A day later I step out of the Dallas Love Field Airport all alone, dragging my suitcase behind me as I go out to the curb to wave down a cab.
Today, it's pouring.
The rain pelts the ground and the metal awning over my head with a vengeance. I let the two families ahead of me take the first two cabs, deciding to wait for the next.
I'd like to say it's because I'm being a good person, but in reality, I'm just not ready to step out of the safety of this awning yet.
The wind is chilly and I pull my jacket around me tighter, rubbing my arms through the fabric to try to circulate some heat into them.
I only have about another minute before another cab pulls around and I brace myself as I run out into the downpour, letting the driver jump out to grab my suitcase and throw it into the trunk.
I duck into the backseat that smells faintly like someone probably threw up in here recently, and I buckle my seatbelt.
I've seen way too many crazy videos of how cab drivers drive to trust going without one.
The man jumps back into his seat, shaking out his hair, sending cold spritzes of rain water across my face.
"Where to?" He asks and I wipe at my face while I tell him the name of the hospital. "Music?" He asks and I shrug.
"Whatever you prefer." I say, instantly regretting it as a heavy metal screamo song comes blaring through the speakers talking about feeling alone and wanting to die.
It's not exactly my taste, but I did tell him it was his choice, so I smile as the bass rattles my teeth.
I try to look out of the windows to see this new city I've found myself in, but it looks the same as anywhere else I've been.
We drive through downtown, the big buildings and bars lighting up either side of the road. The traffic is bogged down and I'm not sure if it's always like this around here, or if it's just that every person seems to entirely forget how to operate a motor vehicle as soon as it starts raining.
Between all of the sudden stops, the horns blaring, and this dude's depressing yet loud music, I'm thrilled when we finally pull up to a hospital off of the road.
"Here we are." He says, turning down the music and parking outside of the main entrance in the pull around drop off section. "Need help with your bags?"
It's now that I realize I hadn't thought this part through too well.
I should have found a motel first, dropped my stuff, and then come here. Now I'll have to lug my suitcase around with me.
"No thanks." I say, paying the cab fare on the pad in the backseat and getting out.
He pops the trunk for me and I jerk my suitcase out and onto the ground before closing the trunk again.
The cab pulls away and I stand staring at the hospital lobby.
A horn honks behind me and I jump, waving apologies to the car waiting for me to get out of the way so that they can pull through.
I enter the hospital, letting a security guard go through my bag before I head to the main desk.
"I'm looking for Alice Maxwell." I tell the bored looking women behind the desk.
"Relation?" She asks.
"My sister." I tell her, watching as she clicks around on the computer in front of her.
"Down the hall to the elevator lobby." She says, still looking at the computer. "Take the ones on A hall up to the third floor. You'll have to stop at their nurses station to get checked in and get a visitor's pass. Visiting hours will be over in one hour."
I nod, repeating the directions in my head over and over in my head until I find a bay of elevators, picking one on the red side that has an A painted over them.
The doors open and I squeeze on with my bag and two nurses and two men. They make room for me and I apologize when my bag runs over one of the men's loafers as I get situated.
The elevator shakes and groans as it moves and I think about what would happen if it got stuck. Would we climb out of the top? Pry the doors open between floors and try to climb out?
What if the whole thing just free falls? I wonder if that theory about jumping just before it hits the bottom has an validity to it, or if that's just a silly rumor.
I don't have to think long on it before the doors open again, releasing me.
I scramble out of the elevator and over the nurses station in front of me.
"Hayden Maxwell." I tell the first person I see. "I'm trying to find my sister and her baby? Alice Maxwell?"
The nurse looks up at me with confusion but another woman walking by behind me stops, turning to come to the desk beside me.
"Miss Maxwell?" She says and I turn to the short plump woman standing beside me. She's got graying hair and a clipboard in her hands. "I've been trying to reach you."
I furrow my brows then huff, digging in my pockets for my phone. "Shit, sorry, I forgot to turn it back on when I landed." I tell her. The concerned look on her face though gives me pause. "Is everything ok?" I ask, suddenly feeling like I should be nervous. "Is Alice ok?"
The woman straightens and touches my arm. "Oh, yes, she's fine." She tells me quickly and I sigh.
"Ok, good." I breathe, releasing the tenseness in my shoulders.
"Let's step in here to talk." She waves me forward, across the hall to a small room with three chairs and a tiny table in the middle. "Have a seat."
My nerves are back.
I sit down, watching her as she sits across from me.
"What's going on?"
"Everything is fine." She tells me first, crossing her legs. "Your sister and the baby are both doing ok."
"Ok." I nod, waiting.
She suddenly looks a little frazzled.
"So since we talked yesterday, your sister has given us some new information." She explains. "She gave us the name of the father and we were able to track him down. He lives here in Dallas. We contacted him and he came in earlier today." I nod along, still not getting it. "The hospital has released her into his care."
"My sister?" I scoff. "She doesn't need to be with some boyfriend, she needs to be-."
"No." She cuts me off. "Your sister is still under the care of the hospital right now. I'm talking about the baby."
I furrow my brows. "So she's..." I stall. "You let her go with him? Do you even know anything about him! What if he's an addict too? You just let some random man take a baby?"
"Well, Miss Maxwell, he is the babies father." She says gently.
"As far as you know."
"The hospital did confirm he was the biological father before she was released to him." She tells me quickly.
"But I thought you called me because you wanted to place her with family?"
She gives me a look. "Well, yes, and her father is family."
I blink. Duh.
"Well, yeah, but I mean..."
"I know this is a lot." She says, turning back on her caring mechanical voice. "As her father he had the right to take over her care. She was cleared by her doctors to leave."
"But did you even check into him?" I protest. "What if he's a creep or high or-."
"They did all of the standard procedures in checking him out before she was released to him." She informs me. "As the father, he had every right to take her."
Fuck his rights.
I don't know him.
For all I know, he's going to abandon her too. If he was hanging around with Alice, who knows what he could have wrong with him. He could be someone she gets high with. He could be her dealer. She could have met him in jail.
There is too many unanswered questions.
I don't know why I'm feeling so damn defensive, but I am. I know I wasn't technically here for the baby. I know I can't handle being responsible for one.
But dammit if that means she is just out there with some stranger, then I fucking care.
"Why don't you talk to your sister." She tells me. "She spoke highly of him, and seemed confident in his ability to-"
"My sister abandoned that baby at a fucking Wendy's!" I yell. "You really think she's the best judge of character here?"
"Look." The woman sighs heavily. "If seeking custody is something you want to do, you can set that up with the courts. As her father though, we didn't have any other choice or any valid reasons to not let him take her for now."
I don't want custody, right? This is the solution to the biggest problem I've had with this whole situation. I can't have her, so why does it make me feel so on edge to think of her with someone else.
Maybe they're right.
Maybe he is a good guy and the baby is in good hands. Maybe this is ok. I'm sure they really did everything to make sure she would be safe and cared for before they just let her leave.
But suddenly, maybe, isn't good enough for me.
"Where does he live?" I ask. "Like his address? Or his number? I want to talk to him myself."
"I can't give out that information." The woman folds her hands on top of her clipboard. "You'd have to talk to your sister about that."
"I don't want to talk to her right now." I fume. "I want to check this dude out for myself. If he's going to be taking care of my niece, I want to know who he is."
"Like I said already, that isn't information I'm at liberty to give you." She says flatly. "Now, if your sister chooses to disclose that to you, that is none of my business. My hands are tied."
She gives me a hard look.
I see it in her eyes. She wants to help. But she can't. She wants me to talk to Alice.
"Fine." I stand. "Where is she?"
The woman leads me out of the room and down a long corridor of hospital rooms before stopping at one near the end of the hallway.
"Call me with any questions." She passes me her card and I shove it into my pocket.
What good is asking her anything if she can't tell me anything?
She nods her head at the closed door and gives me a small smile before she walks away.
I stare at the door.
On a clipboard hanging beside the door is my sister's chart, her name scrawled across the top.
I force my hand up to knock gently against the thick wood door, straining my ears to hear her on the other side but there is no response.
I take a deep breath, blowing it out slowly through my nose before I open the door and step inside.
I leave my suitcase outside of the door and walk into the room.
There she is.
Laying on a hospital bed, an IV bag hanging above her head dripping fluids into a line that goes into her arm.
Her eyes are closed but her face is turned towards me and I swallow back a lump in my throat as I stare at her.
It's insane what eleven years has done to her.
The woman before me is nothing like the girl I remember.
She's so tiny in that bed.
It engulfs her fragile body.
The way her skin stretches tightly over the bones in her face and neck and arms breaks something deep inside of me.
She doesn't look like she could stand up on her own, much less have just had a baby only a week ago.
Her chest rises and falls with tiny gasp of air. I watch it over and over, up and down. If it weren't for that tiny movement, I'd be sure she was dead.
She looks worse than some of the corpses we've had come in to the funeral home.
Her skin is so pale she almost has a bluish tint to her. Like I can see every vein in her body weakly trying to carry the blood through her taught frame.
Her hair that used it be blonde is now a faded out pink, her roots showing and greasily smattered to her skull.
She looks like a complete and total stranger. I don't know what I had expected, but it wasn't this.
She was so normal at first.
Even my parents had told me how I was the problem baby. I was the one who wouldn't stop crying for the first two weeks after they brought us home. I was the one who was always sick when we were toddlers. I was the one in trouble in daycare for biting and scratching other two year olds. I was the one who had caused them to have to call poison control multiple times by the time I was three.
She was the good one.
The quiet one.
The one everyone cooed and fawned over because she was just such a sweet little child while I was a total hellion.
I remember how much I loved her. I remember the days she was my best friend.
Her first diagnosis came when we were six.
She'd started acting out, getting in trouble at school, not focusing, zoning out. She'd throw intense tantrums daily.
The first doctor got her on medication for HDHD and OCD.
It helped for a while.
She had more good days than bad, and according to the doctors that was the goal. My parents had explained to me once that her brain just worked differently than mine.
I couldn't understand how one day my sister was just Alice, and the next she was someone entirely different. She'd have these angry outbursts, throwing things and screaming until her voice would give out.
She'd destroy my things and then come to me in the middle of the night to climb into my bed to apologize.
Things only got worse.
When we were twelve, I'd walk by her room and hear her whispering. I could never understand what she was saying, but she'd fight with herself for hours. She'd cry for no reason. She'd refuse to eat. Refuse to sleep.
The day before our thirteenth birthday I had been in my room working on my homework when I heard her throwing things again in her room next to mine.
She ran into my room, the light in her eyes completely vacant.
"Make them shut up!" She'd screamed at me. "I'm tired of them talking all the time!" She'd run across the room and shoved me off of my bed. "Hayden, make the voices stop!" She screamed before she started slapping me.
I'd screamed for help as she continued to demand me to make the voices I couldn't hear leave her alone.
That was when she got her Schizophrenia diagnosis.
All of her constant mood swings and paranoia and outburst finally made sense. I'd always known something wasn't quite right, but I hated knowing that my own sister was fighting a constant war within herself.
Her meds didn't help. She said she hated the way they made her feel like she was under water.
I didn't get it. I couldn't understand why she fought the doctors and our parents so hard. I thought if she'd just take her medicine, she could be ok. She could be the nice Alice all the time. I didn't get why she'd chose to sit with her demons instead.
When we were thirteen she got her first taste of drugs. It was weed at first. I didn't think it was bad. If it made her feel better f then I didn't care.
But she didn't stop there.
She started skipping school and hanging out with people who just kept giving her more and more.
She ran away when she was thirteen.
She was gone for a week before the police found her and a few other kids hiding out in an abandoned house in the town over.
She was high on heroine.
She told me it made everything feel good. That it was the only way she could get out of her own body, away from her own mind, and live in this in between world where everything was bright and the darkness couldn't come for her.
I didn't see it that way though.
All I could see was her laying there with her eyes closed, the look of pain etched into her features. If she was so happy, why did she look like she was falling apart?
She did a stint in rehab, and then two years in an institution where we would come to visit her every weekend, surrounded by the smell of antiseptic and the swooshing of socks against cold hard floors.
She was often dazed, sleepy, and moved slowly and talked like getting her words out was difficult, but she was ok.
She came home on our sixteenth birthday.
For two weeks I had my sister back.
She was a more hollowed out version, but it was her. She was nice Alice again. She was healthy. She was taking her meds.
But then she was gone.
She took off in the middle of the night and I haven't seen her since.
Not until now.
Her dark eyelids flutter slightly before her blue eyes, dull and distant, settle on me.
"Hayden." She breathes. "You came."