Chapter 30
The Girl with the Jar of Glitter
I opened my eyes, startled.
“Who the hell are you?” I shouted.
“So you don’t remember.” Her blond hair covered her face like a curtain when she turned her head. “My name’s Lucy.”
There was an immense void in my mind. Her name didn’t tell me anything; it just remained there bouncing back and forth.
But I did recognize her sweet voice. I’d heard it somewhere in my unconscious those last few days.
I sat up in bed and looked at her. She was wearing a hospital gown and her skin was pale, almost yellow. Her lips were thick and dry.
“Have we met before?”
“That depends. You are Will, right?”
“So you don’t just sneak into people’s rooms, you read their patient files. You know that’s illegal, right?”
She shrugged and smiled, but there was infinite sorrow in her eyes, buried deep enough that you could only barely see it.
“So I’m a little gossipy, whatever. I didn’t need to look in your file to see your name, though. I remembered it.”
“Who are you?”
That was the first time I’d felt curious since waking up and going through that battery of tests. A little detour on a long, long road.
“Let’s make a game of it. Try and guess.”
“What?” I shifted and grunted from the pain.
“Did the accident affect your hearing?”
“What the hell…”
“Do you know how to play chess?” she asked.
I waited. Should I tell her to shove off and leave me in peace or keep going? Before I could stop myself and think, I heard my own voice loud and clear:
“Yeah.”
“Cool. I’ll be right back.”
She disappeared. I waited for a long while in silence, looking at the blank wall in front of me and asking myself if this turn my life had taken, the wreckage I’d left behind, if the girl with the sweet voice had all been real.
She returned in fifteen minutes carrying a pretty wooden box under her arm.
It was small and had rounded edges. She opened it up, and I saw it was a chessboard.
She placed it on the table where they usually put my food and pills.
She had set out almost all her pieces before I managed to react and organize my own.
“Ready?”
“Do I have a choice?” I grumbled.
“You start.”
“So what’s the story? If I win, you tell me why you like to creep into strangers’ rooms and where you think you know me from?”
“Exactly.”
“And if I lose?”
“Mmm…” She looked at me with suspicion and tapped her chin. “Honestly, you don’t have anything interesting to offer me.”
“Well, there goes my self-esteem.”
“Sorry. I hate lying, though.”
After a pause, I asked, “What’s the deal, then?”
“If you lose, you have to keep playing. I don’t have many friends around here and the days in the hospital are endless. How’s that sound?”
Something about her, about her words, struck me.
“Sure.” I cleared my throat. “Fine. Let’s do it, then.”
We played three games that afternoon, and I lost all of them. I don’t know how she did it, but she could see all my moves coming and controlled the center of the board, and after that, there was nothing I could do.
She came back the day after at the same time.
And she won two games again, effortlessly.
The next day was the same. And the day after that.
“How do you do it?”
“Practice,” she said.
“Right. So I’ll have to wait till the end of time to get lucky and find out what I want. At least you could tell me something about yourself. What are you doing in here?”
“I’ve got GvHD.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Graft versus host disease.” She looked up and sighed when she saw my confusion.
“When the neighbor ladies ask, my mom usually tells them they diagnosed me with cancer when I was little. I got a stem cell transplant from my sister, and since then, my cells have been fighting against hers. And they won’t give up.
There’s not much we can do. I’ve tried all kinds of treatments, but none have worked.
So they put me back on corticosteroids and my immune system weakens and then it’s a free-for-all for infections.
And so on and so forth, in an endless cycle. ”
I felt the sudden urge to look away. “You’ve told this story hundreds of times…”
“What makes you say that?” she asked.
“I can tell by the way you chain the words together, as if you knew it all by heart and didn’t even have to think about it.”
“That’s the best thing, not to think.”
“Sure.” I moved a bishop.
“Now it’s your turn,” she said. “Why are you here?”
“You want the long story or the short one?”
“Short.”
“I’m a selfish asshole.” I studied the board.
“Now long.”
“I’m a selfish asshole who thought driving drunk was a good idea and all the bullshit in my life has finally caught up to me.”
“The bullshit in your life?”
“So to speak. I’m fucked. That’s what I’m trying to say. Probably forever. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’m fine this way. Everything’s fallen apart, but I don’t have to pretend anymore. All I have to do is breathe. Your turn.”
She moved a pawn and looked up. “You’re all over the place.”
I couldn’t help smiling, despite everything. No one had ever used those words to describe me, and they felt so right: all over the place. “You’re the opposite, aren’t you?”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, thanks. Checkmate.”
“Shit.” I sighed.
“You in the mood for a coffee?”
“I need help getting around.” My right leg was broken in so many places, it would take weeks of rest and rehab just to put any weight on it.
Lucy went to the nurses’ station to have them bring me a wheelchair.
A nurse helped me get out of bed and settle into it.
Down the hall was a little room with chairs and vending machines and a big window with views of the city.
Lucy put a couple of coins in the coffee machine. Then she passed me a coffee with milk and sat down next to me. She took a sip of her own coffee and said it was hot.
“Are you sick right now?” I asked her.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just… You don’t look bad.”
“Trust me, I’ve been through terrible periods. The medicine makes your face swell up. Your fingernails fall off. You get sores, rashes, abscesses in your throat, your liver, and your bones…” She looked away. “My bones hurt all the time. Everything hurts all the time.”
I looked at her hands and the scars on the hard flesh. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No. I hate people avoiding the subject on purpose.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
In silence we looked out at the houses with lights turning on as the night wrapped around them.
It was comfortable, being there with her, not thinking about the job I’d lost with my screwups, not thinking about the friend who had been like a brother and now was dragging me to trial, not thinking about how my gorgeous fiancée would one day walk to the altar with someone else, and how my family was disappointed in me and out of the blue I was alone.
“Will.”
“What?”
“Since you suck so bad at chess, I’m going to tell you two things that might help you remember me.
One, you’ve changed a lot, a ton. I’d have forgotten you, except that I never forget a face.
We all change. I did too. It’s inevitable when you get older.
Two, one day in grammar school, I gave you a jar of glitter. ”
As I looked at her, I felt unable to breathe.
Those words hit me like a hammer blow and all the things I thought dead and buried, I now realized had been there throbbing inside me, waiting for me to dig them up.
And now they were back. I remembered them.
I remembered the life I’d left behind, every tiny, insignificant detail I thought I’d forgotten forever.