Chapter 6 Claire
Claire
Claire jolted awake from the half-flashback, half-dream, face wet with tears.
Mom…Dad…
She should have asked them to stay longer after her graduation. Then they wouldn’t have been on the road when that trucker lost control. They would still be alive today.
If she’d gone with them to a movie like they wanted, their plans would have changed just enough. They’d invited her, just like Matías had asked her to come with him to Spain. And both times when she’d declined…
Oh god. A violent sob racked Claire’s body. The teenager next to her frowned and asked, “Are you okay?”
Claire shook her head. She’d been alone in the world when her biological parents died, and Jim and Sarah had swooped in like angels and made her part of a family. But then they’d died, too, and Claire had been left all alone again. She’d found some sense of belonging in law school and at her work, but it wasn’t until she met Matías that she finally felt that she had found a safe haven again. And now she might lose him, too.
She sobbed again. The teenager rooted around his backpack and found a travel pack of tissues. “Here, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” she whispered as she accepted the proffered mercy.
“Hello from the flight deck,” Captain Cheasequah said. “We’re making our final approach into Madrid-Barajas Airport and will have you on the ground in about thirty minutes, so I’m going to go ahead and turn on that fasten-seatbelt sign. Please remain in your seats for the remainder of the flight, and thank you for flying the global skies with us.”
—
Claire emerged from the plane puffy-eyed and red-nosed. She headed straight to a restroom and splashed her face with cold water.
I look like crap, she thought of her reflection in the mirror. Her hair had frizzed in all directions, her skin had simultaneously dehydrated and broken out during the flight, and there were purple-gray circles beneath her eyes. And then, because her brain was a scramble of dread and anxiety, she wondered, Should I put on some makeup to meet Matías’s family ? After all, she’d only talked to them a few times on Zoom, and this was her chance to make a first impression.
But then Claire glanced at her reflection again and actually laughed out loud, startling the poor woman at the sink next to her.
There was no fixing Claire’s appearance. She looked like crap because how the hell would someone look if their almost-fiancé was in a coma, with two of his friends in similar critical condition and two dead?
She gathered her bags and trudged out of the restroom. The airport bustled with travelers eager to be on vacation, or striding purposefully to business meetings, or chattering in excitement to be reunited with friends and family. In another life, Claire might have been one of them. But today, all she heard was a cacophony of Spanish airport announcements she didn’t understand, mixed with the noise of a version of humanity she couldn’t comprehend—one that was looking forward to what came next.
Because of her stop in the restroom, her entire flight beat her to passport control, and the lines wound back and forth, doubling onto themselves at least ten times. With shoulders slumped, Claire took her place at the back of the queue. The massive hall was hot and humid since it was summer, and unlike wasteful Americans, Europeans didn’t crank up their air-conditioning to high as soon as the thermometer reached seventy-two degrees. It must have been at least eighty-five in the room when all the sweating travelers were accounted for.
For once, though, Claire wasn’t in a rush to get out of the airport. She would stay here in passport control for days if it could somehow slow down time and unmake reality. How could Matías, who was bursting at the seams with energy and life, possibly be lying in a hospital bed, unconscious? How could someone like that be put on mute, their creativity and joy paused like a TV show, abandoned while the rest of the world continued?
But eventually she made it to the front of the line. Her photo was taken, her fingerprints scanned, and when the immigration officer asked the purpose of her visit, she just whispered, fighting back tears, “I’m going to see my boyfriend and his family,” and the officer nodded, stamped her passport, and waved her through.
She shuffled through customs and out into the Arrivals Hall. There, a sea of faces surged around her and Spanish hit her like a tidal wave. Gone were the flight attendant and pilot announcements in both Spanish and English. Now it was only the language Claire had just started to study—and after six months, she was only on chapter 4 of her textbook because her job kept her too busy.
Claire’s heartbeat pulsed in her throat as she scanned the crowd for Matías’s sister, Aracely. Please let me remember what she looks like, Claire thought, because she suddenly couldn’t conjure an image of Aracely’s face in her head. She never imagined this was how she’d meet them in person for the first time.
There were drivers holding up iPads with names of the passengers they were picking up. Friends with balloons and ?Bienvenidos! posters. Eager, wide-eyed people, bouncing on their toes and shouting as they spotted those they were searching for.
And then Claire saw them. A woman in her early thirties and a man about a decade younger, their expressions as gray and eyes as bloodshot as Claire’s. Aracely and Luis, Matías’s siblings, stood like somber statues in the middle of the animated Arrivals Hall.
“Hola,” Claire said when she reached them.
Aracely just reeled her into a tight, silent embrace. She was a soft, plump woman, and it was comforting, if only for a few seconds, to be in her arms.
“Thank you for picking me up,” Claire said after they’d pulled apart. “How is he?”
“Matías is…” Luis hesitated. “He is the same.”
Claire closed her eyes tightly for a moment. When she opened them, she found the courage to ask, “No improvement at all?”
Aracely bit her lip and shook her head. “You must prepare yourself to see him, because…” She started to cry and couldn’t continue.
Luis hugged his sister. He was only twenty-three, the baby of the family and still a little lanky from youth, but he had the same hair as Matías—thick black and wavy—and even though his eyes were deep brown and not liquid gold like his brother’s, they were the same shape, and the resemblance nearly made Claire dissolve into tears, too.
“Matías broke thirty-seven bones,” Luis said in a low voice. “They were going one hundred and eighty kilometers per hour when they crashed and flipped over. Matías is in many bandages. There are a lot of machines…I-I’m sorry, I don’t know what they are called in English.”
“It’s okay,” Claire said, not wanting to know yet. Thirty-seven bones. Coma. Speedboat accident with two of his friends dead. It was already too much to take in.
“How are Leo and Facu doing?” she asked.
“Still in Valencia, but also in an intensive care unit,” Aracely said, unburying her face from Luis’s chest. “They’re only a little better than Matías. We pray for them, too.”
“Come,” Luis said, putting his other arm around Claire protectively and steering her toward the airport exit. “Let us take you to Matías.”