by Luanne Rice
She looked up.
“You can move your left eye in a vertical track?”
Up: yes. She might as well have said, “Uh: duh.”
“When you look up, with your left eye, you’re communicating with us, right?”
Upward glance.
I half wanted to shove him away. Newton is such a scientist, so into empirical evidence, he wouldn’t be convinced by a few eye movements and emotion alone—but I knew for sure, and I swear I could feel Roo almost laughing with me, yet at the same time, so in love with Newton and his methods. So I calmed myself down and watched him rummage in his book bag.
He pulled out a notebook and wrote the alphabet in block capitals. It seemed to take forever. He held the paper up in front of her face, black pen poised just beneath the row of letters.
“Spell your name,” he said, then began slowly moving the pen from left to right, pausing momentarily beneath each letter. Roo’s left eye flicked up once for R and twice for O:
Roo.
“Who is your favorite poet?”
Rilke. At that, my heart began to pound; she wasn’t just awake and aware, her mind was still sharp.
“It’s March, Roo,” Newton said, sounding as excited as I felt. “April’s coming soon. What meteor shower will we see?”
“You gotta be kidding me,” the security guard said out loud. Until now, Roo had been known as the vegetable in room 413, and if questions were going to be asked, shouldn’t they be simple, such as how many fingers am I holding up? I was grinning and couldn’t tell them how perfect this was, how incredibly Roo & Newton it was as I watched his pen move geekily and patiently along the alphabet, and Roo spell out the answer:
Lyrids.
Didn’t these guys know this was a love song, this was Newton’s way of reconnecting us to Roo and her intelligence—and her to him and me, and to this exact world instead of the drifting-away, brain-damaged one we’d all consigned her to?
It was getting late, and outside the window the sun had set and the amber sky was darkening. Streetlights and parking lot lights hadn’t yet come on, and in the violet night, I swear I saw a shooting star. I caught my sister’s eye, and realized she was looking past Newton, straight at me. I felt her gaze, and I shivered because I knew she had seen the star, too.
My mother and Dr. Danforth entered the room at the same time. I went to the door and threw myself into my mom’s arms. We walked to the bed, and I eased her down by Roo’s side. Dr. Danforth stood back; she was holding her breath. Newton held the paper in front of Roo. He held the pen ready, just under the letters. My mother clutched my hand hard, and I could feel that hers was shaking.
“Roo, who is sitting beside you?” Newton asked.
The pen moved, and Roo’s left eye flicked up at M, O, M. But she didn’t stop there:
Mommy.
My mother began to cry. She let go of my hand and buried her face in Roo’s neck. She stroked Roo’s hair, her face.
“My girl, beautiful girl,” she said.
Newton and I stepped away. My mother held my sister and rocked her the way she had when we were young, when we were sick or couldn’t sleep, when she would hold us on her lap and comfort us and tell us we would feel better soon. My mother did that to Roo, and as I watched Dr. Danforth lean close, I had the feeling that she was observing not so much as a doctor but as a woman who had come to care very, very much about this incredibly special girl.
And as Newton and I stood by the window, letting my mother and the doctor have their time with Roo, we did the most natural thing: We held hands. We were practically family, after all, and this was one of the greatest moments in our family’s life.
Taylor Swift, whose real name was Nan, brushed my hair, getting me ready. It was early in the morning—the day I was to leave the hospital in New London for a new one in Boston.
My mom, Tilly, Newton, and Isabel were out in the hall, waiting to give me a big send-off. I could hardly believe it had been just four days since my breakthrough with Tilly. So much had happened—the entire world had changed. The way people looked at me, talked to me was different, brighter. They were taking care of a person now, not a ruined lump lying in a bed.
Taylor/Nan used a pink plastic brush, sweeping tendrils off my forehead, pinning them back from my face with a small gold barrette.
“We have to keep your hair out of those beautiful eyes,” she said.
“That’s right,” Pearl said, rubbing my hands with some new lavender-scented lotion she had brought from home. “We don’t want anything blocking your ability to speak your mind; we want you to be able to tell those doctors in Boston what’s what.”
“I cannot believe she was in there the whole time, and none of us noticed,” Nan said.
“Talk to her,” Pearl said, calm and wise as always. “Right, Roo?”
I looked up.
Pearl smiled, shook her head; it felt as if she was proud of me. Although I had heard the other nurses calling her Etta, to me she would always be Pearl—precious, and old-fashioned, and as deep as the sea.
Because Tilly had figured out I was conscious, I was now considered to be a good prospect for treatment. Dr. Danforth had secured me a bed at Boston Medical Center, one of the top places for patients with complicated neurological conditions. Leaving this floor was hard; I had really gotten used to the nurses, and they were all coming into my room to say good-bye. I felt sad; in such a short, intense time, this had become my world. I wanted to be excited, but I was incredibly nervous and scared about the trip.
“Stay strong,” Indifferent said, giving me a big squeeze.
I coughed and wheezed, and she dabbed my mouth because of course I couldn’t do it myself. Getting emotional made my nose run, and that wasn’t good for anyone.
Just then, Dr. Danforth walked in. Other than Pearl, my doctor was hardest to say good-bye to. She had kept me alive. She had never talked down to me, never used baby talk, never ignored me.
Even the kindest nurses like Pearl and Nan had treated me, at least slightly, as if I were an object, not really here. But not Dr. Danforth. She had always treated me as a smart girl who had had a bad accident. Her eyes, the compassion in them, had always let me know she knew I had suffered a tragedy, had lost so much. She’d let me know I was still of value. I still mattered.
“Here’s what I think,” she’d said last night. “It’s rare, but I think you have locked-in syndrome. I want to keep you here, and treat you myself, but I honestly feel Boston is the best place. My colleague Dan Hill leads the field here in the US, and he will be calling in another specialist from London. Roo, I am so sorry I missed it for so long.”
She spoke to me as if I understood more about medicine than I could, but I followed her, appreciating her words. She spoke about brain injury and the difficulties in assessing consciousness, how my scores on the Glasgow Coma Scale—my verbal, eye, and motor responses—had caused her to classify me in the severe range, and how locked-in syndrome is rare and mimics coma so thoroughly as to be referred to, in some literature, as “the coma that’s not a coma.”
“Roo, they will learn so much more about you in Boston, and be able to help you in a way I can’t here. The tests are extremely advanced, and Dan has worked with other locked-in patients.”
My condition had a name. I wasn’t crazy. All these weeks when I had heard everything, understood every word, ached with longing for Newton and the beach and the stars, for school, for being at home with Tilly and my mother, for life with my dad—and no one had known I was there. When I had wept, they’d thought my eyes were running; when I had screamed, they’d assumed the sound was just noise escaping an unconscious lump that used to be me.
I’m locked in. My body is paralyzed, but my mind isn’t.
Now, after Indifferent’s hug, I felt even more tearful as Dr. Danforth prepared me for my journey. She did her normal exam, and I knew it would be our last time. She listened to my heart and lungs, shined her light into my pupils, examined the col
or and tone of my skin, the rate of my swallows. The orderlies had arrived with the gurney, ready to take me downstairs to the ambulance, and although Dr. Danforth could have said good-bye to me in my room, or on the floor, she rode the elevator with me.
My mother, Tilly, Newton, and Isabel rode down with us, too. I knew that only one could ride in the ambulance with me; as much as Tilly wanted it to be her, my mother had insisted. In fact, after they said good-bye, Tilly, Newton, and Isabel would go back to school. My mother would get me settled in Boston, then take the train home.
We were on the loading dock, behind the emergency room. The day was bright, and for the first time in over a month I felt sunlight on my skin. A breeze ruffled my hair. The ambulance was a van, and as it backed up to the platform where I lay on my stretcher, I heard the beep-beeping of a vehicle in reverse. That triggered a memory of emergency vehicles arriving soon after my accident, when I’d been lying bloody and broken in the car, having to be cut out of my seat belt by EMTs.
The accident was fresh in my mind. The idea of being on the road made me feel terrified. Dr. Danforth tucked an extra blanket around me, then crouched down by the stretcher. Her soft fingers encircled my wrist as she took my pulse.
“Your heart rate is higher than it was upstairs, Roo,” she said.
I looked up.
“Are you nervous?”
I looked up.
She moved her face so close to mine; the expression in her eyes was gentle, concerned, and she gave me a reassuring smile.
“That’s normal,” she said. “You have a long ride ahead of you. But you are in good hands, and your mother will be with you. Boston Medical is excellent, there is nowhere better. I will be following your case closely. I won’t lose track of you, I promise.”
There was so much I wanted to say to her. Thank you for everything, don’t forget me, please help me get better, help me get back to where I was. And questions: Is there any hope for me? Will I be able to go to school again? Will I walk, will I ever be able to talk again, will Newton and I be able to go out on the beach and look at summer constellations?
I felt her lips touch my forehead, a good-bye kiss. And when she stood up, to let the orderlies push me into the back of the ambulance, my field of vision enlarged and I saw that everyone from the floor had come down to see me off: Pearl, Nan, Indifferent, the woman who delivered food trays, the blood technician, and Dr. Quiet. Some were smiling, some were crying.
Then my family surrounded me. My mother, Tilly, Newton, and Isabel all hugged and kissed me, and said they’d see me in Boston.
“Bendiciones en su viaje,” Isabel said. “Blessings on your journey. That’s what mi abuela, my grandmother, said to us when my mother and I left Mexico to come to the States. She gave this to me, to keep me safe, and Roo, it will keep you safe on your way to Boston.”
She slipped off the necklace with the tiny gold cross she always wore, mingled in with her chains of milagros—I had never seen her without it—and attached it around my neck. I knew it had belonged to her grandmother, who she hadn’t seen since leaving Mexico, and I knew it meant the world to her.
“You know I love you, amiga,” Isabel said. “Take a little part of me with you.”
I looked up. I love you, too.
“Okay, it’s time now,” Tilly said, angling herself between me and Isabel. She said it so sharply, I wondered if something was going on between my friend and my sister. “You’ve got to get Roo to Boston!”
My impatient sister. But we did have to go; I was tense and already tired, and the emotion of leaving was getting to me. Tilly wedged close to me. She looked so worried, her brow furrowed, and her eyes red as if she hadn’t slept.
“I have to tell you something,” she said.
I waited, remembering that she’d mentioned this on the day of my breakthrough, something so terrible she thought I’d despise her for it.
“I texted you,” she said. “The day you crashed, you and I were texting.”
I looked up. Yes, we were. I was an idiot to do that. I brought this on myself, but did we have to talk about it now?
“You knew, you remembered?”
I looked up.
“All this time you’ve known?”
Left eye, vertical movement, what do you want me to say?
“Roo, I have been so worried you hate me for it!”
If I could have rolled my eyes I would have. Hate you? Never. Hate myself? Not so clear. From the time I picked up my cell phone to the moment I hit SEND: three seconds, maybe four. That was all it had taken to destroy my life.
Tilly hovered, as if she wanted more from me. I realized this confession had been tormenting her. Had she thought I didn’t remember? Had she really been afraid I would blame her? I wanted to reassure her but didn’t know how. Besides, I hadn’t even gotten into the ambulance, and my strength was waning.
I looked beyond Tilly, to make sure Newton was there. He was, standing back, behind the rest of the crowd. Everything between us had flipped. Before the accident, I had been the one seeking distance, but now I worried so much that he would pull away, especially since we would be so far apart. The ride to Boston took at least two hours. How would we survive this?
Maybe he read my mind. He had been known to do that. He stepped forward, and it was just us. Face-to-face. He smiled. His heavy black glasses were crooked on his long nose. The tiny screws that held the earpieces to the temples always got loose, and I had been the one to carry a tiny screwdriver in my backpack and tighten them for him. Without me to help, his glasses were a mess.
“I’m going to see you up there as often as I can,” he said. “I can’t drive up every day, even though I want to. You know I want to, right?”
I didn’t know how to reply to that. I was so full of doubt. How could he want to stay with me?
“Exams are coming, and I’m lining up college visits. But a hundred miles and one day, one week apart, are nothing to us.”
Did I believe it? I wanted to.
“You know all those stars up there? Behind the daylight, waiting for the night? They are just like us, Roo. Infinity.” He whispered so no one but I could hear him. The breeze blew, ruffling his brown hair and blowing a few strands of mine free of the barrette Nan had clipped on. They tickled my nose and cheeks, and I wanted to push them back.
“We’re forever,” he said.
I looked up, wanting to say, Yes, we are. But he didn’t see, because my hair was in my eyes. And then my mother climbed onto the ambulance, and the orderly pushed my stretcher inside, locked the wheels into place, and made sure the monitors were attached and the straps across my body were fixed tight.
As the doors closed, I heard everyone clapping and shouting, cheering for me, telling me to have a good voyage, a safe trip, a wonderful life, telling me to come back and visit, telling me they loved me and would miss me. Tilly’s voice was loudest of all, followed by Isabel’s, calling out my name.
And my mother held my hand, and as soon as the ambulance began to move, I fell asleep, exhausted by the journey ahead and by so much love, more than I thought the world could hold.
That night should have been great. I was all set to make one of my famous pizzas. Mom had gone shopping, and our refrigerator was full with fresh crust from Bagatto’s, frozen tomato sauce that Mom had put up from our garden, and extra mozzarella. Mom had told me what time she’d be home from Boston, and I had the oven preheated and ready. I threw in some garlic bread and made a salad, just to get started.
Any word from your mother? Newton texted me, and I felt my heart jump to see his name on my screen. What was that about?
Yay, Roo made it to Boston a-ok, I replied.
Great. Let me know if u hear anything else.
K. Ttyl
And the totally psycho thing was, I wanted to talk to him later.
I kept walking to the window to look for my mother. She had taken a train from Boston, and I figured she’d catch a cab from the station to our house.
>
I wanted to hear all about Roo, how she’d done on the trip, and what her new hospital room was like, all of it. At the same time, I was fantasizing about Newton. I pictured us driving up together, many times in the future. Every time we got good news, would he hold my hand in the car like he’d done on some of the recent drives to New London?
I shook those thoughts off. How bizarre were they, and how messed up was I to be dreaming of my paralyzed sister’s boyfriend? But the feeling of his hand kept jolting me, and the way his eyes looked behind his glasses, staring at me as if he liked me. Not like Roo’s sister, the way he always had, but as something more. Was I wrong? I hoped so, and I hoped not.
The sound of car doors slamming made me shut off the fantasies and run to the kitchen door. Expecting to see my mother paying a cab driver, I felt shocked to see both her and Isabel getting out of Isabel’s family’s Toyota.
“Hi, sweetheart,” my mother said, kissing me. “What smells so good?”
“I’m making pizza and garlic bread. How’s Roo?”
“It’s going to be a long haul, but she is in the right place,” my mother said. “The hospital is so big—I got lost trying to find my way from her floor to the lobby. She has a private room there, too, I’m so relieved, and it’s fancy. The equipment—it’s like being in a lab. Your father … well, he would have loved it. And I know it’s going to help Roo.”
“How come you’re here?” I asked, half ignoring my mother’s words, only aware of Isabel.
“Tilly, how rude!” my mother said, laughing but sounding embarrassed for my bad manners.
“I picked her up at the train station,” Isabel said.
“It was so sweet of you to call and ask my train time. You’ll stay for supper, right?” my mother asked.
Isabel stared at me. She had little circles under her big brown eyes, and she was frowning. I raised my hands in front of me, as if I could push her away.
“No,” I said.
“I told you to tell her,” Isabel said. My mother had walked into the front hall to hang up her coat and put on her fuzzy slippers. I heard coat hangers jangle and the thump of one shoe, then the other.