Page 132 of Dirty Roulette
She bites her bottom lip, her cheeks burn red. “I know you do.” Her bottom lip trembles and she sucks in a deep breath, her chest hitching as she lets out a quiet cry. “I just wanna go home.” There is begging laced in her voice, but I don’t think the police are done talking to her.
“I’ll take you home soon, I promise.”
“Excuse me...” An officer says behind me, his boots crunching underneath the gravel. Barbed wire wraps around my lungs and heart as I clench down harder onto Payton’s shoulder as if someone else is going to try to rip her from me. “You’re Sebastian Henderson?” He swallows, and his lips press together.
“That’sme...”
“May I have a word?”
I clear my throat. “Yeah...”
Something awful settles in my stomach with the way the officer asks the question. A dreadful voice in my head tells me to prepare myself now. It’s lodged into my cranium like a bullet. It’s the cold sad expression on the officer’s face as he holds his belt and the soft and slow movements of his footsteps crunching on the gravel as he positions himself.
“We tried going to your parent’s residence, but no one was there and...” He starts and runs a hand against his face. “It’s your sister...” He pauses for a moment running a hand over his five-o-clock shadow.
It’s those words. The way he says it with care and the sadness leaking off his tone. She’s dead, I just know it. A crown of thorns placed on top of her head. Payton’s grip tightens around me, like her lungs are being constricted as much as mine. It’s like atoms stop fusing, I’m drowning in the trenches of the Atlantic sea. Everything grows heavy, my brain fogging over wanting to shut down entirely. His eyes are fragile like spilling the truth is the hardest part of the job.
“We found her. She’s alive...” The officer clears his throat.
I can’t breathe. There’s no air. Just water pooling into my lungs. I’m sucking in all the oxygen in the world.
“Alive...” Payton stutters out the word, and she clings to my arms as I weep.
“We’ve been working under the radar and received a call earlier tonight from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She woke up, and she was talking. From the incident tonight, we have reasonable belief that Brittni Thomas attempted to take her life. She was medevaced the night of the concert. No one could identify her in the condition she was in. She was asking for you, and Payton... but more adamant for someone named Noah.”
“Ryder! She’s alive!”
“Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, God!” I weep out the words. The weight on my chest is being lifted. I grasp Payton by the cheeks kissing her on the lips and she cries with me, with the same smile of relief.
***
We drove to the hospital the second we rounded everyone up. The Jeep cramped with all four of us – Payton, Noah, and Mom. We took turns throughout the night to switch who was driving. I start counting the white dotted lines, and each set of bright headlights passing us in the opposite direction.
Even when we switched, I still didn’t sleep. My eyelids would close, but the hum of the engine and the tires rolling across the road kept me awake. The minutes left on our GPS did us no justice as time stood still. My thoughts keep going to Charlie. When she was first found, they checked her in as a Jane Doe in critical condition. Once she stabilized, UC Davis Medical Center thought it would be best to transfer her to a specialist in LA.
Trees zip past us in blurry patches, and the sun started to rise once we hit LA. Traffic is light and we get mere glimpses of the oceanfront before getting deeper into the city. When I finally roll up into the hospital, I place the Jeep in park and the car sits in pure silence. Payton’s eyes are far away, as she stares at the lot filled with a different assortment of vehicles and people strolling down the sidewalk to the double door leading up to the hospital entrance.
Mom leads, holding a death grip on her purse as she stares at the map and follows each direction to Charlie’s room. Payton laces herfingers into mine when we walk along the squeaky clean floor with fluorescent lights reflecting off the linoleum. Nurses stroll down the hallways rolling patients in wheelchairs. Doctors in their white coats make rounds as we wander through the hallways.
“You seriously only have tapioca pudding? Y'all got people dying up in here and you don’t have chocolate pudding!” There it is, her snooty voice, and I feel the smile perking up on my lips. “You gotta be shitting me. I don’t wanna eat no slimy-ass balls.”
I step into the room and Payton’s fingers tighten around mine. Mom’s eyes water as her purse drops off her shoulder to the floor. The nurse huffs, throwing her hands on her waist as Charlie continues to rant about the pudding on her food tray. We must have been standing there for a whole minute before Charlie’s eyes finally dart in our direction and she sees us.
I never thought I’d hear her complaining again, or see her being the typical obnoxious little sister with no manners. The biggest smile forms on her lips, and I find myself choking up.
Bruises still scatter across her face. Her nose was battered with cuts. There is swelling underneath her eyes and a set of stitches on the side of her forehead. “Sebastian!” She kicks the thin hospital sheets and scoots to the edge of the bed, “Payton! Oh my God,oh my God!”
“You can’t be getting up!” The nurse lectures her, but Charlie’s doing it anyway.
“Mom!”
Charlie’s cheeks redden as she scampers across the floor with socks too big for her tiny feet. She grasps the IV pole tangled in wires and tubes. Her hands paw for my shirt dragging me into a hug, pulling Payton with her and Mom. Her arms aren’t big enough to hold us all, but it’s the best hug and probably the only one she’s given me in the past ten years.
Noah steps in with a hand resting in the pockets of his skinny jeans and a small bouquet of flowers in the other. Charlie gasps as she whispers, “Noah?”
We step aside, as she wraps her arms around his neck. I forgot about the backside of hospital gowns and I’m granted a view of her white ass. She kisses him on the lips and he is gentle enough to stroke her puffy cheeks.
“Hey trouble,” Noah smiles as he says those words.
