Chapter Fourteen: Aftermath

Therese touched Vicki’s limp body on the bed beside her, still warm. “Vicki?” She shook Vicki’s shoulder. “Vicki?” She put her hand to Vicki’s throat to feel for a pulse, her ear to Vicki’s chest. Both were silent. This can’t be happening. This must be a nightmare. Therese looked up to the ceiling and let out a blood-curdling scream.

Mr. Stern opened the bedroom door, his face at first bewildered. He might have said something, like “What’s going on?” Then his expression changed to terror as he rushed to Vicki’s side.

“Ducky? Talk to me, sweetheart!” He put his ear to her chest. “Ducky, love, wake up!”

Vicki did not move.

“Call 9-1-1,” he said to Therese as he started CPR. “Now!”

“Oh my God!” she screamed, unable to think. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, but still her mind couldn’t keep up. She stumbled around the bed for the phone on the nightstand and dialed the numbers, the same numbers she dialed around this same time last year.

She told the person on the other end the Stern’s address. “She’s not breathing! There’s no pulse! Her dad’s giving her CPR!” Her own voice kept asking her accusingly, What have I done?

“Stay on the line with me until someone arrives,” the person on the other end said.

“I’m so sorry!” Therese didn’t want to admit what they had done. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” What have I done?

“Talk to me Therese,” Mr. Stern said while he continued to pump Vicki’s lifeless chest.

“She wanted to see her mom. She saw her last weekend using this drug. Ketamine. I wanted to see my parents, too. This wasn’t supposed to happen.” She couldn’t breathe. She was hyperventilating. She didn’t care. She wanted to die rather than face Mr. Stern.

The woman on the phone asked, “You and your friend took ketamine? Can you tell me how much and how long ago?”

Tears ran down Mr. Stern’s sallow cheeks and some of the determination and hope vanished from his face. He stuck his finger down Vicki’s throat. “I need to make her vomit.” But Vicki’s body would not respond.

Therese knew Hades would not let her return from the Underworld.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said again. In her mind, to Than, she said, “How could you?”

 

Mr. Stern rode in the ambulance with Vicki to the hospital while Carol, Richard, and Therese followed in Richard’s car. Therese prayed to Hermes to please, please, please find a way to let Vicki return to the living. She couldn’t stop crying and wished she herself could die. If she hadn’t provided the money for the drugs, Vicki would be alive.

Carol and Richard weren’t talking. They were so upset with her when they discovered what had happened: that Therese had bought the drug, had taken some herself, and not only contributed to the death of her friend but might have died herself.

Therese didn’t blame them for being mad at her. She was mad at herself. She wished she, too, would have been taken by Death and forced to stay in the Underworld. The Lethe River was beginning to sound good.

“Hermes,” she whispered too softly for the adults up front to hear. “You should have let me die.”