The Summer We Came to Life

Chapter

48





SHIT. WHERE AM I?

“Samantha,” I hear Mina say, “look.”

I see Kendra sobbing in her sleep. She’s curled up in a ball amongst the twisted sheets, grabbing her midsection. The whimpering was hers, but now they become the cries and groans of earthquake victims. Her face is contorted in pain, and sweat forms a dark halo on her pillow.

“What happened?” I ask Mina.

“The sheets. Look closer.”

Kendra’s legs are curled up tight, but now I see a foot peeking out of the bedclothes. It’s sticky with blood.

Panicked, I try to pin down Kendra’s thoughts. She’s flashing through the horrors of the day in her mind.

She sees herself at work, held together by sheer will. She sees the wobble in her stilettos as she opens the clinic door. She hears the echoes of the counseling session. Irreversible. Decision to live with. Emotional trauma. Risk of surgery.

She remembers the cream tile of the ceiling, the nurse clutching her hand with latex gloves. The tense murmurs coming from the doctor. Kendra remembers how the numbness in her pelvis spread to her heart. She sees the blood on the doctor’s gloves, remembers the flecks of hazel in the nurse’s eyes above her mask.

Michael was there in the waiting room. He smiled when she came out and she wanted to stab him for it. He took her home in a cab, not even a town car. He’d brought his briefcase with him, work to do at Kendra’s bedside presumably. Kendra didn’t cry in the car; she’s proud of herself for it. She molded her face like plaster of Paris and kept it dry all the way back to SoHo. She watched the dogged New York hustle outside the window and tried to find a metaphor in it that would give her strength. It worked.

When the doorman opened the cab door and saw Kendra’s cracking plaster of Paris face, she gave him a tiny nod and he understood. He stepped back and Kendra got out and shut the cab door before Michael knew what was happening. The doorman strode forward and tapped on the window for the cab driver to drive away. Kendra bargained with her stilettos. Just let me make it inside.

She stumbled through the lobby and barely let the elevator doors shut before she sank to the carpet.

Kendra sees herself crawl into bed and pass out from the pain. She woke up several times to the disturbing feeling of warm blood pumping from between her legs, but she was too weak to move.

Kendra thinks she’s going to bleed to death. Alone.

But now her thoughts turn a particular shade of indigo, and the roaring sound of waves rushes in the distance.

Kendra moans. She’s whispering something on repeat:

“Isabel.”

And then I see it—Kendra’s fever-fueled nightmare. She sees Isabel sinking in the water like a shiny penny in a vat of oil. The dark shadows of the sea are stealing her away, pulling at her hair, handcuffing her wrists and ankles.

Now Kendra’s mind fills with a vision of Mina standing on a dock, her yellow sundress whipping in the wind, watching in terror at dark waters rising around her.

The worlds are colliding.