Before I Let You Go(2)
“But you have surgery all day tomorrow, Sam. This isn’t your problem.”
“Lexie, your problems are my problem now. I’ll be fine, and if I’m not, I’ll postpone the surgeries. If you’re going, I’m going, so either call an ambulance and get back into bed or let’s go.”
So I let him come with me, but even as he drives across the city, I feel anxiety grinding in my gut. Sam knows only the basics about Annie’s issues. He’s been supportive and understanding, but at the end of the day, he’s from one of those “old money” northeastern families; the biggest scandal in his entire lineage is his parents’ somewhat amicable divorce. And now, four months after our engagement, here he is looking for an obscure trailer park in the middle of the night, to give medical care to my pregnant, drug-addicted sister.
He hasn’t ever met Mom, and I’m not sure he ever will. I haven’t seen her myself for almost two decades—not since the day of my sixteenth birthday, when I walked out of the strict religious sect she moved Annie and me into after Dad’s death. We speak on the phone from time to time, despite that being against the rules of her community—since Annie and I turned our back on the sect, we’re dead to them. I hate calling her because I usually hang up feeling lonely. A call to Mom is like telephoning another planet. She’s so disconnected from my world, and I have completely rejected hers.
I try to keep an open mind as we drive. I don’t want to think the worst of Annie, but it seems like her situation has gone from bad to worse over the past two years. I think of her every day—but in my thoughts, she has lived a much healthier life than the one I fear I’m about to see. It was the only way I’d been able to deal with throwing her out of my house two years ago. I imagined that she was working somewhere—maybe writing again—maybe she has a nice little apartment, like the one she had in Chicago after she graduated. I pictured her dating and going out with friends and shopping for clothes at little boutiques. Annie always had such a beautiful sense of style, back when she cared about how she looked.
It’s well after 3:00 a.m. when we find the place. It’s an older-style trailer, and even in the semidarkness of the trailer park, there is no denying that Annie is somewhere near rock bottom. The trailer is falling to bits—one side is dented, as if it’s been in some kind of car accident, and there’s black tape holding a panel in place. There is an awning at the front, but the support beneath it is damaged, too, so one corner of the roof leans down toward the ground. Trash cans are stacked against it, each overflowing with waste so that a scattered carpet of filth rests over the ground beneath the awning. There’s a narrow path through that trash right to the front door, and inside the trailer, the soft yellow glow of a light beckons. As soon as the car pulls to a stop beside the awning I reach for the door handle, but before I can open it, Sam takes my other hand in his.
“If things are too messed up in there, we’re calling an ambulance and going home. Okay?”
“She’s harmless, Sam,” I promise him. “Annie is only a danger to herself.”
“I trust you,” he says. “That’s why we’re here. But there’s only so much we are going to be able to do for her without a hospital. If she has preeclampsia, we’ll need to force her to go. Right?”
“I know,” I say on a sigh. “Let’s just play it by ear, okay?”
As we walk toward the trailer, Sam walks so close to me that I can feel his breath on the back of my neck. The door swings slowly open and then Annie is there.
Once upon a time, I was so jealous of her beautiful blond hair and her bright blue eyes, and those delicate, elfin features. The woman who stands before me now is nothing more than a shadow of my beautiful sister. The blond hair is now wiry and thin and hangs around her face in matted tendrils. Her eyes are sunken, her skin sallow; and through her parted lips I see the telltale black marks of rot on the edges of her front teeth. My eyes drift downward, and I take in the jutting ball of her bump—a horrifying contrast to her otherwise skeletal frame.
I’m not seeing my sister—I’m seeing a wasteland after war. If I wasn’t so desperate to help her I might turn away and sob.
“Thanks for coming,” Annie says. Now that I can actually see her, I identify a quality in her voice that had eluded me over the phone. Yes, she is weary. Yes, she is scared. Yes, she is tired . . . but more than all that, Annie is broken. She has called me because she had exhausted all other options.
I climb up the stairs and duck to step inside Annie’s trailer. I see the unmade bed, the old-style TV, the vinyl-clad table. Every single surface is littered with trash, but there are piles of books haphazardly stacked among the mess. Annie was an English major. She worked for a children’s book publisher and she had some short stories published in magazines. At one stage, she was even working on a book of her own. It’s heartbreaking to see the books in this place—the one throwback to the life she has lost.
“Who is this?” Annie asks, and she nods toward Sam. He is a big man, a broad man, and he looks so cramped in this tiny trailer. He has to bow his head to stand. As I look between Sam and Annie, I can barely believe that both of these people are now technically my family. They couldn’t be more different.
“This is Sam,” I murmur. “He’s my fiancé. He’s a doctor, too.”