Seeking Carolina (18 page)

“I swear, I didn’t hurt her!”

“Tell him,” was all Johanna heard Gunner say, and then car doors slamming, tires spinning, and the men driving away. Julietta’s screams had become whispers. The same word over and over again—Daddy. Wrapped around her little sister, wrapped up by her other two, Johanna was comforted and heartbroken at once. Emma and Nina let up on their grip. Cold air made Johanna gasp.

“Let’s get her off the ground and into—” she began.

Julietta clutched at her, her whispered cries for her father now a mewling sound.

“Here, sit on this.”

Parka. Hand. Arm. Face. Charlie’s face.

“But you’ll be cold.”

“Gunner and I are going to change the tire. The front one blew. I’ll be fine.”

“The guys will be back in a minute,” Nina said. “It’ll be okay.”

Johanna let go of her sister long enough to get Charlie’s coat underneath her. When she took Julietta back into her arms, she was limp as a rag doll, and silent. She trembled slightly, a hiccup of nerves firing intermittent spasms through her body. Johanna looked up at her other sisters, their worried expressions mirroring the one tensing the muscles in her own face.

A flash of blue and red lights turned all their heads. Nina put her hand on Johanna’s shoulder, standing over her like a sentry. Emma walked towards the police officers getting out of their car. Gunner and Charlie joined them. A moment later, one officer, a young man hardly older than Charlotte came to squat on his haunches beside the clutch of sisters.

“Is she injured?”

“Not that we can see,” Johanna told him. “The driver of the car said they only went off the road. They had seatbelts on.”

“Who was driving?”

“He’s not here,” Nina said. “He and my sister’s husband went up the road to make the 911 call. They should be…here they are now.”

The minivan pulled over beside the police car. Efan started towards them, but was stopped by the other, older officer.

“An ambulance will be here in a few minutes,” their officer said. “We’ll get her taken care of.”

“They’re going to take her away,” Nina said when he was gone.

“Don’t say it. Don’t.”

“You know what’s happening.”

“She’s had a shock. That’s all.”

“It’s what we’ve all feared, Jo. You can pretend all you like, but now it’s happened. Be prepared for what’s coming.”

A silent ambulance pulled up, red lights flashing. EMTs scrambled out of the back, took a limp and unresponsive Julietta from Johanna’s arms.

She was in an accident as a child. She saw our father die.

But words would not come out of her mouth. Gunner was already talking to one of the EMTs, a young woman with her hair pulled into a ponytail that bounced when she nodded to whatever he was saying, what Johanna knew he was saying.

“Jo?” Charlie was suddenly beside her. Johanna turned into him, buried her face in the front of his shirt and there stayed, his arms holding her close, until there were no more flashing lights in her periphery.

“What will happen to her?” she asked at last.

“They are taking her to the hospital in Great Barrington. Once they know there are no physical injuries—”

“We know there aren’t.”

“Sweetheart.” He drew her close. “They just have to make sure.”

“And then?”

“They’ll make her comfortable until they can get someone to check her out psychiatrically. The EMTs said to go home. The hospital will call if there’s any change. We can see her in the morning.”

Johanna sniffed. She wiped her eyes. Efan leaned against the Audi, head bowed and Gunner’s hands on his shoulders. He nodded, but he did not look up to whatever Gunner said to him. Emma and Mike sat in the open door of the minivan, her head on his shoulder. Nina stood in front of Efan’s car, watching tail lights no longer visible in the distance.

“We should go,” Charlie said. Johanna nodded. He went to the van, she to the Audi.

“I can’t go home,” Efan was saying. “I’m going to the hospital. I’ll sit at her bedside.”

“Will they let you?” Gunner asked. “You’re not next of kin.”

“She isn’t dying!” Efan put a hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry. So sorry. It’s just…I didn’t realize how deeply I love her. It’s so fast, but…there you have it. I love her. I have to be there when she wakes. If they won’t let me in her room, I will wait outside of it.”

Gunner gently clapped his shoulders. “If you’re sure.”

“Will you call us if she wakes?” Nina asked. “Or if they give you a hard time.”

“No one gives me a hard time.” Efan smiled a shaky smile. “Would you refuse this face?”

He hugged Nina, then Johanna. They waited while he got into the car and headed back north. The silence in the minivan was anything but contented. Johanna leaned against Charlie, eyes closed and wishing.

How did the most perfect night of her life turn so quickly?

The food, the contest, the music and fireworks and laughter. The plan for the rest of her night, the rest of her life. All gone. Every happy spark in her soul doused for a patch of black ice on a country road.

Her head snapped up when the car stopped. Johanna blinked awake, lifted her head from Charlie’s shoulder. “Stay with me.” Johanna barely felt her mouth move, though she heard her own words clearly. “Please, Charlie. Stay with me.”

Charlie took her face in his hands, kissed her brow.

“I wouldn’t leave you now for anything in the world, Jo. I already called Charlotte.”

* * * *

This man lies beside you, and only holds you gentle against the fearsome night. He was the boy you used to sneak in here, when you were just a girl. I see him in this man’s sleeping face. Naughty sylph. Such abandon. My highest hopes were for you. Of all, you were the wildest, most free. Sorrow slid from you like water from a selkie. Now it holds you close. Banish it, and they all will—my Valkyrie, my Madonna, my precious sprite. Wild women caught and sang the sun in flight! You are who they look to. You cannot let them go gentle into that good night, lest they learn too late, and grieve.

Banish we burdens from these halls! Life is joy! Not madness and secrets and headless ghouls. Rage, my sylph. The light cannot die if you rage against it.

Four Calling Birds

Efan stood in the hallway with a woman in a white coat, their heads close together and voices low. He lifted his head, motioning Johanna, Emma, and Nina closer, held out his hand as they drew near.

“Then she must be moved,” he was saying, and gestured to the sisters. “These are the ladies Coco. If some sort of permission is required, they can give it.”

“What’s going on?” Nina asked. “Julietta needs to be moved where?”

“Ladies?” The woman in the white coat gestured them into a conference room and closed the door behind them. “I am Dr. Faust, currently your sister’s physician. May I speak frankly?”

“Please do,” Emma said.

“There is nothing physically wrong with Julietta,” she began. “Not even a bruise from the seat belt. There is nothing we can do for her here. This hospital has no psychiatric ward, and I have no expertise with psychiatric matters. From what Mr. Bowen has given me concerning your sister’s past—”

“Mr. Bowen?” Johanna asked.

“That would be me.” Efan raised his hand. “I have only repeated what Michael told me last night in the car, about Julietta’s parents being untreated psychiatric patients who died in a car crash when she was a toddler, and that she nearly died as well.”

“That’s not exactly how it went,” Emma said.

“Forgive me. It is what Michael told me.”

Emma turned to Dr. Faust. “I was in the crash too, and I was older.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“I hardly remember. I doubt Julietta does either. We were both knocked out.”

Dr. Faust and Efan exchanged glances.

“What?” Nina asked. “Tell us.”

“Perhaps we should sit.” Dr. Faust gestured to the conference table and chairs. “Mr. Bowen, would you get the ladies some coffee?”

“Of course.”

Efan put pods into the coffeemaker and pressed the necessary buttons. Johanna focused on him, on every move he made.

It’s worse than we feared. Oh, Jules.

“Your sister woke crying,” Dr. Faust began. “She was calling for her father.”

* * * *

Johanna put her head in her arms, closing off the hospital conference room, her sisters, Efan and Dr. Faust still discussing their best options. She wanted it to be yesterday, wanted last night to have never happened.

If not last night, it would have been another time.

Johanna’s own voice in her head sounded callous, however truthful. Julietta’s breakdown had been building since she was a tiny girl strapped into a car seat, bleeding and in pain, while the emergency crews cut her free, while she screamed for her father.

“She is fine staying for today,” Dr. Faust was saying. Johanna picked up her head. “But other than keeping her comfortable, there is nothing we can do for her here.”

“I’m not putting my sister in a ward.” Nina said. “That is absolutely out of the question.”

“She has reverted,” the doctor continued. “At the moment, she is a little girl who just suffered a terrible tragedy. She needs the proper care, doctors who know how to bring her back without causing more harm.”

“No wards. I will not have her subjected to what goes on there. There must be private facilities available.”

“Of course there are, but insurance rarely…”

“Fuck the insurance,” Nina raged. “I’ve got money. Show me where to sign.”

“Nina.” Efan rose from his seat, his hands raised in supplication. “There is a better option. Will you listen?”

“We’re listening,” Johanna answered for her. “Nina, come on. Sit.”

“There is a small hospital at the academy,” Efan began. “A private one. A colleague of mine, the school psychiatrist, has technical rights to practice there. If I can pull the proper strings, we can get her in a bed, and he will treat her himself, at least for the time being.”

“There is a good chance she will come out of this on her own,” Dr. Faust said. “Follow-up care will be necessary, but there is no reason to believe this event is in any way indicative of the sort of mental illness your parents suffered from. PTSD is vastly different from—”

“PTSD?” Emma asked.

“Post traumatic stress disorder,” Efan answered.

“Isn’t that a veteran thing?”

“Common misconception,” Dr. Faust said. “Traumatic events embed themselves in our brains, so to speak. In many cases, the person suffering has no idea what is causing the seemingly random anxiety that, when you really dig into it, isn’t random at all. A time of day can trigger it, or a sound. It could be any number of things. Then there are episodes like Julietta is experiencing—a full-blown reversion to the moment of trauma, brought back by the car going off the road.”

“I thought psychiatry wasn’t your area of expertise,” Nina grumbled.

“It isn’t. That’s about all I know, which is why I feel your sister needs to be with someone who knows more.”

“What do you think?” Efan asked them all, but looked at Nina. “She will be close by, and in a private room that will not bankrupt you should her insurance refuse.”

“Who is this colleague of yours?” she asked. “Not some crusty old Freud-devotee, is it?”

“He is neither old nor a great admirer of Freud, I assure you. He’s a good man. Dr. Sam Chowdary. A good friend. I called him last night and he is very happy to be of assistance.”

Nina folded her arms over her chest. Johanna held her breath.

I didn’t realize how deeply I love her.

Efan’s words echoed back from the night prior, earnest and bewildered. Johanna’s heart swelled, pulled him into her family as swiftly and completely as it had Charlie’s children.

“All right,” Nina said. “Jo? Emma?”

“For now,” Emma answered. “But if she doesn’t come out of it—”

“She will.” Johanna rested a hand on her sister’s arm. “She will, Emma.”

“Whether she does or doesn’t, it’s a first step.” Efan stood up. “It’s all we can take. Doctor? Can we see her now?”

“I will go look in on her. Wait here.”

* * * *

Whether for the sedatives administered or shock, Julietta did not respond to any of them. Her unfocused eyes moved from face to face, lingering only on Johanna’s, and only for a moment. Efan spoke quietly to her. Nina held her hand. Emma kissed her cheek. When it became too obvious to ignore her lack of any reaction, the sisters filed out one by one, leaving Efan at her bedside.

“This is bad,” Emma whispered outside the door. “Thank goodness Gram isn’t here to see.”

“I’m certainly glad she’s dead,” Nina drawled. “What a thing to say, Emma.”

“You know what I mean. She…” Emma averted her gaze. “She must have gone through stuff like this with Mom.”

“Dr. Faust said this is completely different—” Johanna began, but Emma cut her off.

“I heard what she said. I also know what I remember.”

Nina grasped her sister’s hand, and for the first time, Johanna understood why she and Julietta had always been closer when it was Nina she had grown up with, Nina who had cared for her in the house in New Hampshire.

“You both remember more than Jules and I do,” she said. “We’ve never talked about it.”

“What is there to talk about?” Nina let go Emma’s hand and turned away. “Why share that kind of pain when it isn’t necessary?”

“Well she obviously remembers,” Johanna insisted. “Something, anyway.”

Emma flopped into a chair that hissed air from the cushion as she sank into it. They all waited for it to go silent, collected whatever thoughts whirred overhead.

“Hindsight is a cruel, cruel thing.” Nina shook her head slowly. “All these years, the anxiety, the need for order and control. It’s all there, like a roadmap to be followed. Dammit.”

“We couldn’t have known,” Johanna said.

“I should have. I was too wrapped up in my own life to notice.”

“Don’t do that to yourself, Nina. Don’t do it to us.”

“I was in the accident too,” Emma said quickly. “Why does Julietta have PTSD and I don’t?”

“Maybe because she was injured?” Johanna answered. “Maybe she’s just wired different.”