Except she didn’t. Five o’clock came and went, and then six o’clock did. I finally gave in and texted Koro, You and Hope get home all right? and got no reply. Probably still teaching me a lesson, because he had to know I’d be concerned.
Or half out of my mind.
Then it was seven-thirty, and I texted Karen and packed up to go home. It was Women’s Wednesday, the sacrosanct evening when Hope and Karen would watch a movie while they ate dinner on the couch, with popcorn for dessert. Another thing I’d stopped sharing in once I’d achieved my objective and they’d moved in with me. This would be Karen’s first Wednesday without her sister, though, and I needed to go home and do that with her. It would make Hope feel better, and it would make Karen feel better, too. It might even make me feel better, come to that.
Karen was surprised, but she watched with me willingly enough. The idea of the driving lessons had helped clear up her earlier narkiness, I guessed. I even let her pick the film, which was why the credits were rolling on Little Miss Sunshine when my phone rang.
I had the phone out of my pocket so fast that the second ring had barely started when I’d noticed the New Zealand number and was saying, “Hello?” I was already headed out to the terrace, too. I wanted to be relaxed for this, or at least to sound that way. Because it was my cousin Tane’s number, and there was only one reason he’d be ringing me. He had to be with Hope.
“Hemi.” It was Hope’s voice, not Tane’s, and the single word sounded tense and stressed. But at least she’d rung me.
“Sweetheart. How are you? With the cuzzies already, eh. Karen and I were just watching this film and wishing you were here. Would’ve made you laugh.” There, that was good. Letting her know I wouldn’t be berating her, even before we got into it. Letting her relax.
“Hemi. I . . . I . . . It’s Koro.”
It was still heat-wave warm outside, and the gooseflesh had risen on my arms all the same. “Tell me.”
“I just . . . he’s alive. But I should have called you. Why didn’t I call you?” Her voice was high, nearly out of control.
“Hope.” I put all my command into it. “Stop. Take a breath. A deep one. Let it out, then take two more. Don’t talk. Breathe.”
I heard the sharp inhalation, then silence, and finally, in a slightly calmer tone, “OK.”
“Right. Now tell me. What happened?”
“He didn’t come to get me. I thought he must have forgotten, or got the date wrong, or changed his mind. I couldn’t reach him, and I couldn’t think what to do, so I just came anyway. And all these hours . . .”
The pitch of her voice was rising again. I said, “You don’t have to tell me that now. You don’t have to think about that now. Just tell me what happened.”
“He said he fell. He was saying something when we were waiting for the ambulance. Muttering something. He was coming to get me, and somehow, he fell. He broke his arm, too, I think, or his shoulder, because it was all . . . wrong. Twisted wrong.” Her voice wobbled on the words. “And he hit his head on the corner of the dresser. So hard. He bled so much, and the paramedic said he was in shock. It’s cold here, and it was a long time. He’s been taken to the hospital, and Tane—he’s taking me there now. We’re going, and he’s called some other people. Your family. He saw the ambulance and came over. But Hemi.” There were tears, now. “He’d been lying there for eight hours. I’m so . . . I’m so sorry.”
“No,” I said. “You didn’t know. And you did find him, and got him help, too.”
“If I’d called you, you could have had somebody check on him. He wouldn’t have been there all this time.”
“And if I’d called somebody else when I couldn’t reach him,” I said, “he wouldn’t have been lying on the floor for eight hours. I didn’t call, because it would’ve hurt my pride to do it. And you didn’t call me because it would’ve hurt yours. How did you get there? To Katikati?”
“On the bus.” Her voice was thready, so exhausted and distressed, and I felt a surge of worry to go along with the fear for Koro.
“Have you slept?”
“Not . . . not much.”
Tane’s voice, now, practically vibrating the phone out of my hand. “Cuz. You’d better get your arse out here. Koro’s not too flash, and Hope isn’t much better. Why the hell did you let her come like this, without taking better care of her? And why didn’t you or Koro tell us she was coming? One of us could’ve gone to collect her, instead of her getting here dripping wet and dead tired, and Koro lying there with his head split open.”
“I’m coming now,” I said. “I’m on my way.”
Hope
I was more tired than I could remember ever being, at least since the worst times with Karen, but I couldn’t sleep.
I was in Hemi’s bed, in Hemi’s teenage bedroom. But there was no Hemi to put his arms around me and tell me it would be all right, or that I hadn’t done everything as wrong as I knew I had. Or maybe it was that there was no Karen for me to be strong for. For the first time in my life, I not only had nobody to comfort me—which was the normal state of affairs—but, so much worse, I had nobody to comfort. Because I’d left.
And every time I tried to shut out all the confusion, to close my eyes and find the sleep I craved more than any drug, I saw Koro.
Sprawled face-down across the bedroom floor, his pants half-on, his bathrobe askew around him, his body so still, it froze me, too. I’d struggled to turn him onto his side, thinking in some dim corner of my mind, Recovery position, while I’d thought about heart attacks and strokes. I’d seen the blood that had covered his face and flowed onto the floor, that was still seeping out from a gash in his scalp. I’d felt the iciness of his skin, and it had turned mine just as cold.
I’d felt frantically at his outflung wrist for a pulse, but hadn’t been able to detect it beneath my numb, shaking fingers. But he was bleeding, and dead people didn’t bleed.
It was only when I’d pulled out my phone that I remembered that it was dead. I spotted the old-fashioned corded landline by the bed, lunged for it, dialed 911 . . . and got nothing. I hung up and dialed twice more before I figured it out. There must be a different emergency number in New Zealand, and I didn’t know it.
My breath sounded loud and harsh in the room, competing with the wind and rain lashing the little house. When I heard myself whimper like a child, though, I pulled myself together. There’s nobody else here. Deal. Cope. You can’t call for help? Then get help.
I thrust my feet back into my boots and ran. Back out in the rain, in the wind, down the hill to a neighbor, too far away out here in the country. Up a long driveway, where I pounded on a door, waited, and heard nothing. Another dash to another house, and it was the same. I kept running, stuck in a nightmare, the kind where you try and try and you can’t get there, can’t get closer. Until, at the third house, I found somebody at home, and I was gasping out an explanation, and a woman was calling for the ambulance. Then I was running back up the hill again, my boots squelching with water, my hair streaming with rain. Back into the little house, and back to Koro.