Chapter Two
Two
When I wake up in Sterlingwood General, in a room that smells of hospital, the first thing I feel is grateful. The difference between living and dying is so tiny, the space between heartbeats, but somehow I’m here.
“Oh my God, she’s awake!” someone—I’m pretty sure it’s Amber—shouts. “You’re awake!”
“My head,” I groan, as Amber hurries over and kisses me repeatedly on the cheek.
“How are you, honey?” My mother hovers over me too. I can hear the relief in her voice, though she’s wearing a prominent frown. “I thought the doctor said she didn’t have a concussion. Why does she have a headache?”
“It might just be the stress,” Monique offers. Missing every social cue, Mo starts to explain that headaches can have many causes, from dehydration to anxiety. “Since they said she passed out on the way to the hospital, it was likely the shock—”
“That’s very interesting, Monica,” Mom says, cutting her off. “Do me a favor and get the doctor?” It’s an order, but Mom makes it sound kind. She is never not delegating—Sterlingwood’s mayor first, everything else second.
Mo hurriedly does as she is told. Being low-key afraid of my mother means she’ll answer to anything, even the name “Maureen,” which was what Mom called her when Mo first moved to town at the start of high school.
“You have to be more careful,” Mom says, squeezing my hand.
I give her a weak smile, because I know exactly what her tenderness means: I was scared. I’m glad you’re okay. Please don’t ever do this to me again.
Mom and I have a way of communicating without words. In our silences, we say the important things. Promise not to hurt or embarrass each other.
The woman Mo returns with seconds later is in colorful floral scrubs with lavender bottoms and a white shirt with purple flowers.
“Welcome back, Zadie!” the nurse says, all cheer. Under the fluorescent lights of the hospital room, everything feels too bright.
There’s a stinging pain in the back of my neck and an ache going around the crown of my head.
“I think I’m having a migraine,” I tell the nurse, and she nods, scribbles something on a chart, then begins to take my vitals, asking me a bunch of questions.
“What’s happening?” Mom asks. I’ve heard her assistants joke that my mother wants regular progress reports on progress reports.
Before the nurse can answer, a short, ancient-looking man enters with a stethoscope around his neck. “How’s the girl doing?” he says. If I wasn’t feeling so gross, I’d blanch at being called the girl, but what it reminds me is that there is also the boy.
“Jason! ” I say, shooting upright and wincing, all while the nurse is taking my blood pressure. “Is he okay?”
“Well, I don’t know if okay is the word,” Monique mumbles, eliciting the fastest smack from Amber.
“What do you mean? What does that mean?” I scan the room, desperately searching for information on somebody’s face.
“He’s not awake,” the doctor says, pushing round, owl-like glasses up his nose. He comes forward, tips my chin up, and shines a penlight in my eyes.
“He’s sleeping?” I ask.
“He’s in a coma, honey,” the nurse says, each word gentle, but it feels like a punch.
“A coma?”
Air is pushing against my windpipe, making it hard to breathe.
“We have every hope that he’ll make a full recovery,” she hurries to add, “but he took a harder hit than you. An especially bad one to the head.”
Amber sniffs loudly.
When my dad died last summer, thirteen months ago to be exact, I discovered that the worst kind of pain feels like nothing—blank, flat, dry—until it feels like everything.
But Jason isn’t dead, and this pain is different, a sharp, twisting feeling in my chest.
“Can I see him?” I ask.
Mom pats my hand in my lap. “Maybe just focus on getting better,” she says.
“I want to see him,” I say, ferocious suddenly.
I want to confirm it—that the Jason I know, who is always on the move, always doing something, is really hurt enough to be unconscious.
The nurse readjusts my arm cuff and instructs me to lie back down. She tells me she has to restart the measurement.
“Is he going to be okay?” I manage to squeak out.
Both the doctor and nurse seem reluctant to make any promises. “We’re doing everything in our power to get him better,” the nurse says, as the doctor begins inspecting my neck, rambling about whiplash. Mo interrupts to ask him a question, but I hardly hear a word anybody says.
The nurse discharges me an hour later. “You’re free to go and check on your boyfriend,” she says, giving me a final squeeze on the arm.
I have just enough presence of mind to think ex-boyfriend, a heaviness sticking to the pit of my stomach.
Amber offers to give me a ride home after we check on Jason, leaving my mother free to follow the nurse out of the room and pepper her with questions.
Monique pouts about having to leave because her grandparents don’t like her to stay out this late.
Together, Ambs and I take the elevator to level three.
“If something had happened to you, I would have gone to jail for what I would do to the driver who caused the crash,” Amber tells me. I manage a weak smile and decide not to point out that she is a generous five two and has not a violent bone in her body.
“What would you do? Overfeed him to death?” I tease, even though I still feel awful.
My body aches with dull, unspecific waves of pain. Like when you have the flu and can’t really say what is hurting. And then there’s my heart, still smarting from Jason’s words.
“Well, there’s a reason they call it death by chocolate,” Amber says.
She gets more serious suddenly, squeezing my hand in her small one.
“I hope you get that you’re, like, crucial to us.
Nobody else knows Mo is terrified of grasshoppers or remembers my fifteen stupid allergies.
” She lowers her voice. “Or knows that my parents are basically just roommates, and I never, ever want to be like them.”
Amber’s sweet words form a lump in my throat, but I say, “Maybe I plan to blackmail you all.”
She ignores me. “Who else keeps a list of everyone’s birthday in our grade?”
“It’s called data.”
“Data that somehow always makes it into the morning announcements.”
I don’t bring up the point Jason made a couple of weeks ago—that more people hate getting called out on their birthday than appreciate when someone remembers. That, for being only vice president of Sterlingwood High, I take on too much.
I change the subject. “So who was the driver? What even happened?” I ask Amber as we approach the ICU.
“There was a four-car pileup. Apparently, some cargo truck driver was following too close.” She rolls her eyes. “He’s totally fine, of course. But they’re saying Jason braked out of nowhere.”
Was it because of my puking?
I tell Amber what I can remember about the accident itself, leaving out everything beforehand. No one I know saw me falling apart. If I never acknowledge it, my humiliating public meltdown might as well not have happened.
One of my earliest memories is of being at the Yellow Mart in Sterlingwood before my parents’ divorce.
I’m five, and right before I die of complete boredom, listening to my parents argue over cereal brands, Dad steals me away for the most fun game of hide-and-seek-and-chase.
One of the funk songs Dad likes is playing loud on the store’s speakers.
We’re grinning so hard that our faces feel like rubber, and everything is wonderful until I hear an earth-shattering crash.
A gigantic pyramid of baked beans has crumbled right at Dad’s feet.
We are both laughing as we get to work rebuilding the tower.
Mishaps like this seem to follow Dad, but today when I look up from the mess, for the first time ever, I am aware of them.
The woman who grabs her son’s arm and marches off, like he might catch something contagious just from being near us.
The elderly man who curses under his breath and mutters about “people these days.”
Other shoppers around us meander, stealing glances at our chaos. For a second, I see the two of us from their perspective: loud and Black and messy.
Maybe Dad notices me freeze up, because he sends me to Mom while he gets a staff member and finishes cleaning up.
I find Mom in the freezer aisle, where a woman in a mustard yellow sweater is hugging her, congratulating my mother on being elected to city council.
The woman’s eyes are admiring, pleasant, calm.
My mother is beautiful, admirable, with her slicked-back bun, subtle brown lipstick, and impeccable posture.
I never tell Mom about the tower crash, but the next time we go to the store, I stay with her.
Softer eyes and kinder smiles and fewer whispers. Every time.
And it becomes my unspoken motto.
That memory passes, an inconvenient ghost flittering through my mind. When I come back to myself, Amber is whispering as we walk, “So what was the surprise? What was he trying to ask you?”
My voice is pitched unnaturally high. “Jay?”
I had everyone believing he was going to practically propose to me. That he was going to promise me forever. My lipstick from this evening is all rubbed off by now, and with it, every trace of certainty I had in anything.
“Did he ask?” Amber’s eyes are round as saucers.
I try to think of how to break it to her. No, he didn’t ask. He said it was over.
The shame feels so heavy.
I suddenly see it in my head, my superlative: Zadie Cartwright, Most Likely to Lose Everything.
How do I tell Amber about the breakup without making it sound like it was me, like it was a Zadie problem? After all, I don’t know for sure that it was.
I open my mouth right as Amber squeals.
“Oh my God, he did, didn’t he?” She grabs for my hand. “Where’s the ring?”
“In…his car.” The lie tumbles out without me thinking. I am a storyteller, my father’s daughter.
Amber’s face twists in horror. “No! You lost it in the wreck?”
The muscles of my neck feel bunched, sore, and tight. “It’s crazy, right?” I say, half-hearted.
“That sucks so much,” she says, starting to tear up like she’s the one who has lost something precious. “I’m so sorry, Zadie. You have to tell the police.”
I nod, knowing full well that I will do no such thing.
I’m only too relieved to step forward and speak to the unit clerk when we reach the ICU. “Can we see Jason Riddick?”
Amber taps my shoulder. “Um, is it okay if I don’t…” She looks as white as a sheet of paper. Mo’s thing is surgery and diagnoses and obscure medical facts. Amber can hardly look at a scratch. “I just…If there’s blood…”
“Oh.”
I don’t want to see Jason by myself because I don’t know how I’ll cope if he’s swollen or unrecognizable.
I almost say we should forget the whole thing and just go home, but despite being the sweetest human, Amber has zero discretion.
Everyone will know by tomorrow morning if I couldn’t hack seeing Jason sick.
Besides, I’m suddenly overwhelmed by this need to protect Jason if he does look bad.
I should get to see him first. I should make sure what people hear about him is flattering and honest and fair.
“I’ll be right back.” I leave Amber and follow the nurse down the hall.
My heartbeat quickens as she opens his door. The beeps of a dozen machines should sound like hope, but they make the hairs on my arms stand up. I slowly shuffle forward.
A huge breath escapes my lungs when I see him. Minus a wide bandage around his head, some bruises and cuts on his face, and an elevated leg in a cast, he still looks mostly like himself. Like the strong and handsome Jason I know. He looks like he’s sleeping.
“How is he?” I ask the nurse, suddenly on the verge of tears. I don’t know if it’s relief or exhaustion or both.
“He’s stable. That’s the most important thing. Feel free to talk to him. We have every reason to believe he can hear.”
The thought makes a chill run over my skin, like stones skipping on water. “Really? He can hear us?”
“Oh, yeah,” she assures me. “Now, you have a job to do: Tell him all the reasons he should hurry back. Tell him you’re waiting for him, and it’s rude to keep a lady waiting.”
For the first time in what feels like forever, a small smile tugs at my lips.
The nurse pats my shoulder. “Let me give you two some privacy.”
When she shuts the door, I stand staring at Jason.
I’m not sure what to do. It’s bad enough he’s fighting for his life, but now I don’t even know if he would want me to be here.
Still, I force myself over to the side of Jason’s bed and take his hand.
It feels stiff and big and unfamiliar. I squeeze.
“You’re going to get better, okay?” I tell him, more demand than request. “You’re going to play this season and go to college and do everything you’ve ever wanted.”
Even as I say this, I’m staring at his broken leg and wondering if my words are possible. What if he never wakes up again? What if he never gets to do any of the things he always talked about—playing for his dream school, making the national team, playing for an international club?
A new feeling stretches over me: guilt.
If we hadn’t been fighting, he might not have been so distracted. If I hadn’t thrown up. If I’d handled the breakup better.
I hoist myself up into his bed and slowly tuck myself into his side, careful not to dislodge or break anything. “I’m so sorry, Jay,” I tell him, holding his hand again.
“And listen,” I whisper, “I forgive you for the…what you said before the crash…” I can’t even say the words out loud, like speaking them might make them real. “We’ll talk about it when you’re awake.”
I kiss him, a long, heartfelt kiss on his jaw, where he’s already developing a five o’clock shadow.
Hopefully, by the time Jason wakes up he’ll have changed his mind about the breakup. But there’s a thought percolating in my mind, like a slow-kindling fire. It’s what the nurse said about Jason possibly hearing everything we’re saying.
You have a job to do, the nurse said, and maybe she’s right. Maybe this is on me.
Maybe I can fix everything that went wrong with us so by the time he comes out of this coma, it makes absolutely no sense for us not to be together.
All I have to do is figure out why he felt he had to end things.
All I have to do is read an unconscious boy’s mind.