Outside the Lines: A Novel

I’d never seen so much blood. I held my father’s head in my arms and watched helplessly as his wrists oozed red onto the white tiled floor. It looked like he’d spilled a can of paint. I remembered my mother telling me the best thing to do with a cut was to put pressure on it, so I grabbed the nearest towels and wrapped them around my father’s wrists as tightly as I could. I heard a person screaming in a guttural, anguished pitch. It took a moment to realize that person was me.

My daddy was limp and heavy in my arms. His eyes were closed. “Wake up!” I screamed. I shook him. “Don’t do this, Daddy! Don’t do this to me, please!” I glanced wildly around the room, desperate to call for help and not leave him. But there was no way. No phone anywhere closer than the hallway. “I’ll be right back,” I told him. “Don’t die, Daddy. Please don’t die!”

I raced out the door over to the phone and dialed 911. “My daddy’s hurt!” I wailed. “There’s blood everywhere! Please, you have to help him!”

“Okay, honey,” the operator said calmly. “I’m sending the ambulance right away. I need you to stay on the line with me.”

“No! I have to go back to my daddy. I have to be with him!” I sobbed, my chest heaving and swelling with every breath.

“I understand, sweetie, but I want you to stay on the phone with me until the medics get there. They’ll be quick, I promise. You just hang in there.”

“I can’t! I have to go be with him!” I picked up the phone and carried it with me back toward the bathroom. It just reached the doorway but I couldn’t step inside. Staring at my father’s motionless body, I wished desperately my mother had agreed to buy the cordless phone I’d wanted for my birthday last year.

“How old are you, sweetie?” the operator asked.

“Almost eleven,” I said, my breath hitched on the words.

“Where is your dad bleeding?”

“His wrists.”

“Did he cut himself on something?”

“The bathroom mirror is broken all over the floor. He’s holding one of the pieces. A big one. The tip has blood on it.” Oh no. He did this to himself. He’s trying to die, just like he said he always would. He’s going to leave me.

“Okay, sweetie. I understand. What’s your name?”

“Eden.”

“Like the garden of Eden?” she asked, and I started wailing again, thinking of the flower bed in front of our house. “Shh, shh,” the operator said. “It’s okay, Eden. Everything’s going to be all right.”

I couldn’t answer. I was crying too hard. I stared at my father, but he didn’t move. Was he dead? Did I get home too late? The party at Tina’s had been stupid, and I was bored, so I pretended I had a stomachache and decided to leave. Why didn’t I come home earlier? I could have saved him. He never would have done this if I had been with him.

“Eden? Are you still there?” the operator asked.

“Yes,” I whimpered. “Tell them to hurry, please. I think he might be dead.”

“They’re almost there, sweetie. Just hang on. Where’s your mother?”

“At work.”

“Where does she work?” I heard the sound of a keyboard clicking. “Can you give me the phone number?”

I took a deep breath and recited it. As I was speaking, I heard the whine of the siren coming down our street. “They’re coming!” I said. “I can hear them.”

“Okay, Eden. That’s good.” The operator’s voice was low and soothing. “But stay with me until the medics are inside, okay?”

“There’s so much blood,” I blubbered. My face dripped with snot and tears. “How can he be alive if there’s so much blood?”

“Eden, I want you to go downstairs and let the medics in, okay?”

“I don’t want to leave him,” I said, sniffling. He still wasn’t moving.

“I know, but they don’t want to break down the front door unless they have to. Please, just go let them in and then you can show them where your dad is. I’ll call your mom and she’ll be there soon, okay? Is there a neighbor you can go to while you wait?”

I thought about Mrs. Worthington and realized I’d rather die than go to her house. “No.” The sirens got louder and then they stopped. The red lights flashed outside, spinning through the front windows. “They’re here. I need to put the phone down to let them in.”

“Okay. You’re a very brave girl, Eden. You did exactly the right thing.”

I hung up and raced down the stairs. I flung the door open just as the medics ascended the front steps. “He’s upstairs!” I said. “Hurry, please! He’s bleeding!” Oh god, please don’t let him die.

One of the medics, a tall man with a trim blond beard, smiled at me. “Okay, honey. We’re here. Everything’s going to be okay.” He pushed past me with another man, carrying a wheeled stretcher between them. “You stay here, okay? We’ll take care of your dad.”

I glanced over his shoulder and saw a fire truck pull up next to the ambulance, and then my mother’s car behind it. She must have left work earlier than she thought she would. She leapt from her car and tore up the front lawn.

“Eden!” she screamed. “What happened?” She rushed up the front steps and took me in her arms, squeezing me tighter than she ever had before.

A fresh round of sobs took me over and I couldn’t answer her. She pulled back a little and grabbed my hands, turning my arms over, touching me everywhere she could see. “Are you hurt? Are you bleeding? What happened?”

I looked down and realized I was covered in my father’s blood. It coated my skin, stuck to my clothes—there was even some in my hair. I smelled like a handful of pennies. “It’s Daddy,” I said, crying. My jaw jittered and shook as I spoke. “He cut his wrists.”

My mother’s expression went from frightened to horrified. “Oh my god,” she said. “Oh my god, oh my god!” She hugged me to her again. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“Yes!” I cried. “But there’s so much blood, Momma! What if he dies?” Would it be my fault for not coming home sooner? Did I put enough pressure on his cuts to save him?

She didn’t answer but instead held me tighter, rocking me back and forth on the front porch. Many of our neighbors were now outside, watching. Mrs. Worthington had even crossed the street to stand on the sidewalk in front of our house.

“Go away!” I screamed through my tears. “Stop staring at us! Go home!” I hated their prying eyes. I hated knowing people talked about my family like it was broken.

“Shh, shh,” my mother said, trying to soothe me, running her hand over and over down the back of my head.

A fireman approached us, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a kind smile. He set a large hand on my mother’s shoulder. “Mrs. West?”

She turned her head to look up at him. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, too. “Yes?”

“Why don’t we go inside, so we’ll be out of the medics’ way when they bring your husband out?”

My mother looked at the front door, then back to the fireman. She looked dazed. He gently urged us into the house and to the living room, where we sat down on the edge of the couch just in time to see the medics bring the stretcher with my father on it down the stairs. Covered up to his chest with a blanket and black straps to keep him from falling, he was ghostly pale, his shoulders crusted with crimson stains of his blood. His eyes were closed.

“Momma?” I said. I looked at her, then back to the fireman.

“Is he alive?” my mother whispered, and the fireman touched her hand.

“Let me go find out.” He stood and followed the medics down our front steps and out into the yard.

“I want to see him,” I said, trying to pull away from my mother’s grasp.

“No, Eden. Stay with me. The fireman will be back in a minute to let us know how he is.” Her face was whiter than I’d ever seen it before. Her lips were pressed into a thin, pale line and her makeup was smeared down her cheeks in black and blue smudges. She looked like she’d been beaten.

“No!” I yelled, and yanked away from her embrace.

“Eden!” she screamed. “Come back!”

I ran down the front steps, ignoring her command. The big fireman grabbed me before I got to the ambulance. I wrestled against his hold, but he was too strong.

“It’s okay, honey,” he said. “Your dad is alive. They’ll take him to the hospital and the doctors will take good care of him. I promise. Everything’s going to be all right.”

He meant well, I knew, but there was no way for him to understand how many times I had heard my father say those exact same words only to find my world crumbling around me. I stopped struggling against his grip and the fireman let me go. I ran back inside the house and straight to my mother, who, unlike my father, I knew would tell me the truth.