Second Lives

by P. D. Cacek

  Jamie opened his eyes and Ryan let go of his hand and backed away.

  “What’s wrong with his eyes?” Ryan asked, but no one heard him. They were all listening to Jamie and the strange words he was saying in a voice Ryan didn’t know. Either the near drowning had deepened Jamie’s usual clear tenor to a gravely baritone or he’d done something to injure Jamie’s throat when he was doing CPR.

  But that didn’t explain what happened to Jamie’s eyes.

  “His eyes are the wrong color.”

  “I don’t know,” the orderly said. “I mean, ah…ich vais nicht, but I will, wait. Varten, varten.”

  The man looked at Ryan. “It’s been a long time since I had to do that, but I think I got the gist of what he’s asking. My grandfather was Jewish and when I was little he taught me Yiddish because it’s sort of the universal language for Jews and—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The man shrugged. “Sometimes when a person goes through a traumatic event they revert back to the first language they learned and—”

  “Jamie’s not Jewish, he’s an Episcopalian from El Segundo.”

  Jamie reached up and touched the orderly’s arm, lifting his head slightly to whisper something else that wasn’t in English.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he asked and Jamie’s chocolate-brown eyes focused on him. “And what happened to his eyes?”

  “What’s wrong with his eyes?” the doctor asked at the same time the orderly said, “He’s still asking about Esther.”

  “Who’s Esther?”

  “His daughter. He wants to know if she got away from the men.”

  Ryan shook his head. “This is crazy. Jamie doesn’t have a daughter and he doesn’t speak Yiddish and his eyes are gray! What happened to him?”

  But before anyone could answer, or try to make up something that sounded like an answer, the orderly asked Jamie another question.

  And Jamie answered, “Aryeh Rosenberg.”

  “Who’s that?” Ryan asked.

  “Him.” The orderly nodded down at Jamie. “That’s who he says he is. Aryeh Rosenberg.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “She’s back.”

  Well, that’s more like i—

  * * *

  It! Pain!

  “Agh!”

  It was her voice, she knew it was her voice, but the pain made it echo back and forth through the darkness surrounding her. It hurts! The pain was like nothing she’d ever felt before, like fire burning a hole in her chest and there was nothing she could do to put it out. The pain was trying to kill her, it wanted her dead.

  And the only thing she could do about it, the absolute only thing, was to scream into the darkness and hope someone heard her.

  “AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!”

  A voice answered.

  “I know, I know, shh. Are you in much pain?”

  Was the voice kidding? “Aaa-HAAAAA.”

  The voice had a hand and it took hers. “Squeeze my hand. Come on, squeeze it.”

  She squeezed and the pain laughed at her. Dumb pain.

  “Good girl.” The voice’s hand patted hers. “That was great. Now, can you open your eyes for me? Come on, try. Open your eyes. Come on, you can do it.”

  The pain tightened the darkness over her face. Yeah, go on…try. I won’t do anything. So she tried to open her eyes, but the pain lied and burrowed deeper into her chest. Bad, evil, dumb pain! “Hurt.”

  “I know,” the voice said, “I know it hurts and we’ll give you something to help, but you have to open your eyes first. Come on, try.”

  Her eyes opened…and closed so fast she didn’t actually see anything but a watery blur, but the voice seemed happy enough.

  “Great, that was great. Okay, one more question, on a scale of one to ten, how bad’s the pain?”

  If she’d had the energy she would have shown the voice with the middle finger of her right hand.

  “…hundred and five.”

  The voice laughed. “Okay, you can go back to sleep now.”

  A warm tingle rushed up her arm and into her chest and both of them – she and the pain – went to sleep.

  * * *

  And woke up on the subway.

  The subway?

  A quick look around proved it. She was on the subway and she must have gone shopping because there was a bright pink shopping bag on her lap. She didn’t remember buying anything but she must have and it must have been really expensive. The silver logo on the front of the bag was very pretty, but the script was so fancy, with a lot of doodads and curlicues, she couldn’t make out the name of the store, but she knew it was probably from one of the shops at the South Bay Galleria. One of the places with a French name she could never remember. They weren’t the kinds of stores she and her friends usually shopped at – those bright and shiny overpriced places with their Evita-like salesladies who sneered and glared and followed you around like they thought you were going to steal something (as if) – so she had no idea why a bag like that would be in her lap….

  Or what was in it.

  “Why don’t you take a peek?”

  She felt herself blush – like she’d been caught doing something nasty – and looked up. The woman – who she would have sworn hadn’t been there a moment before – was sitting on the bench seat directly across the center aisle from her, her body swaying in time with the motion of the subway car. The woman was about her mom’s age, around forty, but dressed a whole lot better. Her hair and makeup and outfit were the kind of things that came in pink bags with silver logos no one could read.

  “Is this yours?” she asked the woman, dipping her chin toward the bag.

  “It was,” the woman answered and turned to look out the window behind her.

  But there was nothing to see beyond the glass but darkness. They must have been going through a tunnel and that meant she couldn’t be on the Metro Green Line. She and her friends took the Metro Green down to Redondo Beach all the time but she didn’t remember ever going through a tunnel before.

  Maybe it wasn’t the Green, but if it wasn’t, what line was she on? And where were her friends? She never went on the subway without her friends, it was just too boring.

  She was about to ask the fashion-plate woman where the train was going when the woman turned back and nodded at the bag.

  “That was mine,” the woman repeated, “but not anymore. Go ahead…look.”

  She looked down at the bag but shook her head, suddenly afraid because they were the only two people in the car. She’d never seen the subway that empty before.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Other places.” The woman’s bright red lips curled into a smile. “Go on, look in the bag.”

  She recognized the tone; it was the same one her mom used to tell her to clean up her room. It was an order, not a request. Do it now. Right now. This minute.

  She nodded, but her fingers only got as far as the layer of shiny incandescent tissue that peeked out the top of the bag before stopping. “I don’t want to.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” the woman said.

  “But what is it?”

  “Mine. It was mine.”

  She made a face. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t, but open it anyway.”

  She was still shaking her head no when her hands moved by themselves and parted the tissue paper. When nothing jumped out at her, she dipped deeper until she felt something warm and soft and yielding.

  Wool? Cotton? Silk? She sank her fingers deep into the material, if that’s what it was, and felt a small tingle against her skin.

  “What is it?” she asked the woman.

  “Something I don’t need any more. Why don’t you take it out and try it on for size?”

  This ti
me there was no hesitation. Leaning forward, she set the bag on the subway car’s scuffed floor then sat back, pulling the material out of the bag.

  And screamed.

  Maggot-pale and pulsating, the jellied mass of flesh glistened beneath the subway car’s fluorescent lights. When she tried to shake it off, it tightened and oozed up her arms and over her head like in that movie about an alien blob she thought was really dumb until that moment.

  She could see the woman through the translucent flesh as it devoured her.

  “Tell Dr. Stanton Helen said ‘goodbye’,” the woman said.

  * * *

  Her mouth tasted like the inside of a used cat box.

  God, what a dream.

  Yawning, she started to turn over and bury her face into the pillow the way she always did when her mom called her – too early – to get ready for school and—

  PAIN!

  Her eyes flew open and there was only a white nothingness above her. MOM! Then a face that wasn’t her mother’s moved between her and the white nothing.

  “How’re you doing?”

  “M-m—”

  “It’s okay,” the face said, “your throat’s going to be a little sore from intubation. I’ll get you some water, but can you tell me how you feel?”

  “H-h-urt.” Her throat didn’t just hurt, it felt on fire. “Hurt.”

  “Okay, we can fix that,” the face said and went away. A moment later the white nothingness turned gray then black and winked out.

  * * *

  “Helen?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Open your eyes, Helen.”

  “Where…?” She frowned. It was really hard to talk.

  “You’re still in recovery, Helen. How do you feel?”

  She closed her eyes.

  * * *

  The pain woke her up.

  “AHHHH!”

  Before the echoes died, she heard the soft scuff of shoes running toward her.

  “Whoa, shh…you’re okay. Take it easy, shh. Slow breaths, that’s right. Nice and slow. There you go.”

  Slowly, too slowly, the pain subsided enough for her to open her eyes.

  A woman stood over her, a different woman than the one in the subway car dream. Only a dream. The woman in the dream had been dressed to the nines, but this one was wearing a lavender smock top that really didn’t do anything for her complexion.

  “Purple’s not your color,” she told the woman.

  “I’ll try to remember that. How’s the pain now?”

  She checked and held up one finger, the middle one. The woman laughed.

  “Well, at least you still have your sense of humor. But can you really tell me how it is?”

  She held up five fingers, closed her hand and opened it again.Ten.

  “Thank you. Now, do you know where you are?”

  She blinked her eyes and the woman came into clearer focus. The woman was wearing one of those stethoscope-y things around her neck like Billy Price wore when he played Frank Gibbs in Our Town…so that meant the woman was probably a nurse and she was in a….

  “Hospital,” she said.

  The nurse smiled. “That’s right. Now, can you take a deep breath for me?”

  She tried and gasped in pain. The nurse was getting back at her for saying she didn’t look good in purple. The bitch.

  “OW!”

  “I know, but you’re doing fine.”

  She was going to tell her dad about the nurse and get her fired.

  “Great,” she said and closed her eyes.

  When she opened them again a man about her father’s age was looking down at her.

  “Welcome back,” he said and when he smiled there were wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. Gross. He was a doctor; she knew that because he was wearing a white coat with his name embroidered over the pocket like Doogie Howser, MD. But when she tried to read the name stitched over the pocket of his coat he leaned over and flashed a light in her eyes.

  “Hey!”

  “Just want to make sure you’re in there.”

  She started to bat his hand away when the pain in her chest gave her another little reminder it was there. “Ow!”

  “Still a lot of pain?” She knew a rhetorical question when she heard one so didn’t bother to answer. “Here. Is that any better?”

  He’d fiddled with the IV stand next to her bed as he asked and the same warm, fuzzy feeling she’d felt earlier started in her toes and quickly filled up the rest of her. She sighed.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Good,” the doctor said. “Feel like talking?”

  She shrugged one shoulder and smiled when the pain didn’t react. “’Kay.”

  “Do you remember anything?”

  “I was on the Metro Green Line with some crazy lady and she gave me this really weird bag.”

  The doctor chuckled. “Sounds like you had yourself a really good analgesic dream.”

  “Um.”

  He stopped smiling and got serious. “Do you remember me talking to you the first time you woke up?”

  “I woke up before?”

  “Yes, and I told you what happened in the OR. Do you remember?”

  She yawned. “Nah huh.”

  “That’s okay.” He took her hand and he had a good hand, big and warm and strong, like her dad’s hands. “You’re still in recovery, so we can monitor you. There were some complications during surgery.”

  Complications? Surgery? She tried to remember and remembered falling.

  “What?”

  “You had another heart attack while on the operating table and your heart stopped. We had to open you up and start internal cardiac massage. You were a bit stubborn and for the space of a few seconds, and only a few seconds, we thought we’d lost you. But your heart started beating and obviously you’re okay.”

  Heart attack? Lost me? Open me up? “What?”

  “It’s okay, really.”

  What does he mean ‘okay’? It’s not okay!

  “You were on oxygen the whole time and just speaking to you, I’m fairly certain you didn’t suffer any mental diminution. Of course, we will continue to monitor you and—”

  He kept talking and while she could hear the words, she was having a really hard time understanding what he was saying. And the pain was coming back. It made it hard to breathe, so she had to do it faster just to get in enough air.

  “You…cut me…open?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I…died?”

  “Clinically, yes, but only for a few seconds. Hey, listen to me, you’re starting to hyperventilate. You have to slow down your breathing. Shh, hey, slow down. Deep breaths. Come on, take it easy. You’re fine.”

  Was he kidding? She wasn’t fine and never would be again!

  Her breathing got faster and without thinking, without remembering what he’d just said, she tried to sit up, to get away and the pain knocked her back. Then, before she could scream – MOM! – the spots between them jammed together into one big black ball and swallowed her.

  * * *

  It was a dream, like the one about the woman on the subway.

  It had to be a dream that they cut her open and she died. Had to be, because if it wasn’t that meant she would never ever be able to wear a bikini top or scoop neck shirt or tank top again and her friends would stare at her scar and pity her and—

  It was all Mr. Byrd’s fault!

  If it wasn’t a dream.

  “Helen?”

  She whimpered.

  “It’s okay, you’re okay, but you have to stay calm. Your heart’s been through a lot, you have to remember that.”

  She remembered. She remembered he said she died and they had to cut her open.

  “Okay?” he asked and she nodd
ed. “Good. Now, listen, I want you to open your eyes and look at me, okay?”

  She opened her eyes but wouldn’t look at him.

  “Helen, can you look at me?”

  “My name’s….” Her throat hurt worse than before, but she made herself swallow. “My name’s not Helen.”

  “It’s not?”

  They made a mistake. She finally looked at him. “No.”

  He was frowning. “What do you mean? You’re not Helen?”

  God, they made a mistake. They cut her open and she’d died because they thought she was someone named Helen.

  The tears started again, but this time she had to struggle just to get enough air into her lungs to take little breaths.

  “I want my mom.”

  “Um. Shh, it’s okay, calm down.” His mouth tried to smile but the rest of his face was still frowning. “Sometimes this happens after anesthetic. It’s called retrograde amnesia, but it’ll pass, just give it time and try to relax, Helen.”

  “I’M NOT HELEN!”

  She didn’t think she had enough air to scream, but she did…oh, boy, did she ever and that got things going. The doctor – who made a mistake and cut her open and let her die and gave her a scar and who her dad would sue forever – got up and said something to the nurse, who hurried out of the room.

  “Helen! Helen, you have to calm down. You’ve just had major heart surgery. Helen!”

  “I’m not HELEN!”

  But nobody seemed to be paying attention to her. The nurse came rushing back into the room and handed something to the doctor, who did something with the IV bag hanging next to her bed and….

  A warm tingle started in her arm that quickly spread up over her shoulders and down into her belly, extinguishing the pain on its way to her toes.

  “Oh.”

  The doctor handed the something back to the nurse and turned back to her.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Even her throat felt better, but she just nodded.

  “Good.”

  Her eyes closed. “Mmmm.”

  “Okay, you rest and we’ll talk about this when you wake up.”

  “Mmm hmmm.”

  He patted her hand. “You’re fine, Helen. I swear.”