DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 14, AUTHOR'S NOTE - 3/21/15, 2:23pm

Hi. So, it's "Kyle."

We're still here.

That's the first thing I'm supposed to say in this post. "Bailey" was concerned that you guys would be worried after so many days have gone by without a word. So: we're still in the mountains, and we're still alive.

The other thing I promised Bailey is going to be a lot harder to do. She asked me to write these last author's notes for her. All of them.

I told her I'm not a very good writer, which is true. I mean, recently I told her I had a story idea about a girl whose memory is erased after she gets kidnapped, which Bailey keeps wanting me to write, but I don't know if I'd ever be brave enough to actually write it. To be honest, I've never even tried to keep a journal. It's Bailey who's the writer. Not me. But she insisted that I write these author's notes, because Wattpad is still our only lifeline to the outside world. She told me just to describe everything that's happening to us in my own words. So I'll do my best. Every few afternoons while Bailey sleeps, I'm going to start making the walk to the house to post these notes. This way she can put all of her limited productive energy into finishing her novel.

So here I go. I hope I don't let her down.

Okay. For starters, Bailey has gotten a lot weaker. Lately, she has only a few hours every day when she has enough energy to be active. But finishing her novel means so much to her. I don't really know how to explain to you how determined she is. To be totally honest, it breaks my heart to watch her get up every single day, prop the pillows behind herself so she can sit up in bed, and get ready to work. After I make her coffee, she hands me the notebook and starts dictating Part 14 wherever she left off. It's slow going. A lot of times she has to go over the paragraph she'd just dictated, and she asks me to change a sentence or make the dialogue sound more real. It's a slow and frustrating process, and I'm amazed at how patient she is. But after a couple of hours, at most, she gets tired and it gets too hard for her to focus. It's a good day when she writes more than a page before we have to give up and put away the notebook.

We spend the rest of our time resting, or sometimes dreaming up things we'll do when we get off this mountain. Or we talk about the cop, and we try to figure out why he did what he did and what made him become the person he became. We used to take short walks in the deep snow, just to get outside. But last week we had to stop. It's too hard for Bailey to keep her balance in the too-big snow boots we got from the house. Now, the best she can do outside of bed is sit by the wood stove after I light a fire. Mostly we just lie in bed and listen to the silence in the mountains, waiting for the snow to melt.

But she never seems discouraged. That's the thing about Bailey. Without her meds, she can barely move, her thoughts get foggy, but she hardly ever gets down.

Me, on the other hand, well . . . I get impatient for weather to finally warm up, and I get scared that we won't make it out in time to get Bailey the medical care she needs. But whenever I get upset, she grabs my hand, and she calms me down. Sometimes by saying nothing at all, and just by being her. Most of the time, to be honest, it feels like she's taking care of me rather than the other way around.

She made me promise to be completely honest when I write these notes. I'd never seen her more serious about anything when she made me swear to this. No matter how hard it is to be "unflinchingly honest," she said, I have to record what happens to us truthfully, exactly how it happens. "Don't hide anything, or leave anything out," she insisted. "Even if it's embarrassing, or boring—or sad." I guess I should admit that I didn't fully understand why this meant so much to her. But when I asked her she did her best to explain, and I wrote this part down so I would get it right, exactly how she put it: "I need the real us to be recorded," she said. "Not some fake, idealized version. Otherwise, later, people will only remember phantoms, and it would be like the real us, the real you and me, never lived at all. The real us would be lost forever. So whatever you write, say it in your own words, but just promise to tell the truth."

I promised her that I would. So I will. Or, at least, I'll do everything I can to be as truthful as possible, for better or worse, no matter how hard it gets these next few weeks.