Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

12:50.

I wonder if Dara will call me when Zoe’s out of surgery. I mean, it’s perfectly normal that I’d want to make sure she sailed through it. I tell myself that just because I haven’t heard from her doesn’t mean anything’s wrong.

I am the kind of person who imagines the worst. When friends fly somewhere, I check the arrivals online, just to make sure there wasn’t a crash. When I go out of town, I unplug all my appliances in case there is a power surge.

On my computer browser, I pull up the main page of the hospital where Zoe’s having her surgery. I type in the words “laparoscopic hysterectomy” on Google and look on the tab for a list of possible complications.

When the phone rings I pounce on it. “Hello?”

But it’s not Dara, and it’s not Zoe. The voice is tiny, so faint that it’s gone before it even registers. “Just calling to say good-bye,” Lucy DuBois murmurs.

It’s the girl-a junior-whom I mentioned to Zoe weeks ago, the one who has suffered from depression for some time now. This isn’t the first time she’s called me in the middle of a crisis.

But it’s the first time she’s sounded like this. Like she’s underwater and sinking fast.

“Lucy?” I yell into the phone. “Where are you?” In the background, I hear a train whistle, and what sounds like church bells.

“Tell the world,” Lucy slurs, “that I said fuck you.”

I grab the daily attendance sheet, where, prophetically, Lucy DuBois has already been marked absent.

It’s a pretty remarkable thing, to save someone’s life.

Based on the train whistle and the bells I heard, the police were able to focus their search near an old wooden bridge that backs up against a specific Catholic church with a 1:00 P.M. Mass. Lucy was found lying under a trestle with a liter of Gatorade and an empty bottle of Tylenol beside her.

I met her mother at the hospital. Now, after being given an activated charcoal solution to drink, Lucy has been brought up to the inpatient psych ward on suicide watch. It remains to be seen how much damage she’s done to her liver and kidneys.

Sandra DuBois sits beside me on a chair in the waiting room. “They need to keep her under observation for a few days,” she says, and she forces herself to meet my eye. “Ms. Shaw, I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Please, it’s Vanessa,” I say. “And I do: Let me help your daughter.”

I have tried, for the past month, to convince Lucy’s parents that music therapy is a valid scientific tool to try to break through to their increasingly isolated daughter. So far, I haven’t gotten them to agree. Sandra and her husband are heavily involved in the Eternal Glory Church-and they don’t treat mental illness on a par with physical illness. If Lucy was diagnosed with appendicitis, they would understand the need for treatment. But depression, to them, is something a good night’s sleep and a Bible study meeting can cure.

I kind of wonder how many suicide attempts it will take before that changes.

“My husband doesn’t believe in psychiatrists…”

“So you’ve told me.” He’s not even here, in spite of Lucy’s close call-he is traveling for business, apparently. “Your husband wouldn’t necessarily have to know. We could keep this a secret, just between you and me.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t really see how singing songs can make a difference-”

“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” I quote, and she blinks at me, as if I have finally spoken her language. “Look, Mrs. DuBois. I don’t know what will help Lucy, but whatever you and I have done so far doesn’t seem to be working. And you might have a whole congregation praying for your daughter, but if I were in your shoes, I’d have a backup plan just in case.”

The woman’s nostrils flare, and I’m certain that I’ve crossed that unwritten line where professionalism and personal belief bleed together. “This music therapist,” Sandra says finally, “she’s worked with adolescents before?”

“Yes.” I hesitate. “She is a friend of mine.”

“But is she a good Christian?”

I realize I have no idea what religious affiliation, if any, Zoe is. If she asked for a priest at the hospital, or even checked off a box on her intake form for any given denomination. Stumped, I watch as Sandra DuBois stands up and starts down the hall, toward Lucy.

And then I remember Max. “I believe she has relatives who attend your church,” I call out.

Lucy’s mother hesitates. Then, before she turns the corner, she looks back at me, and nods.

On the first day I visited Zoe, she was unconscious. Dara and I played gin rummy, and she asked me probing questions about my childhood before offering to read the dregs of my green tea.

On the second day I visited Zoe, I brought a flower that I’d made by sticking three dozen guitar picks into a piece of floral foam in the shape of a daisy. And let me just say I am not crafty, and in fact have a gag reaction when confronted by a glue gun or crochet hook.

On the third day, she is waiting for me at the front door. “Kidnap me,” she begs. “Please.”

I look over her shoulder, toward the kitchen, where I can hear Dara banging pots and pans for dinner preparations. “Seriously, Vanessa. There is only so much conversation about the positive effects of copper bracelets on a body that a normal human can take.”

“She’s going to kill me,” I murmur.

“No,” Zoe says. “She’s going to kill me.”

“You’re not even supposed to be walking…”

“The doctor didn’t have any restrictions against going for a little ride. Fresh air,” she says. “You’ve got a convertible…”

“It’s January,” I point out.

Still, I know that I’m going to do what she asks; Zoe could probably convince me that it’s a fantastic idea to take a vacation to Antarctica in the middle of winter. Hell, I’d probably book a ticket, if she was going, too.

She directs me to a golf course that is covered in snow, a local haunt for elementary school kids who drag their inflatable tubes up the hill and then grab each other’s legs and arms before sledding down, linked like atoms in a giant molecule. Zoe rolls down the window, so that we can hear their voices.

Man, that was awesome.

You almost hit that tree!

Did you see how much air I got on that jump?

Next time, I get to go first.

“Do you remember,” I ask, “when the most tragic part of your day was finding out that the cafeteria was serving meat loaf for hot lunch?”

“Or what it felt like to wake up and find out it was a snow day?”

“Actually,” I admit, “I still get to do that.”

Zoe watches the kids make another run. “When I was in the hospital, I had a dream about a little girl. We were on a Flexible Flyer and I was holding her in front of me. It was the first time she’d ever been sledding. It was so, so real. I mean, my eyes were tearing up because of the wind, and my cheeks were chapped, and that little girl-I could smell the shampoo in her hair. I could feel her heart beating.”

So this is why she directed me to the hill, why she is watching these children as if she’s going to be tested later on their features. “I’m guessing she wasn’t someone you knew?”

“No. And now I never will.”

“Zoe-” I put my hand on her arm.

“I always wanted to be a mother,” she says. “I thought it was because I wanted to read bedtime stories or see my child singing in the school chorus or shop for her prom dress-you know, the things I remember making my own mom so happy. But the real reason turned out to be selfish. I wanted someone who would grow up to be my anchor, you know?” she says. “The one who calls every day to check in. The one who runs out to the pharmacy in the middle of the night if you’re sick. The one who misses you, when you’re away. The one who has to love you, no matter what.”