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The last thing Helen wanted to do was go searching for her little brother in the woods. She’d been looking forward to this party- now that she was fifteen, her parents were finally letting her get dressed up and hang out with the adults instead of sending her to go play with the other children. And yeah, some of it was kind of boring, but it was also kind of cool to finally get included.
And now she was forced to traipse around the edges of the broad backyard, where the grass gave way to the fringes of the woods, trying to find her little brother. Apparently he’d wandered away during a game of hide and seek; one of the Martin kids had found her in the party and whispered in her ear that they couldn’t find him and they were starting to worry.
“Richard!” she yelled. “I am going to kill you when I find you!”
He didn’t answer and she huffed in annoyance. It wouldn’t be the first time that he wandered off at an inconvenient moment, but it never got less irritating.
“Richard Campbell Gansey III!” she shouted as she tramped farther into the woods, grimacing at the dirt clinging to her new shoes. “Come back here now, or I’ll tell Mom and Dad!”
She was deeper in the forest now, sweat beginning to bead at the back of her neck. Off in the distance she could hear the other kids calling for him too, but he wasn’t answering anybody. The summer humidity was thick and oppressive, even in the shade; the sun would be going down any second now and it probably wouldn’t help much. The low buzz of cicadas set her teeth on edge.
“Come on, Dick, it’s gross out here, come back here now so we can go back in the air conditioning,” she called. “I don’t want to be out here. Let’s-”
She paused.
There was a small limp form collapsed on the forest floor.
It didn’t click for a second, because it was absurd. She was seeing things. There was no way that-
She broke into a run, the heels of her shoes digging into the soft ground. “No!” she screamed. “No, no, no!”
She could hear the clamor of the other kids in the distance. “What? Where is he?”
“Call 9-1-1!” she screamed back at them. “Get my parents!”
Her baby brother was so still. His clothes rumpled, his hair tousled, his arms flung above his head. She dropped to her knees, attempting to adjust his twisted little body, and recoiled. Welts covered every inch of his exposed skin, swollen and reddened, leaking venom and blood. Her heart stuttered in her chest.
“No, no, no, it’s okay, it’s okay,” she said, her voice sounding unfamiliar in her own ears. “It’s okay, where’s your- where’s your EpiPen, Dick?”
He was always supposed to carry one. Their mother always had one in her purse, his nanny always carried one. She patted at his pockets and dug it out, her hands shaking as she tore off the cap, but even as she stabbed it into his thigh she couldn’t help but feel it was useless. One sting could kill him, but he was covered.
She let out a whimpering breath as she forced herself to look at his still little face- his eyes swollen shut, his pale lips parted. Was he even breathing? Had the reaction set in too fast? Was she too late?
She cupped her hand over his nose and mouth, trying to gauge if he was breathing or not, and when she felt the soft pulse of weak air against her palm tears smarted in her eyes. “Come on, Dickie, come on,” she coaxed. “You can do it. Just keep breathing.”
He was so swollen he was almost unrecognizable. He’d been stung hundreds of times, the venom coursing through his bloodstream and it was killing him. She started frantically digging out stingers, trying to do something, anything to help him, but gave up when all she was doing was making him bleed worse as her manicured nails ripped at his skin.
“Come on, Dick, stay with me,” she said. “I’m right here, okay? Just keep breathing.”
She wasn’t sure if the EpiPen did anything. He was still and limp, his lower lip dropped open as he struggled to breathe through his mouth. “Come on, come on, come on,” she begged. She didn’t know what to do. Was she supposed to give him CPR? He was technically breathing, it was just so faint.
A hornet buzzed as it landed on his cheek. She let out a strangled cry and swatted it away, not caring if it stung her. It didn’t matter, she wasn’t allergic.
The woods were so peaceful and it made anger prickle down her spine, the sky so beautifully blue above them between the leaves. How could anything dare to be peaceful when her little brother was dying?
She didn’t dare pick him up, just in case. Instead she laid down in the dirt beside him, her hand on his chest, feeling the pull of his muscles as his body struggled to stay alive. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “Keep breathing, it’s okay, just don’t die.”
For a while she stayed still, listening to his ragged breathing and the whirr of cicadas, praying that something, anything- God or the universe or mystical powers in the forest- might save him. She tried to hold his hand but his fingers were limp, his skin stretched too tight with swelling and welts, and it made her want to throw up.
It felt like hours before she heard voices and sirens, dozens of heavy footsteps crashing through the quiet woods. She pushed herself up, still guarding her little brother’s body.
“Helen, what happened?”
“Oh my god, my baby!”
“I found him,” she choked out. “I gave him his EpiPen but he only had the one, I don’t think it’s enough-“
Her father scooped him up quickly, his head falling limply against his shoulder. Her mother was already sobbing, brushing leaves out of his tangled sweat-damp hair as she tried to get a better look at the damage. It made her heart seize in her chest, she never saw her parents cry.
And then everything was happening so fast. The paramedics took Dickie from her parents, cutting off his clothes to reach the welts that covered every inch of his body, covering his face with a plastic oxygen mask and pumping him full of medications. Some of the other guests had followed them, they stood on the outskirts of the scene with shocked expressions that she was dying to slap off their faces. How could they just stand there, staring slackjawed while her baby brother was dying?
No one told her what was happening next, but she was observant. The ambulance couldn’t make it that far through the woods so his little body was loaded onto a gurney and carted away from the trees back towards the remnants of the party. He was loaded into an ambulance, but there was going to be a helicopter waiting at the hospital to lifeflight him to a bigger children’s hospital. From there…she wasn’t sure.
Her mother rode in the ambulance with Dickie but Helen blinked and found herself in the passenger seat of her father’s car. He was driving fast, following the ambulance with its lights and sirens blaring, already on the phone with…she wasn’t even sure who at this point. Whatever connections he had who could fix his son and get them to the children’s hospital, probably.
Later, when she tried to remember exactly what happened that night, a lot of it was just a blur. It was like she closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them she was sitting in the waiting room of the children’s hospital. Her new Kate Spade dress had torn down the side of the skirt, the fabric splotched in dirt and blood, and her sandals had rubbed blisters on both heels. She sat in the waiting room for a long time, staring blankly at the TV playing a cartoon she hadn’t watched since she was four and straining to listen for the conversations at the nurse’s station.
Hours went by before her father finally sank into the chair beside her. “He’ll make it,” Richard said, his voice breaking in a deep sigh. “Nobody knows how he survived that, but he’ll make it.”
The knot in her chest finally started to unravel. “He will?”
Richard nodded. “They don’t know how much damage was done, so they want to keep him in the PICU for a few more days to monitor his condition, but he should recover,” he said. He squeezed her knee. “They said it’s a good thing you used the EpiPen when you did.”
It didn’t feel like a good thing. It just reminded her of the feel of his swollen skin under her hands, hot to the touch. “What do we do now?” she asked.
“I’ve made arrangements for a hotel room nearby, I’m going to send you and Mom there for now,” he said. “You can shower, get something to eat and rest a little. I’ll stay with Dickie. Do you want to see him before you go?”
On one hand, she did. On the other, she could guess what she would see- her little brother limp and silent, hooked up to monitors and IVs, his body still mangled from the hundreds of stings. “I’ll…I’ll see him when I get back,” she said.
Her father didn’t push, and she was grateful. Her mother was silent in the Uber ride to the hotel, focused on texting family and friends with updates. Helen sat quietly staring out the window. It wasn’t until she was in the shower, scrubbing grime off her skin while her mother called down for room service, that it finally sank in what had actually happened and she broke down.
They kept him in the PICU overnight. She made herself visit him the next morning- he wasn’t really lucid yet, and he looked just as alarming as she’d been afraid of, his face and arms still swollen and purple- but she squeezed his hand and half heartedly tried to say something that would make him smile. He didn’t, though.
He was moved shortly to a regular room in pediatrics; the swelling had gone down but the marks from the stings remained, thickly clustered all over him, even the back of his neck and his ears. He was starting to perk up a little bit and the nurses kept reassuring his parents that it was good that he was eating and talking. Progress, good progress.
After three days in the hospital he was cleared to go home, and things felt normal again. Their parents went back to work, and she went back to her summer plans, and other than a bad rash and extensive bruising, it was like nothing has ever happened to her little brother.
A month later there was another party, at another wealthy friend’s house, but when her mother asked if she could stay with the little kids this time she said yes. Before she would have been insulted at being forced to babysit, but now she wanted to keep her eyes on her brother. Just in case.
It was another summer evening, the air sticky sweet and the cicadas starting to buzz. She found a spot in a cozy lounger on the wraparound porch and busied herself with her phone and a book, glancing up occasionally to make sure that he was still in her line of sight.
And then all of a sudden she could hear screaming. Panicked, frenzied screaming. She dropped the book, her heart in her throat, and ran towards the younger kids.
“It’s just a bee, Gansey, calm down!”
“You know if you stay calm it won’t bother you.”
“Stop screaming!”
But he was cowering in the grass, his arms over his head, howling in panic. A single bee hovered around him.
Helen grabbed him by the elbows and pulled him up. “You’re okay, come on,” she said, but he kept screaming, struggling in her grip. She swore under her breath and dragged him towards the porch. At ten he was just big enough that she couldn’t carry him easily, but she wrestled him into her arms and hauled him the last few steps to her abandoned chaise.
He collapsed into her lap, bawling into her stomach, his arms still covering his head. “You’re okay, Dickie, I’ve got you,” she said. “The bee is gone. It’s gone, okay? Nothing is going to sting you.”
His breathing had gone raspy and ragged, his whole body gulping for air between sobs. Helen stroked his hair. “Breathe in for four, okay?” she said. “I’ll count. And then hold it for four. Then out.”
The panic attack kept him too scared to obey on the first try, but he attempted to follow her on the second. She kept counting, her voice quiet as he wailed, her hand gentle on his hair.
Eventually his sobs died down and he sagged limply with his head on her lap, his arms dropping and his hands gripping at her skirt. “‘m sorry,” he mumbled.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Do you want to go home? I can go get Mom and Dad and-“
“No,” he said, sitting up quickly. “It’s fine. I can- I want to go play.”
“It’s okay if you do, really-“
He shook his head. “I’m fine.”
Helen sighed heavily. “All right, just…give me a second, okay?”
She went back into the house and stole a washcloth from a powder room; after she ran it under cold water she flagged down a server and got a cup of strawberry lemonade. By the time she got back Dick was sitting quietly in the lounger, leafing idly through her book. If it wasn’t for his red, watery eyes and the occasional sniffle she wouldn’t have known he was crying hysterically a second ago.
“Drink this,” she said, pressing the cup into his hand.
“This book is silly.”
“The intended audience is teenage girls, of course you think it’s silly. Drink your lemonade.”
He obeyed, sipping the drink quietly. When he was done she wiped his face with the cool damp cloth despite his protests, cleaning away the last traces of tears and the sugar around his mouth.
“You’re sure you want to stay?” she asked one last time.
He smiled at her, bright and winning. “Yeah, I’m fine, don’t worry about me,” he said, and he jumped up to go play.
It was hard not to worry, but it also seemed a little stupid to feel so concerned about him when he bounded back over to his friends, already rejoining their game without skipping a beat. Even on the car ride home, when Mom asked them how their evening was, he was all smiles. No mention of a panic attack or crying. If he wasn’t going to tell their parents, she wasn’t either, so she kept his secret.
But in the wee hours of the morning she woke to a little figure hovering in her doorway. “Nell?” he whispered, and that worried her because he hadn’t called her that since kindergarten. “Nell, can I sleep with you?”
“Yeah, yeah, course you can,” she mumbled, shoving her covers around to make room. Dick climbed into her bed and huddled himself small against her. “Bad dream?”
He didn’t answer, but she could feel the rapid thumping of his heart against her arm. It reminded her of lying beside him in the decaying leaves and dirt of the forest, but then his heartbeat had been so slow, just the faintest flicker while his body threatened to give up.
Helen closed her eyes and swallowed the sick feeling rising up in the back of her throat. “You’ll be fine if you get stung again, you know,” she said. “I had an EpiPen in my purse, and you had one in your pocket.”
He was very quiet, snuggling close to her side. That was unusual, no one in their family was particularly given to physical affection. “Do you want me to get Mom?” she offered.
He shook his head. She shifted around so he could cuddle better and she didn’t have to feel his heartbeat anymore. “You want to talk about it?”
Again he didn’t say anything. She wondered if he was already tired enough to drift back off to sleep, but then she heard him, so quiet she almost missed it.
“I was supposed to die.”
The sick feeling rose back up in her throat, acidic and sharp. “No, you weren’t,” she said.
“I was. I was, Nell. I was dying,” he insisted.
Dad had told her that part later, when they’d moved Dick to pediatrics and they knew he was going to be fine, that his heart must have stopped while he was lying there in the woods. “No, you weren’t,” she argued, because he was only ten and he shouldn’t be thinking about almost dying.
“Somebody else was dying on the ley line so I lived instead,” he said, and there was a weight in his voice that she had never heard before. “What’s a ley line?”
“I don’t know. Shush and go to sleep.”
“I heard him, though,” he insisted. “It. The voice said it. I have to find him.”
“Who, baby?”
“Glendower.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, but it’s what the voice said, when the hornets stung me and I died.”
Helen ran her hand over her face in exhausted exasperation. “You didn’t hear a voice, Dickie, you got stung by a hundred hornets and had an allergic reaction. It was a…a hallucination.”
“But-“
“You’re just tired, you’re not making any sense,” she said. “It was a rough day. Go to sleep. You won’t have any more bad dreams about Glendower or whatever.”
He didn’t push the conversation further, just burrowed under her covers, and Helen ran her hand over the bumps of his spine. Hopefully in the morning he would forget all about ley lines and kings, and in time he would forget about how he died on the forest floor, and then she would have her little brother back.