Chapter Forty Seven #2
“You can win and still lose. You can’t live a life fully under the surface. You have to find a way back even if it’s hard.”
The last words on the page stand alone, with some space in between.
“You are not an Atlantean,” you say.
You hear Diana’s chair skid back, and then you watch as she gets up and calmly walks out of the room.
Everyone watches her go. You stand next, but it’s not until Fran says, “Go get her, dude!” that you feel your legs moving and you too head out into the hallway, where you find Diana looking at the bronze face of a man who donated to this wing of the hospital years ago.
You walk up behind her, and she turns when she hears your footsteps.
Her voice, when she speaks, is as clear and resolute as you’ve ever heard it.
“We have a choice, Case,” she says.
The man on the plaque looks old and distinguished, like he lived a full life doing important work and giving to charities. You want to let Diana know that you remember what she said about Sean’s last words. But she seems too determined, so you just listen.
“We can stay down here forever,” she says.
The hallway is so clean, the floor gleams like the surface of a lake.
“In our grief.”
You swallow and your throat is dry.
“We could stay all our lives if we wanted to,” she adds. “We could live here.”
“We already do,” you say.
“Or…,” she says, “we could let ourselves come back to the surface. That’s what he was trying to do. And I think that’s what he would want us to do.”
You’ve been especially attuned to sounds since you came back from the woods, and you hear so many of them now. The whir of hospital machines. A janitor’s cart, rolling on a bad wheel. The hushed tones of patients’ families. It’s the complete opposite of the woods in every way.
You sit down in the hallway and lean up against the wall. The donor looms above you. Diana looks down at you, and then, after a moment of contemplation, she joins you, your shoulders touching.
“It’s hard to remember who I was before,” you say.
Diana stares across the hall into Troy’s room.
“You were a kid all alone on a roof,” she says.
You wish her depiction wasn’t so accurate. But in a way, those hours before you met her were the “before.” In your darker moments, you’ve wished that the two of you never met. But then you remember how alone you felt.
“I never asked you. Why did you climb up to see me that first night on the garage?” you ask.
She huffs out an uncomfortable laugh.
“I was drunk,” she says.
You pause.
“Okay,” you say.
“Ugh, I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe that’s not it. You were alone on your birthday, on top of a garage.”
“Oh,” you say. “So it was pity…”
“No,” she says. “That’s not it either. I think when I saw you, it just felt like something I would do. It felt familiar.”
“Being alone?”
“Yeah,” she says. “But we don’t have to be anymore, if we don’t want to.”
She leans against you, and you close your eyes.
And it’s in that moment, one that you wish would last for an entire hour, that you hear the commotion from down the hall.
The slap of the footfalls comes first. Then a door bursts open, and you see Will, sprinting like he did on that first day at the gas station, his eyes nearly closed with determination.
Behind him is a red-faced male nurse. The nurse is yelling and trying to get a breath at the same time.
“Sir,” he is saying. “Sir. I told you that is not allowed…”
He’s not in great shape, the nurse. And it’s hard to tell what his winded warning is in reference to until you get a better look at Will.
He’s back in a tracksuit, bright red this time.
And he’s holding something. Something that seems hard for him to grab hold of.
Your mind races, but you can’t for the life of you think about what kind of contraband he would be transporting through a hospital.
“Troy!” he screams. “Troy. I’ve got him. He’s here!”
It starts to click then, and as Will thunders closer, you also see the short, flailing limbs of a terrified long-haired dachshund, better known to most people as a wiener dog.
“Oh my god,” says Diana, and rises to her feet. “Oh my god.”
“Secure the door behind me!” Will yells. “I repeat: Secure the door behind me!”
You get up too, and you don’t hesitate for a moment.
You and Diana are in lockstep as Will crashes into Troy’s room, clutching Turbo.
You take one look at the nurse, and you know you cannot let this man in the room.
If you can survive a bear attack, this poor guy has no chance.
And in this particular context, the consequences seem laughable.
What will they do? Arrest you and send you to juvie, where you will be given an actual bed and prepared food?
You slam the door behind Will, and Diana and you brace yourselves against it, ready to move heaven and earth to make this reunion happen.
“Enough is enough, Troy!” says Will. “This dog is bereft, bro. You are his sole reason for living, and you need to wake up right now!”
He plops the dog on Troy’s chest, where it seems stunned. Of course, nothing happens. And you chastise yourself for thinking there would be a miracle. The nurse pushes against the door, and it pops open a crack. But you push back and quickly close the gap again.
“I’m calling security!” says the nurse.
“Now what?!” says Will, and he looks on the verge of tears.
He kicks a chair across the room.
“It doesn’t count if one of us doesn’t make it,” he says. “It doesn’t count!”
And you know he’s right. None of you need another absence in your life.
You all have too many. There’s no more room for absence and uncertainty.
This, your therapist often said, was actually at the very root of your anxiety.
The fact that life is always barreling toward you and always uncertain.
And it keeps going until the second it stops.
What you want—what every person alive wants—is to control it. But that is impossible.
Because no matter how much you try, you might find yourself in the middle of nowhere with no idea how to survive.
Or stuck on a rapidly warming planet. Or in love with someone, entirely and aggressively against your will.
Or trying to help a complicated person who can’t find his way to accepting it.
Or you just might find yourself in a hospital in suburban Minnesota, barricading a door while your new friend tries unsuccessfully to wake your other new friend from his coma with the use of a dog.
You don’t have much time for revelations at this juncture.
The pressure on the door is too great. And Will is starting to break down.
But you know, if only for a second, that it’s never going to stop.
None of this. The absurdity and the peril and the absolute heartbreak of this life is going to keep going.
But you also know with equal, fleeting certainty that you have to actually be there for it all.
Two things happen then in quick succession.
The first is that the door flies open, sending you and Diana to the floor.
The nurse and two befuddled security guards stumble in, and you’re not sure what they were expecting but it’s not this.
The second thing that happens is that Turbo seems to finally understand where he is.
He takes a long hard look at the creature he loves most in the world, and then he proceeds to release the loudest, most mournful cry an animal has ever made.
It is earsplitting and tragic and seems to contain the entire history of grief on earth in one canine bay.
Everyone covers their ears and freezes in place as he howls again and again.
You look over then, and Diana is mouthing something to you. But you can’t hear her. You move closer to her, and you take your hand off your ear for just a second. You feel her lips graze your ear, and when you turn toward her, you’re surprised to see her smiling.
“We’re here!” she says.
And then, it’s as if something shifts in your brain. As all the mayhem unfolds around you, you feel like you’re in a body again. Your body. And you are I.
Even though you know your brain will best you again, for now, there’s a moment of total calm, and you hear each thought so clearly.
Yes, I am here.
I don’t know why.
I might never know.
But that’s okay for now.
At least I am here.
And then I watch as Troy opens his eyes.