Where We Left Off (9 page)

I’d leaned over the side of the bleachers and vomited. Twice. Wretched a few more times. Wiped my mouth with the inside of my sleeve. The crack of the bat in the distance felt like it split my skull in two. The players shouting on the field sounded like a stadium filled with thousands of jeering fans, the volume megaphoned in my ears, ringing. Pounding.

Somehow I stumbled my way to the car and the key found the ignition. I remembered sitting there, the engine idling, thinking I had to go somewhere, not knowing how to get there. Not even sure if I had my license or had ever been taught to drive. Brake on the left, gas on the right. That much I knew. It was a haze of starts and stops until I switched off the car in the driveway and sat there, trying to collect myself. Trying to remember how to breathe. The small space in the car was closing in on me, the edges of my vision blackening.

He’s home by himself
, I remembered thinking.
They were supposed to be back before dinner. He’s got to be hungry. And worried. He’s worried. I’m worried.

The front door had been unlocked and it fell open when I rotated the handle. I’d given them grief the week before about how Nana’s “crazies” would just welcome themselves into their home and take whatever their heart’s desired, but Mallory had corrected me.

“She’s only worried about the crazies on the
road
.” She’d laughed over dinner, Nana
not
offering to deny her granddaughter’s statement. “Says no one knows how to drive these days, but have you seen her behind the wheel?” Mallory had looked at me above her glass of milk and mouthed, “S-c-
a-r
-y,” and then shot me a wink.

I shook the memory violently from my head. Acid seeped into my throat as I raced down the hall, my feet only slowing up when my shoulder collided with the doorjamb to his den. “Tommy? Tommy!”

Vacant eyes locked onto mine. Innocent, naïve eyes.

“We have to go, Tommy.” My feet slipped on wet paint and I skidded toward him like I was on a hockey rink. Whatever he’d been working on broke my fall, my hand punching through the canvas as I landed on my ass. “Goddammit!” Anger blasted out of me and I grabbed the frame and slammed it against the ground, over and over, mangling it beyond any sort of recognition. The sound of my brutality mimicked the bat and I’d wished more than anything I had one in my hands. I’d slam it into any surface I could find. Smash it against everything I saw. “Dammit, Tommy!”

That lopsided mouth drooped even more.

“I’m sorry,” I’d cried. Snot ran from my nose onto my upper lip. “Tommy, I’m so sorry. I’ll fix this.”

Fumbling with the piece, I smoothed out the canvas, trying to rejoin the torn sections. I was like a kid finger painting, smearing the colors into a horrible and disgusting brown. I’d ruined his work, but it was all ruined. Everything ruined.

Tommy was terrified. I was terrified. I had to get to them. To her.

“Tommy.” My mouth was dry and my tongue scraped with the words. “Tommy, we have to go.” He wasn’t suddenly going to get out of his chair and follow me. I knew he couldn’t do that, so I wasn’t sure why I stood there, waiting. I needed someone else to take control, to look at
me
and say it was going to be okay.
Please tell me everything will be okay.

“For once it would be nice if you could actually say something!” I screamed. My chest rattled as I roared at the man sitting in the dark in front of me. Then I threw up again, all over his painting, which didn’t really matter since it looked like vomit, anyway. Everything spiraled out of control. My words. My actions. My body. My world.

“We have to go,” I said once more and his eyes answered me.
Okay
, they’d said.
Okay. Let’s go.

I pushed the mess I’d created out of the way and
stooped
down to him. He wasn’t a small man, necessarily. Standing upright he probably sneaked up upon six feet, but I’d only known the frailty of him, only seen him bent over his work or folded into a chair at the dinner table. I’d misjudged so much about Tommy, including the size of his love for his family.

His eyes were webbed with red veins, cheeks smeared with wet, salty tears. I swiped my arm across my own face, feeling my tears slick on my sleeve. I gulped in air. “Come on, Buddy. We have to go to the hospital.”

I picked him up. That was the only way we were going to get to the car. His weight cradled heavily against my chest, and I didn’t know if it was his sorrow that sunk his body, making him dead weight, or if this was all he was capable of, the only support he could offer. I’d left the front door open in my rush, but that didn’t matter. They could take everything from the house and it would never come close to what was taken from me that day. They could take it all.

After I’d buckled Tommy into the passenger seat, I raced around to the driver’s side. Slammed the door behind me and shut us in, wanting to shut everything out.

I locked my seat belt across my lap and threw my head back against the headrest, closing my eyes, welcoming the black.

“Are you a praying man, Tommy?” My head lolled sideways, my gaze sliding to him as my eyelids fluttered open. “I feel like we should pray.”

His eyes told me
yes,
I was certain of it.

I’d never prayed before, but I hadn’t stopped praying since.

When we showed up at the hospital, Mom was waiting at the entrance. I was grateful someone was there, readied with a wheelchair to help with Tommy, because truthfully, the moment I pulled up, I’d forgotten about everything except for the fact that I needed to get to her. I needed her.

I’d left the car running. Someone shut it off. I’d left the keys in the ignition. Someone brought them to me later. I’d left the world outside those hospital doors
outside
because my
entire world was held
within
them.

It was hours and hours of waiting before I was let into the room.

Family Only
had been the policy, but having two parents who worked at the hospital offered something in the way of benefits. If you could call seeing your comatose girlfriend a benefit.

She’d looked so small in that cold and sterile room. When finally given permission to visit her, I’d almost backed out. I hated myself for being too scared to join in her tragedy. If I could offer my support from my maroon plastic chair in the waiting room, then I would never know the magnitude of what had happened. My mind could fabricate something else, something easier, something less frightening. Something more hopeful.

I was a coward, plain and simple.

But even cowards did brave things once in a blue moon, so I put on that counterfeit brave face and walked to her room. Room 4D. She had one of those awful blue curtains draped around her bed, and when the nurse pulled it
back,
it made this horrendous screeching sound as the metal rings scraped on the
rod
.

My shoulders shot up to my ears to soften the sound.

What I noticed first was that Mallory had no reaction.

She would’ve made some snide comment yesterday. “Nails on a chalkboard,” she would’ve said
yesterday
because that was her go-to with anything that made her uncomfortable. Yesterday.

Yesterday.

But it was today.

And I didn’t know that I would be able to face my tomorrow.

The nurses and doctors left us alone that night, except when performing their routine monitoring tasks. Overnight visitors of the boyfriend variety must have been off-limits, but no one questioned my presence in her room. And no one questioned me when I’d pulled back her covers and climbed into her hospital bed with her.

It wasn’t the same space as the couch, but I maneuvered enough to make myself her boat. “You’re safe now, Mallory,” I’d whispered into her hair. Her crusted, blood stained hair. I’d kissed her temple which was purpled and swollen. “You’re safe.”

Nana was in critical condition, my mother told me. Thrown through the windshield, colliding with a tree stump, her body a heap on the pavement at West Street and Magnolia. That tank of a car hadn’t been the protection she’d thought it to be. But you couldn’t protect yourself against others’ mistakes, it seemed.

Mallory was revived at the scene. Revived. The only need for revival was when someone had died, but I didn’t want to fit that piece into the story. I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge just how close I’d come to losing her completely. She was here now, breathing along with the machine—or maybe because of the machine—but she was here.

And I was with her. I would stay with her forever, I’d promised.
I’ll never leave you, Mallory,
I’d murmured against her cold skin all night long. When I kissed her black and puffy eyes swelled shut, I told her I’d always be there. When I held her hand, crippled and scabbed, I whispered my promise again.
I’ll never leave you,
I spoke against her mouth as I kissed her, over and over.
I’ll never leave you. I love you. I love you.

I.

Love.

You.

The thing about promises made was that sometimes you didn’t hold the power to keep them.

The thing about falling in love so young was that you weren’t always responsible for the path your life took, or the decisions that got you there.

We moved three weeks after Mallory’s accident.

Dad was transferred to Dignity Memorial back in California. Given a position as Chief of Surgery. A “once in a lifetime offer,” they’d said.

I’d had my own
once in a lifetime
, though.

Her name was Mallory.

I never saw her again.