Rejoice (13 page)

It should’ve been that way. If only it weren’t for him.

Chapter Thirteen

Ashley visited the hospital as often as she could, and her time there had brought about something neither she nor Brooke had expected.

After a lifetime of being related, the two sisters were finally getting to know each other. But even then, most of the time Ashley tried not to talk about Peter. What advice could she possibly offer about staying with the person you loved? Especially after she’d just ended things forever with Landon Blake?

Forever love wasn’t her territory; it was Kari’s.

Still, she looked forward to the occasional nights when she’d leave Cole with her parents and Maddie and head for the hospital to spend a quiet evening with Brooke. Ashley would stroke Hayley’s hand, and she and Brooke would get into the kind of conversation the two of them had never had before Hayley’s accident.

The night after Thanksgiving was one of those nights.

November was almost past, which meant Hayley had been in the hospital two months. Her progress seemed tedious and slow, at least to Ashley. Brooke had become the optimist in the group, believing she was seeing movement in Hayley’s fingers, certain that Hayley was tracking her around the room with eyes that were supposed to be blind.

Hayley was asleep when Ashley arrived, so she pulled up a chair next to Brooke and leaned back, searching her sister’s expression. The hum of the machines in the background was strangely comforting, and the nurses had dimmed the lights in a way that relaxed Ashley, made her feel even more talkative.

“You okay?” Ashley searched her sister’s eyes.

“Yes.” She shrugged and looked at Hayley. “I keep thinking tomorrow will be the day she wakes up and tells us she’s okay.”

Ashley bit her lip. “It could happen.”

“I know.” Brooke smiled but it fell short of her eyes. “I’m praying for it every day.”

Hayley began to stir, and soon she was making the strange and constant moaning sound that accompanied her waking moments. And while that aspect of her recovery hadn’t changed, for weeks now she’d been able to stop crying whenever any of the family talked to her.

The crying grew louder. Brooke looked at Ashley and nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Are you sure?” Ashley was excited and anxious all at once. Hayley’s medication made her sleep much of the day, and Ashley hadn’t seen her awake for the past few weeks. Usually Brooke was the one who went to her when she needed comforting.

“Yes. It’s good for her to remember more than me.” Brooke smiled. “See if you can make her laugh. That’s her newest thing.”

Ashley stood and leaned against the rails that ran along Hayley’s bed. “Hey, little girl, it’s me. Aunt Ashley.”

The sound of Ashley’s voice had an instant impact. Hayley stopped crying and blinked. Ashley watched her, hating the way the child opened and closed her eyes, each movement painstaking and deliberate, in slow motion. Further reason to believe that the brain damage she’d suffered was very serious.

As Hayley woke up, she held her arms out in front of her, both hands stiff and turned outward. Next, her right leg kicked straight up in the air and stayed there, bouncing a few inches in either direction.

Ashley placed her fingers on Hayley’s right calf. Her small muscles were hard and stiff. Ashley massaged them, the way she’d seen Brooke do. Almost immediately, Hayley’s leg relaxed enough that it returned to its position on the bed.
Oh, Hayley, you’re so different.
Ashley kept her thoughts to herself.

Tears blurred her vision, but her voice was happy, upbeat. “Hey, silly girl, where’s your smile, huh?”

Again in a way that was painfully slow, Hayley turned her head and looked at Ashley. Not at her face or at the space near her, but right into her eyes. Ashley sucked in a quiet gasp and shot Brooke a look over her shoulder. “Hey, come here. You have to see this.”

“I know.” Brooke smiled. She joined Ashley at the side of the bed and stared at Hayley. Even before Brooke began to talk, Hayley shifted her gaze to her mother. “That’s what I’ve been saying. Looks like she can see you, doesn’t it?”

“She can; I swear she can!” Ashley gripped the bed rails and uttered a giddy sound. “Brooke, I can’t believe this; look at her! She can see; I have no doubt.”

Brooke took Hayley’s stiff fingers and worked her thumb into the child’s palm, relaxing her little hand some. “I keep telling her doctors that, but in here they don’t see me as a professional. They think I’m a delusional mother, believing what I want to believe about Hayley’s condition.”

“Hayley . . .” Ashley tried again and waited until her niece looked her way. Then Ashley made a goofy face, one that always made Cole laugh. “That’s right, silly head; where’s your little smile?”

And right then Hayley opened her mouth and laughed! Not the normal wind-chime laughter that had been her trademark before the accident. But a series of short breathy sounds, the way Edith at Sunset Hills laughed. Still, it was something. It meant Hayley could hear Ashley and that she knew what was being said. Also, that somehow she understood she was being played with, and that it would be an appropriate time to laugh.

Ashley kept working her fingers into Hayley’s calf muscles—first the right leg, then the left—and finding ways to make her respond until ten minutes later a nurse came in with a long needle.

“Time for her meds.” The nurse’s eyes looked tired, as though a lifetime of seeing children like Hayley had left a permanent mark.

Brooke moved back and motioned for Ashley to do the same. As they did, Hayley began to cry, and her arms and legs, which had been calm while they were being massaged, grew stiff and rigid once more.

“She wants us.” Ashley stared at her niece wide-eyed. As often as she’d been by to visit, she’d never seen Hayley so responsive. “Brooke, she knows who we are and she doesn’t want to be alone.”

“I know.” Brooke’s eyes were wet, but her smile took up her whole face. “Now you can see why I’m so hopeful. She’s coming back to us, Ashley; I really think she is.”

As soon as the nurse was finished, Ashley returned to her place by the bed. Hayley was crying again, turning her head from side to side. “It’s okay, sweetie; we’re still here.” Once more she took hold of the child’s stiff leg and eased her thumb into the tight muscles. And once more Hayley stopped crying and found Ashley’s eyes. “That’s right, Hayley; where’s your happy smile, silly?”

The corners of Hayley’s mouth stretched and filled her face, and she pressed her head back into the pillow. The action reminded Ashley of something—something she couldn’t put her finger on until . . . She gasped out loud. “Brooke, she looks like a newborn. That smile . . . it’s the same one she had when she was two months old.”

“Right.” Brooke’s tone was sure and confident. “That’s what I’ve been saying.” She moved back in place beside Ashley. “Now if we can just get the doctors to see it.”

Ashley was quiet, continuing to massage Hayley’s legs and arms and hands. After a while, as they often did when she was with Hayley, tears formed in her eyes and spilled onto the child’s hospital sheets. They were strange tears, really. Not like any Ashley had ever cried before. The tears didn’t involve her sinuses or even the sound of her voice; they simply came. Falling like rain whenever she spent time with Hayley.

“I want her out of this bed so bad, Brooke.” Ashley dabbed at her cheeks, but it did nothing to stop the flow. “I want her to sit up and tell us she’s only teasing, that she’s really still in there, still the Hayley we know.”

“Exactly.” Brooke’s eyes never left Hayley. “I want her to tell me how she’s feeling, if she’s alone or afraid or if her legs hurt when they cramp up. I want her to ask about Maddie and talk about going home again.” She sniffed. “I want her to eat with a spoon, not through a tube in her nose.”

“I picture her on her fourth birthday.” Ashley wiped at her tears again. “Riding her tricycle, playing catch with Cole . . . eating birthday cake with the other kids.”

Brooke’s voice held a quiet resolve that hadn’t been there before. “Then we have to pray that way, Ashley. You and me and everyone else who knows her.”

“I am, Brooke. Every day I am.”

They were quiet then, and after fifteen minutes, Hayley fell asleep. Brooke and Ashley took their chairs again, the tears gone for now. Once they were settled, Ashley leaned forward and rubbed her sister’s knee. “Okay . . . what’s on your mind?”

Brooke shrugged. “I’m wondering, I guess; why Peter isn’t here, why he thinks his being gone will make it easier for us.”

A conversation came to mind, one Ashley and Kari had shared earlier today. Ryan had dropped in a few times to see Peter, and each time Peter had acted strangely. Ryan had talked about Peter’s behavior with Ashley’s dad and they’d reached the same conclusion: Peter might be taking something to get through the ordeal.

Ashley studied her sister, not sure how much she should say. “Have you talked to Dad lately?”

“Yes.” Brooke rolled her eyes. “Peter isn’t taking drugs. He might be drinking, but he wouldn’t abuse his privilege as a doctor; I know him better than that.”

“I don’t know.” Ashley didn’t want to argue the point. But maybe if Brooke considered the possibility she might look a little closer at how Peter was spending his time. “Doesn’t it seem strange that he isn’t here more?”

Brooke shifted so she was facing Ashley. “He’s guilty, Ash. That’s why he isn’t here. He’s chosen to cut himself off from me and the girls and the accident, because that’s the easiest way he can get through it.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.” She turned back to Hayley. “The guilt’s tearing him up.”

These were waters they hadn’t crossed. Most of the time Ashley and Brooke spent these hospital hours talking about happier times, the years since the girls were born, the fun moments they’d shared as a family, Brooke’s insistence that God was going to work a miracle and give them Hayley back again, whole and well.

Ashley closed her mouth and followed her sister’s gaze, allowing her eyes to fall on the blonde girl, still sleeping peacefully a few feet away.
Give me the words, God. I don’t want to hurt her.

A reassurance came over Ashley, and she felt the muscles in her shoulders ease some. “When’s the last time the two of you talked?”

“Peter and me?” Brooke glanced at her, but looked immediately back at Hayley. “Days. He was here last Saturday for a few minutes—nothing more.”

Ashley rubbed Brooke’s arm, willing her tone to sound kind and gentle. “Then how do you know, Brooke? What if he is using something?”

Brooke’s eyes became stony cold. “What if he is?” She shifted her gaze to Ashley’s, but just for a few seconds. “He’s the one who walked out on this family.” Her chin quivered and her voice shook. “I refuse to chase after him, and I absolutely won’t beg him to take part in what’s happening here. Not when . . .”

Ashley waited until she was sure Brooke wasn’t going to finish her sentence. “Not when what?” She leaned a bit closer to her sister. “Not when it’s his fault you’re here?”

Brooke tilted her face upward and looked at Hayley again. Her expression remained frozen, her body still as if she might break if she moved an inch in either direction. Despite all that, a stream of tears forged its way down the sides of her cheeks.

Ashley wasn’t sure why she didn’t let the issue go, but for some reason she felt God leading her, directing her to talk about what happened. Maybe then her sister would have a chance to work through the accident.

“Brooke . . . is that what you think? That it’s his fault?”

She didn’t say a word, but her head moved up and down twice, and the tears came harder, her shoulders shaking with the sobs she was holding back. It was the first time since Hayley’s drowning that Ashley had seen Brooke break down this way.

“I . . . I asked him to keep their life jackets on . . . to make sure the girls didn’t go near the water without them.”

Ashley knew only a few of the details, whatever Peter had shared with Ryan the night of the drowning. The detail about the life jackets was new. “Have you talked about what happened that day? With Peter?”

“No.” A momentary guilt colored Brooke’s eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it. I can’t stand the thought of picturing Hayley’s last few minutes, the events just before she . . .” Brooke covered her face with her hands and hung her head. “I can’t do it, Ashley. I wasn’t there to help her.”

Ashley felt her eyes grow wider. What had her sister just said? She hadn’t been there to help Hayley? A strange pounding sounded in Ashley’s ears, and a rush went through her veins. In all the weeks while they’d sat vigil beside Hayley, Brooke had never said anything indicating her own guilt.

Until now.

Brooke sat unmoving.

Great, heartbreaking sobs shook her back, and she kept her face covered with her fingers. Ashley slid her chair closer to her sister’s and eased her arm around her shoulders. “Oh, Brooke. You think it’s your fault, too.”

Her sister sat up straighter, but kept her hands over her eyes. “I agreed to be on call. I should’ve put the girls first, and then—”

“No, Brooke.” Ashley’s voice was firm. “No. A million times no. God wants you to let go of that. Both you and Peter would do a hundred things differently if you had that day to do over again. So you took an on-call job. So Peter watched a baseball game. Those aren’t deadly decisions, Brooke; can’t you see that?” Ashley leaned her head against Brooke’s. “What happened to Hayley just happened, that’s all. Blaming Peter, blaming yourself won’t take you back in time and let you fix it. All you have is today, maybe tomorrow. None of us know even that for sure.”

“Yes, but . . .” Brooke let her hands fall to her lap, and her eyes had the frightened look of a lost child. “If it wasn’t our fault, then . . . then that leaves only God. Don’t you see, Ashley? If I believe this is God’s fault, I’m not sure I could ever trust him again. I have to blame someone else.” She gave a slow shake of her head. “God sees all things, right?”

“Right.” Ashley swallowed her fears. This conversation was way beyond her abilities, but still she felt the peace of God inside her, encouraging her to go on.

“Okay—” Brooke sniffed—“here’s the problem. I just found God again, Ashley. All those years when we were kids and Mom and Dad took us to church and talked about Jesus? I never really believed—not until after September eleventh. I don’t know; maybe that was the first time I ever needed God.” She made a sad ironic huff. “Now I believe every bit of it. God is real . . . Jesus died for my sins . . . I want him as my friend and Savior so I can get through life here and spend forever in heaven, okay? I believe all of it.”