Nursing Notes—Patient remained unresponsive for the entirety of coma. Glucose administered daily. Vitals stable throughout. Displayed several signs of errant brain activity: i.e. REM, facial agitations, and smiling. Incoherency and disorientation upon first hours of waking. Routinely visited with patient approximately 2 hours each day, speaking to her, massaging feet, activities to promote blood circulation. Patient began to exhibit signs of waking on day three. Patient awoke fully on fourth day. Moved from ICU to private room and monitored for seven days.
*** When asked of recollections during comatose state, patient asserts only one: she awoke after hearing a voice calling for her to, “Wake up.” Suggests residual lucid dreaming. Premises null of hospital staff at that time.
I wonder if this was what Dorothy felt like, upon waking from her time in Oz.
Along with our companions—she with Toto, and me with Rhoda—we had been picked up and deposited Somewhere Over the Rainbow, where horrors and fantastical things of all kinds had occurred, and forever changing what had once been a simple life for two wildly imaginative farm girls. Though I wore an amethyst charm around my neck, rather than ruby shoes on my feet, our stories aligned enough times to make me feel as if she could very well be the only one who might understand.
Not able to leave our friends and family, we took them in other forms better suited for the venture, while keeping their essence intact. Without their support, love, and encouragement, our demise would certainly have been imminent. For even in dreams propagated by our machinations, there we were haunted by a witch; she, who chased and tormented, leaving both Dorothy and me confounded by her cruelty fueled hatred and inexorable wrath. Only later did we realize how afraid of us she was all along. Battles were fought—some won, some lost. And wasn’t it just a bit strange that while Dorothy’s journey ceremoniously ended after revealing what lie beyond the black curtain . . . mine had only just begun. In a bed we woke, both of us learning that a knock on the head was responsible for the whole chimerical adventure. I wondered if she too, unable to resist the lure, had glanced at her feet. And if she was at all grieved by what she saw . . . or rather, what she didn’t see. My own neck felt devastatingly bare.
There was a point, however, where our journey diverged; when the yellow brick road took me elsewhere. I was glad for Dorothy. Her one resounding and plaintive plea throughout her time in Oz was to find a way home—back to Kansas—because for her, there was no place like home. But for me, waking up was not the triumphant outcome cause for rejoicing. While I was undoubtedly, most assuredly awake, truly I had never felt so asleep.
For me, home was no place.
~
Fact or Fiction will be a game I play for the rest of my life; a game wherein I attempted to identify and assign events and memories to categories labeled Happened and Never Happened. And depending who I asked, the answers would differ. If I referred to the medical chart, it would tell me plainly that my name was Summer Foster Kelly, I was involved in a plane crash just outside Quito, Ecuador, and I remained in a coma for four days—all of which was factually true.
What was not written—considered medically irrelevant—was that during those four days, I experienced more adventures and lived more life than I had in the entirety of my collective conscious days. The objective of the game was mind over matter—in reverse.
I do not live in a chateau with my own private balcony.
I do live on Chateau Ave., in a two-story home, with a spacious backyard expertly landscaped.
My parents are not billionaires, but are brilliant physicists with a penchant for botany.
We did relocate from Roxbury Connecticut to California when my grandmother, living alone, took ill and passed away shortly thereafter.
I do attend Shorecliffs High School.
Geraldine does not work as a receptionist at The House of Hope, but was my attending nurse while in the hospital. During the hour in which she massaged me, we watched soap operas.
Strangely enough, or maybe not, some things I had left completely untouched; though for what reason I couldn’t say. Hattie, all of my childhood memories, Mr. Balfy and his class of musical savants, my kids. And I wouldn’t know until I asked, but I couldn’t think of one single detail about Jake and Emily that wasn’t true. Save for one, that is: they knew me about as well I knew me at the moment. All of the conversations that had forced me into honesty hadn’t happened. The reason for their occurrence didn’t exist. Consequently, Emily was right where I left her: just outside four walls of half-truths.
She was due to arrive in less than thirty minutes.
With the final suitcase unpacked and stowed away in the garage, I had just finished washing and drying my last load of laundry. My mother had offered to do it for me, but I thought it a good idea to acquaint—reacquaint—myself with my wardrobe. I stood beside my bed, sifting through the pile of clothes still warm from the dryer, folding a blouse I didn’t recognize. I held it up, examined it, then carefully folded it once, twice, and in half once more, laying it along with the other beside Rhoda’s dozing head.
“Thank you for still being you,” I said softly, and bent to kiss her between the eyes.
Of all the people and objects I had to welcome back into my life, or say goodbye to, in addition to one other I consciously avoided thinking about, I don’t believe I could have endured the shock of learning that my Rhoda wasn’t real.
The bed felt alien to me as well. Gone was the circular pallet and ornamental duvet, and in its place a very nice four-poster bed I didn’t trust. Last night being my second night “home,” and unable to drift off to sleep, I had snuck downstairs—loopy on pain medications—to the living room, where that plushy white couch existed in both worlds. Only later, when figment claimed the rights to my thoughts, did I remember why I should have stayed in my foreign bed; the images sweeping over my eyes and body like phantom bugs. In the newly dawning morning I had risen from the couch, taking my tear stained pillow and myself back to a room that wouldn’t hurt us.
That was just it, though. I would have thought for certain that being among the unfamiliar and unknown would be the dolorifuge I sought. But it was worse—much worse in fact. It was like being handed someone else’s shoes, and being told to make them fit when they were easily three times too small. I gravitated to my car, to the couch, the dining room table, and the old recliner—not on a balcony, but tucked into a corner in the living room. I might ask my parents if we could move it . . .
There was a soft knock on my bedroom door. “Would you like some company?”
Instinctively I turned to the right, jarred by the view of my bathroom: toilet, sink, and mirror. Composing myself as best I could, I gulped and turned my head the other way, to where my mother stood in the doorway, barefoot, clearly having just come from the backyard.
I did not offer a counterfeit smile, but said honestly, “I would love some.”
She met my eyes and nodded sagaciously. Entering the room, she came to stand at the side of the bed next to me, laying her pink gloves on my beige, not brown, nightstand. “Everything still feeling a bit off to you?”
Over multiple transatlantic flights, I had confided in my parents. It took that long just to explain half of it. Depending on where I was in the story, I would break off suddenly, unable to continue until emotion subsided and released my noosed throat. During those times my mother held me, never once pushing, but patiently waiting until I could speak once again.
I blinked hard. “I can’t seem to keep it all straight,” I admitted, and picked up another shirt, before turning to examine her closely. She looked well. The bruises in her face were healing, the cuts along her jaw already lightened to a deep rosy pink, and the worst of it, a burn on her left hand, was securely protected under layers of gauze and ointment. “How are you feeling?”
“A little less shaken every day,” she said, and glanced at me meaningfully. She picked up a pair of jeans and began folding them slowly. “Being here in our home helps
. Working in the yard, cooking, taking Rhoda for walks—doing all the little things I take for granted by having them at my disposal.”
“And Dad?” Of all of us he seemed to be coping with the most ease, but sometimes his reticence wasn’t proof of ataraxia, but indicative of inner turmoil.
“Resilient as ever,” she answered and laughed lightly. “Fortunately for him, there are just too many thoughts in that man’s head for any one of them to linger very long.”
I laughed with her, thinking that was very likely true, and glad for it.
She touched my hand then, and I looked over at her. “It will come back, Summer,” she said gently. “One piece at time, it will come back.”
I nodded, and spoke over the lump in my throat. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Her eyebrows rose high on her forehead as she asked, “You don’t want to remember?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to remember,” I said and paused. In my hands I held a lavender sundress. My heart gave a great squeeze, making it difficult to breathe for a moment. “It’s that I don’t want to forget,” I finished, sounding as if I were out of breath.
“I see.” I heard her inhale deeply, stacking my jeans on top of a small pile of shorts. “What makes you think you will?” I turned to meet her eyes. “Forget,” she added helpfully.
I shrugged, leaving my shoulder near my ear as I considered the question. “Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?” I asked. “The memories fade, the dreams become less and less easier to recall. Everything goes back to normal.”
Around the same soft brown eyes I had known since birth, her expression grew earnest. “Summer,” she said firmly, “what happened to you—what you experienced was so much more than a dream. Or at least dreams as most people know them. We go to sleep, we carry over our worries and hopes, and there they play out in a fantasy, or something less ideal. But when we wake up, it’s rare that we remember what happened with clarity or structure. In fact, even when I am able to recall a dream—if it isn’t entirely nonsensical—even then it’s just bits and pieces, and usually at the point where I try to relay the events to someone else, I find that I can’t explain it. What my mind took and neutralized in sleep becomes impossible to qualify once I’m awake. Like it loses its power once it crosses the other side,” she mused. Then she looked at me, her lips twitching at the corners like a smile was about to appear. “What you described, however, was a world rich and vivid in details. You recalled scents and sounds, word for word conversations—over multiple periods of time.”
She folded a pair of white capris against her body, using her chin to hold them aloft while she removed wrinkles in an effleurage. I stared at her silently, stuck between wanting to acknowledge this, and the fact that—“It wasn’t real, though.”
“Well . . . I don’t know about that.”
Pure and basic rationale forced me to disagree with her. “I was in a coma for four days, in a hospital, in Ecuador.”
“Your body was, yes,” she agreed evenly, and seeing the look on my face, hurried to add, “Baby, I’m not going to tell you how to handle this. I wouldn’t know where to begin quite honestly.” She laughed, a little sadly. “I don’t know . . . from what you’ve told me, I just don’t believe the same rules apply.”
I laughed, just as sadly. “What about the laws of physics?”
She smiled and sighed. “My foundation in impermeable truths has and never will supersede my belief in all which falls under the unexplainable. What I can prove, I do—through science. The rest . . . the rest are heart matters.”
I picked up a white ankle sock, searching for its partner. “It would be wrong to pretend, though, wouldn’t it? And potentially dangerous?”
This time it was her turn to shrug. “No more so than you forcing yourself to deny what your mind wants you to remember, I would think. Like I said,” she continued, taking my cheek in her hand, “I’m not going to tell you how you should deal with this. It’s your head. They’re your memories. But”—she winced—“I can’t help but see you struggling to understand this using concepts that have no place—that don’t belong. You’re not going to make your peace with what’s happened using logic and justification. What made sense to you before the coma, might not make sense anymore.”
“But Dr. Moncayo said I should try and surround myself with what’s familiar to me. He said it would help what was real to settle, and the rest to disappear. Like it should.”
“Dr. Moncayo was—is—an excellent physician,” she said. “And I have him to thank for playing his part in you being here.” Her soft eyes began to shimmer. “But long before you were airlifted and brought to the hospital, someone else was taking care of you. There’s no other explanation. I’ve looked at the reports, Summer.” She swallowed thickly and went on folding. “We descended an altitude of nearly two thousand feet, and crashed into the foothills. I don’t consider myself versed enough in aeronautic engineering to fully understand what happened, but I am certain that by all accounts of the examiner’s report, none of us should have survived that accident.” She smiled at me, her eyes wide and frightened and thankful. “Especially you,” she added in a thin squeak. She took a deep breath through her nose and released it through her mouth, setting a poorly folded shirt on top of another. “When something incredibly special like that happens . . . you don’t ask why.” Gathering my face in her soft, cool hands, she rose onto her toes and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “You just say thank you.”
I took one of her hands in my own, and held it there beside my cheek, squeezed hard, needing in that moment to know she was real. She squeezed back, two tears dribbling from her eyes as she did. “I’m here, baby,” she whispered emphatically, and brought me close to embrace me. She was small and petite, but I wouldn’t have known it by the way she held me. “There is no map for this, my love. You’re going to take this one brand new step at a time.”
I nodded against the side of her head, my vision blurry and wet. “I think I know what step I’d like to take first.”
“Yeah?” She murmured huskily, and cleared her throat clogged with tears. “And what step would that be?” She pulled back to see my face, holding tight to my hands.
I felt the smile approaching long before it actually appeared on my lips. “It’s about my name.”
~
When my phone buzzed and the doorbell rang at precicely the same moment, I knew Emily had arrived. There was a long, poignant second where my mother, still standing beside my bed clutching my hands firmly, simply looked at me, not exactly seeing me for the first time, but sensing it was the first time I had ever looked quite like this: certain. I came aware of this through her expression, which I thought was auspicious, because if I had been looking in the mirror I might have missed it. A true mirror is someone else’s face looking back at you.
She sighed, still studying my face with alacrity, and asked, “What are you going tell her?”
Knowing I was to see Emily today, I had spent some time in solitude the day prior, just thinking about how I might navigate this conversation. While I had some idea of what to exptect, having experienced a version of my confession to Emily once before, truly it made the situation all the more nervewracking. I could not anticipate things to go the same way; it wouldn’t be fair to either of us. And speaking of fair, a part of me thought perhaps I should wait until some time had passed, until I could be sure Emily’s reaction was genuine, and not a diluted anger owed to sympathy and gratitude that I had overcome odds not in my favor. Then, actually laughing aloud, I remembered who I was considering and ascertained that nothing, not even death, would keep Emily from being Emily. So I made the decision to tell her all which I had confessed in the bandroom. Beyond that, though . . . I hadn’t decided. Not until my mother asked just now. When she did, when the words were spoken, it was as if the answer was coaxed from my lips, carried on invisible tethers into the air where it would be made into truth.
I smiled. Prickly things wer
e dancing all along my spine. “I’m going to tell her everything.”
And for the next three hours, seated on one of Harper’s not-at-all exaggerated patios, that’s exactly what I did; starting with the story of how I became Summer. In my dream, I only wondered about it, contemplating the fate of one of Fitzgerald’s main characters; but in real life, it really was after reading The Great Gatsby for the first time, that I made the decision to leave Foster and her troublesome name in the past, officially introducing myself to people as Summer Kelly.
The hope was that along with a name change a new identity would surface, a girl well liked by her peers and no longer thought of as strange. Things obviously didn’t turn out as I had planned, however, and the name change remained to be yet one more half-truth I hid behind.
After all was said and told—me exhausted by hours of talking, Emily drained from keeping up with a story with more turns than a roundabout with no exit—we both fell silent for a while. Emily, neglecting her plate of pasta, picked up her fork, twirled a bite three times bigger than her mouth, then bit off half of it.
After swallowing and taking a deep sip of root beer, she looked at me, smirked, and said, “Yeah, you look like a Foster Kelly.”
And although she liked it, said it suited me better than Summer ever did, the most bizarre of it for her would be making the switch from Summer to Foster. That, I told her with a laugh, I could understand.
The most bizarre of it for me, I thought two hours later as we walked through the parking lot illuminated with bright orange light: that despite never having been inside Harper’s before today . . . it was exactly how I remembered it.
~
The next turning point for me was Sunday afternoon: my first visit back to The House of Hope. Seeing my kids, holding them, I thought my heart would burst. They remained to be a part of a world untouched. It occurred to me now, as I considered what my mind had and hadn’t changed, that all of which I considered perfect was carried over in a facsimile.
Spent from the day—in a good way, though—I rolled down the windows and pressed play on my iPod. So consumed by the reuniting, only once or twice over the course of the day did I remember that the last couple visits . . . another had joined me. They knew nothing of this, though, and were content to spend their afternoon with someone entirely uncoordinated and not inclined whatsoever with sports involving balls—or sports.
Awakening Foster Kelly Page 96