The Girl He Used to Know

by Tracey Garvis Graves

  “Annika,” she says.

  “He was in the stairwell,” I argue. “Jonathan said he would go down and he was in the process of doing that when we got cut off. Based on the time the towers fell, he would have had time to reach the lobby, go outside, and get clear of them. Brad got out, and he didn’t even head down with Jonathan. He stayed behind and he still got out!” I’m shouting and crying.

  A man lays his hand on my arm, and I whirl around with so much force that he takes a quick step back. “I’m sorry, but who did you say you were looking for?”

  “My boyfriend Jonathan.”

  “My son and a man named Jonathan helped my son’s coworker, who was having a panic attack in the stairwell.”

  “Do you know what floor that was on?” Janice asks.

  “Fifty-two.”

  “I don’t know what floor my boyfriend was on, but I’m sure it was lower than that.”

  “My son was too, but according to some of the people they were with, he and this Jonathan went back up.”

  “Have you been able to find your son?” I ask, my voice trembling with fear.

  The man’s eyes fill with tears. “No.”

  And there it is. The reason Jonathan never called and we can’t find him is because he’s buried in the smoldering rubble of the South Tower.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. Janice squeezes the man’s hand and puts her arm around my shoulders.

  We leave the ballroom and sit on a bench outside the door where it’s quieter. Janice has given up. I know this because she does not tell me what our next step should be. She has suggested everything she thinks we can do, and now with this devastating news, there is nothing left. She can’t return to this hotel with me forever. She has a child to take care of. Mourning of her own to do for the friends she lost in the attacks. I have never felt so hopeless in my life.

  Janice’s phone rings. She answers and says, “No. We’re still at the hotel.” She listens to the caller for another minute. “I think that would be really great.” Then she hands the phone to me.

  “Hello?” I say.

  “Stay where you are,” my brother says. “I’m on my way to meet you.”

  43

  Annika

  Janice goes home and Will finds me in the hallway near the ballroom and leads me outside. I blink against the sunlight and inhale, but the air is a bit cleaner and we don’t need our masks yet. The posters of missing people are everywhere. They’re stapled to lampposts, taped to railings and windows. The ones that have come unmoored from their surfaces litter the street and blow away in bursts of wind. I try to avoid stepping on the pictures of the faces as Will and I make our way downtown on foot. There are people carrying candles, unlit for now but destined for tonight’s new wave of vigils.

  My brother revisits the theory: that Jonathan is not in the rubble but has instead been transported to a hospital. “He may be injured and unable to communicate,” Will says.

  “We went to all the hospitals,” I say.

  “You went to them two days ago, when it was utter chaos. Some of those people have died. New patients have been brought in. There’s been a lot of confusion. Let’s check again.”

  I agree, because Will’s idea has merit and there’s nothing else for us to do. I’ll be fine as long as we keep moving, keep trying to find Jonathan. “Where do we start?” I ask.

  Will smiles. “I’ve always found the beginning to be a good place.”

  I smile, too, because the beginning is, indeed, a good place to start, and for the first time in our lives, it seems Will and I are on the exact same page.

  * * *

  The sheet of paper I pull from my pocket lists the hospitals Janice and I already visited, a check mark next to all fifteen of them. It’s gray from our dirty hands and tattered from being folded repeatedly. I hand it to Will, and he studies it. He turns the paper over and scribbles the names of nearby landmarks and streets, and draws a circle around it and an X to indicate where we are. He adds the names of the hospitals whose locations he already knows and numbers them in the order of the likelihood we’ll find Jonathan there. He points to number one.

  “All right,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  My resolve is starting to falter. We’re standing in the hallway of the ninth hospital. My feet ache and I want nothing more than to go back to Janice’s and collapse into bed. But I can’t sleep until we’re done.

  “Can we sit down for a minute?” I ask.

  “Sure,” Will says. There are no chairs in the hallway, so I slide my back down the wall until my butt hits the hard tile floor. Will does the same.

  I don’t even care that at the moment, we’re accomplishing nothing. We’ve been turned down so many times today, and I need a break to recharge.

  I want to be strong for Will because he’s been so nice to help me, but I have reached my limit, and the tears slide down my cheeks. Soon, the floodgates open and I’m sobbing. Will puts his arm around me. We can check again at the remaining six hospitals on the list, but if Jonathan isn’t in any of them, it’s over. As soon as they lift the travel ban, I’ll fly home.

  A nurse pokes her head out of a room at the end of the hall and walks toward us. “What did you say he looked like?”

  I scramble to my feet on shaky legs. Will stands up, too. “He has dark brown hair. Blue eyes. A couple inches over six feet. He has a scar on his knee from a torn ACL.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Wait here,” she said.

  I forget how to breathe. I tell myself not to get my hopes up, but they soar anyway. Will reaches for my hand and we stand there like that until the nurse returns and says, “Come with me.”

  We follow her down the hallway and onto an elevator. I’m afraid to open my mouth, because the words are right there, waiting to tumble out in a frenzy of “Where are we going, what are we doing, do you think it’s him?”

  The door opens two floors below, and we follow the nurse out of the elevator. “One of my friends works in intensive care on this floor. She mentioned a John Doe they’re keeping under sedation for breathing difficulty and pain and that a few people have come to check his identity, but so far there hasn’t been a match. She said he has dark hair. He matches the height and age. No clue about his eyes because they’re closed. I can only let one of you in at a time.”

  “Go, Annika,” Will says when we reach the doorway of the patient’s room. “I’ll be waiting right here.”

  Once we’re inside the room, I hesitate because whoever this is, he’s in rough shape. Medical equipment surrounds the bed; a cacophony of whooshes and beeps. The antiseptic smell seeps into my nose, reminding me of my own hospital stay years ago, and I gasp for fresh air. That only makes it worse, because there is none.

  In the dim light of the room, I can make out the shape of a man. I don’t think it’s Jonathan, because the hair looks wrong—dull and gray instead of dark brown—but the nurse motions for me to approach the bed. She’s been so nice, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful or cowardly, so I do it.

  This man has been gravely injured. The hair looks wrong because it’s coated in ash and concrete dust, but underneath it I can see that the color is, in fact, a deep dark brown. It’s also dotted with dried blood. He’s on a ventilator, the tube down his throat held in place by some sort of white adhesive tape.

  I look closely, feeling a glimmer of hope as I mentally catalogue the planes and angles of Jonathan’s face, and I try to identify them under the bruises and the blood and the dirt. I don’t want to touch him because it would surely bring him pain, but I trace those planes and angles, my finger hovering inches above his skin. Jonathan’s face is like a Polaroid picture that slowly develops into something recognizable right before my eyes.

  It’s him. I know it’s him.

  Lastly, I lift the sheet and cry harder when I see the scar on his left knee. It’s also apparent that his legs and maybe his pelvis are badly b
roken.

  “Is this the man you’re looking for?” the nurse asks.

  Tears roll down my face and splash onto the sheet covering Jonathan’s chest. “Yes. Can my brother please come in? Just for a second?”

  “Just for a second,” she echoes.

  I throw myself into Will’s arms. It’s a strange sensation, this hug. I can’t remember ever feeling so loving toward my brother or wanting to express it in such a physical way. It’s comforting beyond words.

  “I can’t believe it,” Will says.

  “I can.”

  The nurse comes back in the room. “A doctor and a hospital administrator would like to speak with you. It won’t take long. You can come back when you’re done.”

  * * *

  Dr. Arnett introduces himself and tells us that Jonathan’s respiratory injuries are severe, and he is in critical but stable condition. He warns that there are complications that could arise at any time, and that Jonathan is not out of the woods yet. He is already showing signs of pneumonia, and the risk of an additional infection is high.

  From the administrator, we learn that Jonathan was carried out alive late on the day the towers fell. He was found in a small pocket of space surrounded by shattered concrete and crumpled steel. His clothes were cut off as paramedics tended to him before bundling him into an ambulance and sending him on his way. With no wallet or employee badge, he has been treated here at this hospital while the staff waited for someone to claim him.

  “I claim him,” I say, and from that moment on, I don’t ever leave his side.

  44

  Annika

  Will invites me to stay at his apartment so I can be closer to the hospital, but for the most part, I sleep at Jonathan’s bedside the way he did for me all those years ago. I can’t make actual medical decisions for him, but I will be Jonathan’s medical advocate, and I tell him I’ll take care of everything I can. I’m not sure if he can hear me, but I talk to him anyway and repeat everything the doctors tell me. I tell him we’re going to be here awhile.

  I couldn’t wait to share the news with my parents and Janice and Clay. I don’t think anyone but me thought that I’d ever find Jonathan, and my mom and Janice mostly cried into the phone.

  “I’m going to call the Chicago office right now,” my mom says. I’m glad she’s on top of things, because that hadn’t even occurred to me. When she calls me back later, she tells me that no one there believed Jonathan was alive either. I hope they celebrated.

  Bradford flew back to Chicago as soon as they lifted the travel ban. He calls me the next day on the new cell phone Will picked up for me. My mom has given him the number.

  “We’re all overjoyed that he’s alive. We would have lost even more employees if not for his directive to leave the building,” Brad says. Maybe he’s no longer mad at me for interrupting that meeting. I guess a national tragedy will do that to a person.

  “You said he got out of the building. That his name was on the list.”

  “There was so much confusion. He went down before I did. I … I really thought he got out.” His voice sounds pretty wobbly.

  “Well, he did not.”

  “Please let me know if there’s anything we can do for Jonathan, or for you.”

  “Thank you. That’s very nice of you. I’m sure Jonathan isn’t thinking about work or that promotion right now.”

  “No,” Brad says. “I’m sure he isn’t.”

  Before we hang up, Brad tells me that Liz, Jonathan’s ex-wife, did not make it out of the building and that she is presumed dead. “I thought Jonathan might want to know.”

  I promise Brad I will tell Jonathan when he wakes up.

  I didn’t know Liz, but Jonathan once loved her, so when we hang up, I cry for her anyway.

  * * *

  Jonathan’s medical team has been slowly lifting the sedation, and two days later Jonathan opens his eyes a little. He looks at me so oddly, I worry that maybe it isn’t him and I’ve been wrong this whole time. But the nurse warned me he would be confused, so I reach gently for his hand and say, “It’s me, Annika. I’m here. I love you, and you’re going to be okay.” He closes his eyes and doesn’t open them again that day.

  The next day it’s a little better and he keeps them open for almost an hour. He understands, I think, because he’s looking into my eyes like he knows it’s me. I don’t dare look away. I stare straight back into them, and I hold his gaze and say, “It’s Annika. It’s me. I’m here and I won’t leave.”

  He gets better every day and I tell him to squeeze my hand if he understands what I’m saying, what the doctors are saying. His grip is as weak as a baby’s, but he does what I ask. The doctors have gradually been turning down the ventilator and now they want to extubate Jonathan to see if he can breathe on his own. The sounds he makes when they remove the tube and he tries to breathe are terrible, and I can hear them clear out in the hallway, where they asked me to wait. If the staff notices my physical reaction—the flicking and bouncing I’m doing—they don’t mention it. When they let me come back into the room, Jonathan gasps and tries to speak, but no sound comes out, and he closes his eyes and goes back to sleep. It scares me, but they said he did okay and is just tired because breathing is really hard work.

  The next time he wakes up, he seems a little more coherent. Not much, but enough that he utters, “Annika?” His voice is so hoarse from the tube that I can barely hear him.

  “Yes, yes it’s me. It’s Annika. You’re okay. I mean, you have a lot of broken bones and some respiratory issues, but you’re going to be fine.”

  Jonathan’s pelvis is not so much broken as it is shattered, and the legs are a mess, too. Pretty much every bone from the waist down has some kind of damage, but the doctors say he will heal in time. His respiratory health is still the biggest hurdle he’ll have to overcome.

  “How did you get here so fast?” he asks, because it must be confusing to lose so many days the way Jonathan has. Maybe he thinks it’s still September eleventh.

  “I didn’t arrive until three days after the planes hit. No one could fly after that. I had to drive.”

  He blinks like he’s confused. “For a minute, I thought you said you drove.”

  “I did. You needed me, Jonathan, and here I am.”

  45

  Annika

  Jonathan is discharged from the hospital three months later and we fly home on a gray drizzly day in December. It doesn’t feel dreary to us, though. It feels like heaven to finally leave the confines of his hospital room and walk outside, to breathe fresh winter air that is only vaguely tinged with the smell of smoke. Or maybe I’m just imagining it.

  There have been endless, grueling weeks of physical therapy and breathing treatments. There have been some setbacks, including another very scary bout of pneumonia. The antibiotics weren’t working, and Dr. Arnett, whom I had come to know very well, pulled me aside and warned me that Jonathan might not survive.

  “I know this is difficult to hear,” he said. “But I want you to be prepared. His condition is very grave.”

  That seemed so unfair to me. To make it out of the tower only for your lungs to succumb to an infection one month later. Janice and Clay came to the hospital; Will was already at my side. Everyone seemed resigned to the fact that Jonathan would not be granted another reprieve. His fever rose and nothing the doctors tried was working, and I spent the better part of a day sobbing on someone’s shoulder.

  But Jonathan is the strongest person I know, and he did survive. And now we are leaving the hospital hand in hand, the way I always told him we would even on those days I wasn’t so sure I believed it myself.

  Will arranged for a car to take us to the airport. He came by earlier to say good-bye. I cried in my brother’s arms, overcome by all he had done for me, and when he pulled away there were tears in his eyes, too. I feel like Jonathan and Will are almost brothers now, considering how much time they spent together. Will was great about watching over Jonathan while I ran
to his apartment to grab clean clothes or take a shower.

  I used every bit of vacation I had, and when it ran out, I put in my resignation at the library. They said they’ll hire me back when I’m ready to return to work, and Jonathan said it shows how much they value me as an employee. It makes me feel really good to hear things like that, because I never really know what people think of me, at least the ones who don’t say rude things to my face. I will go back, because I love my job at the library, but I’ll wait until Jonathan is fully recovered, because right now he still needs me a lot.

  His bones are healing and he’s walking okay. A little slow, but who cares. Well, he does. But I know he’ll get faster.

  He doesn’t know what he wants to do, but he’s not going to work for Brad anymore.

  Life’s too short, he said.

  * * *

  My parents are there to pick us up at the airport. It makes me sad that Jonathan’s mom isn’t here, too, and that he doesn’t really have any family left. We’re going to live at my apartment. Jonathan knows how attached I am to it, and since he still has a lot of recovering to do, he said he doesn’t care at all where we live as long as we’re together. By the time we arrive home from the airport and I walk Jonathan into the bedroom, he’s leaning heavily on me. He doesn’t admit that he’s hurting, but sadly, I know all too well what Jonathan’s pain face looks like. I get him settled in bed and crawl under the covers with him. He wraps his arms around me and kisses the top of my head.

  “You amaze me,” he says. He’s probably said it twenty times by now, but it always makes me smile. “It feels so good to hold you again.”