Page 33 of Insidious

He explains that Luna didn’t swallow too many pills, that she is young and doesn’t have any other medical issues. But she did hit her head, and she has what they call a subarachnoid haemorrhage—a brain bleed.

Words like airway, support, monitoring, feeding through an NG.

I nod. I think I nod.

But everything feels … distant, like I am underwater, and I don’t know up from down.

Sounds reach me, warped, delayed. Faces move too slowly or too fast. The only time I feel sane is when I hold Amelie in my arms. It feels like she is stronger than I am.

None of it sticks. Except one thing.

Luna is behind that door, and I am not with her.

“Isaac, what happened?”

Lily’s voice cuts through everything.

I don’t look at her. I can’t.

“I told you something was wrong,” she says, her voice a thin thread, anger slipping into sorrow and guilt. “I told you, and you just kept saying she was tired—”

“I know,” I say.

It comes out flat.

Because what else is there to say?

I know.

I know.

I know.

My mother is crying quietly beside us—small, broken sounds she is trying to hide behind her hand.

Luna’s father is holding her mother. I don’t remember who called them.

Everything blurs into one long, unbearable stretch of interminable waiting. We stand here together, like refugees caught in a storm we didn’t see coming. Somewhere in the middle of it, Amelie starts crying.

That is the only reality that wakes us up, because suddenly, there are hands. Lily’s. My mother’s. Luna’s mother’s, pale and shaking, but composed because Amelie takes first priority.

***

Over the next two days, they take care of Amelie because I can barely take care of myself. They take her home before she catches something and pass her between them. Feed her. Change her. Hold her.

Because I can barely stand, let alone take care of anyone.

They let us in to see Luna. I stand by her bedside and carefully hold her hand. There are so many tubes in her. I tell her I am sorry.

Chloe has been messaging me nonstop. I don’t realise how much until a day passes, when I finally charged my phone. Missed calls. Voicemails. Message after message after message.

My screen is filled with her name. I don’t listen to a single one.

I just delete all of it, then block her.

Clean and final, or so I naively think.

I don’t expect her to come to the hospital.