Blink Once

by Cylin Busby

  “Man alive, you didn’t tell me about this chick, keeping the good stuff to yourself. Does her daughter look anything like her?”

  I blinked yes before I could stop myself. A mistake. I didn’t want Mike bugging Olivia, going into her room. I also didn’t want Olivia to meet Mike, not yet, not until I’d had a chance to fill her in on what he was like. But then I realized something. Olivia wasn’t like Allie. She could totally handle Mike. She would eat Mike for lunch. The thought made me laugh.

  “Did you just say something?” Mike came around the front of chair and looked into my face. “That was weird, it was like you said something.” Mike laughed but it sounded forced. “No, seriously.” He studied my eyes for a second and I blinked no.

  Olivia’s mom had seen us watching her, and gave us one of those patronizing waves that you give to little kids. “Aw, busted. Way to go, wheelchair boy.” Mike smiled and gave her a little wave back.

  “Good luck tapping that later,” Mike murmured, rolling me back to the TV room. “Actually.” He leaned down and spoke close to my ear as he walked me down the hall. “Once you’re out of this chair, I bet you can use this whole accident for a bunch of sympathy nookie. Or maybe that’s just what I would do.” We rounded the corner into the room and Mike put on a fake brightness. “Howdy, we are back from our adventure. I return with West, just as you saw him last, except now with a new tattoo.”

  I noticed that Mom and Dad were sitting closer together now, and Allie was right next to them. What had they all been talking about when I was gone? The room had an awkward feeling, like we had interrupted something. Maybe Allie was telling them that she dumped me.

  “We should probably let this guy get his rest, but thanks so much for coming, you two.” Mom stood up and hugged Mike first, then Allie. Dad stood and cleared away the lunch stuff on the table. “I’ll call you tonight,” he said to Mom, pulling her in for a hug. It was still shocking for me to see my parents acting that way, like they still liked each other.

  “Good to see you, West,” Allie said, finally looking at my face. She seemed to be searching for something, maybe a sign that I still cared about her.

  “Next time, two legs instead of four wheels.” Mike kissed the top of my head hard and walked out the door beside Allie, without looking back.

  “I’ll be here for the big day next week, bud.” Dad got down and looked into my face. “Stay healthy, okay?” He and Mom exchanged a wordless look as he walked out the door, and she sat back down.

  “Your father flew in just for the day and then gave those two a ride up here.” She finished her soda and put the empty can on the table. “To be honest with you, of all your friends, I think Mike is taking this the hardest. That boy.” She shook her head slowly and looked out the window, staring at the same winter trees that I always looked at. “His mom told me he’s been having a terrible time at school—fights, detention, you name it.”

  Detention wasn’t anything new for Mike, but fighting was. Who did he get into a fight with? And why? I felt like he wasn’t telling me anything real during our visits, just keeping everything light.

  “Part of me thinks that maybe you help to keep him grounded; he really needs you as a friend.” Mom looked over at me and met my eyes. “Just one more reason to get better.”

  As if I needed another reason.

  Chapter 16

  I’m cold. I push my hands deep into my pockets, but my fingers are still numb. My toes are so cold, I can’t feel them anymore, and it’s getting dark. In the streetlight up ahead, I can see the snowflakes beginning to fall. I want to get home; I walk faster, with longer strides, watching my boots hit the sidewalk. But when I look up, it seems like I’ve gone the wrong way. Somehow, I’m downtown. I know this part of town, but it’s far from where I live. In the distance, headlights are coming down the street—a bus. The driver pulls to a stop, opens the door. “Getting on?” he asks. He’s a big guy; his thighs spill over the driver’s seat, and his meaty hand holds the wheel. That’s when I see Olivia. She’s sitting up front on the bus, looking down at me from the window. She’s so pale, so sad. I’m happy to see her, but she’s not happy to see me. She locks eyes with me and shakes her head no, silently, slowly. Her mouth doesn’t move. The driver slams the door in my face and pulls away. For a second, I think that maybe that was Olivia’s mom in the bus. But no, I can see hair, long and dark, down her back as they pull away. I know that was her.

  “Got a smoke?” someone asks me, and I turn to see a guy next to me. He’s older than I am, but I’m taller. He looks cold, in an old brown leather jacket, a ratty T-shirt, and dirty faded jeans. “Smoke?” he asks me again. I shake my head and he starts to walk away from me, but then stops, turns, and says, “I know you?” I realize, as the streetlight hits his face, that I do know him, and he knows me. I’ve seen him before. “Man, I just wish I had a smoke.” He pats the upper pocket of his jacket and that’s when I see the blood. On his hands, the tattoos on his knuckles. The wrists of his jacket. Some of it is splattered on his face. “You sure you don’t have a smoke?” He moves toward me again and then I hear something, a girl crying. It starts soft, but then it’s harder, sobbing, gasping for air. There’s someone on the ground, right by the bus stop, a girl lying on the ground, curled into a ball, crying. “You don’t need to worry about that,” the guy says, moving in front of her so I can’t see her. “Don’t worry about her; she’s a waste of time.”

  “I didn’t want to wake you,” Olivia said, wiping her eyes, then blowing her nose. “I was just going to check on you. Sometimes, when you’re asleep, I just come in here to make sure you’re okay. I did that when you were sick. I just wanted to … to know you were okay.” She grabbed another tissue and blew her nose loudly. I waited for her to make a joke, about stalking me in my sleep, about her unladylike nose honk, but it didn’t come. Her face looked so serious, so sad.

  It was dark, and the room felt cold, like they turned down the heat. “I know your parents were here today,” she said, pulling her robe up around her knees and sniffling. “And I know Mike was here. And I know she was here.”

  She stopped for a second and looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess. I just … my mom was here today and we didn’t have a great visit. She saw you, by the way.” Olivia smirked and caught my eye. “She said, ‘What is that handsome boy doing in a place like this?’” She put on a faux French accent that sounded pretty convincing. Olivia took a deep breath and turned her head away from me, and for second, I was reminded of her mother, smoking outside. The same mannerisms, the same measured beauty. “Let’s go for a walk?” She raised the back of my bed up until I was sitting, then dropped the leg rest. “I didn’t know the part about letting you sit like this for a couple of minutes before you got in the chair,” she explained. “I just learned that today.”

  I wondered how much of the rest of my parents’ visit she had listened in on, how much she had heard, or seen.

  “While you’re getting adjusted, I’ve got something for you. I’ll be right back.” She went through the divider and left me sitting by myself in the dark room. I could feel that my toes were cold, my feet were cold. That was a new sensation, something I hadn’t felt in a while, a little tingling.

  She came back in a moment later, holding a manila file, like the kind they had at school. “Remember when we talked about this room, about your bad dreams—about how maybe the guy in here before had something to do with it?” She opened the folder and sorted through a few typed pages. “I have a picture of him. A couple of pictures. But I’m warning you, it’s not pretty. Do you want to see?” I blinked yes and she glanced down at the photo before reaching over to my bedside lamp and clicking it on. She held up the picture so I could see it.

  It was hard to tell how old the guy was in the photo. Maybe twenty, maybe older. Or younger. What was left of his hair was blond. He looked like a something from a horror movie: bulging eyes staring out of a skeleton face. It took me a second to realize
he couldn’t help the stare—his eyelids were gone. Part of his nose was missing, leaving a raw pink hole in the middle of his face. His lips were gone; just teeth were showing, the gums blackened. He had one ear, with a little patch of blond hair over it. On the other side of his head was just a ball of red flesh where an ear used to be. I knew at once this wasn’t the guy from my dream. It wasn’t the dark-haired guy with the blood on his hands. But I couldn’t stop staring at the photo.

  “Is it him?” Olivia asked. I pulled my eyes from the image and blinked no.

  She turned the picture around and looked at it herself for a second, then tucked it back into the folder. “I’m glad it’s not him, to be honest,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to think that he was haunting you, or this room.” She got the wheelchair from the corner. “I guess I still feel bad, like I could have done more, should have done more for him. If it turned out that he was here as a ghost, that would be a sign that I was right. Does that make sense?” She moved in to hold me, to move me into the chair, her arm around my back, my chest over her shoulder. She lifted me and put me into the chair with more ease this time. “That orderly was right; your mom could do this for you. It’s easier every time.” She unhooked the IV bag and moved it over to the pole on the chair. “Now, let’s see if I can get this right.” She carefully switched off the respirator, reconnected the tube to the portable, and turned it on. I didn’t skip a breath. “Okay?” She came around the chair and looked into my face for a second. I blinked yes, and waited for a smile, but I didn’t get one. I was getting the feeling that Olivia was mad at me, or mad at her mom, or just mad. Maybe it was seeing that depressing photo of the burned guy. I wanted to cheer her up, like she had done for me so many times.

  “I feel like I should have tried to be friends with this guy, this”—she paused and looked at the file lying on my bed—“Paul. Maybe I could have done something, noticed something, told the nurses.”

  I was thinking of the day I was running a fever and Olivia was the first one to notice it, to get a nurse. Maybe there was something she could have done for this guy, but who knows, maybe not. He looked like he was pretty bad off.

  I blinked no at her. She couldn’t beat herself up over this. “I’m having a shitty day,” Olivia explained. “A lot of doubt, a lot of thinking.” She clicked off the bedside lamp, moved behind the chair, and pushed me out the doorway, pausing to be sure we were alone first. The hallway felt warmer than my room; it felt good to be in the light. My room was creeping me out after seeing that picture of the guy who was there before me.

  “I would say we should try for a midnight stroll, but it’s about twenty degrees out there, so …” She pushed me slowly down the hall, then turned my chair into the TV room and closed the door behind us before pushing me over to the computer table and pulling up a chair.

  The room was dark, but it wasn’t as scary as my room, and I was happy for the change of scenery. “So I guess you heard me crying before, when you were asleep?” I wanted to blink yes, because I did have some idea, but instead I blinked no. I wanted her to tell me herself.

  She curled up in the chair, pulling her robe over her legs. “I told you about that guy, Paul, how he had visitors at first. Then, slowly, they stopped coming.” She paused and looked at my face in the darkness, studying my reaction. “When’s the last time I had a visitor? Not my mom, I mean a friend. Anyone. Do you know?”

  I tried to think, but I couldn’t remember her ever having a friend come to visit. Her mom was the only person who came. I hoped that our little party today hadn’t been what started her thinking this, but I was pretty sure it had. “You know why I don’t have any friends visiting me? They stopped coming. They stopped coming because they want to see this girl.” Olivia stood and struck a ballerina pose, up on one toe, her head cocked to the side. Suddenly, she twirled in a perfect circle on her toe, then stopped, looking me dead in the eye. “They want to see this girl.” She danced effortlessly across the room, her robe flowing behind her like a white dress. She spun and danced back to me, stopping close to the chair. I could hear her breathing.

  “They don’t want this girl.” She yanked up her sleeve, showing me her shunt, that angry piece of plastic shoved under her skin, held in place with medical tape. “They don’t want to see the girl whose hair is falling out”—she grabbed her ponytail and came away with a handful of dark hair—“whose skin is pasty, the girl who doesn’t smile.” She leaned in, so close that I could feel her breath on my face, and gave me a hateful look. “Nobody wants this girl,” she said slowly. She was so angry; I’d never seen her like this. And it frightened me.

  She slumped back into her chair and put her head into her hands for a moment, then looked up at me. “So you know what was weird to me today? After dumping you, weeks ago, little blondie girlfriend just shows up here today, trots in like she owns the place, little powwow with the parents while your other buddy takes you on a stroll. The perfect girlfriend. Don’t you think that’s strange?” Olivia squinted her eyes and stared at me.

  She turned to the computer and clicked it on. I was nervous about what she was going to show me. Did Allie have a new boyfriend? Was she going to show me something about my friends that I didn’t want to see? She went again to the video site, and I watched as she typed in “BMX racing.” When a list of videos popped up, she clicked the first one and sat back to watch it play. I didn’t like watching it. Seeing other guys getting air and hitting jumps while I was in this chair was not my idea of a good time. Why was she showing me this?

  “You know why Allie was here today?” She said Allie’s name like it put knives in her mouth. “She was here because she wants that guy.” Olivia poked her finger at the screen, pointing out the guy who was in the lead. He was in full gear, matching leathers and jacket, cool race helmet. “She wants that guy, and so does Mike, and so do your parents. And now, with this surgery, they think they’re going to get that guy back.” Olivia paused the image on the screen on a close-up of a guy hitting a corner hard, mud splashing from his tires and hitting the camera lens.

  Olivia scooted her chair close to mine and her put her hands on the armrests. “They don’t care how risky it is for you, that there’s a good chance you’ll die rather than be okay again. They don’t care, because that’s how much they don’t want this.” She poked my chest hard with her finger.

  “Allie dumped you because she wants the biker guy, she wants the handsome guy, she wants to walk down the hall with that guy, Mr. Popular”—she pointed at the screen again—“not this guy”—she hit my chest hard and I flinched. “Did you feel that?” she asked, surprised. “You did feel that, didn’t you? See!” She jumped up from the chair and spun around again, suddenly happy. “The doctors said you would get feeling back on your own, if you just waited, if you were patient. You don’t need this surgery next week. You don’t need it! You can get better slowly, safely—we can get better together. Me and you. Here.” She smiled for the first time all night and knelt down in front of me, lifting my hand to her face, placing my palm on her cheek. I wished that I could feel it, feel her softness, her warmth, but I felt nothing.

  “I don’t care how long it takes, because I love you, West. I love you.” She emphasized the last word, making it clear that she didn’t care what state my body was in. Moments like these, when I was dying to wrap her in my arms, being trapped in this body was so frustrating, it was torture. What she didn’t understand, what I was aching to tell her, was that I wanted to get better not just to get back to my old life, but for her, too. I wanted to help her get better, to get out of here. Wasn’t that what she wanted? For both of us to be free of this place?

  I looked into her eyes. She had just told me that she loved me. That wasn’t lost in everything else. I heard it. And I loved her, too. As crazy and complicated as she was, as insane as it was to fall in love with a girl you’ve never actually talked to, we were in love. It was that simple. And she was worried about me. But she didn’t need to be. I kn
ew it was all going to work out. I just had to convince her.

  “And the dreams—your dreams, my dreams—about this place, about that guy. Those aren’t an accident. That means something. I know you want to just brush it away and forget, but you know it’s all connected. We’re connected.” She put my hand back down and laid her head into my lap, sighing.

  Then suddenly she pulled her head up to stare at me. “I have an idea. Let me talk to your mom. She’ll be here tomorrow. Let me just talk to her for two minutes. I think there’s stuff in your file that they aren’t telling her. Stuff that I looked up online. Things she might not know.”

  Did I want Olivia talking to my mom? She had been on the fence about the surgery from the beginning. A concerned patient telling her that she had looked into my file, seen something there … it wouldn’t take much for my mom to change her mind, to pull the plug on the whole thing. A few words from Olivia, and my chance for surgery, for getting out of here, would be over.

  I blinked no.

  “No, you don’t want me to talk to your mom? Does that mean you’ll tell her that you don’t want the surgery yourself?”

  I waited a moment, terrified of Olivia’s reaction.

  I blinked no.

  “What do you mean, no? You’re just going to do it—you’re just going to let them cut you open?”

  The way she put it sounded so barbaric, but I had to blink yes. I wanted the surgery, no matter what.

  “So even after all this, after everything I’m telling you, after everything I’ve done for you. You know, I could have gotten in a lot of trouble looking in those files; I could get in a lot of trouble for just being in your room, much less taking you out like this.” She motioned to the room. “After all that, you’re telling me you want to go ahead with it? You’re ready to die for these people, for what they want you to be?”

  Olivia was wrong. I wasn’t going to die, and I wasn’t doing it for them. I was doing it for me, for us. I couldn’t stay here forever with her like this. I wanted out, whichever way out was.