Chapter 6 - Fourteen Years Ago
The fluorescent light buzzed over the bed. I could hear it when I stopped breathing so loud. The woman sat close in the plastic chair, her dark coat folded over her knees now, and she kept looking at my hair where it stuck damp against the pillow.
She didn't start with my mom's name. She started with the snow.
"You walk like her," she said. "Head down, like you're counting the lines in the sidewalk."
I didn't answer. My throat still burned from the cold air outside.
She glanced at the door, then back at me. "I knew your mother when she was fourteen. Right around your age. We rode the same school bus out on County Road 9."
That made my stomach tighten. Mom never talked about a bus. She never talked about here at all.
"She had that same long brown hair," the woman said. "She'd pull it forward over one shoulder when she was nervous. You're doing it right now."
My hand froze. I hadn't realized I'd done it.
I shifted under the thin hospital blanket. The fringed one from the SUV was folded at the foot of the bed, damp at the edges. I could smell wet wool from it.
"Where?" I asked. My voice came out hoarse.
"Here," she said. "This county. She lived two streets over from my parents. She wore this gray sweater — not this one exactly, but one just like it. Her grandma knit it. She wore it even when it got too small at the wrists."
I looked down at my own sleeves. My cuffs were frayed. Mom had bought this sweater at a thrift store in town last fall. I'd thought it was just cheap.
"She said gray didn't show stains," I whispered.
The woman's eyes filled fast. "Yeah. That's what she said."
For a second neither of us breathed right. The heart monitor beeped steady beside me, and somewhere down the hall a cart rattled.
I tried to put it together. If this woman knew Mom at fourteen, that meant Mom grew up here. But Mom told us she grew up two counties over, near the lake. She said she didn't have anyone left.
"She left?" I asked.
The woman nodded slowly. She picked at a loose thread on her coat. "She disappeared. One winter, right after Christmas. She was fourteen, almost fifteen. Everybody said she'd run off, but — "
She stopped. Her mouth pressed into a line.
"But what?" I said.
She looked at me like she was deciding how much a kid could carry in a hospital bed. "But she wouldn't have left without telling me. We had plans that week. Real plans."
My hands were shaking again. I tucked them under the sheet so she wouldn't see.
"Did you tell the sheriff?" I asked.
"I was sixteen. I told everyone who'd listen." Her voice cracked a little. "Then years passed, and I thought — I thought that was the end of it."
The door clicked. A nurse came in with a plastic cup and a clipboard, her sneakers squeaking on the tile. She checked the IV bag over my head without looking at either of us at first.
"Sorry to interrupt," she said. "Need to check vitals."
The woman leaned back fast, wiping under her eyes with the side of her hand. She stood to give the nurse room, holding her coat tight against her chest.
I watched the blood pressure cuff tighten on my arm. The nurse wrote numbers down, asked if I felt dizzy, if my fingers still felt numb.
"Kind of tingly," I said.
She nodded and adjusted the blanket over my feet. Then she looked at the woman.
"Are you family?" she asked.
The woman opened her mouth. Nothing came out right away.
"She found me," I said quietly.
The nurse glanced between us and made a note. "Doctor will be in soon to talk about warming protocols and keeping her overnight. Try to let her rest until then."
She left the cup of water on the tray and slipped back out, letting the door swing almost shut but not all the way.
The woman sat back down. The thing she hadn't finished saying hung there between us, heavier now.
May you like
I stared at the half-open door. "What were the plans?" I asked.
She shook her head just once, eyes on the hallway. "Not yet," she whispered. "When she leaves."
