I had heard the garage door close. The car’s engine was running. The fumes were making me drowsier, but I knew I had to fight it. Now that he was with me, Jack was falling asleep again. I tried to move him. I had to get into the front seat. I had to turn off the engine. If we stayed here, we were going to die. I had to move. But my limbs wouldn’t function. What was it that Alex had forced me to drink?
I could not move. I was slumped against the cushion, half-lying, half-sitting. The sound of the car’s engine was deafening. It was racing. Something must be wedged against the gas pedal. Soon we would be unconscious. Soon my little boy would die.
No. No. Please, no.
“Jack, Jack.” My voice was a hushed, broken whisper, but it went directly into his ear, and he stirred. “Jack, Mommy is sick. Jack, help me.”
He moved again, turning his head restlessly. Then he settled again under my neck.
“Jack, Jack, wake up, wake up.”
I was starting to fall asleep again. I had to fight it. I bit my lip so hard that I could taste blood, but the pain helped keep me from losing consciousness. “Jack, help Mommy,” I pleaded.
He lifted his head. I sensed that he was looking at me.
“Jack, climb . . . into front seat. Take . . . car key . . . out.”
He was moving. He sat up and slid off my lap. “It’s dark, Mommy,” he said.
“Climb . . . in . . . front seat,” I whispered. “Climb . . . ” I could feel myself sinking slowly into unconsciousness. The words I was trying to say were disappearing from my mind . . . .
Jack’s foot grazed my face. He was climbing over the seat.
“The key, Jack . . . ”
From far off, I heard him say, “I can’t get it out.”
“Turn it, Jack. Turn it . . . then . . . pull . . . it . . . out.”
Suddenly there was silence, total silence in the garage. Followed by Jack’s sleepy but proud cry, “Mommy, I did it. I have the key.”
I knew the fumes could still kill us. We had to get out. Jack would never be able to open the heavy garage door by himself.
He was leaning over the front seat, looking down at me. “Mommy, are you sick?”
The garage door opener, I thought—it’s clipped onto the visor over the driver’s seat. I often let Jack be the one to press it. “Jack, open . . . garage . . . door,” I begged. “You know how.”
I think I slipped away for a minute. The rumbling sound of the garage door slowly rising woke me up for a moment, and it was with a vast sense of deliverance and relief that I finally stopped fighting and lost consciousness.
I woke up in an ambulance. The first face I saw was Jeffrey MacKingsley’s. The first words he said were the ones I wanted to hear: “Don’t worry, Jack is fine.” The second words seemed filled with promise. “Liza, I told you everything was going to be all right.”