by Sara Shepard
“Hello?” I call out shakily.
No answer.
What if this isn’t over? What if whoever tried to hurt me is still out there, hoping to hurt me again?
I rake my fingers down my face. My fingernails knead harder and harder until I know I’m close to drawing blood. But it isn’t satisfying enough, so I twist a lock of hair around my fingers and pull hard. The pain is sharp, eye-numbing. I stifle a yelp. And then I run upstairs as fast as I can, eager for a closed door, eager for darkness, eager to get away from whatever this is.
• • •
My bedroom is long like a bowling lane and almost as thin. On the walls are animal skulls and posters of Wednesday Addams, who was my childhood idol. On my bureau are vitamin bottles, vitamin powders, a healing stone given to me by a shaman I visited in the desert, an iPod loaded with meditation tapes that I try to use but that don’t really work, and the energy drawings I did with an art therapist that revealed my soul was a dark, twisted knot. I’m trying my hardest to prevent the tumor from invading my body again. But sometimes, I think the preventative shit is worse than the illness.
I think I saw someone running away.
I swallow hard. It’s vindicating that Desmond has confirmed this, but it scares me that such violence actually exists. Who could have pushed me?
I picture my mother’s face swirling above me yesterday in the hospital. And Bill’s, and Gabby’s. Who alerted them to come? How had they arrived so quickly? Then I remember it hadn’t been that fast—I’d been sleeping for quite a few hours before I spoke to them. But still. Is it possible they’d already been in Palm Springs? But what am I presuming, that one of them pushed me? Why would they do that? Because I’m a drain on them? Because they’re sick of my shenanigans? Because I’d done something to one of them? Something inside me rolls over with a ripple. Maybe. But why can’t I remember what that is?
I stop on Gabby again. It’s not as though we’re close. After Bill made the introductions the first time she and I met, I went into the kitchen, and she followed. I didn’t ask her to follow me. Nor did I really want her there.
“Um,” Gabby said quietly once we were alone. “I heard your dad died. So did my mom.”
I snorted. Like I was going to have that conversation. Straightening my spine, I pulled out a big bottle of vodka from the freezer. My fingers burned with cold as I unscrewed the cap, and I poured myself a tall glass.
“Want some?”
Gabby’s eyes widened. “No way.”
I tipped the glass to my lips like I was a pro. I’d never had vodka before, but I felt like I needed to establish myself with this girl early on so she knew the pecking order. I took the tiniest sip and tried not to wince. I watched Gabby stare at me in horror.
“Maybe you shouldn’t do that,” she whispered.
Then my mother and Bill walked in. My mother immediately saw the bottle on the counter. “What’s that?”
Neither of us answered. Gabby pushed her glasses up her nose.
“Who got that out?” my mother said, staring at me.
Gabby cleared her throat. “Um, I did. I just wanted to try it.”
Bill looked appalled. “You?”
“Oh, please.” My mother rolled her eyes “It was clearly Eliza.”
“No,” Gabby’s voice was stronger now. “It was me.”
I don’t know why she took the blame. I wanted to believe it was because I was so crazy and unpredictable that she thought it would be better just to defuse my actions and not make waves. But I wasn’t entirely sure. I needed to be sure. I needed her to fear me. Why I needed that so badly is something I can’t remember now, but I distinctly wrote about it in my journal: I don’t need her feeling sorry for me. She doesn’t know what I can do.
Through the years, I proved to Gabby what I could do. I locked her in a closet and stood outside reading facts about body decomposition from a criminology textbook. I put preserved animals I found at pawnshops on her pillow at night. I was a fan of fake plastic spiders in cereal bowls, a rubber dismembered hand in her backpack, and once, shoving the old child-sized coffin I kept in my room into the front entrance of the house and squeezing myself into it just before she walked through the door. Gabby had fainted when she saw me—just crumpled bonelessly to the floor, thwacking her head on the doorjamb. She’d needed stitches on her eyebrow. And yet, when Bill asked Gabby what had happened, she said she’d tripped. She never told on me for anything I did to her. She just absorbed all of it silently, stoically, pretending like it never happened.
Why didn’t she ever fight back? I heard her arguing with her friends on the phone. I hacked her email and uncovered quite a few heated debates on a Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince fan fiction message board. She lost her shit when a girl at school called her a “fuckface.” I’d called her far worse. Was she doing it because she’d figured out not reacting was the path to victory? Or was she storing up each and every incident, cataloging it carefully and referring to it often, slowly growing angrier and angrier and then downright vengeful? Was she a volcano ready to blow?
Do you really think someone would want to hurt you? Lance had asked. Gabby might have wanted to, but I just couldn’t imagine Gabby doing such a thing. She didn’t have the chutzpah.
I open my eyes and look around. The light seems different in my room. For a moment, I’ve forgotten my train of thought. I’ve had a stroke, I think frantically. But the clock says it’s only a few minutes later, and all of my limbs work. I reach for my cell phone, but I’ve received no new calls. I’m about to put the phone down when I hit the button for my saved photo gallery. There’s a video I don’t remember recording first in line in the preview window.
I press Play.
The camera pans over the hospital room I’ve just left: first the corner with the sink, then those ugly paisley drapes, then a slice of window, the view of the parking lot. I hear a small sigh. The camera shifts, then shows my body on the hospital bed: my arm, my fingers, my chin. My eyes are closed.
I look at the video’s time stamp: 10:09 p.m., yesterday night. The angle is such that I could have held the phone outstretched, selfie-style, but there was no way I’d taken it. I’d only found out my phone was in my room this morning.
Seized with an idea, I scroll back past the video to see if I had taken any pictures at the resort . . . but I hadn’t. The last photo in my camera roll was an image of an antique cymbal-playing monkey toy; a customer had brought it to the store where I work in hopes of making a trade. The monkey was old and well loved, some of its fur rubbed off, the little battery compartment on its butt rusty and corroded.
I stare into the middle distance, prickles dancing up my spine. When I purchased my phone, the setup prompts urged me to assign a security passcode, but I’d declined—I had a knack for forgetting numbers, and it seemed inevitable that I’d lock myself out again and again. I’d tried to set up fingerprint recognition, but the technology couldn’t read my print right away, so I gave up. In other words, anyone could have accessed my phone without any trouble at all. Someone easily could have recorded the video . . . but who?
I click the Details button, but all it says is that the video was taken at the hospital. I stare at the little map of Palm Springs on the screen. I’d never realized the town was such a grid.
My throat is dry. My head is throbbing. But all of a sudden, it seems foolish of me to be just lying here, inactive. I have proof now. Someone was running away. Someone followed me to that pool. Someone could still be following me now.
I push off my covers and head down the stairs. I’m still in the acid-washed jeans from the hospital, but there’s no time to change. I find my house keys at the bottom of my purse and ready them at the door. My car isn’t here, so I’ll have to take an Uber, but that won’t be a problem. Where I’m going, I’m not sure. I just have to go somewhere. I have to figure this out.
Then a hand clamps on my shoulder. I squeal and jump back. “You’re not going anywhere.”
I turn around. It’s my roommate, Kiki Ross. She slides around me, grabs my keys from my hands, and blocks the door. Her eyes are wide. Her mouth turns down with fear and possibly anger.
“Come here, Eliza,” she says in a low voice. “We need to talk.”
From The Dots
A few months later, Dot was in the hospital again. The doctors at the new hospital thought they’d fixed her with a new mixture of medications, but her seizures returned one spring day at home, shortly after lunch. The first one came on strong, with bright lights kaleidoscoping in her eyes. Her mind peeled away from her body and lay in flakes on the floor.
Dorothy hurried her back to the hospital. Back to Dr. Osuri and the children’s ward with the cheerful yellow walls and hot-air-balloon mural. Back to the same room with the television remote that only worked sporadically. Dot waited for her mother to show up. Hours passed. Finally, she rushed in, still in scrubs.
“I’m sorry,” Dot’s mother said in a begging tone. “I came as soon as I could. There was an emergency patient. I didn’t have my phone. And no one told me.” She bit her lip. “Your aunt should have called the front office like I always tell her to.”
“It’s fine,” Dot said, calmly, distantly. Dorothy was here, after all. She was off buying magazines at the gift shop.
More tests, a few days of feeling better, and then a relapse. Dot wondered what Stella, the look-alike from St. Mother Maria’s, was up to. Now, a sad-eyed woman in a brown headscarf took her blood pressure most days. She had very cold hands and made a funny sniffing sound as she checked the gauge.
All the nurses were distant this visit. Unsmiling and serious, as if they were keeping a grave secret from Dot. Dot asked Dorothy what was going on. Dorothy sniffed.
“They’re just snotty, jealous bitches. They can’t stand that we’re so pretty.”
“But they’re nice to the other kids. That one girl down the hall, Sarah? They give her lollipops, like, all the time.”
“Yes, but that’s because Sarah has a wealthy father. There’s always an angle, Dot.” Dorothy waved her finger. “Always an angle.”
And then, a good-ish day—Dot could see straight, she could eat. At lunch, an aide wheeled in a cart from the children’s lending library across the street. She must have been going to an adult ward next, because Dot noticed a Los Angeles magazine on the top of a stack on a lower shelf. When Dot saw her own face on the cover, she drew in a sharp breath. She looked shorn and dopey, her arms the circumference of pencils, her veins visible through translucent skin. Next to her was her aunt, her black hair sleek and straight, her skin flawless and her violet eyes wide. Fighters, read the big yellow caption. And then: Dorothy Banks, Magnolia Hotel resident, puts her hopes and dreams on hold to save her dying niece’s life.
Dying. The word sliced through Dot’s veins, hot as coffee. She’d certainly thought enough about death, even her own death, but she hadn’t realized she was actually, literally, dying. It seemed impossible.
She thumbed through the pages. The story was embedded among slick pieces about Beverly Hills home renovations and ads for plastic surgeons. Dot read every word of the piece, focusing on words like cancerous and inoperable and terminal. She’d never heard the doctors describe her illness in those terms before.
She ran to the bathroom and threw up pinkish, gummy chunks in the sink. When she returned to her room, Dorothy had reappeared. She was fluffing up the pillows and humming. A nurse named Lisa stood in the corner, pretending to busy herself with Dot’s medications. Then Dorothy noticed the magazine on the bed.
“Ah,” she said to Dot. “So you’ve seen it.”
“When was this picture taken?” Dot demanded, so angry her teeth were chattering.
Dorothy lowered her eyes. “A few months ago, dear. When you were at the other hospital. Don’t you remember?”
“No.” Dot tore through her memories. She tossed useless visions aside like limp T-shirts she had no interest in wearing. There was nothing in her brain about a photo shoot. She would have never allowed a photographer to take a picture of her when she looked so grotesque. But that was the trouble with her brain: sometimes, memories dropped out of her entirely, like water through a sieve.
She grabbed the magazine and stuffed it into the trash can, though not before checking out her picture one last time.
“I look awful.”
“Oh, darling. The article brings awareness to your case. Everyone will see now how sick you are. I’m thinking of starting a foundation for donations. That article is all about you!”
Lisa cleared her throat. Dorothy glanced at her and set her mouth in a line.
“The article hardly mentioned me except to say I was dying,” Dot said. It was difficult to even say the word out loud. “It said my tumor was cancerous and inoperable. I thought my tumor was gone. And no one told me I have cancer!”
“You don’t,” Lisa answered loudly.
“It says that?” Dorothy glanced at the trash can. Dot was afraid she was going to fish the magazine out, but instead she folded her hands in her lap and remained seated. “Honestly, darling, sometimes reporters—well, they exaggerate things. Look—it doesn’t matter. People probably won’t read the article. They’ll just look at the picture and the headline. That’s what’s important.”
“They’ll still see the picture of me, then.”
“You don’t look so bad.”
Dot wasn’t in the mood for lies. “Has Mom seen this?”
Her aunt’s head shot up. Her skin seemed to visibly gray. “You know, I was doing this as a favor to you. I was just trying to make sure you didn’t end up like Thomas—I’m certain there was something wrong with his brain, but no doctor would listen. It’s articles like this that get doctors to sit up and notice. But I’ll leave you alone, since that’s what you crave.” She walked out and shut the door, hard.
Dot stared at the door, shocked. Across the room, Lisa sighed.
Dot’s gaze fell numbly to the tiles on the floor. They were a faded avocado-green color and covered in scuff marks. She pushed the beaded bracelet Dorothy had given her when she first got sick around her wrist. It had a bunch of skeleton charms on it. Charm bracelets were out of favor this year at her school, but she didn’t want to take it off. That would hurt her aunt’s feelings.
Lisa glided over and touched her shoulder. “Hey there, hon. Want me to stay for a little bit? We could play Uno.”
Dot shook her head yes, then felt the ever-present tug. “Maybe bring my aunt back in, if she’s still here.”
Lisa’s face fell. “Are you sure?”
“See if she’s out there. Please?”
It took two more pleases, but Lisa did as Dot asked. Dorothy walked in with a sour look on her face.
“You must hate me,” Dot blurted.
“You’re lucky the elevator was taking a long time,” Dorothy said at the same time.
They looked up at each other. Dorothy bent down and pressed her chest to Dot’s. “Why, I could never hate you, darling,” she said, looking into Dot’s eyes, as honest as she’d ever been. “I’m your biggest fan.”
A few days after the Los Angeles incident, Dorothy came into Dot’s room excitedly. Dot looked at her through a curtain of exhaustion. She’d been having so many seizures lately. They pounded her hard, huge waves rolling onto a rocky shore. Her brain actually felt tired from so much quaking. Sometimes, in quiet moments, she thought death might be kind of nice. Not nearly as chaotic, anyway.
“The doctors are having a meeting about your condition,” Dorothy crowed. “Apparently, you’re a bit of a medical mystery. And guess what? They’re letting me sit in on it! Isn’t that wonderful?”
Dot blinked at her. She lingered on the medical mystery part.
Dorothy preened about the room. “Thank God they finally respect me. Now we’ll be sure they aren’t lying to us. I’ll get the real dirt.”
“You think the doctors are lying?” Dot asked. Dorothy didn’t an
swer.
Dorothy wore a silk caftan and Chanel pumps for the meeting. She hired a makeup artist to do her face. “Wish me luck,” she said before she went into the conference room. The meeting was at ten a.m.; the clock crawled to eleven, and then twelve, and still no Dorothy. At 12:30, Dorothy finally returned. She’d eaten off all her lipstick, and she was muttering.
“What happened?” Dot asked, turning off Days of Our Lives.
“The doctors are wrong,” Dorothy said. “It’s asinine. Irresponsible.”
Dot felt a pull in her chest. “What did they say?”
Had the tumor returned? Would she have to endure radiation again, that hot line turning her insides to liquid, reducing her to molten piles of stones? It was bizarre—despite all the seizures, her MRIs kept coming back clean. But maybe the scans weren’t catching everything.
“They’re going to transfer you. They want you in the ICU, without visitors. They’re saying it’s so they can rule out anything environmental that might be causing your seizures. But I think that’s bullshit. I think it’s a conspiracy.”
“They’re putting me in a room without visitors?”
“I’m filing a complaint, don’t you worry, but I’m not sure it’s up to me anymore.” Dorothy’s gaze shot to Dot. Her pupils were hard, black pins. “What have you been saying about me?”
Dot grabbed a handful of sheets. “Nothing.”
“They trick you. They pretend they’re your friends, they get all buddy-buddy—darling, you had to have said something. I believe they’re putting you—us—in the ICU as punishment.”
Punishment? For what? Had Dot somehow slipped to them that she’d had a sip of Dorothy’s wine a few days before, when Dorothy had turned her back? Or did she tell them she’d stolen the M&M’s packet off the desk at the nurses’ station? Dot had moved during a recent MRI, too. The tech hadn’t commented, but he also hadn’t said they needed to repeat the procedure. She’d just been so itchy.
“I’m sorry,” Dot whispered, her bottom lip wobbling. “I don’t know why they’d do this.”
Dorothy took off her left shoe, rubbed her ankle, then put it on again. “Just know you can’t trust them. Ever.”