Erin McCarthy - Believe

I gave a laugh of disbelief, rubbing my face. “What a freakin’ mess. God, why isn’t Robin answering?”

“She’s upset, ashamed.” Rory pulled into a spot in front of the house. “I wish she had told us.”

“She couldn’t.” I got out of the car, anxiously waiting for Rory to get out of the car. Something was wrong. I knew it. I could feel it. Goose bumps rose on my skin. “Rory, hurry. Please.”

I started running. I don’t know why. I just did, pounding up the stairs to the landing to their apartment. I didn’t wait for Rory or her key. I just hit the door with my shoulder, hard, sending it flying back against the wall, wood splintering as I tore the lock from the hinge.

“Phoenix! What’s wrong?” Rory was behind me, coming up the stairs.

But that’s when I saw her, and I shouted, “Call 911!” I fell to the floor where Robin was, grabbing for her crumpled body. “Oh, God, oh, God, Robin, baby, Robin, wake up.”

Tears came to my eyes as I held her, trying to process what I was seeing. She was waxy white, and there was vomit all down the front of her dress. Her body was limp, unresponsive, legs bent at a weird angle. There was a mostly empty vodka bottle on its side on the floor next to her. All the breath seemed to suck out of my body like a vacuum had been brought to my lips. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t move.

“Turn her on her side!” Rory ordered me in a sharp and commanding voice I didn’t normally associate with her.

“What?” I stared blankly up at her through watery eyes. “I don’t think she’s breathing,” I told Rory, and then a raw, anguished sob ripped out of my chest.

The phone was at Rory’s ear, and she told the operator, “Yes, blood alcohol poisoning. She’s been sober for about three months and now it looks like she drank at least a third of a bottle of vodka in less than ninety minutes.” Rory was breathing hard and talking fast as she shoved past me to push on Robin’s back. “Help me roll her, Phoenix, come on. We have to clear her airway in case she vomits again.”

“Is she alive?” I asked, even when I didn’t want to know the answer.

“Yes. Her breathing is shallow, but she’ll be okay as long as she doesn’t asphyxiate on her vomit.”

“Jesus.” That snapped me out of my stupor. She was alive. Robin was alive, and that was all that mattered. I rolled her onto her side. Her body was so cold, her face so clammy, her eyes not closed completely, but only the whites were visible, the absence of her irises disturbing. I was in agony seeing her like this, and I didn’t understand how this could happen. “Why would she do this?”

“Yes, thank you,” Rory was saying to the operator. “I hear the sirens now. I’m going down to let them in.”

As the pounding of Rory running down the stairs receded, I held Robin’s hand and brushed her hair back off her forehead. Bending over, I tried not to cry, and drew in a shuddering breath. I hadn’t cried since I was six years old. That I had tears in my eyes now shocked me, but God, if Robin was gone . . . I would be gone. Done. The light in my life would go out. My hands were shaking and I kissed her temple.

“Hang in there, you’re going to be fine,” I murmured, my voice hoarse and unsteady. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

Then the paramedics were there, jabbing an IV into her arm and taking her vitals as they loaded her onto a stretcher.

“How much did she drink?”

“Is she on any other recreational drugs? Prescription drugs?”

“Has she been suicidal?”

I couldn’t answer, and I heard Rory’s voice from a distance, like I was caught in the eye of a storm and everyone else was whirling around in the tornado, motion and sound and reality out there in the funnel cloud, while I stood frozen in the center, helpless.

It was like the night my mother had overdosed. The sights, the sounds, my terror.

But I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t eleven years old.

And Robin needed me.

I dragged myself back into the present, muscle by muscle, just the way I did when I needed to control my anger. When they lifted the stretcher, I stood, a firm grip on Robin’s hand. She was cold, limp, her lips a horrifying bluish white.

“What’s her name?” the brawny guy setting a bag of fluid onto her lap asked.

“It’s Robin,” I said.

“You her boyfriend?”

“Yes.” My chest tightened.

“Are you sober? Can you follow us to the hospital?”

“I don’t drink,” I told him, my voice choked and harsh. “I’ve never been anything but sober.”

He studied me and nodded. “Okay, good. She’s going to be okay, man, don’t worry.”

“Yeah. Okay. Thanks.” I had to believe him.

Because if she wasn’t okay I had no idea how I would survive.

None whatsoever.

I was dreaming that my grandmother was sitting at the head of the table, shaking her finger at me and calling me a gringo whore, and I was crying because it wasn’t true . . . was it? Maybe it was. I turned, like someone behind me knew the answer to that question, and I saw Phoenix lying on a tattoo table. He was getting a 3-D tattoo, the letters popping up off of his flesh into the air, a marquis sign that blinked over and over. VODKA.

Why was he getting a vodka tattoo?

He turned to look at me, and the tattoo on his chest started to bleed for real, the blood rolling down his rib cage and onto the floor, and his hand went limp, and his eyes stared straight through me.

“Where am I?” I asked him, my words silent in the empty room, the light from his tattoo blinding.

But he didn’t answer.

When my eyes opened, I still didn’t know where I was. Jerking awake, I glanced around the room frantically. There was beeping behind my ear and glowing lights to my right and I squinted. That was a countertop. And I was in a hospital bed. I tried to sit up and realized I had an IV in my arm.

Phoenix was in a chair next to the fluorescent tube light on the underside of the wall cabinets. “Hey,” he said, and his voice sounded strained, hoarse.

“What’s going on?” I asked, trying to prop myself up but feeling nauseated. My head was pounding, and I couldn’t form a coherent thought. The confusion moved through my head like an aggressive fog. “Is this the ER?” The curtain behind Phoenix didn’t mask the sound of nurses and other people moving on the other side, a sense of hustle to their movements. “What happened?”

“You have blood alcohol poisoning,” he told me. “But you’re going to be okay.”

Then I remembered. The text from Nathan. Kylie’s horrible reaction. Being left alone, in the silence. With the vodka bottle. Drinking the first shot. Then another. And another.

Phoenix looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, his back bent, elbows on his thighs holding him up.

“How did I end up here?” It wasn’t like I hadn’t done multiple shots before, but blood alcohol poisoning sounded serious. Like almost died kind of serious. I swallowed hard and shifted my head slightly. There was a trailer effect, like I was leaving pieces of my skull behind at one-inch intervals as I turned. I didn’t remember anything beyond checking my phone as I downed the vodka.

“Rory and I found you passed out, covered in vomit. There was an empty bottle next to you and your lips were blue, your heart rate way slower than normal.”

With each word he spoke, I was more and more shocked. “What? Oh my God. I didn’t think . . . I didn’t mean.”

Fear gripped me in an icy hold. “I’m going to be sick.”

Phoenix was up on his feet as I scrambled to sit all the way up, leaning over the metal bedrail. He shoved a pan off the counter under my mouth just in time to catch a spray of vomit. “Oh, God,” I groaned, as my stomach heaved.

His free hand stroked the back of my head. “It’s okay. You’re okay, baby. Just puke it out.”

My eyes were filled with water, and I tried to wipe the snot away from my nose, but I fell forward. “Why do I have an IV?”

“They’re flushing your system with fluids and giving you glucose.”

“Oh.” I hugged the rail, my shoulders shaking. “I’m sorry,” I said, because it seemed like the right thing to say.

“Why would you do this?” he asked, and his voice cracked. “I know you were upset, but when I saw you like that . . . holy shit, it was one of the worst moments of my life.”

“I didn’t mean to.” How could I explain to him the pain of knowing how badly I had hurt Kylie? How seeing her rage at me had sliced every wound that had started to heal wide open? “I was alone and no one was answering their phone. It was sitting there and I wasn’t going to, but then I just wanted to dull the anxiety a little. Only when I did a shot, nothing happened. The room was so quiet and I felt so anxious . . . I took another shot. Then I started to feel a little rush, and it was such a relief that I had one more and I tried to paint and then I don’t know . . .”

I didn’t know.

It was just like before, only this time I had risked never waking up.

I started to cry, and Phoenix set the pan down and pulled me against his chest. “Baby. Shh.”

His arms felt good, strong, and I breathed in his scent. “You might have saved my life.”

His fingers gripped me tighter, but he didn’t respond.

“Kylie knows, and she hates me,” I said.

“She’ll get over it. Just give her some time.” He rubbed my back. “Now I’m going to go get the doctor and tell him you’re awake, so hang tight, okay? I’ll send Rory in.”

For a second I gripped him tighter, not wanting to let go, but then I fell back against the pillows and nodded. My body felt shaky and weak.