Holding Still for as Long as Possible (29 page)

“I'm clearly awake now, sir. Do you drink beer if you're dead?” Billy looks around surreptitiously, makes sure no one heard her go off the script.

“Oh yeah. Hell, yeah.”

“Okay, then, Question 1, how many beers would you say you drink on average between Monday and Friday?”

“I can drink five thousand.”

“Five thousand?”

“Sure. It doesn't matter, I'm dead.”

Standing up with her neck craned low, still attached to the headset, Billy tries to catch the eye of Stan over the row of cubicles. He is usually sitting at his large intimidating desk on the other side of his office window, watching, monitoring calls. But he is gone. Billy's not sure what to do with the dead guy. She wants a cigarette.

“Question 2. Can you describe a recent advertisement on television that you have seen for beer?”

“Sure. There was a white, bright light. You were there.” The man's voice sounds bored.

“Can you describe a recent advertisement . . .”
Just repeat the question
, Billy tells herself. The customer may not have understood the first time.

“This is related to your reticular activating system. Do you know if you're awake right now, Penelope?”

Billy pauses, longer than she's supposed to.
Never let the call get out of your control
.
You are the one directing the conversation
.
Don't answer questions
. These directives go through her head and she puts her shaking hand on her head. Grabs a pile of hair.

“It's okay, Penelope. It's you we're worrying about. Do you ever feel as if you're just totally out of control?”

Billy sits on her knees, perched on the rolling grey office chair, and leans into the cubicle, fists grabbing at the edge of the desk, faux fetal.

“Penelope, you asked me questions. Now I have one for you. Have you been experiencing fluctuating disturbances in cognition? Attention? Self-awareness? Memory function?”

“Sir. Please understand I am trying to complete my assigned task, which is what I get paid for. If you will take a moment to consider your beer-buying habits. When was . . .”
Don't lose control of the call
. Billy pictures the three-dimensional brain Josh gave her that floats in water and grows. Her brain feels like a grey ineffective sponge. She holds her head in sweaty palms. The voice on the other end of the phone says, “Now you are trying to decide if you will live or die, right? You have a choice. Me, I think you are young and you should choose life.”

Billy pushes her finger into the off button, keeps pushing long after the call hangs up.
Good Will
. She looks around.
Good Will
. It's not working.

Natasha, the shiny-faced teen in the Tupac T-shirt in the cubicle beside her, asks, “Pervert call?”

“Yeah. Real asshole.” Billy scribbles down the dead guy's phone number on the back of a debit receipt from her wallet, grabs her purse, and walks towards the door, running straight into Stan's ample sweatered chest.

“And where are we heading?” Stan always spoke in “we.”

“We're going to go kill ourselves.” Billy pulls her pink shawl tight around her neck and pushes past him, marching purposefully towards the stairwell.

Stan stands with eyebrows raised and arms outstretched.

“Do you know what I realized today, Billy?”

“What?”

“You're Hilary Stevenson. You used to be a well-known musician.”

“Nope.”

“Yes, for sure. I looked at my sister's
cd
yesterday and there's no way it's not you.”

Billy continues to walk, but she calls back from the elevator. “Well, I wouldn't say
well-known
. I would say
briefly radio-friendly
. I'm going to visit my friend in a coma. Mail me my last cheque, okay?”

Stan shrugs. There's always one quitter a day.

In the elevator, Billy holds her breath as if it's an accessory.
Good Will.

When she gets home, she takes her guitar out of the hallway closet and tunes it. Hums a few bars of a cover tune. Then proceeds to sing as if she'd never stopped. She sings loud and then quiet, and she writes the best lyrics of her life, singing them over and over and over until she commits them to memory. She feels her heart getting strong and a calmness taking over.

If she wakes up, she will hear the song in her head.

She will sing it every day afterwards, for at least a year.

She will sell it to a young singer, the winner from
Canadian Idol
, and live on the royalties for years.

If.

I think:
I'm paralyzed. I might be asleep. I might be having one of those dreams where I know I'm asleep but I can't wake up.
I can feel my eyes. I try to make them open, but I can't. I can feel the sheet, the hard mattress, bodies shifting around me. I feel a primal urge to call for my mother, but I know this is ridiculous. I am in my bed, in Parkdale, Roxy a few feet down the hall. I try
help
. Try
roxy
. “
Raaa. Raaa
.”
That's all I can manage.

Nothing. Soon Roxy will shake me, offer me an inappropriate-for-the-time-of-day beverage.

My mouth moves, opens slightly. I manage to lift one eyelid slightly. I can see the side of my pillow. Light. My pillow is not the worn-in Strawberry Shortcake pattern I'm used to. This confuses me.
I must still be dreaming
. I try to open both my eyes.

I am stuck in sleep and can hear the sounds of what I believe to be Parkdale ambient clatter through an open window. I am awake enough now to know I am asleep. I count to ten, hoping the lucid dream will abate and I can wake up normally, all my motor skills intact.

It occurs to me that this might be what dying feels like.

Okay.

Here we are
,
brain
.
You're still with me
.

This is the part where I'm supposed to accept it, right? As soon as I think this, I start to calm down.
Well,
there's nothing I can do about it now
. With this realization, I'm able to float above my body, see myself asleep. I am surrounded by white. How can my death be so
All My Children
?
Why a white room? I'm a talentless hack, even as I'm dying.

With this thought, I am suddenly back in my body. I feel my fingers! Each digit a triumph! I still can't move, though I feel the blood moving in my hands.
wake up wake up wake the fuck up
. I'd only meant to nap. Just a little avoidance nap. Roxy said she'd wake me. She said she would call if she left.

I hear Josh's voice, and Roxy's laugh. I hear my mother's voice
.
My sister Rebecca. I smell Dad's tea-tree soap. Maria's sandalwood oil. When my eyes finally stop betraying me, the first thing I see is white. A line of fluorescent lights on a ceiling.

“Billy, you've been in an accident. You were hit by a truck on your bicycle and you broke a few bones, but you're waking up now. You had surgery, so your confusion is normal.”

I try to move my lips as the words I hear start to make sense. It takes a long time. Where am I? A hospital? Bikes. Streetcar tracks, laughing. Tequila. Stomachs touching. Legs in a V.

I pull things into focus, see a chorus of people around the bed. Dad, Mom, Rebecca, Josh, Roxy, Maria closest to me, holding my hand.

“I don't understand,” I manage.

An unfamiliar man appears. “Billy, I'm Dr. Cameron.”

Dr. Cameron — the dead guy from Edmonton! He leans over me.

“Can you feel this?”

When you're having a panic attack the one thing you're certain of — besides your own death — is that the attack will never end. Even when it does stop, there's always a sense that another one is on the horizon, and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I know when mine ended. With the sound of Dr. Cameron's voice. On Saturday, May 23, 2006, in the afternoon. Over. Forever.

Epilogue

September 2006

Josh and I are sitting across from each other at a table by the window at the Beaver Café. We've ordered matching breakfasts — tiny cups of fruit and granola, lattes, greens and eggs. I'm able to walk around now, after weeks in hospital and recovering at home, and it's a freedom I can't speak about without crying. I'm sure I'm embarrassing to be around, but I don't care. Josh doesn't seem to, either.

I'm thankful for fall and winter coming soon, so I can cover up the scarring on my arms and legs. I'm battling my memory, willing it to return full force. I have all my childhood memories, and my short-term is just fine. It's the weeks leading up to the accident that are blurry. Roxy assures me that they weren't wonderful weeks, not for me anyway.

I'm so grateful to be here. It sounds cornball, but now I've got a straightforward second chance. I spent so much time afraid to live; maybe this shock was all I needed. All I needed to be okay. Roxy keeps leaving drawings of the Buddha on my bedroom door to bug me. She thinks I'm going to write a self-help book or something.

Josh and Roxy moved all his stuff into our apartment. Amy decided to sell her house, get a condo instead. There was a lot of room for Josh in my room since I threw out almost everything the day before the accident in a manic fit of purging. Apparently. The day Josh moved in, I watched as he got sweat across his brow, his eye twitching from the stress of hauling boxes all day. I felt so lazy, watching, wiping the surfaces clean in my room, trying to organize, but was winded after the smallest amount of activity. These days his hair is shaved close to his skull, the faux-hawk too much to keep up with.

We chew in silence, looking up at each other once in a while.

I wonder what he thinks, really, of the injured me — the slow-moving Billy, calm but not entirely the same girl he got involved with.

Last night on the porch, he said, “You seem so much more grounded than you used to.”

“Ironic, huh? The secret to renewed mental health: head injury! Fly through space! Irresponsible drunk cycling! I can see the Oprah show now.”

Now, through the window of the Beaver Café, I notice Amy, coming up the walk with her new dog.

Josh jumps up, runs outside to greet her. They hug. Their hug brings tears to my eyes. That's another thing that has been happening to me since the accident — random bursts into tears. Amy waves at me through the window, gives Josh the leash to hold, and walks inside to see me. We are, as always, awkward.

And although we are unmistakably bonded through the collision, there is another gap now. The Josh and Maria gap. I'm confident this will cease to matter after a while.

Because at first, nothing mattered. Crisis does this. Josh and Amy and Maria and I were all suddenly in love with one another. We had survived! We were okay. As things return to normal, it is easier to feel the complications again.

Still, it gets better between me and Amy every time we see each other.

She grabs my hand when she notices my tears.

“I can't stop crying. I don't know why,” I explain. “I'm happier than I have been in years, I think.”

“No more panic, eh?”

“No, it's like the anxiety got squished out of me by that fucking truck. My therapist says she can't believe how much I've changed.”

“I feel the total opposite. I can't even ride my bike without breaking out into a sweat. I tried riding on the sidewalk like an old lady, and freaked out. I put an ad up on Craigslist to sell my bike.” She laughs.

We hold each other's hands, skin against the crumbs of toast on the wooden table. We don't do anything, just look at each other. It's only been a few months, but both of us are changed. I have my heart back, and a brain on regular speed.

I appreciate you
, I whisper to almost anything these days — the aloe plant, the cat, Roxy, Maria, and especially Josh.

He smiles and blinks at me. “Please promise me I'm not going to come home and find you watching evangelical
TV
shows, baby.”

“I promise, no money to God.”

Now I show Amy my new tattoo. It runs across my chest, covering some of the scarring. It says,
Good Will Trucking.

“I don't get it
,”
she says. “But it's pretty.”

“Maybe you and Maria can come over for dinner sometime.”

“Yeah, totally. We should.”

The offer is genuine, but I'm not sure it will happen anytime soon.

Amy goes back outside, and she and Josh stand facing each other, holding hands, as though about to break into a dance. When I look up from my breakfast, Amy is walking away with the dog, and Josh's face is pressed against the glass, making a monster face at me.

You already know all my fucking secrets, don't you? I took you to therapy, for God's sake. What do you want? But okay, I'm a joiner. I was raised by hippies. So I'll
co-operate.

I'd like to do nothing for as long as possible, just sit in those moments in between, with no expectations of the world or my place in it. Sometimes I watch Josh from the window of our bedroom as he pulls up in the ambulance after an overnight shift. Running the siren in a brief
hello
so I can hobble downstairs to kiss him. The absence of fear is an opiate.

That's my secret. Holding still, thinking nothing at all, is my biggest accomplishment.