Sharing You

11

Brody

June 16, 2015

RESTING MY ELBOWS on the counter, I let my head fall into my hands as I waited for the coffee to finish brewing the next morning. I’d barely gotten any sleep as thoughts of Olivia’s behavior went through my mind over and over again. Something wasn’t adding up, and a part of me was getting ready to just give up on trying to get her help.

Her mood swings were off the charts. I had never thought too much about the fact that she’d always gone back to being her normal self when we were out in public until the night she’d threatened to kill herself. Coming home to find her perfectly fine and telling her father that she was afraid of me was what had me looking deeper into every encounter with her.

No bipolar or depression case was the same, I knew that. But whatever Olivia had been suffering from over the last several years couldn’t be defined as any one thing. What was going on with her was both everything and, at the same time, nothing. Unfortunately, I’d overlooked this paradox until now. And now I was beginning to notice the weird patterns in Olivia’s brand of crazy.

I’d wanted to get her help when I thought her reaction to Tate’s death was the same as any normal mother would have, but now it had changed into something else entirely. With the inconsistencies in her behavior, and the brief flashes of the scheming girl I’d known so well in high school, suddenly I was no longer so sure I wanted to get her help. Had she just been playing a game with me to see how far she could push me? And had it taken me this long to catch on to what she was up to? She was constantly telling me she didn’t need help, and I was beginning to wonder whether that was true. Was Liv just being Liv, someone who didn’t need a goddamn thing from anyone other than her dad’s money? If she was still the old Olivia I’d fallen for in high school, she was just putting on an act and then sitting back and enjoying the show.

I straightened and breathed out heavily when those thoughts went through my head again. She can’t be playing a game. She can’t be faking grief over Tate’s death, I told myself for the hundredth time since last night.

I was so confused, so torn . . . and such a fucking dick. I wanted to be with Kamryn so bad that I was now making up excuses for Liv’s behavior so I could justify leaving her without getting her help first.

The house phone rang, jolting me from the inner scolding, and I turned to grab it from the counter. I ground my teeth when the name I’d briefly seen on the caller ID registered, but I’d already pushed TALK.

“Hello?”

“Where’s my daughter?”

“How are you today, Mr. Reynolds?” I asked as I turned to walk out of the kitchen and toward Liv’s side of the house.

There was a pause before he huffed. “We don’t do small talk, Brody. Put my daughter on the phone and tell me why she wasn’t answering her cell.”

I rolled my eyes and suppressed a huff of my own. “I’m not sure, you can ask her when you talk to her. Liv,” I called out as I walked down the hallway.

Letting my arm drop so I wouldn’t have to play nice with my father-in-law anymore, I called out her name two more times as I let myself into her room and looked around for her. Rounding the corner into her bathroom, I froze for two seconds before I ran to where she was lying on the floor.

“Olivia!” I shouted and grabbed her limp body. “Liv!”

Pressing two fingers to the inside of her wrist, I grabbed the phone I’d dropped near her body, hung up on her dad, and called 911.

“Jeston Police Department, do you need fire, medical, or police?”

“I need an ambulance to 9709 Tuscany Way. Twenty-six-year-old female unconscious, I just found her with an empty pill bottle next to her. Breathing is very shallow, her body is still warm, though.”

The line beeped as Olivia’s dad continued calling me back, but he’d have to wait.

“Is this Brody?” the dispatcher asked cautiously.

“Yes. It’s Olivia . . . my wife.”

The dispatcher cursed softly. “Okay. What kind of pill bottle?”

I grabbed for it and read random things off the label. “Uh . . . duloxetine. It’s for thirty pills, the prescription was filled . . . four days ago.” I said the last few words with dread as I looked down at Liv. “Olivia, I need you to wake up!”

“Okay, the ambulance is already on its way. You said she’s still warm?”

“Yes, I don’t know when she took these. I walked in here to give her the phone and found her. Is there something I can do until they get here?”

“Are her lips or fingers blue?”

Grabbing her limp arm, I brought her hand closer before gently releasing it. “No. Come on, Liv!” Shaking her shoulders, I looked for some kind of reaction, but there was nothing. “I hear the sirens,” I said to the dispatcher. “I’m going to open the door. Thank you.”

As soon as he acknowledged my thanks, I ended the call and ran to the front door, threw it open, and waited for the EMTs to follow me back to Liv’s bathroom. They asked countless questions about her health, her mental stability, and if she’d shown signs of being suicidal in the past as they loaded her onto the stretcher and took vitals. Once she was loaded into the back, I got in my SUV and pulled out my phone as I followed behind.

“Hello?”

“It’s Brody.”

“You worthless piece of shit,” Mr. Reynolds growled. “Tell me where my—”

“She’s loaded up in the back of an ambulance on her way to Memorial because of you and your wife. Thought you’d like to know.” Without waiting for him to respond, I ended the call and focused on getting to the hospital. There would be time to yell at them later.

I STOOD AND held back an eye roll when Olivia’s parents walked into the waiting room almost two hours later. They lived fifteen minutes from the hospital, and they were both so dressed up, they looked like they were ready to go to a race.

“What have you done to her now?” Mr. Reynolds bellowed, and the other people in the large room looked between us.

My face heated, but not with embarrassment. Clenching my hands into fists, I refused to speak until they were standing in front of me, and when I did, I spoke so that only the two of them could hear me. “What have I done? That must be a joke considering Olivia is going to be put on a twenty-four-hour suicide watch once they’re done because she overdosed on antidepressants that were prescribed to your wife!” I hissed.

Mrs. Reynolds scoffed and crossed her arms. “Now you’re trying to lay blame on us?”

“What antidepressants?” Mr. Reynolds asked.

Grabbing the bottle from my pocket, I tossed it at his chest and said the information from memory. “Duloxetine, otherwise known as Celexa. Thirty pills prescribed to Cathy Reynolds, filled four days ago. All thirty were gone, and the bottle was next to Liv when I found her unconscious in the bathroom this morning.” I turned and took two steps toward the chairs before turning back around to face them. Throwing my arms out, I leaned forward and whispered sardonically, “Which, by the way, is probably why she wasn’t answering her phone.”

Mrs. Reynolds took a step closer to me. “Those are in my name because she was too scared to get them herself. She was afraid of what you would do to her if you knew she needed them.”

I laughed, but I didn’t know if it was because Olivia’s parents were so blind, or because I was just that much closer to breaking down after all this time. “Are you—are you fucking kidding me?” I said through gritted teeth. “I have never hurt Olivia. I told you she was suicidal, and you didn’t listen. I have been trying to get her help! I have been trying to get her to realize on her own that she needs help. The other night she called me saying she needed to be with Tate, that she couldn’t live without him anymore, and then she hung up on me. When I got home, she was talking to you on the house phone like nothing was wrong except for the fact that I scare her and shattered her phone. When she got off the phone with you, she told me she broke her cell herself because she wanted a new one. How do you not see that there’s something wrong with her? How do you not see what she’s doing? She’s trying to turn you against me because she knows you’ll give her what she wants. I’m the only one who’s trying to fucking help her! And how do you repay me? You put in a formal complaint with my chief?”

“Excuse me, sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step outside if you want to continue this conversation.”

I turned to look at the security guard standing there with one of the nurses, and my shoulders sagged. “It’s fine. I said what I needed to say.”

We sat on opposite sides of the waiting room for another two hours until the director of a psych ward in a hospital in Portland called me back. Stepping outside, I talked with him for well over an hour about Olivia, what had been happening since Tate passed, the escalation in the last few weeks, and what had happened that morning. He told me about how things were run on his ward and the benefits for Olivia of being treated there; once he got the report from Olivia’s doctor, he told me, we could talk again about the possibility of her going to his Portland facility for care.

Once the call was over, I hovered over Kamryn’s name for a few seconds before putting my phone in my pocket. I wanted to tell her what was happening, but I wanted to be able to hold her when I did. I was finally going to get Liv help, but I’d almost been too late. And my stomach dropped every time I remembered how last night and this morning I’d been wondering if all this had been a game to her.

Walking into the hospital, my steps quickened when I saw Liv’s parents speaking to the doctor. He eyed me warily, and my forehead creased in confusion. We’d spoken twice that morning, and he hadn’t been back out since the Reynoldses arrived. I didn’t know why he’d be talking to them and looking at me like I had no place in being there.

“What’s going on? How’s she doing?”

Mr. Reynolds’s back stiffened, and he turned to glare at me. “You disgusting piece of trash. What was this going to accomplish for you?”

“What?”

“You think throwing a childish fit and trying to make us believe you’re the only one who wants to help her would make any of us believe that our daughter would have done something so tragic?”

I shook my head slowly as I tried to comprehend what he was saying, and why his wife looked like she was about to kill me. Looking past him, I asked the doctor, “What the hell happened?”

He glanced at Liv’s parents, and her mom urged him to tell me. With a slow breath out, he squared his shoulders and looked at me. “Your wife’s toxicity report came back. There was no trace of the antidepressants, or any narcotic for that matter, in her system. We’re running tests to see why she fainted. There’s always the possibility of a seizure, that kind of thing.”

My jaw dropped and I shook my head once. “No . . . she was completely unresponsive. Her breathing was too shallow. I was with her for five minutes trying to wake her up, the EMTs couldn’t wake her up. And if she didn’t take the pills, then what did she do with them so that they were all gone and the bottle just happened to be there next to her?”

“Or what did you do with them,” Mrs. Reynolds said under her breath, and my head jerked back. “She said she was afraid of what would happen if you knew she needed them. I find it disturbing that we get her help, and she winds up in the hospital just days later.”

“This has got to be a joke,” I said, breathing hard.

Kamryn

June 16, 2015

“I THINK it needs to be Sunday every day of the week,” Kinlee blurted out.

Laughing, I dipped my spoon back into the pint of ice cream and ignored her laughing when I moaned through my next bite. “Shut up,” I grumbled.

“Oh, whatever. It’s cute!”

“Lee, it is not cute! You try moaning like this when you eat sweet stuff! Think about never being able to try something sweet when you’re out. Never being able to try flavors at the frozen yogurt shop, just having to hope you’ll like it. Think. About. It.”

Kinlee’s face morphed into a look of horror. “No fro-yo samples?!”

“Exactly.” I pointed the spoon at her.

Jace was working, so we’d spent all day at her house in our pajamas, doing nothing but eating and watching movies. I felt so sick. So fat. So lazy. And so ridiculously happy.

Putting the half-eaten pint on the coffee table, I rubbed my eyes under my glasses and sat back into the cushions on the couch. “You’re trying to kill me with sugar.”

“You found me out,” she said around one of my cookies. “Took you long enough. What’s this?” she asked, nodding her head at the TV.

“How am I supposed to know? You have the remote.”

“Well, I can’t find it. What was coming on after Harry Potter?”

I rolled my head to the side and raised an eyebrow at her. “Really? You’re really asking me this right now? There were two on in a row. How the hell am I supposed to know the answer to that?”

“Meh, whatever. It has Cameron Diaz. I like her.” Kinlee shrugged and sat back. “I don’t want to watch this,” she whispered a few moments later.

“What? Why?” I looked at her, alarmed by the tone of her voice.

“I just don’t. Can you help me look for the remote?”

I watched as she turned and shoved her hand in the side of the couch, and I glanced back at the inoffensive movie playing. “I don’t—what’s wrong with it?”

“I just don’t want to watch it, all right?!”

Jumping back from her now-shrill voice, I sat there stunned for a few seconds before nodding my head furiously. “Yeah, okay. Let’s find it.”

I helped her look for the remote while sneaking glances back at the TV. “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” I said, reading the title out loud. Why would Kinlee be so against watching this?

Looking back at her, I watched her eyes flutter shut and a deep breath left her. Her shoulders hunched forward like she was curling in on herself, and my chest ached for my friend.

“Are—are you and Jace having a baby?” Wouldn’t that be a happy thing?

She sighed sadly and opened her eyes, but didn’t look at me. She just continued staring at the back of the couch. “No.”

Glancing quickly at the movie still playing, I moved to sit on the floor next to her and grabbed her forearm. “Did you have a miscarriage, Lee?” She shook her head, and my confusion grew. “I—what happened? I don’t know what’s wrong.”

For long minutes she just sat there staring until she finally cried out, “I swear to God, it’s like it all comes at once. It can’t just be the same amount all the time. I either don’t see babies, don’t see pregnant women, and don’t see commercials about them . . . or I see them everywhere!” Fat tears fell down her cheeks, and my mouth hung open as I sat there helplessly. “In the last week I have seen dozens of commercials about babies, about pregnancy tests. There has been at least one pregnant woman or one woman with an infant who comes into the store every day, and did you notice the group of women at Starbucks on Thursday?” she asked, finally turning to look at me.

I shook my head as I thought back to Thursday.

“Pregnant!” she spit out. “All four of them were fucking pregnant, and two had toddlers.” Hard sobs racked her small body, and she wiped at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “It’s like it has to taunt me constantly for weeks until I finally break. It’s like the universe realizes that I’m okay with my life, and happy with Jace, and wants to remind me of what I can’t have and make me miserable all over again!”

“You—you can’t have kids, Kinlee?” I asked softly.

“Do you—” She cut off, trying to suck in air. “Do you realize how hard it is knowing you can’t? Knowing it’s not even an option?” she cried. “Do you know how badly Jace wanted a family? That’s all—” Her words stopped as the sobs took over her body, and she slumped into the couch.

Pulling her over to me, I wrapped my arms around her and let my hand run over her back as her body shook uncontrollably.

“That’s all he wanted. That’s all I wanted! And I can’t give us that,” she whimpered, her body sagging as the sobs calmed.

“Kinlee, I’m so sorry. I had no idea,” I said as I continued to hold her. “I’m sorry.”

We sat there on the floor, in front of her couch, for countless minutes as she cried and my heart broke for her. When her tears stopped and she sat back, I grabbed her hand and looked at her red-rimmed eyes.

“When did you find out?”

She sniffed and wiped at her face. “Right before we got married. We got in this huge fight because I was sure he wouldn’t want to get married anymore. It was our first fight, and it was so dumb, but I’d been terrified and heartbroken when I’d found out.”

“Have you ever thought about adoption?” I asked cautiously. I wasn’t sure if this was a sore topic for her.

“I mean, yeah. But it’s expensive, and people can go years waiting to adopt.”

“Would Jace want to?”

Kinlee laughed and shook her head. “He’s the one who’s pushing adoption. I mean, we could, I know we could afford it. But”—she glanced at me—“what if we never get the opportunity, and I get my hopes up? I don’t know if I can handle that,” she whispered.

“Kinlee,” I choked out.

“I just want to be a mom. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

My chin quivered as I watched more tears fill her eyes. “Then don’t be afraid to try. You don’t want to look back in twenty or thirty years and wonder what would have happened if you had just gone for it now. Right?”

Just like how I hadn’t wanted to lose myself in a life I hated with Charles, so I’d run away. Just like how I had done something I never would have seen myself do so I could be with the man I needed in order to breathe. In both cases, I hadn’t wanted to look back in twenty or thirty years and wonder what would have happened if I had done those things . . . I’d wanted to know what did happen.