“Son,” Dad cut in. But Decker kept on talking through his tears.
“I was in such a goddamn rush. It was my idea to go. I made you cross the lake. And I left you. I can’t believe I left you. . . .” He sat up and wiped his eyes. “I should’ve jumped in right after you. I shouldn’t have let them pull me back.” He put his face in his hands and I thought he’d break down again, but he took a few deep breaths and pulled himself together. Then he fixed his eyes on all my bandages and grimaced. “D, I broke your ribs.”
“What?” That was something I would’ve remembered.
“Honey,” Mom said, “he was giving you CPR. He saved your life.”
Decker shook his head but didn’t say anything else. Dad put his hands on Decker’s shoulders. “Nothing to be sorry for, son.”
In the fog of drugs that were undoubtedly circulating through my system, I pictured Decker performing CPR on the dead version of me. In health class sophomore year, I teamed up with Tara Spano for CPR demonstrations. Mr. Gersham told us where to place our hands and counted out loud as we simulated the motion without actually putting any force into it.
Afterward, Tara made a show of readjusting her D-cup bra and said, “Man, Delaney, that’s more action than I’ve had all week.” It was more action than I’d had my entire life, but I kept that information to myself. Rumors about me and Tara being lesbians circulated for a few days until Tara took it upon herself to prove that she was not, in fact, a lesbian. She proved it with Jim Harding, captain of the football team.
I brought my hand to my lips and closed my eyes. Decker’s mouth had been on my own. His breath in my lungs. His hands on my chest. The doctor, my parents, his friends, they all knew it. It was too intimate. Too private, and now, too public. I made sure I wasn’t looking at him when I opened my eyes again.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Logan said, saving me from my embarrassment, “but I need to conduct a full examination.”
“Go home, Decker,” Dad said. “Get some rest. She’ll be here when you wake up.” And Mom, Dad, and Decker all smiled these face-splitting smiles, like they shared a secret history I’d never know about.
The other doctors filed back in, scribbling on notepads, hovering over the bed, no longer lingering near the walls.
“What happened?” I asked nobody in particular, feeling my throat close up.
“You were dead.” Dr. Klein smiled when he said it. “I was here when they brought you in. You were dead.”
“And now you’re not,” said a younger, female doctor.
Dr. Logan poked at my skin and twisted my limbs but it didn’t hurt. I couldn’t feel much. I hoped he’d start the detubing process soon.
“A miracle,” said Dr. Klein, making the word sound light and breathy. I shut my eyes.
I didn’t feel light and breathy. I felt dense and full. Grounded to the earth. Not like a miracle at all. I was something with a little more weight. A fluke. Or an anomaly. Something with a little less awe.
My throat was swollen and irritated, and I had difficulty speaking. Not that it mattered—there was too much noise to get a word in anyway. I had a lot of visitors after the initial examination. Nurses checked and rechecked my vitals. Doctors checked and rechecked my charts. Dad hurried in and out of the room, prying information from the staff and relaying it back to us.
“They’ll move you out of the trauma wing tomorrow,” he said, which made me happy since I hated my room, claustrophobia personified in a hideous color.
“They’ll run tests tomorrow and start rehab after that,” he said, which made me even happier because, as it turns out, I was really good at tests.
Mom tapped her foot when the doctors spoke and nodded when Dad talked, but she didn’t say anything herself. She got swallowed up in the chaos. But she was the only constant in the room, so I held on to her, and she never let go of my hand. She gripped my palm with her fingers and rested her thumb on the inside of my wrist. Every few minutes she’d close her eyes and concentrate. And then I realized she was methodically checking and rechecking my pulse.
By the end of the day, several tubes still remained. A nurse named Melinda tucked the blanket up to my chin and smoothed back my hair. “We’re gonna take you down real slow, darling.” Her voice was deep and soothing. Melinda hooked up a new IV bag and checked the tubes. “You’re gonna feel again. Just a little bit at a time, though.”
She placed a pill in my mouth and held a paper cup to my lips. I sipped and swallowed. “To help you sleep, darling. You need to heal.” And I drifted away to the sound of the beeping monitor and the whirring equipment and the steady drip, drip, drip of the fluid from the IV bag.
A rough hand caressed my cheek. I opened my eyes to darkness and, to my left, an even darker shape. It leaned closer. “Do you suffer?” it whispered.
My eyelids closed. I felt heavy, water-logged, drugged. Far, far away. I opened my mouth to say no, but the only thing that came out was a low-pitched moan.
“Don’t worry,” it whispered. “It won’t be long now.”
There was a rummaging sound in the drawers behind me. Callous hands traced the line from my shoulder down to my wrist, twisted my arm around, and peeled back the tape at the inside of my elbow. This wasn’t right. I knew it wasn’t right, but I was too far away. I felt pressure in the crook of my arm as the IV slid from my vein.
And then I felt cold metal. A quick jab as it pierced the skin below my elbow. And as the metal sliced downward, I found myself. I jerked back and scratched at the dark shape with my free arm. The voice hissed in pain and the hands pulled back and the metal clanked to the floor somewhere under my bed.
Feet shuffled quickly toward the door. And as it opened, letting in light, I saw his back. A man. In scrubs like a nurse, a hooded sweatshirt over the top.
My eyelids grew heavy and I drifted again. I drifted to the sound of the beeping monitor and the whirring equipment and the steady drip, drip, drip of my blood hitting the floor.
Chapter 2
I woke to the sound of screaming. My skin was raw, and I could feel again. I could feel everything. Everything. The slightest movement of air like a blade across my face. The weight of the blankets like a slab of concrete. The texture of the sheets like sandpaper rubbing at my flesh. And something else under all the pain. Something unnatural—my body being tugged in every direction, up, down, left, right, forward, back. Like the fibers that held my skin together had been severed and my whole body might fly apart. And a drum in my head, pounding and pounding to the beat of my heart. Pounding until I felt my skull couldn’t contain the pressure any longer.
People came running, looked at the puddle of my blood on the floor; looked at the dangling IV line, not delivering my medication; and looked at each other. They moved their mouths frantically, but I couldn’t hear them over the screaming. Not until something stabbed my arm and all the feelings faded. The screaming stopped.
“Why would she yank out her own IV line? Why would she cut herself? And blame it on someone else?” Mom was fuming in the hallway. Unfortunately, the doctor wasn’t yelling back, so I heard only half of the conversation.
The doctor stitching up my arm pretended not to hear them. She made a lot of unnecessary noise to drown out the conversation outside.
“She says she saw a man. She says he cut her. My daughter is not a liar.”
Low mumbling.
“Where would she get a razor? And why would she do that? Like . . . like . . .”
Sharp whispers.
“Hallucinations? Like from the medication?”