“It didn’t make any sense,” I said, struggling to explain. “When I first woke up, I had no clue who I was … where I was. I didn’t even know I had a sister. It was Alex who told me my name and what had happened.”
Josh got up from his desk chair, hesitating for a minute before he sat down next to me on the bed. I could feel his breath on my cheek, the warmth of his hand as he nudged me to look at him. “And when you figured it out, when you finally got your memory back, why didn’t you ask to see me? If you’d asked for me, had so much as said my name, they would’ve called me. Alex would’ve gotten me that first day, and I would’ve come, talked you out of this. Why didn’t you ask for me?”
I stayed silent, my attention focused on a small rip in his comforter. I counted the threads, tried to gauge how many stitches it would take to repair it. Fifteen, I figured. Twenty, tops.
“Ella?” Josh said when I didn’t respond. “Look at me. Look at me and tell me what you were thinking.”
I blinked long and hard, then did as he asked, steeling myself for his anger before opening my eyes. It wasn’t there. No anger, no hatred staring back at me, not even a bit of annoyance. What I saw was forgiveness and unwavering faith.
“I did ask for you.”
“What? Wait, what are you saying?”
“I wasn’t thinking. I woke up and everything hurt. Everything. He was there, holding my hand, whispering for me to wake up. And when I did, he was so happy to see her, like his whole—”
“And you didn’t think I would be?” Josh interrupted. “You think that if I had any idea that it was you lying in that hospital bed I wouldn’t have been there? That it wouldn’t have been my hand you were holding, my eyes you saw first?”
“I didn’t know who he was, who I was. And when he told me, when Mom and Dad told me I was Maddy, I believed them.”
“They told me you were dead, did you know that? When the police showed up at his house, Alex and I went to the ER. We had to pass Maddy’s car on the way. It was still there, wrapped around the tree. The nurse at the front desk wouldn’t let me see you. She told me nobody but your parents were allowed in the trauma room, and they weren’t there yet. I kept thinking of you, hurt and alone.”
“Don’t,” I begged. “Please don’t.” No amount of explanation was going to change this, no amount of anger or guilt could undo what I’d done.
“You know what Alex did?” Josh’s gaze locked on mine, forcing me to see, to understand every single word he said. “He sat down. Right there in the hospital waiting room, he sat down and waited. He didn’t argue with the nurse, or fight his way past the security guard to get to Maddy. He stayed there and didn’t move, like he was frozen in place. You know what I did?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t have spoken then even if I’d wanted to.
“I ignored them—the security guard, the nurse, everyone, and pushed my way through until some big orderly stopped me. But I got to see you, both of you, lying there hooked up to everything. The alarms on your sensors were going off. Hers … hers were silent.”
I didn’t remember any of that—not the emergency room, not the doctors, not Josh being there.
“You were both in the same room, your clothes piled up on the floor. I remembered the coat you had had on and the sweatshirt from RISD you never took off. I saw them in the pile of clothes. I knew you had them on when you came to pick up Maddy. I asked the nurse which one of you had been wearing that, and she pointed to Maddy. So that is where I went. Toward her. Toward the person I thought was you.”
I nodded. I’d given her both in the car. She was cold and wet and shivering and I didn’t know what else to do.
“One of the doctors asked if I knew you, and I gave him your names. He told me you were gone, that you had died instantly when you hit the tree. That you probably hadn’t suffered. Like somehow that was supposed to make me feel better.”