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Word Prompt: Wallet
Plot Generator—Idea Completion: The silent treatment.
Something True
The Silent Treatment
This Spring
At the Lakeview Restaurant site there is now most of a structure, almost a building. The rumor is it will be finished and open by summer.
Edward and Bella can't watch long because all the noise, the hammering and the growl of machinery is making Biter bark like he's rabid. They walk in the opposite direction, to the dead forest. Eyes on the ground, watching Biter sniff the earth, Bella notices life. Some green. The tiniest trees. She bends down and touches a branch as gently as if she's touching the fingers of a newborn baby.
As they walk on, Bella takes extra care to step over every bit of green she can see. There's no way to direct Biter around it all, but Bella will do whatever she can. She definitely won't let him chomp at it.
"It's important," she tells Biter, pushing his snout away. "It has to grow." He cocks his head at her which makes her smile and repeat herself. "It has to grow." He cocks his head again.
She straightens up, smiling at Edward. "It's coming back."
He pulls her to his side. "When we're fifty there'll be no sign that a fire ever happened here."
Back at the cottage, Bella gathers pencils from a kitchen drawer and starts to add in new growth to the back wall next to their Christmas tree, which, now undecorated is simply a fir tree. "We'll paint it later," she tells Edward.
...
The next morning, Saturday, Bella walks under the three birch trees, leaves and buds sprinkled over most of the branches.
When Bella helped package up the baby items for their different destinations, Mrs. Cameron spoke to Bella of a new project she wanted to start. Apparently she has a list of them and today they'll go over it, deciding on a schedule.
There's no answer to her knock so she rings the doorbell. After waiting for a few minutes, she tries the handle but it's locked. Strange since Mrs. Cameron was expecting her.
The garage door is closed so she can't tell if the older woman's car is in there. Maybe she had to run an errand, gather more yarn or supplies or something. Bella heads around the back through the grass, knowing of a hidden key under a big rock.
She tries the sliding glass door first, which opens. The house is quiet and still. No box of pastries on the counter, no television on, no sound at all.
Passing the bathroom, the door is open, the room empty. That leaves the bedroom.
Mrs. Cameron is still in bed, covers drawn over her.
"Did you oversleep?" Bella asks, stepping to the side of the bed.
Her gray hair is stuck close to her head as if she's been sweating.
"Are you sick?"
Eyelids flutter open. Deep brown eyes, big round pupils.
"Lulu," she says, letters kind of melting together. "I've a touch of the flu."
Bella presses the back of her hand to Mrs. Cameron's forehead, clammy and hot.
"Have you taken your temperature?"
Mrs. Cameron rolls to her back. "Stop looking at me like that."
"I'm worried about you."
"Wipe that scowl off your face."
Bella touches her face. For a few seconds she's frozen.
"I have a little boy, you know. He's..." she trails off.
"Jared. Do you want me to call him?"
"He's out bicycle riding." She points toward the bathroom.
Bella's stomach drops.
"Come on. You have to go to the hospital." She starts to lift Mrs. Cameron by the shoulders, but it's clear the woman has no strength to even sit up.
With shaking fingers and a quivering, unsure voice, Bella calls for an ambulance, doing her best to give as many details as she can. When asked about a heartbeat, she places her hand over Mrs. Cameron's heart. The beat is fast, way too fast. "Oh, God," she says.
"Is everything all right?" the woman on the phone, the dispatcher asks.
"It's too fast. It isn't right."
After that call, she calls her dad. He arrives in his police cruiser at the same time as the ambulance. He's in his uniform, boots and hat, gun at his hip and all. They follow the ambulance to the hospital and wait outside the intensive care unit.
Wait and wait and wait.
Jared shows up with his wife, or soon-to-be ex-wife. He asks questions, gets no answers.
The doctors don't know.
"What kind of medication is she on?" the nurse asks. Jared takes out his wallet and leafs through it. He doesn't find what he's looking for. He could go to her house and check. The nurse says they'll check her records.
They wait longer. Bella's cold and then hot and then cold again. The sterile smell is too much, but then seems to disappear completely.
After two hours, they're finally admitted to see Mrs. Cameron. "She's agitated," they're warned.
Apparently the hospital has disoriented her further. She's convinced the nurses are trying to hurt her.
Bella stands back against the wall as Jared says things like, "Mom, I'm here. Kim's here. You're going to be okay."
But his voice falters. He doesn't know for sure. Nobody does. Do the doctors?
Bella looks across at the window, the sky gray as ash. She doesn't want to see Mrs. Cameron's face all angry like that.
They try to tell her that nobody here will harm her, but it makes her worse. They decide it's better to wait it out, wait for the sedative to kick in.
When it does, Bella can walk over to the bed. She feels the weight of her father's arm fall away from her shoulders. She hadn't even realized he'd been next to her.
"Hi, Mrs. C." She gets closer. Does she even know Bella's here?
She's hooked up to machines. A needle in her hand, IV. A tube going into her nose, oxygen.
"Lulu," she says, and Bella's heart drums. "What are you doing in here?" Her eyes are half-closed. "Go to the maternity ward."
So she knows she's in the hospital, but she's still confused about why.
Bella sits in a chair beside Mrs. Cameron, holding her hand as the woman relaxes into sleep. Her dad, Jared, and Kim walk out to talk to the doctor. It seems they have answers now.
Bella isn't sure she wants answers. What she wants is to wake up from this nightmare.
She kisses the back of Mrs. Cameron's veiny, warm hand. "I want you to be okay," she whispers. "Be okay."
She's eleven years old again. The rocking chair is creaking. Mrs. Cameron is giving Bella hugs when she needs them, telling jokes when she needs them, and telling her to toughen up when she needs to hear it.
Bella's Dad and the others reenter the room. Her dad is too silent, beckoning Bella over with a finger. He puts his arm around her. She doesn't like any of this.
"It's septic shock," he says low, and she doesn't know what that means. "Complications of the organs due to an existing infection."
He explains that the doctors say she was on medication for a urinary tract infection. The UTI led to sepsis. Unknown and untreated, it escalated into septic shock. As her dad's explaining the infection, Kim is rubbing Jared's arm telling him it isn't his fault.
"He said if she'd been brought in sooner-" Jared starts.
"You didn't know. Your mom told you it was nothing. She was already confused. You couldn't have known."
"It took blood tests for the doctors to figure it out," Bella's dad says.
They seem to be attempting to relieve Jared of his guilt, but what Bella wants to know is why everyone's talking like this is it. The end. Words like: "If only I..." and "should have..." and "my fault..."
But at the same time, she doesn't want to know. She doesn't ask. Her dad gives her answers to unasked questions, anyway.
"It's not looking good, sweetheart. It's-it's very severe at this point. I'm sorry." He reaches out to hug her. She pushes away.
"But what - what are they doing for her? They're just giving up?"
"They're scheduling a surgery," Jared says. "To remove dead organ tissue."
"Then there's still hope. It isn't over yet." They wouldn't even bother with a surgery if there was no hope.
"She's alive now," Kim says. "There's always hope."
Bella looks at Mrs. Cameron asleep on the hospital bed, her chest rising and falling. Peaceful. She watches the heart rate on the machine. It doesn't seem as fast as it was at her house. There is hope.
"Where are you going?" her dad asks when Bella walks past him and out of the room.
"The maternity ward. She told me to."
Her dad begins following her, but ends up leading because Bella doesn't know the way and doesn't think to look at directory signs.
She peers through glass at the newborns. There are only three in their cradles right now, their tiny red bodies sleeping in nothing but diapers and little knit hats on their heads.
She examines the hats - blue and purple and pink, green and yellow, blue and white.
She can hear Mrs. Cameron's voice, the times she'd glide as they were knitting together and would randomly say, "This is a good thing we're doing," or "You're doing a good thing, Little Lu, sacrificing your time this way," or "Work like this is never wasted time, you'll see."
The hats on these babies aren't the hats she and Mrs. Cameron knitted, but it lights Bella up inside to know that elsewhere babies will be wearing their creations. Some are probably wearing them now. For the first time since she arrived at Mrs. Cameron's house earlier, Bella feels calm. She stares at the babies, at their hats. She notices a knit blanket folded over the side of one of the cradles.
This is a good thing we're doing.
"Bella?" her dad says. "Should we go back?"
She isn't sure how long she's been standing here staring. She points in front of her. "I made hats and blankets just like these. Some were even smaller." Tears slide down her cheeks.
A hand squeezes her shoulder.
...
That night her phone vibrates with calls, but she doesn't want to talk to anyone so she doesn't even check to see who's calling. In the morning she showers early to get to the hospital. Today's the surgery.
She can hear her dad downstairs in the kitchen, possibly cooking breakfast. She pulls a T-shirt over her head, lifts her wet hair out of the neck of the shirt and lets it fall, tangled, and more than damp, down her back. She reaches for her comb on her desk when the house phone rings. Even in her room, where there is no phone, the ringing is loud.
It rings again, and she jumps.
It stops ringing.
She stands where she is, comb in hand.
Minutes tick by.
It's been too long.
She swallows.
Saliva fills her mouth again.
She knows.
When her dad pushes her door open, she's certain before he says it, before she even sees the way his mouth his turned down and his eyelids are heavy.
"I'm sorry, Bella," he says, and even though she's certain, she shakes her head over and over and says, "No."
"She went into cardiac arrest before the surgery."
The comb drops to the floor and makes no sound. She says "no" again. Her dad steps toward her with his arms open. She steps backward. Her stomach has never felt emptier. All of her insides have never felt emptier. Yet she could throw up.
"Can I be alone?" Her voice doesn't sound like her own. It's as if it's coming from some other part of the room.
"You've been alone since we got home last night. Are you sure?"
She nods. She's sure.
He says he's sorry one more time and closes the door. Bella lies flat on her stomach on her bed and tries not to cry. She tries not to feel and tries to make her mind stop thinking.
She sees Mrs. Cameron's smiling face and she blocks it out. She sees Mrs. Cameron hooked to machines and she blocks it out. She blocks everything out until it all goes black.
It's like she can feel or see her pulse behind her eyes.
Through the darkness she hears a smooth voice. "Your dad said I could come up." Edward's voice. She opens her eyes and it's still dark. "He told me you don't want to see anyone."
"No." Her voice barely works.
"I tried to call."
She doesn't say anything.
"Have you been sleeping all day?"
Has she? She must have been. But why does it matter? She doesn't answer.
She hears her bedroom door click quietly shut. She feels the mattress move as Edward lies down beside her. His arm comes around her and pulls her back into his body. She's limp.
She's vaguely aware that she's still in nothing but her T-shirt and underwear. His jeans are rough against her legs.
"Bella?"
She remains silent.
"Let me in."
He tightens his arms around her and her tears begin to flow.
She starts shaking in his arms. "This is-"
"It's okay," he says, his voice sounding closer than ever. "Let me in."
"She was here yesterday."
"I know."
"She was fine last week. Completely. Smiling. Laughing, Edward." She sniffles, her vision blurred by the buildup of more and more tears.
"I know, baby."
Hold the people you care about close, she had said.
"She was fine."
"Yeah, she was."
Keep smiling at each other, she had said.
"I'm never gonna see her again."
He combs his hand down her hair.
Maybe someday I'll have a baby you can spoil as a great-grandchild, Bella had said.
"How is that possible?" The sobbing starts again.
"Shh." He turns her around and lets her cry on his chest, his lips to her head, hand down her hair and back.
She uses his shirt to wipe her tears. As her sight clears up and her eyes adjust to the dark, she looks over Edward's chest at the rocking chair, the best, most important purchase she has ever made. She'll never get rid of it.
His T-shirt is bunched up in her fist. She lays her head back down on his chest, and his arms come around her. He holds Bella close. She holds him close back.