Текст книги "Pocketful of Sand"

Автор книги: M. Leighton

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

TWENTY-NINE

Cole

I SEE IT register on her expressive face–that fear that everything you love, everything you live for is hanging in the balance.  In a balance you can’t see, in scales you can’t find.

Panic clouds her vision. It’s there in the way her eyes dart around the room in confusion and circle back to the open window, around the room again and then back to the open window.

“Emmy!” she cries, flitting through the space as though she’s missed something.  “Emmmmy!” she screams, nearing the window.

A hollow pit opens up in my stomach as I watch her, this woman that I love.  She’s trying to understand one of life’s most terrifying possibilities.  But also trying to deny it.

I want to say something, but I know that even if there was something comforting to say, it would fall on deaf ears. The only thing that will help Eden right now is to find her daughter.

So that’s what I’ll do.

“Stay here. I’ll find her,” I tell her calmly.  My voice, my expression, my presence is solid. Steady.  But my insides are clamped down, the fear in the air an all too familiar black cloud.

“I’m coming with you,” she says, not even meeting my eyes.  The devil himself is nipping at her heels.  I know that feeling well.  And I know there’s no use in arguing.

I step out of the hallway and reach for Eden’s coat.  I hand it to her as she scrambles for her boots.  Before we head out the door, I grab the blanket that’s folded along the top of the couch.  Emmy will need it when we find her.

And we will find her.

I promise myself that much.

We strike out, leaving an unconscious asshole in the middle of Eden’s living room floor amidst the wreckage of busted furniture and broken things. He’s the least of my worries right now.  Hopefully the Sheriff will get there and keep an eye on him until we get back.  This is more important.

This is more important than anything.

Eden can’t lose Emmy. I know what that does to a person and I can’t let that happen to her.  Besides that, I can’t lose Emmy either.  She needs me.  And I need her.  We all need each other.

We walk along the road from house to house, both of us calling to Emmy.  The wind is whipping off the ocean, howling through the streets, carrying our voices out to sea before they can get very far.  I hear the panic rising in Eden’s tone.  The way she says Emmy’s name is becoming more and more shrill, more and more desperate.

My heart is thudding heavily in my chest and I try to imagine where a little girl might go when a monster from her past pops up on her front porch.

Icy fingers of dread grip me when I think of her love of the beach, when I think of how the empty stretch of dark sand might seem like a safe place to hide to a scared child.  A place no one would look for her.  I push the thought away. I refuse to consider it as a possibility, even as my feet turn in that direction.

We call her name.  Still, there is no answer.  No small forms hiding in the shadows or running toward us in the pools of yellow light shed from the street lamps.

“Let’s check the house I’ve been working on,” I tell her, steering her toward the sidewalk.  “Maybe she hid there.”  I pray that she did, but some strong sense of foreboding tells me she didn’t. Or that if she came here and found it empty, she moved on.

I unlock the door and push it open for Eden.  She walks through, shuffling from room to room calling for her daughter as I walk around the outside, repeating her name over and over and over.

“She’s not here! She’s not here!” Eden whimpers when we meet at the door.  She clutches my biceps with shaking fingers as her anxiety rises.  “Where could she be?  Where would she go?” she asks.

“Maybe she went to my house,” I tell her, praying that she did exactly that.  That she could find it in the dark.  That she was level-headed enough to think that way.

“OhgodOhgodOhgod,” Eden mutters, her voice trembling as we start around the curve that leads toward the beach.

We both scan left and right as we walk, calling, calling, calling.  My pulse pounds faster as we draw closer to the beach.

Patches of snow still cover long swaths of sand.  They gleam silver in the moonlight.  Everything else is nearly black in contrast.

Above the gust of the wind, I hear Eden’s gasp. I hear her following sob, trailed by the sad song of her daughter’s name from her lips.  My stomach knots for her.  My heart bleeds for Emmy. So much like my own child.  So damaged in her own way.  She doesn’t deserve this. Neither of them does.

We walk quickly along the beach, drawing closer and closer to my cabin. It’s when I’m doing a left-to-right sweep that I see the object.  It’s floating just off the shore, just beyond where the waves begin to break.  It bobs in and out of the slice of moonlight that slants across the ocean.

Without thought, I take off at a dead run down the beach toward the water’s edge.  I focus on the object.  The waves rise and obscure it.  Then they break and reveal it.  I see a tiny pale hand floating on the surface and I know that it’s her.

I throw down the blanket and sprint into the surf.  I pay little attention to the fifty-some degree water when it hits my skin.  I ignore the clench of my stomach muscles when it creeps under my sweater.  I lift my chin when everything inside my chest locks down.  Just a little farther and I can grab her.

Just a little farther.

I turn my body to the side and reach out, stretching my arm and my fingers as far as they’ll go, grasping at the five little digits that float nearest me.  I pinch at one, but my joints are stiff and it slips right out of my grip.  I lunge forward, grabbing again before she drifts farther into the deep.  This time I squeeze the end of her finger as hard as I can and pull toward me until I can get a better purchase.

A finger.  Two fingers. Five fingers.  Her arm.  As I drag her toward me, every small movement is increasingly difficult.  My muscles are sluggish as I finally pull Emmy’s cold, limp body into my arms and turn with her.  My legs struggle to cut through the undercurrent. They scream as I push them to carry us to shore.  But push them I do, step after step.

Closer to shore the waves help force us onto the sand. I fall to my knees, still cradling Emmy’s body.  I barely hear the crying over my own heartbeat.  The world is mute and I can only see Eden when she’s kneeling in front of me, reaching for her daughter.

Until I hear her scream.

“Nooooooo!”

Dear reader,

What if you could have a do-over?  Would you take it?  Would you take your rewrite and see what MORE is?  Or would you just want to ride off into the sunset with your happy ending?  Let things rest as they are?  Well, here, you’re in control.  You get to choose, but choose carefully because your answer will decide the fate of Cole, Eden and Emmy.

Click DOOR NUMBER ONE if you want your happy ending now.

Or click DOOR NUMBER TWO if you want MORE (that will lead to a second book).

Or, if you’re like me, you’ll want both.  And by all means, take them.

DOOR NUMBER ONE

THIRTY

Eden

“NO! EMMY!” I cry, tears blurring her face as I take her out of Cole’s arms and into my own.  “Oh God, baby, open your eyes!  Look at me!”

She’s so cold. Her body feels like ice against mine.  Her hands rest limply atop the dark blue of her wet shirt and her feet dangle lifelessly from her legs.

“Emmy, baby, please wake up,” I wail.  “What am I supposed to do?” I ask Cole, who’s staring at me as though he’s reliving the worst day of his life.

“Eden, let me help. My cell phone is in my pocket and I’m sure it won’t work now, so you need to run ahead to my house. The side door is unlocked.  Call 911 immediately. I’ll be right behind you. I’m going to start CPR and then I’ll bring her on in. Give me five minutes.”

“No, I can’t leave her. I can’t leave her, Cole! She’s my little girl.  She’s my baby.  I can’t leave her. She has to be okay. She’ll be afraid when she wakes up. I can’t leave her.”

I feel more frantic the longer I talk.  I hear my own words. I hear the desperation. The fear. It feeds the terror that’s swelling within me, around me.  Threatening to drown me.  Like the ocean that tried to drown my daughter.

“Eden!” Cole snaps, his fingers gripping my upper arms, digging in.  As his eyes bore holes into mine, I see his own anxiety.  The alarm. The dread.  The hopelessness.  Fighting its way to the surface.  Wrestling him for control.  “We don’t have much time.  Do what I say and do it quickly. Emmy needs our help. Right. Now.”

Without waiting for my agreement, Cole takes my daughter from my straining arms and lays her gently on the dry part of the sand.  With wide, burning eyes, I watch him set to work on her–checking her neck for a pulse, listening to her chest for breath sounds, tipping up her chin, plugging her nose, blowing air into her lungs.

Her chest rises and falls, once, twice.  He spares me one sharp look and one loud word.  “Go!”  And then, with the heel of one hand, he’s pressing into her chest, pumping life-saving oxygenated blood through my child’s gravely still body.

With a sob that’s torn ruthlessly from my throat, I clamber to my feet and run as fast as I can to Cole’s house. I find the side door and fling it open, not even bothering to close it behind me. I race to the kitchen for the phone. Surely this is where it would be.

I spot it immediately and dial 911. With breakdown fighting me for dominance every step of the way, I speak to the operator, directing rescue workers to this location the best that I can without an actual physical address.  She transfers me to an emergency worker who begins questioning me about the circumstances in which we found Emmy. He asks about water and how long she might’ve been immersed.  He asks about her responsiveness and the color of her skin.  He assures me that chest compressions are the best thing we can do for her until they get here, and that warming her very slowly and making sure she stays still and horizontal are important as well.

When I hang up, I start off back toward the side door, only to find Cole rushing in with Emmy.  He takes her into the living room, kicking the coffee table out of the way so that he can lay her flat on her back on the floor.  Without a word, he resumes chest compressions immediately.

As I watch, my eyes are focused on my daughter.  The bluish cast to her skin, the darker purplish color of her lips.  The closed lids, the lifeless limbs.

I’m not even aware of my legs giving out until I’m on my knees within a few inches of her body. I take her cold hand in mine and bring it to my trembling lips.  “Please come back to me, Emmy. I can’t live without you, sweetpea.  You’re my whole world,” I tell her tearfully.  “Please, God, don’t take her!  Don’t take her from me!”

“Get her clothes off,” Cole says quietly. “Then we’ll cover her with blankets.”

When I glance up at him in question, he’s looking at me.  In his eyes are the pain and loss and utter devastation that hovers around the corners of my heart.  And in these few seconds, I know why. I know why he is here. I know why he won’t leave. I know why he can’t give up.

His daughter. My daughter.  Blood of our blood.  Death doesn’t change that kind of love. It doesn’t really separate parent from child. Not in the heart. Not in the soul.

I set to work on getting Emmy’s clothes off her without disrupting Cole’s life-saving cycles of pumping her heart and filling her lungs with air.  I don’t know how long has passed when the knock sounds at the front door, followed by a harsh, no-nonsense voice, announcing, “Emergency Services.”

From the moment I open the door, I’m in a nightmare.  I watch men in thick jackets and white shirts assess and treat my daughter, exchanging words like “near drowning” and “hypothermia.”  I watch from behind the bars of my own personal hell as the two men place tiny pads on my child’s chest and feed electricity into her heart, watching for a viable rhythm to appear on the small screen.  After the second attempt, I hear the reassuring blip.  I hear a strangely haunting howl and I feel arms come around me.  It isn’t until Cole turns my face into his chest that I realize it was me.

The two men work as efficiently as one, preparing my daughter for transport, continuing every measure to save her life, her brain, her organs.  To bring her back to me in as much the Emmy state that she ran away in as possible.

I watch, heartbroken and horrified, wanting to help, wishing I could. Yet knowing there’s nothing I can do except stay by her side and pray that she wakes up.

The ride to the hospital is a blur. Speeding and sirens, monitors and vital signs, warm IVs and warm blankets.  I vaguely remember Cole saying he wouldn’t be far behind, but the memory is as fractured as my mind seems. As my heart feels.

I torture myself with thoughts of my life without Emmy, with memories of her most precious moments, with questions about her recent fixation on me being happy without her.  Could she somehow have seen this in her future?  Could she somehow have known that God would take her from me?

The thought sends me into silent sobs that wrack my entire body. From my perch beside Emmy’s stretcher, I fold over at the waist, pressing my forehead to hers, fighting off the hopelessness and nausea that pulls threateningly at my insides.  She’s not dead, I remind myself.  And she’s not going to be. Her heart is beating now.  Her chest is pumping with her rapid, shallow breaths.  Those are signs of life.  Life.  She can still make it.

 “Emmy, it’s Momma,” I whisper, smoothing the backs of my fingers down her cold cheek.  “You are strong, baby. So strong.  You have to fight to stay with me.  Listen to my voice.  Feel me touching you.  Know how much you are loved.  More than any little girl in the whole world.  We have too much left to do, sweetpea.  We have sandcastles to build, stories to read, cartoons to watch.  And Christmas will be here soon.  I have so many things for you.  I want to watch you open all your presents,” I tell her, thinking that I will buy her the moon if she’ll just come back to me.  “Breathe, baby.  Breathe and heal, get warm and cozy, and then you come back to me, okay?  Okay, Emmy?”

Tears drip from my lashes into her damp hair.  I would give her my blood if it would help, my life if she could use it.  If she’ll just wake up and ask me for it, I’ll give her anything her heart desires.  Anything.  Anything at all for my little girl.

⌘⌘⌘⌘

They let me stay in the corner of the emergency room bay as they work on my daughter.  I’m relieved when I hear things like “sinus rhythm” and “clear lungs” and “core temp is rising.”  They toss back and forth a thousand terms that I don’t understand as they hover over my daughter’s still body.  All I can do is watch.  And listen.  And pray.

When she is declared stable, the doctor comes to talk to me.  I give him my attention in a way that reminds me of watching a television show–thinking with only half of my brain and listening with ears that hear as though I’m standing at the other end of a tunnel.

I struggle to process what he’s saying, latching onto bits and pieces here and there.

Dry near drowning. 

Hypothermia. 

It doesn’t appear she was submerged very long.

Her body slowed blood flow to her limbs first.

Arrhythmia.

Perfusion.

Oxygenation.

Compromised.

Reacting as you did probably saved her life.

Breathing on her own now.

The next eight hours are critical.

Pediatric intensive care.

Talk to her.

Hope she regains consciousness soon.

Take you upstairs with her.

I thank him.

I think.

Calls are made.  Report is given.  The same keywords used.

A nurse dressed in all blue asks me to come with her.  She and another nurse wheel Emmy to the elevators. I follow along behind them.

She’s taken to the pediatrics wing and we walk along a hall painted in soothing greens and yellows, and bordered with bears dancing on big red balls.  I glance in each door that we pass. I see exhausted parents, some crying, some not as they watch their critical children sleep. They vary in age, the children, but the one constant is in the eyes of their parents.  Dejection.  Desperation.  Frantic worry.  It’s there in every room, hovering like an unwanted guest.

We turn into the room that will be Emmy’s.  They ask me to have a seat in the chair in the corner as they move my unconscious child into a different bed and transfer her various tubes and cords to another monitoring station.

When the commotion dies down, I’m left with one nurse, probably ten years my senior. She approaches me with a kind smile, squatting down at my side as she speaks.

“May I call you Eden?”  she asks.  I nod.  “Alright then, Eden, I’m Vera.  I’ll be watching over Emmy tonight.  Would you like to come and tell me about her?”

I do. I walk with Vera to Emmy’s bedside and I tell her all about my child as she assesses her from head to toe, gently uncovering small sections of her body as she checks things and then covering them back up.  She asks me questions, questions that one mother might ask another.  Questions that bring tears to my eyes and panic to my heart.  This can’t be it for my Emmy.  It just can’t be.

With Emmy covered and settled in her cheerful room, one soft light shining over the corner where I’ll be sitting, Vera takes my hand.  “She’s going to be fine, Eden. You just spend your time talking to her, being comfort and strength to her.  I’ll take care of the rest.  Can I get you anything?  Something to eat or drink? Coffee?”

She must know that I won’t be sleeping.  I nod. “That would be great, thank you.”

She squirts some antibacterial foam in her hand as she approaches the door, and then turns to me again.  “Is there someone I can call for you?  Anyone that you’d like to be here? For you or for Emmy?”

She’s asking about her father.

But I’m thinking of Cole.

Cole.

My heart, my battered, tattered, aching heart squeezes at the mention of his name.  It slips off my tongue like a plea.  “Cole,” I tell her. “Cole Danzer will probably be here soon.”  How long has it been since Emmy and I left the house in the ambulance?  How long has it been since he said he’d be right behind us?

Another shot of panic wrecks my chest, sending bone and blood spraying.  What if…?  I suck in a breath and hold it to still the throbbing of my insides.

Please God, don’t let him be hurt.  I couldn’t take anything more right now.  Nothing more.  Please.

“I’ll send word to the ER waiting room. He’ll probably show up there first.”

I try to smile. I’m not sure how effective my efforts are.  “Thank you.”

She nods.  “Of course. I’ll be right back with your coffee.”

As soon as the door is closed, I head for Emmy’s bed. I perch one hip on the edge of the mattress. “Emmy, it’s me,” I announce quietly.

I listen for a response. Anything.  A word, a moan, a whimper. I hear nothing but the soft whir of the Bear Hugger machine that pumps warm air into the plastic blanket that rests between her skin and the cloth ones.

“Can you open your eyes and look at me, baby?”  I try to keep my voice steady, even though it wants to tremble. As does my chin.  But I hold back the shaking and the tremors, the tears and the sobs. I want to wake her up, not scare her.

“Emmmy.  Emmmmaline Saaaage,” I say in a sing-song voice.  “Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

She doesn’t stir.  I reach under the covers and take her slowly-warming hand, stroking each tiny finger from base to tip, massaging them, trying to help coax blood back into them.

I start to hum her favorite song. It’s from a cartoon that she loves. She always sings along to it when it comes on, and then again when it goes off.  I stop every few bars to speak her name. To tell her I love her. To ask her to open her eyes.

I smell the coffee before I hear Vera bringing it in.  But when I turn to thank her, it isn’t Vera holding the steaming cup. It’s Cole.

He’s pale.  His hair is mussed like his run his fingers through the longish locks a thousand times.  His eyes are flat when they meet mine.

“Is it okay that I’m here?” he asks, his voice a low, soothing balm to my frazzled nerves.

I nod, unable to form the words that would tell him how very grateful I am that he came when he did tonight, that he helped me find my daughter, that he helped save her life.

“I saw the Sheriff at your house, so I stopped and got that squared away.”

Ryan. I’d forgotten about him since Emmy went missing.

Emmy.

My precious Emmy.

I nod as one sob escapes. I clamp it off before it can boom out into the room by tucking my head against my arm and smothering the sound.  The coffee smell gets stronger as Cole approaches.  And then all I smell is him.  Cold ocean and warm skin.  Salt and soap.  Cole.

He wraps me in his scent even as he pulls me into his arms.  I bury my face against his neck and I cry. Silently.  My whole body shaking with my efforts to stay quiet.  I pray and I scream, I beg and I blame.  I love and I hate, all without uttering a sound other than my breath hitting Cole’s throat.

When my outburst has run its course, I pull away, sniffing as quietly as I can and then turning back to Emmy.  I take her hand back into mine and, together, Cole and I guard her, we shelter her, we love her back to life.

In the stillness of the room, with the muted beeps and whirs of monitors and machines as his only backdrop, Cole tells Emmy a story.

“Once upon a time, there was a lonely man building a sandcastle on the beach.  He was used to the cool sand and the cool wind, but never had he felt a warmer breeze than he felt on this one particular day. It wasn’t coming from the sea or from the southeast as it so often did. This one was coming from somewhere closer.  With his hands in the sand, the man stopped and turned around.  Standing right behind him was the most beautiful little girl.  She looked so much like someone he loved and lost. She had shiny black hair and big green eyes.  She looked just like her mother, who was standing beside her.  Both of them took the man’s breath away.  He started to turn away, but he couldn’t.  He couldn’t turn his back on them.  Instead, he gave the little girl a daisy.  They were the favorite flower of the child he lost. And then, the little girl and her mother walked away.  The man knew when they did, that he would never be the same again. He knew he would never forget the two beautiful girls on the beach that day.  And he didn’t.  He thought about them every day. He even dreamed about them sometimes, dreamed about laughing with them, playing with them.  Loving them like families should love each other.  He started to worry that he’d never see them again, but God had a different plan.  The little girl and her beautiful mother moved into a house nearby and the man got to see them every day. Sometimes just through the window, but it was enough.  He knew then that he would fall in love with the little girl and her mother.  And he did.  Just like he dreamed that he would.”

Cole doesn’t look at me until his words have died, until they’ve given way to the heaviness of silence and fallen noiselessly to the floor.  But when he does, when he drags his eyes from Emmy’s pale face to mine, I feel all the love that he professed to have. I feel it like heat from a flame.  I see it like color from a painting. Vibrant splashes of red and green, blue and yellow, dotting the bleak landscape. Cutting through the clouds.

His eyes are on mine when he next he speaks.  “I love you, Emmy.  And I hope you can love me, too.”

A lump swells in my throat and tears well in my eyes.  There are still so many things to say, so many questions, so many things to work out, but Cole loves me. He loves us.  It’s there, plain as day.  And I love him, too. I have to believe that the rest can be sorted through later.  Right now is a time for love and unity and strength. For Emmy.  She needs us right now.

It’s the twitch of her fingers within mine that stops my heart.  But it starts running again, at breakneck speed, when Emmy makes a low whimpering sound.

I stand and bend over her, rubbing my hand across her forehead.  “Emmy?  Can you hear me, sweetpea?”

She doesn’t respond, but her brow wrinkles.  I turn to Cole.  “Get the nurse.”

He leaves immediately, jogging from the room.

“Emmy, can you open your eyes?”  I watch. I wait. I hold my breath.  Nothing.  “Emmy, please, baby. It’s Momma. Can you open your eyes and look at me?”

Her eyelids twitch. Or do they? I stare at them.  Hard. As if willing them to move.  Did I imagine that?  Or did they actually move?

Cole comes back with Vera, who moves to the bed and starts checking things.  When she goes to lift Emmy’s left eyelid to shine the light in, Emmy flinches and turns her head away.

The nurse lowers the light and reaches beneath the mountain of covers.  “Emmy, my name is Vera. Can you squeeze my fingers?”  No response.  “Emmy? Can you squeeze my fingers?”

I feel like my life, my entire existence, is balanced on a pinhead. My heart is beating so hard and so fast, I feel winded. Like I’ve climbed a hill or run a race.  And, in a way, it feels as though I have. And that I’m not yet done running.

“Emmy, ca–” Vera’s words are cut off and she smiles.  “Good girl.  Can you wiggle your toes for me?”

I see the slight movement under the blankets, but it’s not until a full two minutes later that I feel true relief.  That’s when my daughter opens her jewel green eyes, searches until she finds my face and whispers a hoarse, “I got to stay, Momma.”