Penpal

by Dathan Auerbach

  “Veronica?” I pleaded with limp, vibration-less vocal cords – the sound nothing more than the broken whisper of a ghost.

  The bone of her right shin had cut savagely through her jeans and stood erect atop a foundation of bloodstained denim. Her other leg bent out to the side twice – as if she had a second joint in her femur. I traced her figure and saw that her left arm had been dislocated at the shoulder and was wrapped so hard and forcefully around the back of her neck that her hand fell over her right breast with her fingertips nearly touching her navel.

  I stepped a little closer and knelt down, gravity doing the lion’s share of the work as my legs trembled.

  Her head was craned back and her mouth hung widely open toward the sky, and as I looked into her half-lidded eyes, they stared absently back into mine, as lifeless and cold as a shark’s. Blood was pooling around my shoe now. There was so much of it.

  When you are confronted with something in the world that simply doesn’t belong, your mind tries to convince itself that it is dreaming, and to that end it provides you with that distinct sense of all things moving slowly, as if through sap. In that moment, I honestly felt that I would wake up any minute.

  But I didn’t wake up.

  I fumbled with my phone to call for help, but I had no signal. I was depressing the power button in the hopes that the signal would return when the phone was turned back on, when I saw Veronica’s phone sticking out of what I thought was her front right pocket. I had no choice. Trembling, I reached for her phone and took hold of it. As I slid it out, she moved and gasped so violently for air that it seemed as if she was trying to breathe in the whole world.

  This startled me so much that I staggered back and fell onto the asphalt with her phone in my hand. She was trying to adjust her body to get it into its natural position, but with every spasm and jerk of her body, I could hear the cracking and grinding of her bones. Without thinking, I scrambled over to her and put my face over hers and pleaded,

  “Veronica, don’t move. Don’t move, okay? Just stay still. Don’t move. Veronica, please just don’t move.”

  I kept saying it, but the words started to fall apart as tears came streaming down my face. I opened her phone. It still worked. It was still on the screen where she had saved my number, and when I saw that, I felt my heart break a little. I called 911 and waited with her, telling her that she would be okay, and feeling guilty for lying to her every time I said it.

  When the sound of sirens tore through the air, she seemed to become more alert. She had remained conscious since first coming to, but now more of the light was coming back into her eyes. She was breathing steadily, but it was a gurgling, labored breathing. Her brain was still protecting her from pain, though it looked as if it was finally allowing her to become aware that something was terribly wrong with her. Her eyes rolled over to mine, and her lips moved. She was struggling, but I heard her.

  “Hhh … he … p … pi … picture. M … my pictu … he took it.”

  I didn’t understand what she meant, so I said the only thing I could. “I’m so sorry, Veronica.”

  I rode with her in the ambulance where she finally, and mercifully, lost consciousness. The paramedics asked me several times what happened, but I could only mumble the word “car.” I was staring so vacantly that one of the paramedics shined a light in my eyes in an attempt to determine if I had been injured as well. When he returned his attention to Veronica, I felt guilty that he had even had to waste his time on me.

  When we arrived at the hospital, the nurses wheeled Veronica through a set of double-doors. As the paramedics rushed by me, one of them put Veronica’s purse in my lap; I fidgeted with the leather strap and sat anxiously yet absently in the waiting room. The blank stare had returned to my eyes as my mind swam in every direction with no guidance or trajectory. The shouts, coughs, cries, and talking of the emergency room waiting area became a dull buzzing in my ear as I went completely numb to all things. All things but one.

  A phone was vibrating in my pocket.

  My pulse quickened and my throat dried as I reached my hand into my pants pocket to fish out the phone. My mother was trying to check in on me again. I had no idea how I was going to explain this to her. I wasn’t worried about getting in trouble – those consequences seemed so remote and insignificant to everything now – but what combination of words could I possibly cobble together to explain all this? Between vibrations, I clasped my hand around my phone and pulled it out.

  It was off.

  For just a moment, I thought the call had simply stopped, or perhaps my phone had died just then somehow. But this moment of confusion ended as soon as the vibrations began again – still in my pocket. I still had Veronica’s phone, and someone was calling it. I felt my eyes begin to water, and I reached into my pocket to retrieve Veronica’s phone. I looked at the screen and could see that her dad was calling her. I needed to answer it. I needed to tell him what had happened. Veronica’s mom was a nurse; maybe she could help. I needed to let someone know what was going on. But every time I tried to imagine even a fragment of what I might say, my thoughts would splinter into pieces too small to reassemble.

  I kept hoping the phone would just stop ringing – that the insistence that I answer it would be over. But I knew from what Veronica had told me earlier that as long as her dad kept his phone to his ear, her phone would never stop ringing. With a burning in my chest, I moved my thumb over the phone and pressed “Ignore.” Relief, guilt, and shame boiled within me, and I collapsed my head onto my knees and cried.

  Collecting myself, I went to the counter to see if there was any information on Veronica’s condition, but not enough time had passed for there to be any news that would be good news. Before leaving the counter, I asked if I could make a call. I dialed my mom’s number into the hospital phone. Looking at the clock on the wall, I saw that it was about 4:00 A.M., and I held my breath as the line sought a connection. She answered. I told her that I was fine, but that Veronica was not. She cursed at me and said she’d be right there, but I told her I wasn’t leaving until Veronica was out of surgery. She said she’d come anyway.

  The police entered the hospital just a little after I hung up the phone with my mother. They didn’t have many questions for me, and the ones that they did have weren’t met with very helpful answers. I hadn’t seen the driver. I didn’t get the license plate. I could only tell them that I thought that it was a brown car, but I couldn’t even tell them how many doors were on it. As the police officers were walking away, I yelled to them, and they walked back over to where I was sitting. I told them that the car I was talking about had a big crack in the back window. Sensing how impotent I was feeling, one of the officers said that would be a huge help. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

  My mom and I didn’t speak that much when she got to the hospital. After verifying that I was unharmed, her relief transitioned into anger. I told her I was sorry for lying, and she said that we’d talk about it later. For the majority of the time that we sat together in the waiting room, there was silence between us. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. I think that had we talked more in that room – if I had just told her about Boxes or the night with the raft; if she had just told me more of what she knew – I think that things would have changed. But I didn’t know that any of those things mattered; they were just distant memories of strange adventures to me. So we sat there in silence, and she looked at me while I looked at the floor. She told me that she loved me and that I could call her whenever I wanted her to come get me.

  As my mom was leaving, Veronica’s parents rushed in with the wide eyes of people who are attempting to see what is important in a room as quickly as possible. My mom must have called them after I had spoken with her. Veronica’s dad and my mom exchanged a few words that appeared to be quite serious, while Veronica’s mother talked to the person at the desk. Her mother was a nurse, but didn’t work at this hospital. I’m sure that she had tried to get Veronica transferr
ed, but her condition was prohibitive.

  While all of these conversations were taking place, I slipped Veronica’s phone back in her purse to hide the evidence of the conversation that I was too much of a coward to have. The police talked to each of us, including me for a second time – I told them what happened again, they made some more notes, and then they left.

  Veronica came out of surgery several hours later with a thick, white cast covering 90% of her body. Her right arm was free, but the rest of her was cocooned in plaster. Her parents and I walked to Veronica’s room; they never asked me for her purse, so I just set it on the table to the right of her bed. She was still under the anesthetic, but I remembered how I felt when I had my cast before kindergarten. I asked a nurse for a marker, but I couldn’t think of anything to write. I slept in a chair in the corner, and went home the next day.

  I came back every afternoon for several days. At some point, they had moved another patient into her room and set up a screen around both beds to act as a partition. The divider was always closed, so I could never tell if the person in the adjacent bed was sleeping; however, I once caught a glimpse and saw that in addition to the cast on his left wrist, the occupant’s face was completely covered in bandages, so I decided to always speak in hushed tones just in case.

  Veronica didn’t seem to be feeling better, but she had more moments of lucidity. But even during these periods, we wouldn’t really talk. Her jaw had been broken by the car, so the doctors had wired it shut. I sat with her for a while, but there was nothing much I could say. I got up, walked over to her, and kissed her on the forehead. As I turned to leave the room, she whispered through her clenched teeth,

  “Josh …”

  This surprised me a little, but I looked at her and said, “Has he not come to see you?”

  “No …”

  I grew infuriated. Even if Josh had gone down the wrong path at some point, he should still come see his sister, I thought.

  I was about to express this when she said, “No … Josh … he ran away … I should’ve told you.”

  I felt my blood turn to ice.

  “When? When did this happen?”

  “Two years ago. A little after his thirteenth birthday.”

  “How … Why do you think he ran away?”

  “The note … on his pillow …”

  She started crying and I followed her, but I think now we were crying for different reasons, even if I didn’t fully realize it. There was still so much that I didn’t remember – so many connections I hadn’t yet made – but I remembered the letter, even if I didn’t know what it had truly meant. I told her that I had to go but that she could text me any time; I pulled the phone out of her purse and set it on the table right next to her free hand. I asked her if she was going to be okay alone, and she told me that her mom was coming in a little later that day, so she would be fine.

  I got a text message from her the next day, and I hesitated before opening it. When I read it, I wished that I had hesitated just a little bit longer. It said, “Please don’t come back here.” It took me almost a full minute to type a simple “Why not?” in reply, because my flustered brain kept directing my fingers to the wrong keys. She said that she didn’t want me to see her like that again, and I agreed begrudgingly because it was only a temporary quarantine. We texted each other every day, though I kept this from my mom because I knew that she didn’t like me talking to Veronica.

  The events of the night at The Dirt Theatre had caused an intense strain in the dynamic between my mother and me, and our interactions became abruptly cold and infrequent after I asked her why she hadn’t told me that Josh had run away. She claimed she simply did not know; that she didn’t talk to his parents anymore. In a way, I thought this made sense – if I had fallen out of touch with Josh, my best friend, then why should I expect our respective parents to stay in close contact? But the fact that she had called them before coming to the hospital meant that she had their new number, which was something that I was never privy to, and this bothered me.

  Veronica’s texts were generally fairly short, and mostly only in response to more lengthy texts that I would send her. I tried calling her only once; I was sure she was screening her calls, but hoped that I could at least hear her voice. She picked up but didn’t say anything. I could hear how labored her breathing was; I thought I might have heard her say my name, but it was hard to tell. Eventually, I just had to hang up to stop myself from crying again.

  About a week after she told me not to come see her anymore, she sent me a text that simply read,

  “I love you.”

  I was filled with so many different emotions. No one from outside my family had ever said that to me before, and somehow reading those words – which came not as the compulsory and reflexive expression that ends phone calls between family members, but from someone who really felt it – showed me why those words were so powerful. There were so many words that I wanted to say, but only a few that I felt I needed to say:

  “I love you, too.”

  Over the next several weeks, the intensity grew. Veronica said that she wanted to be with me, and that she couldn’t wait until she could see me again. She told me that she had been released from the hospital and was convalescing at her house, but every time I asked to come see her, she would always say, “soon.” In the back of my mind, a nagging guilt tore at my jubilation. I realized that her feelings for me were most likely artificial symptoms of her injuries; maybe she only felt close to me because she had almost been taken away from everything. Each time I received a message from her, however, these concerns evaporated in the heat of my happiness, and I would insist again that she let me see her.

  Finally, the following week she said that she thought she might be able to make it to the next midnight movie. I couldn’t believe it; I suggested that we meet somewhere that would be a little less strenuous, but she insisted that she would try. She said that she wanted to redo our date, and I admired her strength and optimism for that. I got a text from her the afternoon of the movie saying, “See you tonight.”

  Chris’ parents had found out about everything that had happened and said I wasn’t welcome at their house anymore, so I got Ryan to drive me. My mother tried to stop me, but I was bigger than her now, so I simply walked out of the house and got into Ryan’s car. I explained to him that Veronica might be in bad shape, but that I really cared about her so he should give us some space. He accepted that, and we headed to the theatre.

  Veronica didn’t show.

  I had saved a seat for her right next to me near the exit so she could get in and out easily, but fifteen minutes into Akira, a man slid into the chair. I whispered, “Excuse me, this seat is taken,” but he didn’t respond at all; he just stared ahead at the screen. I remember wanting to move because there was something wrong with the way he was breathing, but I forfeited after a while because I realized that Veronica wasn’t coming, so it really didn’t matter where I sat or who sat next to me.

  I texted her the next day and asked if she was all right. I enquired as to why she didn’t show the previous night. But she didn’t respond. Despite my attempts to restrain myself and be patient, I messaged her repeatedly, pleading with her to at least tell me how she was feeling. She responded with what would turn out to be the last message I would receive from her. She simply said,

  “See you again. Soon.”

  She was delirious, and I was worried about her. I sent her several replies reminding her about the movie and saying it was no big deal, but she just stopped replying. I grew increasingly upset over the next several days. I couldn’t reach her at her home because I didn’t know that number, and I wasn’t even sure where they lived. However, I knew that my mom knew at least one of these things.

  With no other options, I turned to my mother. I told her that I knew that she must know Veronica’s parents’ phone number since I suspected that she had called them the night of the accident. I told her that I needed that number. She asked why,
and when I told her that I hadn’t heard from Veronica in days, I felt all of what little warmth was left in her disposition dissipate.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to get into an argument with you over this, but she was supposed to meet me at the movies yesterday. I know there hasn’t been much time since she got hit, but she said she would try to come, and after that she just stopped talking to me altogether.

  “She must hate me. If we wouldn’t have gone to that movie, then she would still be okay right now. I don’t know what to do now. I just want to tell her that I’m sorry … that I’m sorry for everything.”

  She looked confused, and I could read on her face that she was trying to tell if my mind had simply broken. There was intense compassion in her eyes that lingered for as long as she thought that my hold on reality had slipped. When she saw that it hadn’t, this compassion dissolved into defeated tears, and she pulled me toward her to embrace me. She was beginning to sob, but it seemed too intense of a reaction to my problem, and I had no reason to think that she particularly cared for Veronica – quite the opposite seemed true. She drew in a shuddering breath, and then said something that still makes me nauseous, even now.

  “Veronica’s dead, sweetheart. Oh God, I thought you knew …”

  I pulled away aggressively. “What? What are you talking about? She said she was doing better … She said she was feeling better, mom!”

  There was a long pause.

  “What happened to Veronica?!”

  “She’s dead, sweetie. She died on the last day you visited her. Oh honey, she died weeks ago.”

  She had completely broken down, but I knew it wasn’t because of Veronica. I staggered backwards. This wasn’t possible. I had just exchanged messages with her yesterday. I could only think to ask one question, and it was probably the most trivial one I could ask.

  “Then why was her phone still on?”

  She continued sobbing. She didn’t answer.