Swimming Through Clouds (A YA Contemporary Novel) (4 page)

“There’s been an accident! Come quickly! There’s been an
accident!” Dad yelled to the 911 dispatcher.

All the sensations around me blended. The snow felt warm.
Jesse’s body sounded loud. Dad’s voice seemed heavy. The blood on my hands felt
cold. The snow tasted salty. My eyes felt numb. And the neighbors were falling.

When the ambulance arrived, I rocked Jesse, confused at all
the commotion. Why did the neighbors stare at me? The men in white and blue
uniforms exited the blinking van and ran toward me. Déjà vu. They wanted to
separate us. They wanted to steal my brother from me. The same way they stole
Mom from us. Not happening. Not this time. I would hold on tighter this time.

“No!” My crackling voice returned. “I won’t let you take him
from me! I won’t! I won’t! I can’t.”

In the end, the EMT staff pried me away from Jesse’s body,
offering me a seat near my baby brother in the ambulance. I didn’t ask Dad. I
just went, and Dad followed in his car. The whole ride over to the hospital,
two EMT techs worked on Jesse, putting in lines, pumping meds into his veins,
and performing non-stop CPR while I watched, digging my fingernails into my
palms.

By the time we arrived at Lakeland Community, the nearest hospital
in St. Joe’s, Jesse started breathing...barely. Enough to give the team a
little hope, and things moved at record speed the second the ambulance reversed
into the ER entrance. The back doors swung open, and a team of doctors and
nurses appeared, wheeling him away while throwing a plethora of medical words
into the air. I only recognized the words
surgery
and
spinal cord
.

The EMT driver helped me step down from the truck and
escorted me to a couch in the waiting room outside the locked doors of the OR.
Dad marched right behind us. He sat down on a different couch and put his face
in his hands. We were together, Dad and I. But I felt more alone than I’d ever
felt before. First Mom. Now Jesse?

I closed my eyes and hit rewind. My mind replayed the scene
over and over again. At times, I caught Jesse by his arm and convinced him not
to jump. Other times, I held his hand, and we jumped together. And still other
times, I raced up the roof and grabbed his hand, but his weight overcame me.
Inevitably, his fingers slipped from mine, and he fell right before my very
eyes. Reality exhausted me, so I dreamt of an alternative life. A life absent
of chaos and loss and lists. The
friggin
’ list.

I must have dozed off, because when I heard voices, they
grew steadily louder like someone turned up the volume. The surgeon spoke with
Dad. I wiped my eyelids with the tips of my thumbs and shook the grogginess
from my shoulders as I rose up to hear their discussion.

“The situation is difficult.” The surgeon—his name tag
read Dr. Jenkins—broke the news to Dad. “His arms are remarkably not
broken, but the fact of the matter is, he might never walk again, but once we
drain the brain hemorrhage and the swelling wanes, he should be able to swallow
and speak again. Just depends. Everyone responds differently to trauma.”

“What are you saying?” Dad asked as if the doctor spoke a
foreign language.

“I’m saying that your son will have to take it slow. Only
time will tell what kind of permanent damage both his brain and spinal cord
might have endured from the fall. We did the best we could, but the healing
process takes time. Just be thankful he’s alive, and we’ll take it one day at a
time.”

“Alive?” Dad reverted to his growling self. “You equate a
mute paraplegic with being alive?”

“Sir.” Dr. Jenkins put a hand on Dad’s shoulder.

Dad shook it off.

Dr. Jenkins spoke slowly. He seemed comfortable with Dad’s
belligerence. “Sir, one day at a time. We encourage families in similar
situations to take things one day at a time. We have counselors and social
workers available if you need to talk further. I have other cases to attend to.
The nurse will be out when your son is stable enough for you and your daughter
to visit with him. We are all surprised that he’s alive. Very few people
survive such head trauma from this type of fall. I’ll talk to you more
shortly.”

And with that, the doc turned and pushed through the doors
marked “Hospital Personnel ONLY.”

“Bull crap.” Dad said to no one in particular. “What kind of
nonsense is this? And you’re
gonna
charge me for
fixing him up enough to just lay in bed?”

I backed up, repulsed by Dad and shaken by the prognosis,
and plopped back down on the couch nearest me.
Never walk
again? Might never speak?
My
mind whirled in a hundred directions like the flurries outside the window.
What
did this all mean?
Jesse was
alive. Barely. But never walk or speak. I hadn’t thought of the in between. The
stuff that lay between being alive and dead.
In between
stamped Jesse’s prognosis as fresh
confusion flooded my already cluttered mind.

Dad just stood there and stared at the OR doors. When no
nurse arrived, he returned to his spot on the couch. Up to this point, he
hadn’t said anything to me. Not one word. Not even looked my way. The tension
stretched between us like a rubber band pulled to its max. I couldn’t think
about going home. I closed my eyes to drift back to the last time I spoke to
Jesse on the roof, when Dad’s voice startled me back to now.

“Get up.” Snap! He stood over me, his eyes laced with red.
Then he turned and walked out of the waiting room toward the elevators. “We’re
going home.”

Everything inside of me tensed. Like a tiger poised to
pounce on Dad, one look at his eyes reminded me who the hunter was and whose
hands held the gun. But how could I leave without seeing Jesse? I needed to see
my brother and tell him in person that I was here for him. I would take care of
him. Help him learn to walk again. Instead, we abandon him? What kind of
stupidity was this? But that’s just it. The story of my life. And I knew better
than to protest, especially in public. I swallowed the angry voices in my head,
stood up, and followed Dad to the car.

Like Humpty Dumpty, the surgeons attempted to put Jesse back
together again. They even drilled a hole in his head to drain the bleed. I
imagined the tube worked somewhat like a straw, sucking out all the awful
memories of his yesterdays. Wishful thinking at best.

After two weeks in the ICU, they moved my brother to Acute
Rehab where he spent close to three months, relearning how to swallow and
maneuver his weight since his legs refused to budge. Dad visited him daily,
returning home to report to me like he was sharing
Chem
lab results: “No change.”

I hated Dad for not allowing me to see my baby brother, so I
called the hospital as often as I could from the school office during my lunch
breaks. The staff seemed to feel sorry for me, the sister who’s brother tried
to kill himself. So no one asked me why I didn’t have a cell phone like most
teens, or why couldn’t I just use the phone at home.

In that first month after the ambulance took Jesse away, I
called every day. But the nurse always told me Jesse was asleep, but doing a
little better each day. In February, a female nurse whose voice I soon looked
forward to hearing, came on the line to answer my questions. Only then did I
fully realize that not only might I never again see my brother walk. Would I
ever hear his voice again?

Never learned the name of the nurse who took the phone, but
I’ll always remember her kindness. To help Jesse hear my voice and her patience
to tell me what he was thinking. He must have written his responses down for
her to read to me. Whatever the case, I never stayed on the phone long. Just
long enough to let him know I was thinking about him. And I love him.

April arrived and Dad woke up one morning and announced,
“Enough.” He was tired of the inconvenience. So he pulled Jesse out of rehab
against the doctor’s advice, and the ambulance brought Jesse home three months
after that night on the roof.

The medical staff assembled a hospital bed in Jesse’s room
and detailed the home care, rehab proceedings, and mandatory follow-up
directions. Dad signed the papers and ushered everyone out. With nothing more
than a two-second, “Thank you,” Dad locked the door behind them, and before the
ambulance left the driveway, I watched in horror as Dad tore the discharge
papers to shreds. Like he was punishing the paper since he could no longer
punish Jesse.

And once again, my list changed. And the Internet
connection—cancelled. So that’s how it had been for the last three
months, while Jesse made little to no progress. Because Dad never allowed
anyone in our house, convinced he could rehab his son on his own, Dad’s
schedule flexible enough for him to come home for lunch almost daily to shower
and change Jesse’s scrubs. But Jess didn’t progress. Just laid there. And days
when I came home and the room didn’t smell of incense, Dad’s go-to choice for
air freshener, Dad didn’t make it home. Perhaps a meeting ran over. Or he couldn’t
be bothered.

Whatever the case, I was strictly instructed to do
everything aside from dressing my brother because, “Girls don’t look at naked
boys. And naked boys don’t look at girls. No one looks at you naked.
Understood, Talia?” It was not a question.

“Yes, sir.” Because that’s the best response to Dad’s rules.
The lawyer makes the laws. Breaks the laws. Then rewrites the laws so he looks
innocent. That’s how Dad rolls.

So the laws in our house simply rolled over to add Jesse’s
list to my list. And that was that. Until the school called the house in June,
demanding a home tutor visit all summer in order to bring Jesse up to speed
academically.

Dad said, “Thanks, but no thanks. We’re moving.”

“We are?” I asked Dad when he hung up. I guess we were.

Next thing I knew, move we did. Taking Jess’s hospital bed,
his wheelchair, and our broken hearts to the Chicago burbs just before my
senior year kicked off.

Doctors predicted Jesse might never walk again, but his
speech should return after the side effects of Traumatic Brain Injury waned.
For months, no words left his lips. He does make one sound each and every
night. He cries. Each and every night. He looks toward his bedroom window and
cries. Eventually, he cries himself to sleep.

CHAPTER
FOUR

The
weekend crawls by, and when I wake up Monday morning with fresh blisters on top
of old scars, my arm is red, oozing, and still burning. I goop on the entire
tube of A&D ointment, wincing as I spread it over every inch of skin and
clumsily wrap gauze from my elbow to my wrist. Then I find a baggy, green
sweatshirt to wear that doesn’t draw attention to the extra thickness. Every
task takes longer than usual. Each time something, anything, contacts my arm,
shots of pain fire up to my brain like arrows piercing the bull’s eye. Over and
over and over again. Twenty minutes remain for me to finish my morning list,
and neither Jesse nor I have eaten breakfast.

My lips still sting from teeth bites. My ugly deformed lips.
My right fist stops centimeters from smashing the bathroom mirror. That would
create extra cleanup and additional chores to pay for a replacement. Time
lamenting things I cannot change only blurs my perspective. I need to take care
of Jess.

If he doesn’t eat now, he won’t eat until Dad comes home for
lunch. And Dad doesn’t always show up. So I quickly shove a bowl of lumpy
oatmeal in his lap, apologizing for rushing off. Jess just glances down at my
arm, his eyes saying the same two words he said to me that night on the roof.
I’m
sorry
.

I tell him, “Don’t be. Same old, same cold.”

I have to get to school on time. If I’m late, I’ll draw
unnecessary attention to myself. I side hug Jesse, leaving the remote under his
hand and fly out the door with my backpack over the shoulder of my good arm.
Lips freshly scabbed, arm on fire, stomach growling, I look forward to only one
thing. Lunchtime.

Lunch cannot arrive soon enough. I need distraction and
little yellow squares pop up like granted wishes from an invisible genie. A
genie named Lagan. Lagan knocks three times before noon with Post-it notes I
find during morning classes. In first period, one sits curled up on my desk.

It reads:

Top of the
mornin
’ to
ya
. Looking forward to
‘conversation’ today at lunch. NLA-style of course.

I flip the note over, and the back reads:

“Nod/Look
Away” in case you forgot.

L

In between classes, I spot one on my locker that says:

Came up with
21 questions. You get two points for every question you answer yes, and no’s
are three-pointers. When you get to 21, you win...another lunch date with me!

L   

After Bio, I follow the smells of pasta and garlic bread to
the lunch line. Handed another personalized cafeteria tray by a smiling
volunteer, my third Sticky Note of the day reads:

Sitting in my
usual spot. Got your tray for u since u looked like u hurt your arm or
something. I’ll change it up if you don’t like. C U now.