After we passed the billboard, we stopped and got candy and balloons for Cutter, and I got him a puzzle he could work on now that he was awake. It was a picture of Superman flying through the air, his fist raised. If I’d been brave enough, I would have told Cutter that he was Superman, surviving drowning the way he did. But sometimes it was hard for me to say mushy stuff to other people, especially if other people were watching.
I got butterflies in my stomach when we parked in the lot at the hospital, and they spread their wings and started flying around when we got into the elevator to go up to the eighth floor, where Cutter was. I was worried about seeing him and my mom. I was afraid of what she would say to me, the way she would look at me, her smile frozen on her face for Zell’s sake, but her eyes cold and hard. I was nervous about Cutter looking at me with those dark eyes of his, eyes that told the real story about what had happened at the pool that day, how I’d failed him. The elevator door opened, and Zell reached out and gave my hand a quick squeeze. In just a few weeks, family had become strangers, and strangers had become family.
I took a deep breath and followed Zell down the hall, my feet heavy as I walked past the framed artwork done by sick children. I kept my chin up, trying not to think about those suffering children taking crayon to paper, and made myself smile at the nurses as they walked by. When at last we reached room number 810, the butterflies were whipping around my stomach so hard I felt like I might need to lean against the wall. But Zell pushed open the door (without even knocking), and I had no choice but to follow her inside my brother’s hospital room.
I think it was because Zell didn’t knock first that we caught Mom and the man together, leaning against each other the way only two people who are very comfortable would do, his arm casually tossed across her shoulders. If they’d had some warning, I bet my mother would’ve put some distance between them and not looked so cozy. She hadn’t let Joe come around us for the first several months they dated. (I wish she’d never let him come around at all.) But I guessed this was a different situation.
I recognized the Ambulance Guy right away. He was the one who stopped and talked to me while the other two got Cutter loaded into the back. He was nice and everything but, jeez, how did he end up with his arm around my mother? In the split second between when the door opened and when they realized we weren’t just another nurse entering the room, I got the picture.
They weren’t hiding anything from Cutter, who was sitting up in bed picking at a tray of food on a table stretched across his bed. They were laughing at something Cutter said, and he was laughing, too, and for just a moment, I wondered if maybe it would be better for all of us—them, too, not just me—if I stayed with Zell and let them be a family. They looked comfortable and familiar, like they belonged together. And when their heads swiveled around to take in Zell and me standing in the doorway motionless, it was clear just who the outsider was.
I felt Zell’s hand come to rest on my shoulder, and then she said with that bright, happy voice she used sometimes, “We came to see the miracle boy!” She pointed to the stuff I was carrying. “And we brought presents!”
My mother got up and rushed over to me, wrapping her arms around me and hugging me so big I could hardly breathe. Ambulance Guy came over and took the things from my hand, exclaiming, “Cool! Look, Cutter!” a little too loudly.
From inside my mother’s arms, I could see Cutter. He gave me that Cutter grin I’d seen a thousand and one times before, and in that moment, with my mother hugging me and Ambulance Guy in the room and Zell saying all her Zell things, it hit me: Cutter was OK. He was OK. He was OK.
Which meant, I guessed, so was I.
LANCE
In the year before Debra left, she’d gotten into new foods, her devotion to all things healthy pursued with the kind of zeal usually attributed to cult followers. She’d eaten carrots dipped in hummus, and smoothies made with strange ingredients, and apples dipped in almond butter instead of peanut butter. “What’s wrong with peanuts?” Lance had asked, but she hadn’t answered, already buzzing to the next thing.
She’d never stayed still, as if the healthy foods were giving her excess energy she had to keep moving to burn off. She’d eschewed anything made with flour or sugar, waxing eloquent on how fruits had all the natural sugar she’d ever need. She’d made and devoured huge salads, nibbled on nuts and seeds, avoided beef in favor of chicken or seafood. She’d rarely spoken to him unless it was to sermonize over the health benefits of the foods she was eating and, therefore, foisting on the entire family. There had never been anything good to eat in the house. He’d grumbled and complained, even as the weight fell off her and she’d started to resemble the girl he’d married again. Trouble was, she’d acted nothing like that girl.
She’d taken up running. She ran all the time, even when it rained. “Shouldn’t you join a gym or something?” he’d asked, concerned, as she’d taken off into the rain one cold day when he was sure she’d catch her death. “You could run on a treadmill. Wouldn’t that be . . . safer?”
Debra hadn’t answered. She’d just run away.
She even ran in her sleep, a phenomenon he’d witnessed one night as she’d lain splayed in their bed, sleep sacking her midsentence. Her mouth had still been open, her unspoken words escaping into the air. He’d watched her, wishing he had the courage to rouse her and tell her all he was thinking. I feel like I’m losing you. I fear that we’re drifting apart. And yet you seem so happy, so purposeful, for the first time since the kids were born, and I’m scared to death to mess with that. He’d watched her sleep and thought of all the things he couldn’t say to his wife. Watching her, he’d noticed twitching under the sheets, and it had taken him a moment to realize she was running even in her dreams. Her feet had moved as though she were rhythmically plodding along the asphalt. Even in her sleep, he could see in hindsight, she’d been running away.
Lance watched for Jencey and her girls to arrive in that mammoth SUV she drove. He was always a little shocked when he saw a tiny woman climb out from behind the wheel of one of those intimidating vehicles. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to drive a car that big, that high, through traffic and down narrow suburban streets. And yet, he’d seen many a mom whip one of those things into a parking space without a second thought.
He busied himself by emptying the dishwasher, a chore he normally made the kids do (Debra hadn’t required them to do enough around the house, and that only added to her stress and unhappiness in his opinion), but he needed a distraction so he’d stop pacing by the front windows, looking out for Jencey, who must’ve been going for fashionably late. He hoped she hadn’t forgotten about their date.
He scolded himself for even thinking that word. This was not a date. And yet, he looked forward to spending time with her, had spent the better part of the day with an anticipatory grin on his face. Lilah had even noticed it. “Stop smiling, Dad,” she scolded. “It makes you look weird.”