J. Redmerski - Song of the Fireflies

“Are you Ms. Bates’s sister?” the nurse asks Rian.

I still can’t raise my head. My fingers are digging into the back of my scalp, trying their best to penetrate my skull. My right leg shakes uncontrollably, the heel of my foot bounces up and down against the floor in rapid succession. My mother’s hand touches my back.

“Yes…,” Rian answers and I feel her stand up beside me.

There is no air in the room. It’s all being held inside my lungs.

“She’s in stable condition. You can come back and see her now.”

The air bursts from my lungs all at once and I fall from the chair to the floor on my knees. Sobs rack my entire body. I feel even more hands on my back, but I can’t raise my head to see whose they are. I cry so hard into my hands that I almost puke. “She’s alive,” I say out loud to myself. “She’s alive…” My nostrils burn from the stinging tears.

Finally I raise my head to see Rian and my mother standing over me.

“No, I, uh…,” Rian starts to say. I notice her glance at me and then look back at the nurse. “Please let Elias go back first.”

Elias

The room is brighter than I imagined. The walls, floor, and ceiling, stark white bathed by fluorescent lights running along the ceiling panels. The nurse pulls a long curtain closed after I’m fully inside the room. The stench of rubbing alcohol and something chemical rises up into my nostrils.

For a moment, I just stare across the short distance of the tiny room and look at Bray, lying upon the elevated bed with white sheets covering her motionless body. Her hair is still drenched, lying against the pillow. Her arms are visible, extending down at her sides. Hospital bracelets have replaced her hemp bracelets on one wrist, and an IV tube is taped to the other. I look at her sleeping face, so soft and calm, as if her body hadn’t just gone through something so horrific. She looks… peaceful.

The nurse makes a few marks on a paper attached to a clipboard and says, “She’s going to be fine. But you should get with her family and discuss what options there are for admitting her. From what I understand, this is Ms. Bates’s second suicide attempt.”

Everything else she says I just hear bits and pieces. Drug overdose. Nearly drowned. If she hadn’t been found sooner…

The nurse leaves me alone in the room with Bray, and I turn off the light shining over her bed. Quietly, I pull a chair around to the side of her bed and I sit. I take her hand into both of mine and tears roll out of me as I lean over, planting my lips on her knuckles. I stay like this for a long time. Just me and Bray, closed off in the solitude of the room. Every now and then I hear faint voices and footsteps moving back and forth outside the room beyond the tall curtain and the glass doors behind it. Bray never stirs. Not once. Her chest rises and falls as she breathes on her own. I wonder what she’s dreaming, if she’s dreaming at all. She looks so peaceful and soft lying there, even though her hair is dirty and wet and her skin is sickly pale. I fall asleep sitting upright in the chair.

Later in the night, they move her to a room and out of the ER. Rian and my mother join me there, all of us sitting around her bed. No one says much, just a few words here and there to any number of nurses that come in to check on Bray through the overnight hours.

My mother decides to leave when Bray’s parents finally show up.

“You call me soon,” my mom says, holding my hands. “Keep me updated and I want you to come home and stay with me for a couple of days.”

I nod. I don’t intend to do that, but this isn’t the time or place to argue with her about it.

She kisses me on the forehead and I hug her tight before she walks past Mr. and Mrs. Bates in the doorway, dressed like they just left church.

I step aside when Mrs. Bates walks quickly over to the side of Bray’s bed and sits down in the chair I had been sitting in for the past couple of hours. She takes Bray’s right hand into hers and kisses her knuckles just like I had done.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you, Brayelle,” she says with tears in her voice.

Mr. Bates looks at me coldly. “You can go now,” he says.

I go into territorial mode in two seconds flat. My teeth clamp together behind my tightly closed lips. It takes everything in me to keep from knocking him on his ass.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I lash out as quietly as I can.

Mrs. Bates sobs into Bray’s hand. Rian stands off to my left, quiet and attentive.

Lines deepen around Mr. Bates’s nose and he rounds his square-shaped jaw, trying to retain his composure. His hands are clasped together down in front of him.

“We’re her family,” he says through his teeth.

“No, I am her family,” I say sharply, cutting off whatever else he had been prepared to say. “And I’m not leaving this room.”

“Please, Dad, just stop,” Rian says, stepping up. “Don’t do this. If anyone belongs here with Brayelle, it’s Elias. And I know you know that deep down.”

“I don’t—”

“Robert!” Mrs. Bates snaps at her husband. Then she lowers her voice and points her bony finger at him. “That’s enough. Elias saved her life.” She glances at me and adds, “From what I understand, more than once. So just back off!”

Mr. Bates looks between the both of us, and thankfully he decides to leave it alone for now. He doesn’t approve; he just doesn’t want to make a scene.

The three of them stay for nearly an hour, and Bray remains asleep. I don’t know if it’s from the drugs that were in her system, or from something the hospital gave her, or just pure exhaustion, but whatever it is, I’m starting to wonder if she’ll ever wake up.

They go to leave after talking privately with a nurse outside in the hall. But Mrs. Bates comes back inside the room and kisses Bray’s cheek before turning to me.

“Thank you for being there for her,” she says with a trembling bottom lip.

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” I say in response, and she smiles slimly and walks past, barely touching my shoulder with her delicate fingers.

It pisses me off that they’re leaving before Bray even wakes up. A part of me wants to run out into the hall and tell them everything I’ve always wanted to tell them, that they’re poisonous people who should have done more to help Bray throughout her life. Why are they leaving? I feel like hitting something.

But then Rian comes back into the room and she’s smiling at me softly. “I talked my parents into letting you be alone with her,” she says.

I stand up from beside Bray’s bed and turn to look at her very changed sister. Her dark hair is pulled into a sloppy bun with black hair clamps pinned to the top of her head. She’s wearing the same clothes as before, when she found me outside my apartment. Her gym shorts are stained with hot pink paint. Her white T-shirt is stretched out and dirty.

“Why?” I ask.

She sighs and glances briefly at the floor.

“Because you were right all along,” she says. “I just didn’t want to believe it. And I meant what I said before, Elias, about you belonging here. More than my parents. More than me. You really are Brayelle’s family, and I know you always have been.” She wipes her finger underneath her left eye before the tear escapes. “Thank you for taking care of my sister. For being there for her when she didn’t have anyone else.”

Rian starts to step back out into the brightly lit hall, but I stop her.

“Rian.” She looks back at me, wiping more tears from her eyes. “Bray forgives you. You know that, right?”

She smiles a little underneath her pain and then nods. “I hope so,” she says. “But I still want that chance to prove to her that I love her.”

Then she turns and walks away, letting the tall wooden door close softly behind her, shutting off the light the room had been borrowing from the hall.

I take my seat next to Bray again, and I reach up and run my fingers through her tangled hair. I brush her long bangs back to keep them away from her face. I kiss her lips and I watch her sleep until my eyes get heavy again. The early morning sunrise begins to peek over the horizon, sending thin, dust-filled beams of light through the sliver in the thick curtains on the window.

And when I fall asleep, I sleep soundly with the knowledge that Bray, the love of my life, is going to be OK. She’s going to live and she’s going to grow and she’s going to get better.

Because I’m going to make sure of that.

Three months later…

Elias

“They’re here,” I call out to Bray from the living room of our new rental house just outside of Savannah. I let the curtain fall back over the window.

Bray hurries in from our bedroom wearing a sexy brown knit dress that stops just above her knees and a pair of black calf-high leather boots. Her hair is pulled into a ponytail with a few loose strands left to hang freely about her face.

I walk over and fit my hands on her hourglass waist and lean in to kiss her lips. She smells like freshly washed hair and coconut body wash.

“Damn, baby. I should bend you over the chair.” I kiss her again and grab two handfuls of her butt.

Bray’s face flushes, and she retaliates by hitting me playfully on the chest. “Stop it,” she teases. “We’ve got company.” Then she reaches up and squeezes my cheeks in her hand. Her tongue sneaks out and licks my pooched-out lips.