Bedful of Moonlight by Raven Held (audio ebook reader .txt) 📕

I knelt down in front of him. Although what could I possibly say? Everything was going to be okay?
“You’ll see your grandpa soon.” I patted his head.
He jutted out his lips as though ready to cry. “Was it my fault?”
“What? No.” He looked so miserable I had to give him a hug. “No, Oliver. It wasn’t your fault, okay? You must never think that.”
Belle was trying to relate what happened to Hyde, but I could hardly make head or tail of what she was saying.
“Come on, let’s get in there,” Hyde said, and guided her with an arm around her.
And then I understood why this all seemed so familiar to me. I recognised the stammering, the sudden inability to say anything, the need to be led somewhere, to be told what to do. All around me, people were talking, yelling, moving, and lights were flashing. Nothing made any sense. The world had come to a standstill, so why hadn’t they all?
The building was a higher one the other time, and there were more windows. I remember wondering briefly why the glass had to be tinted. I remember knowing, before he was wheeled inside, that everything was over. He hadn’t been breathing anymore by the time help came; there was nothing they could do.
I had stood there alone, watching as the paramedics reported into their walkie-talkies and ran inside, until someone took me by my shoulders and led me in.
The hallway was long. It seemed like I would never reach the end, or wherever it was that they had taken Blake to. The place smelt horrible, an amalgamation of medicine and antiseptics, rubber gloves and stainless steel equipments. There was the constant buzz of voices, and the sound made by pattering feet, but all I could hear was the screaming of the tyres and the shattering of glass.
And suddenly there was the tightness in my chest, just like the one I had felt as I ran down that hallway a month ago. It just felt like everything was closing in on me, squeezing tears out of my eyes, squeezing air out of my lungs, out of my head.
“Kristen. Kristen.”
I blinked, only to find that I was panting.
Caleb had his arms around me, and I was on the floor. “Are you okay?”
I got up quickly. This was the most inconvenient time to indulge in myself. “I’m fine. Let’s get inside.”


Sixteen


“Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.”
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 – 1945),


“Are you sure you’re okay? You were a little woozy back there.”
“I’m fine, Caleb. Really.”
“I’ll go get you something to drink.”
Before I could say anything, he had gone off to ask Belle the same thing.
“Ah, just leave him be, kid,” Hyde said, coming over to me. “He needs to keep himself busy or he’ll go nuts.”
“I can’t stand this waiting,” Belle said, staring up at the In Operation light.
Oliver was uncharacteristically quiet. He sat on the orange plastic chairs, unmoving, staring stonily ahead. I always thought it always scary when kids sat alone with their own thoughts, even though I’d been one such kid myself.
So I sat down next to him. “Why do you think it’s your fault, Oliver?” For someone who had been through enough therapy sessions, I knew what a relief it was when people just cut straight to the chase.
He stared down, and his cheeks puffed up the way only kids’ could. “Because Aunty Annabel used to say I was so naughty someday people would get hurt because of me.”
I stared. “Aunty Annabel said that?”
He nodded, looking miserable again.
“Well, Aunty Annabel’s wrong.” I hoped he could hear the insistence in my voice. “It’s not because you’re naughty that your grandpa’s hurt.”
I felt a tap on my shoulder, and looked up to see a cup of tea proffered.
Belle gratefully held the cup with both hands. “Caleb, have you called your mother?”
He nodded. “But she’s not picking up. Neither is Gabriel. I keep getting directed to voicemail. I left her messages. Jade and Ri are on their way.”
Belle pursed her lips and took a sip from her cup. “I just think,” she said, licking her lips, “that something like that would at least pique her concern.”
“She’s probably busy at the moment,” Caleb said.
“Too busy to see her father when he’s in the ER, apparently.” She glanced up at the In Operation sign again, her lips back into a tightly-sewn thread.

*

Finally, when the light in the In Operation sign went off and the doctor came out, all of us leapt out of our respective positions for what he had to say.
Caleb’s granddad was in a stabilised condition, but had to stay in the hospital for a week for observation. Since he was still unconscious and needed to rest, Belle told Caleb to close up the bookstore for the day.
“I’ll give you a hand,” I told Caleb.
Jade narrowed her eyes at me again, as Reilly said, taking her aunt’s hand, “Are you sure you don’t need us here, Aunt Belle?”
“No, it’s fine. He needs to rest. I’ll be leaving soon after, anyway. I suppose Oliver wants some time with his grandpa.” She stroked Oliver’s hair as she looked down at him. The boy’s eyes were glassy and far-off.
“I’ll give you kids a ride, then,” Hyde said. Turning to Belle, he added, “I’ll come back soon to take you all home.” His softened eyes hardly matched his beefy, tattooed body.
“Thank you for all this, Hyde,” Belle said, resolutely keeping her hands to herself even though it was obvious she wanted to clasp his.
Hyde cleared his throat, and glanced at Caleb and me watching. “Yeah. Later.” He patted her shoulder once.
Oliver was still quiet. He did not respond when Caleb put his arm around him and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, buddy.”
“He thinks this is all his fault,” I told Caleb as we climbed into the junk-filled Toyota. For some reason, though, I figured it would be better if I left out the part about Aunty Annabel.
Caleb nodded. “He’s been through a lot today. But he’ll be okay. He’ll be fine. He just needs a day or two. Then everything will be back to normal. He’ll be just fine.”
In the driver’s seat, Hyde said, “So, no damage. That’s good news, right?” He reached forth and turned on the radio. Soon, Lynyrd Skynyrd was extolling the beauties of Sweet Home Alabama.
Reilly flicked a wisp of hair out of her face. In the distance, the setting sun offered its last rays for the day. “I cannot believe she didn’t even show up,” she proclaimed over the twang of guitars.
We all knew straight away whom she was referring to.
“She was probably busy, Ri,” Jade said, frowning. She reached forward and fiddled with the A/C. “Does this thing work?”
Reilly rolled her eyes. “And how many times have we all used that line.”
“By the way,” Caleb said lowly, leaning towards me slightly, “I’m sorry about all that.”
I turned to look at him. “All what? What do you have to be sorry for?”
“I’m sorry you had to be at the hospital with us this afternoon.”
The glance that Hyde snuck into the rear-view mirror was not missed by me.
“You know, you obviously have an issue with hospitals. So,” Caleb said, over my noise of protest, “to put you through all that was thoughtless of me.”
“It wasn’t a big deal for me.”
He cast a sidelong glance at me. “Are you kidding? You were almost hyperventilating back there. Wasn’t she, Hyde?”
Hyde froze, caught in the act of eavesdropping. “Well –”
“Just drive.” I glared at Caleb. “I said I’m fine. It’s the smell that makes me woozy.”
Jade gave up on the A/C. “Does she even know grandpa’s in hospital? Maybe she didn’t, and you’d have accused her of ignorance, which isn’t even her fault.”
But it turned out that Mrs Burnstead did know. It also turned out that she had erased all the voice and text messages she received. When we got home, my parents were on the couch, watching TV, while the Burnsteads had just gotten home.
“I just don’t understand why you would do that,” Reilly said, tossing her keys on the coffee table.
“What happened?” mom asked.
“Caleb’s grandfather had a heart attack. Hospitalised, but he’s okay for now,” I muttered.
“I was busy, Reilly,” Mrs Burnstead said as she came serenely down the stairs. “We were both in the middle of a meeting. We couldn’t possibly just leave.”
Reilly stared at her mother. “Sure you can.”
“Besides, he’s fine, Reilly,” Mr Burnstead said with what he probably supposed was a placating shrug, an arm on the back of the couch where his wife sat. “No harm done.”
“This conversation does not include you,” Reilly snapped.
“That’s enough, Reilly.”
But apparently, Reilly had had enough too. Grabbing her keys again, she flounced out of the house, making it a point to slam the door on the way out.
My mother winced, but Mrs Burnstead just continued down the stairs and went into the kitchen.
So it was more of a relief than usual when it was just Caleb and me on the moonlight porch with our steaming mugs of Earl Grey. My room was still not repaired, despite what Mr Burnstead promised, but it wasn’t like I spent a lot of time in it, anyway.
Tonight, the moon was full and bright, the sky clear. As usual, he was there earlier than I was, my mug in my place next to him.
“Welcome to family drama,” was the first thing he said to me when I sat down next to him.
“It’s okay for me. I’ve got some of my own too. I just don’t want to be present when yours unravels.”
“I know, awkward, isn’t it?” He chuckled. “Reilly, always so melodramatic. I think Jade might take after her.”
“But aren’t you mad at all that your mom couldn’t even make it to the hospital today?” I only realised how much I had overstepped the boundaries after I had uttered that. “I mean –”
“She hasn’t been in contact with her family since before I can remember, so why would she start now?”
“She hasn’t? Why?” It was too late to stop asking now.
He took a long sip, and then glanced at me.
“Okay, that was one too many prying questions, I guess,” I said.
“I always suspected some kind of jealousy going on.”
“You mean between your mom and Belle?”
He nodded. “Sibling rivalry and all that. Mom never got over the fact that grandpa left the Old Belle in Aunt Belle’s hands … among other things.”
“So….”
“So that day when she came over to the Old Belle was the closest contact she had with Aunt Belle. You notice she didn’t even invite her or grandpa to the fete.”
It was a balmy night and the crickets were chirping, as restless as we were. So we made a random decision to visit Hyde at the cemetery. As we began walking, Caleb asked, “So what really went on with you at the hospital today?”
I figured since he had been pretty open about his family to me, the least I could do was give him back an honest response. So I vomited everything sensation I experienced today, the bitter aftertaste that the hospital left, the tense exchange of foreign lingo over the indifferent beeps of cold live-saving machines, the realisation of what was lost.
I had never understood the effect of catharsis, but this, I was sure, was certainly what it felt like.
“See? Don’t you feel