Transcendence (22 page)

I nod, looking around the bed. My left arm is suspended from a pulley, white gauze bandages wrapping the entire length from fingertips to elbow. There are several bags hanging from hooks on a pole, leaking various fluids into my arm. The pain feels like it’s far away, tucked in a distant corner of my brain along with the fragmented memories of the accident. I lick my lips, my mouth feeling so dry I’m not sure I can speak again.

Griffon reaches over and pours some water from a pink plastic pitcher into a matching cup. “Here,” he says, handing it to me. “Can you get this, or do you want me to hold it?”

I reach for it with my right hand, the cup trembling as I bring it to my lips, but I don’t spill too much on the woven hospital blanket. As I drink, my body comes back to life, and I can almost feel the blood surging in my veins. “Thanks,” I manage, handing the cup back to him.

“God, I was so scared,” he whispers, sitting back down in the padded chair next to the bed. “By the time I got in there, I thought it was too late.
She
was sitting there in a pool of your blood, and you were so white…” Griffon runs his other hand through his hair, tugging at the curls, and I can feel the effort he’s using to control his anger.

“But I’m okay,” I say, feeling stronger already. I shift in the bed, my muscles stiff. “It was an accident—”

“That’s two ‘accidents’ in two weeks, Cole.” His whisper grows harsh, and he squeezes my hand for emphasis. His beautiful eyes are dull and desperate as he looks at me. “When are you going to realize she’s out to hurt you? When I think of what could have happened—of what did happen when I was standing just a few feet away…” He raises my right hand to his lips and kisses my fingers.

I can feel my heart rate rising and glance over at the monitors, hoping that they won’t give me away. I remember the flash of danger when my hand brushed Veronique’s that afternoon, but I don’t really remember the details of the accident. As glad as I am that she’d tried to help, it was a pretty huge coincidence that she was there when it happened. “Then why did she save my life?”

Griffon presses his lips together. “I don’t know,” he finally admits. “I’ve been thinking about it nonstop, and I can’t come up with anything that makes sense. She must have wanted it to look like an accident. Maybe she thought you wouldn’t survive, and helping you would throw off any suspicion.”

I stare at him, surprised at the passion in his voice. I’ve never had anyone worry about me so much.

“I’m supposed to protect you this time,” he says quietly. “And I’m screwing it up already.”

At first I love hearing those words. He wants to keep me safe. Who wouldn’t love that? And then I look at them a little more carefully. “What do you mean ‘this time’?”

He glances at me like he doesn’t know what I’m talking
about. “I just mean now. In this lifetime. I need to protect you from Veronique.”

I wonder again, despite all of the things he’s said, if that’s all I am to him. He’s already out to save the world; why not save me on the side? “I’ve already told you, I don’t need protecting.”

Griffon glances at the machines behind me and the I.V. hanging from the pole next to the bed. “Yeah, you’re doing a great job at the moment.”

A door opens and Dad appears through the curtain, two cups of coffee in his hands. His tired eyes lift as he sees me, and Griffon has to reach out and grab the cups before they fall.

“Cole!” Dad says, his voice wavering. He clears his throat. “About time you decided to join us. It was getting pretty boring just sitting here watching you sleep.”

I manage a small smile. Dad is famous for handling difficult situations with stupid jokes, and for once I’m glad for the distraction. “Sorry I missed all the excitement.”

“Thanks for the coffee,” Griffon says. He grabs his jacket off the back of the chair. “I should get going.”

“You don’t have to,” I say. “It’s okay.” Just because I don’t want to be the helpless female in his hero movie doesn’t mean I want him to go.

“Your dad’s back. I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing. I’ll call you later.” The door thunks behind him as Griffon practically sprints out of the room, and I know that I’m going to spend the next several hours repeating his last sentence to myself. He’s going to call me later.

Dad leans over to kiss my cheek. He smoothes the hair out of
my face like he used to when I was little and he was putting me to bed. In that one gesture, I realize how much I miss sitting and reading with him at bedtime every night. I used to make him read the same books over and over again, every night for weeks at a time. With a sudden rush of sadness I realize that he won’t be my dad next time. Someday I’ll be a little kid again and someone else will read me stories and put me to bed. And I’ll remember this Dad and this lifetime, but he’ll be someone else too and won’t have any memory of the little girl who was me. I wonder how Griffon does it, starting over with new people every lifetime, like a new cast of characters in familiar roles. It must be lonely.

“You gave us all quite a scare,” Dad says. He nods toward the door. “I’ve barely been able to get Griffon to leave your room since you got here.”

I can feel my face getting warm, ridiculously happy at the thought that he sat here the whole time. Dad smiles at me. “We can talk about that later,” he says.

There is a twinge of pain in my left arm, like you get when you bump your funny bone. I look up at where it’s hanging over my head and try to bend my fingers. They twitch in response, and the feeling isn’t so much of pain as it is like my whole arm’s asleep. I notice Dad watching me.

“Do you want me to get more pain meds?”

“No,” I say. “It’s okay right now.” I pause, needing to ask the question, but not sure I want the answer. “Is it bad?”

“Honest?”

“No, Dad. I want you to lie to me. Yes, honest.”

A look of pain crosses his face. “It’s not good. The glass severed
everything right down to the bone. They did surgery to repair as much of the damage as they could.”

I think about the complicated fingerings in
Meditation
. In any piece worth playing. The strength you need for the fortissimo and the control you need for the pianissimo sections. “Can I …,” I begin, but have to breathe out quickly and start over at the thought. “Will I be able to play again soon?”

“I’m sure it will all work out.” Dad’s words say one thing, but the fact that he won’t look at me when he talks says something else. He looks me in the eye and grabs my other hand. “The important thing is that you’re going to be okay.”

It’s almost cute that he thinks that this is most important thing. I know better.

Dad stands up and pulls out his phone. “Right now, I’ve got to call your mother. I finally sent her home to get some rest, but I promised to call the second you woke up.”

I look out the window and realize it’s dark outside. Veronique’s lesson was at four o’clock, which means I’ve been out of it for hours. The last thing I remember is the sound of pounding at the door and the ambulance in the distance. I try to sit up more and am rewarded with woozy spins for my efforts. “What time is it?” I ask.

Dad looks up from his phone and glances at the clock. “It’s almost midnight.”

I let my head flop back on the pillow. Just the effort required to hold a simple conversation is exhausting. I yawn. “I’m so tired. How long have I been asleep?”

He puts the phone up to his ear, and I can hear a distant
ringing. Dad puts one hand on my good arm and gives it a squeeze. “Honey, it’s almost midnight on
Saturday
,” he says as he waits for Mom to pick up. “You’ve been asleep for two days.”

“Well, if you’re okay, I have to get to work,” Kat says, folding the magazine closed and stretching as Mom comes into the room. Between all of them, I haven’t been alone since I got here, and it’s starting to irritate me just a little bit. That, and the fact that I haven’t seen Griffon since he ran out of here two days before.

“Call me if you get out today,” she says, gathering up her bag. “If not, I’ll come by tonight.” She bends down and gives me a peck on the cheek. The accident seems to have brought out the big sister in her, and I don’t completely hate it.

“Thanks,” I say, watching Mom start her shift in the still-warm chair. “Can I have another drink?” I ask, flicking through the TV channels, trying to find something decent to watch. My left arm is still suspended in midair; it looks like it’s frozen in a permanent wave. I can’t move very far without being detached, so going to the bathroom involves moves that are similar to untying a very tangled marionette.

“Sure, baby,” Mom says, bringing me the milk that’s sitting on the bedside table.

“Thanks,” I say, wishing it was Pepsi. I take a sip and glance at the still-full lunch tray that’s next to the bed. The view out the window isn’t so bad—I can even see the top of the Golden Gate Bridge if I crane my neck just right—but the food is inedible. Two days of picking mysterious things off my tray has been enough.

Mom sees my glance. “Are you sure you don’t want something more to eat?”

“No. Besides, they said I might be able to get out of here today.” I smile sweetly at her. “And if I don’t, will you please,
please
get me some calamari and plantains from Cha Cha Cha again?” My favorite Cuban restaurant always goes a long way toward making anything better.

“That would be awfully nice of me,” she says, coming around to my back to fluff up my pillow. “We’ll see.” Apparently now that my death is no longer imminent, I don’t get everything I want.

On the other side of the curtain, I can hear the hallway door open and the squeak of Dr. Shapiro’s shoes on the polished floor. He knocks on the side of the door before pulling the curtain back.

“How are things today, Miss Ryan?” he asks, glancing at the computer screen next to the bed.

“Better,” Mom jumps in. “She seems to be getting some feeling back in the tips of her fingers,” she adds. “And the color seems to be better too. We’ve been keeping a careful eye on that for the past twenty-four hours.”

“Thank you,” he says brusquely to Mom, and then turns pointedly toward me. “May I have a look?”

I nod and take a deep breath. When it’s wrapped up tight in white bandages, I don’t have to think too much about what’s going on underneath, but whenever he wants to have a look, the reality of what happened sets in. Dr. Shapiro tries hard to be gentle, but just a bump sends a shooting pain straight up to my shoulder.

“Let’s see what we’re working with here,” he says, unhooking my arm from the sling that keeps it upright and unwrapping the
bandage. My arm looks small and bright yellow, which he said is from the antiseptic they use during surgery. Running straight down the inside of my arm from wrist almost to elbow is an angry red line covered in shiny black stitches. I can hear Mom sharply inhale.

Dr. Shapiro doesn’t say anything, just looks at the scar from several angles. He gently pinches the ends of my fingers. “Can you feel that?”

“Some,” I say.

“Still feel a little numb?”

“Kind of. Mostly from my middle finger to my pinky.”

“Hmm,” he says. “Let me see you move them.”

The fear that it is going to hurt is worse than the actual pain as I carefully bend my fingers down as far as they’ll go.

“Well,” he says, opening up some new gauze to put over the stitches, “the wound is healing nicely, and I don’t see any signs of infection. Which is great.”

“What about the nerve damage?” Mom asks anxiously. “Will she have the same range of motion as before? You know that Nicole is an exceptionally gifted cellist, and I can’t imagine what it would do to her career if—”

“We’ll have to wait and see, Mrs. Ryan,” Dr. Shapiro says sharply, cutting her off mid-sentence. It’s so embarrassing that she doesn’t see how much she annoys him. “Right now I’m more concerned with infection and saving her life than I am with some of the fine motor skills she may lose,” he continues. “The ulnar nerve was completely severed, along with extensive tissue damage. At this point, she’s lucky she gets to keep her hand.” He smiles
apologetically at me. “The scar shouldn’t be too bad,” he says. “I’m good with a stitch, if I do say so myself.”

I look at my arm, all packaged up tight, as he hooks me back up to the pulley system. From the outside, it’s all going to look completely normal, but I know with stone-cold certainty that it will never be the same. The thought that I won’t be able to play again feels like a big empty space inside, as if more than just some nerves and tendons have been severed. I’ve been feeling guilty about making the cello my career since I found out the truth about my “gift.” Maybe now, I’ll have no choice.

“I think we can let you go later today, if you promise to keep it elevated as much as possible.” Dr. Shapiro turns to Mom. “I’ll give you some information about physical therapy and rehabilitation before she’s released.”

“I want the best therapists in the city,” Mom says as I cringe from embarrassment. “Nicole has a promising career ahead of her, and to have something like this end it would just be so … tragic.”

Dr. Shapiro smiles a tight smile. “I’ve done everything I can do. Now it’s just a waiting game to see how well the nerves react.” He squeezes my foot through the covers. “I’ll check back in before you go.”

I wait until the door shuts behind him to say anything. “Do you even hear yourself?”

“What? It’s true! In order to become a truly world-class musician, you need to have quick reflexes and strong fingers. If you don’t get all of the feeling back, I just…” She puts her head in her hands. “I just don’t know what we’ll do.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” I demand. “Didn’t you hear him? I could have
bled to death, and all you care about is whether I can play the cello again! Sometimes I think you don’t even care about me. Just what I can do.”

Mom stands up and takes a step toward the bed. “How can you say that? After everything we’ve done? You know we love you.”

“I know you love the fact that I can play the cello. And that you get to be the mother of a child prodigy,” I say, anger and frustration spilling over into my words. “But guess what, Mom—you can’t be a child prodigy if you aren’t a child anymore. And I’m not. Pretty soon, I’m just going to be a regular adult who happens to be good at the cello.” I wiggle my fingers in the bandages. “Or at least that’s what was going to happen. Face it: I’m not that special anymore.”