I see him when he walked for the first time, his steps so shaky and new, toddling toward me with outstretched arms as he trusted me to catch him.
I see him on his first day of kindergarten, as he waited outside the school with his backpack that was bigger than he was and his hair carefully combed.
I see him when he got his driver’s license and he came in the door waving it above his head like a trophy.
I see him as he left for prom, wearing his tuxedo and shiny shoes, trying to hide from me that his heart was broken over Elin.
I swallow hard, because that was then. Now my heart pounds and only a minute has passed but it’s been the longest minute of my life.
Please, please, please.
On the intercom, the “Rock-a-Bye Baby” charm sounds again, and there’s another life in the hospital.
Please, God, don’t take Beck to balance it out.
Please, please, please.
The nurses and doctors work fast and furiously, and their words blend together. They work like an oiled machine, efficiently and quickly, and I know they’ve done this before.
But this time, it’s my son, and they can’t fail.
They’ve been working and working, and they’re getting discouraged. I can tell and I’m terrified.
Jessica looks over her shoulder and her forehead is sweaty, and her eyes give her away.
She’s scared.
They’re failing.
“Please,” I whisper, and she sees.
She turns away, her hands on Beck’s chest, and she keeps pumping.
“Clear,” someone calls again, and everyone steps back. Beck’s chest lurches upward again, then again.
The monitors are silent, the green line still flat.
A tear streaks down my cheek, onto my lip.
“Please,” I whimper, closing my eyes.
And then.
Then.
As my eyes flutter closed, there’s a beep. Short and loud in the room, above the chaos.
Then another.
The medical team cheers and I open my eyes, and Beck has a pulse.
It’s 10:44 p.m.
forty
BECK
MY EYELIDS ARE CONCRETE CURTAINS, and I can’t lift them.
But I’m in the hospital bed again. Of that, I’m sure. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep this time.
My mom and Sam and Kit are murmuring again, but I can’t understand the words.
And then I see light.
Bright light.
My eyes are open.
I’d done it and hadn’t even realized.
“Ow,” I mutter out loud when I move my hand, and I look down to find a needle embedded in my skin, and a tube taped to my arm. Everything hurts now. I’m no longer numb. I’m dizzy and my head feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, and my vision is just a little bit blurry, and the lights are just a little too bright.
My mom is next to the bed. Elin is on the other side, and they both see my eyes open at the same time.
Everything happens at once—they all leap toward me, grabbing at my hands and exclaiming my name. My mom is the closest, the most insistent.
“Beck, oh my God,” she cries. “I didn’t know if you’d . . . oh my God, you’re awake.”
Her shoulders shake and my eyes are dry and I am not in my right mind. My thoughts are fuzzy and I know they’re giving me something.
“Mom,” I manage to say.
My tongue is wood, but I try to wet it, to limber it up.
Elin hugs me gently, her arms around my neck. My eyes meet hers and she is so warm and sincere.
“I’m . . .” I tell her. It’s hard to speak. My tongue is uncooperative.
“Stop,” my mom says. “Don’t. We know. We’re just thankful you’re here. Aren’t we, Elin?”
She nods and I’m grateful too. But I’m also scared. Why is that?
I think on that, and think on that, and then I remember.
Angel.
“Mom,” I stutter. “Angel.”
Mom pulls back and wipes her eyes and looks at me. “Do you really think you saw an angel, baby?”
That’s when I know; I see it in her eyes. She thinks I was hallucinating when I was high. I shake my head and it hurts.
“No. There’s a girl,” I tell her, my words slow and thick. “Her name . . . Angel. She . . . overdosed. We . . . find . . . her.”
My mother’s head snaps up and she’s terrified. I see it in her eyes, because she’s scared for a girl she doesn’t even know.
“Where was she?” she asks quickly, and though it takes me a minute, I manage to tell her where the warehouse is. Then she’s talking to Kit and he calls the police and they are all going to look.
It happens so fast, but I’m satisfied that they’re listening to me.
I close my eyes, just for a minute, to wait.
forty-one
NATALIE
BECK DOESN’T STAY CONSCIOUS VERY long, but it was long enough.
He woke up.
I’m limp as I wrap my head around that, as I thank God for that.
I’m limp as I relay the information about the girl named Angel to Kit, and he speaks to the police.
I’m limp as I wait, as Elin and I continue to stand vigil.
“Angel was a girl?” she asks, and I can hear that she is afraid. Afraid Beck had found someone else.
“Don’t worry about it right now,” I advise her, still clutching my son’s hand. “The police are going to find her. I’m sure it’s not what you’re thinking.”
I squeeze Beck’s fingers, tracing them with my own, memorizing the way they lay between mine.
“Do you think he was living there? In a warehouse?” Elin asks, and her voice is razor thin. “Do you think he was living with a girl?”
“I don’t know, honey.” I’m honest with her. “I have no idea.”
The not knowing is actually the worst. Every minute of Beck’s life, it has been my job to know. And now I don’t know anything.
Kit comes back into the room. “The police are headed down there to look,” he tells me. “I think I’ll go too.”
“Thank you,” I murmur, and my eyes meet his. There is something there, for a second. He’s hesitant. Tender. Sweet. He doesn’t know how to act around me, and I certainly don’t know how to act around him.
When he leaves, he does so in a slight breeze of Old Spice.
“Don’t hurt him, Nat,” Sam tells me. “I don’t really know what all’s gone on, but I know you, and I know you don’t want to hurt him.”
“I don’t know what I want,” I tell her simply. “But no. I never want to hurt Kit.”
How can I explain to my sister what it feels like—to feel guilty for even looking at another man? To not want to, yet to want to?
I hope she never knows what it’s like . . . this agony of conflicting emotion, of guilt and of need. It’s a perfect storm for losing one’s mind.
A doctor comes in and pokes around at Beck.
“He’s a lucky man,” he tells me, and it takes me a second to realize he’s talking about my boy. As a man. I swallow hard at that. “The swelling has gone down, and the effects from his stroke seem to be minimal. I believe he should make a full recovery.”
He scribbles on a chart and then turns to me.
“I have some recommendations for a rehab facility, if you’d like.”
My fingers are shaky as I reach out to take the pamphlets from his hand. “It’s imperative that he seek treatment when he’s ready,” the doctor tells me. “He was lucky this time. He might not be so lucky the next.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Sam answers for me, and she’s so sure in that conviction.
I’m not. I’m terrified. I’ve seen it spiral out of control before. If it happened once, it could happen again.
The doctor leaves and we sit in silence.
Beck no longer has a ventilator breathing for him in that rhythmic whoosh, so it’s eerily qu
iet but for our breathing and the metallic scrape whenever someone moves their chair over the floor.
When Kit finally returns, the odd look on his face says everything.
“There wasn’t a girl,” he says quietly. “We looked everywhere. There was no sign of another person at all. No blood, no clothing, nothing.”
“Im . . . possible,” Beck says, and I turn to see his eyes open. They’re hollow still, dark, and filled with pain. “She was . . . there. She over . . . dosed.”
“Is it possible that someone moved her, or took her to another hospital?” I ask. Kit shakes his head.
“It’s unlikely. The police called the hospitals. There’s been no one admitted, and they don’t have any reports of an overdose like hers.”
Beck closes his eyes.
The weight of this new reality crushes each of us in the room.
There was never a girl. Beck had been so high, he’d imagined her all along.
forty-two
BECK
WHEN I WAKE THE NEXT morning, my mother and Elin are still with me, although Elin has changed her clothes.
My first thought is that my brain is less sluggish now, and also of Angel.
Angel.
My chest tightens with the story they told me . . . that she’d never been.
That seems impossible. Even for me, when half of the time I couldn’t decide what was real and what wasn’t. Among all of that, Angel had always been the realest thing. She’d grounded me to the earth and held me there.
Only . . . it turns out . . . she hadn’t. Was I actually Angel all along? The things that Angel had to do—and I cringe at the thought—was that me?
No. It can’t be true. I know what I know.
“Beck,” Elin exclaims, and her hand almost crushes mine. “How do you feel?”
I examine that.
I feel sad. Empty. Discouraged. Crushed. Confused.
“Okay,” I tell her, and the word rolls more easily off my tongue than before. The muscle is more cooperative, more willing to speak.
“You do?” my mom asks, and her eyebrow is raised.
“Okay enough,” I amend. “I still don’t understand about Angel.”
Their faces are both blank, carefully controlled. They don’t know what to say about Angel.
“So . . . tell me about her,” Elin finally says, and I think she can tell I want to talk about it. “She was a girl, obviously.”
Her face is worried, which is odd, since they’ve already decided she wasn’t real.
“It wasn’t like that,” I tell her. “Angel is a friend.”
They wait for me to say more, and Elin looks oddly relieved that I didn’t have an imaginary romantic relationship.
“Angel is a girl,” I insist, and stare out the window. “She has short hair that’s jagged because she cut it herself, but she kept me alive. And I know you say she wasn’t real, but she was the best person I’ve ever met.”
My voice trails off because my heart knows she’s dead. I didn’t imagine it. I watched her die. Winston and I watched her die. Oh my God—Winston. “Mom, there was a dog, my dog, our dog.”
My mother squeezes my hand and she doesn’t know what to say, because what is there?
Kit bursts into the room and I can tell he’s tense as his eyes meet mine. His are cautious, worried.
“Did you find a dog?” my mother asks him.
Kit nods. “Yeah. There was a scraggly little dog there. He’s in my truck—I couldn’t bring him into the hospital. I’m bringing him to the shelter but wanted to see Beck first.”
“I want to see him,” I say, and I’m adamant. “Sneak him in. Please. I have to make sure he’s okay.”
Angel will kill me if he’s not.
“Beck, it’s against the rules,” my mom starts to say but I’m panicking and she grabs my hand. “Okay, it’s okay,” she says. “We’ll sneak him in for a minute.”
She gazes at Kit and he nods. “I’ll be right back.”
He’s true to his word. He comes back within minutes with Winston hidden in his coat.
My mother stands watch at the door as Kit bends to put him in my lap. I struggle to sit and Winston laps at my face and he’s wagging his whole body and I grab him into a hug.
I bury my face in his dirty fur and I’ve never been so happy to see anything in my life.
I’m crying and didn’t realize it.
Kit hands me a tissue and I shove it around my nose.
“I need to keep this dog,” I tell my mother. “Please.”
“Of course,” she agrees immediately, even though she doesn’t like dogs.
“Thank you,” I whisper. She nods.
I stroke Winston’s head and I think I smell Angel on his fur, although I guess I’m imagining it, because they say she wasn’t real.
I turn my head and squeeze my eyes shut, and Kit takes Winston.
“I’ll take him with me,” he promises. “No shelter. I’ll keep him safe until you come home.”
I nod because I trust him, because Kit never lies.
He leaves and my mother stays.
“I’m here now,” she croons to me, and I’m wrapped inside her arms. “I’m with you now.”
Something inside of me lets go, of my past hurts and my past anger. It’s irrelevant now. All that matters is now and this moment and trying to forget the pain of losing Angel. Because whether they say she was real or not, she was real to me. I watched her die. I feel her loss.
I’ve got to swallow it down. I can’t deal with it.
But then again, I decide, as I stare at my mom’s shaking hand, forgetting about pain, burying it deep, hasn’t done me any favors. That path led to this hospital bed.
I’ll have to figure out a different way to handle things, and I’ll need everyone’s help for that.
I clutch my mom’s hand and close my eyes.
forty-three
NATALIE
BECK STAYS IN THE HOSPITAL for two more weeks.
He’s undernourished and weak, and they have to build him back up. They have him on medication to help the withdrawal, but it’s still a struggle for him.
Beck is the one who has to do the heavy lifting. He’s the one who lives with the constant need to use. All I can do is be there for him.
I sit with him when he sweats and shakes, and I sit with him when he’s dark and low.
“It’s never going to get better,” he tells me today, and his face is dark and his eyes are hollow. “What’s the point of being sober if I feel like this?”
“It will get better,” I assure him, even though I don’t know when. “Just give it time. Just some time.”
He tells me about Angel, about the warehouse, about how she rescued Winston. He speaks of her with such reverence that even though I know she was a product of Beck’s drug use, I think she really may have been an angel. I tell him that.
He smiles. “She’d hate that,” he confides. “She was very self-deprecating.”
“What would she say about you going to rehab?” I ask curiously. He immediately nods.
“She’d be all for it. The last time we used . . . it was supposed to be the last time. We weren’t going to buy any more. It was her idea. She wanted to move away, get a new start, get clean. She had a hard life. And it never got better.”
That breaks my heart a little, that Beck would imagine someone so troubled. It’s a good insight into where he really was, where he had been.
“I have to go home and shower,” I tell him. “Is there anything you need when I come back?”
He shakes his head. “No. I’m fine, Mom.”
His hair is damp around his forehead, and I hate to leave him. But I can’t stay every waking minute. I have to bathe sometimes too.
When I get home, Winston greets me at the door.
He’s been groomed and his fur isn’t in his eyes anymore and they stare up at me, big and soulful and brown.
“What kind is he?” Dev asks, because he’s coming in the
door from the bus.
“The vet says he’s a Yorkie mix of some sort.”
“I’m glad we’re keeping him,” Dev says, bending to scratch his chin. “How’s Beck today?”
“He’s good. Stronger every day.”
At first, I’d tried to hide Beck’s issues from the kids, but that wasn’t smart. Kids are intuitive, and they know more than we think.
“Good,” he says. He scoops up Winston and heads upstairs. “I’ve got spelling words.” Of course he does. He’s competing in the county spelling bee next month. Matt would burst with pride if he were here.
I’m sitting in Beck’s room when Kit finds me.
“What time is it?” I ask when he sits next to me on the bed.
“Five. What do you want to do for dinner?”
Kit has been here every day, day in and day out. I’m not sure where we’ll go from here, or even what I want, but his presence gives me comfort. But I do know that Kit will always be in my life, in one form or another.
“Let’s get takeout for Beck,” I suggest, and Kit grabs my hand.
“Did you find out when they’re transferring him to rehab?” he asks quietly. He knows that when they do, I won’t be able to see him for a week. It’s rehab policy.
“Tomorrow,” I reply. “It’s a good thing.”
“Yes, it is. He’s strong enough, Nat. He can do this.”
I nod and Kit pulls me into a hug, and I rest there against his chest. His heart beats and it soothes me into calm.
“He can do this,” I repeat finally.
Kit smiles. “Yes.”
I hear the commotion before I see it, but I hear Dev and Annabelle shriek and clamor about, and I hear Beck.
My head perks up, and Kit and I scramble down the stairs to find him in the kitchen with the kids.
“What are you . . . what are you doing here?” I stammer.
He looks so much healthier now already—I can’t help but notice because he’s backlit by the evening light from the window.
He stares me in the eye.
“I need to take care of Angel.”
I’m confused and I don’t know what he’s saying, because we’ve already told him that she wasn’t real. Doesn’t he understand?