Authors: Jamie Deschain
Angie crouched down and took my head, drawing me close. I clung to her for dear life, bawling into her arm as my sister came over with a severely worried look on her face. “What is it?” she asked. “Did something happen to Mom?”
“No, honey,” Shakes said, taking her by the hand and leading her back into the living room. He knew that Helena and Sarah got along well, so I prayed that he’d break the news gently to her.
“Where is she?” I asked Angie. “Please tell me she’s okay.”
“She’s at St. Vincent’s. I got a chance to ask one of the ambulance driver’s where they were taking her before they sped off. I don’t think her father saw me, or if he did he didn’t pay me no mind. When they wheeled Sarah by I couldn’t see much, just that her eyes looked real swollen and she was bleeding from the nose.”
A deep, guttural moan escaped me that I tried to hide in her arm. Sarah—my Sarah—lying in a hospital bed alone and afraid, all because of her father. I couldn’t leave her like that. I had to go to her, and damn anybody that would try and stop me.
“C’mon,” I said, hauling myself to my feet. “We gotta go.”
“But Nicky, what about your sister?”
I stumbled over to Helena, who had tears in her eyes at the news of Sarah’s tragedy. I hated that she was hurting, but I was in no shape to console her myself.
“Shakes,” I asked. “Will you stay with her until my mom gets off work, then tell her where we are. Don’t tell her what happened yet, just say that Sarah was in an accident.”
“Yeah, sure. You got it, Nicky. Me and Helena, we’ll eat popcorn or something, watch some TV. Right brat?”
I could tell he was trying to please her, but like me, she was inconsolable for the moment.
“You gonna tell your mom the truth?” Angie asked.
I sighed and rubbed my eyes, looking all over for my jacket. “I don’t know. Probably. I mean, there’s no hiding it now, right? C’mon.”
I headed for the door, jacket be damned. It wouldn’t do anything to warm me anyway, because running all through my body were chills like I’d never experienced. A dull numbness that left me feeling empty, with the phrase
please be okay
, running through my mind over and over. It just wouldn’t stop, and when we got out of the apartment and down to the street, Angie laced her arm through mine, begging the same thing.
* * *
She wasn’t okay. I stood there, a zombie, looking through the window at the girl I loved connected to a mess of tubes and wires. Both her eyes were swollen shut and she had a broken arm which the doctor’s had put in a cast. She was breathing on her own though, a good sign, and I was told that they’d stopped whatever internal bleeding she had and were now keeping her under close observation. She’d be there for a few days.
I couldn’t do anything but stare. Sarah was unrecognizable; her face a canvas of blue and black. Beside me, Angie stood sobbing into a tissue. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. All that kept running through my mind was that first day I’d pulled her out of her apartment and took her to the roof with Shakes.
I’ll take care of you
, I’d said.
I’ll take care of you.
I’ll take care of you.
I’ll take care of you.
Yeah, that worked out real well. The girl I was supposed to take care of was laid up in a hospital bed. I hadn’t been there to save her; to stop the madness that was her father.
Her father.
My fists clenched tightly together at the thought of him. He’d done this. For whatever stupid reason he’d concocted in his head, he’d beaten the shit out of his little girl and this was the result. Her mother was out in the waiting room, sitting pensively with a rosary in her hand, but him? He was nowhere to be found.
I’d heard the doctors and nurses mumbling something about a fall down the stairs, and though I got the impression that neither of them believed that, I also got the feeling that they weren’t going to do anything about it. The very least they could do is report him for suspected child abuse, but with Sarah’s mom so insistent and convincing that it had been an accident, their hands were tied. There was nothing to back up their suspicions. This was the first time she’d ever been in the hospital, and there was no history of violence in her medical records. So rather than go with their gut, they’d rather believe the mother and pass off all the responsibility that came with the burden of doing what’s right.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a nurse approaching. She wasn’t going to stop, but I wheeled around and asked as politely as I could if I could go in and see Sarah. She took one look at me, at the pain in my eyes and the desperation in my heart—I just had to touch her—and nodded solemnly.
Angie hugged me. Told me she’d be right here when I got back. I thanked her and went into Sarah’s room.
She looked so tiny under the blankets. Her small frame almost skeletal. I pulled a chair over beside her bed and sat down, reaching my fingers out to hers. When I touched them, when I felt the warmth of her body so close, I bowed my head and cried silently to myself.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I wasn’t there. I couldn’t help you. I failed, Sarah. I failed.”
I leaned into the bed, resting my forehead on the mattress beside her broken arm. This girl was my everything. My whole life. Now she couldn’t even hear me. She was doped up on a cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics to bring down the swelling, and there was nothing I could do but just sit there, helplessly looking on and hoping that she managed to pull through without any lasting physical effects.
I don’t know how long I was sitting there for, but when I finally blinked the last of my tears away and sat up with a heavy heart, I looked back over my shoulder to see my mother standing next to Angie. Her heart was breaking, I could see it in her eyes. Join the club, Ma.
I got up, telling Sarah I’d be back for her, and left the room. Mom immediately grabbed me and pulled me into her, holding me close. I cried some more into her shoulder while Angie rubbed my back. Bless them for doing all they could to console me, but what I really needed them to do was pray for Sarah.
“What happened?” Mom asked after a while.
“Not here,” I told her.
Angie stayed with Sarah, and Mom and I walked down the hall a ways to find the small, hospital chapel empty. We walked through the door into a quiet, dimly lit room with beige carpet and ten folding chairs set up for people to pray. Up at the altar there was a wooden cross hanging on the wall, lit by a spotlight from above. To the right were several candles available for people to light in offering to their loved ones. Each of us quietly lit a candle for Sarah and then I collapsed exhausted into one of the chairs. Mom rested her hand on my shoulder, expectantly waiting for me to say something.
I told her everything. Everything from the day I’d first gone to Sarah’s apartment right up until Angie and Shakes knocked on the door with news of what happened tonight. She sat there, horrified, her hand placed over her mouth as she gasped with each story of every beating. Her eyes swelled with tears but I didn’t stop. I spoke and spoke through my own choked sobs, letting it all out, and when I was done it felt like I’d just gone twelve rounds in a boxing ring.
“My God,” mom said, crossing herself. “Nicky, why didn’t you say anything?”
I shook my head. “She told me not to, Ma. I had to respect that. She said if anything happened, if the cops or whomever showed up at her door, there was no telling what her father would do. I didn’t want to cause her anymore harm, you know?”
She understood. She didn’t like it, but she understood. I hated that I’d kept the truth from her for so long, and she must have seen that in my face because she got up and held me close once more, telling me that none of this was my fault.
“We gotta tell someone, Nicky,” she whispered.
I pulled away in a panic. “No, Ma. Please. We can’t. You saw what he did to her, if anybody finds out who knows what could happen.”
“But she could wind up dead.”
“That’s exactly my point. I don’t want that, Ma. I don’t want her to die.” Just the thought of losing her for good caused me to lose it again, and I held my mother as tight as I could.
She was right, of course. Something had to be done, but it couldn’t be any one of us to do it. Not me, not Ma, Shakes, or Angie. It had to be Sarah. She was the only person who could save herself at this point.
“Just let me talk to her, okay? When she’s better,” I told Mom.
She smoothed out my hair and kissed me on the cheek. “You got it.”
I stayed with Sarah for the rest of the night, and while that normally wasn’t something that was allowed, the nurses let it slide just this once for me. I fell asleep in the chair beside her bed, and when dawn broke and the early morning sun beamed in through the window blinds to awaken me, I thought it had all been a bad dream. Like maybe none of it happened. But when I got my wits about me and looked around, she was still there, still asleep, and still in pain.
I held her hand and looked into her swollen-shut eyes, and for the first time said, “I love you.” Making a promise to myself that I’d never let her go another day without hearing that.
NINE
-
Sarah
-
Two days later I opened my eyes for the first time and saw Nicholas sitting by the edge of the bed. His head drooped, like he was asleep, so I just stared at him, wondering if he’d been there the entire time. The thought of him never leaving my side made my heart swell up and I started to cry, my fingers twitching and reaching for his. He stirred, hearing me, and when he saw me looking at him he rushed to my side and clutched my hand, squeezing it ever so softly.
I’ll never forget the first words out of his mouth. They were the words we’d both been feeling for so long but never had the courage to say. They rolled off his lips like the sweetest music, and though I’d just opened my eyes and saw him, I couldn’t help but close them again just to soak in the sound of his voice.
“I love you, Sarah. I love you so much.”
My lips moved but nothing came out. My tongue felt dry and raw, like I’d been licking sandpaper. He soaked a small sponge in a Styrofoam cup of water and placed it to my lips. I eagerly sucked back the liquid like it was the best thing I ever tasted, and when I was done he leaned in and kissed me gently, and I whispered in his ear very quietly, “I love you too.”
We stayed like that for a while, his eyes never leaving mine. I could only imagine how I looked. Disheveled, black and blue, but it was only a picture of myself I had in my head. I asked him for a mirror so I could see with my own eyes what my father had done, and though he was hesitant at first, Nicholas gave in and presented me with what I asked for and I took a good, hard look in that mirror. I was hideous. Swollen lips, broken skin, eyes that looked like two slits had been cut into my face with a razor blade.
But Nicholas told me I was beautiful, and I believed him.
He stayed with me for the rest of the day. Watching me sleep, talking to me when I was awake. We never spoke of what happened, but we both knew that conversation was coming. Later on that evening his mother dropped by and without saying anything he looked at me and nodded.
She knows
, I thought.
He told her.
I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t blame him, but it worried me that the more people who knew my situation, the greater the chances were of something worse happening down the road. But I couldn’t think about that, not with Mrs. Rossi looking at me with her kind eyes and warm smile. The way it felt as she brushed my hair out of my forehead. She was treating me like a daughter, and though I entertained the thought on occasion, that was the first time I could truly see myself becoming a part of Nicholas’s family.
We both made him go home for the night so he could get some rest in his own bed. As it turns out, he had been at the hospital most of the time. Since he was suspended he didn’t have school, and nothing to occupy his time. Angie and Shakes had been there too, but I’d yet to see them with my eyes open. The only person who hadn’t been to see me, besides my mom and dad, was Helena. Ten-years-old. Sweet Helena. That was okay. She didn’t need to see me like this. Let her keep her innocence a little while longer. When I got out of here, I’d give her the biggest hug and let her know that it was no big thing.
I laid in bed that night, alone, thinking about what I’d do when I got home. What would happen? Would my father apologize for taking it too far? Would Mom continue to make excuses for him? It was all a mystery, but I knew that no matter what I had to get out of there, and so as I drifted off to sleep I began to formulate a plan, and as much as I loved Nicholas and wanted to be with him, he couldn’t know anything about it.
* * *
I celebrated my birthday in the hospital, one day before I was set to be released. Everyone came, and by everyone I mean Nicholas, his mother, Shakes, and Angie. They got me cupcakes and balloons, decorated the cast on my arm with stickers, and through it all Nicky never left my side. He was in good spirits, but I could tell something was bugging him. He does this thing when he’s nervous where he’ll look at me briefly, smile all goofy, and quickly look away. It was probably the same thing I was nervous about, but we put it off for one more day, and when I was released the following morning, he took me home by himself and for the first time since everything went down, we really got a chance to talk.
We sat on a bench outside the hospital before heading to the subway station. He held my hand in his and I looked at his profile. He was scruffy and handsome, and I felt some of those familiar feelings returning, like I was my old self. I took his chin and made him look at me, and kissed him. He didn’t know what to do, or how to act, so I told him just to kiss me back the way he used to, which he gladly did with a smile and twinkle in his eye, and as our lips meshed together his hand found its way to my waist and I breathed deep, taking him in. I wanted him so badly. I wanted to feel the person who loved me more than life itself next to me, naked, caressing my skin, licking me, and I must’ve let those desires get the better of me because I bit his lip during our kiss, and he pulled back, surprised.