by Cylin Busby
I glanced at the machine next to the bed that registered her heartbeat, and it stayed rhythmic and calm.
She was one of them. And she didn’t know it.
She didn’t know that she wasn’t going to get better. That’s what they were all waiting for. Paul. The little girl, Katie. Olivia. Me, when I was there. We all wanted to live again. But some of us were never going to make it back. I had been lucky.
“I don’t want you to be like them.” I laid my head on her shoulder and listened to the sound of her heart beating. I hoped she could hear me, could understand me. Minutes passed as we sat quietly like that, listening to the sounds of her body still working, being kept alive. We were together, both of us, in this room. Our bodies were here. But I knew that part of her wasn’t here. And it never would be.
I looked at the wires to the machines, plugged into the wall, and into each other. It wouldn’t take much to show her I had kept my promise. That I had come back for her. I realized what Olivia had taught me; she had shown me how to disconnect the ventilator without setting off alarms, without signaling the nurses. She had known all about the feeding tube, the IV. How to disconnect the shunt so no one would know. It would be hours before they noticed. She knew their schedule, and I did, too. Why did she show me those things, unless she wanted me to use that knowledge?
I thought about the steps I would need to go through. I could do it. If that’s what she wanted.
“Olivia.” I looked at her face. “I can get you out of here. Tell me if that’s what you want, and I’ll do it.” I studied her, waiting for a sign. “Blink once for yes, like you taught me.”
Her face remained calm and beautiful, silent. “Blink,” I begged. “Please, Olivia, show me that you understand.” I sat watching her, but there was no change. “I can’t leave you like this, with the rest of them. You don’t belong here.”
“Oh—” a voice said suddenly behind me, and I jerked away from Olivia, spinning around to see a young nurse pushing a cart into the room. “I didn’t know Ms. Kemple had a visitor. So nice to see a friend here.” The nurse smiled.
I looked back at Olivia’s face, but it was unchanged. The way the nurse talked to her made me sick, that cloying baby talk. I wanted to shake Olivia, to make her understand. To make her answer me. Did she know I was here at all?
I grabbed my coat and stood to leave.
“Don’t go on my account … ,” the nurse started to say, but I left the room without a backward glance. I couldn’t sit there and stare at Olivia—at that girl in the bed—any longer. Coming here had been a mistake. I couldn’t help her; I couldn’t help any of them. I had failed. I had let her down. I walked by the nurses’ station on my way to the doors. Norris was there, doing some paperwork. I looked at her silently, and she nodded.
“You call me anytime. Your mom has my number. I mean that, anytime at all,” she said. I gave her a weak smile and moved to the door before she could stand up. I didn’t want to drag it out—I didn’t want another hug from her, or a long good-bye. I just wanted to get out of the dimly lit hallway, the open door to room 203, the sounds of machines clicking and beeping, keeping all these people alive.
When I stepped outside, I saw the cab waiting for me. I opened the back door and climbed in. The driver was staring out the windshield to the mountains on the horizon. “Snow’s melting,” he said without looking back at me. I looked up and saw that he was right. The soft white snow-caps that I had seen from my hospital window for all those months were now gone, replaced with the sharp black mountain range that formed the familiar skyline for the city. He slipped the car into gear without even asking where I wanted to go. I guess he assumed I was ready to go home, and I was. He didn’t try to make conversation on the drive back, and I was grateful for the silence.
When we got back to my house, I again pulled out my wallet to pay, noticing for the first time that the electronic taximeter was black—he hadn’t turned it on. “Save your money, kid,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “I hope your friend gets out of that place soon.”
I opened the back door. “Me too,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Me too.”
Chapter 29
I’m holding her hand, warm and small in mine. She looks the same, the girl I knew: her hair is long and dark and swirls around her face and the white pillow. “I’ve never had a friend that I could trust like you, West. You said you would come back for me, and you did.” She smiles, and her face takes on a warm light. “I had never been in love before I met you,” she says quietly. “You showed me. You showed me what love is.” Her eyes meet mine. “Thank you, West.” Such a small thing to say—thank you—but I feel her words wash over me and I’m overwhelmed. It’s all okay. I didn’t let her down. I came back for her. She knows I’m here. She’s not trapped in that dark place anymore, with the rest of them. She’s with me, safe.
“I’m so tired. Will you stay with me? Just stay with me until I’m asleep.” Her eyes are closed, her face calm. There are no scars; she’s whole again. I look to the machine next to the bed and see that it is slowly winding down, as if I am willing it to. I want it to stop. The beeping becomes slower and slower, then fades altogether. The ventilator stops pumping. The room is quiet; we are alone. “I’m here, Olivia,” I tell her. I know that she can hear me. She’s free. I stay with her like that as the room grows dark around us. “I won’t leave,” I whisper to her. “I won’t ever leave you.”
The call came three days later. Mom was in the kitchen putting groceries away when the phone rang. I heard her say, “It’s so nice to hear your voice,” and then she went on to tell whoever was calling about how well I was doing. When I walked into the kitchen, Mom mouthed to me, “Nurse Norris,” and pointed at the phone. I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to talk to her, not yet.
“He’s in the shower right now, but I’ll have him give you a call later, or tomorrow,” Mom said, getting off the phone. “Why didn’t you want to speak to her? It’s so nice of her to call and check up on you, don’t you think? She always was my favorite nurse.” Mom turned to put something in the fridge and I was relieved she couldn’t see my face. She had no way of knowing that I just been at Wilson two days before, and obviously Norris had kept my secret for me.
“Yeah, she was my favorite too.”
“You should give her a call tomorrow,” Mom said, washing her hands at the sink. “Now, what should we have for dinner?”
I knew I wasn’t going to call Norris, not tomorrow, not ever. What would I say? I had been haunted by a dream since my visit to Wilson. I couldn’t stop thinking about Olivia being there, being trapped there. About all of them. I didn’t know how I was going to move on while she was still there. It seemed impossible. But I didn’t know what else to do. I had promised Olivia I would be there for her. I wanted to keep my promise, but I didn’t know exactly what that meant. And it was killing me.
The next day when my cell rang and flashed “unknown caller,” I picked it up without thinking. I just assumed it was my physical therapist, who usually called around that time to set up our schedule. But it wasn’t.
“West, it’s Nurse Norris. I tried you last night, but you weren’t available,” she said.
“Oh yeah, Mom told me. I’m sorry, I’ve just been busy….”
“That’s good. I’m happy to hear that you’re busy, that you’ve been getting back to your life,” Norris said.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t know what to say to her.
“West, I’m calling with some difficult news for you. Do you feel like you’re ready to hear it?”
Suddenly I felt a cold wave wash over me. I wanted to hang up on her, to pretend the call had never come. But that wouldn’t stop it from being true. “You can tell me.”
“It’s the patient from room 203, Olivia Kemple. I’m sorry to tell you that she passed. It was early yesterday morning.”
I swallowed hard but said nothing.
“Unfortunately she suffered heart failure. There was n
othing we could do. It’s not uncommon to have organ failure in a long-term coma patient.”
I was silent.
“West, are you there?”
“I’m here,” I answered.
“If you would like, I can get you the information about the memorial that her mother is planning. If you want to go. I’ll be there.”
I paused, trying to take in what she was telling me. Olivia was gone. The girl at Wilson, the body in the bed. She wasn’t being kept alive there anymore. My Olivia.
“West, I’ll be going, if you want to come with me. I’ll be there for you,” Norris went on.
“I don’t want to go,” I said quickly. “I can’t, I’m sorry.” I snapped the phone off and sat down on my bed. I didn’t want to see Olivia’s mother, in her grief, looking so much like Olivia. I knew I couldn’t face it. And her friends, the ones who never came to visit her, now standing around at her funeral, talking about how much they cared. I couldn’t look at those people without screaming. None of them could ever understand.
The Olivia I knew, the girl I met, was the real Olivia. The girl who died at Wilson—I didn’t even know that girl. The girl with the short hair, with the scarred face. That reminder of Olivia was gone. Now all I had was my memory.
Chapter 30
My eyes are closed, but I can hear the sounds of people swimming, the bright sun warm on my face. I’m lying down, and she’s next to me. When I look over at her, the sun is so bright, I can’t see her face, just her profile as she sits up. She puts up one hand to shield her eyes, the wind carries her long hair back, floating. “Who are you looking for?” I ask her, as she scans the lake. “You,” she says. “I’m looking for you.”
As I brushed my teeth, I thought about the dream. It was the same, yet different every time. Sometimes I’d be sitting up on the blanket and she was beside me, her hand on my back, or she’d be walking toward me. But we were always at the lake, and I could never see her face, just a shadow of her, her silhouette, her profile, her hair blowing. I knew it was her, but she was just out of reach. No matter what I did, how I covered my eyes, the sun was hitting her just the right way so that I couldn’t see her, not really. Not the way I used to.
“Mike’s here,” Mom called, and I threw on a T-shirt, grabbing a jacket on the way out. “Take this.” Mom tried to push a toasted bagel into my hand.
“I think we’re going to get something on the way,” I said, but she closed my fingers around the bagel. I knew she thought I was still too skinny.
“You tell him to drive slowly, carefully.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe you boys talked me into this.” But I could tell that part of her was thrilled that I was doing something normal—going to an outdoor concert with friends on a summer Saturday.
Mike honked and I kissed Mom on the cheek. “I’ll call you, and we won’t be late—the band we want to see is on this afternoon. We’ll probably bail right after that.” I bounced out the door and down the steps, feeling good and light. Sometimes in the morning, I would be stiff, and it could take some time for everything to click into place, but lately it had been easier, smoother. The physical therapy had paid off—my gait was pretty much normal now, no limp. Unless you asked me to touch my toes, you’d never know anything was wrong with me. “Don’t take up snowboarding,” the physical therapist had told me at our last session, “and you should be fine.” Snowboarding and skiing were on the list of nos because of the twisting motion, something I had lost and would never get back now that my spine was fused together in two spots. A lot of things were off-limits. But there were plenty of things I could do, things I’d never tried before, like swimming, which I was really getting into.
I started going to the pool at school as therapy—taking the weight off my legs while I did some exercises. Mike joked that I was practicing for synchronized swimming, like girls do in the Olympics. “Hey, old lady, when are you getting out of that pool?” But one of the swim coaches started giving me some tips, and then I added in the practice hours. I didn’t have a lot else to do. Plus I liked the feeling of being underwater. There was something about the silence of it, how the water blocked everything out, that focused me.
Now I was thinking of joining the team next year at school. The coach said I had the right build for it, and I needed to do something to fill those afternoons I used to spend at the ramps anyhow. I didn’t want to even let myself get to the point where I missed biking; I wanted to fill that spot with something before it had a chance to become a hole.
“Oh come on, man, that bagel reeks like a bag of onions,” Mike complained when I climbed in. “Eat it or get rid of it quick.”
“He’s nervous,” Allie offered from the front seat. “You know, little miss Erin,” she whispered.
“No, I’m not nervous. Just because I’ve been asking this girl out for six months, and she’s finally going to hang out with me, why would that make me nervous? I’m sure she’ll think it’s very cool that I drive a ten-year-old car that smells like onions, and that I’m bringing the famous coma boy and his ex-girlfriend along for our date. I’m sure that seems totally normal to her.”
I leaned up and patted his shoulder. “My mom wanted me to tell you to drive really safely, or should I remind you after you pick up Erin?”
“Now’s good,” Mike said. “Seriously, guys, don’t mess this up for me. Just be normal.”
“Oh, what will we talk about?” Allie joked. “Maybe that time Mike streaked naked through the football game last year? She might be interested in that story.”
“Oh, I know,” I chimed in. “I can tell her all that stuff you said about her when you visited me in the hospital. There was something about her legs, or was it her—”
“Yeah, okay, we get it,” Mike interrupted. He shook his head, turning the car into the neighborhood where Erin lived. “Honestly, it never fails to freak me out when you bring up stuff that I told you when you were a vegetable.” He shook his head and turned to Allie, asking her, “I mean, doesn’t that freak you out?”
Allie turned and looked back at me with a small smile. We had a long talk a couple of weeks ago about that, among other things, over coffee one afternoon. “You have this look on your face sometimes, it’s like this sadness that kills me. And I just feel … I just hope that’s not about me, or anything I did or said—or didn’t say—while you were in the hospital,” she explained as we sat in the café. She was right. The sadness wasn’t about her, but I didn’t know how to tell her what it was exactly.
“I know you’ve been through a lot. And I feel like I wasn’t there for you as much as I could have been. But I am now.” She looked down into her half-empty cup and got quiet for a moment. “I want to tell you something.” She paused, looking up at me. She got so serious, I braced myself to hear something bad, like that she’d starting dating someone. But she surprised me. “You know how if you cut down a tree, you can look at the rings and see how old it is?”
I nodded.
“In bio class, our teacher was talking about how if you look closer, you can actually tell what the weather was like for each year—when the tree got lots of rain, or when there was a drought, just based on the darkness and thickness of the rings. It helps us to study the weather from hundreds of years ago, like we can look at the rings of all these trees and figure out there was a bad drought, like, fifty years ago; it’s a living record.”
“Okay … ,” I said, trying to follow her.
She smiled. “Don’t laugh. It made me think of you. Like, if you were a tree, how this year for you, this ring, would be light, almost invisible, a drought year. It’s like a year where you almost weren’t here. But you know what? There are lots more rings for you, in the future, I just know it. Lots of good rings. Solid rings. Does that make sense?”
I looked at Allie’s blue eyes and her freckled face and felt nothing but love for her. She was a great girl, a true friend, even if we weren’t together, even if we never were again, she was someone who cared about me, an
d that’s all I needed to know. What had happened in the hospital, the way she handled my accident, it was forgiven. I reached over and took her hands across the table at the coffee shop and we sat like that a long time, in silence. Since then, every time I’d seen her, it was easier to hang out. I actually felt like we were closer than we’d ever been—closer than when we’d supposedly been in love.
Mike pulled up outside Erin’s house. “Get in the back,” he growled to Allie as Erin came out the front door. She was wearing shorts, a concert T-shirt, and a pair of cowboy boots.
“Hey,” she smiled, coming over to the passenger side door. She slid in and Mike introduced us. “I’ve been dying to meet you! You’re totally famous at school. And Mike told me we’ll both be juniors next year.”
Allie gave me a quick eye roll as she got settled in and Mike started the car. It wasn’t long before we were at the Moonlight, a diner halfway to the city, and Mike suggested we stop. “I’m in,” I said, noting that Mom had been right about the bagel. I could eat two breakfasts a day for a while and not catch up with the weight I’d managed to lose over the winter.
“So?” Mike leaned in and whispered to me as the girls walked ahead of us to get a table.
“What?” I asked. Mike motioned toward Erin, trying not to be too obvious. “Oh, she seems cool,” I admitted.
“Yeah, right? She’s it, I mean she is really it,” Mike said, and I could tell he was completely gone on this girl, a full-blown crush. It was nice to see him so happy.
When we ordered and settled in, Mike seemed to relax a little bit—once it became clear that I was not going to embarrass him, and that Erin totally looked up to Allie and hung on her every word. Mike almost squirted himself with ketchup trying to get out the last drops of an empty squeeze bottle for our fries. “I’ll grab a new one,” I said, taking the bottle from him before he did something disastrous.