Every Last Piece

chapter twenty-four

"This way, please," the doctor says. The Popes hurry after him, but when they're partway down the hall, Marie lets out a sob I know I'll remember until the day I die.

The atmosphere after that is thick with grief, so many faces thinking the same thing as me, wondering if our worlds are about to change forever. I sit there, powerless, until Garnett and Lucas storm into the waiting room. They don't even see me as they attempt to shove past nurses down the hall, but they're blocked off.

"Let us through!" Garnett shouts.

"Please," a nurse says, "you have to let the doctors do their jobs!"

I hurry over and pull back on Carson's brothers, and as soon as they see me, their anger is redirected.

"What happened, Jill?" Lucas spits. "Where the hell is my brother? He OD'd on something?"

Even though I can barely breathe, I collect myself enough to sit them down and tell them everything from the party. Val's presence beside me makes it easier to stay calm. But when I bring up their mom, a confused rage takes over both Garnett and Lucas's faces.

"What about our mom?" Garnett asks. "Why was Carson upset about her?"

"She's at home fine," Lucas says.

A cold awareness hits me. "He didn't tell you, did he?"

"Tell us what?" Garnett asks.

Exchanging a look with Val, I hug myself and shrink in the chair. Images of Dorothy Blue chill me to the bone. Not even Carson's brothers know. I used to have it out for these guys, but I've learned to see pretty clearly that they care about Carson. I have to believe that if they knew, they would've helped him.

"I can't tell you," I say. "You have to talk to Carson yourself."

"Don't mess with us like that," Lucas says. "The hell are you talking about? What did my mom do?"

"I can't tell you!" I exclaim. It gains me a few looks, so once again, I crumple up and whisper, "It's not my place to tell, okay? You have to talk to Carson."

Honestly, I doubt they'd believe me even if I did tell them. I'm still stomaching it myself. As far as I'm concerned, if Carson is alive, only he can tell them.

Garnett runs his fingers through his dark brown hair. "Believe me, I'd love that."

Each minute that ticks by feels like an hour, but most of the waiting room is silent now. Mom hasn't woken up from any of the texts of calls I've sent, but I don't want Nolan to experience this anyway. If Carson isn't okay—we'll deal with that. But I wouldn't wish this state of purgatory on anyone. The not knowing is eating me alive from the inside out. My hands have gone purple from the cold, and I think about how I was sitting in his bedroom earlier tonight, submerged in his smell, and that thought I had; that he might never come back to it.

To me, death was never simple. The one time Dad OD'd when I was a kid, Mom and I rushed him to this exact same hospital, and we waited in this exact same waiting room. With the mural painted on the wall, bug-eyed goldfish that look just the same as they did back then, it's like I've gone back in time. The two timelines intersect in my mind and become one.

I had a similar thought back then too. That when a person dies, they lose everything; every thought, memory, and dream, whisked away to only God knows where. Probably nowhere. Probably blackness. It's hard to picture what continues after the end of anything.

But for some reason, now I can't stop thinking about that toy fire truck Carson had on his floor the first time I went in his room. What kind of eighteen-year-old guy still has something like that kicking around? Probably for the same reason I still have my teddies; because it's the physical embodiment of your childhood, a time when you were pure. It's comforting for me to know that part of me existed. For Carson, I imagine that truck still held memories of the childish dreams he someday had of being a fireman. He grew up so different, but the fact that he kept the toy proves to me something inside of him still dreamt of places bigger than Hull, even when he told me, over and over, that he could never leave.