“Hooray,” I said.
“I’m watching your heart on TV,” said Paris, eyeing the jagged peaks and troughs of my pulse. “It’s awesome.”
“Your friend is a little strange,” said Ben, smiling.
“People have commented,” I said.
“Wouldn’t you say that was a beautiful heartbeat?” said Paris. “Wouldn’t you say Cass has a beautiful heartbeat?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Ben.
Paris nodded, sagely. “She does,” she said, as if it had been his idea, as if she was agreeing with him.
Ben started filling in a chart. “You on any medications?” he asked.
I glanced at Paris. “Yes,” I lied. I knew my dad might see the chart, or someone might say something.
“Which ones?”
“Risperidone. Paroxetine.”
I saw his face change. Or maybe I imagined that I did. But I think it did. I mean: I had just shifted in front of his eyes into a different person, like a movie morphing trick. I had gone from: Reasonably cute but maybe a bit plump teenage girl → mental patient.
He wrote something down on his chart.
He didn’t say anything after that. Nor did Paris. I think she sensed how he had swerved too, how his opinion of me had changed, and she was angry with him. Angry on my behalf.
And I loved her even more for that.
When we got to the hospital Dad was waiting outside and he spoke briefly to Paris, but he wasn’t even looking at her, so she waved to me and kind of subtracted herself from the scene, backed away, until she was gone. And Dad and I went into the building with the paramedics.
DAD: Are you trying to get yourself killed?
ME: No!
DAD: You know about food someone else has prepared. You know this stuff, Cass.
ME: I do.
DAD: Clearly you don’t!
ME: (silent)
DAD: I have to work, Cass. I have to ******* work. I have to know you’re going to be okay when I’m at the restaurant.
ME: You do know that. You can know that.
THE VOICE: You will never be okay. You will always be worthless.
ME: Not now.
DAD: Not now? Are you serious? Evidently I can’t leave you on your own! If you’re not with boys, you’re having a ******* anaphylaxis, Cass! I can’t ****** worry about you like this, it’s ******* kill me.
PEDIATRICIAN: Sir? This is a public ward. Could you lower your voice, sir?
So now you know.
Now you know about my mom, about how she died.
I don’t …
I mean …
I guess I don’t need to tell you much about how it made me feel. You know all about parents dying. You get it. I mean, I didn’t know that night that your mom died, but I knew something had happened to her. And you told me later of course.
For a long time after the restaurant—this is even before I looked it up and found that I shouldn’t have moved her head—I felt a whole range of different things, different emotions, no single feeling that could be identified as “grief.”
I laughed at inappropriate ****. I laughed at the funeral, because we walked into the chapel and there was this little old lady at the back at this, like, raised mixing-desk thing, all knobs and lights and sliders to control the sound on the mikes at the front of the church, and I just started giggling hysterically because she looked like an octogenarian DJ, in a DJ booth.
My dad glared at me, then.
I felt okay for long periods, I forgot my mom was dead, and then it would hit me like a tidal wave, literally nearly knock me off my feet, the realization, the stupid simple realization, that she was gone and would never come back and we’d never make brownies again with peanut-free chocolate and lick the spoon.
I did that thing; I’m sure you did it too. That thing where I would go into my room and I’d see an album and I’d think, the last time I played that album my mom was still alive; I’d wear a T-shirt and I’d think, the last time I wore this T-shirt my mom was still alive; I’d pick up a book and—
You get the picture.
It sucked. I mean, you know all about it, right? One night I dreamed she was still alive and it was all a big mistake and she bent down low to fold me in her arms and then I woke up and—
Well. You know. I thought I might never stop crying that morning, like an ocean would come flooding out of me and I would disappear, just turn into a puddle on the floor, like some mutant in one of those comic book movies.
I dreamed about the robbers too. Daydreamed also. Fantasized about finding them and torturing them, choking the lives out of them. Making them feel a fraction of the pain I was feeling.
Every day, for like a month, I thought, This is the day the cops will find them.