I take a bracing breath, then ease my legs out of bed, my vision doubling as I put weight on my right leg. The pain is so blinding, a wave of nausea roils through me. But I push through it. I have to.
I stagger out of the room and down the long hallway, my fingers clutching at the wall for support, cold sweat molding the hospital gown to my back. Every step is agony, the world around me tilting as I reach the elevator, the thought of Marley’s face pushing me forward. The pond. It’s the only thing I can think of. I have to get to the pond.
The big metal doors slide open and I lurch inside. I shove down more nausea, relieved to have made it this far. But I can’t stop now.
The buttons blink at me, demanding I choose a number, a floor. I try to think, but the searing ache in my right leg is making that impossible, and my left leg is starting to tremble under the strain of supporting all of my weight.
The buttons blink, blink, blink. Lobby? Is that the one with… the… star…?
Suddenly my good knee buckles. I collapse against the wall, tiny pinpoints of black filling my vision as my leg gives out completely.
Only one thought is left in my mind as I slide to the floor.
I… have…
… to find…
Marley.…
* * *
“Kyle,” a voice says. A hand firmly clutches my shoulder, shaking me awake. “Kyle.”
I open my eyes, and Dr. Benefield’s face slowly swims into view. She lets out a long exhale and shakes her head at me.
“Really?” she says as I look around from the floor of the elevator.
“How long have I been here?” I groan as I sit up.
“You tell me,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Marley.
I try to push myself up, but the pain radiating from my leg is so overwhelming, I crumple to the floor again. Dr. Benefield stands over me for so long I start to think she’s not going to help me. Then she sighs.
“Wait here,” she says.
I slump down and try to fight the bile that’s just at the back of my throat, pushed up by the pain vibrating through my entire body.
A shadow falls over me. Dr. Benefield. With a wheelchair.
When she gets me back into bed, she has a nurse reattach my IV, increasing my dose of pain medicine in an attempt to give me some relief.
She grumbles under her breath as she checks my eyes with her penlight. I stare straight ahead as she clicks the light off and scowls at me, her eyes somehow both angry and sympathetic at the same time.
“I had no idea you were going to be so much trouble,” she says as the nurse leaves. When I don’t say anything, she reaches up to probe the healing wound on my forehead. “Blurry vision? Headache? Dizziness?”
“No,” I say. And it’s true. After all these months of wishing they’d go away, of waking up from nightmares with blinding headaches, it’s all just gone.
She sighs and sits down at the edge of my bed. “So, you want to explain the freak-out?”
No. I don’t. But I try anyway.
“This isn’t where I’m supposed to be,” I tell her. I try not to sound so frantic, but I can’t help it. I have never felt so completely wrong in my life.
“No one ever belongs in a hospital,” she says with a wry smile. “Except people like me, of course.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Where else would you be?”
I should be back at home, eating pancakes with Marley or walking to the diner in town for breakfast, the ground still wet from last night’s thunderstorm. I should be looking at all the different yellow notebooks in bookstores, deciding which is just right to get for her birthday. I should be taking Georgia for her walk and getting ready to cover preseason practice at Ambrose High and playing touch football in the park next Saturday with my friends.
I should be with Marley.
Not right back where I started.
A fresh wave of pain ravages its way through my body, and I squeeze my eyes shut, willing the meds to kick in.
A coma. I was in a coma.
“Dr. Benefield,” I say as I open my eyes to look at her. “Do people in comas… dream?”
“Tell me why you’re asking,” she says, “and I’ll tell you what I know.”
“Okay. I have…” I pause, trying to find the right words. “I don’t get how I’m… here. For me, it’s been a whole year since the accident. I have another life. Kim died. I have a girlfriend. Marley. But now I’m here and everyone is telling me that I was in a coma. That reality is”—I gesture at the hospital room, but also at this entire world—“this.”
She gives me a calculating look I can’t read.
“I know it sounds crazy,” I say.
She nods. “Certifiable. Go on.”
“I have to get back there, to my real life,” I say, thinking of Marley and Georgia and our spot by the pond, missing them with all the agony of a missing limb. I don’t care if my leg never heals, if my brain stays broken. I don’t need them. It’s Marley I need.
She frowns. “I don’t understand. When was this?”
“Yesterday.”
She studies my face. “Yesterday you were here. And the day before that, and the day before that.”
I shake my head, thinking of the handful of doctor’s visits I went to, the times I came here to get my head checked, to make sure I wasn’t losing it. “You were there too,” I say to her. “You were my doctor.”
“You opened your eyes a lot,” Dr. Benefield says. “Looked right at me. Those dreams… You probably incorporated me, or other people, into them.” She motions to the beeping heart monitor. “Things you heard or saw could have found their way into your subconscious. It’s not uncommon in comas. Your synapses were healing, reconnecting, coming alive. I can only imagine what that looked like to you in there.”
“What about Marley?” I counter.
She thinks for a long moment, her voice quieter when she speaks again. “Your life with Marley, did it seem like the perfect version of your life?”
I feel a wave of dread wash over me.
Yes.
I had a job I was good at. A life. I was with the person I was supposed to be with. I was becoming the best version of myself, and every day got better.