Chapter 40 Vivian
Vivian
Present Day
Her existence has become this: a series of pokes and prods.
Sudden, intrusive taps on her kneecaps and arms. Sporadic commands directed at her, which are sometimes garbled, sometimes not: Squeeze my hand.
Wiggle your toes. Occasionally she catches just the tail end of a statement:…
Your fingers…. Hear me…Vivian tries to respond but crashes with the effort, organized thoughts a painful somnolence.
In between, there sits that heavy silence. It’s too silent for a hospital floor, she realizes with a growing unease. And then, every once in a while the quiet is jarringly interrupted by a series of loud clangs, too brazen to be the chime of a mere IV pump.
Where am I?
Something she needs to remember continues to hover on her periphery. Something, try as she might, she cannot. But the secret grows almost painfully urgent, pressing against her tender brain bruise.
She retreats beneath her eyelids, in the dark abyss.
Pupils equal, reactive, someone says, as they shine an obnoxiously bright light into her eyes. She recalls seeing this used on an episode of House: a light pen. No—penlight, used to assess neurological status.
Okay, fine. So maybe she is still in the hospital.
But then—another light is positioned in front of her eyes. It feels inherently wrong—nonmedical. This light is wide, flat. Lazy, too; it lingers far too long.
In the still of the quiet, she grows anxious beneath the continued blunt glare. Summoning all her strength and energy, she pries her eyes open—and is surprised to find her mom’s face filling her vision.
And then Vivian realizes: She’s looking at a photo, a familiar one that quickly melts away into the now unlocked home screen of her iPhone.