in a different voice. On the night of the accident, the other driver said he was sorry over and over. I remember the anguish in his eyes.

I wipe the tears from my face with the sleeve of my shirt. I can't keep coming back here. Grace isn't here; she never was. I head back to my car. Dad and Jenny will be worried, so I should go home.
I want to go home
. I get a text as I'm walking. It's Hanna.

Where are you?

Going home. You feeling okay?

Yeah. Sorry if I freaked you out

I've seen worse ha ha