Renee's room was on the fourth floor with west-facing windows, so the room was bathed only in white fluorescent light when we arrived. It smelled of hospital and antiseptic. Lenore and I had come at noon, about an hour before I told my parents we would arrive so that we could leave when we wanted to. I wanted to spend some time holding her hand and talking to her about things I'd rather my mother not overhear. Sister stuff.
She's still hooked up to the ventilator with a feeding tube threaded through her nose to give her the nutrition she couldn't get the classic way. The bruising on her face is finally starting to fade completely, leaving only soft hints of yellowing on her cheekbones. A line of stitches runs from her right temple to her jaw, but it's covered with an off-white dressing. The nurse told us that they were due to come out now. Ninety-eight stitches. Far more than the time I fell off my bike in second grade. She holds the new family record. Her leg was broken in three places and required a lot of hardware to piece it back together. It's currently held aloft above her bed, and her left hand is cast in pink gauze. She hates pink, but what she doesn't know won't hurt her.
The repetitive rise and fall of the ventilator and the beeping of the heart monitor were the only sounds in the room at this point while I held her hand and Lenore caught up on some emails while we waited for my parents. Lenore and my mom have become close over the last couple of years, or as close as anyone could with Antoinette Beaufort. It's not that my mother is a particularly cold person, but I've never heard her described as warm. Lenore started coming to holidays at our house last year after both her parents moved to Tokyo on business. With no other family in the states, she was happy to come to LA with me. She's even made a couple of her own friends in town.
I could hear my mother's heels as she and Sean covered the space between the elevators and the room. My mother has short legs, so I can spot her staccato gait by sound alone.
"Hey!!!" my mom exclaimed coming into the room. She hugged me from behind since I was still in the bedside chair holding Renee's hand.
It's so quiet in here that I almost found myself asking her to keep her voice down to not wake my sister, but reality found me quickly when I remembered that wouldn't be a problem. Sean sauntered in behind her. He's an unusually tall man with salt and pepper hair and the business beard to match it. He's wearing a pressed grey suit which leads me to ask where they are heading after this.
"Oh, we're just going to Aunt Marie's for dinner. None of your mother's family is flying in this year, and you're going to be in the dorm so we thought we would spend the day with her family."
"Plus, I don't have to cook!" my mom adds, giving hugs to Lenore.
"You never cook, mom. Alice cooks. That's why you hired a chef, so you don't have to cook. You don't even do the dishes."
"Yes, but I also don't want to plan things out. I work sixty hours a week, give me a break."
Sean steps forward and I offer up my bedside chair to him. "How is she today?" he asks reverently, taking her hand.
"The nurse said the stitches are coming out as long as the doctor signs off. Some of the bruising is looking better, but otherwise, things are fine. Same." No change is both a blessing and a curse. We keep hoping for improvement, or signs that she's beginning to wake but there haven't been any changes in activity yet.
Lenore closes her laptop and comes to stand with the rest of the family. "Have you guys had any updates from the police?"
My mother shakes her head.
"Yeah, we haven't really found out anything either," Lenore says. I still hope my mother doesn't latch onto this detail, but I have no such luck.
My mother's astute eyes cast my direction, "You're looking into the case? You're not asking around the school are you?"
Lenore cocked an eyebrow at me opting not to involve herself any further in the conversation.
"I'm asking a few people. No big deal. It's not for the paper or the blog or anything. Just kept my ear to the ground. Same as anyone else."
My nonchalance pays off though I catch Lenore slowly shaking her head at me. I'm sure if she could, she would tell me she's not mad, just disappointed. We'll catch up later.
"Are you sure you gals don't want to come to Aunt Marie's for dinner?" Sean asks in the last-ditch effort to get us interested in a family dinner. We're not, but I appreciate him making an effort to make a connection. Although he and I don't have the best relationship he's the only father I've ever known. The only one I have memories of, anyway.
He and my mother got together when I was just a baby, and she got pregnant a short time later. They didn't actually marry until I was about six or seven, though. Renee and I were flower girls in matching pink tulle. After that, Sean spent so much time out of town filming that we didn't see him much. I think we've spoken more words to each other since Renee's accident than we have over the last decade. I can see the regret in his eyes as he reaches for me for connection.
"Thanks for the offer, Sean." I place my arm on his shoulder with a rueful smile, "maybe next time.
***
After the hospital, Lenore and I dedicated the rest of Thanksgiving to Drunk Office, with our Ward 8's and tequila shots. Nothing can erase a tense afternoon like a little Michael Scott and some booze.
Her rollaway was set up on the other side of Jade's bed, which was perfect. There's enough room in here for at least four queen size beds. We camped out on mine using every pillow in the room and sprawled amongst popcorn, chip bags, and candy. The experience was thematic, but I felt like hell this morning. We both got a late start and Lenore drove out to Malibu to see some of her friends that she had met while she was in town last time. She's staying the night there and meeting up with me at Lex's beach house on Saturday.
I had just finished drying my hair and packing a weekend bag when my phone gave a quick buzz. Snatching it from my duvet I saw an unread text from Lex.
Open your door, I'm outside.
I let out a loud dramatic sigh and rolled my eyes while crossing the floor to let him in. "You know it's customary to call before coming over if you don't have plans."
Lex pecks me on the lips. "We did have plans. I'm here to pick you up. Is this your only bag?"
"Yes, it's my only bag. It's just a weekend," I snap, bending in front of him to steal my bag from his grasp. "We made no plans for time or transport."
I can't quite place the emotion on his face, but his smirk borders on taunting. "I just thought a lovely lady such as yourself would be happy to have some help with her bags and a ride in my chariot."
I lift one corner of my mouth as I angle my head in challenge. "Well, it's a new millennium. Women can drive their own cars. We've even been known to lift a bag or two."
He grabs the strap of my duffel bag in my hands and gives it a gentle tug. "Nonetheless." His insistence is made clear in the one word. I relinquish my hold and allow him to take the weight of my lightly packed MCM duffle bag. It only contains one pair of pajamas, a pair of shorts, sandals, running gear, my bikini, and enough underwear that I'll be covered even if I shit myself three times a day the entire time I'm there.
I skip to my bathroom to quickly grab a small shoulder bag containing my toiletries and follow him to the car.
"Are you hungry?" he asks, as we pull up to the drive-thru of an old greasy spoon. The menu board is filthy and so rusted that a stiff wind would blow it right over.
"No, I'm not hungry. I ate this morning."
"What did you have for breakfast?"
A handful of peanut butter M&M's and two cups of dark roast. "I had some fruit."
He leans out the window, ordering two cheeseburgers, a fry, a mocha shake, and a side of onion rings. He turns his head to me, "Are you not hungry like you're going to eat all my fries - or are you actually not hungry."
"I'm not hungry as in I hope the 3400 calories you just ordered are all going in your own mouth."
"Who said any of this was for you?" He quips with a cocky smile.
We pulled around the window to wait for the food. "Stealing fries is more of a girlfriend thing, I would never presume to have the right to a man's fries."
"You're right," he offers with enough heat in his eyes to go thermonuclear, "it is a girlfriend thing."
I clear my throat. "We never specified we were doing a girlfriend thing."
"You're right, we didn't," he muses before the sliding window opens and a gangly redhead teen boy with an acne problem leans out the window with a bag that was more grease than paper.
We drove the rest of the way to Lex's in silence while he picked at his onion rings and I picked at his fries. Before he threw his mustang into park at the bottom of the driveway, Lex made sure to squeeze it between Abrams's jeep and a black Lexus leaving the rest of the driveway vacant.
"We're having a party tonight, I hope that's ok with you."
It was fine, but I couldn't resist a little ribbing. "So it's ok for me to be here when you're going to have more people than the campus, but somehow the campus is unsafe? What makes your house The Winchester Tavern?"
He takes my bags from his trunk before looking me dead in the eye. "Me."
Well, that's a boatload of manly responsibility he thinks he's earned. We strolled to the front door and he paused before opening it. "Did you just make a Shaun of the Dead reference?"
"Yup." I sing playfully popping the p.
"Fantastic."
The door creaks open to a very different scene from the last time I was in residence. All the lights are out and it's mid-afternoon. I can see straight through to the back deck and the ocean beyond it. Despite it being a cool November day there are still a couple of people on the beach. I can see one surfer paddling for a wave in his wetsuit before popping up to hit the crest. "That's Nic. He's trying to go pro."
I frown before giving a contemplative, "huh."
"He's actually really good. He does some big wave competitions. He makes a little money doing it, but in order to really go for big money, you have to basically become a storm chaser. He's pretty dead serious about trying to go surf Nazaré in Portugal from January through March. He'd have to take some incompletes, though."
Despite growing up in a coastal city I've never really given much consideration to surfing. I remember the beach bums in high school but the main thing that comes to my mind about them all these years later is their unfortunate hair. "That's amazing. I don't really know much about surfing, but I did get a chance to go with my stepdad on location in a few areas of Portugal. It's amazing how beautiful the area can be."
I'm mindlessly following Lex up the stairs and he stops in his bedroom. The motion lights turn on to a low light setting and I'm half surprised Barry Manilow doesn't start playing through hidden speakers. He tosses my bags at the foot of his bed before peeling his leather jacket from his firm frame. "Your stepdad is in the movie industry?"
Faaaack. Ooops.
I pivot my hips so I'm facing him while leaving my feet flat on the ground, my legs crossed at the knees. "Yeah. I thought we talked about that the other night. He does some sort of administrative, executive something or another. I don't even remember the exact title," Senior Vice President of Production. I give a veritable shrug as though this is a non-issue before changing the subject. "So, my bags are here? In your room?"
"Yup. Looks like it. Seeing as we're here in this room, and there they are, propped against my bed. I hope you don't hog the covers."