Remember When **Under MAJOR Editing**

Chapter 17

I squinted at Officer Elks, but I couldn't see him clearly through the windshield reflecting the lights from the hospital. This was probably the fourth thing I'd ever heard him say. I wanted to double-check that I'd heard him correctly before I disrespected a police officer by cussing him out.  Apparently he had said what I thought he'd said. Dade smiled. "My brother thinks that you're crazy and you need to get checked out yourself."

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath through my nose, opened my eyes. "Why?"  Dade spoke in his usual sarcastic tone.  If I'd listened to him without watching him, but I wouldn't have known anything was wrong.  But as he spoke, he held his head still, like he balanced on a tightrope.  "When you found your mom that day, you were very calm.  You didn't cry."

I hadn't thought about it. But now that I allowed myself to consider it . . . A seventeen-year-old discovered her mom after a suicide attempt, and she didn't even cry?  That did sound crazy.

I concentrated on Dade's green eyes. "I knew she was there because her car was in the lot, but when I went in, the lights were off and the air was cold." I felt goose bumps prick up at the memory of stepping from the broiling afternoon into that cold, dark space.

Dade slid down from the hood and moved toward me, balancing on one crutch.  "I found her on her bed and I knew she was dead.  I knew exactly what she'd done.  She'd been taking a lot of naps in the middle of the day, but there was something about the way her hand lay on the duvet."  I moved my fingers to that position, duplicating what death had looked like to me, fingers relaxed, palm open and vulnerable.

Dade's hand covered my palm.

"And then I touched her and knew she was alive," I told our hands, "so I was relieved. You can't imagine how relieved I was, and happy. I'm probably laughing on the 911 recording. I felt like the luckiest person alive. I still felt that way when your brother came and I rode with him behind the ambulance to the hospital. It wasn't until later, sitting in the waiting room at the hospital, that I started to get scared my mom might be stuck this way. Oh God."

Even before my face crumpled, Dade shifted forward to give me a hiding place. I sobbed into his TSU T-shirt. Once I started I couldn't stop, and I made a choked noise my mom could probably hear if she were sweeping the paths in the hospital courtyard, pausing over one stepping-stone in particular, sweeping the same stone over and over, spotless.

"Shhhhh," said Dade. He stroked his fingers at the back of my head until his fingertips penetrated the thickness of my hair and he touched my nape. He looped the other arm half around me at an odd angle so he could keep hold of his crutch too. And he kissed the top of my head.

That made me cry even harder. I was caught in the current dragging me along the ocean floor. I struggled to the surface to gasp, "Why did you do this to me?"

"Shhhhh. I just wanted to make sure you're okay."  I  cried for a long time. Every few minutes I'd pull away from him, sniffle, and try to dry up. Then I'd look up at his face, the tears in his eyes, and I'd lose it again. At least no one stared at me. The parking lot was empty except for us and Officer Elks, and anyway someone bawling their eyes out was probably an hourly occurrence outside the mental hospital. All this time Dade worked his fingers in circles at the back of my neck.

I took one final sniff and exhaled, exhausted but safe for now. We slid back onto Officer Elks' hood and held hands.

I stared straight ahead at the low brick building that gave away nothing. "What do I do now?"

"You wait," Dade said.  "I did that already," I sighed. "I'm not allowed to visit her, but I've known since she got here that she could call me whenever she felt ready. She hasn't called. She's only come to my swim meet and freakishly pulled me out of the water and shrieked like the mother of Grendel."