Everything You Are(75)

“Hey,” she says, a hand on his forearm. “Hey. Stay with me.”

“Panic attack,” he says through stiff lips. “I don’t have time for this shit. I need to be here for her.”

“Breathe, Braden. Slow it down.”

She puts a hand on his chest and wills calm into him. Little by little, his breathing eases.

“What if she dies, Phee? I don’t think I can—”

“She’s not going to die.”

Please make it true, she thinks. Please.

The door opens, revealing a woman in surgical scrubs, blonde hair escaping from a clip that tries to hold it back. Both of them get to their feet, linked together by their hands and a single indrawn breath.

“Mr. and Mrs. Healey?”

Braden nods. Clears his throat but doesn’t speak.

“I’m Dr. Javitz.”

“How is Allie?”

“She overdosed, Mr. Healey. She’s responded to the naloxone—that’s something that counteracts an opiate overdose, so that’s encouraging. We’ve pumped her stomach and she’s breathing on her own. We’re running a tox screen, but it would be helpful to know what all she took.”

“I—I have no idea. She’s going to be okay, right? Please tell me the truth.”

“Do you have any prescriptions she might have taken?”

“None. I . . . had some Librium, but it was gone. My wife might have had something . . .”

The doctor looks at Phee.

“No, no, my wife’s dead.”

“Your daughter has been drinking, in addition to the pills. She’s got a blood alcohol of 1.2.”

“No alcohol in the house as far as I know.”

“The police did recover prescription bottles from the motel room. They belonged to the boy’s father, apparently. Oxycodone and Xanax.”

“God,” Braden says, and Phee isn’t sure if it’s a prayer or an epithet or both combined.

The doctor’s expression shifts to sympathy again. “I’m sure this is very hard to hear, Mr. Healey. There were two small bowls on the table. His was empty. Your daughter’s still contained pills, so she didn’t swallow all of hers.”

Phee should have said something. Should have told Braden about what really happened in the graveyard. The signs were all there. The girl lying on the grave in the rain, the note she’d written. God, she’s screwed this whole thing up so badly.

“We’ve had to put the boy on a ventilator, but I think your daughter will pull through without any extraordinary measures. Lucky it wasn’t hydrocodone—the acetaminophen in that is so hard on livers.”

“Can I see her?” Braden asks in a strangled voice.

“Yes, of course. If she remains stable over the next few hours, as I think she will, we’ll be moving her up to the general unit. Come with me.”

Allie looks very small and young lying on the stretcher in a room filled with machines and medical equipment. Her eyes are closed; her mouth gapes just a little. An IV runs into one arm. A tube inserted into one nostril connects to a suction bottle on the wall. Oxygen hisses through nasal prongs. Leads on her chest connect to a machine. A steady beeping indicates her heart rate. The IV machine clicks and whirs as it pumps fluids into her body.

Braden bends over her, brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes, takes her hand in both of his. Her eyes flicker open and try to focus.

“You’re here,” she whispers.

“I’m here.”

“Ethan?” she whispers.

“Alive.”

She sighs, and her eyes drift closed again. Slow tears trickle from the corners of her eyes, streaking her temples, dampening her hair.

“It’s all going to be okay, little bird,” Braden says. “We’ll figure it out.”

Phee feels she is one person too many in the room, a voyeur. Dashing the tears off her cheeks, she retreats, wordless, leaving the two of them alone together.





Chapter Twenty-Eight

BRADEN

Braden feels Phee’s absence the minute she leaves the room. She reminds him, in some ways, of his sister, Jo. Strong. Somebody he can lean on. Lilian was never that. She could be strong enough for strangers—she had to be as a nurse—but when it came to her own family, she was brittle, unable to bend. Even with the kids, it was all rules and schedules, everything laid out, neat and orderly and controlled. Anything that fell outside of the lines she drew sent her into meltdown.

Phee will be back, Braden tells himself, shifting all of his attention to Allie.

“Lucky,” the doctor said, and that word is a raft to cling to in a surging sea of shock and fear.

Lucky.

Not a word he has connected with himself in years, but Allie is still alive, and that’s the luckiest thing in the world.

Memory fragments surface and sink, none of them connected by a thread of logic or order or time.

Allie, barely more than a toddler, tucked between his legs and the cello, absorbing the music.

Allie, singing to herself when he tucked her in at night. “Sing the lullaby with me, Daddy.”

Her tiny, perfect face on the day she was born, and how he held her and marveled at the miracle of her existence, wondered who she would turn out to be.

An alarm goes off and a nurse bustles in, checks the IV, and adjusts something. “Nothing to worry about,” she tells him, but the sound sends his memory down another track.