Chapter 37 - A Million Rainbows

As it turned out, I never had to ditch Emily at lunch, because she ended up ditching me first.

She and Jason had been going out since New Year’s.

That New Year’s Eve party completely rearranged our tables at lunch. Emily started sitting with Jason, which meant Kyle was now permitted to join me. Then Ryan and Casey and some of Kyle’s other friends joined us.

The new arrangement felt very strange at first. I was definitely the odd one out in the new group, being the poorest, the worst-dressed, and the least beautiful (at least among the girls).

But Kyle and I were finally, happily, officially, sitting together at lunch every day.

And now that Emily was dating Jason, who was on the basketball team with Kyle, we were attending all their games together; Kyle was pretty happy about that.

I was back to sitting with Emily on Valentine’s Day, though, since Kyle was out sick with the flu.

From what he told me, he was feeling pretty crappy. But he also had that beautiful house to be sick in, and he probably had some of Sue’s homemade chicken noodle soup, so when I should have been feeling bad for him, I was instead jealous.

Valentine’s Day was also Charlie’s eighth birthday.

She had been so excited about bringing cupcakes into school. I made some strawberry-flavored ones with pink strawberry icing, perfect for Valentine’s Day and perfect for the pink-loving Charlie.

Emily and I pushed open the bathroom door after lunch. She was yapping about her and Jason’s date night this evening, which included dinner and a movie.

I would be spending Valentine’s with Charlie. Kyle already knew that. We hadn’t even planned on hanging out today, so him being sick hadn’t derailed any romantic rendezvous for us.

But I was so excited to give Charlie the gift he had gotten for her. He had already given it to me, and it was wrapped and sitting in our closet at home. It was the Elsa dress from the mall. I didn’t even try to talk him out of it. Charlie was going to lose it when she saw that dress; I wasn’t about to take that away from her.

I noticed Lyndsay’s shimmery gray Adidas sneakers under one of the stalls as we came into the bathroom. I mouthed a warning to Emily, gesturing with my hands to get her to quiet down, so she didn’t say anything personal or anything about Kyle with Lyndsay listening in.

Emily followed my gaze to the floor, then grabbed my arm, pulling me out of the bathroom.

I stopped short at the door when I heard a sob coming from Lyndsay’s stall.

“Hey, just wait here a second,” I said to Emily, going back inside. I blew out my cheeks and stood outside the stall. “Hey, Lyndsay, are you okay?”

I expected her to shout at me and start calling me names. But she was quiet, her soft cries drifting around the empty room.

She blew her nose, then the toilet flushed, then the stall door swung open. “Fucking leave me alone,” she muttered as she pushed past me to the sink.

“Yeah, okay,” I said, turning to leave, but I hesitated, a gummy wad of guilt gluing me to the floor.

The normally polished, put-together Lyndsay wasn’t looking so hot these days. Well, she still looked hot. But she also looked withered and flattened.

That defeated, dejected look was all too familiar. It was the same look I’d seen in both myself and in Mom too many times before.

“Lyndsay, for what it’s worth, I am sorry,” I said, trying to tell her that I really was. Because I was. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had to offer.

She turned red eyes to me. They weren’t viper red; they were just sad, puffy, crying red. “Look, I’m over Kyle. So you can stop feeling guilty or whatever the hell it is you’re being so weird about.”

She yanked on a paper towel, using it to clean the mascara that was smudged under her eyes.

“Senior year kind of blows, huh?” I said.

She let out a haughty laugh. “You look like you’re having a good time.”

I sent back a spiteful laugh of my own. “Right, because getting hit with a fist full of rocks is so much fun.” I rolled my eyes and turned to go.

“I always wear them,” she said, stopping me in my tracks. Lyndsay was staring at her rings, her thumb playing with the large sapphire on her middle finger. “I forgot I had them on. I wasn’t thinking.”

I paused on Lyndsay for a second, trying to decipher that. “Yeah, well. It didn’t scar, at least,” I said, deciding to take it as some sort of half-ass apology.

“That’s too bad,” she said, the corner of her lip pulling into a weak smile. Another attempt at saying sorry, which was more than I had expected from Lyndsay.

I nodded and there was an awkward silence, Lyndsay and I just standing there looking at each other.

My phone buzzed in my backpack, startling me. I reached for it, lingering in the bathroom so it wouldn’t be confiscated by a teacher. It was my old phone, the one I still used for Mrs. Patterson and Charlie’s school.

It was her school.

I hurriedly picked up the call. “Hello?”

“Hi, this is Mrs. Harvey from Deerbrook Elementary. I’m trying to reach Charlie’s mother, Mrs. Lane.”

“She’s not in right now. This is Charlie’s sister, Brianna. What’s going on?”

“Brianna Dover?”

“Yes, I’m one of her emergency contacts. We’ve met before. What is it?” I was panicking, a call from the nurse couldn’t be good and her shaky voice wasn’t putting me at ease.

Mrs. Harvey spoke. “Charlie had a seizure today at recess. She’s currently being transported by ambulance to Barry Memorial Hospital.”

“What? A seizure? I don’t understand. What happened? Is she okay?”

The nurse’s voice grew loud and scary as she explained that along with two separate back-to-back seizures, Charlie had also fallen at recess because of the first one, and she had hit her head and might have a concussion.

I mumbled a goodbye and hung up the phone, the room, doing a three-sixty, as I imagined the worst.

I needed to get to the hospital. “Shit! Dammit!” I yelled, pressing a hand to my forehead, trying to think, not knowing who to ask since Kyle was out.

“What the fuck’s wrong?” asked Lyndsay, sounding annoyed she had to bother with this basic act of civility.

Emily came back into the bathroom. “Bree, what’s up?”

“Charlie’s in the hospital. She had a seizure at school. I don’t know what’s going on. I need a ride. Can I borrow money for a cab?”

Worry sunk Emily’s cheeks. “I don’t have any money on me. What about Ryan? Doesn’t he have a car?”

“I don’t really know him. And I don’t know where he is.”

Lyndsay picked up her backpack. “Come on. I could use an excuse to ditch. I’ll drive you.”

“Really?”

“Yesss,” she groaned, obviously already regretting the offer.

“Are you sober?” I asked.

“Oh my fucking god, yes. Do you want a ride or not?”

“Yes, please.”

I turned to Emily to say goodbye.

“Call me,” she said, giving me a hug.

Lyndsay and I left the school through a side door, not bothering to go past the office. That was probably a bad idea, but I didn’t care right now, and I didn’t want to be slowed down by stupid protocols.

“I need to get my mom,” I said when we were in the car. Lyndsay drove a lime green Hyundai. It smelled and looked brand new.

“Fine,” she said.

We drove to the house. I didn’t have to tell Lyndsay to wait in the car. Judging by the look of disgust on her face, I don’t think there was anything that could have persuaded her to come up with me.

I had to rouse Mom and help her find clean clothes. I didn’t even bother introducing her to Lyndsay. That would have been a complicated introduction, anyway. Hey Mom, this is my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. She’s the one who had me looking like Rocky Balboa there for a few weeks. She might be high as a kite right now, but not as bad as you, so we’re risking it.

Mom sat in the backseat and we both cried the whole twenty-minute drive to the hospital.

Lyndsay said nothing.

“Thanks,” I said to her as we pulled up to the Emergency entrance. She gave a curt nod, then drove away as I slammed the door.

After speaking with the receptionist at the triage desk, a nurse shuffled us through some doors.

Charlie was in a small room partitioned by a curtain. She had an IV in her wrist and a blood pressure cuff around her arm. She was awake, but her eyelids were droopy, and she was dazed and disoriented, barely responding when I hugged her.

A doctor introduced himself to Mom and started asking questions and informing her about Charlie’s current state, telling her they were running tests, that she was stable, but had a minor concussion from falling off the playground equipment at recess. When he said the word "epilepsy," I broke down.

I stood by Charlie’s pink stockinged feet, squeezing her small toes to let her know I was there, trying not to impede the nurse, who was tending to her.

Once she was done talking with the doctor, Mom moved to my side and put an arm around me, and we cried together as they continued to work on Charlie.

An hour later, she was moved to a patient room where she would stay overnight.

They wanted to continue monitoring her and would be running her through a dozen different tests, including an EEG that would detect any abnormal brain waves and was used for diagnosing epilepsy.

For the first time in a long time, Mom had taken over as mom, and she was sitting by Charlie’s bedside, holding her hand and talking to Charlie, who was awake but groggy.

She had a bunch of cords coming from her small body, from the IV in her wrist, and from the heart monitors that were taped to her chest and placed under the gown they had put her in.

It was heartbreaking to see Charlie like that. It being her birthday just made it that much sadder.

“Mom, I’m going to go get you some coffee.” I assumed Mom felt like shit. She looked like shit, and she hadn’t had any coffee or anything to eat since waking up.

I left the room and found a coffee station down the hall.

I took out my phone to call Kyle. It was now five o’clock, and he picked up on the first ring.

“Dover, I’m happy to hear from you,” he said. “Happy Valentine’s Day.” Kyle sounded awful. I hardly recognized his gruff voice.

“Hey, Charlie’s in the hospital,” I said, breaking into a sob.

“What? What happened? Is she okay?”

I went into the story, telling Kyle about the seizures and how we didn’t really know for sure, but it might be epilepsy.

“So she’s staying overnight?” he asked.

“Yeah, she’ll probably be here for a couple of days. They have to run a few tests. It’s her birthday. I forgot to grab her gifts.”

“Hey, I can come and get you. We can stop at your house. Get what you need?”

“I don’t know. You sound awful. You probably shouldn’t drive, right?”

Kyle was quiet for a second. “Yeah, I’m not feeling so great. I’ll have my mom come. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay. If she doesn’t mind.”

“She won’t mind.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Hey, do you guys have insurance for all of this?” asked Kyle. He had stopped being shy about the money questions weeks ago.

“Yeah, we have it through the state.”

“How much does it cover?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay. Well, my dad has worked at that hospital for a long time. I’ll have him take a look at that for you if that’s okay?”

I agreed to it because I couldn’t afford not to.

“Hey, Kyle, guess who drove us here?” I said, wanting to get off the subject of money.

“Uh … I don’t know, who?”

“It was Lyndsay.”

“Lyndsay?” He laughed. “I wouldn’t have guessed that. How’d that happen?”

“Well, we were talking in the bathroom when I got the call, and she offered. She kind of apologized to me, I think.”

Kyle let out a long breath. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said, not sounding glad but instead sounding completely relieved. The feud between Lyndsay and me was finally over—I was relieved too.

“All right,” said Kyle, “I’m going to let you go. My mom’s somewhere in the house, but I don’t feel like getting up, so I’m just going to call her.”

“Yeah, okay. Hey, are you going to be at school tomorrow?”

“I’m playing it by ear,” he said through a cough.

“Well, I guess you probably shouldn’t. You don’t sound great. I just miss you, that’s all.” It had only been a day since I last saw Kyle, but the past few hours had seemed like some kind of sticky time warp where everything slowed to a sad, sluggish crawl.

“Yeah, I miss you too,” he said. “And, hey, it’ll be okay. Charlie will be okay. I have a cousin with epilepsy. It’s usually controlled pretty well with meds and diet if that’s what she has.”

“Yeah, I know. I just hate it. Why Charlie, you know? Why not me? It’s so unfair.”

“Bree, it’ll be okay. Take it one day at a time. She’s at the hospital. They’re taking care of her. Focus on today. And Charlie is strong with a kick-ass sister. She’ll be okay.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Okay. I’m going to call my mom. She’ll be there soon.”

Sue walked into Charlie’s room an hour later. At her side was a doctor whom I didn’t recognize as one of Charlie’s doctors. It took me a minute to understand that this man was Kyle’s father.

He was handsome and tall with peppered hair and a short scruffy beard. He looked a bit like Kyle, but the resemblance wasn’t striking. Kyle looked more like his mom.

Sue immediately rushed over to me and wrapped me in a hug. She then moved to Mom, introduced herself, then was hugging Mom too.

Kyle’s dad was wearing his work scrubs, and he was donning a tag that read Dr. Mitchell Roberts. “You must be Brianna,” he said, holding out a hand to me. “I’m Kyle’s dad.”

“Hi, yes, nice to meet you,” I said, taking his hand stiffly.

Sue put a warm hand on my shoulder, probably sensing my nerves. “Mitch, this is the lovely lady I’ve been telling you about.” She moved her hand, gesturing toward Charlie sleeping in the bed. “And this is her sister Charlie and their mom Maggie.”

Mitch walked around to Mom and shook her hand. “Hi, Maggie, nice to meet you,” he said. “I spoke with Charlie’s doctors. They said everything is coming back normal?” He tilted his head forward and looked at Mom from under his brow, waiting, making sure he had the correct information.

“Yes,” answered Mom.

“And she’s scheduled for an MRI?”

Mom nodded.

“They should be coming to get her for that shortly. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get you guys some answers soon. I know this is scary, but Dr. Allen is one of the best. I assure you, she’s in good hands.”

Mom nodded her thank you and continued to rock and look worried.

“Bree, you needed a ride back to your house?” asked Sue.

I turned to Mom. “I was going to get us some pj’s and Charlie’s cake and presents.”

Mitch Roberts spoke. “Brianna, unfortunately, the hospital policy only allows one parent to stay overnight.”

I wiped my eyes. “What, they won’t let me sleep here?” I asked, tears building, this whole day, quickly becoming too much.

“Bree, hon,” said Sue, “why don’t you come and stay at our house for the night? I can drop you back off in the morning. Or after school? Whatever you want?”

I didn’t want to leave Charlie, but no one would understand me wanting to take Mom’s place. “Mom, are you okay with that?”

Mom took Charlie’s hand. “Yes, I’m going to stay,” she said, speaking to me in a secret code only we understood. She was going to stay and be an actual mom tonight, that’s what she was telling me. And now I was actually crying in front of Sue and Mitch because for once I believed her.

“But I wanted to come back so we could give her her gifts,” I mumbled, realizing I was asking for too much.

“Okay, yeah, we can still do that,” said Sue. She was being overly nice and sweet, making me feel bad, and making me realize just how much I loved the Roberts family. “We’ll go now, so we can get back before visiting hours are over. And then we’ll drop you back off tomorrow.”

“And Maggie,” said Mitch as he started toward the door. “You can order dinner for you and Charlie.” He pointed at a menu near the phone on the nightstand. “The kitchen closes at seven, so don’t wait too long.”

Mom looked relieved at that news; she had to have been starving.

“Well, Brianna,” said Mitch, turning to me. I wiped my eyes, hating that I was crying in front of him. “It’s nice to finally have the beautiful face to go along with the beautiful name I’ve been hearing about for so long. Sorry, we’re meeting under these circumstances, but Charlie’s going to be just fine, I’m sure.” He smiled and waved goodbye, leaving the room.

Sue was nice enough to shuttle me back to the house and then back to the hospital again. Charlie had just come back from her MRI when we returned.

Sue excused herself from the room, saying she wanted to get coffee, but I sensed she was being polite, knowing Mom might be more comfortable if she didn’t attend the impromptu party.

Charlie loved the Elsa dress so much she wanted to wear it. The nurse told her it might be best to change into it in the morning, so she ended up squeezing it next to her, holding it tight as she lay in bed.

I moved to her side to give her a kiss goodbye. “Happy Birthday, Charlie,” I said, leaning in with a gentle hug. I stared at her sweet, freckled face for a minute, a question on my mind. “Did you know this was going to happen?” I asked quietly near her ear.

She looked sad when she answered, “Yeah, but not on my birthday.”

I frowned. “Did you get to have any of your cupcakes, at least?”

She nodded. “I shared mine with Mia.”

“You’re a good friend, Charlie. I’m sorry about today. We’ll make it up to you, okay?”

With tears in my eyes, I gave her another kiss and left Mom and Charlie at the hospital.

It was past nine when Sue and I made it back to their house. She heated up some soup for me and we ate dinner together at the kitchen island before saying goodnight to each other.

I gently knocked on the wall near Kyle’s open door.

His TV was on. An anime played silently with subtitles displayed on the screen. He groaned something inaudible, and I realized I had woken him up.

“Hey, it’s me,” I said, crossing to his bed.

“Hey, this is a pleasant surprise. How’s Charlie?”

He moved over, and I sat beside him, tucking my feet under the blankets.

“She seemed okay when I left. I don’t know. I don’t really understand this. It’s so stupid. She was fine this morning.” I grabbed a tissue from his nightstand, wiping my nose because I was crying for the hundredth time today. I tossed my tissue in the wastebasket beside Kyle’s bed and turned, facing him. “I met your dad. He seems nice.”

“You did? Well, you’ve had quite the day, huh?”

I laughed. “Yeah. How are you feeling?”

“Not great, but I’m over the worst of it, I think. Are you sleeping over?” He tugged on the pj bottoms I was wearing.

“Yeah, your mom invited me. I hope that’s okay?”

Kyle put an arm around me, pulling me down onto the bed with him. I sank into the pillows, under the warm blankets, and snugly into his arms.

“Yeah, I would say that’s okay,” he muttered. He rolled into me, then onto me, and covered my mouth with a kiss.

“Can I stay in here with you?” I asked as he placed a kiss on my chin.

“Uh … yeah, but my coughing might keep you up.”

I squeezed him to me, breathing him in. “It won’t bother me. I just want to be next to you.”

Kyle didn’t argue. He kissed me warmly. My lips, yielding easily. Every inch of my body, coming undone. I had wings. I was soaring. The world around me was easy and good. This was where I belonged

Kyle lifted his lips with a sigh. “Hey, I don’t know if you sleeping in here is such a good idea. I might be feeling better than I thought.”

“No, that’s okay. I want to.” It was a decision I had made weeks ago. I wanted everything with Kyle. I wanted a life with him. I wanted to love him in every way possible. And it didn’t scare me.

He pulled in a breath, then blew it out again. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. “Yes, I am sure.”

Kyle stared into my eyes. “Okay. We’ll be safe. If at any point you want to stop, just tell me. And I love you, Bree.”

“I love you too, Kyle.”