Page 204 of Deliverance

Through the cold, through the snow, through the ache in my bones, I walk.

32 Drew

The room spinswhen I rip my eyes open. A strange sense of disaster swells inside my chest and it takes me a good minute to realize that I’ve lost time. I’m not certain how much. I just know I have.

My mind strains, searching for the memories preceding this moment, but they’re only flashes, broken and incomplete.

I remember running.

I remember snow and blood.

I remember frostbite and the cold ground against my back.

I remember palms touching my skin—callused, gentle, familiar,

I remember being lifted in the air and caged to a hard body. The smell of ocean and salt. The lights and the sirens. The back of an ambulance. The IV needle. Zander’s hands grasping mine. It comes back to me all at once, my breath catching, my head exploding from an onslaught of emotions.

“Andrea, honey?” a voice calls from somewhere off to the side, and the name makes me shudder. Then a shadow swims into my view.

“Mom?” I rasp out, my vocal cords scratchy and hardly cooperating. I have to narrow my eyes to bring her into focus.

She smiles at me, the lines around her mouth and eyes deepening. “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” I say, taking in my surroundings. The beige walls and the steady beeping of the monitor above my head tells me I’m in a hospital.

A huge flower arrangement is in my peripheral. Blue roses. They seem so out of place here and I wonder who they’re from.

“I should probably grab the nurse.” My mother picks up a small plastic remote from the folds of the blanket and presses the assistance button. She continues to fuss and talk, but her words don’t reach me.

I’m trapped in a swirl of images, reliving the abduction and shaking.

“Can you hear me, Andrea?” she asks, leaning in to meet my gaze, the worry in her eyes bright and evident.

I give her a small nod, something in my shoulder, perhaps a muscle, pulling at that. “Where’s Zander?”

“Oh, honey. The doctor is with him right now.” She quiets for a long moment and cups my cheek. “He carried you for two miles in the snowstorm… Poor thing.”

I’ve never heard my mother talk like this, but then again, our relationship can’t be described as amiable. We just exist.

“I want to see him,” I say firmly.

My mother doesn’t object. “Sure. I’ll go check on him in a bit.”

There’s a knock, then the door opens and the nurse walks in. She checks my vitals and asks some questions that I forget the moment she leaves the room.

Everything feels different. My mind, my body, my emotions. I can’t separate the real from the illusions. I can’t tell which memories are a product of my imagination and which ones are not.

“Mom?” I speak up after a few minutes and she sets the magazine she’s reading aside and directs her attention to me. “What happened to…Rhys?” Saying his name out loud makes me physically ill, although it’s probably impossible to feel worse than I’m feeling right now. Pain lances through both my arms and legs. My feet burn. So do the tips of my fingers.

My mother’s expression twists into something hollow and dark. She locks her hands together on her lap and I catch the whites of her knuckles from the corner of my eye.

“Mom?”

A heavy sigh leaves her mouth. “He didn’t make it, honey.”

The air around me stirs. I wait a full minute before posing a question, “Is he…dead?” I expect my voice to shake, but it doesn’t. I expect remorse, but it never comes.

“Yes. He’s dead,” my mother confirms, then adds angrily, “Good riddance. That man had a devil on his shoulder.”

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