The Art of Losing(24)

“Audrey is awake,” he said. His voice was so quiet, I could barely hear him. “She opened her eyes a few minutes ago.”

His attempt to hold in his emotions faltered. He reached out for Mom, opening up his free arm to me. I ran toward him and fell against his shoulder. But the teary family hug was over almost as quickly as it started; Dad “the doctor” started trying to be rational, to talk us out of being too hopeful.

Yes, Audrey had awakened once, but it didn’t necessarily mean she would wake up again if she slipped into unconsciousness. The key to managing the situation was to have realistic expectations. If she did wake up, she might have difficulty walking and speaking, she could have amnesia, or a number of other potential issues.

“Just let us have this moment of hope, okay?” I told him. “You don’t have to always be the voice of realism.”

“Why do you think I read those articles about recovery out loud?” Mom added, getting out of bed. “I’m just trying to counteract your dad’s practicality. I’ve given up on making up for the bad jokes.”

“Hey!” he protested, but he was smiling. “I’m hilarious.”

I allowed myself a hopeful smile as I ran to my room to get dressed.

Audrey was asleep again by the time we got to the hospital, but lucky for us, Keisha was waiting. She’d been on duty when Audrey opened her eyes; her EEG had tracked the change and alerted Keisha at the nurses’ station.

“I rushed to the room,” Keisha told us. “And I took her hand and told her she was in the hospital. I told her she was going to be fine, but that there’d been an accident.”

Mom huffed through her nose. No doubt she’d wanted to tell Audrey that herself.

“I told her that her family was on their way. That you all were going to be so happy to see her,” Keisha added. She dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. I got the feeling that she didn’t see people waking up from comas very often.

The doctor arrived then, so we moved to the hallway while he explained what was going to happen next. Which was, essentially, “wait and see.”

I stayed with Audrey all morning watching movies while Mom and Dad went to work. They made me promise I would call as soon as Audrey did anything, but Mom stopped by the hospital near lunchtime anyway.

I caught a whiff of her perfume—spicy, with a hint of money—when she bent to kiss Audrey’s forehead.

“Since so far you have thwarted my attempts to find you gainful employment for the summer, can you watch Spencer tomorrow?” Mom asked. “Aunt Tilly needs to go to see a client out of town, and he keeps refusing to go to his day camp.”

My aunt visited her agoraphobic clients in their homes. A few times a week, she traveled as far as a couple hundred miles away from northern Virginia. So Spencer spent a lot of time with us or with babysitters or, now, at camp.

I couldn’t blame Spencer for not wanting to go to camp. I may have had fun, but Audrey had trouble with it when she was his age, and I remembered how homesick she was at first. And unlike Audrey, who had little trouble making friends, Spencer could barely speak to other kids his age.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Can I take him to a baseball game?”

“Okay,” she said, but not without raising her eyebrows in surprise. Her idea of fun did not include baking in the sun watching the Nationals while the humidity made it feel like an overpriced steam bath you could eat in. But Mom recorded the nightly news, so clearly there are many definitions of fun.

When her eyes locked on mine, though, I could tell this was not the end of the conversation.

“While your sister is recovering,” she said, “she’ll need help around the house and someone to take her to physical therapy and things like that. But in the meantime, I really do think you should get a job. At least do some babysitting or volunteer somewhere. Something you can put on your college applications.”

In my head, I added a notch to the “College Application Mentions by Mom” list I’d started on the last day of school. This was number seventeen. But what stood out in Mom’s statement was what she hadn’t said. In her insistence that I be available to help Audrey recover was a message: “This is your fault. You owe her this.”

“I’ll talk to Tracey at the White Magnolia. I heard she needed a new part-time salesperson,” Mom added.

I couldn’t keep the sneer off my face. I was absolutely not going to spend all summer helping middle-aged women try on boring clothes that cost more than my entire lifetime’s wardrobe.

“Please don’t,” I said. “I’ll start looking, I swear.”

She leaned down to kiss me on her way out but paused a couple inches away and sniffed. Her face transformed immediately.

“Harley. Please don’t make me tell you to stop smoking,” she said. “Don’t I have enough to worry about?” She gestured needlessly to Audrey’s inert body next to us.

Damn it. Well played, Mom.

I wanted to roll my eyes. But I couldn’t. She wasn’t wrong. I mean, I didn’t even like smoking that much; I just needed something to keep my hands busy and my mouth from screaming. But now, on top of being soothing and a nice distraction, it was also an excuse to see Raf.

“Okay,” I whispered, ashamed.

“And the job?” she prompted, clearly not convinced by my half-hearted appeal.