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Caitlin’s eyes blink open. It’s slow, cautious. The light above her is bright, blazing down like the Florida sun. Her gaze is soft, unfocused and glazed. Her eyes settle on nothing. She doesn’t move her head.
Mrs. Beckett’s voice is urgent. “Tom. Tom.”
But it’s too much stimulation, too much noise, too much light. It happens so fast that Mr. Beckett’s head snaps up from his work a split second too late, after Caitlin’s eyes have sunken back shut.
“Did you see that?” Mrs. Beckett asks, only now looking at him as he sets his leather portfolio aside and rises to standing.
“See what?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for a reply. “No,” he decides. “I didn’t see anything. Sorry, I was—”
“Her eyes,” she insists. “She opened her eyes. You saw it Meghan, didn’t you? You saw her open her eyes.” Mrs. Beckett is staring at me now, her expression pleading with me to say yes, that I saw it, that she didn’t imagine it, that she isn’t losing her mind.
But I can’t speak. I can barely breathe. My heart beats with such ferocity I feel suddenly dizzy, suddenly flush.
She wasn’t supposed to wake up.
She was supposed to die like this, in a coma.
“Meghan?”
I muster a nod, but it’s not necessary.
Because a second later, Caitlin opens her eyes again, more fully this time, and this time, when she does, her eyes find mine.
Twenty-One
Mrs. Beckett takes Caitlin by the hand, sliding her own under it and gripping gently. “Squeeze, baby,” she pleads, standing suspended above her, looking down. “If you can feel my hand, squeeze.”
We hold our collective breath. We wait, me frozen beside the IV pumps, Mr. Beckett at the end of the bed, everyone watching the two pale, delicate hands clasped together under the harsh ICU lights, one firm, the other limp.
Nothing.
Ten seconds pass before Mrs. Beckett gently squeezes Caitlin’s hand again, as she leans even further down, staring wide-eyed into the still, brown eyes and says, “It’s me, Caitlin. It’s Mom. If you can hear me, if you can feel me, please, just squeeze my hand.” Mrs. Beckett tightens her grip on Caitlin’s hand as if to demonstrate what she means.
Caitlin’s eyes are open now, like marbles that stare up at the ceiling, unblinking.
We watch the joined hands again, my own eyes agape, waiting for a spasm, a quiver, a twitch, but still, there’s nothing, and I practically heave a sigh of relief as Caitlin’s eyes sink slowly shut again, buying time. It’s not like she can speak with the ET tube running down her throat and past her vocal cords, but if she could, I wonder what she would say and if she would say I’m the one who pushed her off the bridge.
“We should call the doctor,” Mr. Beckett says, practical, businesslike. I feel his eyes on me, and it takes a minute to process, but then I think that yes, we should, I should, because I’m her nurse and it’s my job to do things like that, to assess her and to call for the doctor. If this was any other patient, I’d be reacting already, taking the appropriate action and not standing frozen, anchored to the ground as I am now with my heart in my throat.
The reality of what’s happening hits like a tidal wave.
She’s waking up. She’s coming to.
Caitlin Beckett pretended to be someone she’s not. She lied to me, she made me trust her, she stole from me. I don’t know what type of crime that is exactly, whether theft, larceny or something else, but it’s nonviolent, punishable by probably a short time in jail and a meager little fine.
I, on the other hand, pushed her off a bridge. That’s so much worse. It’s attempted murder and I couldn’t even claim self-defense because she didn’t try to hurt me, not physically anyway. My life was never at risk. I could go to jail for something like twenty years, if not for the rest of my life. And I have a child—I have Sienna. In twenty years, Sienna will be thirty-six years old, an adult, not that much younger than I am now, and I think about the last twenty years of my life, all I have done and experienced, and then I think of Sienna doing it and experiencing it without me. Going to college. Meeting the man of her dreams. Falling in love. Getting married. Getting pregnant. Having children. Bringing new life into the world and then watching it bloom and grow.
I think of the things I told her. I think of the last words she spoke to me before I pushed her off the bridge.
I’ll tell them what you told me. I’ll tell them who Sienna’s real dad is and how you’re a wh—
Whore.
I have so much more to lose than she does.
“Meghan?”
My head snaps up. Mr. Beckett’s voice brings me back to reality, to the present. He’s watching me and I know I have to do something and so I step forward, my legs shaking and weak. I’m not so sure the Becketts can’t hear my pulse, the surge of blood as it rushes through my body, so fast it makes me dizzy. As the Becketts watch, I move to the bedside. I lean down and force Caitlin’s eyes open to check for a pupillary response, sweeping my penlight across her eyes, when what I really want to do is remove her from life support, to extubate her, to yank the endotracheal tube out and watch her die.
