A Missing Heart (14 page)

It felt like it came out of nowhere the morning it all went down. Tori woke up and left the house without saying goodbye. That was completely unlike her. Before that morning, I would be woken up by her fingertips stroking lines up and down my torso. She’d have her head on my chest, looking up at me with her beautiful eyes until I opened mine. Then she’d smile, the smile I fell head over heels for way quicker than I had ever fallen for a smile. But when I woke up alone, I knew something wasn’t right, even if we had only been dating a few months. I called her phone a number of times, but she must have had it off or pushed my calls right to voicemail. It must have been less than an hour before I heard the front door of my place open and close, followed by the bathroom door slamming shut. Less than five minutes later, that same door flew open and Tori ran out, left the house and didn’t come back for an entire week.

When she finally came back, she informed me that she spent the week trying to get an abortion before anyone found out, but she was already past the point of time doctors would do unnecessary abortions. We had no clue she was pregnant until she was twenty-five weeks and her stomach started to grow. It was never a thought in either of our minds since we were being extra careful, sort of.

I tried not to overreact when she told me what she had been trying to accomplish, but I failed at that. Someone else was trying to take a child away from me, and I lost it. I lost it like she lost it. We both fucking lost it. Then she mentioned the word adoption and it wasn’t pretty. I told her she could go away, and I’d take care of our baby. She seemed surprised by this, considering neither of us wanted kids. At first, I thought she was scared to tell me she was pregnant, for fear of my reaction, but as time passed, I realized it was never me she was afraid of. It took a week of fighting for her to give up the battle. I promised her marriage. I promised her a good life. I promised our family would be okay, and we’d grow to love the idea of having a child in our lives. I must have been pretty damn convincing, but I haven’t been able to fulfill those promises, because in order to do that, Tori would have had to ignore all the reasons she didn’t want kids—and apparently she can’t do that.

Lost in my rationalization for her behavior, I didn’t see her hand reach up to the counter and grab the pill bottle. I didn’t see her pour more pills into her hand or mouth, but I hear a crash and open my eyes to see that the bottle is on the floor, broken, there are pills spilled out, and Tori’s collapsing heavily to the floor as if she were attached to a falling anchor. The glass of vodka falls from her grip, and she crumples into a loose ball right here, on the middle of the kitchen floor.

I should have seen the signs. I should have done something about them. This is my fucking fault.
I’ll probably never know what made her like this, because she’s likely going to die on this goddamn floor tonight. Shit!
Where’s my phone?

“Tori!” I leap across the floor, falling on top of her. “Tori, how many of those pills did you just take? Answer me, babe. Tori!” I press her eyelids up, finding nothing but the whites of her eyes. Jumping to my feet, I circle around the house wildly until I find my phone on the coffee table in the living room. With complete disbelief that I have to call an ambulance for her, I dial the number carefully, feeling like I’m asleep and stuck in some awful nightmare. The words coming out of my mouth are words I’ve never had to use before.

“I think my wife overdosed on Valium. She said she wanted to hurt herself but I was watching her. I took my eyes off of her for less than a minute and—”

“Sir,” the operator addresses me. “I need to ask you a couple of questions. Please state your full name and your address so we can send someone over.”

“It’s uh, Fifty Lightside Lane in Parkett.”

“Okay, please wait for a brief hold so I can get you to the Parkett Police Department.”

The hold feels like more than a pause as I wait for someone to pick up.

“Parkett Police Department,” a man answers.

I explain once more what happened and the questions continue. “Okay, sir, can you give me your name and address?”

“I repeat all of the information I gave a moment ago, waiting for more direction on how I can help her.

“And which room in your house is she currently located in?”

“The kitchen,” I answer, sitting down beside Tori. “Now what?” I ask.

“AJ, I need you to stay calm. Can you tell me if she is conscious?”

“No, she’s not. I can’t wake her up. I have a baby here. I don’t know what to do.” I’m panicking. I can’t do this to Gavin. I’ve watched what Hunter and Olive have gone through without a wife and a mother, and I’ll be damned if I put Gavin through the same pain.

“Okay, can you tell me if she’s breathing?”

I place my fingers in front of her nose, feeling a bit of air flowing. “Yes, she is. I’m not sure how well, though.”

“That’s great. That’s good, we want her breathing right now. I need you to sit with her and continue to make sure she’s breathing. Help is on the way.”

“Okay, I’m real worried about her,” I tell him.

“Do you know what kind of pills she took, AJ?”

I grab the bottle from the ground, spinning it around, trying to focus on the name again to make sure I read it right the first time. “Valium.”

“Do you know how many she took?”

“I didn’t know she had the prescription, and I don’t know how many pills were in the bottle. I took my eyes off of her for only a second.”

“Okay, does she have a medical condition needing the Valium at the moment?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” I tell him. I sound like I don’t know my wife. I’m questioning if I actually know Tori at all.

I place the operator on speaker so I can send Hunter a text message, telling him I need help immediately—that I need him to come and stay with Gavin while I go to the hospital with Tori.

“How is her breathing?” the operator asks.

“She’s still breathing,” I tell him.

“Okay good, you’re doing a great job, AJ.” Really? Because I pretty much feel like I’ve failed Tori and our family.

Hunter is quick to respond, telling me he’ll be here in a few. Thankfully, he lives less than five minutes away, and he arrives before the ambulance does.

During the long seconds it takes Hunter to walk inside and assess the scene, he takes me by the arm and pins me against the wall while I keep a grip on the phone pressed up to my ear. Hunter mouths to me, “This isn’t your fault, bro, she needs help.” The only thoughts going through my head are that this happened for a reason and this was her cry for help—the one I’ve ignored for too long.

“The EMTs and Fire Department just pulled in,” I tell the operator.

“Then I’m going to let you go now, AJ. Remain calm and good luck.”

“Thank you,” I tell the dispatcher.

The seconds between hanging up the phone and the paramedics rushing in through the front door, Hunter asks, “Where are Gavin’s antibiotics, and what time did he have them last?”

“Six tonight and next to the bottle warmer,” I tell him, while dropping back down next to Tori, checking to see if she’s breathing for the tenth time in the ten minutes it’s taken the ambulance to get here. She is.

As the paramedics make their way into the kitchen, everything seems to happen in slow motion as I’m pulled up to my feet and walked across the kitchen—my kitchen that’s being taken over by a number of paramedics, firemen, and police. An officer has his hand on my shoulder, and he’s asking me questions I can’t answer.

“I wasn’t watching when she took the second dose of pills. I only saw her take the one and wash it down with vodka. I wasn’t paying attention for what seemed like less than a minute when I saw the pill container fall to the ground alongside of her.”

“We were told you don’t how many pills were in the bottle to start with?” he asks.

I feel like I’m staring through him when I say, “I didn’t know they were even in the cabinet up there.”

The officer leaves my side to check through the cabinet I was pointing to and retrieves a few other bottles I was unaware of. “Has she had a drug problem before?” he asks.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Do you have a list of any medical conditions that might help us determine what caused this?”

“She’s had something going on—she’s been down and kind of depressed. I’ve tried to make her get help but—she told me today she was getting help…I just don’t know how this happened.”

“Okay,” the officer says. “We may have some more questions later, but I think it’s pretty clear what happened here.”

While he’s talking to me, I’m watching the paramedics prop Tori up on a stretcher and administer some kind of injection. Silently, I follow them out the door. I keep my eyes on her pale, lifeless face the entire way to the hospital. I still love her, even through all of this. I really do. I just don’t know if she feels the same about me. There’s a sensation stirring in my gut that’s telling me she only sees me now as the person who ruined her life. Is that who I am—that person? Lots of people say they don’t want to have kids, but then have them and realize how much they needed them. Part of me thought that’s how it would end up for us, and it will end up that way for me but, it might only be me.

“Her oxygen level is low and she’s only at forty beats per minute,” one of the paramedic states, before several of them start working around her.

I’m scared to ask if she’s going to be okay, and yet, all I can think about is how Hunter must have felt during those moments right after he found out Ellie died. He loved Ellie like I’ll probably never love another person—not like I loved Cammy, at least. Tori has been in my life for less than two years and I love her, but our love has been tainted these past few months, and I should be feeling more than I am right this second. I’m scared for Gavin. My heart is breaking for him. I’ve tried so hard to make us a family—what I wanted us to be, and I don’t know if it will ever happen.

More foggy minutes pass as we move into the hospital. It’s the second time for me today. What are the damn odds? I’ve managed to stay out of this place since Gavin was born, which seems to be a miracle in my life with my history of clumsiness. Now, I’m following the stretcher down the hall, watching as the paramedics continue to work on Tori. I’m not sure what they’re doing or trying to do, and the description they give a nurse who steps in, sounds like gibberish.

I’m sent to the waiting room while they tend to her, giving me time to debate whether or not I should call her parents, considering the conversation we had just an hour ago regarding them not being her actual parents. However, I have to assume if a man is important enough to walk Tori down the aisle, he’s important enough to know what’s going on with her at a time like this.

“Sir, It’s AJ. I—ah, I have some bad news…” For a man who is supposedly not her father, he’s pretty bent out of shape when I tell him what’s going on. He tells me they are both on their way.

I settle myself into the hard, uncomfortable chair, resting my head back against the stone wall and close my eyes, trying again to place all the pieces together. There is so little explanation for such a sudden decline in mental stability. Something had to have triggered this, something beyond seeing me with Gavin in the hospital this morning. My mind is so completely blank of possibilities that I’m blaming myself for not divulging our pasts to each other before we got married. Being ashamed of my past with Cammy and our daughter, and yet still having the ability to live through my pain tells me that whatever her past consisted of had to be worse. How much worse though? Was my past really worth hiding? The pain I still feel today when I think about my daughter has forced me to build a wall up around the thought of her—one that I didn’t feel was necessary to break down and share after all this time. In any case, it was never because I couldn’t talk about it. Whatever Tori’s hiding, though, it’s obviously something she can’t talk about.

Tori’s parents arrive quickly, finding me with my head still flattened against the wall. I haven’t moved in the last thirty minutes. I give them the longer version of what happened, filling them in on everything that occurred today. They both listen intently but don’t have much to respond with. “Has this happened before?” I ask them.

Tori’s mom closes her eyes tightly as her lips quiver against whatever words she’s having trouble saying.

“She’s had a mental illness most of her life, but it has been under control for the past five years,” her dad explains.

“Mental illness?” I question.

“She has post-traumatic-stress-disorder from—”

“From what?” I push, feeling the number of questions I have trigger the fears I’ve been trying hard to suppress these past few hours.

“We don’t know,” he says.

“You’re not her parents, are you?” I ask them.

“Birth? No,” her mother finally answers with a sternness behind her words. “But we’ve raised her since she was thirteen. We legally adopted her.”

How do I know absolutely nothing about my wife and the mother of our son? How did I let this happen? What the hell was I thinking? “Where was she before that?”

“No one knows, AJ. She was picked up off the street when she was twelve and put into our foster care. We were fortunate enough to be able to adopt her a year later.”

“How can no one know? Tori must know if she was that old, right?” I question.

“People can only be pushed so far before they break, AJ,” her dad says. “I can’t tell you how many times our poor daughter has broken.”

Then what the fuck broke her this time?