Wakey Wakey Brooklyn
Wakey Wakey
Brooklyn
I swim into a sea of light. My eyes feel like they’re glued shut, and I have a bad, bad headache.
I touch my forehead, willing it away, and feel tension pulling on my arm.
There is something—a bandage? Something in my mouth, too, the back of my throat.
I swallow and choke, gagging. I can’t breathe.
What is happening? Waves of panic rise. Shouting, then beeping, then a hiss, then nothing.
I wake again. It feels like it’s been years since my eyes opened. My throat hurts. I lean forward. Maybe if I sit up—
“Whoa whoa whoa, stop. Gently. Move gently.”
I’m dreaming. Right? But are you supposed to hurt when you dream? I’m being held down, and I want to move. Roses. I smell roses. Maybe . . . I’m not dreaming? The light is so bright, and the figure next to me is so familiar, but I don’t recognize her at all.
“Hi there. Look who’s awake again.”
I know this voice. It takes a few seconds for my brain to catch up. Familiar, female, favorite person, sister. “Mm—Margot?”
My voice sounds weird, rusty, like it hasn’t been used in a very long time. Margot bursts into tears. “Oh, thank God. Brooklyn, you scared the shit out of me. I didn’t know if you would remember me.”
The lights are so bright. It smells so strange. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the hospital. Vanderbilt. You were hit by a car.
Banged your head on the sidewalk—you have forty staples and a severe concussion.
You’ve been in and out of consciousness for the past several days, and then you decided to have a minor heart attack.
Don’t worry, you’re okay now. They shaved the spot behind your ear, but your hair will grow back. Do you remember what happened?”
Accident. Hospital. Hair. Remember. Do I? “Uh . . .”
“God, I’m sorry, I’m prattling on, you probably can’t even fathom all of this. Oh, Brooklyn. I am so relieved.”
Fragments. I hurt, all over, not just my head. Something feels wrong. So wrong. My chest hurts. And the roses . . . perfume? Mom’s perfume.
Mom. Margot. Alex.
“Where’s Alex?”
Margot mutters a curse. “The doctors were worried about this.”
“What do you mean? Can you call him? I want to see him.”
“Honey, do you not remember? About Alex?” Margot sighs. “The doctors said you might not remember everything right away.”
Remember. Why can’t I remember? It would be so easy to shut my eyes, to slip away.
I am tired, so tired. A car accident? Hit by a car?
How? And then I realize what’s happening.
Alex is not by my bedside. The sunshine, the curls, the blue eyes, that laugh.
The secrets. Roses. That is my mother’s scent.
But Alex . . . woodsy. Musky. Love and vodka. The river. The argument. The blood.
A huge swell of horror moves through me. Of loss, and fear. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. “Oh my God, is he dead? Where is he? Where’s Alex?”
“Honey, Alex is dead. He has been for years.”
The scream comes from someplace unfathomable, deep and guttural. People rush into the room. There is confusion and shouting, then I swim, swirling into nothingness.
It is night when I wake again. I can sense time has passed, but I have no idea how much. Margot was here. Trey was here. Alex. Trey. Wait.
The two men collide in my brain, and I feel something like sparks or fireworks.
I am losing my mind. What is happening? I can’t see either of them clearly.
They blend and merge, dancing, laughing; one wears the other’s face.
Trey with blond curls. Alex with whiskey eyes.
Neither is familiar, nor right; both are ingrained in my soul.
Think, Brook. Think. Ugh, it hurts to think. Do it anyway.
Not Alex. Trey. Trey is now. Alex was before. Maybe?
I feel sick. Wrong. There is a timeline, and if I could just grasp onto it . . .
“Trey?” I ask.
Someone surges to my side from the foldout chair next to the bed. “Brook? Oh, God, Brookie. You’re awake again.”
The voice is familiar, but her face feels all wrong. A stranger. But that can’t be right. The voice is my sister’s. The face is a stranger’s. I think something has damaged my eyes. Nothing looks right.
“Mm—Margot? Where’s Trey?”
“Well, at least you’re back into current events,” my sister says.
“What are you talking about? Where’s Trey?”
Trey was here. I remember him talking, the whispered words. Not exactly what he said, only that he was comforting me and encouraging me. Angel whispers. He was talking to me while I was dying. He was already on the other side.
The reality of my life parades back in.
He’s dead. He’s gone. He is no more. My stomach drops, adrenaline coursing through my body. I know this sensation all too well. To have to grieve him . . . I’m not sure I can go through it all again.
“Brooklyn—”
“It’s okay. I remember now. He’s dead.”
Margot takes my hand. The gesture is so familiar, yet so strange.
Like my mother sitting on the edge of the bed, testing if I was running a fever.
A hand on my forehead, my cheek, fingers trailing across my fiery skin.
Even her scent, roses, is vivid in my nose.
I haven’t smelled that perfume in years, and now, sitting at my bedside, is my mother.
No, my sister. I’m wrong. What is happening?
The thoughts, swirling, kaleidoscoping together and apart, fragmented and fractured. Past, present, past. Is this what it feels like to go insane? To lose control of your mind?
“No, Brookie. Alex is dead. Not Trey. I don’t think. Though I’d like to kill him.”
My brain can’t grasp this. Trey, alive? But not here?
“Where am I? Where is he?”
“You’re in the hospital at Vanderbilt, in Nashville. You were in an accident. You have a severe concussion, and you might not remember things properly. And you decided to stop your heart for a bit, too, just to give us a decent scare. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for three days.”
An unsettling wave moves through me. That is not good, no matter the timeline.
“Why do you look weird?”
“Hardly slept, hon. Let me get your nurse, they’re going to want to know you’re awake. You’re much more with it than you have been.”
“A concussion, and something with my heart?”
Margot grabs the bedside remote and presses the big red button.
“They’ve kept you mildly sedated to give your brain time to heal.
It had some significant swelling, and they couldn’t take any chances.
You’re lucky—at one point, they were talking about removing a part of your skull to relieve the pressure, but it calmed down on its own.
And yes, you decided to get tachycardic on us back in Atlanta.
You were on an external ventilator for a bit, too, so your throat might be a little sore from the forced air. ”
I swallow reflexively. It does hurt. A ventilator?
Images of the pandemic, all those people unable to breathe, dying alone .
. . Stop it, Brook. Stop. You’re spinning out.
Your throat is sore because you were on a ventilator because you had an accident.
Nothing else. Still . . . something feels wrong about all of this.
“Remember what I told you.”
“You’re making exactly zero sense, sister.”
Margot gasps out a sob, half laugh, half cry.
“Hey, at least you know me. Trust me, okay? I’m going to get you through this.
They stopped the sedation last night, and you have surpassed everyone’s expectations.
You came to a few hours ago, and your eggs were a bit scrambled. You’re much more lucid this time.”
A nurse bustles into the room. “Oh, Mrs. Locke, look at you! You have such pretty eyes. Wow, you two do look alike, don’t you?
” She speaks to Margot as if I’m not here.
“I’ve let neurosurgery know she’s awake again.
They’ll be here shortly to do an exam. In the meantime, let’s try to get her to drink something.
Her urine is getting a little dark. The PureWick will be changed shortly. ”
“Um, hello? I’m awake now. You can talk to me, not her.”
The nurse’s grin widens. “Feisty, too. Wonderful! Sometimes patients go in and out when they first wake up from sedation. Don’t worry if you get tired, just close your eyes and rest. You’ll wake up again.”
She leaves, and I focus again on my sister.
Margot looks beautiful but horrible. She’s thin.
Dark shadows under her eyes, hair greasy and scraped back into a ponytail, shirt wrinkled and worn.
Her face seems warped, as if she’s melted.
Something is definitely wrong with my eyes.
She smells of roses, still, like Mom. Mom.
“Where’s Mom?”
A flash of sorrow crosses Margot’s face. “She’s been gone a long time, honey. Remember? She died when we were in high school.”
I don’t remember this, and the pain of hearing that the soft and gentle woman I love, whom I need right now to hold me and tell me everything is going to be okay, is gone, makes tears come.
“How?”
“Breast cancer. It took her quick, our senior year.”
“Dad?”
“Um . . . last I heard, still in Florida.” She fidgets, then mutters, “Dad might be a little much for you right now.”
Florida? None of this is registering. The last thing I remember about my dad is him waving a sparkler toward my face, tears shining in his eyes. Fourth of July, maybe?
Mexico. Wedding. Trey.
“And Trey? Are we still . . . together?”
Margot smiles, lets out a goofy little laugh. “You could say that. I think the kids might like to think they’re legitimate.”
“Kids?”
“They’re at home right now.”
“I have kids?”
Margot sighs. “You do. Two of them. A boy named after Trey that you call Four because he’s the fourth Andrew Edward Locke, and a little girl named Neve that you named after a friend of yours in Ireland.
You have a husband. And a life. Granted, it’s a little complicated right now.
” Margot’s wavy face looks as if a cloud has passed by, and her voice trails off as if there’s more to say, then she brightens again.
“I swear, you will remember everything soon. These memory gaps are just the aftereffects of the medication they’ve had you on.
You’re coming back online in bits and pieces, just like they said you would.
They don’t believe there’s any sort of permanent damage. ”
This is feeling more and more surreal, but I remember Trey and I remember Margot, even though she looks wavy, so if she insists that I have children—I have children?—I will have to trust her. Though no matter how much I try, there is a big blank when I think of them.
“Can I see them? The kids? Maybe that will help.”
“Of course. We might want to wait a day or two, though, until you have natural recall of them. It might freak them out, and they’ve had enough scares for a lifetime.”
“If I have children, I need to be discharged. I need to see them. I need to see Trey.”
Margot pats my hand. “I’ll bring them by tomorrow, okay? Let’s make sure this lucidity holds. I can show you pictures later, but they want you to remember as much as you can on your own before we start prompting memories. Like I said, they expected you to be missing parts of the story.”
The word pictures sparks something. Photos. Photography. I am a photographer. Cameras broken into pieces on a plaid blanket. Water lapping the edge of a picturesque riverbank. Alex, talking. Panic. Fear. A gunshot. Blood leaking from his chest.
My mind veers away from those images as if they came with the searing burn of a hot stove. Trey. Hold on to Trey.
There is silence, at least what passes for it in the hospital environment. I apply logic to the situation. My sister is here. My husband is not.
“Trey . . . Is he at home with the kids?”
Margot’s face freezes. “Not exactly.”
And now I understand the loss I’m feeling. “So he did die in the accident? The car that hit us?”
Saying it aloud, though, it doesn’t feel right, but I don’t understand why.
“He’s alive, honey. But Trey is maybe more complicated—ah, perfect timing. Hey, Eden! Look who’s awake!”