Chapter 36
Still
Maryanne
Maryanne watched the rain, falling to roll dejectedly against the window pane of Alex’s hospital room. Falling as though it were just going through the motions. Much like Maryanne herself as she sat slumped at her friend’s bedside. The snow outside didn’t stand a chance, even against such a listless rain. There’d been less than a centimeter of the white stuff on the ground this morning, and it wasn’t the kind that stayed.
Maryanne dragged her gaze from the window to the monitors, tubes and other equipment surrounding Alex’s bed. She’d seen a lot of medical dramas on TV, but never had she seen a person plugged into this much technology. Of course, most of the characters on those dramas weren’t comatose, head-injured patients.
At least Alex was breathing on her own. A mechanical ventilator would have been too hard to take—listening to it, watching Alex’s chest rise and fall with each artificial breath.
Maryanne dropped her gaze from the forest of equipment to look at Alex herself. She looked so tiny in that bed. Tiny and defenseless, with her head swaddled in white bandages. Her trademark razor-cut bangs peeped out from under the bandages, but Maryanne was pretty sure they’d shaved parts of her head to suture her wounds. Thankfully, she hadn’t required brain surgery—no depressed fractures, no pieces of skull to be dug out of her brain. But Maryanne was thankful not just for Alex but for herself. A neurological patient they could handle at this newly-constructed, state-of-the-art local hospital. But a neurosurgical case would have been shipped out to a larger centre where they were equipped for neurosurgery, and Maryanne wouldn’t have been able to visit.
Sighing, Maryanne rubbed her temples. She’d been here for a couple of hours, and would be here a while yet. She and Brooke took turns spelling Mrs. Robbins, who’d flown in from Halifax as soon as Mrs. Betts had contacted her. Poor woman. She left Alex’s bedside only when Maryanne or Brooke could fill in, and only to snatch a few hours’ sleep at her motel, shower and eat. And of course, to phone home to talk to Alex’s dad, who’d opted to stay home with Alex’s little sister, to keep life as normal as possible for her.
Maryanne turned back to the window to watch the rain again. The low humming of the monitors had made their way into white noise. Even the murmur of voices and steps in the corridor beyond the closed door faded into the background as Maryanne got more and more lost in the rain. Lost in the time. Oh so lost in her thoughts.
With eyes sore from crying, she turned her gaze back to Alex’s white face.
She and Brooke had talked to so many nurses over the last three days since Alex had been admitted. And they all advised the same thing. “Talk to her. About big things and little things. She might be able to hear you, even though she’s in a coma.”
Coma. Maryanne still couldn’t believe it.
Okay, talk. She drew a deep breath. “So, Mr. McKenzie asked me about you,” she said. “And not in his usual snide way. A lot of the teachers wanted to know how you were, Alex. Lots of the kids too.”
Maryanne looked at the monitors. Glanced at the numbers as if they’d have something to tell.
“Your mom’s been great. Of course, you know that. She’s here all the time, right? Your dad and sis are worried about you. Your mom updates them a couple of times a day. Oh, and poor Mrs. Betts—she’s been a wreck since this happened. And so have I, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Maryanne’s eyes filled with tears all over again. For Alex’s sake, she tried her best to keep them out of her voice. “The police asked Brooke and me if we saw anything. Asked all kinds of questions about how we found you. But we didn’t have any answers. And... we didn’t tell them about Connie’s missing candlestick. How could we without telling... ” Maryanne lowered her voice, glanced at the door. “About Connie.
“But I did tell them that I heard something. That I woke up when I heard a thump that I thought was coming from the attic. And that I saw you weren’t in your bed at that time.” She paused. “Do you know what one officer asked me? She... she asked me why I didn’t go looking for you then, when I saw you were missing. You should have seen Brooke when she heard that.” Maryanne half smiled with the memory. “She just about took that cop’s head off. The officer actually apologized. She said of course, I had no way of knowing... that none of this was my fault. But, Alex... if only I had done something. Followed my instinct.” Maryanne’s fingers went to the ring on her right hand, the one her grandfather’s friend had given her, but there was no solace to be had from it. “If only I hadn’t failed you. But I did. I failed you... just like I failed Jason.”
Maryanne felt the emotions flood in. She couldn’t have stopped them if she tried. Not now, not with everything hitting so close to home, and the flood gates, too long dammed up, were opening. She was swamped by it, drowning in the grief and guilt.
Jason.
She’d not said that name out loud in so long. But now that that much—just the name—had tripped from her lips, more would follow.
She looked into Alex’s still face and prayed to God for her sake, Alex could somehow hear what she was saying. And though terrified to admit it, Maryanne half prayed that for her own sake, no one ever would.
“Jason was my baby brother. He was barely a year old when he died. And it was my fault that he did.”
Maryanne swallowed hard. She’d never said those words to anyone. “My parents went into Toronto for the evening. Something they did every so often. It... it was one of those big dinners Mom’s firm held, and she just had to be there. I’d babysat Jason before. It was no big deal. It... it should have been no big deal.
“He’d been whiny all evening, ever since Mom and Dad left around five. Really whiny and clingy. He wasn’t sick, just running a bit of a temp from teething. He wouldn’t take his bottle. Didn’t want his soother even. I put him to bed at 7:30—that was his bedtime—and that wasn’t a moment too soon for me. I was more than a little frazzled by the time I tucked him in. Tired of hearing him crying. Calling Me-anne, Me-anne, Me-anne over and over and over. Even after I put him to bed, I must have gone back into his room a dozen times. No, two dozen! But I couldn’t stop his crying. Couldn’t fix anything. It was coming on to nine o’clock and he still wasn’t asleep! So... so I decided to just let him cry it out. Cry himself to sleep. My grandmother Webb swears by that—and she raised six kids. He kept crying. Kept calling my name. Then I heard a thumping on the wall... some kind of a clatter.
“I thought he was throwing his crib toys again. Just having some sort of tantrum and kicking at his crib railing. And... I was so tired. So very tired of the crying. So I... I just didn’t go to him as he screamed and cried ‘Me-anne.’ Not even... when his crying changed.”
Maryanne could almost hear him. Almost hear that little voice calling out all over again tinged with fear. Gagging. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to hear him crying again, now. She would run to him like a bat out of hell. But it was her tears that were falling now, her voice that was hitching now in her throat. Her head down in her hands. “And... he did stop crying. I remember thinking, ‘Finally, he’s asleep!’ That I was right to let him cry it out. Wouldn’t Grandmother Webb be proud of me! Oh, how smart. I was the most amazing babysitter. World’s most brilliant big sister.
“I... I was wrong.
“You know how I feel the mood of rooms? Well, soon the feeling in that living room as I sat with my popcorn and soda changed. It felt colder. Depleted somehow, yet heavy. Oh Lord, strange as this sounds it felt as if the walls were watching me. When I realized it, I jumped off the couch and ran up the stairs. Something was wrong! I felt it. Not just a niggling feeling now—but a thumping, hammering one. Something was horribly wrong in the house.
“I saw him, Alex. I saw my baby brother. Tangled in the blinds. His little face was turned toward me as he dangled helplessly there and I’ll never forget that sight. I don’t know how I did it, but I snapped the blind cord with my bare hands and ran with Jason to my pa
rents’ room. I was already giving him CPR while I called 911. I begged my little brother—please, please be okay. Please, J-Bug, I begged him, please be okay. I screamed up to heaven!
“Heaven didn’t hear me. Jason... he wasn’t okay. He was gone. He was gone and his last thoughts were why wasn’t I coming to save him? Why didn’t I come to help? The last person he looked for was me. And I just let him choke to death.”
Maryanne looked into Alex’s unopening eyes. Looked at her unflinching face. She’d never spoken this sorrow to anyone. Never told another being this truth that shredded her soul.
“The paramedics came and raced my baby brother away in the ambulance. The police came, asked me questions, looked at the bedrooms. One officer stayed with me until my parents finally came home. But... my parents didn’t really come home, not like before. Mom and Dad were already lost to me. Lost to each other.
“Alex.” Maryanne lowered her gaze, unable to look her friend in the face as she confessed the rest. “I... I told my parents, the police, everyone that I didn’t hear any crying. Not so much as a peep. No one knew that he called out to me and I ignored his last cries. That I let him just die. I told the police, my parents and everyone else that I hadn’t heard a thing. The lie never got easier. It only got harder and harder every time I told it, and yet I could never untell it!
“It’s all my fault. I ignored the feeling and sat down on the couch. I was so damn mad at Jason. Tired of running up there all night. Tired of his crying and whining. And in a moment of hellish frustration I answered that feeling out loud with ‘oh so what!’. That’s exactly when the crying stopped, as if to catch those words on my lips forever and ever and ever. Of course I didn’t know something was wrong—that he was choking. But if I had just listened to that feeling, my brother would still be alive.”
Maryanne’s head shot up as she looked over at Alex. The tears kept streaming down. “And if I’d paid attention to that feeling the other night, maybe you’d be okay. Not in this coma! Maybe you’d never have been attacked. And if you die, Alex. If you... if you don’t make it back up from this... I’ll own that too.”
It was the footsteps behind her, not the swinging of the silent door that caught Maryanne’s attention. The nurse smiled kindly, yet sympathetically, at her. She had to know that she’d been crying, still Maryanne wiped a hand across her eyes.
The nurse went to Alex’s bedside. She checked Alex’s pulse, shone a light in her eyes. She changed the IV bag, made sure the lines were clear and then looked at the same monitors Maryanne had studied earlier, writing down the numbers on the chart at the foot of the bed.
“The numbers are higher than they were before,” Maryanne said.
The nurse answered, “A little higher.”
“Bad higher?”
“Just higher.” She smiled again. “Alexandra’s awfully lucky to have a good friend like you.” The door swung closed behind her.
Maryanne stood slowly, looked up at the clock on the wall and was surprised to see how much time had passed. She’d missed supper at Harvell House. Mrs. Betts would be having a fit. But there was something else she had to do. One last thing she had to tell Alex Robbins.
“We’re going ahead with our plans.” She turned to make sure the door was still closed, then turned back to Alex. “We’re going to dig up Connie’s body this weekend when everyone’s away. And everyone is going away. Betts is pretty insistent that no one is staying home after what happened to you in the attic. So Brooke and I are going ahead with the plan to stay at a motel, and then sneak back into the house. We have to do it now, before the snow comes to stay. Black casters against white snow... we’d lose so much of our ability to hide.
“We’re doing it for you too, Alex. Because we know you’d want us to finish this. To give Connie the chance to finally rest. Find peace.” She drew a last shuddering breath, leaned over and brushed Alex’s dark bangs back to kiss her on the forehead, just below the bandage. “Yeah, I know.” She laughed weakly. “You’d shoot me for that if you were awake.”
Shouldering her book bag and wiping her eyes one last time, she headed home to Harvell House.