What ingrained those moments was that
when I lived them, I knew I would remember them always. When Scott taught me to play baseball, time lost all meaning. I held the ball in my hand longer than needed so I could remember the feel of the threading. I hesitated when Lacy’s dad told me to hop in the car so I could take a mental snapshot of our trailer. I spent a half hour nibbling at the icing of the HC TITLE-AUTHOR
525
cupcake before taking a bite, knowing that Mom gave all her money to our new landlord.
The emergency room takes on the same
slow-motion quality as I run through the
sliding doors. Scott brushes past me and talks to a nurse at the station. My heart beats loudly in my ears. An orderly passes by and stares at my head. I didn’t brush my hair. I didn’t do anything.
The nurse looks up from her computer and
motions toward the closed doors of the
emergency room. Large letters on big signs warn me to stay out, but if that’s where my mother is, no one can stop me. My hand aches as I slam on the swinging door and I barely register my name being called behind me. Both sides of the corridor are filled with curtained areas. Machines beep and people softly whisper.
Walking in the hallway, the hulking figure that torments my dreams turns a corner. I chase after him. Trent. Anger courses through me and propels me forward. Past the beds. Past the nurse asking if I need help. Past anything that is sane or rational.
At the end of a long, desolate hallway, he HC TITLE-AUTHOR
526
enters a room. The other rooms surrounding it are empty. No nurses or doctors are on guard.
Trent stands near my mother’s bed. He doesn’t see me, nor does he see the fist that strikes out and punches him in the jaw. “Fuck you!”
My knuckles throb and pain shoots through my wrist, but it doesn’t stop me. Everything is a blur. My hands hit again and again. Trent slaps me across the face, yanks at my hair, and I cry out when a knee hammers my stomach.
He tosses me like a rag doll and air slams out of my lungs when I crash into the wall.
I try to refocus and go after him again. If I give him enough time he’ll hit me and I’ll go down. On the floor with Trent is a bad place to be. He prefers to kick. I hear a smack followed by the sight of Trent stumbling across the floor.
“Elisabeth, are you okay?” Scott keeps his back to me. He holds his arms slightly out to his sides waiting for retaliation. “Elisabeth!”
“Yeah.” I shake away the stupor. “I’m fine.”
Blood seeps from Trent’s nose. Good for
Scott. He broke it. Trent glares at me, causing Scott to step toward him. “Touch my niece again and I’ll kill you.”
Trent ignores Scott and the bald asshole
HC TITLE-AUTHOR
527
keeps staring at me. “I know you’re trying to take what’s mine. Put those thoughts in her head again and the paramedics won’t be able to save her next time.”
“You fucking son-of-a-bitch.” I leap toward him and Scott wraps his arms around my waist, practically lifting me off the ground to prevent me from mauling Trent. “I should have hit you with that bat when I had the chance.” I wish I had taken the swing. “I wish you were dead.”
“Get out of here before I call security!”
Scott yells at Trent.
Trent’s eyes go flat and he half smiles as he walks past. Scott tightens his hold as I try to go after him again. Trent won’t forgive me for trying to run away with Mom. He’ll want revenge and if he can’t extract his revenge on me then he’ll use Mom as payment.
Scott releases me and blocks the doorway.
“What the fuck is going on?”
My hand snaps out and points into the
hallway. “He hits her. He hits me. He’s a fucking drug dealer who uses my mom and if it weren’t for you and your stupid rules and your stupid blackmail she wouldn’t be here because I would have been there to protect her.”
HC TITLE-AUTHOR
528
A nurse appears in the doorway and I
turn from both of them.
“Is there a problem here?” she asks quietly, quickly, and in a tone that indicates she knows everyone in this room is fucked up.
“Everything is fine,” Scott says.
He talks some more, but his voice and the nurse’s become muffled as I stare at the pathetic creature on the bed. A few hours ago, my entire world was right. Ryan held me in his arms and I convinced myself that everything was going to be okay. This is what happens when you believe in hope. Karma comes around to destroy it.
I sit on the bed and touch Mom’s cold
fingers. This is what death feels like. “Did she die?”
The chatter behind me stops.
“She stopped breathing,” says the nurse.
“But the paramedics gave her naloxone and it counteracted the affects of the heroin.”
Heroin. My heart stops and my lungs ache.
Heroin.
My fingers follow the line of her IV, but I purposely skip the track marks that dot her arms. “How long has she been using?”
HC TITLE-AUTHOR
529