Page 93 of Bound Bride
I stay by Beatie's side for an entire day.
Not once does she wake up.
Her straggly brown hair spreads across her pillow, neater now after I spent an hour gently combing out all of the tangles.
Her gaunt face doesn't shift, not even when I take her hand or kiss her cheek.
She looks exactly like herself and yet she also looks like someone drew her from memory.
Everything about her is still there and yet she looks… wrong.
Thin. Haggard. Blotches dot her skin and the needle marks in her skin pull my heart in all directions.
"How did this happen?" I whisper through tears as the weak sunlight trickles through the curtain over the window. "How did we get to this?"
Calvin stands near the door, but he doesn't have an answer for me.
He stayed with me while the doctors tended to Beatie, he lingered when Kon came to see me and the doctors told me Beatie was doped up on heroin, and he stayed with me when something called Kon away.
I refused to leave Beatie's side.
"How?" I lift my tear-filled eyes to Calvin. "Everything I've done, everything I've beendoinghas been to save her. She's my baby sister. Is this…" I sit up suddenly as a gasp catches in my throat. "Is this my fault? I took too long and they… they didthis…"
"No," Calvin states firmly. "Rose, this is not your fault."
"Isn't it?"
"Not at all. You can't think like that."
Anger weaves through my grief and I tighten my hold on Beatie's hand. "Then how am I supposed to think, Calvin? Beatie isn't safe! She's not fine! Everything I did was to save her and look at her! How can you stand there and tell me this isn't my fault?!"
"Because you are just as much a victim as she is," Calvin replies quietly. "I can't… fathom what has happened to her because we don't know yet. But we will. And I know it's causing you so much pain right now, but she's here. She is with you now and Kon has the best medical team money can buy. She will get through this. She will."
I finally blink and the tears roll down my cheeks. "But what about my mom? Where is she?"
Calvin doesn't have an answer for that and silence falls, so I turn back to my sister.
Seeing her is equal parts relieving and painful.
It all churns together into a cloud in my chest and I pray she wakes up to tell me that everything is fine.
But she doesn't.
She remains asleep, and Calvin eventually persuades me to leave her side to get something to eat.
He uses the baby to convince me so I follow him through the manor to the kitchen.
Kon's there.
He leans against one of the counters with a cup of coffee in hand but judging by the lack of steam, he hasn't drank it and he made it some time ago.
Seeing him floods my chest with warmth, but there's tightness across his face that makes me hesitate.
"Rose." His eyes lock onto me immediately. "How is Beatie?"
I can't think. I can't begin to concoct a lie to explain how the hell this has happened because when Beatie wakes up, the truth might spill right from her lips.
"She's still asleep," I murmur as I approach him. "She hasn't moved. She hasn't woken up. She hasn't done anything." Reaching him, I touch his arm and Kon lifts his hand to my cheek. The moment his palm caresses the side of my face, all my strength nearly fades. I want to sink into his arms and just exist there for a little while, but to my surprise, he moves away from me and toward the opposite counter, where several vegetables are in various forms of being chopped.
