In Her Eyes by Sarah Alderson (ebook reader for pc and android TXT) 📕

I close my eyes as we inch our way through them. I’m getting used to the near constant throb of pain in my head, like a nagging headache that won’t go away, but every time the stress increases, the pain flares and I have to sit quietly with my eyes closed until it passes. A fist lands on the window right beside me, making me jump, and my eyes fly open.

‘Did you know?’ one of the reporters yells at me, the snout of his camera pressed up against the glass. I cringe away from him, automatically scanning the crowd, remembering the journalist from the hospital. I can’t see him among the dozen or so reporters. I wish Nate could do the same thing to all these ones, make them all leave us alone.

Laurie leans her palm on the horn until the news crews back grudgingly away and we’re able to squeeze past.

‘We have to leave the house,’ I say finally to Laurie, when I can’t keep it in any longer. ‘The bank is foreclosing. We have one week to get out.’

Laurie stares at me, her mouth falling open. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know,’ I say with a shrug, and it’s true. I have no idea.

And what about the medical fees for June and me? Has he been paying our health insurance premiums? If not, then we’re even more screwed. The ICU is thousands of dollars a day. I grimace and shake my head. I can’t think about that right now. The only important thing is June. The rest will have to wait.

I find Hannah at the hospital, sitting with a tear-stained face beside June’s bed.

‘Is it true?’ she asks, jumping to her feet the moment I enter.

I nod. This is the worst of it, having to face my child and admit to her that her future has just been wiped out because her father is an idiot. I lay a hand against my stomach to still the boiling anger brewing there, which feels like it might spill over and scald anyone in the vicinity.

I put my hand on Hannah’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, wondering why I’m the one apologizing to her. I should have kept a better eye on our finances yes, and maybe I’ve been too blithe with my spending but for God’s sake, he never gave me a single indication of the debt we were in.

I scan June for any sign of change but there’s none. If anything, she looks paler, the shadows around her eyes bluer, her cheeks more sunken. The machines beep their relentless tune and I suddenly feel like screaming, like punching holes in the walls and yelling until all the howling rage and spitting anger and utter desperation is purged. Right now, with it trapped inside me, it feels corrosive, as if it’s eating me alive from the inside out.

‘What’s going to happen?’ Hannah asks, looking up at me, eyes wide.

I shake my head and press my lips together even harder and somehow, though God knows how, I force a smile. ‘It’ll all be OK,’ I say.

She nods at me and I can see she believes it, or at least she’s trying hard to. I turn away.

The lies we tell.

Chapter 19

DAY 4

I still have no idea what we’re going to do the next morning. I spent an uncomfortable and sleepless night twisted like a pretzel in a chair beside June’s bed. Now I’m sitting with the hospital’s insurance liaison in her office, my eyes blurring from the staggering sums I’m being asked to review. I’ve never seen so many zeroes in one place. It’s almost laughable. A buzzing noise breaks through the haze. It’s my phone. Gene. Damn. He must have heard. I can’t talk to him right now. I’ll have to call him back.

Robert apparently signed something saying that we would be personally responsible for the medical bills given our lack of health coverage. Even if he hadn’t lost all our money, these kinds of sums would bankrupt a small nation. And what was he doing signing anything? He knew it meant nothing. But then again what was he going to say to the people trying to save his daughter’s life? ‘No, we can’t actually afford it. Turn the machines off’?

The door bursts open behind me.

‘Mom?’

I spin around in my chair. Hannah is in the doorway, her face a horror mask.

‘What is it?’ I ask, rising out of my seat, the papers scattering around me in a snowstorm flurry. ‘Is it June? What’s happened?’

Hannah shakes her head. ‘No, but you need to come. Now.’

She grabs my hand and tugs me out of the room. ‘What is it? Where are we going?’ I ask, dread making my legs feel like they’re encased in concrete.

She drags me into a waiting area where exhausted families sit awaiting news of loved ones. A muted flat-screen television is mounted on the wall and Hannah halts in front of it.

I glance up. Not more news. I can’t face seeing any more news reports. I’m about to turn away when the word ‘ARREST’ flashes on the bottom of the screen and captures my attention. The image it’s blasted over is helicopter footage – and it’s a bird’s-eye view of our house. I clutch Hannah’s arm and gasp. They’ve arrested someone! Finally.

The camera zooms wonkily in on the front door of the house and I see two policemen leading someone out in handcuffs. Wait. What’s happening?’

‘Why are they arresting Dad?’ Hannah cries.

I don’t answer her. I’m already walking towards the nurse’s station. I yell at the orderly sitting at the desk to pass me the TV remote and then snatch it out of her hand so I can pump up the volume. I don’t care that the people in the waiting room are all staring and that Hannah has started crying hysterically.

‘And news is just in that Robert Walker has been arrested,’ a woman’s voice intones as the image captured from the helicopter