Chapter 9
The subway ride from the East Village to the bus station felt like hours.
Sitting on the edge of her seat, Shelby clutched her knees and tried to focus on her breathing.
Running out of that bar and away from Orson and Max had felt like whiplash.
Now, with only her wallet, her keys, and her light autumn jacket over the outfit she’d worn on her date, she was headed to Harvard University’s hospital.
She closed her eyes tightly, trying to figure out if this was just a dream.
But when she opened them again, she found herself looking at the late-evening subway riders, checking their phones, digging in their ears, and casting dirty looks at one another, as though tired of being surrounded by people in one of the busiest cities in the world.
Shelby’s tears had dried on her cheeks, and she hadn’t bothered to wipe them away.
The bus from New York City to Cambridge was scheduled for an eleven fifteen departure, which was an hour away.
Shelby bought a ticket, then slumped in one of the plastic chairs in the waiting area.
It occurred to her that she might have had time to go home and pack a bag, if only she’d had the foresight to look at the bus times on her phone.
Jared would have said this was illogical behavior.
Out of her mind with fear and grief, she called her sister Lily to tell her what was going on. But Lily didn’t answer and instead wrote her a few minutes later.
LILY: How did it go with Orson? He’s cute, right? Can’t wait to hear! But I’m out with Mick, and we’re headed into a movie. Love you!
Shelby darkened her phone and pressed the back of her head against the wall. She considered calling her mother, but then thought it was better to sit in the silence of her own mind and try to figure this out.
Max had told her the following, which were all the clues she had to go on.
“Yeah, it was weird,” Max had said in the bar.
“He was acting different when he got back to Harvard. Cagey, I guess. Apparently, he mentioned you to a few people. We thought he was brokenhearted, that he’d get over it soon.
But then, he went out sailing by himself, and boom.
” He raised his shoulders and closed his eyes.
“Everyone knew he wasn’t the most experienced sailor.
But nobody knew he was going out by himself.
Nobody thought he’d dare to do something like that.
I guess the waves got him. He hit his head and went underwater for longer than he should have.
He’s been in a coma ever since. Must have been two weeks ago now? ”
Shelby let out a sob, then stifled it with the back of her hand. Two weeks ago. A coma.
Guilt nearly consumed her. For the past two weeks, she’d been doing the work of demonizing him in her mind. She’d considered the idea that maybe he wasn’t the one, that she’d been wrong. She’d even let her sister arrange a date with someone else!
She should have been at Jared’s side. She should have been reading him books and talking to him, trying to draw him back from the darkness. If she’d known that he was so heartsick over her, maybe she would have left Columbia at the beginning of the semester.
No, she thought now, tightening her hands into fists. She couldn’t let those thoughts creep in. She’d gone back to Columbia because that was where her education was. That was where her professors had set up specific and wonderful curricula for her and her alone.
The bus from Manhattan to Cambridge took four and a half hours and landed Shelby in Cambridge between three and four in the morning.
This, too, was not sensible, and she almost wanted to laugh at how stupid she was acting.
Instead, she went to the bathroom at the bus station, washed her face with water, and headed into the night.
She used an app on her phone to call a taxi, which took her to the hospital.
The woman working the front desk told her that visiting hours weren’t till ten in the morning, which gave her six hours to wait around.
Probably she looked so pathetic that they decided not to kick her out.
Realizing she was starving, Shelby crept down the hallway and bought food from the vending machine: pretzels and candy bars and a diet soda. In the corner, she nibbled on the salty snacks and tried not to look at anyone in the waiting room too closely.
It was then that her roommate Molly texted her.
MOLLY: Did you go home with Orson? Or should I be worried about you? Text me back, please!
Shelby didn’t want to write her roommate back, but she didn’t want Molly to send out a search party, either.
SHELBY: In Cambridge. Jared in a coma. Will call you tomorrow.
MOLLY: You’re kidding. OMG. What happened?
Shelby ignored the message and took a bite of a Twix bar, praying that the sun would come up soon.
When ten in the morning finally rolled around, Shelby filled out a form so that she could visit Jared Kissinger, the coma patient lying unconscious in room 323.
A nurse led her down the white hallways.
Shelby expected that she’d ask her who she was and what her connection to Jared was, and Shelby was prepared to explain herself in a few sentences: I love Jared.
We broke up, but I didn’t want to. But the nurse was unbothered by Shelby’s presence. She had other things to do.
Jared was alone in his room. He was connected to many different beeping machines, and his hands were splayed on the tops of his legs.
Shelby noted that his fingernails had recently been clipped, and she felt a surge of jealousy at the idea that some girl had come in to do that.
She sat in the chair beside his bed and felt a level of surreality she’d never experienced before.
She’d written about the surreal movement countless times in papers.
She’d read about it. But this was the first time she’d been in contact with it—and it made her feel like the world was upside down.
“Hi,” she whispered to Jared, her heart racing. “I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe this. I…” She trailed off. Scrutinizing his face, she had the sense that she’d never really seen him before. Had he had that mole on his cheek before?
Feeling foolish, Shelby sat there alone for two hours.
She wanted to tell Jared she loved him. She wanted to pull him up from the depths.
But there was nothing to do but listen to the beeping of his machines and watch the clock.
Already, she’d missed two of her classes and one meeting with her professor, all of which she cleared up with emails from her phone.
But a little past noon, her phone died, leaving her naked to the world. What was she going to do?
At one, a couple Shelby recognized as Jared’s parents came into the room and stopped short at the sight of her. Jared’s father Jim looked remarkably like him, with the same haircut and the same intense gaze. His mother, Monica, was slight and blond, like a Swedish ballerina.
“You must be Shelby,” Jim said.
Shelby stood and tried to smile but couldn’t. It only occurred to her now how strange it was that she hadn’t met the Kissingers during their shared summertime on Nantucket. Why hadn’t Jared invited her to his parents’ place?
“Hi,” she said. She told herself not to burst into tears. She didn’t want them to think she was weak. “I didn’t know.”
Jim and Monica sat on the opposite side of their son. Monica touched Jared’s hand, then quickly stopped doing that, as though she didn’t want to be seen having a heart, especially not by Shelby.
“The doctors won’t tell me anything, obviously,” Shelby said, when nobody else spoke.
Jim and Monica glanced at one another, seeming to have a whole conversation without words. Shelby thought about screaming to wake them up.
“He was tremendously careless,” Monica said finally. “All we can hope is that he’ll wake up so we can be fully angry with him.”
“We told him…” Jim began.
“Don’t,” Monica said, before looking back at Shelby and saying, “We were surprised he fell in love with an islander, is all.”
“It messed with his head,” Jim said.
Shelby was taken aback. “I’m not really an islander. I go to…”
“Columbia,” Monica said. “We know.”
Jim nodded, as though being a student at Columbia was even worse than being an islander, or on par. Whatever that meant. Her stomach soured, and she thought she might have to run to the bathroom to throw up her pretzel sticks and candy bars.
“I really care for your son,” Shelby breathed, her eyes wet. “I came as soon as I learned what happened to him.”
“Who told you?” Monica asked, as though they’d tried to keep it a secret.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jim said. “She’s here now. And we all care about Jared. All we can do is pray he’ll get better.”
Feeling foggy-brained and out of her element, Shelby excused herself and walked outside to get some air.
It was nearly October, and a drizzle crept through the fog.
Out here, Shelby couldn’t pretend to herself any longer that everything was going to be all right.
Jared’s parents hated her. Jared was in a coma without any promise of waking up. It all felt tragic.
Just then, two figures appeared in the fog, rushing toward Shelby. Shelby flinched to get out of the way before realizing the figures had their arms open, and they were calling Shelby’s name.
“Honey,” Rebecca said, drawing Shelby tightly against her. “We came as soon as we could.”
Beside her mother was Lily, whose eyes were rimmed with red. “Molly called me this morning,” Lily said. “She’s really worried.”
“We got on the ferry right away,” Rebecca explained.
Shelby pressed her forehead against her mother’s shoulder. She felt a weariness that went beyond language.
“Have you eaten?” Rebecca demanded.
Shelby told her about the pretzels. “But I have to get back to Jared,” she said.
“You can take an hour for your own health,” Rebecca said firmly.
Rebecca and Lily led Shelby back to the car and drove to a nearby salad, soup, and sandwich place.
Together, they sat at an anonymous table and picked at their food.
Rebecca and Lily continued to look at Shelby as though Shelby were breakable.
It wasn’t till Shelby had eaten half of her turkey sandwich that Shelby found the strength to say, “It shouldn’t have happened. ”
Rebecca set down her spoon with a clank. “Honey, accidents happen.”
Shelby shook her head and crossed her arms. “I just want to tell him…” She trailed off, unable to articulate exactly what she needed to say to Jared, to her beloved ex-boyfriend.
Lily touched Shelby’s hand. “We’re going to stay with you today,” she said.
Lily and Rebecca exchanged a look.
“I’m not going back to Columbia,” Shelby said.
“Shelby, this is a tragedy,” her mother said. “But…”
“Yes, it’s a tragedy,” Shelby said. “And if he wakes up from this tragedy, I want to be here.”
Shelby couldn’t eat anything else. Rebecca asked for to-go bags for the sandwich and boxes and containers for the soup and salad. Together, they left the café, with Shelby demanding to be taken back to the hospital.
There, they found Jim and Monica in the waiting room, talking to a few guys from Harvard.
They took one look at Shelby and knew who she was, just as Max had last night.
Under their gaze, Shelby realized she hadn’t showered and probably looked worse for wear.
But she put on a brave smile and went up to them.
“Hi,” she said, shaking their hands. “I’m Shelby Vance. But I guess you already know that.”
One of the guys, who was scarily gaunt and wearing a long cardigan, said, “He talked about you a lot.”
“I talked about him just as much, I’m sure,” Shelby said. She wanted to give off an air of confidence. She wanted these people to understand that she wasn’t going anywhere.
“I’m going to head back and see him,” Shelby said. “But we’ll catch up later, okay?”
Jared’s parents and friends nodded, frowning, then turned to watch as Shelby strode toward the hallway, headed for Jared’s room.
Lily and Rebecca were hot on her heels. Shelby could feel how urgently they wanted to rip her out of that hospital.
They wanted her to forget about Jared, about the love they’d spent all summer building.
But Jared had really and truly loved her.
Shelby knew that in her heart of hearts.
She knew it in her bones. And she had to be here, every step of the way, until Jared found the will to wake up again.
She had to make that sacrifice, no matter what.