She, Myself, and I

by Emma Young

  “Uh-huh.”

  “In the park?”

  “Cocktails and clubbing,” I say.

  He frowns.

  “. . . Not really,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, you know, it’s not like the stroke damaged my cognitive capacity.”

  I’d feel bad—if I had brain space to spare. “No, I’m sorry, I—”

  The elevator arrives and the doors part. I’m half prepared for Jared to slip in, movie-style, with me just before they shut. He doesn’t.

  It’s hot in here. As I pull off my sweater, I’m forced to close my eyes briefly, and it’s not Jared’s face I see in my mind but Daniel Johnson’s. Hollow cheeks. Unnatural eyes. Who am I to call someone unnatural? I take a quick breath, then another. Seven-eleven, I tell myself. One, two, three—

  Daniel Johnson. Who is he? A journalist?

  Four... A nurse who cleared away the still-warm detritus from the operating theater? A mortuary attendant?

  Five . . . An IT employee who decrypted Dr. Monzales’s files? If he knows about me, does he know about Sylvia?

  Six . . . Should I go to the police? Or to Mum?

  Seven . . . Or to Dr. Monzales? Not yet. Not yet.

  Before I can start my eleven-count exhalation, the bell pings. The elevator doors slide open. I walk fast along the softly lit corridor to my room. As I close the door, it locks automatically. It doesn’t seem enough, somehow. If there was a chain, I’d hook it. If there were deadbolts, I’d shove them home.

  Where’s my phone? There, on the desk. I sit on my bed. My fingers tremble as I type “Daniel Johnson.” Unsure whether it’ll help to add anything else, I leave it at that.

  I get 283,000,000 results.

  He’s a soccer player. A celebrity hairstylist. The Formula 1 correspondent for the BBC. A member of the Scottish Parliament. A photographer. Why did he have to have such a common name? I remember his address. So I add “Hartford.” And I get . . . nothing. At least, nothing useful. I add “Dixon-Dudley Memorial” . . . nothing. I add “reporter” . . . nothing.

  Perhaps this is a lot more straightforward than I’d suspected. He is a murderer. Or a rapist. Or a thief. He and that woman work together. She identifies vulnerable patients in the park, and he goes after them. Is that it?

  It would be bad luck, on my part. But then, luck’s not something that’s always swung my way.

  • • •

  “So, it was, like, two years ago, and I was in Prague with my cousin and her band, and there are trams. She’d been drinking. Those big glasses. You know, like those German steins? She’d had four of them—liter glasses—maybe five. She stepped out. It hit her. The tram. Yeah. I heard the thud. She was in a coma for two months—”

  I’m listening to the conversation at the café table behind me because it’s something to pin myself to. I don’t want to answer the question that Joe just asked me: “Do you remember this?” And I don’t want to look at his phone again, because if I do I’m going to throw up. I’m steeling myself to answer.

  Me, Rosa, the strong one, who does whatever she has to do and doesn’t shrink from it.

  Joe’s just sitting there, forearms on the pale wood table, his phone between them, watching me with an expression that’s excruciatingly close to suspicion.

  At least no one else is watching me. Les Baguettes is not big. Eight tables, surrounded by a juice fridge, chiller cabinets, paper-wrapped meatball-and-cheese baguette sandwiches stacked by a microwave, and a hot drinks machine. The new kid and his visitor, a guy with a beard and a baseball cap, are occupied in their own conversation. The woman at the register is typing something on her phone with one hand while scratching at her paper cap with the other.

  And then there’s us.

  As soon as I got here, I noticed Joe at a table by the juice fridge. His head was bent over his phone. It wasn’t until, over the soft classical Muzak, he heard me scrape back a chair and looked up that I realized he knew something. I sat down on autopilot. Evidently, he’d gotten a signal. Evidently, he’d made some form of discovery. I wanted to ask, but my mouth was dry.

  He put his phone down on the table. Said quietly, “Do you remember this?” He looked at the screen.

  I looked, too.

  At a photograph of my new body. Of Sylvia—of me.

  In the photo, she was smiling. She was a few years younger, wearing denim shorts and a white short-sleeved top, her thick hair in a ponytail, a fishing rod, of all things, in her hands. It was a sunny day. She was squinting. She looked happy.

  My mind is accosted with manufactured memories. They come rushing, my brain no doubt working to make sense of what I look like and what I just saw, because I feel like I can remember pancakes for breakfast, the crunch of a partially defrosted blueberry between my teeth, sunlight on a drive, the musty, plastic smell of a car in the warmth. A glimmer of water. Rocks. Shale. Minnows in the shallows.

  “Rosa?” Joe clears his throat. “Sylvia?”

  Sylvia.

  I take the phone and I scroll up, above the picture, to a headline.

  LEXINGTON TEEN IN COMA

  And then down.

  Sylvia Johnson, 18, of Courtyard Place, Lexington, is in a coma after falling through ice into the Old Reservoir on Marrett Road. The Lexington High School student is being treated at Massachusetts General Hospital, where doctors say there is a slim chance she will regain consciousness. Johnson’s mother, Amy Johnson, 38, and her father, Daniel Johnson, 52, are at her bedside.

  18.

  I’m freezing. My flesh is gripped by cold. I’m falling. I’m sinking, and I’m freezing, so cold I can’t feel temperature, only pain. And more pain. And terror. Then something very different: disappointment. It’s overwhelming. A blackness descends, like the end of the world. . .

  The phone clatters to the table as though dropped from some other hand. I press my palms to my eyes.

  Near-drowning . . . She slipped through ice, into freezing water. That’s what happened. Sylvia.

  And I felt . . . But it’s impossible. Impossible. It was a hallucination. Or a seizure. This is her body, but it’s my brain. My brain. Hers is gone. Her life is gone, left only in traces, in other people’s memories.

  Her father was in the woods here, outside the hospital. Her father, who—according to the legal document we all signed—agreed that there should be no contact between us. Who Dr. Monzales seemed so convinced did not want to see his dead daughter’s body walk the earth.

  Who’s the woman? Her mother? No. We made eye contact that afternoon in the park. If she was Sylvia’s mother, she couldn’t have looked at me so unemotionally.

  Whoever she is, she’s been watching me. And the doctors didn’t know. Sylvia’s father nearly—did what? Kidnapped me? Was that her parents’ intention? They gave consent to the procedure so that she could live, and they could take her back?

  I think, Imagine knowing that your daughter’s body is walking around, and seeing her. But imagine knowing that your daughter’s body is walking around—and not seeing her. Which would be harder? Well, now I have my answer. Has her father been out there all these months, I wonder, just waiting for me to venture into the park alone?

  “Rosa? Did you hear me? This is you, right?”

  I glance over at the window and see only the fractured reflections of the café. Is her father out there now, hoping for another chance?

  “No,” I whisper.

  As I push the phone back to Joe, another realization strikes. This one cuts me right through.

  When I’m discharged, Dr. Monzales will tell the world about the surgery. When the news breaks, Joe will know.

  He’ll be—what, revolted? Disgusted? And he’s a journalist. He won’t be able to resist writing about me. It would make him famous. Reporters from all over the world will rush to find me. They’ll hound me—and Mum and Dad and Elliot.

  I do not want Joe to discover the truth. If I can buy time, perhaps I’ll find a route to salvation. It’s happened before.
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  I whisper, “This isn’t me.”

  Joe’s expression is disbelieving. I can’t blame him.

  “She looks like me. She isn’t me. I’m English. I’m from London. I look like her. Her dad must have seen me. He must think I’m her.”

  “The photo—”

  “Listen to me. Do I sound American? Ask me, I don’t know, who’s the member of Parliament for Glossop?”

  “Who’s the member of Parliament for Glossop?”

  “I have no idea. But I’ve heard of Glossop.” I hear my words tumbling out. “What eighteen-year-old girl from Lexington, Massachusetts, has heard of Glossop? Hartlepool. Grimsby. Northallerton. Herne Hill. Have you heard of Hartlepool? Lewisham. Rotherham. What eighteen-year-old American has heard of Rotherham? I. Am. Not. Her. Ask me how many weeks you wait to see a doctor on the NHS. Ask me who the judges on our X Factor are. Ask me what Jamie Oliver’s kids are called. No, don’t ask me, I don’t know. Ask me—”

  “Okay—what—”

  “Poppy. One of his kids is called Poppy!” I realize I sound insanely triumphant.

  The suspicion in his eyes fades a little.

  “The Turing test for Englishness,” he says, leaning back a little in his chair.

  “And if I was this girl, when I saw my dad in the woods, I’d have said, ‘Hey, good to see you—why are you skulking about out here? Come back to my room for some Hershey’s bars and soda.’ Wouldn’t I?”

  “Maybe you ran away. You think you haven’t lost memories, but you have. That was a terrible accent, by the way.”

  “I would remember another life.” I wrap my arms around myself and feel my pounding heart. Around her. Sylvia. I feel protective. Of us both. “You seriously think I’d run away and pretend to be some English girl, and persuade all the doctors and nurses, and even find people to pretend to be my parents and my brother? Ask anyone. Ask that woman at the register—she’s seen me here with my family.”

  He shifts in his chair. Then he glances behind us, at the new kid and his friend who told the story about the Prague tram, and at the woman, who’s yawning, still scratching at her cap.

  “You should go to the police,” he says quietly, “if her dad is here, and he thinks you’re her.”

  I clasp my hands in my lap. Unclasp them. Clasp them. I feel . . . strange. Hot and numb.

  She lived in Lexington. Her name was Sylvia Johnson. She fell through ice. And her father came to find me. What should I do? Suddenly, I feel overwhelmingly sad. She fell through ice.

  I can’t look at Joe, because I feel tears coming. And I’m ashamed. Confused. Sad. Ashamed. Tired. Sad, mostly—for her.

  But I also know something for sure: I need to find out everything I can about her. To be able to live with her body, I need to know what kind of life she had. What kind of girl she was.

  I glance back at the phone, which is on the table in front of Joe.

  “Why did you look up that Shakespeare company?” I ask him. “Why did you come back and follow the woman?”

  “I told you: I saw her watching you. I saw her just hanging out with those leaflets.”

  “So you left work and came all the way back here?”

  “Why so suspicious?” he asks. “I wasn’t even at work. Look, I started The Bench as a blog. It did okay. Bostonstream wanted to link to it but instead I talked them into carrying it and having me in the office three mornings a week, doing basic stuff, getting experience. So, Friday afternoons, no, I don’t have to be in. Why did I help you? I guess you seem like someone who could maybe do with some help.”

  For a few moments, I just let all this sink in. I don’t want to be someone who seems like she needs help. But I guess I do actually need it. I look up at him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Accepted. And in case you’re wondering, I don’t make a habit of mugging people. I’ll send the wallet back tomorrow.”

  I nod. “I guess if the journalism thing doesn’t really work out, though . . .”

  “Yeah, professional mugger is now officially my plan B. If I don’t get arrested.”

  Surely there’s no chance, though, that Sylvia’s father will go to the police. In coming near me, he’s broken the terms of the legally binding donation agreement. All I can say to Joe is, “There were no witnesses, except me, and I only saw a hood.” I frown down at his phone. “I’m not her. But I really want to know who she was.”

  “Was?”

  “Before the accident . . . what she was like. What her life was like.”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  “I—” I sigh. “Right now”—right now? Not ever—“I can’t. I really appreciate what you’ve done. And I will totally understand if you’d like to just walk out of here.”

  The violins gently soar into a subdued crescendo.

  At last, he says, “I guess that’s not what I’d like to do.”

  I’m thinking about what to say—how to let him know that I’m glad, and I’m sorry—but he’s talking again. “Look, I have some experience in finding out about people. If you don’t want to talk to her parents—which I take it you don’t—you can get a lot of information online. But if you really want to find out about her, and discover what’s true, not just social media PR, you need to talk to people who knew her. So the best thing’s probably to go to Lexington.”

  The room starts to spin. I don’t respond. Of course there’s no way I can go to Lexington.

  “It isn’t far away,” he goes on. “Forty minutes, maybe. You could get a cab . . . or I could take you?”

  The dizziness intensifies into a kind of mental tornado.

  I feel like I have to fight against it to spell it out to myself:

  Joe just asked if you want him to take you to Lexington.

  Mum would go crazy. Dr. Bailey would downgrade me to unstable and order me interned for another six months. If I could ask Elliot right now, he would no doubt try to talk me out of it.

  But I have free will, don’t I? And Joe didn’t ask what obstacles stand in the way of my leaving with him. He just asked if I want to.

  I signed that legal document, too. I’m not supposed to ever meet her parents. And after what just happened—and that haunted look in her dad’s eyes—I don’t think I want to. This could be my chance to get closer to Sylvia.

  “Would you really?” I ask Joe. “Take me, I mean?”

  “If it would be medically safe for you to go, yes.”

  It would, surely. I’m in the final stage of my time here. Dr. Bailey himself said that. I could take my medication with me. I nod.

  “How old are you?” he asks.

  “Eighteen.”

  “So, it’s your call. Look, it’s Friday. I have to be at work Monday morning, but I could clear the weekend. You could think about it, and I’ll give you my number. You can call when you’ve decided. Or we could go now . . .”

  I don’t answer right away.

  His proposition hangs between us.

  I feel on the verge of something, and I have to make the right leap. Like I’m out on the edge of a cliff. I’m swaying. I could fall either way if I’m not careful. Nervous tension is all that’s holding me up.

  19.

  It’s a four-wheel drive. A hulking, shadowy silver car parked between other hulking, shadowy cars in the hospital’s underground parking lot.

  Joe presses a button on the keychain, and I hear the click of my future opening up. Perhaps I’m a little scared because fear for my own survival has long been the leitmotif of my life. But mostly, I can’t believe that after all these months I’m finally leaving Dixon-Dudley Memorial. Not as I expected it to happen, but still.

  After I throw a bomber jacket and my yellow overnighter—my cabin bag on the journey here to Boston, hastily packed with my medication, some clothes, and toiletries—in the back, climb in, and strain to pull the monumental door shut, that disbelief animates into something closer to excitement.

  The engine kicks in. We pull out of the parking spot, angling toward
the exit. Joe presents his pass to the scanner at the barrier. As the barrier rises, pent-up tension floods out of me. The release seems so substantial, and immediately afterward I feel so much lighter, that I can only compare it to an exorcism.

  The discussions with Dr. Bailey, the case studies and the measured consideration of the attitudes of major organ recipients, conversations with Mum about life after the hospital—all that was theory. This is real. This is me.

  The free world speeds past.

  We’re on a straight, dark road. Smart-looking warehouses to both sides. Dock buildings, I guess, converted into apartments. A corner café, shuttered. A thin woman in neon pink sneakers, swinging something heavy in a paper bag. A man in a suit shouldering a backpack.

  A man heading home from work. A woman who’s just popped out for a carton of milk. Normal people. And I’m among them.

  I’m out, I’m out. The fact of it is spiking me over and over, shots of adrenaline to my heart.

  I stare at a boy jogging past with an easy, loping stride. A woman in a window pulling up the blinds. Supersize traffic lights that make me think of Sesame Street. Uppercase road signs that make me think I’m on TV, watching myself.

  Normal American people. In their normal world.

  The road splits. We veer down to run parallel to the harbor.

  The water’s still, shiny black. The sky above it is speckled with stars and airplane lights. An SUV passes us, windows half down, pop music blaring, three young girls with braided hair in the back, shuffle-dancing in their seats, singing along.

  I press a button in the door to lower my window, and I smell salt and rot. It’s disgusting. It’s wonderful.

  Then I think, How long will it be before someone at the hospital realizes I’m gone?

  I have to get a message to Mum, but I’ll wait an hour or so before I text her. I want to give us time to get far enough away from the hospital.

  Joe interrupts my thoughts: “I should make one stop. If I drop the wallet at the office, I can get it couriered back. That okay?”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “And I know food probably isn’t going to be uppermost in your mind right now. But I haven’t eaten all day. Do you mind if I get something?”