by Susan Ward
It’s not better here than it was in the cage.
It’s worse.
Inside my head the world beyond my filthy cage was the one I imagined.
Maybe I’m not alive.
Maybe I’m dead.
Maybe that’s why this is unbearable for me.
* * *
“Your father says you’re a ballerina,” murmurs a soothing voice from beside the bed.
Eyes open, I stare at the wall.
Paper rustling, likes sheets on a pad. I smile, but not facially. Jacob making a pros and cons list the night of my surprise party. Adorable and weird, but wonderful.
“Miss Harris, I know you’ve been through an ordeal. I also know you can hear me. If you’re afraid to speak, you don’t need to be. You’re safe.”
Silence, and then the chair makes a squeak. He’s stood up. “Let’s try this another way. Maybe you can draw a picture. Or write something here.”
I don’t look at what he sets on my tray table.
The door opens.
Squish. Squish.
The rubber shoes the nurses wear.
They talk quietly.
“That poor family,” the nurse says. “It breaks my heart every time I see her parents outside the door. She looks so much like her mother and father. Gets to me every time they look at me. I can’t imagine what they’re going through, having this happen to their daughter.”
I don’t look like my mother or my father.
They talk quietly between them and I stare at the TV. Who turns it on? Late-night reruns of shows from back in the day.
They discuss some kind of family history about me. Details of my childhood. My parents. Everything. But it’s not completely accurate. Lots of things no one knows about me are missing.
Inside my head, I rewrite the history of me.
“This world makes no sense. Things like this shouldn’t happen. Who could treat her the way she’s been treated? I can’t understand how this happened to her,” the nurse says, confused.
God, I hate that they talk about me like I’m not here. And they never listen when I correct them. They talk and talk about meaningless nothing punctuated by questions.
I’m so tired of the questions.
So tired of people talking at me.
How did this happen?
She’s wondering that?
I didn’t think Milo Bassard was bad.
Brilliant. Eccentric. Flamboyant. Unpredictable. But bad? Never. I thought Jacob was jealous. I thought it was safe to go to dinner with Milo.
My heart starts to race. No, don’t think about that. Those answers make whatever happened to Jacob, whatever it is they’re not telling me, my fault.
Yes, this is a better answer.
Maybe it will make them go away.
Extraordinary people are doomed to live stupid lives.
The nurse stares down at me, shaking her head, and then backs off.
“I know you can hear us,” the doctor says.
Hear us?
He pats my arm. “It’s all right. You’ll talk when you’re ready.”
Talk?
Am I not really talking?
Hasn’t anyone heard anything I’ve said?
Extraordinary people are doomed to live stupid lives.
No response from the doctor. OK, I get it now. My voice is only in my head.
* * *
The door clicks closed behind Alan. Another night of my dad talking to me. Telling me to stay still. How many days have I been here? Words made sound from my mouth today, not only noise in my head.
I asked about Jacob.
I think I did.
Or maybe I didn’t.
My voice made my dad cry, but he only talked about the family being in the waiting room, how I needed to eat, and therapy so I could go home.
Staring at the glass wall, I will myself to pull out of the dream of me dancing with Jacob, and force myself to face the things I don’t want to remember.
I retrace the journey here in my mind, trying to sift through the fragments. Jacob carried me from the cage, but my dad thinks Graham rescued me. I know I saw Brayden helping Jacob to the SUV, then later both of them in the backseat. On the plane, Graham asked about Jacob. He was alive then. I didn’t imagine that.
He’s here.
Somewhere.
I don’t know why I haven’t seen Jacob, but he’s not dead. If he were dead, I’d feel it.
I open my eyes and search the room. A button on the bed. Focusing on it, I awkwardly lift my hand. Even the slightest movement of my body causes a searing pain. I can’t make out the words beneath the buttons.
I press all of them and, breathless, collapse back against my pillow.
Graham Carson rushes into the room, eyes wild with emotion as he hovers above the bed. “Princess, it’s Graham. Nod if you understand.”
I nod and an enormous smile fills his face, but my head is quickly turned. The nurse stares at me. “Do you remember your name?”
“Krystal.” It hurts to push out the word, but I can tell by how her face changes she heard me and I made sound again.
She pats my arm. “Yes, that’s right. Krystal Harris.”
I shake my head. “No. Merrick.”
And the pain in my body sweeps me away.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Three days and I’m still shaking like Jell-O when they’re here. I can’t make myself stop shaking, even though I will my limbs to still because this is my family and I love them.
I know I’m frightening them with my strange behavior, and that I need to pull myself together.
I try.
I really try, but having them all in the hospital room at once is too much, like being zapped with sensory overload, and my insides become a frantic jumble. The movement and sound all around me I can’t process logically—too many smiles, too many kisses, too many tears, too much body contact, and too many things they pretend not to be thinking as they stare at me. The things Alberto Ramos and his men did to me. No, don’t go there yet, Krystal. You are not ready to work on that yet—and the most unexpected things make the wave of attacks come out of nowhere.
“Instinctive responses,” the counselor said soothingly. “They’re not always logical at first. Give it time. It will pass with therapy.”
It’s like my emotions run wild on the surface in an unrelenting fight-or-flight readiness status, and I can’t contain what they do. Whether I want it or not, they flash in sudden impulses I can’t contain.
My family’s not here to hurt me. They love me. My emotional storms shouldn’t stir up because they’ve visited me or that my dad is standing too close to the bed with Mom.
Chrissie’s hand closes around my trembling fingers. She presses her cheek to my head. “I’m so glad you woke up, baby girl.”
Woke? I was always awake, Mom. I chose not to be here.
Chrissie paints kisses across my forehead and the quaking of my body grows visible. “I’m so relieved you’re back with us.”
“Jacob?” I whisper, even though I’ve asked this two dozen times in the thirty minutes they’ve been here.
She brushes at her tears. “We told you, Krystal. He’s still in ICU. He’s awake. Just not for long. He can’t come to see you. That’s the only reason he’s not here.”
I search her face. “You’re not lying to me, are you, Mom?”
“No, he’s fine, sunshine,” Alan says, reaching out to brush back my hair but I flinch and my dad’s hand drops away. There a flash of hurt in his black eyes before he smiles. “We’ve taken turns sitting with Jacob. Me in the daytime. Your mum or Kaley at night. The doctor gave him a good report this morning. He’s getting stronger. They think another day or two, and they can move him to a regular hospital room.”
My mom touches my cheek. “We won’t let anything happen to Jacob.”
I nod and relax back against my pillow.
; “I think we’re wearing her out,” Alan says. “We should all go and let her rest.”
Relief rolls through me.
I love them, but this is too much. I can’t do this yet.
* * *
I wait until the hallway beyond my room is quiet. Well, not completely quiet, but only filled with hospital sounds and no longer my family. I grab my cell from the bed table and text Graham.
Before I set down my phone, he’s in my room. “You all right, Krystal?”
I struggle to hold his worried gaze and swallow down the lump in my throat. All right? I don’t know if I’ll ever be all right again.
“Do you know how to unhook this thing?” I gesture at the rope and canvas holding my leg off the bed. “I want you to take me to see Jacob, please.”
There’s a flash of something on his stern face. I’m not sure what, but my internal distress intensifies. “I would if I could, Princess. But I can’t. Your leg is in that harness for a reason.”
“The nurses take it off sometimes,” I argue. “When they bathe me and”—my stomach turns—“other things.”
His brows shoot up. “I’m not a nurse.”
“Please. I need to see him. See with my own eyes that Jacobs is…” My voice breaks and he studies the contraption they’re holding me hostage in. “Please, Graham. Just do this.”
He lets out a reluctant breath.
“I carry you in there, you see for yourself that Jacob is doing well, and then I carry you back.” His gray eyes fix on me sternly. “And you don’t ask again.”
I nod.
After he gets my leg free, his arms move toward me and I tense, my heart instantly accelerating and my breath rapid pants.
His large body stops. “Princess, I would never harm you.”
The tender understanding in his eyes brings a small measure of calm. He’s the only one who seems to get that when my knee-jerk panic surfaces it isn’t about him. Somehow he understands what I’m feeling, and those gray eyes are always so gentle and patient.
“I know that,” I whisper, but my insides continue jumping anyway. “Wait. Just give me another moment.”
I breathe in and out. You asked him to do this, Krystal. This is Graham Carson. You’ve known him almost all your life. He wouldn’t harm you.
He starts to move and I hold up my hand. “No, wait. Don’t touch me yet.”
My eyes widen as I watch, making sure he’s not trying to lift me, and the anxiety in me quiets as he eases back from the bed, patiently on standby until I nod.
“I’m only going to put my hands under you. Scoop you from the bed. You hold on to me. I won’t hold on to you. That’s how we’ll do this.”
His body lowers above me, and the trembling in my limbs turns into frenzied jolts.
It’s Graham. It’s Graham. It’s Graham, I say over and over in my head, but the gruesome slideshow of Alberto Ramos and his men starts to play anyway.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t get oxygen into my lungs.
“Stare into my eyes, Krystal. It’s me, Graham.”
Locking my gaze on him, I manage to push away the images in my head. My body is slowly taken from the bed into his firm chest and I loop my arms around his neck.
“You’re doing beautifully,” he whispers as he moves with me toward the door.
I shake against his steady body, willing myself not to melt down as we go into the hallway. I count the doors we pass. Read signs. Anything to keep my memories at bay.
I’m managing this, but only barely, and I wish it wasn’t taking so long to reach Jacob. Turn after turn. New hallway.
He hits a button and a few seconds later a ding makes me startle. An elevator—my hysteria escalates—the doors closing turn it into a small box.
Five, six, seven, eight.
I say my mantra in my head.
Metal doors open, finally, and we’re walking again.
With his back, he pushes through double swinging doors. The sign on the wall: ICU.
Glass walls, bed.
Glass walls, beds.
We pass the nursing station. “Sir, what are you doing? You can’t go in there. Family only. That’s what his chart says.”
She rushes toward us as Graham continues down the hall. “This is his wife.”
Her face clouds over and her mouth puckers. “Of course, sir. Take her in.”
The look in her eyes brings the taste of bile to my mouth because I can tell she knows some details about me and why my husband is here. The same expression my family has too often when they visit me, though they managed to smile at me as well.
I tuck my face into Graham so the nurse can’t see me.
Holding me with one arm, he jerks back a curtain.
I turn my face and my insides collapse.
Oh God—everyone said he was all right.
This is not all right.
Jacob is pale and still.
Bandages on his chest, with some kind of hose from beneath the bandage, dripping something into a bag.
What is that hose?
He can’t even breathe on his own.
Machines.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“It looks worse than it is, Princess. He was awake a bit today. He’s going to get better. I have no doubt of that.”
Tears burn in my eyes. “Get me closer to the bed.”
I stare down at him. He looks so weak. My heart wrenches. This is my fault. I don’t care who shot Jacob—I did this. He wouldn’t have been in Juarez if…
I cut off the thought, and fight to focus on my gaze roaming my husband. Just the one bandage. Nothing more.
I want to touch him, to feel he’s OK, but I’m afraid. With the love comes the evil now, even with my father, and I don’t want to suffer that with Jacob. Not ever.
Maybe it’s too soon to even try touching him.
Maybe I should wait until I’m stronger, clearer in my head, when the vile faces of Alberto and the men don’t blur out the faces I love in front of me.
Sniffing back my tears, I say, “Can you just set me close to him for a moment?”
Graham lowers me level to Jacob.
He looks so vulnerable.
Before I can stop myself, my trembling hand reaches out. With a fingertip I trace his brow, his cheek, and then his jawline. The sensation of his skin, familiar and reassuring. I brush back his hair, and let the sandy brown waves slip through my fingers.
“I love you, Jacob. Please, baby, don’t leave me.”
When he doesn’t answer, my finger traces his cheek then lightly touches his lips. His arm does a jerk, and my insides careen out of control. I pull away my hand quickly, afraid. It’s Jacob my eyes are on but inside my head I see the men.
Panicking, I cling to Graham’s neck. “Take me back to my room.”
His footsteps sound loudly against the floors as we go down the hallway, and silently I count them. We go into the elevator and up to my floor.
I watch Graham carefully put my leg in the harness again. “You’ll be outside my door all night, right?”
He looks up from reattaching the device. “Every second until Jamal comes in the morning to replace me.”
I nod, trying to stop my shuddering.
Having Graham outside the door should make me feel safe, only it doesn’t.
* * *
“Jacob”
My eyes open. It’s morning. I turn my head, and instead of Alan I find Graham Carson in the chair. My heart stops. Oh no, why is he here instead of Alan?
Frantic, I pull off the mask from my face. “Graham.” My ragged voice is like sandpaper in my throat, mostly breath, but he comes awake instantly and rushes to the rail of the bed. “Did something happen to Krystal?”
“No,” he says, patting my arm. “She’s fine. Better, in fact.”
Better?
The rush of adrenaline leaves my flesh and I drop back into my pillow. “I
heard her last night…then saw you in the chair instead of Alan…and I thought…”
His eyes widen. “You thought she died.” His face scrunches up. “No, Jacob. Krystal is going to get better. Every day better. You both are.”
Her voice plays in my head. “Then why are you here?”
He gives me another firm pat. “The family went home for some sleep, now that both of you are on the mend. That’s why I’m taking daytime duty in the chair today.”
I shake my head. The days are murky. I don’t even know how long I’ve been in this bed. “I thought I heard her talking to me last night.”
Graham smiles. “You did. I carried her in here to see you.”
I love you, Jacob. Please, baby, don’t leave me.
I close my eyes. Leave her? I can barely stand being in this room without her.
* * *
Ten days pass and I stare at my hospital room, confused and anxiously trying to figure out what’s going on with my wife.
Why hasn’t Krystal come to see me again? And why won’t anyone take me to see her? I can get out of bed. Walk the halls. But every time I ask someone to take me to her, they say ‘no’ without bothering to elaborate. If everything was good with my wife, wouldn’t they let me see her?
The phone on the tray table vibrates and I rein in my thoughts, reminding myself that she’s getting stronger. We text now that I’m somewhere I can have a phone. I wish she’d FaceTime with me, only she won’t, and I don’t know what that means.
Why doesn’t she want to see me?
Swiping on the phone, I read the text.
Krystal: What are you doing this morning?
Me: Missing you. What r u doing?
Krystal: Eating runny eggs. Hospital food worse than Jacob’s cooking.
Me: I’m a great cook. Eat the eggs. Your mom says you’re hardly eating.
Krystal: Don’t order me. I’m trying. They’re awful.
I glance at my half-finished tray. She’s right about that. Shaking my head, my fingers trace the letters without typing. Our morning banter agitates my already raw nerves.
What is this we’re doing?
My mouth tightens as I tap.
Me: Can I call? I could really use the sound of your voice.
The dancing ball on the screen. Why is it taking forever to type out an answer? It’s a yes or no, babe. Please let it be yes. Why won’t she even talk to me by phone?