“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t know what happened. She spooked on the way back.” Skeeter’s voice shook on each word. “Not sure why. I think his foot got caught up in the stirrup. Flipped under from what I saw. Reigns tangled up. She wouldn’t stop. They fell down in here. Thrashin’ everywhere. I shot her. I was afraid to move ‘im though.”
Skeeter’s voice narrated the horror right before my eyes. Rocks had ripped his flesh down to his bones. The area around his right eye remained beaten to a bloody pulp; his eyeball dangled off loose to one side. Flies swarmed around the open wound. The bugs were touching him. I swatted them away, feeling the cool grip of panic. His right arm remained free while the left twisted back in a strange angle under his back. The rest of his pelvis and legs remained trapped under the butterscotch bitch that pulled him down into the pit of hell.
I touched his arm as tears ran down my cheeks. I touched his chest; his body felt warm. I wanted to wrap myself around it. I wanted to never let him go. The knots inside me twisted up tight with the impact of the shock.
Slipping my fingers next to his neck, I closed my eyes and waited. I blocked out the commotion at the top of the cliff. Come on, Jess. I focused on the sounds of the meadow; the sounds of our home. My fingers shook in the blood. His lips were blue. Jess wasn’t getting any air.
“Please,” I muttered, staring down at him. “Don’t leave me. You can’t leave me like this. You promised. Remember. You…pro…promised.” I choked on the last words. Everything in my life felt irrelevant and just plain stupid as his life dripped away onto Sprayberry’s dirt.
Shifting my fingers, I pressed even harder against his skin. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. I would feel it in my bones. My tears dropped onto his shirt and dissolved into the bloody fabric. “Stay with me. I have to tell you something and it’s not gonna be like this.”
In the stillness, I felt a small flutter. I sucked in a gulp of air with an involuntary laugh. Leaning over, I was careful not put my weight against his broken body. I kissed the place on his neck, tasting the blood on my lips. I kissed the side of his face that remained unscathed. With every piece of my soul, I willed his heart to keep beating.
“Listen to me, Jess,” I whispered in his ear. “It’s you and me. Remember that. I’m here. Keep holding on. You will be all right.”
Pressing my lips to his blue ones, I felt the soft trickle of air from his mouth. I blew hard, pulling from the pit of my stomach. The air returned smooth from his lips. I choked back a sob and tried it again. My limited experience with CPR came from the summer at Rochellas. The few puffs into his lungs wouldn’t make a difference, but the act gave me solace. I pushed out another gulp so deep I choked. I should press on his chest but I was afraid. That stupid horse may have crushed him.
I ran my fingertips over the mangled fabric just to let his body know I was still here. “I love you so much. Don’t give up. I will not let you go. You can’t go. Please…please… Jess.” The words turned into an incoherent babble. A pair of arms pulled me away from him.
“Let me go. Stop. No, please. He needs me. Let…me…go.” I fought the person with every piece of strength left in me. He would live if I touched him. My fingers made the raw, biting pain disappear. I screamed as they hauled me back up the side of the ravine. At the top of the landing, people paced and stood in confused horror all around us.
“Alex. Stop fighting.”
I collapsed on the meadow grass as my father wrapped himself around my body. “But Daddy. I have…I have to stay with…him. He needs me. I have to stay.”
“You need to let the paramedics get down there. Look. Can you see it?” He pointed off to a strange looking sled-like thing. “They will put him in the basket and get him out of there.”
“He’s breathing. I could feel it. He will be ok, right Daddy?”
His face twisted up as he nodded. I fell against his arms, knowing my father lied. Just like all the times I looked him straight in the eye and said what I knew felt comforting to the broken man. The lack of honesty ripped my heart right out of my skin. He lied because I couldn’t handle the truth no more than he could all those days we struggled.
Jess would not live. He was crushed from the inside out. People don’t survive this sort of accident. Panic spun around in my mind, cutting off the flow of oxygen to my brain. I couldn’t breathe. My world just got swallowed up into the belly of Sprayberry as madness attacked all rationality. I scratched and kicked my father. He held on with a vice grip as I twisted around, crying in the grass. I broke. Every emotion crashed and splattered in ugly pieces for everyone to see. I didn’t give a damn anymore.
They say your life flashes before your eyes right before you die. In that moment, my whole world spun around in rapid motion. The thought of Jess being dead tore a deep hole through my heart and my body crumbled into dust. I couldn’t live without him. The air would stop flowing in my lungs; I would cease to exist. He was my other half. He was me. We breathed the same or not at all.
Slowly the strength left my limbs. I stopped fighting and collapsed in my father’s embrace. We watched the basket lift over the side in slow motion. Jess had a mask covering his blue lips. I grasped to that small hope. For a moment longer, my blue-eyed boy lived
Chapter 51
Today, 7:05 a.m.
The smell of disinfectant mixes with the crisp, sterile air. I scrub my hands in the sink; the soap burns my raw skin. The black stains are gone from my cuticles, like they never existed except for the remaining cuts in my flesh. Sharlene wraps me in a blue, protective gown and points toward the glassed room.
There’s an eerie silence under the room’s dim lighting. I step across the cold floor amidst the faint hiss of the machines. The frigid temperature activates painful goose bumps on my skin. Approaching the edge, I see a large tube running from his mouth while most of his body is coated in white, much like the time I dressed him as a mummy. I smiled at the memory. We had stolen rolls and rolls of gauze from the hospital. Jess had walked up and down the halls, growling in a zombie’s voice while I followed behind, laughing to the point of tears.
I look at his broken body as those kids drift away in a distant memory. With the shock of the accident gone, I see him clearly. Bandages cover most of his face and scalp. He seems better, and yet he seems worse than expected. I think anything shy of his usual smile would feel unacceptable.
For the first time in his life, Jess's head gleams shiny and sleek, absent of his floppy, dark hair. He would hate it more than the scars, I think. My gut lurches, knowing the damage underneath the gauze would change him forever. But I would love him no matter how he looked to the rest of the world. He was, is my Jess.
I reach forward to touch the bruised skin on his cheek. His body feels warm. I trace over his remaining eye and dip down over his jaw. Leaning close, I whisper next to his ear. “Hey.”
I wait for his response. Nothing but the sound of the hospital answers back. His silent lips remain still. I touch them with my thumb, thankful they are a dry, light pink instead of the oxygen-deprived blue. “I’m here, Jess. I’m sorry for not being here sooner. I got sick but I’m better now. Ashley washed my hair. She saw me naked too.”
He should laugh. He should tease something awful about Ashley holding me hostage in restraints like Kathy Bates in the movie Misery. Instead, he answers with the confines of stillness. This is the part that feels like a raw, open wound. The part where I feel alone, absent from my other half. I reach down to take his free hand. The other arm is swaddled in a brick of white, just like both of his legs.
“I need to tell you something.” I hold tight to the familiar hand with a slew of calluses on the palm. “This was supposed to be a happy time you know. I was going to tell you when I got back yesterday and we would get excited or freaked out or I don’t know. Now I wish I just told you on the phone so you would know. I wish I hadn’t waited.”