If You Were Here

by Stephanie Taylor

  But all it took was one look at his face under the bright light to see what he was trying to do. He wanted to jump.

  My heart thundered like a million horses racing across a plain. Andy wanted to jump. “No,” I said calmly, in spite of the way the drumming of my pulse was making everything around me feel darker. “No.” And without thinking about the possible outcome, I ran the rest of the way across the bridge. I ran like I was trying to cross a finish line or save a falling baby. I ran as fast as I could and came face to face with my uncle Andy.

  “You were going to jump?” I shouted in his face. There couldn’t have been more than two inches between us. Rain dripped from the end of our noses. I could feel the wildness in my voice and my lungs burned. “Are you serious, Andy?”

  He finally tore his eyes from the falls and turned them on me. They were unfocused and distant. He said nothing.

  “This was supposed to be an accident,” I ranted. “You died tragically and no one could have stopped it. Do you have any idea what this did to our family?” I narrowed my eyes at him and reached out a hand like I was going to shove him backwards. I heard footsteps on the bridge. It was Roger.

  “Daniel!” Roger said. I couldn’t hear him, but as I turned to watch him crossing the slippery bridge, I could see his lips forming my name. “Daniel, stop!”

  But I couldn’t stop. I turned back to Andy. “You killed your mother with this. She drank so much…you have no idea.”

  “She’s not dead,” Andy yelled, finally breaking his silence. “What are you talking about?”

  “You dying was too much for her. And your dad ended up in a home—he can’t even take care of himself.”

  “Daniel, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you doing the most selfish thing you could ever do. Why would you do this?”

  Andy’s eyes grew hard. “Pressure. Feeling alone.”

  “Alone? That’s ridiculous. You’re never alone. You have so many friends and girlfriends.”

  “Being with people doesn’t mean you don’t feel alone.” He looked at me. “And how am I ever going to do anything with my life that lives up to people’s expectations?”

  I was about to answer when Roger’s voice rang out. “Get off the bridge!”

  “Who cares about people’s expectations,” I spat. “What about your sister? Did you know she ends up popping so many pills that she’s like, perma-glazed? I basically raised myself.”

  Andy shook his head at me. “You sound insane.”

  “You hurt everyone, Andy.” The rain was coating my face and running under my collar. “How could you tear our family apart? You had everything.” I reached out for him with both hands and grabbed the front of his shirt in my fists, yanking him hard. “This is stupid!”

  Andy clearly didn’t anticipate that I would grab him, and we fell into each other, stumbling slightly. My right foot was on the bridge, sliding as we struggled against each other.

  “Knock it off!” Roger said from behind me. His hands went around my waist and he tried to pull me off Andy. “You two are acting like idiots!”

  The three of us wrestled one another for a minute in a strange tug-of-war. Rain slicked us and blinded me temporarily, but I kept shoving, trying to free myself from being wedged between Roger and Andy.

  “Let go!” Roger shouted in my ear. “This is dangerous!”

  So I did. I let go. Andy fell backward onto the muddy path, his hands landing before his body. I fell forward, one foot skidding off the side of the bridge as I landed on my knees and caught the metal edge of the bridge in both hands. I was safe.

  But the force of our collective letting go sent Roger backwards. He tripped, his feet disappearing from under him. His face was briefly lit by the floodlight as he scrambled to break his own fall.

  The last thing I saw was the fear and shock in his eyes as his hands sought something firm to grab onto. There was nothing.

  30

  December 28, 2016

  Cascade Spilling

  “Hi, there,” a gentle, unfamiliar voice said in Daniel’s right ear. “We’ve been waiting for you to wake up again.”

  Daniel blinked in the bright light of midday. There was a glare from the harsh winter sun that bounced off the white floors and bedding. He blinked repeatedly, his arms shooting out in front of him as he sought to grab onto something he couldn’t name.

  There was a sensation of loss. The urge to save something or someone. He felt around blindly as his eyes adjusted to the light. For a moment, Daniel wasn’t sure if he was standing in the rain or the sun, whether he was waking to day or to night. His breath came in shallow gasps, and tears filled his eyes. He searched the air around him with his hands.

  “Don’t try to talk, sweetheart.” Daniel’s mother appeared in his field of vision. She moved in so he could see her face. Gone were the lines he’d grown used to seeing on either side of her mouth, those parentheses in her skin that revealed the decades of cigarettes and alcohol. Instead, her skin was smooth, her eyes clear. “We need to get the doctor in here, okay?”

  Daniel’s heart raced, tripping the monitor next to him so that the beeps grew louder and more insistent. After twenty seconds, a shrill alarm buzzed, letting the nurse’s station know that something was happening in his room.

  The door flew open and a tall male nurse in blue scrubs walked in. “What do we have here?” he asked, bending forward and pushing a button to stop the monitor from beeping. “Did he just wake up?”

  “He did,” said the first woman who’d spoken to Daniel. She smiled at the nurse. “Can you call the doctor in?”

  “Right away,” the nurse said, hurrying back out into the hallway to page the doctor.

  “Daniel,” came a man’s brusque voice. “You’ve given us all a big scare, but we couldn’t be more happy to see the whites of your eyes.”

  Even though the haze hadn’t cleared from his vision yet, Daniel recognized that strong, firm voice: it was his grandfather. He reached a weak hand out to touch the man’s arm. “I’m right here, son,” his grandpa said.

  “Now, Daniel,” said the first woman, leaning in close so he could see her face. “As soon as the doctor comes in and takes out your breathing tube, there are going to be people asking questions. I want you to—”

  But Daniel didn’t let her finish. He let go of his grandfather’s arm and reached for the woman, pulling her closer by the cuff of her shirt. She frowned as he dragged her down to eye level, hoping she could understand what it was he wanted even without the benefit of his being able to speak.

  It was his grandmother. He watched her and wondered how this was even remotely possible. Her face was the same as the face he’d seen just the night before (But had it really been the night before?) as he and Roger and their dates had left for the prom, but her eyes crinkled more at the corners, and her hair was shorter and frosted with silvery grays. Other than that, she was unchanged. And—more importantly—she was alive.

  But Roger. His heart thudded in his chest. Some memory of Roger tickled at the edges of his mind.

  “Well, well, well,” boomed a voice from the doorway. A doctor in a lab coat swung in and walked swiftly to the bed. It was a different doctor than the one Daniel remembered from his brief moment of alertness on Christmas Eve. “Welcome back, Daniel,” he said kindly, pulling a flashlight the size and shape of a pen from his breast pocket. He clicked on the light and shined it into Daniel’s eyes, holding each lid up with his cold fingers as he searched for signs of life in Daniel’s pupils.

  Apparently satisfied, he clicked off the flashlight and put it back into his pocket. “This level of alertness indicates that our patient here is ready to wake up and join us.” He looked back down at Daniel and touched his respirator. “You about ready to lose this thing and tell us what’s on your mind?”

  The thought of being able to talk was somewhat overwhelming. Was he ready to speak? To explain or ask questions or hear what in the hell had
happened to put him in the hospital in the first place? Daniel didn’t know whether there was any way to actually be ready for that, so instead he gave a small nod, his eyes wide and unblinking.

  Within minutes, the doctor had the respirator removed, and the nurse was back with ice chips and a cloth to clean up Daniel’s face and neck. He took his time wiping under Daniel’s chin, making sure he was comfortable before he used a plastic spoon to fish a chunk of ice from the styrofoam cup he’d brought in with him. He placed the ice into Daniel’s mouth and waited while it melted.

  “No way!” Another person entered the room, his voice bouncing off the linoleum and the bare walls. “I got your text, Lisa—he’s awake!”

  Daniel chewed the ice in his mouth. With a wink, the nurse set the cup of ice on Daniel’s night stand and moved out of the way so the patient could finally speak if he wanted to.

  “You’re awake!” the man said, striding across the room and leaning over the rail to give Daniel a half-hug, which was all they could manage, given the awkward set-up of the hospital bed.

  Daniel looked up at him. He didn’t even need to think about it to know who this man was. Time had barely touched him, merely ruffling his slightly thinning hair and leaving it a shade lighter. His skin was hardly wrinkled, his body still as strong and athletic as Daniel remembered. Daniel’s throat burned with the effort of trying to speak. He had so many things he wanted to say. So many questions, a million things he’d need to find the answers to. He wanted to ask for Roger, needed to know what had happened on his last night with his friend. And then there was Jenny. Thoughts flooded his brain and Daniel wanted to ask every question at once.

  But instead, he looked at the man and uttered his first word since the shooting: “Andy,” he croaked. “Andy.”

  31

  Spring 2017

  If I Believe You

  In the weeks that followed, Daniel got his strength back. It was a long road to recovery after a head injury, and the doctors were careful to test his every faculty and to consider any long-lasting damage. The first thing they noticed was his brain’s apparent inability to send the right signals to his legs, leaving him weak and dragging one foot behind him just slightly. He started physical therapy immediately and made progress from the first day.

  “You’ll be out on the tennis court with me and Grandpa in no time,” his grandmother said, standing in the corner of the room with a proud smile as Daniel held onto two long rails and walked from one end of the small course to the other. His left leg was still limp, but he was making great strides in controlling his steps and his muscles.

  “Forget about tennis,” Daniel’s grandfather said as he watched closely. “I think he should start running with me.”

  “Honey,” Daniel’s grandma said, putting a hand on her husband’s bicep. “One step at a time. He’s making good progress.”

  “It’s fine, Grandma.” Daniel smiled at them both, a bead of sweat breaking out on his forehead as he turned himself around and walked back in the other direction. “I’ll be able to run with him and then he’ll be sorry he invited me.”

  “That’s my boy!” Daniel’s grandpa beamed with pride. The grandfather Daniel had known before his coma had been a completely different man. The stroke he’d had after his wife’s death had rendered him nearly silent and almost totally unable to control his body, but this man was just like the one Daniel had known in 1986, only with less hair.

  Having his grandparents around and healthy never got old for Daniel. Every single day when he first opened his eyes, he took a moment to think about his family. His grandparents being there was almost more than he could have wished for. And his mother…what could he say about that? Lisa was a dentist with a practice in downtown Westchester, and her outlook on life was completely different than the way he remembered it before he’d gotten shot. There were no pills in the medicine cabinet, no vodka bottles under the sink, and no sign of the mother who’d holed up in her room for days, hiding from the world and ignoring her son.

  Daniel and his mom had a woman who came in and cleaned twice a week, leaving their house smelling like lemons and looking like it was always prepped for a magazine shoot. The woman, Denise, also made dinner for them several nights a week. Daniel had quickly gotten used to having hot meals like lasagna and fajitas, and he’d almost forgotten how many nights he’d spent looking for ten dollars around the house so he could walk to Little Caesars to get pizza. It almost felt like he was living someone else’s life.

  But even with all the things Daniel loved about this new and different life, there was a nagging darkness that caught him off guard sometimes. He could be sitting quietly in his room, remembering the way it felt to wake up there to strange music and unfamiliar posters and clothes, and it would hit him: Roger was gone.

  Once, as he’d struggled through an early appointment with the physical therapist and had felt like giving up on everything, he’d been overwhelmed with the thought that he’d gotten to live not just once, but twice. That his actions had mattered to both himself and to his family. But he wanted to share it with someone. He longed to laugh about it all and to talk about what he’d been through, and one of the only people he could have talked to was Roger. Roger’s absence was like a hole in his heart that no amount of physical therapy would heal.

  The other person he longed for as he struggled to regain his strength and to adjust to his life was Jenny. She occupied nearly every one of his waking thoughts. Of course he’d done the math already and knew that she’d be forty-eight that year, but his promise to her stayed with him as he took walks around his neighborhood and caught up with old friends.

  That day in her room, as they’d laid in bed listening to the rain, he’d told her he might have to go. He’d known it was probably going to happen, that the day would eventually come. But he’d also promised her nothing would change the way he felt about her, and nothing had. Daniel also knew that while the last time they’d seen each other on prom night felt like just a few months to him, it would have felt like thirty years to Jenny. He didn’t even know if she thought of him anymore. Maybe Daniel Girch was nothing more than a distant memory to her now, someone she’d known and nearly forgotten. He had no way of knowing for sure, but it didn’t stop him from thinking about her.

  By the time spring rolled around, Daniel was ready to get out of the house and see the world again. He’d missed a fair amount of school, but the private tutor and online classes the district had provided were keeping him on track for graduation. Somehow, going back to Westchester High seemed wrong to him, though he’d driven by it on a few occasions, trying to reconcile it in his mind with the place he’d spent time with Jenny and Roger.

  “You ready?” Andy asked, standing in the driveway one April afternoon. Daniel’s limp was barely noticeable by then, and he’d started acting like himself again.

  “I’m ready.”

  With a flourish, Andy pulled the fabric cover off the car in the driveway of his parents’ house, revealing the 1969 Camaro that had always been his pride and joy. Daniel took a deep breath. Seeing the car brought back a lot of memories.

  “Let’s just take a drive,” Andy said, sliding behind the wheel. He reached over and unlocked the passenger side. “I don’t take the old girl out often enough.”

  Daniel climbed in carefully, closing the door with a firm pull. The smell of the car hit him like a wave, and he remembered the night he and Jenny had gone to the movies. The night she’d kissed him as they’d listened to The Smiths. Jenny. He couldn’t stop thinking of her.

  “Where should we go?” Andy asked, pulling out onto the main road that led through town. Daniel still had the habit of making mental notes about all the things that had changed in Westchester between 1986 and 2016. The fast food restaurants that had cropped up along the highway; the different housing developments that had taken over fields and forests; the way the roads had all widened and spread out in every direction.

  Daniel shrugged. “We can just
drive.”

  And so they did. They drove on the highway, passing glass office buildings and off-ramps that had been built in the past thirty years. Daniel read the signs as they blew past, noting the names of streets and parts of town that had changed. Somehow he felt nostalgic for 1986 in a way he hadn’t felt in the months since he’d woken up.

  “Do you ever think about him?” Daniel asked, looking out the window. “About Roger?” He hadn’t even meant to bring up his old friend, but thoughts of him had filled Daniel’s mind as he’d gone through rehab and gotten his strength back, just as thoughts of Jenny had occupied his mind.

  Andy tapped the steering wheel with his thumbs. “About Roger?” He frowned and looked at Daniel. “How do you know about Roger?”

  Daniel didn’t have an answer to that, so he just sighed heavily, letting the silence grow between them. How to explain it all? How to make Andy remember something that may or may not have even happened? But if Roger was really dead, then it had all happened, hadn’t it? If he could see Jenny and if she remembered him, then it had definitely happened…

  “Roger died before you were born,” Andy said, focusing on the road again. “And he was more your uncle Danny’s friend.” Daniel knew that his uncle Danny—the 1986 Daniel—had made a career out of being a Marine after high school and rarely came home or called. No one knew what had prompted this life choice or the distance between him and his family, but that’s how it had always been. “Did Grandma talk about Roger? Or your mom?”

  “Must have been,” Daniel said, shrugging. “He sounded like a good friend.”

  Without talking about it, Andy signalled and took an exit off the highway, steering them down a tree-line road and into a gated park called Oak Lane. He slowed to go over a speedbump, then paused at a curb and turned off the car.