In This Moment

7

The dream is restless, terrifying, and all I want to do is get away from the scene in front of me. But it isn’t the accident I’m dreaming about—at least not today’s accident.

I’m trembling, my tank top and denim miniskirt soaked and clinging cold to my body. It’s raining and dark—aside from two beams of light that seem to be pointing straight up into the sky. I want to run, to get out of the storm, but as I turn in circles I see wide-open fields, a long and empty road stretched in front of me. It’s then I notice someone, walking on the road toward me. I squint, wipe at my eyes, taste raindrops when I open my mouth to shout to this person. It doesn’t occur to me to be scared. But my body is humming with something...adrenaline, I think, though I can’t sort out why my muscles seem to know something is wrong, but my mind doesn’t.

A few moments later the person is close enough for me to see who it is. Paige Holden. My high school best friend. Relief ripples through me, and I start laughing with release.

“Paige!” But my mouth is full of water, the rain everywhere, and I choke a little. Coughing, I shout again. “Paige!” I’m relieved she’s here, but she doesn’t seem to hear my cries despite being only a few feet away. She’s also soaked to the bone but isn’t doing anything to wipe the steady stream of water running down her face.

I’m about to call her name again when the words die in my throat. She’s stopped walking—too far for me to reach if I stretch my arms as far as they’ll go, but she’s close enough I can see everything, the two streams of light, which I now realize are headlights, illuminating her. Oh. God.

Her blond hair, once so pretty and the envy of most of our friends, is caked with rusty red clumps, the usually bone-straight strands tangled in knots. The rain seems to have done nothing to rid her shirt—which used to be a pretty pale blue eyelet tank—of the dark crimson blotches covering its surface. I suddenly understand all the red is blood, her blood. But it’s her head, specifically the shape of it, that makes my legs give out. I didn’t notice before, the shadows that followed her while she walked toward me hiding it, but now I see what’s missing. The left side of her head—including one beautiful blue eye—is gone. Just...gone.

I wake myself screaming. Taking a few deep breaths I try to calm the rattling inside me, but the image of Paige’s face hovers around the edges of my consciousness, and I think I’m going to be sick.

It has been twenty-eight years since that horrible night, and nearly as many since Paige came to me while I slept.

And now it’s happening again.

* * *

Two days after Ryan slid the engagement ring on my finger—only a week after my twenty-fifth birthday—was when I learned my mom had breast cancer.

Back then we had a weekly, standing dinner with my parents: Sunday night, seven o’clock. A free meal was always welcome as we were broke—Ryan in pre-med at Tufts and me working a front desk job at an orthodontist’s office, my eye on teacher’s college by the fall if we could afford it. Ryan proposed on a Friday evening and though I was bursting to call my mom moments after, I decided to wait until our dinner. So I sat on our exciting news for two days, having no idea my mom was sitting on some news of her own.

We arrived ten minutes early, like always, because for my parents, showing up on time meant you were already late. I wore my engagement ring but kept my hand in my skirt’s pocket when Dad opened the door. He seemed distracted and tired, his face drawn and the buttons on his shirt mismatched by one hole, which was out of character. He was always immaculately dressed, even for a trip to the gas station. But I assumed he was merely work-weary—being a high school principal wasn’t an easy job, teenagers masters at creating drama-fueled challenges—and that mom was too busy getting ready for dinner to notice.

After Dad poured our drinks, Danny, my younger brother, regaled us with stories from middle school, while Mom’s famous black bean and cilantro cream enchiladas warmed in the oven. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. I was sitting on my left hand, had been careful to keep the ring out of view. A lull in the conversation came, and I opened my mouth to shout the words, “We’re engaged!” when my mom suddenly stood, her small shoulders rolling back and her chin held high.

“I have cancer.”

I don’t remember doing it, but suddenly I was standing as well, facing her. “What?” The word, barely a whisper. My hands shook, the beautiful, if not tiny, cushion-cut diamond ring on my finger forgotten.

A lot happened all at once. Dad started crying. So did I. Danny fetched a box of tissues, seeming more mature than his thirteen years, and pushed them into our hands. Mom assured us, in her best nurse’s no-nonsense tone, she would be fine. Ryan stood beside me and I clutched on to him.

Though Mom’s cancer was advanced, there were decent treatment options. Plenty of people survived cancer these days, so why not Mom, who was tenacious and well-equipped for what lay ahead?

But those three words, “I have cancer,” shook something loose in me, took my confidence and spun it around like socks in a dryer. My mother was my rock, a small woman with a huge personality and the ability to put my brother and me in our places with only a glance. Because of her I knew how to throw a proper dinner party, I understood being kind was as important as being smart or successful, and that she would always be there for me. Without her I would not have survived the aftermath of Paige’s accident—along with a million tiny heartbreaks in my childhood, like when my beloved guinea pig, Sherman, died and when Johnny Saxon dumped me after I gave him my first kiss. My mother carried me through the grief that threatened to swallow me whole after Paige died—I knew I needed her as much as an adult as I did as a child.

I wanted to be stoic, like she, my dad and Danny were that evening, but her diagnosis pulled the rug right out from under me. To this day I’m still embarrassed by how selfishly I took her news. One of my first thoughts upon hearing she’d need chemotherapy and would likely lose her hair was to hope it would grow back in time for the wedding. I couldn’t cope, so instead focused on the small, unimportant things, like taking wedding pictures with a bald mother-of-the-bride.

Six months later Ryan and I were married—in a no-frills ceremony at city hall, Mom wearing a gorgeous wig—and I quit my job to take care of her a month after that when it became clear the cancer was winning. Dad had Danny to worry about, plus he had to keep working to pay the bills, and I needed to be useful. But there was only so much a daughter’s love and devotion could do, and much too soon for all of us, Dad and I were picking out a granite headstone, Danny standing beside us with silent tears rolling down his peach-fuzz covered face, me understanding I would now have to live with a hole inside me, forever.

It was around that time the debilitating nausea started. I was distracted by my grief and so, not worried, but Ryan—suffering “second year syndrome,” medical student hypochondria—dragged me to a specialist after I threw up in the sink one night after dinner. The doctor agreed it might be an ulcer, certainly the stress of the last year could have done it, she said, and they took enough blood I actually felt woozy when we left the clinic. Of all the possible things it could have been, I was not expecting the result: I was pregnant.

With the baby on the way and my heart still shattered from Mom’s death, I nested in our cramped apartment full of secondhand furniture and cheap but cheerful decor and tried to prepare for motherhood. Meanwhile, Ryan finished second year, and Dad started dating, which I thought was absolutely too soon, but I never said so because I’d promised Mom I wouldn’t let Dad wither away.

“I love your father, Margaret, but he is a man born without the ability to read a recipe or keep his whites and darks separate in the laundry machine. Bless him, my Hugh.” I’d laughed softly when she said this, but I knew the domestic tasks excuse was a cover. Dad did better as a team. Plus, Danny, only a week away from celebrating his fourteenth birthday when Mom died, also needed someone. He was too young, she said, to be left without a mother.

“But he has a mother,” I’d said, biting my lip to keep the tears at bay so she would see how strong I was. How capable she raised me to be. “I’ll take care of Dad. And Danny.”

She’d taken my hand then and pressed my palm to the paper-thin skin of her cancer-hollowed cheek. “You have your own life to worry about,” she’d said. “I won’t steal the joy of that away from you, along with everything else I’m taking.” I’d nodded, leaned into her body so bony and frail and smelling like antiseptic—the scent of sickness and death—but still warm with life and love.

I never did announce my engagement that evening. It wouldn’t be until the next day, when I sat with Mom and Dad at her oncology appointment, that my secret would be revealed.

“What is this?” she’d exclaimed, grabbing my hand and holding it up to the light. Delight had brightened her face as she stared at the ring. She’d still looked like herself—wavy brown hair to her shoulders, enough weight on her body to prove she loved good food—and despite where we were and why we were there, it’s one of my favorite memories of my mother.

“Hugh, the grandbabies are coming!” she’d trilled loudly. Her enthusiasm and happiness had made me laugh, but I also felt bolstered—she wouldn’t leave before meeting her first grandchild.

* * *

By the time I drag myself out of bed and splash cold water on my face it’s just before seven, and I still feel horrible—brittle with fever, consumed by shock and worry for Jack, and humming from the vestiges of my nightmare about Paige and the bittersweet memories of Mom. I text Audrey and am making a cup of tea when I hear the front door open.

“Meg?”

Tears come to my eyes, and I hastily wipe them away. “In here,” I call out. I turn and lean against the counter, the ceramic mug hot in my hands. Ryan comes into the kitchen and I smile, all the bad feelings I was holding on to about this morning’s argument gone the moment I see him, wanting nothing more than to be inside the safety of his arms.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” I reply, taking a sip of my drink and glancing at the clock. 7:06 p.m. “You came home early.”

He smiles. “I came home early.” He walks to me and, careful not to spill my drink, puts his hands on my shoulders and kisses my forehead. “I left the meeting right after you called and went to Children’s. Audrey was still there.” His eyes—at times blue, at times gray, but today a flecked mix—are concerned. He holds a gentle hand to my forehead, in the spot he just kissed. “You’re hot.”

“Thank you,” I say, batting my eyelashes. Then I cough hard, and my tea spills, scalding and sticky on to my hands. “Ouch!”

Ryan rips off a few sheets from the paper towel roll. He gently wipes my hands, then the edge of my mug and the small circle of wet on the floor near my feet.

“How was everyone doing?” I ask, as he tosses the soiled paper towel into the trash.

“As well as can be expected. Audrey filled me in on what happened.” He watches my face, waiting to see if I want to talk about it. I just nod. “She wanted to stay with Sam until Jack is out of surgery, which might be a while,” he adds. The corners of his mouth turn down, and I wonder what else he knows. “Go, sit,” he says, gesturing to the living room couch. “I’ll join you in a minute, okay?”

I kiss his cheek before heading to the living room, where, with a contented sigh, I sink into the plush cushions. A few minutes later Ryan sits beside me, pulling my slippered feet onto his lap and wrapping my legs in a blanket. Once he’s cocooned me, he grabs the beer he brought with him from the kitchen and twists the cap.

“What did you find out? About Jack?” I hold my breath, my heart racing. Ryan doesn’t answer immediately, and suddenly I’m terrified.

“Is he going to live?” I whisper.

He pauses. With his telling silence I wilt deeper into the cushions, tears springing to my eyes.

“Oh, my god, Ryan—”

“He’s fighting hard,” Ryan says. “But he has a tough road ahead.”

I sit up a bit straighter and steel myself for what a “tough road” means.

“He has a skull fracture and some bleeding in his brain.” Ryan puts a hand on my knee, rubs firmly. “Meg, Praskesh is his surgeon, and he’s the best. He’ll get it under control.”

“I don’t know if Audrey should be there, Ryan. It’s too much. For them. For her.” I take a deep breath, my heart hammering in my chest. I recognize the feeling as panic—I desperately want Audrey home with me, where I can know for sure that she’s okay.

“Someone she loves is suffering a whole lot right now,” he says. “Sam needs her there. And she’s okay. I just saw her. She’s fine, Meg, all things considered.”

I nod and try to control my quivering lips. “What about Jack’s leg? And his back? Andrew said it was broken?”

“They’re trying to save his leg,” Ryan says. Then he sighs, runs a hand over his face, and I try to focus. I think about how when Jack woke up this morning, he had no idea it would be his last as a carefree teenager. That the moment he stepped off the curb, his life would never be the same again. “As for his spine, jury’s still out. It depends on the break. And if his spinal cord was completely severed or not.”

Bile moves up in my throat, and I swallow reflexively a few times. “And if it is completely severed? What will that mean?”

“He’ll be paralyzed.”

A violent shiver moves through me, and my tea nearly spills again on the couch.

“Hey. Hey, come here.” Ryan takes my mug and places it on the ottoman tray. He shimmies closer, tucks me under his arm and rests his head on mine. I fight the tears so hard my shaking intensifies, and Ryan rocks me, like he did when my mom died, and when Audrey was hospitalized with a terrifying case of pneumonia when she was only a year old. “He’s young, Meg. And strong. Even if we’re talking worst case and he’s paralyzed, he can make it through this.” Of course “worst case” isn’t actually paralysis—that would be Jack not surviving this—but I don’t say anything because I understand Ryan is trying to help me.

“Talk to me.” Ryan’s face, so familiar, is creased with worry—his age beginning to show in how easily the lines form on his forehead and around his eyes and don’t fully disappear when at rest. I want to tell him that seeing Jack Beckett fly off Sarah Dunn’s car has brought up what I went through at sixteen, and I wonder if he’s already figured that out.

But still, Ryan doesn’t know everything about the night that Paige died. Just that there was a horrific car accident after a reckless teenage party—the incident made all the papers and news channels, and though we weren’t named, being young adults, our story was used as a cautionary tale in practically every high school in Massachusetts. But though Ryan knows the details of how Paige died and that I witnessed the accident, he’s never understood why I hold myself responsible. The full truth is right there on the tip of my tongue, straining to be released as he holds me. “If you can’t trust the ones you love,” my mom used to say, “life will always feel harder than it needs to be.” But then he shifts position, and the moment is gone, and I tuck the secret and all it carries back inside again.

8

The next morning I see the gel clings on our bedroom windows and smile, thinking of Audrey and her big, bird-loving heart. Then I remember what happened the day before, and the smile melts from my face.

I’m alone in bed, Ryan already up. Squinting at the clock I see it’s nearly seven, and as I come more fully to consciousness I hear shuffling, movement underneath me. The sounds of my family getting ready for the day. I wait a few more minutes, working up the courage to face the day—it was late by the time Ryan went to pick Audrey up at the Becketts, and I was half asleep on the couch when she gave me a kiss good-night before heading to bed. I’m not sure how she’s doing today, though I can imagine.

When I finally walk into the kitchen in my robe and slippers, the vestiges of sleep still clinging to me, Ryan hands me a mug of coffee, and I grimace. “Can’t do it,” I croak, handing it back.

He pulls out his phone and taps the flashlight icon. “I called Prakesh to check in on how Jack’s doing this morning. They were able to stop the bleeding and stabilize his skull fracture, and repair the leg. He’s hanging in there.”

“Oh, thank god,” I say, momentarily refreshed by the sense of relief that washes over me. But then I remember the possible paralysis. “What about...the other thing?”

He shakes his head, a frown on his face, and I know Jack is paralyzed. The weight is back, painfully heavy on my shoulders, and it’s all I can do not to burst into tears. Ryan notices and places a gentle finger under my chin. “Let’s worry about you for now, okay?” he says softly. “Open up.”

I open my mouth and stick my tongue way out while he shines the light into my throat. I can smell my rose face cream on his skin—he claims to not need moisturizer whenever I offer to pick up some for him, but my own bottle seems to disappear at a mysterious rate.

“Yuck!” Audrey says, her head right beside Ryan’s as he shines the light down my throat. I resist the urge to close my mouth, my jaw beginning to complain.

“Strep,” Ryan announces, releasing my chin. “Classic.” Even though as a radiologist he probably hasn’t seen a case of strep since medical school, Ryan prides himself on being able to diagnose illnesses that send one to a family doctor. He also likes to guess how many stitches a cut will need, or how many degrees a fever is, or which strain of flu has felled us.

I sigh, rubbing my jaw. “At least I don’t have any showings today. But I can’t do strep right now. No time.”

“That’s what Sam has,” Audrey says, licking yogurt off her spoon before dipping it back into the container. “Apparently it’s going around school.” She looks a bit tired but otherwise seems fairly chipper, considering yesterday’s events. I wonder if she’s simply putting on a good performance.