AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Right. My throat had been too dry and sore to answer.
Click-click-click. The morphine was colorless but swam heavy in my bloodstream. I imagined I could hear a scold in every click. Click-click-click meant that I wasn’t strong enough to handle the pain. Click-click-click masked the reality of what had happened to me, to us.
Of course I wanted to get out of there sooner than later. But I also needed relief from the agony of the moment I was living through.
The thing was, I’d been pretty disciplined at weaning off the morphine. Because I did want to heal. I did want to go home. After that first week of click-click-click, I’d allowed my thumb to rest on the round-button surface of the clicker. But I’d hold off pressing it.
Hold hold hold and then sometimes click. Rarely click. No click.
My brain had been a clicker of sorts, too. It had flooded me with sleep and daydreams, it had activated scenarios that forbid reality. Sure, I’d circled it. I hovered over the surface of it. I knew I needed to make contact with it. But if I was actually ready to handle my truth in full, if I really was strong enough to find myself, then I had to return to Bowditch Bridge.
By daybreak, I’d decided it.
I put the plan into motion using one of the recipes I’d learned at El Cielo. It was an apple crumble, a dessert item at the restaurant, but I prepared it with less brown sugar and half a cup of oatmeal. I thought I might be able to trick it out as a breakfast food.
“Morning, Mom.”
“Oh. You’re up early.” She gave me a quick look—my presence had startled her—then she recovered with a smile as she poured a cup of coffee from the pot I’d just brewed. No flies on Mom. She knew I was up to something.
“Just thought I’d make you some breakfast.” And when I opened the oven, I was instantly gratified by the bubbling apple, oats, butter, brown sugar, and hint of clove.
“Mmm, smells good.” I could tell Mom was surprised. She was ready to call a truce, especially over baked apples.
“Here, I’ll fix you a bowl. Oh, hey, also—if it’s okay by you, I’m going to take the car into Midtown tonight to sit in on Lissa’s Nutcracker rehearsal.”
“The car,” she repeated dubiously.
“And it’s really easy to get parking up there,” I continued as I ladled out a serving. “Morning, Dad. Right on time. Here, sit down, both of you. Enjoy.”
Dad was sniffing the air like a bear that had woken from hibernation. I dished up a generous serving for him and set the bowl next to Mom’s. It had been a while since I’d last put on my chef’s hat—and after the other night, I had a hunch that both of my parents were searching for any way to find the middle ground with me.
“What if we give you taxi money?” Mom bargained. “I thought you and I had a deal, that we were going to practice driving together.”
“Mom, I know how to drive. I have my license. And I’d much rather work on my driving while I’m feeling good about it.” I turned on the spigot, focusing on my sponge and suds as I cleaned out the mixing bowl. Letting them work out their private eye and hand signals.
“You know where the keys are,” said Dad after a pause. “Especially if there’s seconds on this crumble for me.”
Relief. “Thanks.”
“Please, please be careful.” Mom was not fighting the decision, but she wasn’t enjoying it. “This is so yummy, Ember. It reminds me of something…something you might have made…before.”
Might have made before the accident. It was hard to keep my smile to myself. “Thanks, Mom.”
The school day felt eternal. The words Bowditch Bridge seemed to either fog up or slice through every moment. After classes and physical therapy, I took my homework to Tazza, a sandwich shop where I had a cup of coffee. Would coffee forever make me think of Kai? Probably.
Dance practice had always been finished by six. On the night of February 14th, I’d started the trip upstate sometime after seven.
And if I’d been picking up Anthony Travolo, then where from?
I refused the clicker. I closed my eyes.
From Pratt, of course. You’d take the subway, and then you’d walk over the bridge together. It was a way to catch his little bit of free time.
Not too much dissection all at once. I could feel my body shut down like a power plant. Click-click-click. My sweat cooled. One more coffee, one more check on my watch, and maybe I was ready. All along, I’d been leading myself to this night, listing toward it as a final phase, that last known place.
Because it was waiting for me. It had been waiting all along.
Weregirl had been playing that night. I’d hinted about the concert we’d be seeing next month. I was never good at surprises, and this gift had thrilled me. The two ticket printouts were still in my desk drawer; I’d found them under a bunch of papers just last week.
Tonight, the car seemed overly large and powerful to be handled by a single person. I drove slowly, listening to the GPS even though I knew the way. Exiting off the George Washington to US 9, briefly onto the Palisades. There weren’t many cars on the road as I pulled onto the roundabout leading to Mountain Road. Another ten minutes, and it was truly desolate up here. Being a city girl, a city driver perpetually sharing the streets and claiming my space, I was struck by how so many roads upstate were lonely and unlit.
Tonight, my vision was illuminated by three-quarters of a moon in a cold black sky. It would have to be enough. I hunched over the steering wheel. Turned up the volume on one of my favorite songs—“Half-Life,” the title track.
That night, I’d hit the bridge at a quarter past seven—the emergency call had come in at 7:21. There’d been a snowstorm that afternoon, three inches in the city by four o’clock, followed by sleet. Ice on the bridge had made it a slippery hazard. I’d known that.
If I’d been older, more cautious, more experienced, would I have crossed the bridge safely? Would I have been able to hold on to us?
A businessman named Jim Lyford, in the car behind us, had been on the way back to his house in Fishkill after a dinner in the city. He’d been in the coast guard, a detail that probably made all the difference in the outcome of that night. He’d just turned onto the bridge when we went over, and his series of reactions to what he’d witnessed had been instant and flawless.
He’d moved with the precision of a specialized task-force member, calling it in as he pulled off to the side of the road, then bracing for the dark water, plunging through and diving deep. Wrenching open the car door once the pressure equalized, and then using his CPR training when he’d got me above water…Later, he told me that the best way to save a life was never to doubt that you could.
