Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
Thursday, 12:01 a.m.
But it could have been any time or any day. It is so hard to tell in places like this. Yes, it is dark beyond the window in Bunny’s fourth-floor hospital room, a clear indicator that it is night. In all the rooms stacked against Bunny’s, other patients like her are asleep. But any sign of night ends there. Everyone else—the nurses who keep checking in, the anxious family members who pace and pace and pace—is wide awake.
Frank was right. Bunny is indeed sick. This is all Ellie can think about as she sits in an uncomfortable hospital chair—everything about it cold and slick to make it easier for the custodial staff to wipe the germs away—next to her mother’s bed. It’s a virus, the doctor—some physician who is not Jack—explained shortly after she was admitted. It’s nothing serious in theory, but then again at her age, anything that triggers a high fever or affects her breathing can turn very serious very fast. They need to get the fever down, though so far they can’t get it to break. Whatever it is, the doctor said, she likely picked it up while here in the ER on Monday.
Now, while Frank speaks to someone at the nurses’ station, Ellie sits and watches her mother sleep. Tangles of cords are attached to her body like unwanted leashes meant to keep her here. She looks so pale, her skin practically translucent when set against her blue hospital gown. Ellie decides she hates this gown. It doesn’t suit her mother at all. She should be dressed in something punchy and bright, her skin smoothed with coral blush and a tan, as she walks around and around her condo development, her body basking in the hot sun and the damp humidity.
But there is no sun here. In this sad hospital room, there are no tropical insects singing their lullabies into the night. It’s just machines beeping. It’s so cold, Ellie thinks as she wraps her cocoon cardigan—the one she finally pulled out from her book bag and slipped her lean body back into—tighter around her frame. Ellie briefly closes her eyes and pretends to feel that warm, southern sun on her skin. She can’t. When she opens them again, her vision is blurred by tears. The only heat in this room radiates from inside Bunny’s body. None of this is right.
“Hi, sweetheart.” Frank appears in the doorway, his demeanor and tone more subdued than it was back on the porch. “Tough night, huh?”
Ellie can see in her father’s face and the specific expression he wears that he’s had such a long day. Such a long week. Like her, he’s been placed in so many unexpected settings—and so many unanticipated circumstances. He’s tired. Ellie is, too.
Ellie stands so her father can sit. A true gentleman, in most cases, he’d decline such an offer. Tonight, he accepts it.
“How’s she doing?” he asks, like Ellie knows. Like either of them do. People give up so much control in places like this. You put all your trust in a stranger and hope they’ll do the right things—make the correct choices—to get you or your loved one back on track. But no one ever knows if the choices they’re making are right. Doctors, after all, are just people. “Has her fever come down?”
Ellie shrugs and stands at the foot of her mother’s bed. The only light source in here comes from the hallway and the small in-room television that’s mounted near the ceiling. The ibuprofen she took earlier is wearing off, a subtle quiver of pain suddenly reintroducing itself to her body, like an unwelcome party guest.
“This is all my fault, Dad,” she says, which takes every imaginable effort not to cry. She does not want to break down in front of him. He doesn’t need to worry about her right now, too. “If I hadn’t brought her here on Monday or if I hadn’t tried to ship the two of you off today or—”
“Stop,” Frank insists, which surprises her. Through the window behind him, a pale trace of white moonlight illuminates part of his face. “This isn’t your fault, Ellie. You didn’t cause any of this.”
“But I did, Dad,” she pleads, a part of her wanting him to believe this, even though she doesn’t want it to be true. “I’m the one who chose to—”
“You didn’t, Ellie.” In the hallway, a pair of nurses push a wheeled stretcher. “Who’s to say where one choice ends and another one starts? You can just as easily make the argument that this is all my fault for not absolutely insisting that she stay put at home on Monday, instead of turning up on your porch and bogging you down with all this.”
Knock, knock, knock.
Ellie and Frank both turn. A female nurse, a woman with beautiful mahogany skin and a smile as warm and inviting as a freshly made bed, stands at the door.
“I’m really sorry,” she says, her tone apologetic. “But visiting hours ended a long time ago. There’s only supposed to be one guest per room overnight in this wing.”
Ellie gives a firm nod, a signal to this nurse that she understands and has no intention of giving her a hard time. The woman turns at this gesture and disappears down the hallway.
“You should get some sleep, Ellie.” Frank stands. He takes a step closer to his wife’s bed and presses the back side of his hand against her forehead, the way Bunny has always done for them when they’ve been sick. He pulls his hand away and adjusts her thin, hospital-grade blanket. “You need to rest.” He turns back to face his daughter. “You’ve had a long week, too.”
Ellie buttons her cardigan, this single layer meant to keep her protected and warm. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” she tells him.
Frank nods and then drags the hospital chair closer to Bunny’s bed. He sits and takes her hand in his. “I’ll be right here.”
The town is empty. Ellie knows this because she’s driven all around it—past the bookstore and the coffee shop and around those familiar streets—at least a dozen times.
She keeps looking, but he’s nowhere. He’s everywhere, too. Still, she can’t find him.
Click, click, click.
Ellie flicks on her blinker so she can turn and drive home. All the traffic lights blink red at this hour. It’s up to each driver—not that there are many of them out right now—to stop or to yield or to say screw it and just keep on going.
The car rolls into the driveway. From the outside, Ellie sees the whole house is black. The power is still out. The generator has exhaled its last, tired sigh. She slides on her book bag straps, her keys dangling from her fingers as she steps onto the porch, hoping perhaps she hasn’t seen things clearly because of the darkness. Maybe he’s hiding somewhere in the shadows, waiting for her. She opens the door and knows instantly he’s not here.
Upstairs, Ellie sits alone in the dark on the edge of her bed. Is she really going to get changed and go to sleep? She can’t. It’ll never happen. She already knows this as fact.
A memory: the night of Maggie’s birth. By the time the nurses, each of them angels in their own right, had gotten her settled in her room (Had minutes or hours or entire days passed?), she had absolutely zero concept of time. She kept blinking, half in shock and half in relief that it was over, that she’d made it, that she and the baby had both survived. Maggie, all swaddled up in one of the good hospital cloths (so much better than the silly muslin ones the stores convince new mothers to buy), was on her chest and asleep. A nurse—a woman who looked to be only a few years older than Ellie, and whose eyelids were painted with the boldest shade of blue—appeared at her bedside.
“Why don’t you let me take her to the nursery for a few hours for you, Mama,” the nurse said, already lifting the baby off Ellie’s chest. “You need rest.”
Maggie didn’t so much as stir from the movement, just slept peacefully as the nurse set her down in the wheeled bassinet. Ellie didn’t know if she was supposed to act like she didn’t want this time away from her new daughter—the guilt of motherhood already setting in. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do or say or want right then.
“Enjoy it,” the nurse said, reading her mind. “You won’t get much alone time from here on out.”
Back in her dark bedroom, Ellie realizes how right that nurse was. For years, it’s felt as if Ellie hasn’t had a single moment to herself. But right now, while seated on the edge of her bed, she sees that life has come full circle on her. Finally—unwillingly—Ellie is alone again.
Through the blackness, she reaches for the drawing from the coffee shop—the one Jonah had completed and dropped off the other night—and thumbs the paper, knowing what she finally needs to do, the one thing that’s been hurting and worrying her the most this week, which she finally must force herself to see.
Even without light, Ellie knows the way. She can walk this path without issue, regardless of time or space or which life she’s trapped living in.
There’s no need to knock. She knows, regardless of what magic has unfolded around her in recent days, that the person she’s looking for is not on the other side of this door. Still, she wants to see what is.
Moonlight filters through the linen curtains, lighting the room as though from within. It’s all still here. Her bed, with its fuzzy throw pillows. The pale-pink walls, which she adored when she was a child but learned to roll her eyes at the more she aged. The beanbag chair where she loved to sit alone and read. Her favorite photos of her friends and some inspiring quotes, as well as a printout of the electronic acceptance letter she’d received from Middlebury, pinned to a corkboard.
Ellie steps deeper inside, the scrap of paper with her and Jonah’s drawing on it still in her hand. The whole room smells like Maggie. Not like perfume or cosmetics but like her. The same distinct scent she carried that first night the nurses laid her curled-up body on Ellie’s chest. This space should not exist here. And yet, it does. But then again, perhaps its presence makes perfect sense. Mothers are the gatekeepers of their children’s memories, the only people who know all of them—even the early ones their children themselves will never recall.
Yes, Ellie thinks. Of course this room is still right here, despite logic.
Because a mother’s love is not made from logic. It knows no boundaries. No limits.
Not even time.
The bed is soft. Ellie allows herself to sit on the edge of it, running her free hand across the cozy comforter, the one with the pretty watercolor design. For a long time, Ellie has only allowed herself to miss a certain part of her daughter. The younger one. The little girl with pigtails and Velcro sneakers, the one who left a trail of crushed-up cereal pieces and stray toys all over the back seat of Ellie’s car. The one who danced in front of the television every time her favorite cartoon’s theme song came on. The girl who said, “One more, one more, one more,” every night—no amount of stories her mother could read to her ever seeming to be enough—before she finally tired herself out and fell asleep in Ellie’s arms.
But that was then. Right now, Ellie misses a different part of her daughter. The bouncy teenager running out the front door to meet her friends. The one who did her homework every evening at the kitchen table, the black pendant light glowing above her as she worked so hard. The one who insisted on a daily basis that she no longer needed her mother, even though it was so clear she still did. That she still does. That they all do.
Ellie takes a big breath and moves across the bedroom. She pauses in front of the corkboard, her head tilting to one side as she takes in the sight of Maggie, her wide smile staring back at her from all those pinned-up photographs.
“I’m going to fix this, Mags,” Ellie whispers to the air, some part of her hoping the words will carry through the window and over mountains and right to her daughter’s ears. “Not just for you.” She pins up the scrap of paper. “Not just for Dad. But for me. For all of me. And for all of us, too.”
This time, Ellie leaves the door wide open when she exits the room.