The Last Hour (39 page)

I got up from the bed and stepped away from Carrie.
 

Sarah had been right. I was making it worse. Every time I tried to push through and communicate, every time I tried to let her know how much I loved her, I just made it that much harder for Carrie.

I needed to walk away and let her go. I needed to figure out what the hell was going on with me. I needed to know what to do next. And I didn’t have a clue.

I walked out of the darkened room.

In the living room, Ambassador Thompson sat, holding a glass of scotch. His hair was rumpled, a look of exhaustion and sadness on his face. He was speaking quietly with Julia and Crank. I didn’t know any of the three well. Crank and Julia were constantly on the road, and we’d only met twice, last New Year’s and then at Dylan’s wedding.

Dylan sat on the arm of a chair, his arm casually thrown across Alex’s shoulder. He wasn’t looking so good either, and it bothered me how his eyes kept returning to the scotch. Dylan didn’t drink and came off the painkillers after his leg injury far sooner than he should have. But every time Carrie’s dad raised that drink to his lips, Dylan’s eyes followed it.

I sighed. I’d have liked to shake him out of whatever dark space he was in. But I couldn’t, just like I couldn’t with Carrie. Because even though they hadn’t signed the death certificate and planted me in the ground yet, I was as good as dead. And the people I loved? They were going to be moving on without me.
 

I waved at Daniel, who was standing, looking alone.
 

“Come on, kid. Thanks for walking down here with me.”

I couldn’t stay in here. Somehow, with Sarah gone, it was worse.
 

Crazy as she was, she’d helped me stay balanced since the accident. I walked out of the hotel room and wandered down the hall, then found myself in the street, halfway between the hotel and the hospital. It was almost like I was being pulled, back toward my body, and I didn’t resist. Not after what I saw with Sarah. I didn’t know if there was a God. I didn’t know if there was an afterlife. I didn’t know shit. But I’d seen with my own eyes that she’d been sucking the life force right out of her own body.
 

I was starting to worry about me and Daniel, and what all this meant.

I didn’t know if there was any hope for either one of us, but if there was, I wasn’t going to make it any worse if I could avoid it.

I felt the tension in my body ease as I got closer and closer to the hospital. It was dark out, and probably past midnight, but traffic was heavy, cars rolling by with music blasting, crowds of young people spilling out of the bars and restaurants onto the sidewalk. I walked up the center of the street, ignoring the traffic. A car drove right through me, and I felt nothing. The cars drove away, their red taillights receding in the distance, and just down the street from me I saw a crowd of people, mostly college students, laughing around the sidewalk tables of a bar.

It was lonely out here, even with the kid walking beside me. Hideously lonely. At one time I would have casually walked up to the people outside the bar. I’ve always been the guy with a ready smile and plenty to talk about, the guy who was comfortable walking up to a bunch of strangers and ending up making a lot of friends. I watched them now, and it was like a wall between us.
 

I couldn’t help but ask myself the question. Did I believe that anything would come after this?

Twenty-four hours ago, I wouldn’t even have believed what was happening to me now. And that begged all kinds of questions. I’d never been a believer. Not in any religion. I went to church as a kid, with my parents, but it was just a place we went. Rituals, a part of life, but what bearing did it have on reality? None that I could see. An afterlife? Laughable.

Yet here I was. And this was nothing like any afterlife I’d ever heard of or thought about. As a matter of fact, the concept of wandering around like this forever ... unable to touch anyone ... unable to talk to anyone ... that was the stuff of nightmares and horror films. I’d last maybe a week or two before I turned into a gibbering maniac. If this is what death was like it’s no wonder people had such a horror of the idea of ghosts. They were probably all nuts, wandering around haunting everyone they had loved.

And what if it lasted even longer? What if I had to stay in this awful silence and watch Carrie grow old without me? What if I had to watch her die?
 

I closed my eyes and shook my head, trying to shake the hideous, maudlin thoughts that were crowding my brain.

One thing at a time. Right now I needed to focus on today, and the really big question ahead of me: was I even going to live another day?

With the thought, I found myself in the intensive care unit, my body laid out before me. Daniel followed along. The kid had adjusted to our new reality a lot easier than I had.
 

The rasp of the respirator. Inhale. Exhale. The cold, mechanical breath that was keeping my body alive. I studied the electronics tied to my body, the monitors that measured my pulse, my respiration, my oxygen levels. It was easier to study those numbers than it was to look at my ravaged body.
 

I shook my head, then wandered out into the hall. My room was two doors down from Sarah’s.
 

A touch of fear tightened my chest as I approached her room. Had I done the right thing? Forcing her back into her body? I didn’t know. I didn’t have any way of knowing. It was just a wild-assed guess that might have been the wrong one entirely.

She was laid out on the bed, connected to the monitors same as I had been, except that the tubes down her throat weren’t connected to a respirator. She was breathing on her own. I slumped against the wall, studying her. They’d covered her in a sheet up to her neck, but that didn’t disguise how grossly swollen her left leg was. When she woke up, that was going to hurt like hell.

Daniel sat in the chair next to her bed as I stood, studying her. The ward was quiet, visiting hours long since over, though I didn’t think that really applied to me. Sarah seriously looked like crap. The bruising all over the side of her face had taken on a purplish, almost black hue, yellowing just along the edges, and one of her eyes was swollen completely shut.
 

As I watched, her lips moved, just a little. Her head moved, just a hair, and her lips moved again too. Like she was trying to talk. Like she was dreaming.

I closed my eyes in relief. If she was dreaming in there ... if she was trying to say something ... then that meant ... just maybe ... that she was going to be okay.
 

“Ray?” Daniel said.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“I’m scared.”

I opened my eyes and turned toward him, then put my hand on his shoulder. “I hear you. What do you say we walk down to the pediatric ICU and check in on you?”

He nodded slowly, and we left Sarah and started walking.

“Is Sarah going to die?” Daniel asked.

I shook my head. “No ... I don’t think so. I think she’s back in her body and recovering. Did you see how her lips were moving?”

“Why did she attack that guy? It was scary.”

I sighed. “Long story, kid. But ... short version is, he’s kind of a bad guy, and he was being mean to Carrie. And well ... you know, Carrie and her sisters stick together.”

“Is what she did why all that stuff happened? The alarms?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

We were out in the hall now. “Sarah took you to the pediatric ICU, right? Which way?”

He pointed, and we walked.
 

After a couple of moments, I said, “Listen, I don’t want you to be scared. I know this is freaky, and you miss your mom and dad. But ... I promise I’ll do whatever I can to help. We’ll stick together, okay?”

“You’re not going to disappear? Like she did?”

I didn’t want to lie to the kid. But how could I know the answer to that? I settled for a half-answer. “I don’t plan to go anywhere kid, until I know you’re safe. All right?”

I swallowed after I said those words. My life was a web of promises, and it wouldn’t take much to pull the thread on them.

I felt a hand shaking my shoulder, and I wanted it to go away, so I slapped it, then a little harder, then a voice said, “Carrie, wake up.”

I mumbled something obscene, then felt, rather than saw, the light come on. It was red through my eyelids. “Leave me alone,” I groaned.

“Oh, sis, if I did you’d be mad later.”

I cracked my eyes open just a hair. My sister, Julia, was sitting on the edge of the bed, an unfamiliar bed, and she was touching my shoulder. For just a second, I was completely disoriented. What was Julia doing here? Where was here?

And then I remembered. The accident. Sarah, and Ray. And then I felt gorge rising up my throat, and I jumped up, untangling myself from the covers and ran for the bathroom. I just made it, throwing myself at the toilet, grabbing the bowl with both hands as a flood of stomach acid and bile came up my throat, burning my sinuses.

“Oh,
fuck,”
I said, feeling tears at my eyes. Then Julia was at my shoulder again. “Carrie, are you okay?”

I shook my head, the tears starting again, and then, I was vomiting again, out of control. Julia, practical as always, filled a glass with water, passed it to me as I finished and said, “Rinse.”

I leaned back against the tub. Christ. I stank. My clothes were dirty, and I’d gotten puke on my sleeve. I took a mouthful of the water, sloshed it around in my mouth, and spit it out into the toilet. Julia flushed it, then sat down on the floor across from me.

This was the first good look I’d had of her. She’d let her hair go natural again earlier this year, something I approved of wholeheartedly because she had lush, wavy hair I would have killed for. She looked tired, but not exhausted, and wore casual jeans and a black t-shirt.

“You okay?” she asked. “Think you’re all done?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I think so.” I took another sip of the water, this time swallowing it. My head was splitting. I rested it against a knee.

“When did you get in?” I asked.

“About 1 a.m.”

I nodded. “And what time is it now?”

“A few minutes after five. We’re going to grab some breakfast before we go to the hospital. And no arguments from you. You look like death, have you even been checked out by a doctor?”

I swallowed. “Just a preliminary exam.”

“And they didn’t do a CT scan or anything? You need to get checked out, you might have a concussion. How many times have you vomited?”

I shook my head then whispered, “I’ve been too busy. Ray, and Sarah…”

“Carrie, you can’t help them if you aren’t taking care of yourself.”

I held a hand out, shaking my head. “I don’t want a CT scan, Julia, I’m fine.”

“That’s enough. Stop acting like a child, Carrie. When we get back to the hospital you’re getting checked out.”

I felt my lip curling toward my chin, and was horrified to discover tears suddenly running down my face, uncontrollably, and then I sobbed and said, “I can’t get a CT scan, Julia. I think I might be pregnant.”

I buried my face in my knees and wrapped my arms around my legs, and suddenly her arms were around me. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. I’d avoided even thinking about this since yesterday morning. But I’d been feeling sick, nauseous, for a couple weeks. That wasn’t from a concussion. I didn’t get sick often, either. I had planned to tell Ray Saturday night, and go get a stupid home pregnancy test. But then the accident, and there was no Saturday night, no Ray, no nothing.

I couldn’t be pregnant. Not now. Not if I was going to lose Ray. Please, I thought, please don’t let me lose him. And then I was crying again, sobbing uncontrollably, snot and tears running everywhere. Julia just held me and crooned in my ear like I was a little girl and rocked me back and forth.

J
ulia was kind enough to fend off everyone else
while I cried myself out. But I couldn’t stay like that all day. I made her promise not to say anything to anyone else. Then I finally got up, washed my mouth out again and took a steaming hot shower in hopes of clearing my foggy head. All I could think about was the strange, troubling dreams I’d had, dreams where Ray was there, but wasn’t. Now that I’d acknowledged ... to myself, to someone else ... the possibility that I might be pregnant—it changed everything.
 

I was terrified to go back into that hospital. I was terrified to leave this room. I was terrified I was going to start the day married and end it a widow, and all I could see was darkness ahead. And so I stayed in the shower longer than normal, just letting the hot water run through my hair, down my face, down my body. As if staying in here could put off the reality I was going to find outside.

Finally, I turned off the water and wrapped myself in a towel, then wandered into the room.

I blinked. Someone, probably Dylan, had gone out to the condo and packed a bag for me. My clothes, which had been covered in broken glass and snot and blood and vomit ... were gone. And I never, ever wanted to see them again.