Born Again Read online

  He held up his Transformer. “Someone stepped on Optimus Prime and broke him.” He could barely pronounce the name, and it warmed my heart.

  He handed it to me so I could survey the damage. Sure enough, a piece of the leg was broken.

  “Ah, that looks pretty bad,” I said, sadly. But then I smiled. “Luckily for you, I happen to be a Transformer surgeon. D’you know what that is?”

  He shook his head, wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands.

  “I fix broken Transformers.”

  His eyes suddenly lit up. “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. All I need is a bit of glue, and he’ll be good as new.”

  So off we set, in search of glue, his little hand in mine. I was determined to find that glue, and I made a game and song of it, which made him giggle.

  “We’re off to find some glue. We’ve got some work to do,” I chanted. It didn’t take long for him to join in.

  We bumped into Gaynor, who pointed us in the right direction, chuckling to herself. “There’s some in the kitchen drawer, second from the stove.”

  Once I’d fetched it and mended the toy, Cody was so full of gratitude he hugged me, thanked me, then hurried off to play with his friends.

  Gaynor must have been watching at the doorway. She came in. “He doesn’t usually like grownups,” she said. “You’re really great with kids. You ever thought about having some of your own?”

  I smiled. “All the time.” For as long as I could remember. I loved kids; they made the world make sense.

  “Does Colin want them?”

  I nodded.

  He did. We’d spoken briefly about them. I was sure he would make a good father someday, just not the parent to my children. I already had someone in mind for that role...

  Once Gaynor left me, my thoughts were so occupied with images of the big family, the big house, the beautiful wife, that I found a quiet spot and called Naomi.

  “If you’re calling me, you can’t be having much fun,” she said with a laugh, when she picked up.

  “It’s fine, I just miss you.”

  Amused. “You saw me yesterday at work.”

  “But I didn’t get to kiss you.”

  She laughed. “Ah, now that’s just wrong. We can’t have you going a day without kissing me. Why don’t you get your cute little butt over here so we can make things right.”

  I was already on my way.

  Some things in life, the most beautiful things, deserved to be captured on film and in pictures, for posterity. Naomi was one of them.

  From my spot under the shade of a huge cedar tree, on top of our picnic blanket, I fished in my purse for my phone, took it out and hit record on the camera. The hills and forest of the Sammamish State Park provided the picturesque backdrop; in the foreground, the lake glistened. I zoomed in on Naomi, several meters away, standing in the water, swishing it with her hands. She looked like a goddess in a vest top, her jeans rolled up to her knees, allowing for the water to fully consume her legs. Her hair blew in the wind.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and I wasn’t the only one. The camera picked up several men, even the ones with families in tow, ogling her.

  When she noticed that I was filming, she waved and blew me a kiss. I died of happiness for a moment, then came back to life and returned the kiss.

  It had been years since I’d been here. The last time was with Colin; we’d come for the fair. It was usually too crowded, so I never enjoyed myself. Even though it was crowded today, too, this would go down as one of my top five favorite days. Not because of the setting, but because of Naomi in the setting.

  The picnic was her idea. She’d thrown it together while I was en route to her place, having skipped out on the barbecue. We did the ten-mile drive in her car, but stopped on the way to grab a bag of Doritos, upon my insistence.

  Now we were here, surrounded by people, young and old, friends and couples, singles and families. The good weather had seemingly brought the whole state to the lake that afternoon.

  She came running over, and by the time she reached me, her feet were covered in sand. She stuck one sandy foot in front of my face, playfully, and I laughed, pushed it away. If we were alone, I would have kissed it.

  She dropped on to the blanket, we shared a kiss before she grabbed a hand towel and wiped her legs down.

  “You have a lot of admirers,” I said, once I’d stopped recording.

  “There’s only one that matters,” she said simply, as she continued to clear sand off her manicured feet.

  “Do you feel kinda weird being out with me in public, with everyone watching us?” It had taken a while to adjust to holding her hand in public, but that had been my idea, and it just felt right. It didn’t immediately occur to me that we were two women holding hands, and that not everyone would be accepting of it. But once the looks started, I became conscious of us. That still didn’t prompt me to let go. I wouldn’t have let go of her hand for anything; and I would have let her kiss me as many times as she wanted, no matter who was watching, whether they approved or didn’t.

  “Should I?” This world wasn’t new to her; she’d been out for as long as she’d known she liked women. “Do you?”

  I thought about it, then shook my head. “It does take a bit of getting used to. But... I love being here with you.”

  She smiled. “Then that’s all that matters.”

  I laid my head in her lap while she fed me black grapes. We basked in the sunshine and heat, talking about nothing, and I couldn’t have been happier. When my phone rang I ignored it. It could only have been Dove again.

  “Do you miss the church?” she asked, out of the blue.

  I considered it for a moment. “A little. Not the religion so much as the sense of community.”

  It was true. The church had been a huge part of my life for five years, and I would have been lying if I said I didn’t miss aspects of it. Pastor Hugh was a likable, charismatic guy. Had a fatherly spirit to him, which I’d gravitated towards. I missed that. But generally my newfound friendship with my coworkers had given me the sense of community the church had provided — a pretty good substitute. And my love for Naomi had given me purpose. I had everything I wanted. It didn’t matter that we were, in essence, having an illicit affair we had to keep secret indefinitely.

  A ball came rolling towards us, stopped at Naomi’s feet. Its owner, a little boy no older than eight, came running to reclaim it.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Naomi picked it up. “Catch,” she said, and threw it to him. He caught it and she clapped. “Nice one.” The boy beamed, threw it back at her. “Go long.” He ran farther back, then she threw it again. He caught it.

  He was about to throw it again, when his friends pulled him away so they could continue their game.

  I looked up at Naomi to see that she was smiling, though there was a melancholy to it.

  I sat up then. I took a courageous breath then said, “Did you mean it when you said you didn’t want kids... any more kids?”

  It was a subject we hadn’t broached since the revelation of Rory, but something that had been weighing on my mind. I wanted kids, but I also wanted her. I didn’t know which one mattered more to me in that moment, and prayed I would never have to choose.

  She didn’t speak for the longest time, and I thought she wouldn’t answer, that maybe I’d crossed a line by asking. But then she shook her head, smiled. “No, I didn’t mean it.” She turned to look at me now. “I want a small army of them.”

  My words! My own words! If I hadn’t already been sure of it, I would have known in that moment that she was The One.

  I was still reeling from my weekend with Naomi the following Monday. We’d seen each other at the morning briefing, hadn’t exchanged any words, but that warm feeling I got whenever I looked at her didn’t dissipate. It was still there in the late afternoon, when I finished a call with one of my clients. I was tempted to knock on her office door and steal a kiss to satiate my hunger
for her lips. I’d gotten so accustomed to them, that it proved difficult to keep away.

  I got up, ready to claim my forbidden kiss, when my cell phone rang. I looked at the screen: Dove. Why the hell would he call me now when he knew I was at work?

  I hit cancel.

  Just as I was about to walk out, my work phone rang. I looked longingly at Naomi’s office, hoping the call wouldn’t take as long as the previous client call, then answered reluctantly.

  “Hi, is that Dakota’s line?” It was the voice of the company operator.

  “Uh, hi, yes.”

  “There’s a lady on the line, says she’s your brother’s girlfriend...”

  My whole body went cold. Even before the operator transferred the call to me, I knew something terrible had happened. I felt it all over.

  “P—put her through,” I said, my breathing suddenly labored.

  Weeping was the first thing I heard. “Dakota, it’s Dove. He O.D’d.”

  NINETEEN

  My head was spinning; the room felt like it was on a slant, tipping sideways, and dragging me down with it.

  I snatched up my belongings, hastened dizzily out of the room. Through the tears, everything looked blurry. The walls, the furniture, my coworkers.

  I barely even registered Saeed in front of me, leaving the break room, coffee in hand, until I collided with him, sending a swash of steaming black coffee on to myself. I didn’t feel it. I was already trying to get past him.

  He grabbed my wrist. “Dakota, you all right?”

  “I...I have to... my br—brother, I have to...” What was the point wasting time trying to explain when I couldn’t form proper sentences? So I abandoned my efforts and continued on my way, leaving the questioning stares of my colleagues behind me.

  The keys dropped out of my hands a couple of times as I fumbled to let myself into my apartment. Operating with shaky hands made everything more difficult. Shaky hands coupled with watery eyes? Forget it.

  Once inside, I hurried to my room, threw some clothes in a bag, tried to hold it together, but broke down bawling on my bed.

  I heard Brit’s bedroom door creak open. Moments later, “Let me guess, she dumped you too?” There was unmistakable glee in her voice, and when I looked up, it was there on her face, too. “If you’re looking for sympathy, go kick rocks.”

  I tried to speak but couldn’t find the words. Nor did I have time to form them. I needed to get to the hospital.

  I got up, picked up my bag, then barged past Brit. “I can’t deal with you right now.”

  She ran in front of me, stopped. Her face was no longer smug, but concerned. “What happened?”

  I blinked to clear the tears but they wouldn’t budge. I bit my lower lip to stay them, but that too failed.

  She nudged my shoulder with her hand. “Dakota, what the fuck happened?” It was the first time she’d spoken to me with something that wasn’t vitriol in nearly six weeks. And because of that, I lost it.

  “Dove overdosed.”

  She slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God! Is he... is he all right?”

  “He’s in the hospital. In a coma. I’m going there now.” I started past her again.

  “Let me get my keys, all right?” I stopped. I opened my mouth to speak, but she gave me a grave, serious look. “I’m taking you, no arguments.”

  So that was that.

  She fidgeted with the radio dial, her other hand on the steering wheel. The channels hopped, from talking to music to more talking. I stared blankly out of the window ahead, barely blinking. We’d been on the road for fifteen minutes, and neither of us had said a word.

  Then I broke the silence. “If he dies—”

  She cut me off before I could finish. “He’s not gonna die.”

  “You don’t know that.” My tone was almost robotic, dry, lifeless, as though I’d lost him already. “If he dies, it’ll be my fault.”

  I saw her look at me through the corner of my eye. “Why would you say something like that? It’s not your fault that he’s an addict.”

  She didn’t understand. Of course I was to blame. And losing him would be my punishment.

  My phone’s ring tone played from the foot of the car, where it lay nestled in my purse. I let it ring, didn’t bother picking up. If it was bad news, the worst news, I wanted to live in ignorance a while longer, clasping onto hope.

  Then it rang again. And again. Finally I took it out to see who was calling. Naomi’s name flashed on the screen. I stared at it, my finger hovering over the green accept button.

  “Aren’t you gonna get that?” Brit asked, sneaking a peek at the screen.

  I hit cancel instead. “No.”

  The ventilator that kept my brother alive, breathing for him because no oxygen was getting to his brain, looked complicated, sounded like death.

  As he lay virtually motionless, save for the light rising and falling of his chest, I held his hand while a nurse flitted around the room, seeing to the patient in the bed next to his.

  On the other side of his bed stood Kirsten, the on/off girlfriend who seemed to be on now, if her uncontrollable weeping was anything to go by. So skinny and gaunt, like she hadn’t eaten in weeks, she looked like she’d only marginally escaped an overdose herself. I was certain she was high as a kite. I wanted to reach over the bed and throttle whatever life she had left out of her, but I myself didn’t have the strength.

  “He just kept taking more, said he couldn’t feel it, that it wouldn’t numb the pain,” came her tearful recounting. “He wasn’t himself. He hasn’t been himself for weeks.”

  I blinked emptily. The room smelled of disinfectant and rubber. It brought me back to my stints in hospital as a child. Three times in one year once — that was a record. Broken arm, a cut on my back that had started to turn septic, and a bad case of diarrhea from eating rotten meat. I was no stranger to these places. Nor was Dove. Once, as adults, we’d sat down to calculate how many combined stays we’d had. I couldn’t recall the number now. Apparently it hadn’t been big enough for Child Services to get involved.

  “Heroin? When did he start taking that?” I said.

  She shrugged, but her eyes betrayed her. She knew, she just wouldn’t say. Perhaps he’d always been taking it.

  She went quiet, stroked his arm with a bony hand, then said, “He said he tried to call you but you wouldn’t get back to him.”

  There wasn’t an ounce of reproach in her tone, but I didn’t need her to say it for me to feel it. I was way ahead of her.

  Stray tears trickled down my cheeks, got caught on my lashes. I wiped them away with my free hand. “Excuse me, nurse, do you know where the chapel is?”

  Five minutes later, I was sitting on a pew at the front of an empty hospital chapel. It was dark and small. Candles burned at the front, at the feet of a statue of Jesus on the cross.

  I pressed my hands together, tears flowing once more, and spoke to God like I never had before.

  “I know why you did this, and I know I deserve it. But please, I am begging you, don’t punish him for my sins. He’s broken and sick and he needs help, but he’s so good, and kind, and he loves... he loves so deeply. And the world needs that right now.”

  My nose ran, my eyes burned, my heart ached.

  “Lord, you’re vengeful and all-powerful, and I know I have no right to ask this of you. But please keep him safe. Please wake him from his coma so that I can make things right. I can’t lose him.”

  I fished out some tissues from my purse, wiped my nose.

  “Forgive me for my sins. Don’t hold them against him. The lust, the ungodly acts, that’s over now. I allowed the Devil to pull me from a path of righteousness, drag me into sinfulness. But now I see the error of my ways.”

  I squeezed my hands together tighter, as though that would somehow strengthen my prayer.

  “Get him through this, and I’ll do whatever you want.” I crossed myself twice, sat back in the wooden seat, and let the Lord do His work, w
hichever way He chose to go. It was all up to Him now.

  Brit was waiting for me outside the chapel when I left. She handed me a coffee, and we sat down in the waiting room.

  “You know what’s funny?” I started after a while. “I always thought my religion made me docile and weak. But it actually makes me stronger.”

  She simply nodded. I didn’t know whether she believed it or not, but now wasn’t the time to enter into a theological debate.

  “It just takes the complications out of life,” I added.

  She regarded me curiously. “Like what?”

  I sighed. “Like everything.”

  We drank in silence. Her slurping would have annoyed me at any other time, but right then it calmed me.

  Then she said, “We’re good. All that other stuff, it doesn’t matter.”

  I knew what she meant. She reached out, rubbed my back, causing me to well up all over again.

  My phone buzzed in my purse, ruining the moment of reconciliation.

  “You should answer it,” Brit said.

  Yeah, I couldn’t put it off.

  Naomi’s name flashed on the screen once more, and this time I pressed accept.

  “Dakota, where are you? What happened?” Her voice sounded more shrill than usual in her panic. “Saeed said something about your brother?”

  “He overdosed. He’s in a coma. I’m at the hospital with him now.”

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “We don’t know yet. I’m gonna need tomorrow off...”

  “Of course. Just tell me which hospital you’re at and I’ll come right over.”

  That was the last thing I wanted. “No,” I said, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice. “Brit’s here. I’ll let you know when I know more.”

  I hung up on her while she was still talking. Then I switched off my phone.

  Brit frowned, but said nothing.

  When we returned to Dove’s room, my heart almost leaped out of my chest to discover that he’d woken up.