Watch Over Me (20 page)

"Why? Why didn't you tell me?" I whisper to her as I run the palm of my hand down
her cheek.

"Silly, Addy, we don't tell each other things," she slurs with a smile. "Everything
is just hunky-dory if we don't talk."

I blink back tears as I stare down at her.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

A laugh bubbles out of her as her hand weakly reaches up and lightly smacks me on
the arm.

"You're so silly. It's not your fault. It's MY fault. It's all my fault. Everything
is my fault. They died because of me. Me, me, me. All my fault. I'm so sleepy," she
mumbles almost incoherently before her eyes drift closed.

"No, Meg, wake up! You can't go to sleep. Please, Meg, open your eyes," I beg as the
tears fall down my cheeks.

Her eyes slowly blink back open, but they don't focus on me. She stares blankly at
a spot above my head.

"I shouldn't have snuck out to that party. I shouldn't have drank so much. It's my
fault you came to get me. It's my fault that truck hit you. My fault, my fault, my
fault," she whispers sadly. "I'm going to make it right. It should have been me."

I shake my head frantically back and forth, not really understanding what she's saying
but knowing that this isn't right. None of this is right. None of this should be happening
right now, and I'm ashamed of myself for not being a good friend and not knowing what
she kept bottled up inside of her.

As Meg floats in and out of consciousness, I remember Dr. Thompson's recent words
of wisdom and do something I haven't done in a long time.

I pray.

"
You can't expect the people around you to know what you want from them if you keep
everything bottled up inside, Addison," Dr. Thompson informs me as she gets comfortable
in her chair across from me and reaches for her coffee cup.

The cup is white and has pink child-like writing on it that says "World's Best Mom."
It reminds me of the mug I made for my mom one year for Mother's Day years and years
ago. I briefly wonder if it's still in the cupboard with all the other coffee cups
at my parents' house but probably not. I'm sure it's long gone, along with the rest
of my mom's things.

"Your anger is like a living, breathing thing. It needs to be let out or it's just
going to slowly eat away at you. Your father has learned how to communicate with people
in rehab; he knows that he's wronged those he loves, and he knows that they are going
to be mad at him. You've been skirting around the big issues with him because you're
afraid to rock the boat. You're still so worried about him and what he'll do that
you aren't focusing on yourself. You aren't going to be able to get past your disappointment
with him until you finally admit to him what his drinking did to you. The two of you
need to talk about it and move forward."

That's so much easier said than done. My father and I have never had the type of relationship
where we sit down and talk about our feelings. That was always something I did with
my mother. My dad is a good person to call when you're in a bind or you need help
lifting something heavy, and he's always there with a joke or something to say to
make you laugh, but he's never done the touchy-feely thing. He's never been a person
I felt like I could go to with a problem or to lean on. Doing so now when he's fresh
out of rehab, and probably one stressful situation away from going back, doesn't seem
like the best idea.

"Don't be afraid to lay it all out for him, Addison. It's time for someone else to
take away some of the burdens that trouble you. He's an adult and it's time he takes
some responsibility for his actions."

After sitting in the hospital room for two hours, we finally get word from the doctor
that Meg is going to be okay. Meg admitted to only taking a few of the sleeping pills
once they were able to get her talking in the ambulance. They still pumped her stomach
just in case and were able to get away with just bandaging the cuts on her arm without
any of them needing stitches. We won't know how long she'll need to stay until she
can get a full exam from a psych doctor. For now, she's safe and she's alive and that's
all that matters.

"Are you sure you don't want to go back to your place first and get cleaned up?" Zander
asks softly as we pull into the bakery parking lot.

I glance down at myself and realize my shirt is dotted with Meg's blood. Zander puts
the car in park, and I don't say a word as I stare at the red splotches on my T-shirt
and touch each of them with the tip of my finger.

"I shouldn't have left. She's all alone there. She doesn't have anyone but me," I
mumble as I continue to trace the bloodstains, thinking about the words she spoke
to me about both of them being gone and how it was all her fault. I can only assume
she meant her parents, and it breaks my heart all over again that all this time we
had so much more in common than I really knew.

Zander reaches over the console and grabs my hand, pulling it up to his lips and kissing
the top of it. I look over at him as he takes his other hand and runs it over the
top of my head and down the side of my face.

"She's fine, Sugar. They're going to have her heavily sedated until tomorrow."

I nod my head in response to him, but I still feel guilty. I left her alone to deal
with her demons, and now I'm leaving her alone in the hospital. It doesn't feel right.

"I have to go into work for an hour to finish up some paperwork. I'll make sure to
check on her and let you know what's going on," he promises.

I want to tell him I love him. It hits me like a punch to the face as I sit here staring
at him, covered in my friend's blood, the guilt eating me alive. I want to tell him
that I'm only able to breathe right now because he's sitting next to me taking care
of me.

But I don't. I can't. I won't burden him with my feelings until he knows everything
about me. Instead, I lean over toward him and rest my forehead against his and let
out a deep sigh.

"Thank you for being here today," I tell him softly.

"Don't thank me for something like that. Of course I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere.
You know that, don't you, Addison?"

His voice is filled with worry and concern, and I almost wonder if he knows that I
was about to tell him I love him but stopped myself. I wonder if he knows there's
more to my story than I've told him so far and this is his way of reassuring me that
nothing I say or do can chase him away.

It's wishful thinking on my part. I
want
to believe all of those things, and I
want
them to be true so much that I'm just assuming he can read my mind and know what
I'm thinking.

"I should go inside and talk to my dad," I tell him, pulling away from his face and
moving to open the car door. All I want to do is pull him close and kiss him, forget
about what happened today and forget about the part I played in it, but I can't. I
have responsibilities.

"You'll call me if you need me, right?" he asks through the open window as I step
out into the parking lot and close the door behind me.

"I will, I promise."

The shop is empty when I walk through the front door, and I'm thankful for that. I
probably should have taken Zander's advice and gone home first to shower and change,
but for the first time in a long time, I just want to talk to my dad. I want the comfort
of his wisdom and the reassurance that only a father can give.

"Whose blood is that? Is that your blood? What the hell happened?" my dad frantically
asks me as soon as I walk through the door. He races around the front counter and
grabs onto my arms, searching me for injuries.

"I'm fine. It's not my blood," I tell him in a tired voice as he takes my face in
his hands and turns it side to side making sure I'm telling the truth.

"What happened? Did that Zander guy do something?"

I pull back and look at him like he's crazy.

"What? No! It's from Meg, but she's fine," I say quickly when his eyes bug out in
shock.

"What happened to Meg?"

I clear my throat uncomfortably and turn away from him, mumbling the words quietly.
"Today was a really bad day for her. She took some sleeping pills...too many. And
she broke a few things around her apartment and cut herself, hence the reason for
the blood."

It's quiet behind me for so long that I finally turn around to see if my dad even
heard me. He's still standing in the same spot with his hands on his hips and a surprising
look of fury on his face. His lips are pinched tightly together and the hands on his
hips are balled into fists.

"I knew that girl was trouble. She's done working here, and I don't want you anywhere
near her."

"Excuse me?" I fire back at him, gritting my teeth in anger.

"You heard me. That isn't the type of person you need to be associated with, Addison.
She's bad news and this just proves it. She tried to kill herself for God's sakes.
Someone like that is just…"

My dad cuts off what he's about to say, most likely because of the rage coming off
of me in waves. I can feel it boiling inside of me, and I want to scream. I want to
shove everything off of the table next to me so it can crash to the floor and some
of this anger can be taken out on something other than him. He has no idea how much
Meg and I have in common, and I should feel sorry for him because he's so dense when
it comes to this subject, but I don't. He doesn't know how Meg and I met, and he doesn't
know we have matching scars on our wrists to remind us every single day of our weaknesses.
He doesn't know because he was too busy spending another sixty days in rehab forgetting
about the daughter he left at home to fend for herself and say good-bye to her mother
all on her own.

"Someone like that is just
what
? Go ahead, finish that sentence."

I want to hear him say it. I want to hear him admit that someone like that is poison,
damaged, broken, pathetic, weak…all of the words I know are flowing through his head
right now, all of the words I've associated with myself over the last year.

"Come on, Dad, tell me what you really think of Meg. How do you
really
feel about someone who tries to kill themselves? What do you think about the kind
of person who could be so weak and in so much pain that they feel like there's no
other way out, no other way to stop the hurting?"