Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
Jenna
The first thing I register is the absolute certainty that I’m about to die. This isn’t melodrama. I have actual, physical, evidence.
For instance, one of my legs bends at an angle not endorsed by the American Medical Association, and something warm and wet has been pooling under my head for—wait, how long have I been here? And where is ‘here’?
“Mrs. Davis?”
The voice is thin and quavery, like a violin string about to snap. It belongs to a nurse with kind eyes and a name tag reading “Monica, LPN.” So, I’m in hospital and I’m not dying. “Can you hear me?”
I try to say yes, but it comes out like a dying goat. Monica nods, apparently fluent in Trauma Goat. “You’ve had a bad accident, and you’ve been in a coma for two weeks. But you’re going to be all right.”
Two. Weeks?
I want to shout. To say anything but I can’t even get one sound out. My tongue feels like it’s been shrink-wrapped.
“Water,” I croak, pointing at the bedside table.
My tongue feels like it’s been shrink-wrapped. “Water,” I croak again.
She pours from a carafe, guiding the cup to my lips like I’m a geriatric toddler. I sip, almost gag, and spill half of it down my gown. For some reason, this feels like the worst indignity yet.
I try to summon a memory.
Something about an intersection, and then a roar, a flash of gold fender, a blonde head behind the wheel. Mira. Her Mercedes. The pieces click one by one, each one worse than the last.
There are too many hands on me. Strangers’ hands. Someone is shining a light in my eye and someone else is asking about my legs and I can’t look at any of them because something on the wall has stopped me in my tracks.
Children’s drawings, taped up in a crooked row. Crayon suns. Lopsided hearts. At the bottom of each one, in a child’s careful block letters: WE LOVE YOU. And underneath, in handwriting I recognize: Colton and Livy.
The monitor spikes. A nurse says something sharp to someone I can’t see.
I keep looking at the wall next to me. There’s a mosaic of Post-its, every color, overlapping at the edges. One for every day.
The monitor climbs again as I read all of them.