Sleeping Beauty (11 page)

The atrium of the hospital is open from the lobby all the way up to the fifth floor. From my vantage point it seems as if the elevator is dropping us into a carnival. The lobby is lined wall-to-wall with booth games: a bean bag throw, Wack-A-Mole, even a dunk tank. I see a long table of people with headphones and microphones, even the occasional television camera.

Where did all this come from?
I think. It definitely wasn’t here when I arrived an hour and a half ago.

For the first few floors I do like everyone else does and gape at the spectacle we’re being lowered into. The floor numbers flash by: 4…3…2. Finally I can’t take it anymore, I have to know. I lean towards him. “Brendan, are we dating?”

The people around us exchange knowing looks and suppressed smiles. An old woman in front of me turns around and pats my hand. “Honey, if you have to ask…”

Ding!

The elevator opens and heaves us into the hospital lobby where the crush of people make it impossible to move any further towards the front entrance.

“C’mon,” says Brendan. He grabs my hand and tows me through the crowds in the opposite direction. Most people take one look at his medical garb and badges, and make an opening wide enough for us to get through.

“What’s this all about?” I say, after my toe is crushed by the wheel of a red Radio Flyer wagon carrying a bald child, a bag of poisonous-looking fluid hooked to an IV pole jutting from the wagon frame.

“Fund raiser,” Brendan yells over his shoulder. “A local radio station does it every year.”

He raises his badge to a scanner on the wall. It makes a beeping noise, and a pair of doors opens, one in each direction. There’s a bright yellow sign above the door.

Intensive Care Unit

Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point

He drops my hand as we approach a nurse’s station. “Uh, am I authorized?” I whisper.

“Brendan!”

We both turn around. A tall, smiling man with a long face and a chin like the man in the moon moves towards us.

“Trent,” Brendan says, shaking his hand.

I glance at the guy’s badge. It’s dangling from the end of a lanyard and is bouncing and spinning around as he moves, but I glean the words “MD” and “Neurology.”

“Just heard about the Garrison girl. Heard it was touch and go.”

“It was,” says Brendan. “We had an excellent team though. I think the outcome will be good.”

Trent looks over at me. “Trent Seles.” I pronounce my name and we shake hands. He gets a knowing look on his face. “Claire? Is this the new girlfriend you’ve been hiding from us?” His smile is sly.

“Yes,” says Brendan.

“No,” I say.

His eyes flicker back and forth between us. He claps Brendan on the shoulder. “Alright, well, it sounds like another day in paradise.” He checks his watch. “I’ve got to run. See you at the staff meeting bright and early?”

Dr. Seles makes a beeline in the direction we’ve just come. When I look at Brendan he has his eyes closed. “Thanks, Claire.” Eyes open, he watches as the man disappears down the hall. “That was only the head of neurology.”

Before I can respond he walks behind the crescent-shaped counter, and studies a huge computer monitor displaying a dozen or so rectangles clustered around a gray half-moon outline. Each rectangle contains a name and a jumble of lines and colors.

A man sitting at a nearby computer looks up. “Garrison’s in three.”

“Got it, thanks.”

Brendan taps one of the rectangles. It maximizes, filling the screen. The words “Garrison, Analis 5 F” display at the top. Underneath is the most tangled-up line graph I’ve ever seen. Brendan spends half a second looking at it before tapping so fast through a series of screens that I grow nauseous again. I catch things like “renal,” “BP,” and “medications” before looking away.

It would have been better if I hadn’t.

While Brendan taps away on the touch screen behind me, I’m bombarded by a pediatric horror show. The ICU is a large, open room with about twenty beds. Each bed is separated from the next by curtains. In each bed is a small person. At least I think they’re people. Most of them are so swaddled in bandages and covered in tubes that it’s hard to believe there’s an actual child underneath. There’s a steady
beep, beep, beep
of monitors coming from every direction, the hiss of ventilators, and the overpowering smell of sterility.

I turn away. “I think I’d better wait–” I say, but Brendan’s gone.

Without looking up from his computer the nurse at the desk points across the counter. I follow his finger. Brendan is next to one of the beds, speaking to a scrub-clad nurse. The girl in the bed, maybe four or five years old, is dwarfed by the bed and a mountain of machinery closing in on every side. She’s wearing what looks like an enormous turban of gauze on her head.

The nurse pushes a few buttons on a gray machine with red flashing numbers, says a few more words to Brendan and walks away, heading towards the doors we came in. I watch her, waiting for her to scan her badge. Once the doors open, I’m making a break for it.

Before I can implement my master plan, a young couple enters. The nurse greets them in a low voice and leads them back to the bed where Brendan’s standing. Their eyes are red-rimmed, their clothes rumpled and looking none-too-fresh. Brendan holds out his hand to the father. There’s a brief shake, but mostly the man just clutches Brendan’s hand in both of his and chokes out a few tearful words I can’t quite hear. Brendan moves his lips and words like “induced coma” and “craniectomy” float across the unit and land on me with a thud.

The mother is frozen at the end of the bed, her hands over her mouth. That’s when I realize I’m standing the same way. I drop my hands to my sides. Brendan gestures for the mom to come to the bedside. He lifts the little girl’s lifeless hand and puts it in her mother’s.

“I have to get out of here,” I say weakly.

The male nurse at the counter springs into action. “This way.”

I sit on a bench outside the hospital entrance, alternating deep breathing with dropping my head between my knees. My cell phone buzzes and I fish it out of my jacket pocket. “BRENDAN CELL” the screen blinks.
How did his number get saved on my…?

“Hello?”

“Where are you?”

I hear his voice coming from the phone and somewhere close by. I turn around.

“Oh, never mind, I see you,” he says, and hangs up. In a few seconds he’s closed the distance. “You okay?”

“No, I’m not okay,” I say, staring at the cracks in the sidewalk. “What happened to that girl?”

“Car accident this morning. Her grandmother was driving her to school. No seat belt.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

He sits on the bench next to me. “I don’t know yet. She had a lot of brain swelling. I had to remove half her skull.”

I swallow hard as my stomach heaves. “Remove it? What did you do with it, make an ashtray out of it?”

He squints at me. “It’s in the freezer.” I stare at him, not sure if he’s pulling my leg. “Not
my
freezer,” he adds helpfully.

“Of course not. Okay, well, good luck with that I guess.” I hop up and start heading north on the sidewalk.

“Where are you going?”

“Bus stop,” I say without turning around. “I know you’re not my doctor anymore, but during the five minutes that you were you probably realized that I can’t drive a car in my condition.”

“Hey, hey, wait!” he says, jogging backwards in front of me. “What did you think I dragged you around with me for? I’m driving you home.”

“Thanks, I can take the bus.”

“I thought you wanted to know if we’re dating.”

“Ha! Like the old lady said: ‘If you have to ask…’”

“You didn’t have to ask,” he says. “I was going to tell you, just not in the middle of an elevator of people.”

“Great, tell me.”

Behind us is a four-story parking garage. He points to it. “Can we at least get my car first?”

The car turns out to be a sleek, silver Audi convertible. I haven’t been in a convertible since high school, and I feel childishly excited. “Are we putting the top down?” I say once we’ve cleared the garage exit. He doesn’t answer. I turn my head. “Hello?”

“I heard you. Look, Claire, this whole thing is as weird for me as it is for you.”

“Really, how?”

He turns out of the hospital drive and onto the road leading to the freeway. “It’s like
déjà vu
all over again every time we talk. I feel like I’m playing Adam Sandler in
Fifty First Dates
. Every time I see you we seem to start over with the same conversations.”

“What do you mean? Did I–”

“You’ve been in my car a few times,” he says. “The very first time you were in it you asked me if I could put the top down, said you hadn’t been in one since high school.” He sighs. “Anyway, there’s something wrong with it; it opens but it won’t close right. I need to get it fixed.”

“Lampshade,” I mumble.

“What?”

“Look, I’m sure we’ve already had this conversation too, but can you explain the nature of our”–I almost choke on the word–“
relationship
? I mean, do I even
like
you?”

He does the sharp nasal exhale again, this time even raising his cheeks enough to give the impression of a smile. He glances over at me, and it’s impossible to look at him and not see: the guy has feelings for me. Lots of them.

“Well, you liked me a lot more two days ago,” he says, eyes back on the road. “It’s just hard to get my head around the fact that I’m right back at the beginning, that you pretty much despise me all over again.”

I sneak glances at him as he drives, studying his profile. His dark brown hair is disheveled from the surgery cap, giving him a kind of rakish look. The circles under his eyes are even more noticeable through his pale skin. I can tell he’s the kind of person who doesn’t sleep much, and totes his worries around like carry-on luggage. His lips are cherubic, like something out of a Michelangelo fresco. And that ever-present, oh-so-perfect three day stubble.

How is that achieved,
I wonder. I fantasize about how it would feel to run my lips along his jaw line. And then it hits me with enough force to make me squirm: I already
have
. “Ugh!”

“What?” The car swerves slightly as he briefly takes his eyes off the road.

“Oh, my god. Have I ever–have we ever…” I lose my courage and close my mouth.

The silence drags on and on, which is answer enough I suppose. The car chews up another few miles of highway before he speaks. “Claire, I don’t know what to tell you. Once Wendy made her diagnosis, she put you on lithium and carbamzepine and–”

“Lithium? Isn’t that what crazy people take?”

“No, it’s what people with bipolar disorder take.”

“I thought Wendy said you had ruled that out?”

“We did, but I spoke to every doctor I could find who had any experience at all treating people with KLS. Lithium and carbamzepine are the only two drugs that reduce the worst symptoms of the episodes. If you take it early enough in an episode it can even shorten it.”

I snort. “Clearly, that didn’t work in my case.”

“No, but everyone–your brother, Wib, your friends–they all said that you had never been so, I don’t know…
yourself
. West said you’re normally lethargic all the time during an episode, and even when you appear awake you’re sort of emotionless, like a zombie. That’s
not
the way you were this time. I attributed the difference to the new meds. It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t remember anything.” He runs his left hand back and forth across the top of his head, which doesn’t do any favors for his cap-hair. “If I’d even suspected you’d have complete amnesia when you came out of it I never would have…” He stops.

“Oh god, what?” I say. “You never would have what?”

“Nothing.” His eyes are steely, the grip on the steering wheel tight enough to turn his knuckles white. “We just spent so much time together, told each other our entire life stories, talked about everything you can think of. I thought I was on Park Place, and now it feels like I pulled the ‘Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars’ card, you know?”

I stare out the window. We’re just down the street from my apartment, and I haven’t had to give him even one “turn left” or “turn right.” Obviously he’s been to my house from every possible direction. “Is that another way of saying you thought you’d slid into home, and now you’re back on first base?”

Crickets chirping.

We’re still a good half block from my apartment, but he suddenly slips the car into the first curb space he sees. He throws the car into park and stares at the steering wheel. “Can we just talk about something else?”

“Sure,” I say. “Tell me something you
don’t
already know about me. We’ll start there. Then you can make a list of things I’ve already asked you so I don’t ask them again. After that you can tell me what you think of me naked–”

“Stop, Claire. Please.”

“–and if you think I’m any good in bed. If there’s any time left you can tell me what you wish you
hadn’t
done if you’d known I would never remember any of this.”

It happens fast. Before I can say “I’ll walk from here” his hands are cradling my face, his lips are on mine. There are no flashbacks this time, just the certainty that we’ve shared this–and more–before. He pulls away before I’ve had nearly enough.

“What I
wouldn’t
have done is fall in love with you.”

Suddenly someone knocks on the windshield. I let out a high-pitched shriek.

Davin leans into my open window. “Claire-Bo, I thought that was you!” He turns to Brendan. “Doc,” he says, turning suddenly surly.

“Wib, good to see you again.”

I’m so stunned to see him, and so rattled by what’s just happened that it takes me a few seconds to say anything. “What are you doing here?” I say finally, but I already know. There’s only one reason he would come to the Valley.

He lets his sunglasses slide down his nose. “Checking up on
you,
” he says. “What else would I come to this ghetto for?” He looks behind him down the sidewalk. “Had to leave my van on the next block. Hopefully it’s still there when I get back to it.”