by Cat Patrick
Colette was going to die, probably.
I stood up because my mom would be here to pick me up any minute. “Bye, Gabe. I’ll see you on Thursday.”
chapter 22
Myth: People always wake from comas instantaneously like on TV.
“ARE YOU AWAKE?” Tess asked from her room the next morning. The sun was barely up but I’d been awake awhile.
“Yeah,” I said, feeling trapped. I’d slept with my weighted blanket the night before. It’d been comforting at bedtime, but now it was crushing me. I was sweaty, and I struggled as I kicked it off, the superheavy blanket landing on the floor with a thud. “Are you?”
“No,” she said. No one laughed.
Our connecting doors were open, so I could hear her easily. I pictured her lying halfway off her bed with her hair all crazy.
“Are you going to school?” I asked. Mom had said we didn’t have to—that we could take the whole week off if we wanted. It wasn’t as great an offer as you might think since no matter where we were, it wouldn’t change Colette’s situation.
“I’m going,” Tess said. “And I have to leave soon, or I’ll be late for zero period. We’re sculpting today.” It didn’t sound like she was moving. “Are you?”
“I think so,” I said, feeling like school might be better than home. I had an extra hour to think about it since my day wouldn’t start until first period.
From my bed, I listened to Tess shuffle around her room, getting ready. She told me goodbye and left, and I finally got up, getting tangled in the weighted blanket on the floor and tripping.
“Stupid blanket!” I said, growling at it.
I ate the only cereal I like in the world with milk from the mini-fridge in my room. I didn’t need a jacket because it looked warm outside. I left my room but turned around because I’d forgotten my backpack. I left again, then turned around because I’d forgotten a snack and my mom says I have to take one every day or I’ll get hangry.
In the lobby, I asked Charles if I could ride Black Licorice and he said it was okay. I walked the bike outside and put on my helmet while Pirate followed, wagging her tail. When I kicked off and started coasting through the parking lot, Pirate ran next to me, her tags clanking happily. She stopped at the edge of the lot and barked: goodbye!
“Have a good day, Pi!” I called over my shoulder.
I rode by the horse corral, the new mini-golf course, and the go-kart track, thinking of Colette, wondering whether she’d be able to do those things again. No one really knew what had happened to her because she hadn’t been awake yet to tell them, but Tess thought Colette had been trying to apologize to me by starting up the dare-or-scare game again. Tess thought that Colette had thought that the game was really the only way to show me that she was sorry—because to Colette, dare-or-scare had always been our special thing, just the three of us.
I didn’t know what to think about all of that, but I knew about her Glasgow Coma Scale score, which meant that I knew I’d probably never find out what Colette’s intentions had been.
I hadn’t told Tess about the score, though.
At school, I left Black Licorice in the bike rack without a lock. I stopped by my locker to get a notebook and went to homeroom, feeling the walls as I walked through the school. In my classroom, I sat at my own private desk island by the window and checked the online feed of a brain-injury survivor while the class filled up.
“What’s that?” a familiar voice asked over my shoulder.
I angled the screen so that Kai could see it. While he looked at my screen, I checked out his shoes: they were black suede with dark brown accents.
“This girl was in a car accident and the doctors put her in a coma so that her brain wouldn’t swell up.” I refocused on my phone and tapped the screen to enlarge a picture of the girl in the hospital: her face was bruised, one eye was swollen shut, and her head was wrapped in gauze. “Now look at her, though.” I opened another picture: of the girl in a soccer uniform. “She had to relearn how to talk and walk, but now she can play sports and stuff again.”
“Cool,” Kai said. His hair was in his face today; he pushed it back and it fell right into his eyes again. “I hope that’s how it’ll be for Colette.”
“Me too,” I said.
“My mom said they tried giving Colette hypothermia to try to make her wake up.” Kai stepped away from me a little, which I appreciated.
“They froze her?” I asked. “That’s terrible.”
He made a face. “I know, it sounds like torture. But I guess it can help coma patients wake up or something.”
I looked down at my phone screen again. “Colette’s not like this girl. Colette went into a coma all by herself. The doctors didn’t put her in one.”
“Is that better or worse?”
“How should I know?”
Someone hit Kai on the shoulder with a wadded-up piece of paper and he turned around to see who it was. When he saw Dillon laughing across the room, he bent over and threw it back at him.
The bell rang.
“See ya, Frankarama.”
Kai smiled a sweet, sad smile at me and went over to his desk in the normal part of the classroom. I still had a desk over there, too, if I wanted it. I just liked the desk island for now.
“Take your seats, please,” Ms. Garrett said. “Marcus! It’s time to settle down. Everyone, put your phones away and quiet down—that means you too, Tess and Mia. We may only have six weeks left of school, but there’s still learning to do.”
Six whole weeks left of school: I couldn’t believe it was still April. So much had happened since the last time I was in this classroom just four days ago, it felt dizzying.
Like she felt the same way, Tess looked over and held up her hand, a weak high five, or a wave without any movement. Her shoulders were more bent forward than usual, and she looked fragile, like she might break. I waved back, an actual wave, and she smiled, but barely. I wondered if she wished she were at home. I wondered if I did.
Tess looked down at her desk, her dark hair covering her face.
I did my math homework in fifteen minutes because it was totally easy, then got out Call of the Wild, hoping to finish reading it before the period ended. I still had to finish a paper on it—I had to start a paper on it, actually. But then the phone rang on Ms. Garrett’s desk. Everyone looked up at her while she talked to whoever was on the other end.
After she hung up, she looked at me.
“Frankie, Principal Golden would like to see you.”
“Why?” I asked.
“She didn’t say,” Ms. Garrett said, pursing her lips and making her face look even more birdlike.
A bunch of kids made noises like oooh and waaaa and uh-uhhh. Some laughed. One—Kai—just looked at me with a worried expression like the one that was probably on my face right then, too.
I hadn’t told Kai about the coma scale score either.
“And you too, Tess.”
The other kids didn’t make any sounds when Tess’s name was called.
I left my stuff and took a hall pass from Ms. Garrett. In the hallway, I realized Tess had brought her bag with her. I went back in and got my stuff, causing everyone to turn and stare at me. I wanted to shout at them to leave me alone. But then I noticed Kai’s warm smile and it made me feel calmer.
“What do you think is going on?” I asked Tess, back in the hallway.
“It must be something about Colette,” she said. “Otherwise why would they call us both?”
We started walking toward the front office, our footsteps in sync. I wondered if Tess noticed, but didn’t ask her because I thought she’d think it was weird that I had. Maybe she wouldn’t have. I don’t know.
“It has to be about Colette, right?” Tess asked. She bit her pointer fingernail.
“Unless Mom or Charles died or
something.”
“Ohmygod, Frankie! That’s an awful thing to say.”
“Okay,” I said, wishing I knew as well as Tess did which things would be considered awful—before I said them. Frustrated, I thought of some advice Gabe had given me—that people understand you better if you actually talk to them—and so I shared what I was thinking as we passed the classrooms in the English hall. “It’s not like I want to say awful things, you know.”
“I know,” Tess said.
“I just say the truth, mostly.”
“I know.”
“But a lot of people consider the truth to be an awful thing,” I said, scrunching up my eyebrows. “Am I supposed to lie? Maybe I’m just bad at lying.”
“You’re not supposed to lie to people,” Tess said. “But you’re not supposed to say every bit of truth that you think, because some of it is harsh. It comes out as being rude—or insensitive.”
I knew all of this from therapy, but it was different hearing it from my sister.
“I don’t want to be rude or insensitive.”
“Frankie, you’re not,” she said. I looked down at my shoes. “You’re not,” she said again. “You have a really big heart. And you have a lot of great ideas in your head. But sometimes you just don’t have a filter.”
“So what’s in my big heart and head falls out of my mouth?” I asked, smiling, sort of joking and sort of serious.
Tess smiled back, nodding. “Yeah.”
We were outside the main office; Tess stopped, an anxious look on her face. “You know, it makes you who you are, though, and that’s good.”
I looked away, feeling awkward.
“I’m serious, Frankie,” Tess said, touching me on the arm, then taking her hand away quickly. I touched my other arm to balance myself out. “Because you don’t have a filter, you spoke up about what you thought had happened to Colette. You spoke up, and it’s the reason they found her. She might still be missing right now if you had a filter.”
She might be dead anyway, I thought. Maybe that’s why we’re being called to see the principal.
I just thought it, though, because saying it probably would have upset Tess. See? I have a filter . . . sometimes. Maybe it just needs to be changed more than other people’s.
* * *
—
IF YOU’VE ONLY seen a hospital on TV, I’m going to be honest with you and tell you that TV is a liar.
The reason Tess and I were called to the office was because Colette’s parents were getting desperate and they wanted us to go and try to talk to Colette to see if it’d get a reaction out of her. I guess freezing Colette hadn’t worked—I mean, why would it?—and now they wanted to see if hearing familiar voices would help.
“I wonder why they didn’t ask Mia to come,” I asked Tess as we walked through the hospital doors behind our mom. The doors had slid open automatically, and I wanted to go back out and try it again, but I kept moving. “It smells in here. Gross.” I plugged my nose.
“Shh,” Tess said. Her face was pale and she looked like she might throw up.
“It’s not a library,” I said. “The point of us coming here is to talk. I wonder if it will work. And, really, why isn’t Mia here? Is she coming, too?”
“I don’t know,” Tess whispered. “Maybe they didn’t ask her because she and Colette haven’t been friends for as long.”
“So?” I asked.
“So she’d know our voices better,” Tess said, looking around warily. There was an old woman by herself in a wheelchair and she was crying. I looked away.
“That’s logical,” I said.
Our mom stopped at the information desk and asked which way the ICU was. That stands for “intensive care unit,” and I was about to find out that it’s exactly where you don’t want to be in a hospital.
We went in the direction the information-desk woman had said, down the hall to the left and to the elevator bank at the end. Inside the elevator, Mom pressed the button for floor three and I stared up at the ceiling.
“An elevator would be a terrible place to be in a tornado,” I said. “Or in any natural disaster, really.”
The elevator doors opened, and it smelled even worse on this floor: like cleaning solution, mashed potatoes, and sickness. “Gross,” I said again.
“Frankie, please keep your voice down,” Mom said. “People are trying to rest and get well.”
I had to try really hard not to point out, again, that a hospital wasn’t a library and we’d been specifically asked to come here to talk. I didn’t think that I should argue with my mom, though. We walked down the shiny floor to a nurses’ station; my mom asked where Colette was. The nurse pointed to wide double doors with push bars in the middle. I followed Mom and Tess through to the ICU.
The room was about half the size of our gymnasium at school, dim because the windows were all covered, divided into small sections by blue curtains on rods with wheels: movable fabric walls. Each small section had a bed in it. I couldn’t see everyone, but I stopped and gaped for a few seconds at the patients lying in the beds I could see until my mom grabbed me by the wrist.
“Don’t do that,” I said, pulling my wrist away, then wrapping my fingers around my other wrist to even myself out. I followed my mom.
“Please remember to be kind,” she whispered.
“I am,” I insisted. Do you think I’m a mean person? I wondered but didn’t ask her. We were rounding a fabric wall and there, in a twin bed on wheels with guardrails on the sides, was Colette. “Yikes,” I breathed.
Tess spun around and slumped down so she could slam her face into Mom’s shoulder; Mom hugged her tight.
“I know it’s heartbreaking to see her like this,” Colette’s mom said, standing up from one of two chairs against what would have been a wall, if the wall wasn’t a blue curtain. Colette got her red hair from her mom, but Colette’s mom had a short cut with some gray in it. “Thank you both for coming. We appreciate it so much, and also you helping the police like you did.”
“Uh-huh,” I said in response, my eyes on Colette, wishing I wasn’t looking at what I was looking at. My mom and Colette’s mom worked on comforting Tess while I stared. There were so many weird and terrifying things about the situation. I dug my thumbnails into my pointer, middle, ring, and pinkie fingers, over and over, while I looked.
First, Colette had her eyes closed. You might say, duh, but it’s not like I’d ever stared at her while she was asleep before. She looked completely different. Open, her eyes would have given me clues about what she was thinking or saying, but closed, they said nothing. I did not like Colette’s closed eyes at all.
Pointer, middle, ring, pinkie.
Poke, poke, poke, poke.
Second, there was a tube in her mouth and the outside of it was taped to her cheek—and the tape or the tube or both were pulling the right side of her mouth over in a way that made her look just flat-out creepy.
The others were talking in a whispered huddle. Tess was asking questions I probably wanted to know the answers to, but I didn’t try to join their conversation. I went on with my list of horrors.
Third, there was a pole attached to a bag attached to a tube attached to a needle—attached to her arm. That’s all I’m going to say about that.
Fourth, the beeping. I like music and the loud noises of crowds don’t bug me. But if I’m in a quiet place and there’s a noise that cuts through the quiet—something unexpected that’s not supposed to be there—it can drive me to the point of screaming.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Stop it, stop it, stop it!
If it stops, she’ll be dead. It’s monitoring her aliveness.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
My annoyance grew and grew, and turned into something that felt more like anger at the beeps. My heartbeat quickened, and m
y head got hot. I balled my fists and knocked my knuckles against my thighs, purposely out of time with the beeping.
The others were still talking, ignoring me. I knew I couldn’t scream in the hospital: I didn’t need my mom to tell me that. But I didn’t know what to do. Taking a deep breath only sometimes works, but I couldn’t do that even if I’d wanted to because I would have been breathing in that smell. I searched my brain for other strategies Gabe had taught me. What was that one? Oh right: Think of a list of things that start with the same letter. I chose the letter C for Colette. Camel, car, candy . . . Each one appeared in my mind at the same beat as the beeps. It was so annoying!
What do I do?
Beep.
I want to leave!
Beep!
Why did you run off and do this to yourself? I screamed at Colette in my mind.
Beeep!!!
And right then, I remembered something.
We were in third grade, I think. There was a school play, The Three Little Pigs. I played the role of a lamb and Tess and Colette were both pigs. I’d desperately wanted to be the other pig.
“It’s not fair!” I’d cried when I saw the assigned roles posted in the hall. “I don’t want to be a lamb! I knew all my lines and I should be a pig!”
“Sorry, Frankie,” Tess said. “I wish you were the other pig, too.”
Tears shot out of my eyes like sprinklers and I kicked the wall underneath the poster. I kicked it again harder and grunted. Tess’s face turned red and she looked around to see who else was watching.
“You’re going to get in trouble,” Colette warned. “Stop kicking the wall.”
I kicked it again, even harder this time. It hurt my toes, but I didn’t care. I wailed loudly in the hallway. A teacher would probably come out soon and tell me to go to the principal, and then I’d probably have to work on art and talk about how outbursts at school aren’t okay. I didn’t want any of those things to happen, but my body did its own thing.
I kicked the wall yet another time.
“Frankie!” Colette said. “Here, look at me.” I didn’t at first. I couldn’t see through my anger.