by Cylin Busby
“West, honey, oh, there you are,” Norris whispered. “Come on, that’s not it, it’s this room here, the empty one.” She steered me out of Olivia’s room and back into 201.
“What’s wrong with that girl?” I asked her quickly.
“Oh, she’s been here a while. She’s PVS, not like you.”
“PVS?”
“Persistent vegetative state,” Norris explained, moving a pile of linens to the bottom of the empty bed in my old room. “We all knew you were going to be okay—well, I did. Most folks like you do wake up—some don’t do as well as you’re doing, but they almost always come back to us.”
“And what about her?” I asked, fearing that I already knew the answer.
Norris shook her head. “No, she’s got no brain activity. It’s real sad, isn’t it? That’s why I think you are a miracle. You should always remember that, okay?”
Olivia was real. It had happened. But she would never wake up. The girl I met, the girl I fell in love with wasn’t alive—she was a ghost. Her body was in the room next door, but she wasn’t really here. I would never see Olivia, my Olivia, again.
Chapter 25
When Mom found me, standing in my old room with tears running down my face, she wasn’t too happy. “What are you doing in here?” she demanded, looking at Norris.
“I wanted to see it, Mom. I asked her,” I told her quickly, wiping my cheeks, before she blamed the nurse.
“I didn’t know it would be so upsetting,” Norris explained. “I think he’s just happy, aren’t you?” Norris put her hand on my back.
“It’s time to go; they’ll be wondering where we are,” Mom said curtly. She touched my arm but I pulled away.
Norris could tell that Mom was pissed, but she just stayed calm. “West, anytime you want, you come back and visit me. I usually go on about six in the evening, okay? I mean that, anytime.” She winked at me as Mom led me out of the room.
“What were you doing in there?” Mom asked angrily as soon as we were out of earshot.
“What’s the big deal?” Inside I felt like my mind was bubbling over, about to explode. But she had no idea what I had just seen, what had just happened to me. How much my life had changed in just the few minutes she wasn’t by my side. Part of me wanted to turn her around and show her room 203. Show her Olivia. Show her it was real, it had happened. But the other part of me knew she still wouldn’t believe it. Just because the girl looked like the girl I imagined didn’t make it real to her. So I knew her name. So I knew how she looked before. Mom would find some way to explain it away. The psychologist would have some new diagnosis. Seeing Olivia didn’t change anything for anyone but me. How could they understand? No one would ever understand. No one but Olivia and me.
Mom went on talking: “I just … I didn’t know where you were.” She paused to smile and wave good-bye at the guard at the front desk, then turned back to scold me. “You scared me; I was looking for you.”
“Mom, I’m okay!” I practically yelled. “Just drop it. I don’t want to talk about it.” I just needed her to be quiet for a minute. I needed to think. We walked through the sliding door out the front sidewalk where a woman was standing, smoking.
“Fine. I’ll go get the car,” Mom said. “Stay here.” She looked at me pointedly.
“I won’t move.” I scowled at her. So much for our first outing. I looked over at the woman to see if she had caught any of our embarrassing fight, and realized that I had seen her before. Dark hair, long coat.
It was Olivia’s mom.
“Hello,” she said after I’d been staring at her for a few moments. I had forgotten about her beautiful voice, the lilt of her French accent.
“I’m sorry, you just—you look familiar.” I shook my head, trying to think of what to say next.
“You’re visiting someone?” She motioned toward the doors. When I nodded yes, she went on. “Also me. That’s probably why I look familiar.” Her smile was so much like Olivia’s, it startled me. “How old are you?” she asked, stubbing out her cigarette on the sidewalk with her heel.
“Seventeen.”
She nodded. “My daughter is about your age.” Her smile was sad.
“Oh.” It was on the tip of my tongue to say I know. I know your daughter. I could see Mom’s car pulling around and into the cul-de-sac. I had to make this quick, and not too obvious. “Is she a patient?”
She nodded. “Two years.” I held my breath, hoping she would say more. “When they found her, she wasn’t breathing. We don’t know how long.” She looked down at her gloves for a moment. “Long enough.”
“What happened to her?” I asked before I could stop myself. Part of me didn’t want to hear the answer. Part of me already knew what she would say.
She cleared her throat. “She had been, how do you say it? Violée. Assaulted.”
Olivia didn’t have an eating disorder. That’s not why she was here. Of course she didn’t. She never told me what had happened to her. I never wanted to think too hard about it.
But I knew. Somehow, I had always known.
I was back in the dream. But this time, I wasn’t looking at him. At the blood on his hands. I was looking at her. For the first time, I looked down at the girl on the ground. Her white leotard torn and wrenched down in the front, splattered with dark blood. Around her neck a thin pink scarf, tight, cutting into the skin. She’s coughing, choking on her own blood.
Mom gave a short honk.
“I believe your ride is here,” Olivia’s mom said. “It was nice to meet you.” She leaned in and I could see that her eyes were exactly the same as Olivia’s—same color, same shape, but with small wrinkles around them. “I’m Sophie.” She took her glove off and put her hand out to mine.
I hesitated, wondering if I should make up a name, not tell her the truth. “I’m West.” I took her hand in mine and felt the same small, strong grip as her daughter’s.
“Well, West, until we meet again.” I knew Mom was watching us, so I quickly turned away and headed to the car. Mom got out and put my crutches across the back seat. She watched as Olivia’s mom went through the sliding door and back into the hospital.
“Was that one of the other nurses?” Mom asked casually.
“No, just some woman.” As we pulled away, I watched out the window until the hospital disappeared on the horizon. It felt like a part of me had been left behind there, and there was no way I could ever get it back.
Mom talked the entire ride; I caught only some of it. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea … you should mention this to your psychologist….” Her words all jumbled together, I didn’t care about what she was saying. The sick feeling in my stomach was one of realization. No one—not Mom, not the psychologist, not Norris or Mike or even Olivia’s mom was going to be able to help me out of this. No one could understand. No one would believe me. I was alone. But I knew one thing: I wasn’t insane. It had happened. Olivia was real. And no one was going to take her away from me again.
Chapter 26
The next day, when the psychologist came in for our meeting, I was ready for her. I knew my mom had probably already spoken to her, or the other doctors, and told them about the hospital yesterday, how I had freaked out, cried seeing my old room. They didn’t know the whole story, but it didn’t really matter. I couldn’t hide my reaction yesterday, but now I was ready to explain it away.
On the treadmill that morning, I had walked without using the handrails. Just walking, with braces on, but still. This was progress. And as I thought about what happened yesterday, what I had seen at that hospital, I realized something. No one had been where I had been. No one else—not my parents, my friends, not the doctors, the psychologists—none of them knew what I had been through. What it was like to be in a coma. What things I had seen or done or felt. Who was there with me. They didn’t know. And trying to explain it to them would just make them think I was crazy. That I needed help. They would keep me here longer, think that I couldn’t cut it at
home, or at school. So I needed to act like they wanted me to act. To stop talking about Olivia. To act like I had forgotten all about that. About her. It was the only way to get out of here and get on with what I needed to do. I had made Olivia a promise that I would come back for her, no matter what. I didn’t know what that meant, but I had to figure it out. And being stuck in here, or worse yet, in a loony bin, was no way to do that. I resolved to be the most normal, happy, cheerful former coma patient anyone had ever seen. I was going to put a smile on my face and act like everything was grand. That was the only way.
I took a shower and got dressed to sit down with the psychologist. I knew I couldn’t be too forced, too happy, but I was ready to say what she needed to hear. And it worked.
“Your mother tells me you had a visit to Wilson Center yesterday. Do you want to talk about that?”
I explained what it was like, the overwhelming emotions I felt at seeing my room. But how happy and grateful I was to be better, to be moving on.
“It can be very emotional to see those other patients there, the ones who are in a similar situation to what you were in. Do you think it was seeing them that made you feel that way?”
“I didn’t really see any other patients,” I lied. “It was just the memory of being there, you know, being powerless and hopeless, like we talked about.”
“And last night—any dreams? Did that dream about the man attacking someone come back again?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I haven’t had that dream since I left Wilson. I guess I only had it there.” That was actually the truth, but now I knew why. The dream was connected to Olivia—to her attack, not to Wilson, and not to me. But I wasn’t about to tell the doctor that.
“I think you haven’t had that dream since your surgery, since you regained the control of your body. When you lost that sense of being powerless, the dream stopped at the same time.”
I could tell she was really pleased with herself, with her theory. And actually, I’m sure it was grounded in some psychology truths. But she didn’t know the whole story. “Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that,” I told her, trying to look thoughtful. “That really makes sense.” I watched her face to be sure I wasn’t laying it on too thick.
We talked a little bit about my mom and her reaction to being at the hospital, and about being with me out for the first time since my accident, and then wrapped up the session. I was relieved she hadn’t asked about Olivia at all. “Next week I hear you’ll be an outpatient, so I’ll only be seeing you once a week, on Wednesday.” She watched my face.
“Yeah, I think that sounds good.”
“But West, I want you to know that I’m always here for you, and if you feel like you need to talk more than that, we can increase our sessions to twice a week. You can also call me if you find that the transition to home life is harder than you thought. Your mom has my card with my direct line on it. You use it if you need to, okay?”
I nodded and tried to look very serious, but inside I was celebrating. Only once a week, I could do that. I could hold it together.
When I had time to think over the next couple of days—on the treadmill or in bed at night—my mind kept returning to the conversation with Olivia’s mom. I would play it back like I was watching a movie; every word she said, every subtle thing, everything I said. That Olivia had been attacked was not actually a surprise to me, I found. It wasn’t startling. Somehow I knew it; from the moment she said it, the memory of the dream washed over me and I knew it. It felt like an old memory—like when you smell some type of food and it brings you back to the cafeteria in your kindergarten school. Suddenly you are there, really there; you remember everything—the tile on the floor, what the little table was like, the milk carton in front of you. When her mom said the word assaulted, I knew. Yes. But I had always known, I just hadn’t wanted to know. Olivia had been hurt, that was clear. Something terrible had happened to her, but she didn’t want to talk about it, and I was happy to let it go. I didn’t want to think about someone doing that to her. But she showed me, and I saw it instead, in my dreams, even though my brain didn’t want to figure it out. Didn’t want to put the pieces together. But now that I had, there was no removing that knowledge. My room at Wilson was haunted, but not by a former patient. It was haunted by Olivia, by what had happened to her, by the girl that she was before. I wondered if she even knew. Did she know what had happened to her or was she like me, unwilling to examine it? Not ready to really know?
I wanted to know more about her attacker—had he been caught, did he look exactly like the man in my dreams? I had computer access at the center, and I had used it just a few times. Sometimes they had me practice my typing on the keyboard; I was still a little rusty with the fine motor skills. But I was too paranoid to look up anything about Olivia and her case. What if they could trace the things I was doing on the center’s computer? That would have to wait until I was home, where I knew how to clear the search memory quickly and easily, so my parents wouldn’t know what I was doing.
Something about knowing the truth made the pattern of my days at the center less of a struggle. I wasn’t constantly doubting myself, or worrying. I eased into my schedule and made more progress. I was happier. After weeks of constantly restraining my thoughts, of telling myself that Olivia wasn’t real, now I knew she was. When I thought of her, it made me smile. She was real, I knew where she was, and I knew that I could see her again. Maybe not the way I used to, but she was real. And that made all the difference. I had a secret, and something about that was exciting. Like when you have a crush on someone and you feel extra alive for no reason. I felt like that. I had something again—what had been taken away from me was returned. Not the way I thought it would be, but it was better than nothing, than being told the girl I was in love with didn’t exist. She did; I had seen her. That was enough to keep me going for now.
When Mike came to visit the day before my release, he noticed the difference. He brought some new tunes and they let us listen to his iPod in a corner of the physical therapy room, even though a few other patients were in there. No one seemed to mind. We played a few rounds of the card game Spit—something that my cognitive therapist had taught me. It was supposed to help with my mental agility, as he called it, and it seemed to be working. “Dang, for somebody with brain damage, you are kicking my ass,” Mike joked after I beat him a second time.
“I don’t really have brain damage,” I explained. “I just have to get used to using my mind again.”
“A three-month nap will do that to you.” Mike smiled.
“Yeah, it’s pretty pathetic that I’ve been in a coma and I’m still better than you at cards,” I pointed out.
“Oh it’s on, coma boy,” Mike said, dealing out the cards for a rematch. At the end of the afternoon, I had won nine times, he had seven, so we were pretty close, but still … I was feeling pretty good, and it must have been clear. When Mike was leaving he pulled me in for a bro hug and then hesitated at the door. “Look, not to get all romantic on you or anything, but I’m glad you’re back. I’m glad you’re like—you—again.” Mike looked embarrassed.
“Yeah, I am feeling pretty good. You can tell?”
Mike nodded. “When you first woke up, you were scary—like seriously scary—because you’d seem normal, but then you weren’t … I was worried.” His face was serious. “But now, I mean, they’re letting you go home, right?”
He looked like he doubted himself, so I had to reassure him. “Tomorrow. I think I’m ready. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt normal, so thanks for noticing.”
Mike smiled. “What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t warn you when you were acting loco?” He punched my arm as he turned to go. I was glad to see him slip back into his old self. When he got serious, it scared me. “Call me when you’re home, I’ll come over. I think Xbox will totally help you with that ‘fine motor skill’ shit you were talking about.”
I had to laugh, but he was probably right. The contr
ols for some of those games were pretty complicated. As I watched Mike walk to his car, I realized that I wasn’t going to be doing a lot of anything else when I got home. I wasn’t going back to school this year, that had already been decided. I would start my junior year over in the fall, a total redo. I was bummed that Mike and Allie would be seniors without me, but the upside was that this would give me a chance to get my grades up. I’d been coasting on a C average, spending more time biking than studying. But that would all be different now.
The next morning, both Mom and Dad came to get me. My room was already packed up, and we went into the therapy room to say good-bye to everyone. I would be back tomorrow for an all-day appointment, so this wasn’t really good-bye. Still, it felt sort of significant. The stroke lady gave me a hug, even though she knew she would see me again, probably the next day. “I’m so happy for you,” she said, smiling in her lopsided way. I was happy for me too.
“Do you want to stop for lunch?” Dad offered, climbing behind the wheel of Mom’s car.
“I kind of just want to get home,” I admitted, and Mom gave me a quick smile.
“I can make us sandwiches when we get to the house,” she offered. We had my crutches in the trunk, but I didn’t really need them anymore. I was able to get by pretty well with just the braces on, though I walked stiffly. They told me I would always be a little tight, because of the fusion in my spine.
When we reached the house, I was surprised to see how unchanged everything was. My room was cleaned up, things put away and the bed made, which I knew I hadn’t done, but otherwise the same as I remembered it. I looked over at my laptop sitting on my desk, happy to see it was there, and that I could use it when I got a minute away from my parents.
Mom made lunch and we all sat around the table talking until Dad said he had to go and take a meeting by phone. “I’ll just be at the hotel—this shouldn’t take long. I was thinking I’d like to take you two out to dinner tonight, if you’re up for it?”