by Emma Young
“I wouldn’t have thought you would’ve wanted to meet them,” I say.
“Mostly, I think, it was intended for their benefit,” Mum says. “So they could see we were decent, loving people. And I wanted to be reassured that they could handle the donation, and they weren’t doing it because they thought their daughter could live on in some way . . .” She sighs. “Her mother had a stroke after the accident, but there was nothing wrong with her cognitively. Not when we met or when they signed the paperwork. Then I heard she had another stroke. Worse that time . . . They wanted anonymity, too.”
“In fact, they stipulated it,” Dad puts in. “We’ll have to talk to Dr. Monzales about how to handle this. The police will have to be involved.”
“No—”
“No?” Mum says.
“I don’t want to press any charges,” I tell them.
Dad says quietly, “Rosa, he came after you in the park.”
“I don’t want the police involved.” And I don’t. Because I have my own plan for what to do about this.
Dad glances at Mum and says, “If it’s possible not to involve the police, we won’t. I think that’s the best we can give you right now.”
“You could have told me what you knew about them,” I say. “I could have handled that kind of knowledge.”
Mum puts her half-eaten slice of pizza in its box. “Dr. Bailey advised us. You know he did.”
“And in the end he was wrong,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. “Look what happened when you found out who she was. You vanished off on her trail.”
“It was the right thing to do. And I’m back now.”
Mum nods. She wipes her hands on a napkin. “And you’re not the same as when you left.”
“Mum.” This is from Elliot, who otherwise has been unusually quiet during the conversation.
Impatiently, I say to her, “How exactly am I different?”
Looking directly at me, she says softly, “Only in the way you should be. The kind that means I know I’ll have to learn to let you go a little.”
Which makes me cry all over again. As she hugs me, and I feel the slick of my tears between our cheeks and inhale the scent of her, but breathe in her love even more deeply, I think: a heartfelt truth. Not from me, yet. But still . . .
Later, after Elliot’s taken the pizza boxes off to the trash, I tell Mum I’m ready to be scanned.
They all come with me. As the elevator door opens and we step out into the corridor that leads to the scanning suite, I realize I’m nervous.
Because I’m thinking of the episode in the park, by the woods, and the one by the reservoir, and of what happened in O’Neill’s, when I collapsed.
Dr. Monzales is waiting. “Rosa!” He’s smiling. I’m sure Mum and Dad have told him everything. But he doesn’t look angry. As always, his white shirt is immaculately pressed.
He leads me in, and when I’m settled in one of the black leather armchairs, he slips an EEG cap over my scalp. Next, I’m taken to another room for an MRI scan. I lie there, very still, trying to hold on to the happiness I just felt in my room, and not to listen to the throb of the machine.
When, an hour later, I’m told everything’s normal, at first I feel more anxious.
Because all those faints, those visions—they weren’t normal. Were they?
But then I think, Perhaps Elliot isn’t entirely right.
Perhaps a part of Sylvia really does remain with me.
37.
The day of my return to the hospital is a Monday.
For the rest of the week, I decide to do whatever Mum and Dad and Dr. Monzales want.
So I eat “re-nutritive” meals on a schedule drawn up by the dietitian. I rest in my room with trashy websites and photos posted on Instagram by AikaA, my friend in Tokyo (What are cats reallllly thinking in these clothes?), and on beanbags in the rec room. I don’t complain when Dmitri spits out a piece of half-eaten chocolate over Super Big Boggle.
“What the fuck is that?” he demands of Jess, who just gave it to him.
“Chili chocolate!” she says. “I don’t appreciate the reaction!”
“I don’t appreciate being given something that tastes like a snake has ejaculated into it!”
I only smile.
I even accept an apology from Jared.
He finds me in my room. Hovering in the doorway, he says, “I knew that guy from the park. I thought maybe he’d talked you into going off with him for some kind of story, or something. That’s why I told the doctors, when they asked. Sorry if that just made more trouble.”
“Yeah. It’s okay,” I tell him.
“I was trying to look out for you.”
“Thank you.”
“So, he took you—what? Like, for a weekend away?”
“Not really. Look, I’m kind of in the middle of something—”
“Oh. Sure.” Halfway through turning to go, he stops. “Me Before You’s showing at movie night tomorrow . . .”
"Me Before You? I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to see something like that.”
He shrugs. Looking a little embarrassed, he says, “Yeah, actually, there are sides to me I don’t show everyone.”
Maybe I’ve been too harsh on Jared. If anyone knows what it’s like to have sides . . . “A friendly night out? And by out I mean in? Not a date?”
He hesitates. Nods.
“I’ll bring the M&M’s,” I tell him, and he smiles.
I have more scans. All are normal.
On Wednesday, I meet Dr. Monzales in his office. My discharge date will have to be delayed perhaps by another month, he tells me. There is “some red tape, some necessary discussions with the head of public relations—that kind of thing.”
True or not true? I don’t know. Perhaps this has more to do with Sylvia’s father finding me in the park than PR discussions.
“Now,” Dr. Monzales says, “before you go, Rosa, I have something for you.”
He spins his chair so he’s facing the shelves behind his desk. From a cardboard box nestled between a framed American Medical Association certificate and a metal brain on a little stand, which I guess is some kind of trophy, he takes a much smaller, dark blue box.
He passes it to me. I open it. Resting on blue velvet is a pea-size chunk of gray rock encapsulated in an acrylic sphere, on a chain.
“Thank you,” I say, uncertain.
“It’s a piece of the Moon,” he explains. “Your own piece of the Moon. For my pioneer. Let me help you.”
He gets up, comes over, lifts it from the box, and carefully secures it around my neck.
A piece of the Moon . . . I don’t believe in amulets, but maybe this is something like one.
“Thank you,” I repeat. This time, it’s an awed kind of whisper.
He nods.
Then, when I’m at the door, my fingers on the smooth, cool sphere, he says, “Oh, there’s something else I need to ask you.”
My heart sinks. I think, Please don’t ask me more about Sylvia or Lexington.
“The anti-epileptic you are on is a relatively new drug,” he says. “As occasionally happens, even after extensive trials, reports have been coming in of some rare side effects. A very small proportion of recipients are reporting hallucinations. And there have been blackouts. Have you experienced anything unusual?”
“. . . Maybe,” I say. “Yeah.”
"Yes? Okay—I will change it. Immediately. We have an excellent alternative. You know, Rosa, you can always tell me—in fact you should always tell me of any problems, any at all. If you are willing, can you describe to me what you felt?”
“I’ve just felt faint sometimes,” I say, because I don’t want to tell him about the freezing, or the blackouts. He’d wonder, quite reasonably, why I hadn’t already informed him. “Yeah, I’d like another drug.”
He nods. “Of course.”
I should be glad, I guess, that those fainting episodes were due to my drug. But I’m not.
Side effects of hanging out with you . . .
I’m trying very hard not to think about Joe.
But every moment my brain idles, Joe’s there. Every night, as I fall asleep, his voice is in my head, his hands are on my body, and I relive in slow motion every moment of our conversation outside O’Neill’s.
I need to see him, to talk in person.
But I promised myself I’d sort things out with Mum and Dad first. They deserve that.
I do need to see him.
But there’s someone else I really need to see first.
38.
I send a letter to his home address, because I don’t know how else to reach him. I think, Keep it simple; save the theoretical discussion for the theoretical meeting.
I write:
Dear Mr. Johnson,
My parents and doctors don’t know I’m contacting you.
I think we should meet, and talk. I don’t know what you’re thinking but this is what I’m thinking: I’m not your daughter, and I think I need to focus on my life, but it must be so hard for you to know her body is out there. I’m sure that’s why you came to the hospital, and I’m sorry how that turned out.
I know there’s a legal agreement, but it’s far more important to me to try to sort out the situation between us than to stick to something we both signed before the surgery even happened. I am so truly grateful that you consented to the surgery. If you think it might be possible to meet, text a time and place to:
And I give Elliot’s number.
Elliot promised not to tell Mum and Dad on one condition: that if I do meet Sylvia’s father, he’ll go with me. But if her dad does agree, I wouldn’t want to go alone, in any case. I’d want Elliot there.
Two days after I mail the letter, Elliot finds me in the rec room exchanging messages with AikaA about Mum and Dad’s plan to relocate us to Scotland. (So—though I don’t tell her this—I can build a new life away from people who knew me as I was). Since AikaA lives in Tokyo, I wouldn’t have expected her to know much about the place, but she writes: I LOVE Scotland so much!!
Elliot passes me his phone.
I could come. Or could you possibly get to the Trinity Hospice, in Hartford? My wife is unfortunately unable to leave. Do you feel you could meet her, too? We’ll be there. Any day, any time.
Elliot calls Dad to ask if he can borrow the car to drive to New York to visit Aula (he hasn’t told them, apparently, about Aula’s other boyfriend, or their breakup). He also tells Dad that he wants to take me. He guarantees that I’ll be safe. Mum would argue, of course, but does she really need to know? We’ll drive, I’ll meet Aula, we’ll come straight back . . . Dad, to my surprise, agrees.
Less than twenty minutes after showing me the message, Elliot leaves to pick up the car. Only half an hour after that, my phone vibrates. I dash out through the gym and the park, and around to where the ambulances pull in, through a rainstorm, to join him.
It’s the first time I’ve been in this car—Mum and Dad’s American car. Given his dress sense, and yes, his beard, Dad might look like the least likely purchaser of a Dodge Charger, but that’s what they have. It’s deep red with black leather seats.
Another car-related surprise: Elliot drives excessively cautiously. Maybe it’s because of the rain, which is falling even harder as we clear Boston. Cars stream past us on the highway, one after the other. The windshield wipers sweep back and forth like a hypnotist’s watch. When I wake, we are passing through a little town, and the rain is still falling. The homes and stores are faint in the murky gray. Nature might be attempting to obliterate the work of people, but it’s failing. If I were a god, I’d blow the rainclouds away. But all I can do is suffer them, stifled in the car, subjected to Elliot’s random song list from his phone. (Only once do I object: “Not Elle King,” I tell him.)
In fact, for virtually the entire two-hour journey, we don’t talk. The only significant question he asks me is this: “Where did you get that necklace?”
I explain.
“Are you sure it’s a piece of the Moon? It looks like a bit of that gravel by the gym door.”
“It does not.”
“You are kind of gullible sometimes, Rosa. Has anyone told you that?”
Gullible? I think: What about Aula and the fact that you didn’t know about her other boyfriend? Nothing in the world would ever make me say it.
“Put it in your essay,” I say instead.
At last, I spot HARTFORD on a road sign.
The GPS guides us through the darkness, around a cluster of skyscrapers, into a suburb of huge colonial-style homes, and ultimately to a modern, sprawling, white building that reminds me of the American country clubs I’ve seen on TV. It has a long, immaculate drive and an oversize porch, with TRINITY HOSPICE glowing in electric blue above the glass doors. As we drive past, we both see a sign: ALL VISITORS PARK AT REAR.
So Elliot drives on and into a near-empty parking lot. The rain has stopped, I realize. The sky is black. Cloudy. No stars.
I get out, into the damp. As Elliot locks the car, I make for a path that looks like it’ll take us back to the entrance. I can’t see any doors here, but there is a floor-to-ceiling window. Through it, I make out a darkened room: white pendant lights, switched off; pale marble walls; wood tables.
Elliot joins me. He pulls his jacket on over one of his apparently endless collection of obscurely worded T-shirts (this one might be in Icelandic, judging by the rune-type characters). “You sure about this?” he says.
Which makes me remember asking Joe if he’d take me to the reservoir, and him asking if I was sure. . . Joe. I can’t think about him right now.
“Yeah,” I tell him.
He says, “You do realize this has the potential to go very badly . . . and you don’t have to do this.”
I’m a little surprised. “You agreed to bring me.”
He nods.
“You showed me the message.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” he says. “And not showing you that message would have been a kind of lie.”
“A big lie.”
He nods.
“We’ve come all this way,” I tell him.
“And you realize there’s such a thing as the sunk cost fallacy?”
I can’t wish Elliot were any different, because I love being with him more than practically anybody else, but there are times . . . “I guess I don’t. And I have to see him.”
He shakes his head. “I thought maybe halfway here you’d change your mind.”
“Why?”
He rubs a hand through his patchy beard. “Because I would’ve. I’d have thought: fuck them; they signed the paperwork—it’s my body now.”
“This isn’t really about them.”
“If you’re after absolution . . .”
“I don’t want absolution.”
“What do you want?”
Silence. Except for a siren in the distance and the drip of water from a gutter somewhere. The breeze is chilling me down to my bones. I want to break this moment, and I think: heartfelt truth. “I don’t know. I want what anyone wants. For things to be okay . . . to find peace.”
He says softly, “I hate to break this to you, Rosa, but I’m not so sure there’s such a thing.” He doesn’t sound like he’s trying to be coolly cynical. He sounds earnest.
“I hope there is,” I tell him.
I continue along the path and around to the front of the hospice. Elliot follows. As the double-height glass doors part before me, I know that this is absolutely what I have to do, and I sense a strength in my core. Confidence, I guess. Which I’ve never felt before, at least not deep down.
Maybe Elliot’s right about something he told me: If you just begin acting like the kind of person you’d like to be, you st
art to become her.
“It is a little late for visitors,” the nurse says when we give Mrs. Johnson’s name.
She’s stationed behind a glass-front waterfall-effect desk in the reception area, peering up at me through black-rimmed glasses and exuding about the same aura of welcome as an MRI machine.
“We’ve come from Boston,” Elliot tells her, in a pseudo-professional voice I hardly ever hear him turn on. “Her husband said he’d meet us here.”
“Are you family?”
I nod, cautiously. This is Hartford. There’s no reason for her to recognize Sylvia. Unless she’s seen a photograph. “My name’s Rosa Marchant.”
She sighs. One of those people who gets frustrated when she actually has to do her job. But I’ll take frustration. It strongly suggests she doesn’t recognize my face.
“Okay. You can take a seat. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Maybe you could find Mr. Johnson?” Elliot says, dropping the voice already. “Is that something you could do?”
With a weary expression, she points toward a line of blue molded plastic chairs.
Elliot bristles, but I don’t want an argument. Not here.
He lets me pull him over to sit down. I wonder if the turquoise blue color is designed to fit with what appears to be a water theme. There’s the desk, and one wall is filled with a blown-up photograph of a lake with birds—maybe herons—flying away over it. I’m not entirely sure what it’s meant to represent. Hope? The future? A joyful journey to a final horizon?
At last, the nurse gets up from whatever she was doing or pretending to be doing and heads off down a corridor that runs back behind her desk. I wouldn’t have known unless I was watching. Whatever the soles of her shoes are made of, they’re soundless on the polished floor.
“We can still decide to go back,” Elliot offers.
I shake my head.
“Stubborn, too,” he says. “I’ll put that in my essay.”
I elbow him.
“And violent.”
“And incredibly thorough,” I say, “when it comes to retribution for insults.”
He smiles.
“Thank you for waiting.”