“Indigo, can you hear me?”
“Hmm?” I mumble sleepily. “That you, Mom?” I snuggle under thin covers. “I had the craziest dream.”
“Did you dream you jumped off a building?” a deeper voice, which matches my dad’s, replies.
I pop one eye open to see my parents’ sullen faces as they stand beside a hospital bed. Correction—my hospital bed? They stare at me. I stare at them. They stare at me some more.
“How are you feeling?” Dad asks with a raised eyebrow.
“Pain,” I grumble, since pain is what I’m feeling. Like extreme physical pain. My head is pounding as if my skull needs to expand to make more room for my brain, and my arm feels odd. I look down. A cast? Holy hell, I broke my arm. And my legs? I can’t feel them! “Am I paralyzed?” I choke.
“With stupidity.”
I turn. My brother, Alfred, leans up against the wall on the other side of the room, eyes down, fiddling with his phone.
He goes on, “Paralyzed with extreme stupidity.”
I wiggle my toes. Okay, I’m not paralyzed.
“Indigo, what were you thinking?” Mom wails. I know this is not a rhetorical question. Mom will literally wait, glaring at you, daring you not to answer one of her infamous nonrhetorical rhetorical questions.
“I’m not sure what I was thinking, Mom.” But that’s not the truth. I don’t remember everything. But one thing is clear. Yesterday I wanted to die. Like Violet. With Violet.
“Oh, you’re not sure?” Mom’s silver hair is pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head, accentuating the angry veins pulsing around her hairline. “And without a coat? You realize you could’ve caught pneumonia!”
Surprisingly, yes. I did realize that.
Dad crosses his arms across his chest. At sixty, Dad’s hair should be silvery like Mom’s, but he dyes it black. What’s left of it, that is. “Helen. The girl jumped off a building and you’re mad because she forgot her damn coat?”
Mom ignores Dad and continues, “You had hypothermia, dislocated your shoulder, broke your arm and have a grade-two concussion. You could’ve died!”
“Well, duh, Mom,” Alfred pipes in. “Wasn’t that the point?”
Mom snaps her fingers at Alfred. “You be quiet. Nobody’s even talking to you.” She cocks her head to one side as she speaks. “So that’s what this is about? Death was your brilliant plan?! What exactly would that have solved?”
What would death have solved? It would’ve leveled the playing field. Righted a wrong...
“Indigo?” Mom snaps, interrupting my thoughts. “Do you hear me talking to you?”
Another nonrhetorical rhetorical. Must. Find. Answer.
“I do hear you, Mom.” Wait... I’m starting to remember more details. I snuck out of the house... I was headed to catch the train...
“Your cell phone survived the fall.” Alfred’s still not looking up from his own phone. “The paramedics used your thumbprint to unlock it and dialed Mom.”
Alfred’s sixteen years old and attends a “twice-exceptional” high school for kids who struggle in a normal school setting, but nothing’s really wrong with them...and they’re super smart. Or...something like that. In truth, I don’t know what a twice-exceptional high school is. All I know is that twice-exceptional schools welcome kids with learning disabilities, and Mom and Dad have had Alfred diagnosed with every learning disability known to mankind. And are probably currently writing letters to the president of the United States to have new labels invented so they can have him diagnosed with those as well. ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia (where your brain doesn’t make sense of numbers), auditory processing disorder (where your brain doesn’t make sense of speech) and, my personal favorite, distractibiliphilia. I imagine that’s where your brain sends signals to your hands to never put your phone down.
“I can’t believe you, Indigo!” Mom cries, tears brimming to the surface. “How could you be so selfish? Were you honestly trying to kill yourself?”
I was. Though, I still can’t remember much about it. Okay, I took the train and...
“Are they gonna put her on a 5150 hold?” Alfred yawns, slides his phone into his back pocket and flips his lime-green Seahawks cap forward.
“I’m not crazy,” I snap, struggling to force the details to the surface. When I got off the train it was cold... I walked to the Amgen campus... I crossed a bridge...
“Indi. No offense...” Alfred starts many sentences with no offense followed by something intensely offensive. I wait for it. “You jumped off a building in a random, nondescript industrial zone. You’re batshit.”
“Watch your language, boy!” Dad bellows, as the brown skin on the bald portion of his head shines under the fluorescent lighting in the hospital room.
“I didn’t jump! I fell.” Technically, that’s not a lie. Obviously I fell. But did I jump? Was I brave enough to actually do that?
“You were climbing for fun?” Mom asks.
“Helen, why on God’s green Earth would she be climbing a building, in the freezing rain, at 11:00 p.m., for fun?”
Mom shrugs in response to Dad’s question. “I don’t know, Isaiah. I see people climbing buildings all the time.”
Alfred chimes in, “Construction workers don’t really count.”
Mom frowns. “I meant on TV.”
“Oh.” Alfred scratches his forehead. “Like...Spider-Man?”
“It was for Vee,” I blurt. “She always wanted a photo of the Amgen bridge at night, in the rain.” Of course I’m lying but continue, grabbing my phone from the side table for emphasis. It’s dead, so all I see is my reflection in the glass. My eyes are black-and-blue, as if I got punched in the face more than a few times. My normally flawless light brown skin has all sorts of nicks, scrapes and contusions. And my long hair is matted to my head. Yikes.
“The Amgen pedestrian bridge?” Mom asks.
I nod and say softly, “I thought it might help somehow. I thought it might change her mind.”
Violet is a student at a Big Picture high school. I mean, I go there too, but I think they let me in only because of Violet and the whole twin thing, since I don’t exactly fit the Big Picture student profile: motivated, unique and prepared for career advancement. I’m more...unmotivated, common (the perfect antonym for unique) and interested in career advancement only if it means I get to stay glued to Violet’s side for the rest of our live-long days. Anyway, at Big Picture high schools, students have internships and work closely with career mentors. Since Violet and I are aspiring photojournalists, last semester we were with Aaron Wade, one of National Geographic’s top photojournalists. Aaron always had us hiking and climbing to get good photos. So this lie of mine, of taking a photo at 11:00 p.m. from the top of an under-construction building, across from the Amgen campus and their beautiful helix-shaped pedestrian bridge, is an awesome one.
But, awesome lie aside, Mom is crying now. Dad places a hand on her shoulder while she fishes around in her purse for a tissue. I can’t stand to see my mom cry, so I turn to face Alfred, who mouths, “You dumbass.”
“Could you all please...?” I want to say leave, but I know that will never fly with my family. Mom would go into a rage that I dare disrespect her with such insolent language. Alfred would murmur one of his signature acronyms, like L-O-L. His never-ending attempt at making text-speech an actual way of speaking. Dad would bellow a patronizing, Are you the one paying for this doctor bill? No? I didn’t think so. Leave that! Instead, I ask as politely as I can, “Could you all excuse me? I need to go to the bathroom.” I add, “Number two.” Just to make sure they all get out.
Mom blinks. “Do you need help?”
“Um...” I swing my legs around the side of the bed. A movement that reminds me every muscle, joint and bone hurts like hell. And the arm that’s apparently broken, and encased within this itchy cast, also rests inside a sling. Not to mention my other arm is hooked up to an IV. “I think I do. Yeah.”
“I’ll go get the nurse.” Mom grabs her purse off the chair beside the bed and pulls the straps over her shoulder. “Besides, I need to talk to a nurse anyway. I can’t have the hospital thinking you’re suicidal. They need to know you fell, not jumped. Right?”
I swallow, nod and mumble, “Right.”
“Okay, good. I’m not gonna be dealing with Social Services or CPS or whatever they’re calling it these days. I won’t have it.”
“Suicide is the second leading cause of death among teens I-R-L, Mom,” Alfred states.
“Boy, stop with the acronyms,” Dad retorts. “Nobody knows what I-R-L means.”
“In real life?” Alfred smirks as if Dad not knowing what I-R-L means is the ultimate fail. “Multiple attempts are common. Maybe having her assessed isn’t such a bad idea. They could give us some steps to follow at home. For prevention.”
In rare moments, Alfred makes a lot of sense. However, these rare moments of Alfred genius are typically followed by our parents stating something like...
“Alfred, have you lost your damn mind?” Dad barks.
Yep. Something like that.
“I have a ‘step’ Indigo can follow,” Mom adds, rage climbing like a shuttle launching off toward outer space. “Stop scaling buildings in the middle of the damn night! Alfred, stay here with your sister in case she needs anything. Dad and I are going to find the doctor.”
“Actually, Alfred?” I want to say, Can you get the hell out, too? Instead I ask politely, “Could you grab me a cranberry juice from the cafeteria?”
Alfred shakes his head. “Call a nurse.”
“Alfred!” Dad shouts. “Get your sister something to drink from the cafeteria. What is wrong with you?”
“Geez.” Alfred pushes off the wall. “I’m going. Calm yourself. B-R-B.”
Mom’s phone chimes. “It’s Michelle.” Her eyes widen. “It’s almost four in the morning. Why would she be calling?”
“Not sure.” Dad sounds worried. “Maybe she just wants to see if it’s okay to tell Violet Indigo is in the hospital.”
Since I’m older than Violet by two and a half minutes, I like to think of myself as big sis. But since Michelle is older than us both by fifteen years, she’s the real big sister. She’s also a chief nurse practitioner who has taken a leave of absence from her position at Mercy Hospital to be Violet’s in-home caretaker.
Mom only stares at her ringing phone until Dad snatches it out of her hand. He slides his finger across the screen to answer it. “What’s up, hon?”
Dad’s expression is hard to read. He stands, listening, barely breathing.
“What is it?” Mom almost screams, covering her mouth with her trembling hands as Alfred moves to stand at her side.
Dad holds out a hand, a signal for quiet as he continues to listen to whatever my sister Michelle is saying to make his rich brown skin look somehow drained of color. “Thank you, hon,” he chokes. “We’ll get there as fast as we can. We’ll get the okay to bring Indigo. Discharged against medical advice? Okay. I will ask.” He hangs up.
“What?” Mom asks frantically. “What’s wrong?”
“Almost an entire minute.” Dad’s eyes well with tears. “One minute where she couldn’t breathe. Longest episode yet. Violet wants to take the medication. She’s in a lot of pain. She’s scared. She’s ready to go.”
“No!” Mom wails, flinging herself into Dad’s arms. “God, no.” She weeps onto Dad’s chest. “We have to stop this, Isaiah.” Her voice is pained and muffled. “We can hire a lawyer. Declare her incompetent to think on her own. We have to do something!”
Dad rubs Mom’s back, lays his head on top of hers and whispers, “God, please help our baby. Please help her.”
Help her?
My bare feet slam onto the cold tile of the hospital floor as I stand. The cord to my IV pulls at my skin. Blood rushes to my head, intensifying my headache and making the room spin as the memories flood to the forefront of my mind:
The climb.
The freezing rain.
The conversation with God.
The...voice.
I remember. I remember it all.
“Indigo Phillips, what are you doing?” Dad takes a protective step toward me.
I place a hand on my forehead, as if doing that can make the room cease to spin and give me the strength I need to unhook from all these stupid wires, get out of this room and make it to Violet. To plead with her. Beg her to reconsider. Tell her about my miracle. I heard a voice. That’s got to mean something, right? That’ll make her change her mind and choose to stay.
Only, my plan of hospital escape doesn’t get me too far, because my knees buckle, and just as I feel Dad’s strong arms wrap around my waist, everything goes dark.