Chapter 16
Sixteen
EMBER
T he darkness is noisy all of a sudden.
For a long time, there was just darkness. Soundless, warm, and infinite.
And then, slowly, there were sounds: beeps, whooshes, murmurs, coughs, laughs, squeaks. The sounds came and went. Became louder and quieter, interspersed with long stretches of thick silence.
At first, the noise is unwelcome; the warm, dense silence is luxurious, enveloping, restful. But then, when the sounds grow loud and the murmurs become voices and the voices become not just word-sounds but meaningful and real, the return to silence takes on a frightening quality.
One voice is a constant. A male voice. Deep and rough and familiar. That voice is always near. Comforting. Sometimes he whispers. Sometimes he's silent, but even in his silence, he's near.
The first major shift is the transition of the word-sounds and the voices into language, into speech patterns with context and meaning.
"…more severe than we anticipated, but she's showing signs of improvement."
"…Wake up, doc?"
"—To know for sure, as I’ve said, but I think soon."
"Can she hear me?"
"Again, there's no way to know for sure, but the coma patients I've worked with have told me that they do hear and understand sometimes. Not all of them, and not all the time, but those who say they heard their loved ones speaking to them all agree that they were comforted by the voices of their family. So yeah, I’d encourage you to keep talking to her."
I wonder who they're talking about.
Someone's in a coma? Poor thing.
I hear other sounds—a scrape, soles squeaking on tile, a door latching.
The Voice is close, now. "Wish I knew whether you're hearing me, Ember."
Ember? Who's Ember?
"The Cartwright sisters told me you’re studying to be a vet? Why didn't you say anything? I guess maybe it didn't matter. I dunno. I just…I wanna know everything about you, Em."
Em. Ember.
Emberly.
Is…is that…me?
He sounds sad. Scared. I just want him to know it's okay. I don't want him to be sad.
"Those weeks you were in California sucked, Ember. I know we didn't spend much time together, but…fuck, how do I put it? It meant a lot to me. I feel things with you that I've never felt. A connection that—it's just different, Em. And the longer you were gone, the more I…the more I missed you. The more I realized how stupid I was being for letting that bullshit with Amy hold me back."
California . The word feels heavy. Laden with sorrow.
Amy brings anger. Jealousy.
"I just want you to wake up so we can talk. I don't—I don't know if you read that message, but…I meant it, okay? I did. I know, I know, it's fuckin' nuts. But I fuckin' meant it." He clears his throat as if to swallow a lump. "I won't say it. Not until I'm looking into those big silver eyes, not until I know you hear me."
What did he say? What's the message? I need to know. For the first time since the sounds resolved into speech, I can understand, I feel impatient. Frustrated.
Now, the darkness feels more like prison than comfort. The silence becomes oppressive. I want out of the silence. I want out of the dark.
How do I get out?
Something implacable pulls me deeper into the darkness where the sounds are far away.
* * *
"…not a medically induced coma, so I can't just bring her out of it. She has to wake up on her own."
“You said twenty-four hours. It's been almost three days."
"I wish it was an exact science, Felix, but it's not. As I've said before, the human brain is, in many ways, still largely a mystery to us. We've learned a lot in the last few decades of medical research, but there are still a ton of question marks, things we just don't understand. Consciousness is one of them."
"The longer she's unconscious, the higher the chances of deficiencies…is that how it works?"
"It's not that cut and dried, I'm afraid. I've gone over her scans. I've compared her first scans to the results from this morning, and she's showing signs of improvement. She's breathing on her own. Her nervous system is responsive. Steady heart rate. Reactive pupils. Her body just isn't ready to wake up yet."
The Voice sighs. "I know I’ve asked you the same questions a billion times. I'm sorry, doc, I just…"
The Doctor Voice is understanding and patient. "I get it, Felix, believe me. The waiting and not knowing is the worst. Just keep talking to her. I truly believe she will come out of it soon, and we'll be able to assess better once she does."
Felix.
The name inspires complicated feelings. Blue eyes—paler than the sky, sharp and deep and piercing. Blond hair. Scruffy jawline. Hands like cinder blocks, nonetheless gentle. Lips that kiss.
There's anger, though. Confusion. Hurt.
Need.
Felix.
He’s the Voice.
I want out of the darkness. I want to see him. Talk to him. I want to remember.
But something in the darkness isn't ready.
I go back under, but this time it feels more like drowning.
* * *
The silence is not totally silent this time.
There are faint sounds—the beeps, the hisses, the squeaks of shoes, the murmur of voices.
The darkness isn't totally dark anymore, either. It's…filtered. Not absolute black but a fluttering haze.
A word pops into my head: Eigengrau . Intrinsic gray. The specific kind of darkness perceived when eyes are closed.
Beep—beep—beep—beep.
A latch clicking—hinges creaking quietly—the latch clicking again.
A faint sound—hard to identify; a chair settling as it adjusts to weight.
“Hey, Em." Felix. He sounds tired. "I've sorta run outta things to say, so I, um, I sorta went through some of your things and found a book that it seems like you really like. Thought I'd read it to you."
Felix clears his throat.
"Uh, okay. I'm not great at reading out loud, so just…y'know, bear with me." Another nervous throat clearing. "'I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead…"
Heartache blazes through me—sickening and vicious and boiling and acidic.
Dean.
Marylou.
That prose, that voice, the sense of adventure and the joy of traveling.
Reading it out loud. Back and forth—me and him. I'd read a page or two or ten, and then he’d read.
Him—not Felix.
Someone else.
Who?
The darkness disgorges a name: Dutchie.
Dutchie and I read this book to each other. Not just once, but…so many times. It's like an old friend. One you’ve been through so much shit with, you've argued with them, fought bitterly even, but always find a way to mend the breaks, forget the nasty words and sharp retorts. Because that friend just knows you.
Felix keeps reading, and I could almost recite the next words for him.
The hurt is massive and magnificent—deep and sharp and potent. But…it's a beautiful kind of pain. I don't shy away from it as Felix reads Dutchie's and my book to me. I embrace it. I can almost feel Dutchie somewhere within the dense, star-bright center of the pain.
I can almost hear him. His voice is the silent brief pauses between Felix's words, the swift intake of breath.
The dark thins. The hazy flutter shades from eigengrau to a less intrinsic gray, to a low shadowy yellowish wash over my eyelids.
He reads well, despite his word of warning. Slow but fluent, carefully handling each word, cautiously enunciating each sentence. Felix reads and reads, pausing to drink something, to turn pages with a flapping rustle of paper.
I want him to stop.
Read something else. Something less fraught.
Another hazy flutter—light; dim and warm and inviting. Shapes. White wall. A blank TV screen.
Flutter of eyelashes obscuring the scene.
The light returns.
Felix sitting a couple feet away, ankle on knee, my battered, dog-eared, highlighted and underlined and written-in-the-margins library sale copy of On The Road by Jack Kerouac in his big hard hands, a ratty, faded gray Detroit Tigers hat on his head, pushed up a touch so a few stray dark blond curls sweep his forehead beneath the brim. His jaw is shadowed by stubble so thick it's more beard than stubble, and he has dark purple bags under his eyes.
I try to say his name, but I feel as if I'm filled with lead—my tongue, my lips, my hands, every part of me feels so heavy. Even blinking requires effort—if I'm not careful, a blink could plunge me back into the darkness, and I don't want to go back down there.
The attempt at "Fee" ends up in a nearly silent breath between slightly pursed lips. He doesn't hear it.
My throat hurts. Breathing hurts.
Everything hurts.
I need to get his attention. Only, I can't even wiggle my toes. I feel them, but it's like when you first wake up after a long, deep nap in the sunshine, when you're heavy and drowsy and sun-warmed and lazy, and you could just lay there forever, because even opening your eyes just seems too hard and so pointless. It's like that, but times a thousand.
I try a sound in my throat, just a soft hum of air past my vocal cords. "Mmmm."
He doesn't hear it—it barely registered in my own ears.
C'mon, Ember. Try again.
Louder.
"Mmmm."
He hears it this time. He lets the book drop to his lap, his piercing blue eyes flicking to me. Shock sears through him as he realizes I'm awake.
"Em!" He lunges forward and takes my hand in his, kisses my knuckles. "You're awake!"
I try to smile at him, but I'm not sure it reaches my lips. I think maybe my eyes communicate it, though. "Mmmm."
His eyes shimmer. "Hi." He lets out a breath, a long, ragged sigh as if he's releasing a half-held breath pent up in his lungs for days. "Shit, the doctors. I gotta—I gotta—"
I manage to apply the slightest amount of pressure on his hand with mine— not yet. Don't go yet.
"Em, I—" he closes his eyes, and I think for a moment he's about to shed tears, but he shakes his head and gruffly clears his throat. "You're okay. You're okay."
It sounds like he's trying to convince both of us.
He presses the back of my hand to his lips, staring into my eyes with such intensity I wonder if he intends to look away ever again.
"F—" That much saps my energy. I try again anyway. "Fee."
"I'm here, honey. I'm here."
"W—" it's a twitch of the lips more than a sound. "Wha—"
"What happened?" he guesses. I blink hard, once, hoping he interprets that as a yes. “Once for yes, twice for no, huh?"
I blink once again.
"You got into a wreck. Broke some ribs, punctured a lung and collapsed it, broke your leg. Hit your head really hard, too, so you’ve been in a coma for three days. Well, two and a half. Almost three."
I can't remember. I wrack my brain, but I can only remember driving back from California, being so excited to get to Felix. It all goes gray, then.
They’re there, the memories, but I can't reach them. They're just out of reach, hidden behind a swirling curtain of fog.
"Hey, don't worry about it. You're gonna be okay. We can…we can talk once you're up to it. For now just rest."
I blink twice—I don't want to rest. I don't want to go back into the drowsing dark.
I shift my gaze to the wired remote thing connected to the hospital bed, focusing on the call button.
He follows my gaze. "Want me to call them?"
I blink once.
He presses the call button, and a minute or so later the door opens to admit a young woman wearing maroon scrubs and white sneakers, auburn hair pulled up into a messy bun.
"Oh! She's awake!" Her smile is bright and eager. "Welcome back, Ms. James! How are we feeling?"
"She can't really talk, I don't think," Felix answers for me.
"Oh, that's perfectly normal. Her body was shut down for quite a long time. It'll take time for her to get it all back." She peeks at the monitor, checks a chart on her iPad, flashes a penlight into my eyes, one and then the other, pokes the bottom of my foot with the clicker of her pen. "Seems like she's doing pretty well, all things considered. I'm gonna go get Dr. Richardson, okay? He'll check you out and go over a few things with you guys. Think you can stay awake a bit longer?"
"Mmm…hmmmm." I blink once.
The nurse grins at me. "We've got a fighter on our hands, huh?" She pats my foot over the scratchy white blanket. "Be right back."
Despite my assurance to the nurse, it's harder with every passing minute to stay awake, but I'm scared of falling asleep.
My mouth is dry. I look at Felix, squeeze his hand—squeeze is a generous term, though. "W—wah…” the rest won't come out. I manage to get my tongue across my lower lip. "Wah—"
"Water?" Felix guess. "Thirsty, huh?"
I blink my eyes once, wait, blink once again.
"Alright, I'll get you some water. I'll have to ask the nurse, though—all I have is old coffee." He kisses my hand again. "I'm not going anywhere, okay? Just popping out."
He pulls away and stands up, and the terror I feel at his distance is shocking. My heart pounds and the monitor beeps faster.
Don't go—don't leave me. Not you, too.
He doesn't even leave the room, just pokes his head out—his words are muffled, and then he comes back to me.
He notices the speed of my heart, sees fear in my eyes. "Hey, hey, I'm here. I’m here." He takes my hand, and immediately my heart rate slows. "There you go. You're okay. I'm here, Ember."
The same nurse swishes into the room with a Styrofoam cup with a plastic lid and straw. She rolls a tray over to the bed, lowers it, and puts the cup on it. "Let’s get you sitting up a bit, huh?"
She presses a button, and the upper half of the bed hums quietly as it elevates me to a reclined sitting position. She removes the bottom half of the straw wrapper, stuffs the straw into the cup, and whips off the top half. Places the straw between my lips.
"Just little sips at first, okay?"
I suck a tiny bit of cold water into my mouth—it's shocking, like a blast of cold air. My mouth seems to absorb some of the liquid before I can even swallow. I hold the water in my mouth for a moment, swirl it a bit with my tongue, move my jaw around—eventually, I swallow it. And god, that feels good.
"Ready for more?" she asks.
"Mmmm-hmmm," I say, the affirmative not much more than a hum. Still, it's communication, right? It counts.
"Here we go—another tiny sip. Not too much." The nurse touches my lips with the straw, and I pinch them around the plastic O, pull in another tiny mouthful. My throat is so dry it hurts, scratchy and sandy-feeling. Once again, I swish the water around my mouth, swallowing even the tiny amount in fractional portions.
"Good, good." The nurse waits patiently until I'm ready for more.
Swallow by swallow, she helps me quench my thirst—or at least drink enough that I no longer feel genuinely parched. I only stop when it feels like my stomach can't handle any more.
"All done?" She asks, when I close my mouth to refuse the straw.
"Mmmm-hmmm."
"Good, it's important to listen to your body. You’ve been getting your liquids and nutrients intravenously for the last few days, so your stomach might have a hard time at first." She sets the cup on the tray and glances at Felix. "You’ll have to help her until she has her mobility back. Just take things slow, okay? Dr. Richardson should be in soon."
We're alone again. My gaze goes to the book—he set it on the edge of my bed when he got up.
"Want me to read more until the doctor comes?"
"Mmmm…mmm," I grunt, the negative somehow slightly more difficult to form than the positive.
"No?"
I don't know how to communicate my extremely complicated feelings toward that book, especially without the ability to speak. My left hand rests on my thigh above the blanket. I look at it and wiggle my ring finger—tap my thigh a few times. "D—Duh…"
His gaze follows mine, and he frowns. "Dutchie?"
My heart pangs, and I blink once. I try to form the R sound, meaning to say "read" but all I manage is a garbled grunt. I look at the book again. "Duh…sh…ee."
God, this is difficult. Frustrating and infuriating to have the words in my head yet unable to get them out.
Understanding dawns on Felix's face—understanding that morphs into horror. "Dutchie? That was Dutchie's book?"
I blink twice, and then once.
"No and yes. I…I'm not following." He flips through pages, opens the front cover to look at my name written in my best calligraphy on the inside of the cover. "It's your book—your name, your writing in the margins."
"W—we…"
The horror on his face deepens. "We?" He scrubs his face. “We, meaning you read it together?"
I blink once. "Mmm-hmm."
"It hurts," he whispers. "It reminds you of him."
Another blink.
He hangs his head. "Fuck, Ember. I'm so sorry." He sweeps his hat off and tugs at his hair. "God, I'm an idiot. I just…I saw your name in it, all the markings and…it just…it looked like a book you loved."
I squeeze his hand, having no other way of communicating with him. "L—Luh…love."
"You do love it."
Blink.
"But it's hard to…" he trails off. "I'm sorry, Ember. I'm sorry." He leans toward the floor, stuffing the book into a faded black Jansport backpack.
The door opens, admitting a handsome doctor in his forties—actually, he looks kinda like Dr. McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy. His smile is warm and professional and kind as he sweeps toward the bed, white lab coat fluttering behind him.
"Well, if it isn't Ms. Ember James." He consults his iPad, and then closes it with a snap of the lid and tosses it onto the rolling tray as he rounds the bed to my left side. "Wow, you have the most stunning eyes I've ever seen, you know that? Can you follow my pen with your eyes?"
Up, down, side to side, up, down…
"Good, very good. Quick look with the light." A penlight flashes into my eyes, forcing me to squint. "Excellent. Now, it's not unusual for you to have to work on your motor skills, so don't panic, okay?" He goes to the foot of the bed, tugs the blanket up to expose my feet, and puts his palm against the sole of my left foot. "Can you push against my hand?"
I try, but I'm not sure how much progress I make.
"Hey, that's great! Now the other one." I do it again, and he praises the effort the same way. All that done, he hooks a rolling stool with a foot and drags it over to the side of the bed and sits, leaning on the railing. "I'm sure you've got a lot of questions, Ms. James. I also know you're probably frustrated with how hard it is to talk at the moment. I promise that will fade quickly. We'll have a lot of tests and assessments to do—you know, cognitive stuff, just to see where you are. You suffered a pretty decent traumatic brain injury. But you seem lucid and coherent, and your scans are all pretty good. I feel confident you'll make a full recovery, in time. But…" he pauses to think. "You're going to have to be patient with yourself. Brains are funny things. You might have balance issues. Random bouts of irritability—like, something totally innocuous will send you into a fit. Lethargy. Confusion, brain fog. All this is normal and it should clear up, but it might take a while to do so."
I have a thousand questions, and can't verbalize any of them.
He puts his hand on mine. "I know, I know—you have questions and you can't ask them. We'll get to it all. But you do have other injuries. You broke several ribs and one of them punctured your lung. That's coming along nicely, but you've got some work ahead of you to get your lung back where it needs to be. You also have a compound fracture of your tibia." He indicates my left leg, which is in a cast and elevated. "You were in a hell of a wreck, Ms. James. You're truly lucky to be alive—if EMS had gotten to you any later, that punctured lung could've been…well, no sense dwelling on that. Just try to remember to be thankful, okay? You're alive. You’ll recover. In time, you'll be back to normal. But for now, just rest, okay? Get some sleep."
I widen my eyes, fear filling me. "C—coh…coma?"
He gives me a reassuring smile. "You won't go back into a coma. You will sleep very, very deeply, and there will still be some confusion and disorientation, speech difficulties, everything you're feeling now." He pats my hand. "I know it's all scary and confusing." He indicates Felix. "But lucky for you, you've got this fella here. He hasn't left your side for a second since you came in."
That makes my heart do funny things.
Felix is stoic through all this, just holding my hand and listening—when the doctor mentions him, Felix ducks his head and moves to withdraw his hand—I hold on as tightly as I can, and he allows me to keep holding it.
The doctor slaps his knees. "Well, I think that's enough for now. You need to rest. And don't fight it, okay? If you fall asleep, you will wake up. And don't be shy about pain control, okay? If it starts hurting so you can't rest, you hit that call button. You're in good hands, Ms. James. We'll take the best possible care of you."
"Th—thay…"
He winks at me with what is, I assume, his most charming smile; he's a good-looking man and he knows it. "No worries, Ms. James. I'll be by in a while to check on you." He gently taps Felix on the back of the shoulder with the iPad. "Take good care of our girl, huh?"
"Yeah, I will. Thanks, doc."
When he's gone, I meet Felix's eyes. For a long time, we just look at each other. There's so much I want to say, but it's all behind that impenetrable wall of fog.
Eventually, the leaden weightiness in my limbs spreads to my eyelids, and I find myself drifting.
I force them open and squeeze Felix's hand as hard as I can. "F-Fee…"
"I'm here, Ember. Not goin' anywhere." His voice is rough and ragged, as if he's swallowed gravel. "Got you, Ember. I've got you."
I don't want to sleep. I want to remember what happened. I want to know why there's a rattling little hot hard ball of anger in my belly when I look at him. I want to know why the thought of California brings such sorrow. I want to know why I got in a wreck—I'm normally a very careful driver. I've never gotten a ticket, never been in a fender bender, and I've covered literally over a million miles. Dutchie and I did some back-of-a-napkin calculations, using estimates of places I know I've been since I personally started driving—it'd probably be more than double the number if you include the years I was just mom's passenger as a kid.
Felix lifts my hand to his lips and kisses it—I wriggle my fingers, feeling the scratch of his stubble under my fingertips.
"Bee…Beer…beard," I whisper. "L-lie…like."
He gives me a lopsided grin, putting my palm to his cheek and jawline. "You like the beard, huh?"
"Mmm."
“Then I'll leave it." He touches my cheekbone with a fingertip. "Rest, Ember. I’ll be right here when you wake up."
I can't fight it anymore.
This time, there is no darkness, no eigengrau…just the nothingness of sleep.