The Promise of Paradise - By Allie Boniface Page 0,65
Booze,” J.T. answered. “We’re getting ready to close…oh, yeah. Hang on a minute.” He held out the receiver. “For you.”
Ash frowned. No one called her at work. “Who is it?”
“Dunno. Some guy.”
“That’s helpful.”
J.T. shrugged and started counting his drawer
“Ashton Kirk?” She didn’t recognize the voice.
“Yes?”
The man paused, giving way to a cough. But when he spoke again, she knew who it was. She knew before he told her his name. She knew from the way he formed his vowels. She knew from the way he dropped the end of his sentences, from the way he stopped every so often when the words became too hard to say. She knew because he spoke exactly the same way his son did.
“Eddie’s been in an accident. He’s asking for you.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
A face. Blurred and dark. Eddie tried to sit up. “Whoa.” Hands on his shoulders pushed him back. “Take it easy.”
He tried to ask where he was, and why the hell the lights above him were so bright, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out. He tried again. A mumble this time. In fragmented pieces, the room took shape around him. White everywhere. Shadows he couldn’t make out. Noises he didn’t recognize: humming and beeping and mechanical burping. Something wrapped tight around his arm. And a God-awful smell. Seconds later, he placed it.
Oh, Jesus Christ. I’m in the hospital.
He could make out different voices, some female, some male. Pain radiated from his temples to down around his ankles, and he closed his eyes again. Next time he opened them, he saw Cal. Eddie’s mouth fell open. In the doorway, dressed in the same plaid shirt and jeans he’d been wearing the night of the accident, stood his kid brother.
“Screwed up, didn't ya? Mom’s gonna kill you.”
Eddie squinted. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m not here, idiot.” The seventeen year old crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “I’m inside your head. Inside your dreams. Where I’ve been for the last three years.”
A doctor walked by Cal—or through Cal, Eddie thought with a shudder—peeling off his gloves as he left the room. No one else even blinked.
“You’re dead.” Eddie turned his head away. “And I must be close, if I think I’m talking to you.”
“Severe lacerations…possible head trauma…hematoma…we need a CAT scan and MRI…X-ray that leg…”
Eddie fought to hold on to the words, to the sentences that swirled around him. But he couldn’t even keep his eyes open. Something pricked his arm, and warmth dripped into his veins. He stopped struggling. Even the lights didn’t seem so bright anymore.
Better. Doesn’t hurt so much. He turned his face back to the doorway. “Still here?”
Cal grinned. “You gotta tell her,” he said. His expression grew serious. “You gotta tell her how you feel.”
“Who?”
Cal rolled his eyes. “Who do you think? I’m seventeen, not a moron.”
“Now you’re giving me advice on women?” Eddie found that if he closed his eyes, he could still talk to his brother. Funny. And yet not so funny, after all. Maybe the people closest to you, the ones that wound the threads of their lives through yours, belonged to you forever. Maybe you could continue to have conversations with them. Even past death. Even past hopelessness.
“It’s not hopeless,” Cal said.
“Stop reading my thoughts.”
“Tell her.”
“She just got engaged. I saw him put the ring on her finger.”
“So?”
“So she’s gone. She’s not anybody I ever knew, anyway. And she doesn’t belong in Paradise.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Yeah? What do you know?” Go to hell, Eddie thought, exhausted.
“Already there, bro. Same place you’ll be if you spend your life wondering what would have happened if you’d had the balls to talk to her instead of running away.”
“I didn’t run away.” Eddie didn’t want to think about it anymore. He didn’t want to hear his dead brother’s voice. Didn’t want to remember the anguish of saying goodbye at the grave. He felt himself melt into the bed, as if his bones had turned to liquid. As if part of him was already gone. Didn’t hurt so much. Besides, if going to sleep, if giving in to the pain and the weakness clamping down on his body meant seeing his brother again for real, then maybe dying wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
Maybe everything really did happen for a reason.
* * *
“I’ll give you a ride to the hospital,” Lacey offered.
Ash shook her head and waited for the room to stop spinning. She wasn’t religious, had abandoned church the summer she left for college. But