Keep Me in Your Heart: Letting Go of Lisa / Saving Jessica / Telling Christina Goodbye

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Better than Cody, she thought. “So when can I lose the crutch?”

  “When you can put weight on the leg without your knee hurting, you can chuck it. Maybe in a week or so.” He peered at her over the tops of his glasses, his expression turning fatherly. “And the next time you get in a car with your friends, put your seat belt on.”

  The hair salon, Charlene’s, made a fuss over Trisha when she arrived. The stylist set to work giving her a trendy cut to cover the shaved spot on her head. “I was letting it grow long,” Trisha said while the stylist snipped and trimmed.

  “By this summer, it’ll be long again. It’s hair. Hair grows.” The woman flashed a smile in the mirror where Trisha watched her transformation. She thought of all the times she and Christina had pored through magazines studying hairstyles, laughing and experimenting with gels, creams, and temporary color. She remembered the time Christina put a blond rinse in her hair, which turned it pink. “I look like a troll,” Christina had wailed. Trisha had come to her rescue by helping her recolor it brown, though it took many weeks to finally return to its natural shade of honey blond.

  Trisha’s mother spared no expense, and by the time they left the salon, Trisha’s hair looked perfect, her nails were buffed and trimmed, and she had a new concealer that artfully hid the bruising under her eye and along her cheek. She felt better too.

  Around five, they pulled into the driveway. Her mother had no sooner turned off the engine than Charlie came running out the front door. “Boy, am I glad you’re home!” he shouted. His cheeks were flushed and he looked ready to explode.

  “Slow down. What’s wrong?” asked Trisha’s mother.

  “Nothing’s wrong!” He grabbed Trisha’s arm. “Cody’s mother called. Cody woke up.”

  Gwyn’s message had been on the answering machine when Charlie got home from school, he said. Trisha and her mother didn’t even stop to call the hospital, they just got in the car and headed into Chicago. If the car could have sprouted wings, it wouldn’t have gotten to the hospital fast enough to suit Trisha. Once there, she hurried to the elevator and, with her heart pounding, rode it to the tenth floor.

  Just as she came down the hall, she saw Gwyn step out of Cody’s room. Heedless of the hospital’s rules about silence, she called, “Mrs. McGuire! How is he? Charlie said Cody’s awake.”

  Gwyn looked tired, but she was smiling. “He opened his eyes around noon. I was sitting next to his bed and reading. He just said, ‘Hi,’ clear as you please.”

  By now Trisha’s mother, who had parked the car after leaving Trisha at the entrance, had caught up with Trisha. “We’re so happy to hear the good news about Cody,” she said with a beaming smile.

  “Can I go in?” Trisha asked.

  “You should know some things first,” Gwyn said, her expression growing serious. “He’s different—not quite himself yet.”

  “That’s okay. He’s been through a lot. I won’t stay long.” Trisha recalled how hard it had been for her to concentrate during the past week. She understood that Cody might be having problems too.

  She started inside the room. Gwyn caught her arm. “We should talk. His memory—”

  “Please, can we talk later? All I want right now is to see him.” Trisha had grown increasingly impatient. She didn’t want to stand in the hall discussing Cody. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and tell him how happy she was that he was awake. She wanted to tell him how much she’d missed him and how scared she’d been for his life.

  Trisha eased out of Gwyn’s hold and went into the room. The top half of the mechanical bed had been raised and Cody was sitting up, eating a dish of ice cream. “Cody!” she cried. Moisture filled her eyes, and for the first time in days, she shed tears of joy.

  He looked startled. She wished he didn’t have to see her with a crutch. “Hi,” she said, reaching out to touch him.

  He drew back, his eyes wary, clouded, an expression of bewilderment on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice almost a monotone.

  “Do I know you?”

  Twelve

  “Cody, don’t kid around. It’s not funny,” Trisha said. She propped her crutch against the wall and opened her arms. “Don’t you know how worried I’ve been about you?” He looked past her. “Mom? Mother?” Gwyn was by his side instantly. “Cody, this is Trisha. She’s a friend from school.” Her voice sounded soft, soothing, as if she were explaining something complex to a frightened child. She warned Trisha with her gaze to play along.

  “I—I don’t remember.” Cody looked more confused.

  The implications of the situation hit Trisha hard and fast. The coma had affected his memory.

  Cody looked back at Trisha shyly. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to …” His sentence trailed off as if he’d lost interest in it. Once again his voice didn’t sound normal to her.

  Trisha took a step backward. “It’s all right. I shouldn’t have barged in on you.”

  She got out of the room as fast as she could and leaned into the wall in the corridor for support, numb with shock. “What happened?” her mother asked.

  “He didn’t know me.”

  “What? How can that be?”

  Gwyn appeared. “That’s what I was trying to tell you before you went into the room. The coma’s left Cody with some amnesia. His doctor says memory loss happens sometimes. Usually it’s temporary. His brain’s had a terrible trauma, and it may take some time before he’s completely himself again.”

  “Does he remember anything?” Trisha’s mother asked.

  “He thinks he’s still in middle school.”

  “But that was years ago,” Trisha said. No wonder he didn’t remember her. They’d only started dating in high school.

  “But he will improve,” Trisha’s mother said hopefully.

  “We hope so.” Gwyn wrung her hands. “But there’s also the possibility that he’ll experience some personality changes.”

  “Meaning?” Trisha asked.

  “We don’t know yet. We just have to take it one day at a time.”

  “And his voice?”

  “Yes. I know it sounds like a monotone. That’s also a side effect of the coma. However, his doctor says he’ll begin to sound more normal as he hears others talk. Just like a baby learns to imitate by hearing others.”

  Trisha was reeling from what she was hearing. “So I guess you don’t have to worry about telling him about Christina. He doesn’t even know she existed.”

  “Not yet, but I’m sure he’ll remember eventually.”

  “What if he doesn’t? What if he never remembers her, or me, or anything about high school?”

  “We’re not thinking that way, Trisha. And I don’t want you thinking that way either. He will come back to us. I know he will.”

  Trisha could only stare at the floor. Her heart felt pulverized, her emotions tattered. An already terrible day had just gotten worse—her Cody, the love of her life, didn’t even remember who she was or what they’d meant to each other. And there were no guarantees that he ever would.

  Trisha slept fitfully and called Abby first thing Saturday morning.

  “I’ll be right over,” Abby told her on the phone.

  When Abby arrived, Trisha pulled her into her room and told her everything that had happened with Cody. She was crying by the time she finished her story.

  “Low blow,” Abby said, patting Trisha on the back and handing her a wad of tissue.

  “I feel like my whole life’s falling apart. Two of the most important people in my life are gone—one’s dead and the other doesn’t know me.”

  “That can change,” Abby said. “Cody will get his memory back, in time. I mean, once he comes home and friends drop by to visit him, he’ll start to remember.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “It’s logical. Right now, he’s in a strange place, a hospital far from home. Once he gets home, in his room, around all the things he’s grown up with, it will jog his memory. Just you wai
t and see.”

  “Do you think?” What Abby was saying made sense, and it was the first ray of hope Trisha had seen since the hospital visit.

  “I’m no doctor, but I’ll bet you anything, things will come back to him when he’s in his own space.”

  “I don’t know … If you could have seen the look on his face yesterday when he saw me. No recognition. None. Nada. Zilch. I was a total stranger.” Her hope spiraled downward as she recalled Cody’s expression of befuddlement and panic when she’d tried to hug him. “This is a nightmare, Abby—A real nightmare.”

  “I know it seems that way now, but—”

  “It is that way. I couldn’t even get through a simple memorial service for Christina, and Cody may never remember her or me. Can it get any worse?”

  “Cody’s alive and he’s expected to recover. As I see it, that’s a big plus.”

  Trisha wandered over to her desk and to the bulletin board hanging above it. It was filled with snapshots of her and Cody and her and Christina from happier times. “If I take these down, the board will be blank,” she said sadly. “These two people filled up my life, but now …”

  “Don’t take them down. They’re good memories. I still have pictures of Carson in my scrapbooks and on my bedside table. I’ll never remove them.”

  “I feel like I should be doing more to keep Christina’s memory alive.”

  Abby studied her. “Is that what you’re afraid of? That she’ll be forgotten?”

  Trisha nodded.

  “Get your coat. I want to take you somewhere.”

  In Abby’s car, Trisha leaned her head back against the seat and shut her eyes, trying to gather her composure. Was this how it was going to be from now on? Was she going to fall apart every single day for the rest of her life?

  The car slowed, pulled over, and stopped. Trisha sat up and looked out the window. She saw a field, patchy with snow. She didn’t have to ask where they were. She knew.

  “Come on,” Abby said, getting out of the car. “I want you to see something.”

  Trisha followed. The field was scarred by the impact of the accident that had changed so many lives so quickly. A stick held a tattered piece of material; it fluttered in the chilly breeze. Tucker’s car had been towed away, but large gouges were ripped in the earth and a few glittering pieces of glass caught the sunlight, reminding Trisha of what had happened there. She felt as desolate and windswept as the field looked. She shivered.

  “This is what I brought you to see,” Abby said.

  Trisha turned and her breath caught. In the ditch was a lone white cross made of sticks held together by a strip of rawhide. Hundreds of flowers adorned the area, stretching for yards up and down the ditch. “It’s for Christina,” Abby said. “Kids from school, kids from Henderson, people from all over the area have been coming here all week and leaving flowers and stuff.”

  Trisha walked to the makeshift memorial, bent, and retrieved a folded scrap of paper that was tucked into a cluster of flowers tied with a ribbon. She unfolded it, read, “We miss you,” and saw that it was signed by four girls she did not know. She refolded the paper and tucked it back into the flowers. She read another note, and another, and another, careful not to crush any of the flowers heaped on the ground. Many of the bouquets were dead or frozen, but many were fresh, as if they’d just been dropped off.

  Abby put her arm around Trisha’s waist. “See? No one’s going to forget Christina. Before the spring rains come, we’re going to move the cross up to the shoulder of the road for everyone who drives past to see. The cheerleaders from her squad have already made sure flowers will be put out here once a week until school’s over for the year.

  “People care, Trisha … a lot of them cared about Christina. We all lost her. In a way, we all lost part of ourselves the night she died.”

  Tears had frozen on Trisha’s cheeks. She stood with Abby while five years of memories washed over her. She had thought she’d have a lifetime of friendship with Christina, but her best friend was dead. Everything was different now.

  “You had breakfast?” Abby asked, her voice sounding cheerful.

  “Not yet.”

  “Me either. Let’s go chow down on pancakes at Millie’s.” That was a popular local restaurant. “My treat.”

  Trisha returned to the car and took one long, lingering look back at the roadside memorial. It occurred to her that the town cemetery held Christina’s body, but her memory would be held here in the shape of a small, handmade white cross, planted next to a cornfield on the side of a country road in northern Indiana.

  Trisha really didn’t want to go back to school on Monday, but her parents insisted. “You have to pick up the pieces and go on,” her father told her. “I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal, but you still have to go on.”

  “It’s your senior year,” her mother added. “You need to look ahead and think about graduation and college in the fall. Life goes on, honey.”

  Trisha certainly didn’t feel like going on. She felt confused and aimless, like a swimmer treading water or a car stuck in neutral, unable to go backward, unwilling to go forward. If it hadn’t been for Abby’s friendship and sympathetic ear, Trisha was sure she would have gone crazy.

  “Is it true about Cody?” Tucker asked her when he saw her at her locker on Monday.

  “It’s true.”

  “I was supposed to visit him on Saturday, but when I called, his mother said not to come. She told me what had happened when you went.”

  “Maybe he’ll improve when he gets home to his room and his personal stuff.” Trisha used Abby’s line of reasoning because Tucker looked pretty upset. After all, he and Cody had been friends.

  “His mom told me she’s bringing him home today.”

  The news jolted her. She felt her face flush because she hadn’t known, and if she really cared about him, then she should have known. She should have called to check on him, but hadn’t because she’d been too afraid of facing rejection again.

  Tucker added, “His mom said that he’s improving and that his doctors can’t do anything more, so they think he should come home and pick up where he left off.”

  Trisha slammed her locker hard enough to make kids turn around and look her way. “That’s so stupid! How are any of us supposed to pick up where we left off? It can’t be done, Tucker.”

  “Don’t I know it. I can’t tell you how much I miss Christina. Every minute I’m awake, I think of her. I mean, I talked to that girl practically every day of my life.” He shifted his weight, leaning his shoulder into the bank of lockers. “I have her voice on my answering machine at home. She called me the day of the basketball game to tell me she loved me. I’m never going to erase that tape.”

  Trisha realized that as bad as things were for her, they must be worse for Tucker. She wasn’t sure whom he had to talk to about it. “She really did love you, Tucker.” It was useless to bring up the past and her list of gripes about the way he treated Christina. Those days were over for good. He could never hurt Christina’s feelings again.

  “Don’t give up on Cody,” he said.

  She saw moisture pooling in his eyes, and she felt ashamed of her self-pity. “I don’t want to give up. But how can I have something special with somebody who doesn’t even remember who I am?”

  A bitter smile crossed Tucker’s face. “At least he’s alive, Trisha. At least you can talk to him. Go make him remember you.”

  Thirteen

  Trisha gathered her courage, called Cody’s house after school on Tuesday, and talked to his mother. “He sleeps a lot,” Gwyn told her. “But he seems comfortable in his room. I know he remembers the house, but frankly he doesn’t talk that much.”

  “He never was a big talker,” Trisha said, offering encouragement.

  “That’s true. We’re just so glad to have him home again that I’m trying to overlook the negatives. He’ll be seeing a specialist in head trauma recovery, and we’re hoping the specialist can help bring Co
dy all the way back.”

  “Um, I’d really like to come visit him. I don’t want to freak him out like last time, but I thought maybe, if we can talk, it might help his memory.”

  “A few of his old friends have called—Tucker Hanson for one, but I’ve not let anyone come yet. I think he needs more time.”

  “Sure. I understand.” Trisha couldn’t hide her disappointment.

  “Oh, what the heck,” Gwyn said quickly. “Come by tomorrow after school. That’ll give me time to prepare him for your visit. I know this is difficult for you, Trisha, because you and Cody have been so close. I’m not trying to be cruel.”

  “No, it’s okay. Really. I’ll come over about four. And I won’t stay long.”

  She hung up, feeling both scared and elated.

  Gwyn met Trisha at the front door and gave her a warm, encouraging smile. “He’s in his room. I told him you were coming and that you were going to tell him about school. He tries hard to remember details and gets frustrated when he can’t, so if you see it starting to happen, move on to something else. Fortunately, I guess, he’s easily distracted.”

  Trisha headed up the stairs, a sense of the familiar overcoming her. She and Cody had spent so many afternoons studying in his room or downstairs in the den. It was hard to believe that he didn’t remember it as she did. She knocked on his partially open bedroom door.

  He invited her in. She pasted on a smile and peeked into the space she knew so well. He was sitting in a chair at his desk, papers and photographs spread across the top. “You’re Trisha,” he said. “Mom said you’d come.”

  “And here I am.” She dragged another chair to the desk and sat, careful not to infringe on his personal space. She didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable.

  “I’m sorry I went nutsy on you at the hospital.”

  “Not a problem. I should have listened more closely to what your mother was saying about your amnesia.” She was glad to hear that his voice sounded normal again.