When we reach my bedroom the light is already on. Weird, since I haven’t been here in weeks. I’m mesmerized by the passion, the love in Lotus’s eyes as she slides her legs down to the floor. She turns toward the bed.

“Oh, my God!” she gasps.

I look past her, and my heart stops then sprints in my chest. Simone is on my bed, asleep. She looks so peaceful that at first it doesn’t compute. The open, empty bottle by her hand. My daughter’s preternatural stillness.

“Moni?” I rush over to the bed and shake her. “Simone, baby, wake up.”

She doesn’t stir. She’s so cold. Fear squeezes my heart until I’m sure it’s hemorrhaging.

“I’ll call 911,” Lotus says behind me, horrified panic in her voice.

I don’t feel panic, though I know this is serious, but an eerie calm descends as I answer the operator’s questions. Yes, she’s breathing. She’s taken a bottle of her mother’s pills, but I don’t know how many. The EMS team arrives quickly, loads Simone onto the stretcher, and rolls her out of the apartment building. In the ambulance, she stops breathing, and they intubate. Watching them force a tube down my daughter’s throat, my icy wall cracks, and terror, panic, anger—they all rush in on a tidal wave. Bright lights and the screaming siren, muted before by my shock, flood my senses.

God, my baby girl. Simone.

“Moni,” I mutter, paralyzed by my helplessness.

Lotus squeezes my hand, but doesn’t cease her persistent whisper. Psalm thirty-five, what she was repeating last night. Tears course over her cheeks, and she shakes her head.

“It wasn’t you,” she says, her voice thin and reedy. “It wasn’t you. It was . . .”

She doesn’t finish that thought. She doesn’t have to, but resumes her urgent whisper. I have no idea what to say or believe. What to think. Could Lotus have been right? Could last night, her premonition or whatever it was, have been about Simone?

As soon as we reach the hospital, they wheel Simone out of sight. She’s breathing, but still hasn’t regained consciousness. They have to pump her stomach.

A tube down her throat, her stomach being pumped. I’m caught in my worst nightmare, and I can’t wake up. Can’t even stir, but watch uselessly like some spectator trapped behind a glass partition separating reality from fiction.

“Bridget!” Lotus says, her tear-filled eyes wide. “You have to call her.”

“Shit.” I pass a shaking hand over my face. I dread having to break this to Bridget, but I’m also struggling to keep my temper under control. The lies she told, the scrutiny she exposed our family to again for her own gain—it’s all fresh in my mind. And the pills. Her name’s on the bottle of pills Simone took.

My conversation with Bridget is brief, terse, almost stoic in spite of her hysteria. It has to be. If I allow one emotion, compassion, through that wall of ice, they’ll all overtake me—trample my intention to save recriminations for later. For after Simone is out of the woods.

I’m seated in the waiting room, gripping Lotus’s hand like it’s a rope thrown over the side of a cliff, when Bridget arrives.

“Kenan, oh my God.” She’s dressed simply in jeans. No makeup. Tennis shoes. None of the camera-ready glamour I’ve gotten used to seeing since she’s been filming Baller Bae. Her face is streaked with tears.

I stand to greet her, and she flings herself into my arms. My teeth grind together, and I bite back all the questions, the accusations, and instead, awkwardly pat her back.

“Where is she?” she asks, pulling away to search my face.

“They’re working on her now. They were pumping her stomach.” I hesitate. “The pills she took—it was a bottle of yours. Did you notice it was gone?”

Her eyes transform from wide and teary to slitted and enraged.

“You can’t be blaming me,” she snaps. “If this is anyone’s fault, it’s yours.”

She glances down to Lotus still seated in the waiting room chair.

“And hers.” She points one long finger at Lotus, her voice rising. “This was Simone’s cry for help, for attention. When she needed her father most, you came and ruined everything.”

“That’s enough,” I snap. “If you’re gonna point fingers at anyone, it should be at yourself, Bridge. You think it’s coincidence that Simone tried this the night your train wreck of a show aired? The very night you dragged all the shit that drove us into counseling in the first place back out? Have you considered that?”

“No, I haven’t, because I wasn’t the one missing in action when she needed me most. Where were you when she needed you? With her.” She jerks her head toward Lotus. “So get off your high horse, Kenan. Maybe we’ve both failed her lately, but at least she didn’t have to wonder if she was first with me.”

“God, that’s so unfair,” I say. “We’ve been apart for almost three years between separation and divorce, and this is the first time I’ve dated anyone.”

“But Simone wants us back together,” Bridget says. “Maybe now you’ll believe her.”

“We can’t do that. We can’t tailor the world to her like that, and you know it, but we can help her deal with reality. And you’ve undermined that at every turn, encouraging this fantasy that we might get back together.”

“I wish both of you would just shut the hell up,” Lotus says tonelessly from her seat.

Bridget and I stare down at her, our mouths gaping open.

“Excuse me?” Bridget’s hands go to her hips, and indignation jerks her brows up.

“I know what it’s like to think the adults are all crazy,” Lotus says, shaking her head. “To feel like no one is considering what’s best for you. She doesn’t need the two of you at each other’s throats. She needs you both by her side.”

Lotus takes my hand and looks up, holding my stare. “This isn’t about you, Kenan. It can’t be. It has to be about Simone.”

Her eyes cool, harden like volcanic rock when they shift to Bridget. “It’s not about who is wrong or right, because if it was, believe me, Bridget, you’d be wrong.”

“Who do you think you are?” Bridget takes a step closer to Lotus. Before I can insert myself between them, Lotus stands and, even several inches shorter, manages to look Bridget right in the eyes.

“I’m cutting you some slack because they’re shoving tubes down your daughter’s throat,” Lotus says, her tone darkening. “But you have one more time to put your finger in my face and step to me.”

Bridget draws a deep breath, but takes a step back, wisely retreating.

“Look,” Lotus says, her gaze moving between us. “This isn’t about me either. We all have sacrifices to make until Simone is better. I’ll do my part.”

What the hell does that mean? What sacrifices?

I’m about to ask her when the doctor comes down the hall and tells us we can finally see Simone. I follow the doctor, eager to see my daughter and to start the healing she needs. At the last minute, I turn back to the waiting room, intending to ask Lotus to wait for me.

But she’s already gone.

My first sight of Simone almost brings me to my knees. There’s a machine monitoring her vitals, and an IV running into one thin arm. The pallor of her skin, usually glowing golden, is a sickly grey.

Her heart is broken in her eyes.

How the hell did I miss that? That fathomless sorrow in my baby girl’s watery blue eyes—has it been there all along? What if we had been delayed coming from the airport? What if we’d gone to Lotus’s apartment instead of mine? What if I’d gotten stuck in typical New York traffic? A thousand scenarios fly through my mind like bats, the dark wings casting shadows on a day that could have ended with me standing in a morgue instead of in this hospital room.

“I’m sorry,” Simone croaks, tears rolling over her cheeks. “I just . . .” A sob shakes her, and she turns her head into the pillow, her eyes squeezed shut.

“Moni, it’s okay.” My voice comes out strangled, and I take a moment to compose myself. “We’ll sort it out tomorrow.”

“Yeah, rest,” Bridget says, stroking Simone’s hair back from her face. “We’ll talk about everything later.”

“I know I shouldn’t have done it.” Simone hiccups. “I just wanted it all to stop. The fighting, and the tweets, and the posts on Facebook. Some kids from school were tagging me. It all started again.”

Rage simmers under my expressionless face as I listen to how my daughter was tortured by our choices and insensitive people who didn’t stop to think how a careless tweet might push an emotionally fragile girl over the edge.

Bridget’s sob pulls me from my thoughts. She grips the bed railing so tightly her knuckles show white through the skin. I cover her hand. The same helplessness torturing me swims in her teary eyes. For once, we’re on the same page, though it’s a terrible one in our story—stained with our regret, dog-eared by our pain. To the two of us, Simone is everything. It’s the common ground we lost sight of on our battlefield. Neither of us speak, but at our daughter’s side, we broker a silent détente.

The door opens behind us, and Dr. Packer enters. All the times she told us to be careful, told us Simone wasn’t doing well, told us it wasn’t about us, twist through my memory. When I look into the therapist’s eyes, I don’t find judgement or censure. Only kindness and concern, but I don’t need her to condemn me.

I can do that to myself.

42

Lotus

“Kenan’s here,” Yari says from my bedroom door. “You sure about this?”

I stare unseeingly at the interview notes for next week’s gLO Up podcast. I’m not sure I’m ready to do what needs to be done. I may not be strong enough.

“Yeah.” I stand and walk past her. “It’s the right thing to do.”