“This is Megan”—Ramona gestures towards me—“Marissa’s guardian.”
“Megan,” she says, turning back to Jim. “This is Dr. Charlebois, your sister's doctor.”
Chapter Six
“Megan,” Jim rasps once Ramona excuses herself and we are alone. “I…this isn’t what I was expecting at all. Ramona told me her guardian was named Megan, but I would have never…” He runs a hand over the top of his head, gripping the back of his neck with tension. “You don’t have the same last name,” he finally says, arms falling to his sides in frustration.
“Hi, Jim.” The air between us thickens with tension, my mind churning with memories of the last time we saw each other. God, he looks good. He looks even better than he did last summer, that morning when I snuck out of his bed like a coward. His thick blond hair is a little longer than it was at the wedding, the ends twisting up in an almost curl. The sleeves of his robin’s-egg blue scrubs strain across his biceps. He seems taller tonight, like his presence is too much in this cold and dreary room.
I turn and look back at my sister, reaching up to smooth the damp hair away from her forehead. “This is my little sister, Marissa.” We had the same last name, our biological name, until I was eighteen and took it upon myself to file a petition with the court. As soon as I was eligible, I had my last name changed to Abernathy, to match my foster parents. Myrealparents.Marissa doesn’t hold as much disdain for our mom’s name as I do, so she opted to keep hers.
He walks to the waist-high cabinets that line the wall on the other side of the room and leans against them, arms coming to cross over his chest. He watches in silent adoration as I fix the creases in the bedding, the only sound the soft humming of the machinery surrounding us.
I spy an open cabinet door near his hip with towels inside, so I take the opportunity to grab a washcloth. He steps to the side to allow me to approach the sink, and I flip the handle, letting the water run until it’s ice cold. Once the cloth is thoroughly soaked, I squeeze the excess water out before returning to my sister’s side, using tender strokes to wick away the sweat from her fever.
“So…sepsis, secondary to a UTI?” I ask, breaking the silence.
He nods. “Elevated white count, elevated creatinine to suggest acute renal failure. Most likely dehydrated. We’ll do gentle IV hydration to manage that. I’ve started broad spectrum antibiotics while waiting for culture results to come back. I, uh…I’ve left a message with the facility demanding they contact the manager on call.” He stops and adjusts his position, clenching his fists for a second. “Situations like this piss me off.” He chuckles awkwardly.
I feel a tear slide down my cheek but I laugh anyway. “Good. I’m glad you’ve already said something to them. Trust me, they will feel the full brunt of my wrath. I know things happen, and recognizing changes in someone who can’t communicate is hard. But they’ve been documenting symptoms for days and didn’t tell me? Didn’t update her primary doctor? They just ignored it?” My voice cracks, and I shake my head. “Has she been like this since they brought her in?” I ask, referring to her sleeping. “Was she responsive at all?”
“So far she’s just been sleeping. She was groaning a little at first, fairly restless, but after we got her fever under control,some IV pain meds and fluids, she was able to relax.” He watches my hand continue to smooth the now invisible lines in the blankets. “How long have you been her guardian?” he asks, voice soft.
I take a few moments to study Marissa’s face. Even though she’s pale and gaunt, body fragile from the sickness, her beauty still shines. Especially her hair. It’s thick, like mine, but more strawberry-blonde as opposed to red. She was born with a color people pay hundreds to try to replicate.
Fresh, hot tears burn my eyes. “Fifteen months,” I whisper. “I’ve been her guardian for fifteen months.” I clear my throat roughly, tossing the now lukewarm washcloth on the counter and rolling my stool backwards to lean my shoulders against the wall. I pull the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my hands and tuck them between my knees. “It was 1:13 P.M. on a random Tuesday in January of last year when I got the call. I’ll never forget that exact time as long as I live, because you’d never think someone would be drunk enough on a Tuesday afternoon to run a red light and plow into a crowd of pedestrians on the crosswalk.”
He straightens as I speak, raking his fingers over the top of his head in frustration. “I remember that day,” he says. “We got a good number of the pedestrians in our ER, and the driver, too.”
The driver that walked away with only a few scratches; the driver, who apparently had money and a good lawyer, and was only sentenced to three years for causing “great bodily harm.” Because of some bullshit laws regarding good behavior, he will be released in the next few months, while my sister will never be the same. “She was an artist. A damn good one too. She had just graduated from The Institute of Art and was interviewing with a gallery downtown to have some of her work featured.” We were meeting for a celebratory lunch at a small café nearby. Except she never showed.
The tears continue to fall, and I use the sleeve of my sweatshirt to wipe them from my cheeks, my eyes now red and itchy from the pain. “The impact from the car caused a pretty significant brain bleed, and she needed an emergency surgery. They did as much as they could, but with the amount of swelling in her brain, they had to put her into a coma.” Those days are a blur. I sat at her bedside, refusing to leave her unless my bladder was ready to burst. I didn’t shower, couldn’t eat, never bothered to change my clothes, only slept in the rock-hard recliner of the ICU when I was so tired I was hallucinating. “After a few days, they were able to wean her off the sedatives. When she woke, she was still there. Most of her right side was paralyzed, and while she could talk, she couldn’t form real sentences. But damnit if she wasn’t determined. She worked so hard with therapy, listened toeveryrecommendation, tookeverymorsel of advice and guidance to heart. We thought she’d make a miraculous recovery, and then the seizures started.” And with each one, I saw a little more of my sister slip away.
Jim crosses the room to stand at my side, resting his warm palm on my shoulder. I reach my hand up to cover his, squeezing.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I had no idea.”
“I know.” Lainey and Ryan know; Jenna and her family know, obviously. I like to keep my cards held tightly to my chest, so I ask that it’s not spread around. “I meant it when I said my life was complicated.” I turn to look up at him. “I hope you know I wasn’t just saying that, that night…as an excuse.”
He adjusts his stance so I can swivel my chair to face him. His head tips down to look at me over the slope of his nose, his normally sky-blue eyes nearly black in the shadows of the small room. I tilt my head back to maintain the contact, wanting to show him that I mean it.
“She has a son. His name is Jackson. He’s five and the fucking coolest kid there ever was. He was the product of some bad decisions with a shitty ex-boyfriend. When this happened, I went to court and petitioned to have guardianship of both Marissa and Jackson. So, I guess you could say I have a son. He calls me mom, which makes me smile and somehow breaks my heart at the same time.” It was an expected result I guess, since I insisted my sister move in with me when she found out she was pregnant and her piece of shit ex-boyfriend left town with her life savings.
It’s always been me and Marissa against the world, so it made sense to help her raise my nephew. Once he could talk, we both got in the habit of responding when he’d call out “momma.” It became a joke that he had two moms. He understands now that I’m his aunt, but considering we basically raised him as partners, he continued to call me mom.
Right now, these two are my whole world, and everything else falls to second place.
A knock sounds, and Jim steps back as the ER tech from earlier enters. “They’re ready to take her for her MRI now.”
I nod, leaning over to plant a kiss on Marissa’s gaunt cheekbone, whispering to her that I’ll be waiting for her when she gets back.
We watch in silence as they pause machines and unplug IV pumps. Her bed rolls out of the room and Jim stands again at my side, his warmth radiating around me. “How do you handle it all?”
“I don’t.” I stare at the crack in the door, listening to the sound of the gurney disappear down the hall. The thick bubbles rise in my chest, and I take a slow breath in and out of my nose, begging the tears to dry up, but it’s useless. “I’m so fucking tired.” My voice breaks with a sob, and I slap a sweatshirt covered hand over my mouth, embarrassment setting in at my breakdown.I’m exhausted, embarrassed, and so goddamn angry right now. Angry with the facility for not caring for her, angry at the drunk driver who put her in this position in the first place, angry with myself for feeling so out of control.
Jim doesn’t falter, doesn’t back away as I curl into myself, hugging my waist as I hunch over in the stool. Instead he rushes to me, falling to his knees and wrapping his strong arms around me, pulling me into his embrace and adjusting my head so I can rest on his shoulder, a silent invitation to let it out.
“I’m so fucking tired,” I sob, his arms gripping me tighter. “I wanted her to come home so bad, believe me, the last place I want her to be is in a strange facility, but I can’t do it.”
