Chapter 4
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. Beep.
My alarm blares right next to my head. I reach out, swatting at it, trying to get that god-awful sound to stop, but my hand keeps cutting straight through the air where my nightstand should be.
“Sweetie.” I hear my mom’s soft voice from beside me.
Five more minutes, I try to say, but it comes out all garbled, complete nonsense.
She runs her fingers gently down the side of my face. I try to lift my other hand to bat her away, but my arm gets all tangled up in my bedsheets.
“Stevie, can you hear me?” she asks, her hand still pressed against my face.
“Mom. Five more minutes,” I say again, and this time it’s audible, but it sounds like my throat is filled with gravel.
And jeez, that alarm. I start to rip free from the sheets to shut it off, but two strong hands clamp down on me, pinning my arms firmly to the bed. I try to open my eyes, but they just won’t.
“Get off me!” I grunt, tossing and turning my whole body around the bed. “What are you doing?” My throat is on fire, and I can’t breathe.
I need to get up.
I need to get these hands off me.
“Stevie, stop!” my dad’s voice yells as the grip on my forearms readjusts. His grip, I realize.
“Mr. Green, please,” says a woman’s voice I don’t recognize. Calm, collected. “Stevie, you need to stop fighting.” I can feel her hovering over me now. Right in front of my face. “You’re in the hospital. You’re okay.”
Hospital?
I feel my chest heaving, then everything constricts around my lungs, making me panic more. The sound of my mom’s crying fills the room.
I try to open my eyes and this time they respond. But everything on the other side is too bright when I even take a peek and I have to clamp them shut again.
I try again to pull my arms free, but it’s no use. I don’t have any strength left in me, and soon darkness pulls me back under.
When I come to again, I hear my dad’s muffled voice on the phone. I can only pick up every few words… upset… sedated… waiting…
Behind my eyelids my eyes are burning. I spend a few minutes forcing the lids open a sliver at a time. Eventually, the light seems to dim and everything starts coming into focus.
Finally, I register that there’s a soft hand resting over mine, familiar, comforting. Mom. I turn my own over, grabbing onto her with as much force as I can muster.
All of a sudden she pops up from where she must have been resting her head on the side of my bed and looks at me like I’ve never seen her look at me before, tears pouring over her cheeks.
Mom? I try to say, but nothing comes out. I open my mouth to speak again, and she shushes me.
“Don’t talk, baby,” she whispers in a shaky voice, then turns away from me. “John. John! Get the doctor.” She looks back at me, taking my hand and holding it up to her mouth. I notice a thin clear tube sticking out of my skin. I follow it up to a bag of clear liquid hanging on a metal rack.
My lungs start to heave again, up and down, as my eyes wander around the room: electrical knobs on white walls, a stainless-steel sink set into a teal countertop, a vinyl recliner tucked into the corner.
I look down at myself as much as I’m able to, lying flat on my back. Enough to see the sea-green gown covering my body and the pink fuzzy socks on my feet.
Hospital, I remember hearing.
“Mom?” I cry, barely more than a whisper. What’s wrong with me? I want to ask, but I can’t get it out.
A strong sterile smell hits me in a wave all at once, just as a middle-aged lady in a white coat enters the room. She hurries over to my bed, and I try to scooch away to the other side as I clutch my mom’s hand for dear life.
The lady takes a step back from me. “It’s okay, Stevie,” she says, holding her empty palms out to me. “My name is Maggie.” My eyes drop down onto the dark-blue monogrammed lettering on her pocket. MARGARET REICHER, MD.
My mom runs her hand up my arm and onto my shoulder, keeping me in place.
“Stevie.” The doctor pulls my attention back to her face. “You’ve been in a bad accident…” is all I hear her say, before the sound goes out.
An accident?
I look to the side at my mom, then notice my dad next to her, one big hand clamped onto her shoulder, the other one covering his mouth. How could I have been in a car accident? I inspect my parents again. They look fine.
“Stevie. Stevie, can you hear me? Do you remember my name?” a voice says from my left.
I blink hard, looking up again at the lady in a white coat next to me.
“Mary. Margie… MarrrrrrrRRRR,” I groan as a searing pain cuts through the back of my head.
“Is she okay?” my dad asks, worry filling his deep voice. I turn my head into the pillow, squeezing my eyes shut until the fog of pain clears enough for me to open them.
“Stevie. Can you hear me?” the woman asks again. I look up at her, and she continues. “My name is Maggie,” she says in the same calm tone of voice.
Maggie. Right. “You’ve been in an accident. Do you know what happened to you?” she asks. I just squint at her in reply, my eyelids feeling heavy. “You fell, and you hit your head. You’ve been in an induced coma for the past two weeks, healing.”
What the hell? A coma? No. That doesn’t make any sense. I was just with Savannah and Rory—
“Stevie, I’m going to do a few tests. Is that okay?” She takes a pen-shaped tool out of her pocket and holds it up for me to see. When I don’t answer, she moves closer, leaning over me.
She drags it over my arms, my stomach, and down my legs, across the bottoms of my feet, asking me again and again, “Can you feel this?”
I nod, tracking a light pressure running up and down my body.
“What about this?” She runs her fingers down my cheeks, across my forehead. I nod again, feeling frozen in place, like a slab of meat on a cutting board, being poked and prodded. I just want her to take her hands off me.
She sits down beside me on the bed and clicks the end of her pen. A bright white light moves in front of my eyes, making me squeeze them shut.
“Can you tell me your name?” she asks. Of course I know my name. I clear my hoarse throat and suck my lips into my mouth, trying to get everything to work right as my head aches.
“Stevie,” I finally get out. I lick my lips. “Stevie Green.”
“What’s your address?”
“Two fifty-four Fairfield Road.”
She looks over at my parents, who both nod.
“Good. How old are you?” she asks.
“Uh—uh…,” I stutter. The ache in my head grows and what should be an easy answer eludes me.
“Stevie?” She looks at me expectantly, her eyebrows arched. I trace the outline of her gold-framed glasses, the sharp, downward turn of her nose, just like my grandma’s.
“I’m…” I rack my brain for the answer, but all I can pull up are flashes of yellow brick and rows of maroon lockers. Central Catholic. “High school…,” I mutter more to myself than to her, everything feeling foggy.
“What’s that?” She leans closer to me.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “I can’t think right now.”
Worry flickers across her face, but it’s gone as fast as it came. “Okay.” She clicks her pen off and slips it back into her jacket pocket.
“Okay?” my dad shouts, upset. I try to turn my head to look up at him, but I’m so tired. “How is that okay?”
“Her brain has undergone a major trauma. This isn’t abnormal. Sometimes it just takes some time. We need to be patient with her.”
Why is he acting like that? What does she mean? I just need a second…
I try to think harder, try to remember more, but every fiber of my being is getting pulled back to sleep and eventually, I have to give in.