Chapter 29
Welcome to the Rest of Your Life
I was confused as the doctor examined me for the second time that morning.
My parents were waiting a few feet away, pretending to hold it together in spite of their nerves.
I answered questions, opened my mouth, followed the glow of his tiny flashlight.
I heard him say they’d have to give me more tests in the coming days.
I was in a daze, and I had a scary pain in my stomach and upper chest.
“Lena will be here soon,” my mother said when the doctor left, and she started fluffing the pillows and stretching out the sheets.
My mouth was dry, my lips cracked and bleeding.
I licked them and tried hard to swallow.
I thought about calling the doctor again to ask how it was possible that even after all those exams, they’d never found anything in my throat—that’s how big the knot in it was, as though I’d swallowed a tennis ball.
“What happened?”
“They had to operate on your leg, they took out your spleen, you had head trauma.” Mom rung her hands. “They induced a coma, apparently that was for the best. You were in critical condition, and they needed to buy some time to evaluate you.”
“I mean, why am I here?”
My parents looked at each other. I could see the disappointment in their eyes, the doubts, the effort they were making to hold it all in, the distance that separated us. There was a sharp edge to their attitude. Their facade started to crack, and then blew open suddenly.
“You had an accident. You were driving, Will. You were drunk. The witnesses said…” My father struggled to find the words. “They said you were in an illegal drag race.”
A flicker—the dinner. Laughter. The pine woods. The hard surface of the table when I lay down. The glimmer of the stars. The car. Everything like a colored blur. Josh’s voice. Josh. Fuck.
I felt the bitterness in my throat, and I wanted to vomit.
“Where’s Josh? Is he okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, he just has a broken arm. You got the worst of it.”
My parents looked at each other again. Maybe it was because I was struggling to catch my breath after learning Josh was alive, but I couldn’t really tell what they were thinking.
“Will, you need to know there’s an investigation open,” Dad said. “Hard days are ahead of us, but we’re in this together, all right?”
I was confused. “Investigation?”
“Josh is pressing charges.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Against you.”
After that, my memories start to blur.
The days were long and short at the same time.
Lena sitting on my bed, stroking my forehead tenderly.
Josh claiming he hadn’t known anything about the races or my state that night.
The disappointment on Dad’s face, which he tried to hide.
Mom’s worry. The visits from the doctors and nurses and nurses’ aides.
Bland food that wound up in the trash. Tests, one after the other, and finally the one that changed my life. The MRI.
They rolled me into a tube. It seemed as if the walls would close in on me.
This must be what a coffin feels like, I thought.
I realized I could have ended up in one many times, a fancy wooden box with gold fixtures and a soft, satiny cushion.
Why had I been lucky enough for the ambulance to get there on time and for the doctors to know what to do and for my body to respond to treatment?
Are all those things just random? Live or die, is it that simple, like throwing a coin into the air?
Is there any reason for a person to touch the edge of death and then come back from it?
A second chance? Maybe. A second chance to do things differently, to go back…
I opened my eyes. My head was filled with noise.
I thought, I hope a coffin is more comfortable than this.
And then I laughed, a strange cackle that rose up from inside me. And the overwhelming urge to cry. But if I started, I thought, if I let that first tear out, I’d never stop. I’d cry until the hospital, the city, the world was full of tears, until the oceans overflowed.
Our bodies are made mostly of water. Our bodies are made of tears.
When I went back to my hospital room, I realized something terrifying that would leave its stamp on everything in the years to come: I didn’t exist. My name was on a birth certificate, and if I looked in the mirror, I’d see the same guy with dark hair.
But that Will Tucker everyone thought they knew? He was nothing. A ridiculous fantasy.
“How was the test?” Lena smiled.
I couldn’t respond. It wasn’t just my lips that remained closed—it was my heart.
It wasn’t because of what Josh had done; it wasn’t all the wounds from the accident, which time would heal; it wasn’t what this might mean for me professionally; it wasn’t even the loneliness I felt then.
It was because when I was in the MRI, I realized how unreal I was and that the void of myself was dragging down all the people I knew, the way a tornado destroys everything in its path.
Twisted as it was, this is how I saw things.
The accident was the best thing that could ever happen to me.
The physical part didn’t matter—there was something else, a blow inside me that broke not bones, tendons, or muscles, but my soul, which was mortally wounded and struggling to survive.
Life is marked by these kinds of paragraph breaks, endings with new beginnings.
“Lena.” Her name sounded metallic when I uttered it and tasted the way blood did when I was little and used to lick my wounds. “Lena,” I repeated. “You need to go.”
“Where? What do you need?”
Always so obliging, so innocent.
I imagined replying the gentle way: What I’m saying is, you need to leave me, let me live my life without you, without destroying you. Leave this room and go somewhere safe and be happy.
But I knew the other way would be easier.
“There’s not going to be a wedding. I’m sorry.
I really am. I wish I could have been the man you deserve, but I’m not.
Before you ask if it was the accident, if I’m out of my head or hung up on something, you should know: I was with another girl that night.
And it wasn’t the first time. And I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been the last.”
It had been years since I’d been that honest with someone.
Lena stood there in the middle of the room, eyes glistening, chin trembling. I could see the struggle inside her. Could see the I love you and I don’t believe you, could see the other part of her saying You’re a goddamned idiot. The second won.
She walked out of my life without making a sound.
When she was gone and the door was closed, I realized that she and Josh had been the last people who were truly close to me. And now they were gone. The rest were all old acquaintances and family, people who’d known me from the beginning.
That word echoed through me: beginning. The nest I had left.
And after that, like a sign, came Lucy.