I tap lightly on room 110’s door and wait for Lindsey to respond before going in. She rises from her position in the chair beside Jacob’s bed, and I motion for her to sit down. Her jaw is set and she’s pasty white, making the dark rings underneath her eyes all the more apparent. She came straight to the hospital after the police interviews this morning, and I bet she’ll stay all night.
“Jacob, Dani’s here to visit,” she says and smiles down at him, reaching to brush the hair off his forehead, but his black curls are gone—shaved before his second surgery. Thirty-two staples form a U shape on the left side of his head. His face is swollen to unrecognizable from all the steroids they pump into him. It was easier to look at him when the bandages covered his head, but there’s no need for them anymore. Still.
“Hi, Jacob,” I say, averting my eyes and trying to sound upbeat. I understand why Wyatt refuses to visit. He doesn’t agree with his parents’ decision to keep Jacob alive after the doctors have declared him brain dead. He’s not the only one who doesn’t agree with them.
Lindsey insists everyone address Jacob when entering and leaving his room. During his first three days in the ICU, she found stories from coma survivors who claimed they felt their loved ones’ presence and were comforted by it while they were unconscious. She’s been obsessed with their stories ever since and demands we include Jacob in all our conversations. Yesterday she asked one of the nurses to leave because they spoke around Jacob like he wasn’t there.
I hand her the grande macchiato I picked up from Starbucks on the way over and take a seat in the tan vinyl chair on the other side of Jacob’s bed, marveling at how quickly these visits have become routine. Unlike the general hospital, the psychiatric ward has very strict visiting hours, so I wasn’t allowed to stay with Caleb twenty-four seven even though I wanted to. I spent lots of time sitting down here with Lindsey in between my visits with Caleb. I’ve kept them up since he got discharged because I don’t want her to feel like I abandoned her now that he’s out.
I search the mural of cards taped on the wall in front of us, trying to spot any new ones since my visit yesterday. There are hundreds of cards, and more arrive every day, each filled with well-wishes and prayers for recovery. Lindsey and Andrew take turns reading them to Jacob, showing him the pictures on the inside like they’re reading him his favorite children’s book.
#22 is painted in bold red strokes in the center of the mural. Lindsey said it took Sutton two hours to complete it, but she was determined to do it herself. It turned out great.
Jacob has been number twenty-two since the boys started playing Soccer Shots in preschool. They all wanted number twenty-three, but Sawyer got to pick first that day, and he snatched it up before they could. They were left with second best, so Jacob settled for one below and Caleb one above.
#22, #23, and #24.
These past few years we’ve had to watch Jacob and Sawyer get more and more attention on the field while Caleb is slowly edged out of the equation, but that’s how it is when you’re the goalie, and they’re the leading scorers in the tricounty area. Bryan and I have always told Caleb that, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Now it’s just him, and something tells me his soccer days are over.
“Did the kids go down easy?” she asks like she used to when our kids were little and getting them to sleep was our biggest worry.
She’s really asking about Caleb. Luna has been staying with us since Caleb got out of the hospital, but she’s never had a problem falling asleep even when she was a baby. She’s one of those people who can fall asleep anywhere and at any time just by laying their head down. Caleb used to be the same way.
“Caleb was still awake when I left. Bryan is sitting in there with him.” It isn’t exactly a lie. I turned on the baby monitor that I overnighted from Amazon last week before I left and made Bryan promise to check on him. He swore he would, but I’m not sure I trust him, since his expression said differently.
“You’ve got to give the boy some room to breathe,” he said when I set it in front of him on the coffee table. “Maybe all he needs is a little space.”
That’s not going to happen, because the psychologist’s words from the hospital follow me everywhere:
Suicide contagion is a real thing in teenagers. Having someone close to you attempt suicide increases your risk.
It’s such an awful term. Suicide contagion. Makes it sound like an infectious disease. One that’s already contaminated us.
“How about yours?” I ask. Sometimes she goes home at night to put them to bed and leaves once they’re asleep to spend the night with Jacob.
She rolls her eyes. “You know Sutton.”
Sutton is every bit as spoiled as the name implies, except Lindsey and Andrew call it being spirited. She’s their indigo child or something like that. I can’t imagine being part of that parenting generation. Everything is so different from when my kids were Sutton’s age, and I couldn’t handle it. Kendra and I stopped having kids after we had two, and we loved that the three of us each had two kids so close together. It was perfect, but Lindsey was determined to have a girl, and she doesn’t give up when she’s set her sights on something. It took her ten years to get pregnant again, and I’ve always secretly wondered what would’ve happened if she’d had a boy.
“How’s Wyatt?”
“Running around trying to take care of everybody else like a good middle child.” She smiles at me, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. Those are filled with exhaustion and questions she won’t allow herself to answer.
That’s not what I meant, and she knows it. Wyatt has been as opposed to keeping Jacob on life support as the protestors outside the hospital are. She gives me another smile.
She was obviously mad at me earlier today about the lawyer, but it’s impossible to tell if she still is because she acts so differently at the hospital. She keeps a smile plastered on her face like some strange Stepford wife and talks in a high-pitched voice like everything has to be positive. I totally understand why, and I’d be the same way, but it doesn’t make it any less disturbing.
“Listen, I just want you to know that we only got a lawyer so we’d have someone to help all of us through this. That’s all. We don’t want you to think of Ted as just our lawyer. He’s here for everybody. Anyone can ask him questions or run things by him.” I’m talking too fast, but I can’t help it. I fix my gaze on her, and she returns my stare with a strange expression that I can’t read despite thirty years of friendship. Our eyes hover above Jacob’s body, which is covered with a crisp white sheet. She changes it daily even though the nurses could do it for her and tucks the corners underneath the mattress military style. The beds in her house are the same way. “I wasn’t trying to go behind anyone’s back or do anything without letting you know. We’re in this together.”
Those were her words—not mine.
“We’re in this together, Dani. We’re in this together,” she repeated over and over again as her nails dug into my arm while we waited to hear which one of our boys had been shot and was in surgery. Sawyer’s death shook us to our core, and not knowing if Caleb or Jacob would be next was a nightmare no parent should have to go through. Just thinking about those moments of sheer terror and powerlessness makes me want to throw up on the tiled floor.