I brought my hand to my lips and closed my eyes. Decker’s mouth had been on my own. His breath in my lungs. His hands on my chest. The doctor, my parents, his friends, they all knew it. It was too intimate. Too private, and now, too public. I made sure I wasn’t looking at him when I opened my eyes again.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Logan said, saving me from my embarrassment, “but I need to conduct a full examination.”
“Go home, Decker,” Dad said. “Get some rest. She’ll be here when you wake up.” And Mom, Dad, and Decker all smiled these face-splitting smiles, like they shared a secret history I’d never know about.
The other doctors filed back in, scribbling on notepads, hovering over the bed, no longer lingering near the walls.
“What happened?” I asked nobody in particular, feeling my throat close up.
“You were dead.” Dr. Klein smiled when he said it. “I was here when they brought you in. You were dead.”
“And now you’re not,” said a younger, female doctor.
Dr. Logan poked at my skin and twisted my limbs but it didn’t hurt. I couldn’t feel much. I hoped he’d start the detubing process soon.
“A miracle,” said Dr. Klein, making the word sound light and breathy. I shut my eyes.
I didn’t feel light and breathy. I felt dense and full. Grounded to the earth. Not like a miracle at all. I was something with a little more weight. A fluke. Or an anomaly. Something with a little less awe.
My throat was swollen and irritated, and I had difficulty speaking. Not that it mattered—there was too much noise to get a word in anyway. I had a lot of visitors after the initial examination. Nurses checked and rechecked my vitals. Doctors checked and rechecked my charts. Dad hurried in and out of the room, prying information from the staff and relaying it back to us.
“They’ll move you out of the trauma wing tomorrow,” he said, which made me happy since I hated my room, claustrophobia personified in a hideous color.
“They’ll run tests tomorrow and start rehab after that,” he said, which made me even happier because, as it turns out, I was really good at tests.
Mom tapped her foot when the doctors spoke and nodded when Dad talked, but she didn’t say anything herself. She got swallowed up in the chaos. But she was the only constant in the room, so I held on to her, and she never let go of my hand. She gripped my palm with her fingers and rested her thumb on the inside of my wrist. Every few minutes she’d close her eyes and concentrate. And then I realized she was methodically checking and rechecking my pulse.
By the end of the day, several tubes still remained. A nurse named Melinda tucked the blanket up to my chin and smoothed back my hair. “We’re gonna take you down real slow, darling.” Her voice was deep and soothing. Melinda hooked up a new IV bag and checked the tubes. “You’re gonna feel again. Just a little bit at a time, though.”
She placed a pill in my mouth and held a paper cup to my lips. I sipped and swallowed. “To help you sleep, darling. You need to heal.” And I drifted away to the sound of the beeping monitor and the whirring equipment and the steady drip, drip, drip of the fluid from the IV bag.
A rough hand caressed my cheek. I opened my eyes to darkness and, to my left, an even darker shape. It leaned closer. “Do you suffer?” it whispered.
My eyelids closed. I felt heavy, water-logged, drugged. Far, far away. I opened my mouth to say no, but the only thing that came out was a low-pitched moan.
“Don’t worry,” it whispered. “It won’t be long now.”
There was a rummaging sound in the drawers behind me. Callous hands traced the line from my shoulder down to my wrist, twisted my arm around, and peeled back the tape at the inside of my elbow. This wasn’t right. I knew it wasn’t right, but I was too far away. I felt pressure in the crook of my arm as the IV slid from my vein.
And then I felt cold metal. A quick jab as it pierced the skin below my elbow. And as the metal sliced downward, I found myself. I jerked back and scratched at the dark shape with my free arm. The voice hissed in pain and the hands pulled back and the metal clanked to the floor somewhere under my bed.
Feet shuffled quickly toward the door. And as it opened, letting in light, I saw his back. A man. In scrubs like a nurse, a hooded sweatshirt over the top.
My eyelids grew heavy and I drifted again. I drifted to the sound of the beeping monitor and the whirring equipment and the steady drip, drip, drip of my blood hitting the floor.
Chapter 2
I woke to the sound of screaming. My skin was raw, and I could feel again. I could feel everything. Everything. The slightest movement of air like a blade across my face. The weight of the blankets like a slab of concrete. The texture of the sheets like sandpaper rubbing at my flesh. And something else under all the pain. Something unnatural—my body being tugged in every direction, up, down, left, right, forward, back. Like the fibers that held my skin together had been severed and my whole body might fly apart. And a drum in my head, pounding and pounding to the beat of my heart. Pounding until I felt my skull couldn’t contain the pressure any longer.
People came running, looked at the puddle of my blood on the floor; looked at the dangling IV line, not delivering my medication; and looked at each other. They moved their mouths frantically, but I couldn’t hear them over the screaming. Not until something stabbed my arm and all the feelings faded. The screaming stopped.
“Why would she yank out her own IV line? Why would she cut herself? And blame it on someone else?” Mom was fuming in the hallway. Unfortunately, the doctor wasn’t yelling back, so I heard only half of the conversation.
The doctor stitching up my arm pretended not to hear them. She made a lot of unnecessary noise to drown out the conversation outside.
“She says she saw a man. She says he cut her. My daughter is not a liar.”
Low mumbling.
“Where would she get a razor? And why would she do that? Like . . . like . . .”
Sharp whispers.
“Hallucinations? Like from the medication?”
And that was it. Mom, Dad, Dr. Logan, and the nurse Melinda entered my room and formed a semicircle around my bed. Dr. Logan looked at me just like Dad used to when I’d cry out in the middle of the night, scared of a monster in the closet—an expression of concern laced with condescension.
“Someone was in my room,” I said before anyone else could speak.
Dr. Logan nodded and Mom patted my hand. Dad started pacing the room. “Brain injuries,” said the doctor, “can often lead to hallucinations.”
A tear escaped Mom’s eye, ran down her cheek, and fell to her shoulder, staining her silk blouse.
“Soon,” Dr. Logan said, pointing to my forehead, “we’ll take a look at what’s going on up there.”
The day passed slowly. I moved down a floor to a new room with blue walls and its own bathroom. Which was reassuring since the walls were bright and happy, which meant I was supposed to see them, which meant I was supposed to be conscious. And maybe even use the bathroom. But I felt that unnatural tugging, same as last night, only fainter. A pull on my body from up and down and left and right. Alternately faint and strong, growing and receding. I folded my arms across my chest and tucked my hands under my ribs. I held on tight, but the feeling remained.
Decker came after school and sat real close to the bed. As close as he could without actually touching me. We watched daytime television together and didn’t talk, but it still felt good. We knew each other well enough that we didn’t need to fill the silence. Besides, it didn’t seem like he was in the mood to talk either. Then I was pulled away for my tests, which weren’t like tests at all, as I didn’t do anything, just lay there while machines clanked and banged and took pictures of my brain.
That night, Melinda came in and replaced the IV bags. “Just a small dose tonight, darling.” Then she placed the sleeping pill in my mouth and held the cup to my lips, just like the night before. And then that same sweet nurse whispered soothing words, brushed
the hair out of my face, and tied my arms to the bed.
I was fully detubed the following morning. Saturday, I thought, trying to orient myself. Gradually, I felt the tugging grow again. Outward and downward. A new nurse, who didn’t smile, dumped a container of pills in my mouth and forced the water down my throat. I missed the tubes.
When Dr. Logan entered my room, he nodded at my parents and flicked a light switch, illuminating a white screen on the far wall. Despite the painkillers, my ribs ached with every breath. Worse, the glowing wall unit gave off a faint buzz. Like an itch in the center of my brain. Dr. Logan slid a large film onto the screen.
“Let’s have a look, Delaney,” he began. “First, an MRI of a typical brain.” He pointed to the film. Images of brain cross sections were lined up in a grid, three by three. I imagined playing tic-tac-toe on them. The images looked like photographs of halved fruit taken by an old black-and-white camera. Everything was shades of gray.
He took out another large film and stuck it onto the screen. “And here’s your recent MRI.” The cross sections of my brain were much more exciting to look at. Small bright spots sporadically broke up the shades of gray. There was even a short bright streak in one frame, like someone had taken a paintbrush to the film. I kept my mouth shut. Personally, I thought my brain scan was nicer, but it definitely wasn’t typical. An atypical brain wasn’t good news. Mom squeezed my right hand. Dad sucked in a deep breath, the kind that makes a wheezing sound.
“As you can see, there was significant damage. These bright spots are everywhere, indicating abnormal tissue.” Dr. Logan shifted his lower jaw around and blew out a breath. I waited for the “but.” As in, “But it turns out you don’t need those parts of your brain.”
Instead he said, “Obviously, this is surprising since you woke up fully aware, memory complete, speech intact, everything firing, as we like to say.” He stuck his hands into his white lab coat and continued, “I have no idea how this is possible.”
I touched my fingertips to my hairline. “I have a damaged brain? I’m brain damaged?”
“Yes and no. Technically, yes. But you show no symptoms of brain damage.”
“So, what’s wrong with my brain?”
He scratched at a tuft of his salt-and-pepper hair. “A lot is wrong with your brain, according to the MRI. You should have serious memory issues, both short and long term, but you don’t. You should have debilitating speech, cognitive, and coordination handicaps, but you don’t. Actually, you should still be in a coma, or some sort of vegetative state.”
Panic surged in my chest, contracting my ribs. At that moment, I welcomed the physical pain. It distracted me from my mental terror. What if this was all temporary? What if nature realized its mistake and returned me to my rightful comatose form, an empty shell?
I gently touched the top of my head and whispered, “Am I going to die?”
He leaned forward and shook his head, but didn’t quite deny it. “Honestly, so little is known about the brain. So little.” If he meant that to be reassuring, he failed. Coming from a neurologist, that statement was downright horrifying.
I asked for clarification. “So, I’m not going to die?”
Dr. Logan clasped his hands together and looked up, as if expecting an answer from above. Receiving none, he sighed and said, “Not today.”
I didn’t believe any of it. He continued. “I don’t know how you’re functional with this widespread trauma. It’s as if other areas of your brain are compensating for the damage.”
Mom tapped her heel on the floor twice as fast as she spoke. “So”—tap, tap, tap—“she’s going to be fine.” Tap, tap, tap. She placed a hand on my forehead.
Dr. Logan grinned, a closed-mouth smile revealing nothing. “We’ll start rehab as soon as the paperwork clears. We’ll know more then.”
Dad blew a clump of hair out of his eyes. He was blond, like me, with no signs of gray yet. Right then, with his hair shaggy and his clothes scruffy, he looked almost like a cool parent. That would be a lie.
The only other times I’d seen my father with messy hair was on vacation, and that was only if Mom forgot to pack his hair gel. Every other morning he slicked his hair back, put on his loafers and tie, and set out to work at his accounting company. That was my real father. This rumpled man at my hospital bed was an imposter.
Dad used to work for a large CPA firm, traveling most weekdays to conduct audits. He quit when I was in elementary school and opened his own firm in the next town over. It was just him and his secretary, and nobody in our part of Maine earned enough money to make him rich, but it paid the bills and he was home every night. That was enough for him.
“Will this all be covered by insurance?” he asked. Now that sounded more like the father I knew.
“You’ll have to speak to central billing.” Dr. Logan slid the images down and stacked his files on the counter.
I scratched at an itch on the side of my head. I wondered if I was scratching the surface of the damaged part of my brain or the newly rewired part. Maybe it was the buzzing. Maybe everything was so screwed up that neurons fired randomly, telling me things itched when they, in fact, did not.
“I’m okay,” I said to the room, even though my body was pulling apart in every direction, even though my brain scan lit up like the sky on the Fourth of July. “I’m okay,” I said again, because if I said it enough, maybe it’d be true.
Mom kept tapping and Dad stared out the window, probably running numbers in his head. Dr. Logan looked at me, but he wasn’t looking in my eyes. He looked a few inches higher, where the medical anomaly resided, and slowly backed out of the room.
Decker came in as soon as the doctor left and dumped the contents of his backpack at the foot of my bed. Dad took Mom by the elbow and led her out of the room, whispering into her ear.
Decker didn’t seem to notice the lingering tension in the room. “Cards,” he said, throwing a handful of get-well-soon cards onto my lap.
“Food.” He set three burgers and two cartons of fries on the bedside table and swiveled it over my lap.
I tore my eyes away from the white screen, now off, that labeled me as damaged. Decker hadn’t seen it. I smiled at him. “Who gets the third burger?” I asked. He grinned and inched the burger in question closer to his side.
“And, as per your request, homework.” He stacked three textbooks next to my feet. “For the record, I think you’re crazy. Nobody expects you to do your schoolwork.”
Decker was right. As the potentially dead, occasionally comatose, definite miracle, I was given more than enough slack. But I still had a decent shot at valedictorian. As of today, I was only one school week behind. I could catch up. “What’s the work?” I asked.
Decker shrugged and took a massive bite out of his burger. “Janna’s coming later.”
“Oh.” I was somewhat surprised it was her and not someone else from my classes. Janna and I had been in the same general social circle since elementary school and we sat at the same lunch table, but mostly we were friends in the way that people are when they’re friends with the same people.
She was also Carson’s younger sister. Janna shared her brother’s main features: green eyes, blond curls, wicked smile. Unfortunately for Janna, her eyes were smaller than Carson’s, her curls were unmanageable, and her front teeth were spaced too far apart. And unlike Carson, who was only in our class because he had to repeat third grade, Janna was smart. Really smart. Currently second-in-the-class smart. Which might also explain why we never became close.
Maybe now we would.
Decker said everyone I knew—and even those I didn’t know—came to see me when I was unconscious. They cried and hugged each other in the halls. Turned out I was much more exciting when I was technically dead. But when I woke up, my visitors were limited to the kids from the lake and the girls from my classes, and technically they only visited my parents, since I was busy getting scanned. Apparently, the novelty had worn off. I’d only been conscious for
three days, and now it was just Decker. And Janna, it seemed. It was also the weekend. There were arguably more exciting ways to spend a Saturday than in a hospital room. Or with me.
“Decker,” I said. I put my burger down and waited for him to do the same. I’d been getting half answers and less-than-half answers for days. “What happened out there?” I gestured out the window in what I hoped was the general direction of home.
“You fell. I left you and you fell,” Decker said. He gripped the rail of my bed until his knuckles turned white, and then he left the room, abandoning his second burger.
Mom came in while I was finishing my fries and Decker’s second burger. “Tell me what happened,” I said. “At Falcon Lake.”
“You fell and Decker pulled you out,” she said, and then she shushed me and talked about home. Soon, she promised—tap, tap, tap—I’d go home soon.
There was this hole of time, and nobody would fill it.
Janna told me that evening. She sat on the side of my bed and held my hand. She held it tight. I’m not even sure she knew she was doing it. But I let her and she told me.
After I fell, Decker ran back onto the ice. But Kevin Mulroy, who is brave, and Justin Baxter, who is not, caught him before he got too close and dragged him back to shore. Decker screamed my name the whole way. He lost three fingernails resisting.
Janna called 911 and said, “Delaney Maxwell fell through the ice at Falcon Lake. And she didn’t come back up.”
Janna and Carson ran to the McGovern house, the closest residence, but no one was home. Carson threw a piece of firewood through the garage window, climbed in, and took the rope James McGovern brought as a precaution on his ice-fishing trips.
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