Avery knew how hospital time was somehow intangible; it seemed to flow differently when you were at the bedside of a loved one. It was more than just time that seemed off, though. Her body did, too. She knew she should sleep but she was not tired. She knew that she should eat but she was not hungry.
She checked her phone. Six missed calls, three texts. All from Kellaway, O’Malley, and Connelly. She didn’t bother checking them just yet. She was more interested in the time. She wasn’t all that surprised to find that it was one in the morning.
Rose’s condition had not changed. She was still unconscious, still relying on the breathing tube. But her doctor said her vitals were strong and he was now confident to say she’d be out of the woods sooner rather than later. As she looked at Rose, Avery thought about the conversation she’d had with the doctor during his last rounds before he had left for the day.
He had brought Avery a sandwich from the cafeteria which she had barely nibbled at. He’d pulled up the chair from the corner of the room and took a seat.
“I’m going to level with you and I hope you’ll understand the blatant nature of it. You being a detective, I assume you deal in hard facts, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, based on what I know about these kinds of situations, I think this was really just a cry for help. Even if she didn’t know it…I think that’s what it is. If she really wanted to do some damage, she would have taken more pills. The EMTs on the scene said there were about a dozen or so left in the bottle. And she also wouldn’t have called for help. I only tell you this to let you know that she may need you to dig the issues out of her when she’s back to normal—or as close to normal as you can get after something like this.”
Avery thought: Rose won’t want me digging for anything. But she said nothing of the sort. She simply nodded and considered the doctor’s advice.
That had been about seven hours ago. And while she was still thinking over what he had said, she didn’t think there was that much hope when it came to her and Rose. Avery had never been particularly close to her mother; after the age of twenty-one or so, they’d simply grown apart. Maybe that was the future she had with Rose. Maybe she just needed to accept it.
To keep her mind busy and away from the horrors of her personal future, she read through the texts and emails that had come in. Every text had asked if they could help in any way. Kellaway included a side note to let Avery know that she’d be praying for her and Rose and that if she needed a shoulder for the late-night hours, to text her.
It was not much, but to see such support from people who, for the most part, had remained constants in her life—as well as a new face—made her think that maybe her world had not been wiped out when Ramirez had died. Why had she felt such a need to wipe her slate clean and start over from the beginning? Why had she gone into hiding anyway?
Because you were retreating, she told herself. You were only thinking about yourself. Rose’s father dies and you move farther away. What kind of messed up shit is that?
Avery’s final thought before she finally drifted off to sleep in the uncomfortable chair was that maybe she’d had it backward all along. She’d assumed Rose would need a lot of help to pull through her father’s death and the trauma of the case that had taken his life. When, in reality, Avery was starting to realize she might be the one who needed the most help of all.
***
The buzzing of her phone woke her up at 7:10 that morning. There was an ache in her neck from having fallen asleep in the chair and a nasty taste in her mouth from not having had a chance to brush her teeth. The number on her phone’s display screen was one she recognized but had not programmed in yet. It was Kellaway.
She answered it, her heart warmed by Kellaway’s kind offers via text. There was no sense in shutting her out. It would solve nothing and only make her seem unapproachable.
“Hey, Kellaway,” she said.
“Hi,” Kellaway said. “How’s she doing?”
“She’s still out of it but the doctors think she’ll pull through.”
“I thought you should know that O’Malley and Finley got worried about you. They pulled the reports from the EMTs. So they know what happened. I do, too. But no one else. I feel like we were snooping and I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Really. Look…are you okay to stay on the case while I’m here?”
“Yeah. I’m meeting with Connelly to talk about it later this morning. But hopefully you’ll be back on it soon.”
“We’ll see,” Avery said.
“Anyway, I thought you might want an update. We were able to find Abby Costello’s old phone. It was in one of the ecoATMs a few blocks away from her apartment. It was worse than just the cracked screen we were told about. It was pretty badly broken. The tech guys say it looks like she wiped it out. They can pull up the call logs, but it might take a while.”
“So maybe she just never got a chance to program the new one before her date,” Avery said thoughtfully.
“Most likely. Also, the first guy Abby saw at the restaurant checks out. Turns out, though, it was his first date with her. Met her on Tinder. They got into an argument when she told him point-blank he wasn’t her type and had no intentions of seeing him again after having a few drinks. He cut out and went to see a movie with a friend. He showed me the ticket stub and the text messages thread with the friend. So he’s clean.”
“Good work.”
Kellaway paused for a moment, as if she wanted to say something else, but eventually just decided on: “Please let me know if you need anything.”
“I will. Thanks.”
They ended the call like that and Avery could not help but hate herself a bit for wishing that she could be out there on the hunt. But she looked at Rose, in bed with the breathing tube still attached, and knew that if she was going to get her life in order, she was going to have to work on her priorities.
***
A little less than two hours later, Rose opened her eyes. She made a series of gasping noises, as she was unfamiliar with the breathing tube and alarmed at finding herself in a strange room. With the assistance of two nurses and her doctor, she was tube-free and resting as easily as she could half an hour later.
While a nurse spoke with her and checked her vitals, Avery and the doctor hung by the doorway outside. It was killing Avery to not be in there with her daughter, but she did her best to remain patient and calm.
“She’s responding splendidly to all stimuli,” the doctor said. “She’ll be groggy for quite some time and although she will likely be very hungry, we’ll have to feed her slowly. We’d like to keep her overnight, but I don’t see any reason to worry. Like I said…just be there for her in the coming days as she starts to explore the reasons behind what she did. I’d be happy to recommend a psychiatrist if you think it might help.”
Avery thanked him and watched as he made his way down the hallway. She turned back toward the room, peeking in. The nurse motioned her inside and when they passed one another—Avery on the way into the room and the nurse on the way out—the nurse gave her a hopeful little smile.
“Hey there, kiddo,” Avery said.
“Hey, Mom…”
And that was all it took. Rose’s bottom lip trembled and she started crying. They were deep, hitching sobs that seemed to come from her heart. She reached out with a trembling arm for Avery and Avery was more than happy to oblige. She went to Rose’s side and took her in her arms with caution.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Avery said. “It’s okay. I’m so sorry. I should have been there for you. You should have been able to know that I would be there no matter what and—”
“No,” Rose said. “I’m so sorry. This is on me, Mom. I was being stupid and selfish and I wanted to hate you so bad. I needed to blame you and…”
The words were lost in her tears, becoming nothing more than slurred sounds. Avery started to weep softly then and for the better part of ten minutes, that’s how their reunion went: two women, having shared grief with one another and seeking a new way to continue with their lives, finding the answer had been right in front of them the entire time.