The Promise Girls

by Marie Bostwick

  “I don’t mind. Sometimes you just have to let it out, right?”

  He shook his head. “No, I mean I really shouldn’t be telling you this. They’re really strict about patient privacy. You can get fired for violating it.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anybody.”

  She smiled at him. He smiled back.

  “I wondered if I’d ever see you again. I go to Starbucks every day, you know. Right after work.”

  Avery did know. She’d noticed him on the first day and from then on had looked forward to three o’clock, hoping that—she looked at the nametag pinned to his scrubs—Owen Lassiter would come through the door again. Though she hadn’t ever worked up the guts to talk to him, three o’clock was pretty much the highlight of her barista day.

  But on that last day, when he struck up a conversation with her and they were laughing about Bertie Bott’s Beans and it all felt so easy, she decided that if he came back the next day, she would try to give him her phone number . . . somehow.

  How did that work anyway? Did you just give a guy your number? Or did you wait for him to ask for it? Or was there some sort of secret signal or handshake that you gave a guy so he’d know that you wanted him to ask for it?

  If she’d met him at some seaport festival, dressed in her mermaid costume, she’d have had no trouble talking to Owen Lassiter. Avery Poseidon in her iridescent blue tail and shell-covered bra top was a true Siren—alluring, playful, and in control.

  But if she had met Owen at one of those events, he probably would have been one of those guys—the guys who traveled in packs, called one another “bro,” dropped the F-bomb every fourth word, referred to women as “females,” spent their weekends either drunk or getting drunk, and their Mondays recovering—and she’d have had no interest in him. She might have toyed with him, led him on and then dropped him like a hot rock, but that was all.

  And she wouldn’t have felt bad about it; that’s what mermaids did, used their wiles to entice and ensnare foolish, mortal men. She was playing a part and so were those bros. But Owen Lassiter seemed . . . nice. But with no persona to hide behind, playing herself instead of a part, she didn’t know what to say or how to act.

  Hopelessly, terminally, socially awkward.

  She blamed that partly on the way she’d been raised. Minerva had taught them at home. She said that regular school would take too much time away from developing their artistic talent. For her sisters, it almost made sense. Almost. Joanie spent hours every day practicing piano and Meg painted constantly. Avery was supposed to grow up and be a writer, so “developing her talent” mostly consisted of trying to turn her into a precocious reader—something she definitely was not, no matter how many flash cards Minerva showed her.

  Later, in foster care, she did go to a regular school, but lagged behind the others academically and socially. Finally, she did learn to read and love books, but she never did master the social signals, especially the whole boy-girl thing.

  It didn’t matter. She couldn’t hint for him to ask for her number now anyway, not when her sister was lying unconscious in a hospital bed. She shouldn’t even be thinking about stuff like that.

  Owen took Meg’s temperature, tapped in the results, and put the tablet back into his rolling cart. He pushed the cart past her and toward the door.

  “So, they fired you?” Avery nodded. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’ve ordered a peppermint-pineapple latte every day since. And I order loud, so the manager will hear.”

  “Thanks.” It did make her feel better.

  “He was stupid. There’s nothing wrong with bringing a little creativity to your job, right? Though, you probably could have charged a little more. Three bucks was a bargain.”

  His face split into a wide grin that made him look even cuter, if that were possible.

  “Well, it was nice to see you again. And good to meet you, Meg,” he said, raising his gaze to Meg’s hospital bed. “I hope that you’ll be up and around—”

  Owen stopped in midsentence. His smile fled. He let go of the cart and crossed the room in long, urgent steps, pushing past Avery to get to Meg’s bedside.

  “What? What is it?” Avery jumped up from the chair.

  Owen held Meg’s wrist, checked her pulse again. The crease between his brows grew deeper as he stared at his watch and then at Meg’s face. Avery’s heart was pounding. She gripped the metal footboard with both hands and leaned over the end of the bed just in time to see her sister’s eyelids flutter, then open.

  Only then did she cry.

  Chapter 8

  As soon as Avery called, Joanie jumped up and drove to the hospital. Her mind raced as she wove in and out of traffic, frightened about what she would find when she got to her sister’s bedside. Meg had been comatose for six days. And a skull fracture . . . who knew what the long-term impact might be? As worried as Joanie had been during the long days of her sister’s unconsciousness, she now realized that the consequences they might face in Meg’s awakening could be just as frightening, though in a different way.

  Asher was already in the room when Joanie arrived. Either Avery had called him first, or he’d broken even more laws racing to the hospital than she had. Joanie stood beside him. Asher squeezed her hand without taking his anxious gaze from Meg’s hospital bed. Meg’s own eyes were clear and her expression calm. Seeing this, Joanie felt her heartbeat slow a little.

  Two doctors conducted an examination. Joanie recognized the woman who was moving a penlight from left to right and asking Meg to follow the light with her eyes as Dr. Handley, the staff neurologist. The other doctor, a man, looked very young. Joanie assumed he was a resident.

  “Is she okay?” Joanie whispered to Asher. “How long has she been awake?”

  “Don’t know,” he said hoarsely. “I just got here.”

  Dr. Handley was asking Meg how many fingers she was holding up and Meg correctly whispered three. The doctor slipped the penlight back into the pocket of her lab coat, held out her hands flat, palms up, and told Meg to push down on them. Meg was able to force the doctor’s hands down, but not very far. The young resident scribbled something on a clipboard.

  “Good,” Dr. Handley said. “Not bad at all. Meg, do you know where you are?”

  “Well . . . the hospital,” Meg replied, a lopsided grin indicating that she thought this was kind of a dumb question.

  “Right. Do you know how you got here?”

  Meg shook her head.

  “You were in a car accident,” Dr. Handley said, her voice casual and reassuring. “You broke three ribs, which is why I imagine you’re finding it a little painful to breathe. You fractured your skull, too, and have been unconscious for six days.

  “We’ll need to keep you here for a while to run some tests. You’re not going to be one hundred percent for a few days yet—expect fatigue, moments of forgetfulness, difficulty retrieving words—but it’s safe to say you’re through the worst of it. I think you’re going to be fine.”

  Asher let out a whoosh, as if he’d been holding his breath for a long time.

  “Thank you, Doc.” Asher gripped Dr. Handley’s hand and then the hand of the young resident, who looked surprised but not displeased to be included in this display of gratitude. “We were so worried,” he said, the words catching in his throat.

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Hayes. But we didn’t do all that much. Sometimes,” Dr. Handley said, addressing her words as much to the resident as to the family, “the wisest course of action is to monitor the situation and wait for the body to heal itself. The human brain is the most delicate of organs, so surgery should be our option of last resort.”

  Asher’s eyes turned back to Meg. He bobbed his head in agreement, but judging from the rapturous look on his face, Joanie doubted he’d heard even half of what the doctor had to say.

  “Yes, we’re all so grateful to you,” Joanie said, filling in the silence.

  “You’re welcome,” the doctor said once again,
then stepped into the corner with the young resident. They huddled together, speaking in low voices as they discussed Meg’s case.

  Joanie and Avery stood on either side of Asher, the three of them creating a half circle at the foot of Meg’s bed because the monitors were in the way. For a moment, they just stood there looking at her, unable to come up with words adequate to the occasion. What do you say at a resurrection?

  “I’m so . . . I’m just so happy,” Asher said finally. “You have no idea.” His voice broke and his eyes filled, but he blinked back his tears. “Trina is going to be mad that she’s not here, but I told her you wouldn’t want her to miss her exams.”

  “Oh, no. I wouldn’t want that.”

  Asher grinned wetly. “That’s what I told her.”

  “Trina,” Meg repeated slowly, as if trying to memorize the word. “Do I know her?”

  Asher’s smile froze. Avery looked at Joanie and her eyes went wide, as if she was asking what they should do. But Joanie was shocked too. How could Meg have forgotten her own daughter?

  Calm down. Remember what the doctor said—fatigue, forgetfulness, difficulty retrieving words. Maybe it extended to names too. It’s possible.

  Joanie smiled deliberately, making an effort to keep her voice calm and measured. “Trina is your daughter.”

  “Oh.” Meg was quiet for a moment. “Do I have more than one?”

  “No,” Asher said, unable to disguise his dismay. “Trina is our only child. We wanted to have more, but we—”

  “Oh!” Meg’s lips stretched into a smile and her eyes grew brighter, the expression of a student who has just found the solution to a difficult math problem or a crossword puzzle aficionado who has just thought of a seven-letter word for seismic anomaly. “So you’re Trina’s father. And I’m her mother,” she said, putting it all together. “And we’re . . . married?”

  “Yes,” Asher said hoarsely, and looked over his shoulder. “Doctor? Can you come over here, please?”

  A few minutes later, Dr. Handley stood next to Meg’s bed.

  “Let’s just pick up where we left off,” she said calmly as the family looked on. “Can you tell me your full name?”

  Meg pressed her lips together, an expression of intense concentration on her face. After a moment she shook her head.

  “Do you know what city we’re in?”

  Another head shake.

  “Do you know who this is?” she asked, pointing to Asher.

  “My husband?” Meg said uncertainly.

  “We already told her that,” Joanie said.

  “What about this lady?” the doctor asked, pointing to Joanie.

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  Meg looked very young and vulnerable, like a child who has been caught misbehaving and is disappointed to be such a disappointment.

  “It’s okay,” Joanie said, and laid her hand on top of the light blue hospital blanket, patting Meg’s leg. “You’re doing fine.”

  Avery moved closer. “Do you know me?”

  Meg’s face lit up, the transformation from despair to elation so instantaneous that Joanie was reminded of a child, someone who hasn’t yet learned the trick of filtering her emotions or wearing masks.

  “Yes!” Meg exclaimed, looking at Avery with dancing eyes. “You, I remember! That beautiful voice! You told me a story, didn’t you? About a lovely girl. And a selkie who came from the sea.

  “Oh, it was sad,” Meg said, her expression of happiness melting into something more poignant and tender, the place where joy is outlined by shadows of suffering. “So terribly, terribly sad. And you told it so beautifully.”

  Chapter 9

  In spite of Dr. Handley’s warnings about fatigue, Meg didn’t feel tired. That was a good thing because although everyone kept urging her to rest, in the four days since she’d regained consciousness, no one let her sleep, even the curious collection of family members who had been issued to her upon her awakening.

  Now that she was out of immediate danger of losing her life, the family no longer took turns spending the night sleeping in the uncomfortable upholstered vinyl recliner, keeping watch in case Meg should suddenly breathe her last (really, what had they supposed they could do to prevent it?). But they continued to stay on a steady rotation of visitors throughout the day, arriving at six in the morning and finally departing at eleven. She was never alone.

  Had she actually known any of these people, remembered them or the stories they kept telling of their supposedly shared past experiences, it would have been fine. It would have been sweet. It really was sweet, they were all so incredibly devoted.

  But it was hard to know quite what to do with the love and devotion of people who profess to know you intimately but whom you remember not at all, like stumbling into someone in the grocery store whom you do not recognize by name or feature, but who calls to you with familiar affection across the produce aisle and uses your first name to catch you up on the outcome of events that you have not the slightest recollection of. It’s all very confusing, but you don’t want to embarrass this stranger or yourself, so you smile benignly, nodding as they speak, hoping that they’ll soon remember the time and some appointment they’re late for.

  That morning she’d had another visit from Asher, the very tall man with the brown eyes and ponytail who she’d been told was her husband. He’d come to see her almost every day, not staying too long at any stretch because he owned some sort of construction business and this was the beginning of the building season. But today, for the first time, he was bringing along Trina, who she’d been told was her daughter, her only child.

  When they arrived, Asher was smiling, as usual. A grin seemed to be his default expression. Meg had decided just the day before that she liked that about him. But the girl’s expression was more somber, a mélange of anxiety, distrust, and studied but unconvincing indifference.

  Meg didn’t remember the girl any more than she did the rest of her newly minted relatives, but she could see her own features reflected in Trina’s face—short nose, full lower lip, brown eyes set a little too far apart and topped with thick brows, hair that couldn’t make up its mind to curl or frizz. For the first time, Meg started to think that what everyone was telling her might be right, that all these people really did belong to her, that this was her family and this girl was her daughter. Watching Trina take a seat in a side chair, pulling up her knees and hugging them tight to her chest like a hard-shelled beetle curling into a self-protective ball, Meg thought it must be true even as she struggled to believe. It looked like Trina was struggling, too, and for much the same reasons.

  If Asher was aware of the tension in the room—and over the previous couple of days Meg had decided that he was much more tuned in than he appeared at first glance—he gave no outward indication of it. Instead, he made breezy conversation about what was happening with the house he was building, occasionally asking Trina a question, getting one-word responses in return.

  After a few minutes of this, he launched into a series of parrot jokes. He knew a lot of them. He started with riddles, asking and answering his own questions.

  “What do you call an escaped parrot? A pollygone.

  “What do you call a parrot in a raincoat? Pollyunsaturated.

  “What do you call memory loss in parrots? Pollynesia.”

  Meg laughed out loud at that one. Trina smiled a tiny bit even as she let out an anguished groan. “Dad, that’s so lame. We’ve heard all these a million times.”

  “Hey, it’s all new to her,” Asher countered, pointing at Meg.

  “Pollynesia,” Meg said, and laughed again.

  After the riddles, Asher launched into proper jokes. Starting with: “This parrot walks into the pharmacy and buys some Chap-Stick. The pharmacist says, ‘Will that be cash or charge?’ The parrot says, ‘Just put it on my bill.’ ”

  And ending with: “A guy goes to the movies to see the summer blockbuster, but gets there late and sits down in the first seat he can find. He kee
ps hearing this munching sound next to him and when his eyes adjust to the light, he looks over, sees a parrot sitting next to him, watching the movie and eating popcorn, and says, ‘What are you doing at the movies?’ And the parrot says, ‘Well, I really liked the book.’ ”

  That one made them both groan. Looking at each other with pained expressions, Trina and Meg were momentarily joined in a bond of affection and anguish for this hopelessly goofy man. The moment was brief but nice. Meg thought Trina felt the same way, but she couldn’t be certain.

  When it was time for Asher to get to work and Trina to school, Avery showed up for the changing of the guard—Joanie, apparently, had worked out all the schedules in advance. He stood next to Meg’s bed, his fingers wrapped around the bedrail. Meg thought he looked like an overly friendly retriever who was thinking about jumping his fence, but Asher stayed on his side of the railing, said good-bye and that he’d see her tomorrow. Then, addressing Trina, he said, “Don’t you want to kiss your mom?”

  Trina pressed her lips to Meg’s forehead and muttered a farewell. For a full hour after they’d left, she could feel the imprint of the girl’s lips on her brow, a gentle branding. It felt warm.

  * * *

  Family members weren’t the only ones who couldn’t leave Meg alone. Nurses and orderlies constantly woke her up in the night to take her temperature, pulse, and blood pressure, or to administer medications. During the day it was worse.

  She was continually being wheeled off for X-rays, scans, and the like, and spent much of her time lying on some table or inside some tube, trying to obey the technician’s instructions to remain perfectly still as the machines looked through walls of bone, blood, and brain in search of her lost memories. Meg kind of enjoyed these times, the only time she had to herself. Having no active role to play in these investigations, apart from the occasional demand to hold her breath, she let her imagination wander.

  The metallic knock-knocking of the imaging machine became the drumbeat of an undiscovered tribe in an Amazonian jungle. Closing her eyes, she envisioned tropical forests, humid and verdant and humming with life, trees populated by troops of chattering monkeys and brilliant plumed parrots. Mental pictures of parrots opened up a cache of parrot jokes.