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Lane sniffs and I just know she’s about to start crying again.
I give a wide-eyed look at Lane and Stanley over my shoulder, they get my hint and duck out of the room.
“I’m so sorry, Presley.” I put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze. My entire body aches just from the effort of that touch.
“I know you are.” He places his hand on mine and brings it to his cheek. He’s seeking my comfort; I give it to him. It feels nice.
Paisley continues watching her TV in the background. I wonder if she’s in shock.
“We have nowhere to live,” he whispers and I sit beside him, keeping my hand in his as he stares ahead, a frown worrying his brow. “In hindsight I know I shouldn’t care about that because my sister is alive… but my home is gone and everything in it, and if the insurance company thinks my father was at fault, they won’t pay out.”
“You’ll just have to get a kick-ass scholarship and take her to college with you.”
“Like I’ll still be able to go to college now.” He leans forward and buries his face in his hands. The weight of his world and his sister’s future now rests on his shoulders. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be offloading on you after everything you went through yesterday. I’m being a pussy.”
“Bad word,” Paisley mutters, making me smile. When I look at her, her eyes haven’t left the TV hanging from the ceiling.
“You’re not being a P-U-S-S-Y… you’re scared. I would be too.”
He smiles at me, genuinely for the first time ever and cups my face with his hand. “I’ll forever be indebted to you.” His voice becomes a whisper. “You could have died trying to save her. For a moment there we all thought you did and all I could think about was how I… was all I did… and….” The pad of his thumb rubs the softness of my cheek. “That I’ve been horrid to you since we met. I’d ask you for forgiveness but I don’t deserve it.”
“Says who?”
His twinkling blueish-grays hold mine and we share an intimate moment where two people connect and converse without using words or touch.
When he leans in, looking for comfort again, I glance at Paisley and reassure him, “It’ll all work out. Somehow. It will.”
“You mean like that drop you did onto that wall?”
“Right?” I widen my eyes with excitement. “How effing crazy was that? For real. I was like…” I throw my hands up in the air and cheer quietly. “I mean, by that point I’d resigned myself to the fact I’d never be able to dance again. I was ready to feel my legs break, ready to fall and snap my spine.”
His smile blinds me. “You nailed it. I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Me too.”
“I think if it hadn’t come away from the wall like it did, it would have had a very different ending.”
“And I am so grateful to whatever gris-gris made that happen.” I pat his hand on his lap and our smiles fade again to sorrow. “Did you still want me to meet your mom?”
He nods and checks on Paisley. “You coming to see Momma, Paisley?”
We walk through the halls together, leaving one part of the hospital to get to another. The children’s ward to the intensive care unit. Both are so far apart; the walk takes it out of me. I do love how everything is decorated for fall and Halloween. October in Louisiana is an incredible month.
It smells of sanitizer and death though which takes away from the festive ambience. I’ve never spent any time in an actual hospital until now. I’ve been fortunate in that regard. I don’t like it. It reminds me of L.I. Where I spent a year of my life for trying to tell the truth.
“She’s in here,” he says, looking tense and nervous.
He pushes on the door and Paisley immediately cries a happy sounding, “Momma!” Her voice is as husky as mine. Smoke will do that to you.
“Hey, baby,” comes a weak voice from the bed in the middle of the room. The frail, brown-haired woman is hooked up to so many machines she’s more wires than human. “How are your hands?”
Presley lifts Paisley onto the bed and then holds his hand out to me. I didn’t realize I pressed my back against the door until now.
I step closer, taking his hand to comfort myself or him I’m not sure.
Her eyes are so much like Presley’s it makes my heart ache. Seeing her lying there so sick is like seeing him.
“You’re the girl who saved my baby.”
I shrug my shoulders. “I did what anyone could have done.”
“But nobody else did.”
I don’t know what to say to that so I give a generic response. “I’m glad I succeeded.”
She smiles, making her sallow cheeks a bit fuller. “I saw the video.” Her breathing is raspy, not like mine after the smoke inhalation, but like her lungs are just too weak to function. This is so sad. My mom is a deadbeat, she deserves this fate, not Presley’s mom, Rebecca, who has those kind motherly eyes like she cares about everything you’re saying even if it doesn’t interest her. Just like mothers are supposed to do.
