The Stories We Tell by Patti Callahan Henry Read Free Book Online

the accident hasn’t spent itself yet, and it spills through the Spanish moss and thick-leaved magnolias with hand smacks of water on the windshield.
    It’s easy to love Savannah. I’ve lived here my entire life and yet I still stumble across a building or door I’ve never noticed, usually one thing that had once been something else: a hotel that was once a convent, a studio that was once an elementary school, a coffee shop that was once a home. No waste here. One thing is turned into another, until the original is long forgotten, a ghost within the existing structure. I’m tied to the city with tight knots, and yet Willa always wanted to escape. Now she’s here, unaware and unconscious in its oldest hospital.
    I need to compose myself, so I take a seat in the hospital waiting room. Hospital waiting rooms are interminable places of wasted time, and this one is no exception. People are texting on cell phones, holding cold cups of coffee, and staring at framed artwork declaring the winners of the elementary school’s art contest. If Willa were here with me, she would likely make a joke to break the tension—maybe something about the toddler who’s going through her mother’s huge bright blue bag and tossing its contents onto the floor. Or something about the old man whose head has dropped to his chest, displaying a shiny bald pate under the fluorescent lights. She wouldn’t be cruel (she’s never cruel, my sister), but she would say something funny and sweet; she would find a way to break the tension.
    I’m just getting settled in a cracked red vinyl chair in the corner when my phone pings with a text from the hospital: Your sister is awake. She’s asking for you.
    No more waiting.
    I try not to run as I wind my way through the sterile hallways with their identical doors. The room numbers are posted in black, and I recognize the font: Cambria. Even here, my mind searches for clues, as if the font will someday offer up some secret.
    Number 426.
    There’s a hushed swish of the door I enter Willa’s room. The single bed is positioned underneath a tangled mass of medical equipment that beeps and hisses. A mound of hospital blankets rise from the bed, and at the sides of that mound, small, pale hands rest, palms up, an IV in the left arm. The bandage has been removed and there’s only the tiniest cut next to Willa’s eye, with a single black stitch that looks like a fallen eyelash. It’s the bruised swelling that morphs the right side of her eye and temple.
    â€œWilla,” I whisper, my voice cracking. She opens her eyes to see me. I rush to her side. “Should I call the nurse?”
    She shakes her head in a tiny movement and says, “No. I’m just glad you’re here.”
    I take her hand. I don’t know what to say or where to start. How do you feel? Does it hurt? Why did you do that to Cooper? What happened? What happened? But she asks me first.
    â€œWhat happened?” she says.
    â€œA car accident,” I say. “With Cooper.”
    Her face doesn’t register emotion. Her lips are blanched, and cracked. She bites the bottom left side and speaks clearly. “No. I wouldn’t be in a car with Cooper.”
    â€œYou were,” I say.
    â€œWhy?” she asks.
    â€œHe said you were … He said you were drunk and he tried to take you home.” I release her hand and sit in the chair, staring at the IV pole, unable to look any longer at the damage.
    â€œWhere?” she asks, as if that’s the important thing.
    â€œThe Bohemian.”
    â€œNo,” she says, and sits up, holding the IV tube stable. “I wouldn’t do that. I sing there. I work there.”
    So I tell her the story—the part about Cooper’s Charleston clients and how she fought him about leaving the bar. I tell her about the rain and the live oak. She denies it with a single word: “No.”
    â€œThe doctor