by Tami Hoag
She was tired, physically and mentally. She did feel the stress of taking this step. The Weidman Center was a safe place. Everybody knew her there. Everyone knew what to expect from her and of her. They were all used to looking at her. They didn’t know Before Dana. People back home only knew Before Dana. The idea of introducing them to After Dana made her sick to her stomach.
What would people in the real world know about flooding or adynamia or any of the other strange storms that went on in the mind of someone who had been damaged the way she had been damaged? Nothing. The only people who could understand it were people who had gone through it—and the loved ones who had shared the experience.
Like her mother.
“I’m sorry,” Dana murmured.
Her mother shook her head. Tears filled her eyes and choked her voice. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
Dana slid down in her seat and stared at the road ahead, uncomfortable with the notion of having to deal with her mother’s emotions as well as her own.
“How long before we get home?” she asked.
Her mother sighed. “About an hour . . .”
* * *
SHE COULD SEE THE sunlight hitting the surface of the water far above her, diluting instantly as it tried to penetrate the depths. She swam toward it. Up. Up. Kicking. Reaching. But something held her back like an unseen arm across her chest. It pulled on her from behind, slowing her down, drawing her backward away from the light and the air and freedom.
Her composure burst like a balloon within her, like her lungs exploding, flooding her with ice-cold panic. In the next instant she broke the surface of consciousness, literally throwing herself into the present. She cried out as she struggled against the hold of the seat belt and shoulder strap. Her arms flung out before her, hands clawing at the dashboard of a car.
“No! No!”
“Dana! Dana!” Her mother’s voice shouted her name frantically as the car swerved to the shoulder and stopped hard. “Dana, it’s all right! It’s all right, sweetheart!”
Still not fully in the present, Dana batted away the hand that reached toward her. She sucked in air in great choking gulps. Her pulse roared in her ears.
“Calm down. Calm down,” her mother said over and over, her voice trembling. “You’re all right. It’s all right. You’re safe.”
Dana thought her heart would gallop out of her chest like a runaway horse. She could smell her own fear in the cold sweat that drenched her clothing. Her mind scrambled for the list of things to do to calm herself.
Slow your breathing.
Be conscious of your pulse.
Take stock of your surroundings.
Slowly the world began to come into focus. She was in a car. It was daylight. The radio was playing softly. They sat on the side of a road that bordered a neighborhood on one side and a wooded field on the other.
“You’re all right, sweetheart,” her mother said again, reaching over to touch Dana’s shoulder and stroke a hand down her arm. “You just had a bad dream. You’re safe. We’re almost home. You’re all right.”
She sounded as if she was trying to calm a panicked animal.
She is, Dana thought.
She shrugged off her mother’s touch, irritated by it, irritated and embarrassed by the situation. She pulled her hood up, wanting to close herself off.
“You had a bad dream.”
“Yes.”
“It’s over now. You’re all right. We’re almost home, sweetheart,” her mother said, reaching out again to touch her.
Dana shied away, crowding herself against the car door, scowling. “Just go. Let’s go. Don’t make such a big deal.”
Lynda sat back behind the wheel and sighed, then put the car in gear and eased back onto the road.
“Are things starting to look familiar?” she asked.
“I guess,” Dana murmured, looking at the houses as they turned into a neighborhood.
Lovely brick houses of complementary styles sat on large landscaped lots. Pumpkins and mums and happy scarecrows decorated front steps and front yards. Ghosts of memories slipped through Dana’s mind. She had been the little girl in pigtails riding her pink bike down the street. She had been the girl walking the dog, the teenager sitting with her friends on the park bench, talking fashion and boys. All that seemed like something from a movie, from someone else’s life.
They turned onto a cul-de-sac lined with vehicles—three of them news vans wrapped in advertising for their stations, satellite dishes perched on the roofs.
“Oh no,” Lynda muttered under her breath.
Dana felt her mother tense. It didn’t occur to her why. It didn’t occur to her that she would be considered news. She knew she had been a headline in Minneapolis in January, but she had spent the last nine months—her entire After Dana life—in hospitals living with medical staff and other brain-injured patients with little connection to or interest in the rest of the world.
Her attention was on the bouquet of pink balloons that adorned a copper mailbox at the end of the street. The house beyond that mailbox was home—a large brick house with blue shutters and interesting rooflines and a yard to showcase the talents of Mercer-Nolan Landscape Design.
They pulled into the driveway, drawing alongside a black Mercedes SUV with a red, white, and blue sticker in the back window: REELECT MERCER/STATE SENATE. The front door of the house swung open and Roger came out to meet them followed by a younger man Dana didn’t recognize.
Roger looked like a man an ad agency would choose to star in a commercial for real estate or home insurance—tall, handsome, with dark hair swept back and Clark Kent glasses. His smile was broad and white. He came around the hood of the car and opened Dana’s door.
“Welcome home, sweetheart!” he said cheerfully, leaning toward her. “How was your drive down?”
“I don’t know,” Dana said. She stared down at the clasp of her seat belt, momentarily stumped as to how to open it. “I wasn’t there.”
“She fell asleep,” her mother qualified, reaching over the console with impatient hands to unfasten the belt.
“What are those people doing here?” Lynda snapped, her irritation directed at her husband. “They have no business being here now.”
“I don’t control the media, Lynda.”
“How did they find out Dana was coming home?”
“I don’t know,” he answered with sarcasm. “Maybe a dozen pink balloons tied to the mailbox isn’t a good way to keep a secret.”
“Can you fight later?” Dana asked. “I want to get out of the car.”
Roger offered her a hand to help her out of the vehicle. She straightened slowly as she got out, stiff and achy from the long ride, but she let go of Roger’s hand quickly, nevertheless.
She cut a glance at the other man, who stood behind her stepfather. He looked to be in his thirties, with a blocky build and a doughy face. He was buttoned up and professional in a jacket and tie, his thin brown hair combed flat to his head. He stared at her with carefully concealed shock. Dana could see it in his eyes and instantly disliked him for it.
“Who is he?” she asked bluntly, tugging the edges of her hood forward.
Roger glanced over his shoulder. “Wesley Stevens. He’s helping run my campaign.”
“Why is he here?”
Roger forced a laugh. “So many questions!” He moved to hug her. “Welcome home, sweetheart.”
Dana stepped back against the car, frowning. “You already said that. Don’t touch me. I don’t like to be touched.”
His frown was fleeting, and he quickly turned around even as his eyes darted to the left, looking for witnesses. “I’m sorry, honey. I just want to give you a hug. I’m happy to have you home. We’ve missed you!”
“Then you should have come to visit me more,” Dana said with simple logic.
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“I wish I could have.”
“How does it feel to have your stepdaughter home, Senator? How does it feel to be home, Dana?”
Dana turned toward the source of the questions. The reporter was standing at the end of the drive maybe a dozen feet behind her mother’s car—a petite blonde with a professional smile that wavered badly as Dana faced her.
“How does it feel to be home?” she asked again.
Dana stared at her. They were about the same size. The reporter’s hair was cut in a shoulder-length bob, just as Dana’s had been before it had been shorn off in the hospital. Her blue wool blazer could have come straight from Dana’s own closet.
Oh my God, I used to be her, she thought.
Beside the blonde stood her cameraman. The camera was rolling, sucking the moment of revelation in to spew it out to the home viewing audience of southern Indiana and northern Kentucky.
Dana felt rooted to the spot, unable to turn away. She wanted to disappear. She wanted to pull her hood over her face and vanish, but she couldn’t seem to move.
A second reporter and a second cameraman appeared, and then a third pair.
They all seemed to speak at once, their questions coming in a wave of language rushing toward her even as her emotions began to flood her mind from within.
Dana, how are you?
How do you feel?
What—? Where—? How—? Who—?
Dana— Senator— Doc— Casey— Holiday— Grant— Senator— Dana— Mercer— Dana, Dana, Dana!
The words all ran together and tumbled over one another, ceasing to make any sense. Panic began to close a hand around her throat. And all the while she continued staring at the blond reporter—the girl who reminded her so much of herself, of who she had been. The young woman’s features were so like hers—the shape of her face, the tip of her nose, the color of her hair. Her intent expression was so familiar it was as if Dana was somehow creating it, generating that intensity from her own emotion.
In a trick of her damaged brain, the girl became her. She wasn’t a stranger who happened to look like her. She was Dana. She was Before Dana, and After Dana was suddenly staring into the face of her past.
Her whole body began to shake from its very core outward.
“Stop it,” she said, so softly she wasn’t even certain she had spoken out loud. Then the voice came stronger. “Stop it. Stop it!”
Without realizing what she was doing, she took a step forward, and then another, reaching out toward the image of herself.
“Stop it! Stop it!”
The faces of the reporters loomed larger, distorted, their mouths tearing open. Questions turned to screeching, discordant sound.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Dana shouted.
Like in her dream about the water, something caught her from behind, dragging her backward. A strong arm banded across her chest, pulling her back. Dana reacted on instinct, grabbing at the arm, fighting to pry it away. Her feet came off the ground as she was lifted and turned, and suddenly she was in her mother’s arms and being turned again and pushed in the direction of the house.
Behind her she could hear a man’s voice booming with authority. “That’s enough, folks! Please! I’m sure you can understand this is family time. Senator Mercer’s daughter is just out of the hospital. She’s exhausted. She’s overwhelmed.”
“We’re thrilled to have Dana home at last,” Roger said loudly. “But please have some respect for our privacy.”
Dana felt herself propelled through the front door into the foyer, her body on some kind of self-defense autopilot, moving to escape the mob even as her brain was still swimming in the noise and emotion.
Dana! Dana! Dana!
She twisted and turned and ran backward out of her mother’s reach, banging into a hall table and knocking over a vase of fresh flowers. Water cascaded to the floor, splashing on the tile. The sound of crystal shattering seemed as loud as a bomb.
“Dana!” her mother shouted. “Calm down! Calm down!”
Dana shied sideways and ran into the powder room, yanking the door shut behind her, cutting off the sound and the motion and the madness. With trembling hands, she turned on the faucet, scooped up the water, and splashed it over her face. She repeated the process again and again, slopping the water down the front of her hoodie, all over the vanity, and onto the floor.
“Dana?” her mother called, tapping on the door. “Are you all right, sweetheart? Please open the door.”
The question was absurd, Dana thought as she stood staring into the ornate gold-framed mirror above the vanity. Was she all right? Nothing was right, least of all her. She had just had a meltdown in front of news cameras. News cameras in the driveway of her home, where she was supposed to feel safe and secure.
Why did they care that she was home? Her newsworthiness should have died with the man who had victimized her.
Welcome home, she thought as she stared at herself in the mirror.
Her mother knocked again, harder. “Dana? Answer me!”
Forgetting to turn the faucet off or dry the water from her face, Dana stepped back and sat down on the toilet, her legs feeling like rubber beneath her as the adrenaline subsided.
The door flew open and Lynda burst in looking frightened and frantic and pale.
“Honey, are you all right? Are you okay?”
She started to lean in, to reach out, to touch and fuss, and Dana couldn’t stand the thought of it.
“Stop!” she said, holding her hands up to block her mother’s advance. “Just stop it! Oh my God! Leave me alone!”
Lynda pulled back, looking hurt and at a loss. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to do. The faucet was still running in the background. She crossed her arms and held on to herself as she struggled to calm her own emotions.
“Are you all right?” she asked again with forced calm.
“I’m tired,” Dana said softly. All the emotions tumbling inside her, and she chose the simplest physical excuse. She didn’t have the energy to address the rest of it. Better if she just shut down. Better for everyone.
Her mother turned off the faucet, pulled a hand towel off the towel bar, and handed it to her. “Dry your face, sweetheart.”
Dana pressed the towel to her face, then wound her hands into it and held it in her lap, leaning forward, resting her forearms on her thighs. She wanted to put her head down and go to sleep right there. Maybe when she woke up she would be someplace else and all this would have been a bad dream. She wondered how many times a day she had had that thought since this second life had begun.
“I can’t believe the nerve of those people,” Lynda said, looking out the door, as if the reporters might have come inside to wait in the hall. “How dare they show up here? They’re nothing but vultures.”
“I used to be one of them,” Dana pointed out.
“You were never like that,” her mother argued. “Pushy and rude. You were never like that.”
“They’re just doing their jobs,” Dana said in automatic defense of her former colleagues, even though she didn’t want them here either. “They have assignments.”
“I’d like to know how they got this assignment. If Wesley had anything to do with it, he’s getting a piece of my mind. Mr. Campaign Manager,” she muttered. “It’s none of their business—someone coming home from the hospital. After everything you’ve been through. What did they think? That you would want to give a press conference in the driveway?”
“I guess I’m news.”
Dana thought of the blond girl in the driveway thrusting a microphone, asking a question. She had been that girl, getting the answers, getting the story. Now she was the story. Shoe Meets Other Foot: Details at Five.
“You’re not a headline,” her mother said. “You’re my daughter. I don’t want them upsetting you. Don’t be ang
ry with me for wanting to protect you. I’m your mom. That’s my job.”
She reached out and brushed Dana’s wet bangs out of her eyes.
“I’d wrestle a grizzly bear for you, you know,” she said with a soft smile.
Dana tried to smile back. It was something her father had always promised—that he would wrestle a grizzly bear for her. After his death, her mother had taken up the mantle of bear slayer.
“They don’t have any right to come here,” her mother said. “It’s time for us to get our lives back. They have no right to intrude on that.”
But they wouldn’t get their lives back, Dana thought. There was no getting back what had passed. They could only move forward and hope for the best. Forward looked like a long hike up a steep hill at the moment. The idea of it drained what little energy she had left.
“I need to lie down,” she said. “Can I lie down now?”
“Of course, sweetie,” her mother said, holding out her hand to help Dana up. “Your room is all ready for you. Just the way you left it.”
“Great,” Dana said. “Now all I have to do is find it.”
6
When Dana woke with a start, the world beyond the windows had grown dim. Warm amber light puddled beneath the small alabaster lamps on the nightstands. A soft pink blanket swaddled her in warmth. The big bed was like an ivory cloud beneath her. She felt like she was in a wonderful cocoon.
As always when she woke, she had no idea where she was. To head off the panic, she looked to the nightstand for her four-by-six cards with her familiar questions and instructions. There were no cards. She tried to remember the questions.
Where am I?
Not the Weidman Center.
Without moving, she looked around to take in the details of her surroundings and try to process them. Across the room, near the windows, sat a writing desk with feminine lines and curved legs. On the desktop sat a computer, a dictionary, a pink ceramic mug filled with pens and markers. Behind the desk, ivory-painted built-in bookcases were filled with books and framed photographs and the mementos of a young girl.