I wait for the flash to end. For the world to reset. I close my eyes, and Marley’s face burns against my eyelids. Her hazel eyes, the freckles scattered across her nose, her long brown hair. The smile she gets on her face when she’s telling a story. The way she chews her lip when she’s thinking really hard about something. But when I open my eyes, I still see the hospital. Marley’s not here.
The world goes black as the sedative pulls me under.
* * *
I hear voices all around me. My mom. Nurses filtering in and out.
I keep my eyes closed and I wait. For silence. For the chance to get out of here and find Marley.
Soon it’s the middle of the night, and I hear the door close, the air still and quiet except for the beeping of my heart rate monitor.
In an instant, I sit up and rip the IV out of my hand again, ignoring the thin trail of blood that drips down to my wrist.
I take a bracing breath, then ease my legs out of bed, my vision doubling as I put weight on my right leg. The pain is so blinding, a wave of nausea roils through me. But I push through it. I have to.
I stagger out of the room and down the long hallway, my fingers clutching at the wall for support, cold sweat molding the hospital gown to my back. Every step is agony, the world around me tilting as I reach the elevator, the thought of Marley’s face pushing me forward. The pond. It’s the only thing I can think of. I have to get to the pond.
The big metal doors slide open and I lurch inside. I shove down more nausea, relieved to have made it this far. But I can’t stop now.
The buttons blink at me, demanding I choose a number, a floor. I try to think, but the searing ache in my right leg is making that impossible, and my left leg is starting to tremble under the strain of supporting all of my weight.
The buttons blink, blink, blink. Lobby? Is that the one with… the… star…?
Suddenly my good knee buckles. I collapse against the wall, tiny pinpoints of black filling my vision as my leg gives out completely.
Only one thought is left in my mind as I slide to the floor.
I… have…
… to find…
Marley.…
* * *
“Kyle,” a voice says. A hand firmly clutches my shoulder, shaking me awake. “Kyle.”
I open my eyes, and Dr. Benefield’s face slowly swims into view. She lets out a long exhale and shakes her head at me.
“Really?” she says as I look around from the floor of the elevator.
“How long have I been here?” I groan as I sit up.
“You tell me,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Marley.
I try to push myself up, but the pain radiating from my leg is so overwhelming, I crumple to the floor again. Dr. Benefield stands over me for so long I start to think she’s not going to help me. Then she sighs.
“Wait here,” she says.
I slump down and try to fight the bile that’s just at the back of my throat, pushed up by the pain vibrating through my entire body.
A shadow falls over me. Dr. Benefield. With a wheelchair.
When she gets me back into bed, she has a nurse reattach my IV, increasing my dose of pain medicine in an attempt to give me some relief.
She grumbles under her breath as she checks my eyes with her penlight. I stare straight ahead as she clicks the light off and scowls at me, her eyes somehow both angry and sympathetic at the same time.
“I had no idea you were going to be so much trouble,” she says as the nurse leaves. When I don’t say anything, she reaches up to probe the healing wound on my forehead. “Blurry vision? Headache? Dizziness?”
“No,” I say. And it’s true. After all these months of wishing they’d go away, of waking up from nightmares with blinding headaches, it’s all just gone.
She sighs and sits down at the edge of my bed. “So, you want to explain the freak-out?”
No. I don’t. But I try anyway.
“This isn’t where I’m supposed to be,” I tell her. I try not to sound so frantic, but I can’t help it. I have never felt so completely wrong in my life.
“No one ever belongs in a hospital,” she says with a wry smile. “Except people like me, of course.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Where else would you be?”
I should be back at home, eating pancakes with Marley or walking to the diner in town for breakfast, the ground still wet from last night’s thunderstorm. I should be looking at all the different yellow notebooks in bookstores, deciding which is just right to get for her birthday. I should be taking Georgia for her walk and getting ready to cover preseason practice at Ambrose High and playing touch football in the park next Saturday with my friends.
I should be with Marley.
Not right back where I started.
A fresh wave of pain ravages its way through my body, and I squeeze my eyes shut, willing the meds to kick in.
A coma. I was in a coma.
“Dr. Benefield,” I say as I open my eyes to look at her. “Do people in comas… dream?”
“Tell me why you’re asking,” she says, “and I’ll tell you what I know.”
“Okay. I have…” I pause, trying to find the right words. “I don’t get how I’m… here. For me, it’s been a whole year since the accident. I have another life. Kim died. I have a girlfriend. Marley. But now I’m here and everyone is telling me that I was in a coma. That reality is”—I gesture at the hospital room, but also at this entire world—“this.”
She gives me a calculating look I can’t read.
“I know it sounds crazy,” I say.
She nods. “Certifiable. Go on.”
“I have to get back there, to my real life,” I say, thinking of Marley and Georgia and our spot by the pond, missing them with all the agony of a missing limb. I don’t care if my leg never heals, if my brain stays broken. I don’t need them. It’s Marley I need.
She frowns. “I don’t understand. When was this?”
“Yesterday.”
She studies my face. “Yesterday you were here. And the day before that, and the day before that.”
I shake my head, thinking of the handful of doctor’s visits I went to, the times I came here to get my head checked, to make sure I wasn’t losing it. “You were there too,” I say to her. “You were my doctor.”
“You opened your eyes a lot,” Dr. Benefield says. “Looked right at me. Those dreams… You probably incorporated me, or other people, into them.” She motions to the beeping heart monitor. “Things you heard or saw could have found their way into your subconscious. It’s not uncommon in comas. Your synapses were healing, reconnecting, coming alive. I can only imagine what that looked like to you in there.”
“What about Marley?” I counter.
She thinks for a long moment, her voice quieter when she speaks again. “Your life with Marley, did it seem like the perfect version of your life?”
I feel a wave of dread wash over me.
Yes.
I had a job I was good at. A life. I was with the person I was supposed to be with. I was becoming the best version of myself, and every day got better.
She takes my silence as the answer she was expecting.
“Kyle, your life is here,” Dr. Benefield says, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “Your friends, your mom, have been in this room every day, waiting and praying for you to heal. Perfect or not, they love you.”
I let her words sink in, but it’s all too confusing, the pain too much, the feelings too overwhelming.
Where is she?
The medicine starts to take over, and the world slows down around me as my eyelids get heavier and heavier.
“Get some sleep now, okay?” she says. She flicks off the lights as she leaves, my vision growing hazy as I drift off.
28
It’s night by the time I wake up again. The whole day drifted by in an agonizing blur, the medicine barely ta
king the edge off.
I hear a knock on the door and turn to see Dr. Benefield, strands of her red hair slipping from her loose ponytail after a long day.
“How are you feeling? You slept a long time,” she says as she pulls a chair over to my bed and slides into it, resting her arms on her legs.
“You really doped me up,” I say.
She shrugs and nods. “You were hurting.”
I’m still hurting. Just not the kind of hurt she’s talking about.
I glance at the clock on the wall. It’s pretty late.
“Do you live here or something?”
She snorts. “First few months on a new job, you spend a lot of time at the office.”
My mouth drops open. And she’s the person who operated on my brain? Is that why I’m so fucked up?
“First few months at this hospital.” She smirks, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “I’ve been digging around in people’s brains for a long time now. You’re in good hands.”
She nods to my broken leg, the white sheet outlining the huge cast.
“You have any idea how lucky you are you didn’t reinjure this?”
I turn my eyes to look out the window, not wanting to think about last night.
Besides, I’ve already healed this injury. With Marley. This is insane. How can no one know where she is? Who she is?
“Charts say they’re still going to remove the cast tomorrow, even after that little stunt you pulled. Good news, huh?”
Good news?
I open my mouth to say something, but my words get cut off as thundering footsteps sound from the hallway, quickly approaching my room. Both of us turn our heads as the door almost flies off its hinges and Sam bursts inside.
“Bro, you’re awake! That’s what I’m talking about.” He starts doing his football touchdown dance, grooving around the room, his arms and legs moving to an imaginary beat.
For a moment I remember him crying, placing those tulips on Kimberly’s grave. It’s such a stark contrast. Besides… he’s not even supposed to be here. He should be at UCLA.
He stops mid-hip-thrust when he sees Dr. Benefield and quickly straightens up, clearing his throat. “Oh, uh… I’ll come back.”
“You stay right here, bro,” she says, standing and looking over at me. “We’ll talk more later. Any symptoms and you have one of the nurses call me, got it? Don’t move.”
When I nod, she heads out, closing the door quietly behind her.
He spins around to look at me, absolutely ecstatic. “Dude, this is so—”
“How long have you been in love with Kim?” I ask abruptly, figuring the only way to get the truth is to shock it out of him. His mouth falls open in surprise, which tells me I was right. I couldn’t have just made it all up. I knew it.
He recovers quickly and gives me a skeptical look, pointing to the IV drip next to me. “What kind of drugs are they giving you?”
I stare at him for a long moment, but he still refuses to fess up.
I let it slide and try to smile, pointing to my forehead. “Coma brain. Sorry.”
His shoulders ease, and he plops down in the chair Dr. Benefield was just sitting in. “Dude, you’ve been out for weeks. Where the hell did that come from?” he asks, eyeing me.
I pause. He’s probably going to think I’m crazy, but… everything is already so crazy, what does it matter? I have to be dreaming anyway. I’ll wake up soon and be back with Marley.
“You told me at football one Saturday. After Kim died,” I say, his eyes widening. “In the accident.” His mouth drops open and he starts to speak, but I keep going. “I woke up, Sam. I woke up an entire year ago in this room, and you were here and you didn’t say anything but you were crying and—”
“That’s insane. Kim’s fine—”
“Just listen,” I say, cutting him off.
Then I take the leap and tell him everything. About Kim being gone. About the months lying around wishing I was gone too. Our fight in the park. The tulips. How we realized what we had to do, who we had to be. What we had to let go of.
Mostly, though, I tell him about the girl at the cemetery in that yellow pullover. The girl who saved me. The girl I fell in love with. I tell him about Marley.
He listens as I finish, his face stunned.
After a long, silent moment, he says, “A hallucination? A dream, maybe?”
I start to argue, but he stops me.
“Nothing you just said really happened,” he says. “You were in a coma. I was here. I saw you, dude, and I promise, you didn’t leave this bed.”
I shake my head, my heart pounding loudly in my chest. He’s wrong. “Still feels real,” I say, thinking of Marley. “She feels real.”
He snorts and pulls his phone out. “Easy way to find out,” he says.
Yes. Of course. I sit up, watching as he opens a browser, typing out the letters in Marley’s name and looking up at me expectantly.
“Marley…”
I freeze. Marley…? What’s her last name? I know I know it. I rack my brain, trying to remember a moment when she said it.
I can’t, though. I can’t think of one moment. How is that possible?
I swallow, faltering. “I, uh. I don’t know,” I admit quietly.
Sam puts his phone down, raising his eyebrows at me. “You were in love with some chick who has no last name? You didn’t think that was weird?”
“She has a last name,” I clarify, getting pissed off. “I just don’t remember it because it didn’t matter.…”
“The only place that shit doesn’t matter is in dreams, man,” Sam says, sliding his phone back into his pocket. He gives me a serious look. “I’ll tell you what is real. Kimberly is real. Kim is alive. Not this dream girl of yours. Aren’t you happy about that?”
I can still feel how coarse Kim’s headstone was underneath my fingertips, the unending weight of grief, heavy on my arms and legs.
“Of course I’m happy, but—”
“Hey, fam!” a voice says, pulling me back to the present. “This where the party’s at?”
Kimberly’s standing in the doorway, a duffel bag slung over her good arm. Sam stands quickly, the chair screeching against the white tile floor.
“Yep! You know it.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, like I’ve done dozens of times, but when I open them, she’s still there, her blond hair shining. I didn’t realize it until now, because they felt so real, but the flashes always had a fog to them. A blurriness lingering around the corners.
Now… she’s crystal clear. I can see every strand of hair on her head. The faint dark circles under her eyes.
And that tells me it’s true. She’s alive.
All of the things I wanted to say to her when I thought she was dead come rushing back to me. My throat closes around a million words.
But I don’t… understand.
Her eyes meet mine and her smile gives way to tears, spilling out from her eyes and down her cheeks. “God, Kyle, I was so scared,” she says.
“Kimberly…,” I start to say.
“I know, I know,” she says. She drops the duffel bag on the floor and runs to the bed, her arms wrapping around me. But she doesn’t know at all.
Sam motions for me to hold her, but I can’t because I am fully freaking out. I don’t know how to explain that it’s like she’s come back from the dead, when for them I’m the one who did that. That hers aren’t the arms I feel around me when I close my eyes. Marley’s are.
She lifts her head, wiping her tears away. “Look at me—I’m a hot mess.” She laughs, looking from me to Sam. “Were you guys arguing?”
“What?” Sam says, shaking his head quickly. “No way.”
“We were just—” I start to say, but Sam cuts me off.
“Kyle had a nightmare. Or something.”
Kimberly rubs my chest, smiling at me. “It’s okay. I’m right here,” she says.
I flinch, my whole body stiff, because all of this feels wrong. All I can
see is Marley, her head on my chest as we lie by the fire.
I look up at Sam over Kim’s shoulder.
“That’s all it was,” he says, his eyes boring holes into me. “Just a dream.”
And of all the things Sam has ever said to me, that one hurts the most.
29
After Sam leaves, an uneasy silence settles over Kimberly and me. I want to grab my phone to look at anything else, but I can’t look away from Kim.
It’s like seeing a ghost. Again.
My eyes follow her as she sets up a cot by the window, pulling a fuzzy white blanket covered in blue butterflies out of her duffel bag.
I have a sudden memory of her sitting on the sofa, wrapped in that exact blanket, when I thought she was a ghost.
Dr. Benefield’s words come back to me. You opened your eyes a lot. Looked right at me.
“Let me see that,” I say. Kim straightens and turns, giving me a confused look. Then she holds out the blanket to me.
I take it, frowning as I feel the fabric, real and tangible in my hand.
“Did you sleep here while I was…?”
“Sometimes,” she says, brushing her blond hair out of her face as she studies mine.
“Did you say anything to me?”
She exhales, looking down at the blanket as she nods. “I’d ask you to wake up. I’d tell you, ‘Don’t—’ ”
“ ‘Let go,’ ” I say, finishing her sentence. “You said, ‘Don’t let go.’ ”
“That’s right,” she says, surprised.
I did hear her. I even saw her.
Which means all the visions I had, the things I thought were nightmares, all the strange moments I told myself were in my head… were they all real?
But then, what does that mean about the rest of my life? About Marley?
“I’m so sorry. For everything that happened,” she blurts out, her hand reaching to touch mine. “What I said, in the car—”
“No,” I say. “You were right.”
She looks taken aback. She shakes her head and opens her mouth to argue.
“Don’t. Please,” I say, looking down at the butterflies on the blanket. Memories keep rushing in. The butterfly struggling on the pond. I should be so happy, but this overwhelming sadness tugs at my chest, making it hard to breathe. I hold out the blanket to her, unable to meet her eyes. “I just… I’m sorry. Can I be alone?”
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