Finally, she whispers, “I miss me, too, pal.”
Over my mom’s shoulder, I see the red neon sign through tear-blurred eyes: EXIT. It’s what I want. This is the place where my father died, and all I want is to start moving away from the darkness it left in our lives.
“Let’s go home, okay?” I point my mom toward the exit, and I guide us out.
It’s what I’ve been trying to do all along.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Vivi
Everything is dark and rattled. My brain is an empty cavern, dank and full of nothing but echoes. I scream inside my head, and it goes from the back of my skull to the front, then bounces side to side until I’m exhausted from hearing it over and over, and I sleep.
My eyes are gummy. I want to rub at them, but my body is too heavy to move. Hmm. IV in my arm and a monitor clamped to my index finger. Left arm casted and in a sling. I want to examine the rest of myself, but it’s too much.
I should hurt. But I don’t. I feel smeary.
My mom is asleep in a hospital chair, limbs bent in an uncomfortable-looking way. There are flowers lined up by the window. I want to crawl to the windowsill and sleep there. Or arrange the plants around me. The muted colors of the medical equipment, the unpainted walls, the beeping, I can’t. I can’t.
What have I done?
I feel my eyelids sag, shades dropping against my will. But it’s not against my will. Sleep, sleep, let me wake up in a different life or not at all.
I am bleak, and the sky is incongruously blue. If the weather walked into my hospital room, I’d slap her face and demand, How dare you?
I don’t know what day of the week it is. Maybe Saturday. Maybe it is someone’s wedding day and every person there is remarking: We couldn’t have asked for better weather! and How about this gorgeous day, eh? How nice for them.
But I feel betrayed. The universe usually understands me better. I need drippy rain; I need hurricane wind to rattle the windowpanes. I need gray skies and white snow, mucked over and melty from car exhaust.
Outside, it’s hot, hazy, eye-shielding summer. Inside me, it is parched earth and desolation, and nothing will ever rebloom.
Sleep now. Gone. My short-circuiting brain and me.
My mom is looking right into my eyes. It’s dark in the room now.
“Hey, chickie,” she says, squeezing my hand.
“Hey.”
A tear drops down her cheek. “I’m so happy to see you. We’re so lucky you’re okay.”
“How long have I been here?” My voice sounds like a scratched-up record.
“A little more than forty-eight hours. You had surgery, and you’ve been heavily sedated since then. The doctors eased up on that a few hours ago to see how you do.”
I press my palm against my face. I’m not sure why that’s my first instinct—I had a helmet on, right? There’s a splintering pain in my shoulder. A sling cradles the cast on my arm. “What did I have surgery on?”
“Your humerus. You also have two broken ribs and a lot of wounds up your left side, and they had to be irrigated. You’re on a lot of pain medicine, but it might still hurt.”
“It does,” I whisper. I look down at my hospital gown and wonder what my skin looks like under there, mottled and forming scabs. I tug at the hospital sheet to see my legs. I want to know that they’re okay. The side of my left leg is covered in gauzy bandages. Only a few little spots are uncovered, little pellets of wounds like someone shot me with a gun full of gravel. “God.”
Craning my head down, I can see more gauze peeking out, over my collarbone. “And here?”
“Stitches, baby. Probably from a piece of rock on the road that you landed on. I’m sorry.” She tightens her grip on my hand. “I’m so sorry. Do you remember what happened?”
I remember everything that happened, but not as if it was me in those memories. I remember everything like it’s a movie—something I watched as an outsider. I remember what I did and what I thought, but the logic behind it all? I could never even begin to explain, so I just nod.
“Are you mad at me?” I whisper to my mom.
“No, baby. No, of course I’m not mad at you.”
“But I lied to you. I lied to your face. I stopped taking my pills.” The dull ache in my shoulder and the fuzzed-over feeling in my brain . . . I deserve them. I lied to my own mother, who tries so hard to trust me.
“It’s okay, chickie. It’s all right.”
“Am I . . .” I glance at the IV. “Am I on medicine?”
“Painkillers and a few things to hopefully make you . . . steadier.”
That explains why I can be still—like, I have to be still. Even in pain, even sluggish, it’s a bit of a relief.