Moonlit

by Jadie Jones

  “Mom.” My voice catches in my throat.

  She doesn’t reach for the light switch, but she doesn’t have to. The alcohol seeping from her pores is so strong that it makes my eyes water. She won’t be able to handle this. It’s too much.

  “You honestly thought I wouldn’t find out?” she glowers from the door frame. Silvery white light glows from beneath the hand that she presses against the wall to hold herself steady. Her eyes narrow.

  “I’m going to be fine. I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Worry me? I’ve called every hospital in Virginia looking for you,” she snaps.

  “I know. I—”

  “Not another word, Tanzy. You listen to me. I don’t even have to guess what landed you in here. All I asked of you was to not ride anymore. Do you really respect me so little—respect the memory of your father so little—that you would ride again behind my back? After all I’ve been through? Was it not enough that you took my husband from me?” Her accusation stings like a slap.

  “Mom, please. That accident was not my fault,” I choke.

  “Don’t call me that! Stop calling me that.” Her whispers echo in the dark room.

  “Call you what?”

  “Mom. I am not your mother,” she seethes.

  She’s never been this bad before. She must have had a lot tonight. I hope she didn’t drive. I just need to get her to calm down. Then I’ll call a taxi. She’ll sleep this off and completely forget about it.

  “I know you’re mad, and I am sorry but I—”

  “Listen to me, Tanzy. Hear every word that I am about to say to you. I am not your mother,” she says slowly and evenly. Almost calm. “Your father had you before we met. There’s not a drop of my blood in your body. And I never officially adopted you. Which means that you don’t belong to me at all. You’re eighteen now, and I no longer have the energy to keep pretending that I care about you. Do you understand? I have wiped my hands clean of you. As far as I am concerned, you do not exist.”

  She glares at my still body for a second longer, and then whispers something I can’t make out under her breath. The tones don’t even sound English. Suddenly, the white beneath her hand changes to pure gold. She closes her fist and walks away without a single glimpse back.

  The air thins as if all of the oxygen followed her out. A rumble grows under my sternum. I can’t swallow. Thick blood bubbles up my throat and fills my mouth. Red vomit splatters my front and dribbles to the floor. My ribcage and teeth chatter as more blood shoots out of my gaping mouth like a fountain. I’m dying. This is what dying feels like. A shriek that can’t possibly be mine, can’t possibly be human, tears through my soaked lips. Everything sounds like it’s screaming as beeps and alarms sound around me, swallow me. The cacophony of anger and fear and panic fade before the first bodies rush through my door. Then they fade too.

  Turquoise water stretches as far as I can see from my perch on a smooth black rock. The ocean is perfectly still. Like glass. I reach a bare toe to the water and drag it across the surface. The ripples I make grow into waves as they roll away from me and back across the endless blue. I lose my balance and fall into the bottomless sea. I gasp as I resurface and then swim back for the craggy shoreline.

  How did it get so far away that fast? I reach it quickly. But the rocks are too high and too slippery. I can’t pull myself out. A face peers down at me.

  Lucas. He reaches for me. I don’t know whether or not to take his hand. The waves I made earlier double back and toss my body against the hard rocks. Even though I am still afraid, I give a hard kick and propel myself just far enough out of the water for him to reach me. Our hands fit together like a key to a lock. I don’t care what he’s going to do so long as he stays with me.

  My eyes fly open. Several nurses scurry around my hospital bed. I can’t distinguish their rapid orders, and their voices blend together into a single, frenzied sound. They freeze and peer down at my face as a moan escapes my lips. The blur of colors and motion begins to clear. Ryan’s face appears above my own.

  “Tanzy? Are you with us?” he asks, his hand on my face. I can’t focus enough to answer yet.

  Dr. Andrews appears beside Ryan. His gray eyes study mine.

  “Her pupils are dilating normally and evenly. That’s a good sign,” he says to Ryan. “You gave us quite a scare,” he says louder. I mentally cling to his solid voice like a buoy.

  “What happened?” I mumble. The nurses that scrub at the blood caking my skin don’t respond. Another nurse covers me with a new blue blanket. I think I’m glad I didn’t see the one she took off.

  “We’re not really sure,” Dr. Andrews says. A lemon yellow mark gleams in his palm as he rubs his graying brow with the back of his hand. “It appears that you went into sudden respiratory failure and then cardiac arrest. Your body’s been through a lot. We’ll probably run a couple of tests to check for any new internal bleeding or other complications.”

  “Am I dying?” I whisper. “Tell me the truth.” The wrinkles around his eyes deepen as he frowns sympathetically.

  “No. Not right now, anyway. Your vitals have stabilized for the most part. We just need to make sure you’re healing properly. It’s only been two weeks and you’re doing much better than anyone expected. But you’re not completely out of the woods yet,” he explains. “With all of the surgeries you had, I would not be surprised if there was some kind of complication.”

  “Tanzy!” I hear Dana cry from the open door. “Are you okay? Why is there blood all over the place? What happened?” She rushes to my side.

  “I’m okay,” I croak.

  “Tanzy gave us a good scare, but she’s recovering,” Dr. Andrews explains.

  “Your mom. She—This was on my windshield.” Dana says and holds up a folded piece of paper. “I got here as fast as I could. What do you mean a good scare? What happened?”

  “We’re going to take her for a few tests and scans just to make sure everything is okay,” Dr. Andrews continues firmly. “I’ll come get you from the waiting room once we’re done, but we need to clear her room of any visitors for now.”

  “Sure. Of course,” Dana says and shoves the note in her back pocket. “Are you okay?” she mouths at me.

  I nod. New tears come as she slips from the crowded room. I wish we had our fence to lean on. All these walls and people and machines. They inch in on me. Even the air tastes stale.

  “Ryan, let’s take her down for a full CT and an MRI,” Dr. Andrews orders as he flips pages back and forth on my chart. “Page me as soon as the results are up,” he says and strides from my room.

  “Looks like me and you will be hanging out today,” Ryan says and smiles down at me. His voice feels like warm sunlight on my face. I smile back at him and my heart does cartwheels in my chest. He takes hold of my bed and pushes it out of the door and down the hall.

  “There is a patient ahead of you, so we’ll just hang out here ‘til it’s your turn,” he says, parking my bed alongside the wall.

  Having Ryan as a captive audience is exhilarating and intimidating. I wish Vanessa were here. I bet she’d know if he was interested in me. Thinking about her makes me feel braver.

  “I’m a little disappointed, I have to admit,” I venture.

  “What? That your miraculous road to recovery had a speed bump?”

  “No.” I stumble on the small word, but I make myself keep going. “This isn’t what I had in mind for a first date.”

  The corners of his mouth pull into an embarrassed smile. Great. He’s trying not to laugh. Heat makes a conspicuous path from the neck line of my faded hospital gown to my ears. There’s no taking that back. I try anyway. “I’m totally kidding.”

  “For the record, this is not what I had in mind for a first date, either,” he says as he looks up. His blue eyes sparkle with curiosity. If there is such a color that is redder than I already am, my cheeks are well on their way to finding it.

  “So what all are you looking for?” I ask, d
esperate for something else to think about so I stand a chance of returning to my normal color.

  “Honestly, pretty much anything and everything,” he answers, taking my lead. “They’ll make sure there’s no internal bleeding. They want to make sure all the breaks are setting properly. The whole nine yards.”

  “None of this makes any sense. I still don’t know what happened to me. Dana can barely talk about it and Dr. Andrews isn’t the world’s best conversationalist.” Ryan lets out an amused laugh. “Sorry, it’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

  He smiles and takes my free hand in his. Do doctors usually do this? Don’t read into it. Well, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to read into it just a tiny bit. Some kind of current flows back and forth between our touching skin. I wonder if he feels it too.

  “You’re in a very unique situation,” he says. His grip is just as cautious. “Honestly, we’re all pretty confused. And Dr. Andrews is an amazing surgeon, but no, he’s not a man of many words.”

  “What about the visiting doctor that gave me the illegal stuff? What do you know about him?” I whisper.

  “Who told you?” His eyes widen in panic. He scans up and down the hallway before he brings his face closer to mine. “You weren’t supposed to find out about that. No one outside of that OR was ever supposed to find out about that.”

  The sudden fierceness in his face makes goose bumps bloom down my arms.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell anyone. Or sue, if that’s what you’re worried about. Although it would be a quick fix to pay for this extended vacation of mine,” I add with a forced laugh. His face relaxes a little. “I’m alive. I don’t think I have much to complain about. And I won’t tell anyone, if it makes you feel better. Not that anyone would believe me.”

  “It does make me feel better.” He watches my face. His thoughts trek back and forth across his eyes. “You’re a very interesting woman,” he leans down and whispers into my ear.

  I can feel my cheeks turning red again, but I don’t care. All I care about is the fact that he just called me a woman.

  “And it wasn’t illegal. It was unknown. And everything about you so far has fallen into that category,” he says as he straightens and slips his hand from mine.

  My fingers instinctively follow his before I force them into a fist and tuck them beneath my thin sheet. “What exactly happened when I got here? No one has really filled in the blanks for me. They just tell me I’m lucky,” I probe.

  “The night you came in was my very first shift here,” he says. “You were life-flighted from the local hospital near your farm, and you were considered D.O.A. Your body was—the injuries were catastrophic. They tried for over an hour to resuscitate you, but nothing was working. Dr. Andrews finally gave up and called your time of death. That’s when Dr. Metcher stepped in. He completely transfused all of the donor blood with a blood substitute from his home country. He left almost immediately after your heart restarted; he was running late for his flight. I guess he took a lot of your answers with him. And we all swore to each other that what happened in that operating room would stay there. The only reason Dr. Andrews agreed to try the drug is because you truly were officially dead. They were already drawing up harvesting plans for your salvageable organs.”

  “I guess I am lucky,” I whisper.

  “You really are. Even the senior surgeons around here are saying you’re like nothing they’ve ever seen before. You’re going to be in a lot of case studies,” he says as he peeks into the procedure room.

  “Can I ask you a question, but you have to promise not to move me to the psych ward?” I venture.

  “I don’t think you can surprise me anymore than you already have.”

  “Well, I know I shouldn’t expect everything to be back to normal yet, but I’m seeing some strange things. I think something is wrong with my eyes.”

  “I told you before that halos are perfectly normal following the extent of the trauma your body has handled,” he answers and glances at his watch.

  “But these aren’t halos. They’re little horseshoes. I only see them on people’s palms. They glow. And they change color,” I add before I can talk myself out of the confession all together.

  “You’re right. That’s not normal at all,” he says. I wait for more information, but he stands stone still beside my bed.

  “Okay, so?” I push.

  The blue in his hand turns a cranberry red. What does that mean? He closes his hands into tight fists, purposefully concealing his palms. “So that’s probably a good question for Dr. Andrews.”

  “But you know Dr. Andrews isn’t going to tell me anything. You said so yourself.”

  “I don’t know how to answer that one.”

  “Ms. Hightower, we’re ready for you,” a nurse calls from the open doorway.

  I leave my questions in the empty hallway as Ryan silently wheels my bed into the procedure room.

  7 Two of a kind

  The tests take forever. I have to stay quiet and perfectly still, which is fine with me since Ryan doesn’t seem interested in breaking the wall he’s thrown up between us. He won’t look at me, and every time I catch him deliberately staring anywhere else it makes me feel even worse. My mind picks apart every interaction we’ve had in the past two weeks. It’s only been a couple of hours since the last time he stared straight into my eyes, but I already miss it. Not just the depth of the blue but the way I feel in their gaze. Like I don’t have anything to hide anymore.

  The sudden clarity just makes the likely truth that much worse: He thinks I’m certifiably crazy. And possibly contagious. By the time I’m done and ready to go back to my room I don’t even try to talk to him. I ignore the quick glances he makes at my face when he thinks I’m not paying attention.

  The hurt and tension vanish as I catch sight of Vanessa waiting in my room. “Hey!” I say as Ryan steers me through the doorway.

  “Hi, Tanzy,” she replies. “How are you? I heard you had a hard night.”

  “Yeah, wasn’t my favorite night ever.” And she doesn’t know the half of it. “They just did a bunch of X-rays and a full CT so I guess we’ll find out soon. How’s everything with you?”

  “Oh, you know,” she answers vaguely.

  “Girl talk?” Ryan asks with a raised eyebrow.

  The instant rebound in his voice makes me stare at him. Where was that cheerful guy a couple of hours ago? He even gives Vanessa a playful half-smile.

  “Yep,” Vanessa says with a laugh and gives him a little wave as he feigns a hasty exit. “Did you two have fun?” she ribs as soon as we’re alone.

  I can’t help watching the empty doorway, digesting the fact that Ryan’s bad mood clearly had something to do with me. I sigh as I lean back in my bed. “I wish there was more to tell you. I guess three casts and a neck brace just don’t do it for him. So what about you? Your turn.” The subject of Ryan makes me queasy. Even though I want nothing more than to talk about anything else, thoughts of him won’t leave me.

  “Well, I came to talk to you for a couple of reasons,” she says. The golden mark pulses in her open palm. She rubs her hands together as she shifts on the bed.

  She’s nervous. What in the world does she have to be nervous about?

  “I think when you meet someone that could be a friend, it’s important to be up front and honest. You know, put all your cards on the table and see what happens.”

  “Okay,” I say, even though I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about.

  “You scared me the other day.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “No, I know you didn’t. Let me explain,” she says, closing her eyes.

  I sit back and watch her face twist as she tries to decide how to continue.

  “You scared me because of what you saw. I didn’t have any bruises on me last week. But I’ve had marks on me before. A lot, actually. I mean, it’s been better lately. He’s been really sweet since—well, the last month or so. Being a doctor can
be so stressful, you know. It’s hard, what he does. And I am so much younger than he is and there’s a lot I don’t know so I frustrate him. I don’t mean to. It just happens.” The fact that she is near tears makes my stomach knot. “I used to have to cover up all the time. So when you said that, about seeing marks, I guess it just shocked me. Took me to a place I didn’t want to ever go back to. I don’t know what you saw or how you saw it, but there it is,” she finishes.

  “Are you saying that Dr. Andrews hurts you?” I whisper. He is always so kind with me. I couldn’t imagine him laying a hand on anyone, least of all Vanessa. The doubtful thoughts make me feel instantly guilty.

  Of course you only see him for five minutes at a time tops. Anyone can hide anything for five minutes. You should know that better than anybody.

  “Not recently. It’s been over a month since the last time,” she says quietly.

  “So what changed? Why did he stop? Did you tell someone?”

  “I’m not sure how to explain it to you,” she stammers. “No one ever believes me. They just think I’m a freak.” I can practically feel her pulling away as the vortex of her thoughts wipes every hint of expression from her face.

  “You want freak? Right now, I literally see a horseshoe glowing in your palm. It’s gold. Ryan’s is blue. Everyone has one,” I blurt. “So just try me.”

  ”You can see it too?” she gasps.

  Too? Did she just say what I think she did? Her eyes dart to her right palm and then back to my face. “You see them? They’re real?” I whisper.

  “I used to see them all the time, but I don’t anymore. I saw rings, not horseshoes. But I’m sure they’re the same thing. The only one I still see is my own.” She looks down at her palm again and waves her fingers. “My whole life I’ve seen things that, well, that don’t make sense. Once the colors disappeared other things started happening that I couldn’t explain. But I never told anyone about any of it. Not ’til right now,” she stammers.

  My mouth falls open. I don’t know what to call the emotion that races through my veins as she validates the countless things I was sure I’d imagined.