The Last Hour (17 page)

She shook her head. “Nothing yet. Mom called ... from the phone on the airplane. She asked me to tell you she loves you. Their flight gets in at ten o’clock.”

“It’ll be midnight before they get here, then,” I said.

She nodded.
 

“You doing okay?” I asked.

She nodded. “Battery’s almost dead in my phone.” Her response was toneless. I was really starting to worry about Jessica. The first couple of hours we were here, I’d attributed her near silence to shock. But we’d been here for
hours
now, and she was still speaking in a shocked monotone. It was out of character and starting to scare me. I wondered if Alexandra would be able to get more out of her ... they were far closer in age.

I didn’t have an opportunity to explore it further, because a few moments later an exhausted looking surgeon walked into the waiting room. She was in her early forties, with dark hair tied in a bun at the base of her neck.
 

“Carrie Sherman? I’m Doctor Schmidt … I came by to check on you and to let you know Sarah is out of surgery and recovering nicely.”
 

Jessica leaned forward and spoke, her tone urgent, “Is she awake?”

The surgeon shook her head. “Not yet. But we’re feeling confident that her progress is very good. She’ll be in the intensive care unit for the next several days at least.”

I took Jessica’s hand in mine. She’s always responded almost physically whenever Sarah was hurt, and the news that she’s not just in the hospital, but in intensive care, for days, was going to shake Jessica up. I gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

Alexandra said, “When can we see her?”

“If you’re ready, I’m going to take you to the ICU now. But I need to prepare you. She’s still at significant risk of infection. When you go to visit, we need to limit it to one at a time, and for no more than fifteen minutes. I’ll ask you to disinfect your hands on the way in, and to wear a face mask.”

“That’s all fine. Whatever’s best for her, of course.”

I felt a pit of fear in my stomach. Ray was still in the operating room. “What happens ... I mean ... will they know where to find me? When Ray comes out of surgery?” Or if anything happened? I couldn’t say it.
 

“I’ll have them page me immediately if there’s any change. My understanding is they expect him to be in surgery at least two or three more hours.”

Two or three more hours. Why did it take so long, what exactly were they doing that could cause this to be a ten hour or longer procedure? I thought about the doctor, Peterson, and what he’d said.
Part of the skull driven into his brain.
 

Where the hell did he learn to talk to family members? Of course, I wanted to know the details. I wanted to know everything. But the more I thought about it, the more I might have appreciated a less crude way of putting it. It didn’t matter. Whether or not they told me what was happening, whether or not they gave me the details in the bluntest terms or the floweriest language, the fact was, Ray’s injuries couldn’t possibly be worse or more threatening. But it wasn’t going to do him any good at all if I stayed sitting here versus going with my sisters to check on Sarah.
 

Schmidt raised her eyebrows and said, “Are the three of you ready?”

Alexandra said, “Let me text my husband and let him know where we’re going.”

She did, and the three of us followed Doctor Schmidt down a confusing series of passageways until we reached the ICU. At the door, just as Schmidt was about to slide an access card, Jessica said, “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

All four of us stopped in place, and I said to Schmidt, “Can you give us just a moment? I’m sorry.”

She nodded, and I took both Alexandra and Jessica by the hand and we walked a few feet down the hall. The three of us stood in a tight triangle, and I said, “Jessica, I promise you, no matter what happens, we’re here for you. No matter what.”

Her eyes watered, and she responded, “Carrie ... I’m afraid. What if ... what if she doesn’t make it? The last thing we did was fight over a stupid belt. I don’t care about the belt—she can have it. I want my sister back. It’s ... I don’t understand why she hates me so much.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Alexandra said. “She never has.”

“Then why ... why does she pull away so much?”

Alexandra slid a hand over Jessica’s shoulder and said, “Sarah’s always needed to be ... a little different. I think the biggest mistake Mom ever made was trying to dress you two alike all the time. She’s pulling away because she doesn’t feel like she’s her own person, Jessica. But that’s not because she hates you.”

“The accident might not have even happened if we weren’t fighting.”

I shook my head, violently. “No. That guy ran the red light. We never had a chance, Jessica. Do you understand me? This was
not
your fault. Or anyone’s really, except the guy who hit us.”

Alexandra gave her gentle smile. “Let’s go. It’s going to be okay.”

I pulled my sisters in to a hug, and held them tight. I just wish I believed Alexandra’s words were true.

“Okay. Ready?”

They both nodded, and we separated. I nodded to Schmidt and said, quietly, “Thank you.”

She swiped her pass, and the door slid aside.
 

Two minutes later we were looking in on Sarah.

I tried not to gasp when I saw her. She was barely recognizable. The left side of her face was bruised and swollen, much of it deep purple and black. Tubes were tied and taped in her nostrils and mouth, and it looked as if even her eyelids were bruised. What skin we could see that wasn’t bruised looked even more deathly pale than normal.
 

Her left arm was splinted and slightly elevated, the fingertips poking out of the splint, swollen, red. And her left leg was huge, bloated and swollen, with bulky dressings attached and tubes running out from under the sheet. I was frightened to even think of what her leg must look like; the surgeon told me before that the wound would be left open for two to three days.
 

A nurse met us and said, “You can go in, but only one at a time.”

Alexandra and I both looked at Jessica, and I said, “You go first, Jessica.”

Jessica was shaking. She swallowed, whispered, “Thank you,” and then slipped into the room. From outside, I watched as she slumped into a chair near the bed. Her eyes were round and unblinking as she stared at her unconscious, injured twin.
 

Alexandra grabbed my hand when Jessica started talking. I don’t know what she was saying; we couldn’t hear her. But as she spoke, tears began running down her face.
 

“You okay?” Alexandra asked me at a whisper.

“For now,” I responded.
 

“I’m so sorry this happened. All of it.”

I nodded, at once grateful my sister was here and, at the same time, wishing desperately I could just go find a dark corner somewhere and curl up into a ball and scream.

Army Wife (Ray)

You ever wonder how a ghost can have an insanely powerful craving for a cigarette?
 

Yeah, me neither.
 

Not until now. Because the minute Dylan told them he was going to go grab a smoke, I wanted one more than you could possibly imagine. Who would have guessed fucking addictions could follow you right into the grave?

No. Crap. I wasn’t going to think that way. Somehow I was getting out of that. Maybe they could do some kind of stem cell injection thingy and grow back the parts of my brain that got turned into mush. Or something. But I had to survive. I had to be there for Carrie. That’s what mattered.

Anyway, I figured having a smoke, even if secondhand, couldn’t hurt me while I was in this condition, so I followed Dylan out to the front of the hospital.
 

George Washington University Hospital is somewhere in downtown DC, an area I barely know. Carrie knows it like the back of her hand: she’d spent a couple years living here in high school, and had been back for a bunch of conferences and meetings and such. During our few months here together, she’d played the role of tour guide and taken me everywhere in the city.

Dylan hitched himself up on a four-foot high brick wall, which was quite a feat for a guy as short as he is, and then his phone beeped. He looked at it briefly ... reading a text message, I suppose, then put it away. I boosted myself up next to him as he fumbled in his pocket, looking for his cigarettes and lighter.
 

I wanted to bum one from him, but good luck with that.

Not a problem, though, for the fortyish-looking lady who asked him for one a moment later. She wore jeans and a t-shirt, and had a tired, stressed look to her face.

“No problem,” Dylan said, passing one to her.
 

She got her cigarette lit, puffing a cloud of smoke, then said, “You visiting someone here?”

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said, reluctantly.

“My daughter’s here, in labor and delivery. Stupid bitch got herself knocked up again.”

Dylan recoiled, wincing at her harsh words and tone. “You don’t sound happy about it.”

“Do I look happy about it?” the woman said. “No, I’m not happy. I can’t afford to raise another kid, and god knows she won’t take the responsibility to do it.”

Dylan looked flabbergasted. His mouth opened, then closed, and finally he looked away, taking a drag from his cigarette and not responding.

I took a deep breath, trying to catch just a whiff of the smoke. Nothing. I don’t think I was even actually breathing. That was not fair.

“So what are you gonna do?” Dylan asked.

I was startled. Startled that he asked the question, and more, that he seemed interested. But he looked at her like he knew her.

The woman shrugged. “I’ll deal with whatever gets handed to me. I’ll pray.”

He grunted. “My best friend’s in there, and from what it sounds like, he’s gonna die.”

I jerked as he said it. And he didn’t stop. “There were four of us. Two died in Afghanistan. Ray ... he was my sergeant, and now my brother-in-law. I love that guy. What the hell? Can’t we even catch a break?”

The woman shook her head. “The Lord don’t go around handing out breaks.”

Dylan snorted. “Guess not,” he said. He slid off the wall and then stamped out his cigarette on the ground. “Good luck to you and your daughter.”

“I’ll be praying for your friend.”

He turned and started walking back toward the entrance to the hospital, and then stopped, a confused expression on his face. He was staring at a parked car, an early 2000s Ford Taurus, and a crease formed between his eyebrows. What the hell was that about? He lit another cigarette, which was going to make me completely insane, and walked a full circle around the car.
 

The car had Virginia plates. Vanity plates, reading ARMY WIFE. Military parking stickers were attached to the rear windshield, for both Fort Stewart and Fort Drum, New York. And the thing was, it was familiar. I couldn’t place it. I’d seen this car before too. But where? Surely not at Fort Drum? I suppose it could have been somewhere in DC, but I’d only been here a few months, and to be honest, I’d been kind of preoccupied most of that time.

Dylan seemed to shrug it off, and I had bigger things to worry about, like was I going to live, so we moved on. I followed him back into the hospital, and ten minutes later we were in the intensive care unit. At the door, he texted Alex and we waited. A moment later, she came and opened it, letting him in. Us, I guess. Except getting in wasn’t going to be a problem for me, but I didn’t want to think about the implications of that.

As he slipped in, Alex said, “You really need to quit smoking.”

Dylan looked at her with a dour expression and said, “Today’s really not the day for that, okay?”
 

And that’s when I heard Sarah let out a piercing scream. I jerked, looking for her, then moved down the hall as quick as I could. Carrie stood outside a room with a glass door and window. Sarah was inside ... both of her, I guess. So was Jessica, sitting in a chair, face buried in her hands.
 

I walked right through the door, and immediately caught Jessica’s quiet, half-sobbed words. “I’m so sorry. I know it’s my fault. I wish ... I wish none of this had happened.” After she said it, she leaned her chin on her arms, and just sat, staring at her twin.

Sarah ... not the Sarah on the bed. Or ... whatever. She was standing there, next to the bed, and her face was red. Daniel was still with her ... either they hadn’t found his parents ... or ... the other alternatives didn’t bear thinking about.

Sarah looked up at me as I entered and shouted, “Did you know my sister was a lesbian? My
twin?
”
 

Daniel shrank a little at her shout.

I stopped in place. “Um ... no….”

“Neither did I. What the hell, Ray? It’s not like I would have judged her, or even cared. But why is it she wouldn’t tell me until she thought I was dying? Or unconscious or whatever? Can you
believe
that? I can’t. I can’t believe my own
twin
wouldn’t tell me something so important.”

I was speechless, but Sarah was anything but that. “Plus,” she shouted, “she thinks the accident was her fault. Because we were fighting. And if I die, she’s never going to be convinced otherwise. All over this stupid belt.”

“The one you’re wearing?” I asked. It was a nice belt, made up of gold washed chain links, though the pink heart pendant buckle was extremely out of character for Sarah.

“Yes, this one. Aren’t you paying any attention? I was wearing it when we left the apartment this morning, that’s what she was so mad about, it’s sort of hers.”

I shook my head. “You were not wearing that. I would have noticed that buckle. An axe or something I could believe, but a heart?”

“I kind of replaced the heart with a padlock.”

I blinked. “Okay,” I said. “That I can buy.”

“Yeah, if I live, she’ll never let me live it down. But that’s not it.
She
lost her virginity. Before me. I mean, it was with a girl, but what the hell? Why doesn’t she talk to me any more?”