The Rattled Bones(59)

But there is no heat. Only cold. I shake the embers free from my palm, trying to erase their words. IM HERE. I want the girl to be here and I don’t. Not with Gram.

Not now.

The air’s too thick, too frozen. It’s hard to breathe. I call for Gram, and the words drop out of the flames, searing through the layers of my flesh and setting fire into my bones.

IM HERE IM HERE IM HERE.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


When Gram wakes me, she has the doctor by her side. I sit up, see the sun fading from the day. The light is gone from the room, the air heavy warm with summer. I cast my eyes to the windowsill, to the rocking chair. I turn to the pillow beside me even as I know the girl isn’t here again.

“Hello, Rilla.” Dr. Brower Walsh stands at my bed, all lean giant with his tidy haircut and wide brown eyes. Doc Brower makes house calls for only a few families, people his grandfather treated when he was the area doctor and traveled from house to house. “Your grandmother tells me that you had an accident.”

My head throbs. “Yesterday.”

“You gave her quite a scare.” He holds up two fingers, looks to my neck. “May I?” I nod and he sets his fingers above my collarbone, looks down as he counts to some number in his head. “Good. Good.” Two hands now—all fingertips maneuvering around the contours of my neck, ears, skull. “Any headaches?”

I think of the burning light assaulting my brain, the strands of ember words searing there. That was no headache. “Earlier with Gram, I felt a little dizzy.”

“Her eyes practically rolled into the back of her head.” Gram’s voice is twisted, worry making her words low and shaky.

“Mmm-hmmm.” Dr. Brower removes a thin instrument from his bag. “I’d like to check your eyes. Follow the red light.” I do. My eyes track back and forth. Left to right. Right to left. “Do you happen to remember if you hit your head when you fell overboard?”

I remember so much, the moments playing in slow motion in my brain. The bubbles spraying around me as I was plunged into the deep. The race to cut through the rope binding my ankle. The girl yelling for me, telling me not to go. The underwater squeezing my lungs. The darkness that stretched on forever. “I didn’t hit my head.”

“No other issues since your spell in the water?”

“Not that I can think of.” Not that I can talk about.

“She had a fight with Reed just before she collapsed.” Gram is reaching.

“Ah.” Dr. Brower nods, checks the range of all my joints. Elbows, knees, ankles, wrists.

“How are you sleeping?’

“Not great.”

He presses the stethoscope behind my ears. “And your diet?”

“Good.”

He looks to Gram for confirmation. She nods. “No changes.”

He surrenders his stethoscope to its perch around his neck and takes my hand, his touch pressing gently against the burn that’s still healing at my wrist. “Is there anything else going on that you want to tell me about, Rilla?”

“No, nothing.”

“What happened here?” He taps at the very edge of my bandage.

“It was an accident. I singed it on my engine.”

“May I take a look?”

I nod, knowing he’s looking for signs of self-harm.

He removes the bandage slowly. “Yes, that’s healing nicely.” He wraps my wrist gently, expertly, before resting my arm at my side. “I think you may have experienced a stress-induced anxiety attack, or panic attack. That dizziness you felt, was it accompanied by a racing heart? Sweaty palms?”

“Yes.” Even though I know this isn’t anxiety. I’ve had a panic attack before, when my entire body filled with my heartbeat and I wanted to flee from my own skin. This isn’t that. This is my brain trying to make sense of something that isn’t as natural as the fight or flight instinct.

“I’ll prescribe you some antianxiety medication. You can take one when you feel like you’re getting overwhelmed. They do tend to make people drowsy, though, so I don’t recommend that you use them while out at sea, okay?”

“Okay.”

He takes out a small pad, scribbles some words before tearing off the top leaf of paper. “This medication might also help you sleep because it can calm the mind.” He pats my leg. “Take one only if you need it.”

Gram reaches for the prescription and I don’t see a hint of argument in her eyes, which scares me more than the visions. Normally Gram would argue that lavender or chamomile would be enough to calm my mind. Instead, Gram clutches the prescription to her heart, letting me know we are both in out of our depths.

Doc Brower throws closed the clasp on his traveling medicine bag, its leather worn enough to have been inherited from his grandfather’s practice. “A good night’s sleep is critical, Rilla. Especially after losing your father. The death of a loved one is one of the greatest stresses that the human mind can endure. Be easy on yourself. Try not to do too much.”

“I’ll try.”

Doc Brower reaches for my hand. “We need you to be good and healthy before you head to college and make this peninsula proud.”

His words are so close to something my father would say that they make sadness shoot through my core. “Yes, sir.”