Chapter 3 #2
I look over to see a beige Toyota Corolla with a dent in the passenger door come to a stop in front of us.
During the elevator ride down, the nurse had explained that the car they organized to take me home was approved by the hospital.
I had assumed that meant some sort of hospital van, or dedicated taxi service.
The only thing with any sort of official branding on this car is a Yankee Candle air freshener hanging in the window.
The driver is busy playing with the radio as the nurse helps me up from the wheelchair and into the back seat.
The whole time she’s reciting information from my discharge paperwork: how to confirm my appointment for tomorrow, who to call if I need to reschedule, where to find my medical records on the patient portal.
By the time she closes the door, I feel dazed.
All the facts and numbers are an impossible mess in my head.
“41 Sheafe Street?” the driver asks gruffly, looking at me in the rearview mirror.
Was that the address on my license? I had shoved my wallet into my coat pocket before I got in the elevator earlier, along with my keys, so it would be easy enough to pull it out and double-check.
Except it doesn’t feel easy. It feels like everyone is forcing me to face the trauma of the past few days over and over again until I finally buckle and break.
So instead, I just stare back at him dumbly while my bangs stick out from my forehead like hands on some insane, oversized clock.
The driver seems to gauge that I’m as clueless as my blond hair would lead him to believe, because he frowns, then throws the car into drive and turns up the radio.
It’s a sports program with two hosts yelling about last night’s Red Sox game against the Guardians.
I don’t know baseball—I’m not even sure what city the Guardians are from—but I listen because it’s nice to know there are two other people out there just as stressed as me.
“AND THEN THEY PULL THEIR STARTER IN THE SIXTH INNING!” one of the radio hosts yells. “ARE YOU KIDDIN’ ME?”
I stare out my window, trying to focus on the narrow streets as they fly by, each corner we turn. Left, then right, but I can’t keep track of the route. It’s like someone is scrambling the information in my mind as soon as I receive it.
I’ve always been so good with directions.
Maybe it comes from a lifetime of living near the ocean—you can never get too lost because you always know what direction is west. But now I don’t have a reference point, no familiar landmark to guide me.
There’s just a labyrinthine mess of reddish-brown brick buildings and cracked sidewalks.
Bars and convenience stores. Nothing looks familiar at all.
“COME ON, HIS ON-BASE PERCENTAGE IS BELOW THREE HUNDRED!” blares from the radio. “MY KID GETS TO FIRST MORE THAN HIM!”
I give up after we pass a third Dunkin’ Donuts and bring my attention to the discharge papers in my hand.
There are pages and pages of instructions, in font so small I can’t even attempt to read it in a moving car, but on the top page I see that the most important information has been highlighted.
There’s a phone number to call to confirm my neuropsychologist appointment tomorrow, and another one to schedule a car to pick me up and drop me off.
Both incredibly helpful, I have to admit, if only I could actually place a call.
I reach into my bag and feel around until I find my phone. The warning screen is gone, and the hazy sunset wallpaper is back. Did it forget my previous passcode attempts? Or is it secretly keeping track, waiting for me to mess up again?
It takes another moment to muster the gumption to slide the bar across the screen to unlock it. A prompt appears, asking me to enter my passcode, and I carefully press each number so I don’t mess up…
iPhone Unavailable
try again in 5 minutes
My heart drops to the floor of the Corolla.
How many tries do I get? And what happens when I run out?
This is exactly the kind of question I would usually ask Matt—except I can’t because my phone won’t let me call him.
It won’t even let me look up his number.
My stomach twists as the realization ripples through every other facet of my life.
I can’t confirm my doctor’s appointment tomorrow.
I can’t call Sara. I can’t even contact the hospital with any questions.
All because I can’t remember six simple digits.
It’s the head injury, I tell myself. But at the same time, all my old insecurities come roaring back.
Growing up, it was easy to pigeonhole me as the spacey blonde who daydreamed through school, the ditz with the weird grandma.
The girl with a thousand different dreams, who thought she could travel the world and do everything.
It wasn’t until I was older, after my grandmother got sick, that those assumptions took on a new, painful edge.
Marnie Stephens, the college student who had to move home to take care of her sick grandmother.
The young professional who spent most of her twenties cycling through temp jobs while still hoping the universe was just taking its time.
Marnie Stephens, the thirty-year-old who still has no idea what she wants to do with her life.
Then I’m hit with another devastating realization.
Oh God. I’m thirty-one now, aren’t I?
“Here ya go,” the cabbie announces, putting the car into park.
I look out the window at the muddy-brown brick building just outside the car door.
This is not the Boston I was promised. The apartment Matt and I had planned to move into was on the top floor of a black-shuttered townhouse in Beacon Hill.
There were flower boxes on all the windows and a tall linden tree rising from the brick sidewalk out front.
I had daydreamed about watching the foliage change on its branches in the fall and picking what flowers to plant in the window boxes in the spring.
But there are no window boxes here. No tree.
The sidewalk is barren except for an empty Dunkin’ Donuts cup rolling in the wind.
The four-story building in front of me looks almost identical to the rest lining the narrow block except the color of the mortar is mottled, patched in places where it’s given up, and the windows are slightly off-kilter in their frames.
The front door is painted a rust color that at some point probably matched the brick but is now faded and flaky.
“Are you sure this is it?” I ask.
The driver turns to quirk an eyebrow at me from over his shoulder.
I smile even though I have no idea why. I’m so terrified, I think I might throw up all over his worn beige interior.
“Okay. Well… thank you,” I say, gathering up my phone and my bag before opening the door.
I step out onto the curb, then turn back to the car, ready to ask the driver to wait until I’ve figured out which key unlocks the building’s entrance, but he’s already thrown the Corolla into drive and started forward.
I clutch my bag in my hands and watch as the car rolls down the narrow street—as if maybe, possibly, it will stop and turn around. Maybe the driver will realize he forgot to tell me something, some vital secret the universe needs me to know that will magically make all of this make sense.
But he doesn’t turn around. The car just zips left around the corner and disappears.
Totally fine, I think. If this is where my driver’s license says I live, then it must be true.
I pull out my license again just to make sure, and my heart drops a little when the bold text confirms it: 41 Sheafe Street, Apt. 3A.
It takes me another moment to step toward the front door. The faded rust-colored paint of the door looks almost brown under close inspection. Not exactly the high-gloss red from the pictures of our Beacon Hill building, but if I live here, it must have some redeeming qualities, right?
Please let me be right, I think, swallowing down the panic clawing its way up my throat.
In perhaps my only stroke of luck today, the first key I try turns the lock and I push open the door to step inside.
I expect a lobby, or at least some sort of foyer, but there’s just a sterile hallway.
It smells of cheap lemon cleaner, and there’s a line of locked mailboxes along the right side with a fluorescent striplight above.
I’ve been standing there for a moment, looking for some detail that might be familiar, when a man emerges from the stairwell and shuffles to the mailboxes. He looks like he’s just woken up, with mascara smeared under his eyes and a purple velvet bathrobe draped over his shoulders.
Should I say hello? He’s my neighbor, after all. Not just on the same street, but in the same building. And if I’ve lived in this building for six months, then surely I must know people here. He and I could even be friends.
For the first time all day, I feel a bit of hope.
After all, in our small neighborhood in Malibu, my grandmother and I knew everyone.
When Sara and I were roommates in our two-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica, no one hesitated to say hello when they passed each other in the hall.
Even in Matt’s giant apartment building downtown, the neighbors still smiled at one another in the elevator.
Boston couldn’t possibly be that different, right?
By the time the man looks up from his mailbox, my smile is so wide it’s hurting my cheeks.
“Hi!” I say a little too loudly.
His mouth offers an inverse of mine, a frown that communicates annoyance as much as it does confusion. Then he turns and heads back up the stairs.
Okay. Not friends, then.
And that’s fine, I remind myself. I haven’t lived here that long. Maybe he’s never even seen me before. Or maybe I inadvertently took a package meant for him and now he can’t forgive me.