You'd Be Home Now (6)

I feel sick.

“No,” I say. “I don’t want to.”

“Very common,” Dr. Cooper says. “You’re afraid it will break again? Very understandable. But I assure you, it won’t.”

“You can do it, Emmy,” Maddie says softly. She puts her hand on my shoulder. “You can.”

“I can’t,” I say. “I’m too afraid. I’m…”

Dr. Cooper slides his hand under the back of my knee. “A very awful thing happened to you, Emory, something much larger than you can possibly articulate right now. But the first step for you to move forward and heal is bending this knee. Making yourself healthy.”

I close my eyes.

It’s so stupid. Joey is somewhere in the wilds of Colorado hiking and talking and doing god knows what so he comes back better, Joey 2.0, and Candy is never coming back again and here I am, afraid to bend my damn knee. The simplest thing in the world.

“Just a little bit. You may feel some discomfort.”

Dr. Cooper’s fingers press the underside of my knee, pushing up gently. His hands feel overly cold and creepy.

“Emmy,” Maddie whispers.

My leg is everything that happened in that car and I will carry it around forever, literally and figuratively. I should feel lucky to be alive. I didn’t overdose, like Joey. Or go through the windshield, like Luther.

Or die, like Candy.

I jerk my knee up. My knee feels like fire and I groan.

“You did it!” Maddie claps her hands.

“Pain level,” Dr. Cooper says. “A scale of one to ten.”

    “I don’t know,” I say, breathing hard. The pill is tapering off. “Maybe five. I don’t know.”

“All right. I’ll write you a prescription for more Vic—”

Maddie shakes her head, cutting him off. “Thanks, Dr. Cooper, but our mom wouldn’t like that.”

“I’m sorry?”

Maddie sighs. “You know, our brother. He’s in rehab. She’s already guarding the prescription from the hospital with a tight fist.”

I watch Dr. Cooper’s face shift from confusion to understanding. Mill Haven is small. Of course he’s heard.

“Yes, that’s right. Well, I’m glad he’s getting the help he needs, but Emory’s pain is her own. Certainly, her medication usage can be monitored, but she shouldn’t go without just because—”

“You don’t know our mother,” Maddie says. “Or maybe you do.”

They stare at each other.

“Well.” Dr. Cooper clears his throat. “Let’s try again, Emory. A few more times before you go. I see from your chart that your mother’s arranged for in-home physical therapy starting next week, and I’ll give you some instructions on knee care and strength exercises. And if you change your mind, I’ll send you home with a scrip, just in case.”



* * *



—

I watch from a chaise lounge in the backyard as Maddie does somersaults off the diving board, bouncing into the air and then curling into a tight ball, barely splashing as she enters the water. It’s sticky outside and I flap my T-shirt to get some air on my body.

    As Maddie slithers and sidles through the pool like an eel, I sneak a look over the brick wall separating our yard from the Galt’s yard. Let my eyes travel up the ivy snaking the siding to the corner window, the one that’s right across from my own bedroom window, a room I haven’t been in for weeks, because of my knee. Sixteen stairs from the first floor to the second.

The blind is still drawn. He’s not home from pitching camp yet.

I thought he might visit me in the hospital. Break our rule. Just that once. But he didn’t.

I check my new pink phone. I start to open my texts and then, before I can stop myself, I’m switching to Instagram to check his feed. I can’t help it. I want to see his face. He’s like my drug.

There he is, smiling, in sunglasses and his ball cap, the picture of glossy, perfect health.

Feelin great, he posted.

And then, beneath that, a tornado of messages from girls. Triple hearts, smiley faces, fire. Ur so hot, Gage. Gage you’re the best. Miss you. You are fire. DM meeee.

My body fills with heat.

I wonder what those girls would say if they knew I’d kissed that perfect mouth. A lot. Not very far from this chaise lounge, in fact. Just over there in our pool house.

You are perfect, CuteCathy commented.

Scrumptious, said PristTine.

I look at Gage’s plump mouth again.

It’s nice this way, he said the last time, his fingers tracing my neck. Just you and me, this way. Private. Our own thing.

An ache runs through me.

“You are bright red. Whatcha looking at there?”

Maddie’s voice startles me. She’s standing above me, squeezing water from her thick hair, the droplets landing on my bare legs.

    “Nothing.” I press the phone against my thigh.

“Ah, secrets.” She winks. “I get it. Well, you deserve some fun. But I’ll get it out of you. I have my ways.” She starts tickling me and the pink phone slides off my thigh and onto the damp patio. She snatches it up and starts tapping.

“Maddie!” I make a swipe to take the phone back, but I’m not quick enough.