Untethered (33 page)

I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of antiseptic. I’m about to tell her more when I hear the whoosh of the door. My eyes fly open to see Sam standing there panting. He looks at me, his lashes wet behind his glasses, his chin quivering. “Sylvie?”

I nod and he runs over, throwing his arms around me. I feel a sharp tug on my hand as he accidentally pulls at my IV.

“Ow!” I say, but give him a smile to let him know it’s no big deal.

He pulls back and stands by the side of the bed shifting from one foot to the other. “I was worried. With what happened in the pool—”

“Where’s Kevin?”

His eyes water over. “Here. At the hospital, I think. But ...” He puts a thumb to his mouth and bites down as he talks. “They gave him mouth to mouth, the whole works. He ... I don’t know if he’s alive. When they put him in the ambulance, it didn’t seem like it. But how can someone drown so quickly?”

No. No, no. He can’t be dead
.

“I need to know how he is.” My voice is trembling.
This is all my fault.
I suddenly start coughing like crazy, pain sawing through my throat.

“Sylvie, I don’t want to leave your side. You’ve still got pneumonia.” Mom’s face is grey.

“Please? Please, Mom.”

She hesitates. Looks from me to Sam. “You stay here,” she tells him, and goes out into the hall.

All I’d wanted to do was get out of him. I was sure he’d come back if he were forced. Sure it would work if Cassie read the message. But what if ... what if instead of saving us both ... what if I killed him? What if I’m a murderer?

“Oh God, Sam,” I say, feeling woozy. “He has to be okay. He just has to.”

Sam gives me another hug, carefully this time. We stay like that until my mom comes through the door again. “We can’t get any information on Kevin. Hospital policy.” She sits in the one chair in the room, pulling it as closely as possible to the bed. “I called your father. He’s on his way here.”

“Okay.”

“I’m so happy, Sylvie.” Mom strokes my arm. I know I should be euphoric, but there’s an anxious gnawing in my gut, cutting into my happiness.
Where is Kevin?

“Sylvie,” Sam says. “Nelson gave me a ride over here. He’s out in the waiting area ...”

“Get him.” I say without hesitation.

Mom grabs Sam’s arm to stop him leaving. “It’s too soon for visitors, Sylvie.”

“Just for one minute, Mom. It’s important.”

When Sam brings Nelson into the room, Mom’s too concentrated on me to even notice his blue hair. He stands at the foot of my bed, looking nervous.

“Nelson.” My voice is still rough from the tube. “I thought after what I told you in the Art room today you wouldn’t like me anymore.”

He shakes his head, then looks up to the ceiling and blinks a bunch of times. “It’s true?”

I wait until he looks at me and then I say, “I know it’s nuts, but, yeah, everything’s true.”

He doesn’t leave. He just stands there staring at me, like he’s not sure what to think. My mom and Sam silently slip out of the room.

“I should have gone to that bonfire that time you asked me. And I should have kissed you back,” I whisper to Nelson. “Thing is, I only wanted Kevin. I couldn’t see that there were better people out there.”

“Guess you got Kevin after all,” Nelson says bitterly, looking down at his feet.

I laugh, but it hurts my chest. Nelson comes over to the side of the bed and briefly touches my hand.

His warmth is like a little fire. It warms all of me. Especially my heart.

The door to the room flies open and my dad rushes in, looking like a rumpled Clark Kent. He sits on my bed and crushes me in a hug. His shoulders shake as he cries. “I was so worried we’d lose you,” he says. I glance towards the edge of the bed.

Nelson’s gone.

My whole family stays well past visiting hours that day and the next two. They pull in chairs from a neighboring room then take turns accompanying me while I’m forced out of the room for a whole set of tests I don’t know the names of. From an MRI to a 40 question survey to making me smell stuff one nostril at a time, the experience is both terrifying and strangely surreal.

I don’t bring up being Kevin again, but every once in a while I ask one of my parents to see if they can find out what’s happened to him. They do it grudgingly. No one tells them anything.

Near 11 pm, the head nurse kicks everyone out. “Sylvie needs rest and so do you. Go home. You can come back tomorrow morning.” At my parents’ hesitation she insists, “She’ll still be here.”

I nod. “Believe me, I’m not going anywhere.”

When they leave, my room is quiet except for the faint bustle of the nurses in the hall. It’s lonely and chilly, so I pull my blanket up to my chin but keep my eyes open in the semi-darkness. I stare out the window to the brightness of the parking lot, and beyond that to the dim glow of the moon behind clouds. I wonder if Nelson’s lying awake in the moonlight. I wonder where Kevin is, if he can see the moon.

I wonder if Cassie’s looking at that same moon right now and I suddenly wish I were with her. That we were in my backyard staring at it together.

Three nights later, when I get the green light to take a walk with my mom in the hospital halls, I decide to search Kevin out.

Mom holds my arm like I’m weak, but I’m not. I feel fine. Great, in fact, apart from the bruising and itching in the spots where there were stickers for the EKG or whatever it was. But, hey, I’ll take minor allergies over a penis and facial hair any day. I shuffle along the shiny Linoleum floors in paper hospital slippers eyeing the names on the outside of each room: Conroy, Harper, Adams, Schmidt, Krusinsky, Sanchez ... We do the entire second floor but I don’t see a Phillips anywhere.

“Let’s get you back to your room,” my mom says, steering me that way.

“No. I want to keep walking. Third floor.”

“I really think—”

“I need to find Kevin, Mom,” I say softly.

“Sylvie!”

“Mom.” Apparently something in my voice gets to her, because she blinks at me then sighs and heads towards the elevator.

We walk the whole third floor, then my mom forces me to sit and rest for five minutes in one of the lounges. We watch the doctors and nurses bustle past, along with other patients trailing IV’s hanging from a pole on wheels. Visitors in winter coats carry stuffed bears and flowers wrapped in cellophane. I time five minutes exactly, then I tug my mom’s sleeve. We board the elevator for the fourth floor.

When the doors open, I feel my insides jump. There in front of me is Kevin’s dad and step-mom, both looking tired and disheveled. They get in as we get off. I turn around as Mr. Phillips presses the button for the restaurant level. Kevin’s step-mom and I cross gazes, and I see sudden shock in her eyes right before the elevator door closes. My painting. She recognized me.

“He’s here,” I whisper to Mom as we try to walk casually down the hall. Now there seems to be a lot more hospital staff in the hallway. Two nurses chat at the nurses’ station, pointing to something on the computer. A doctor stands rubbing her temples then writing something down on a chart. An orderly pushes a cart around the corner. Suddenly, Mom’s grip on my arm tightens. I look at the room we’re passing. Room 404. K. Phillips. A big laminated sign stating NO VISITORS hangs on the closed door.

“I’ve got to see him.” I move towards the room.

“No visitors,” Mom says between clenched teeth as she smiles at a nurse walking by. The same nurse who was on duty those mornings I snuck in to see my body.

“I don’t care.”

“Sylvie, you are not going in there.” Mom whispers it with force.

I turn around. All the staff seem busy, their backs to us for the moment. It’s now or never.

“I’ll meet you by the elevator,” I say, prying Mom’s hand from my arm and slipping into room 404 before she can do anything about it.

Inside, it’s déjà vu. The machines, the tubes. Just like me, just a few days ago.

I stand next to the bed, looking down at the thick lace of Kevin’s eyelashes and suddenly feel like crying. Yes, Kevin’s been a jerk. And no, I definitely don’t have a crush on him anymore. But I do care about him. A lot. I just hope he’s learned as much as I have throughout this whole mess.

I can’t feel his presence like I could when I was in his body. “Kevin?” I whisper. “Are you here?”

Dread trickles through me when I hear nothing.
Please, please be here.
I glance at the window and see something shimmery over my left shoulder. I blink and concentrate and there is his reflection, his copper hair brilliant under the light, his shoulders strong. My body goes weak with relief that he’s still here, still nearby. “I’m sorry about all this. I didn’t mean ...” But I stop, swallow and say, “Why don’t you come back?”

He doesn’t answer. I think about how his mom doesn’t spend time with him and how his dad forces him to compete. How his best friend is a prick and his grades are in the toilet. How Cassie now knows what he did.

“You’re strong enough to deal with it all, Kevin. Despite what you think.”

The only sound in the room is the beeping of machines.

I think of the memory I experienced just before I left his body. “Heroes don’t run away. Maybe it doesn’t mean much to you anymore, but you were a hero to me back in fifth grade.” I swallow and blink back tears. “You could still be.”

I turn away from his reflection and take another look at his body covered in wires and tubes. “Come back, Kevin. Before it’s too late.”

Suddenly, the body on the bed convulses and there’s one huge gasp for air. The machines go wild, beeping and screaming. Kevin’s eyes open and he looks at me. There’s no anger there, no hatred. Just the feeling of something shameful shared.

I hear footsteps running down the hall on the other side of the door. I cover my face with my arms and slip out of the room, fast as I can.

“Hey!” that same nurse yells. But she goes into Kevin’s room instead of following me.

When I get near the elevator my mom’s pacing furiously and looks ready to kill me. She sees me running and knows instantly to punch the DOWN button. I reach her just as the bell dings. I push her inside, and she pulls at the sleeve of my gown. “I cannot believe you!”

I catch my breath and give her a wide smile. “It’s okay, Mom. Kevin’s gonna be okay.”

The hospital gives me my discharge papers the next afternoon. But before I leave, Dr. Hong comes to visit. “Sylvie,” he says, smiling.

“Dr. Hong. What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to wish you a good trip home. And let you know that if you want to talk, I’ll listen.”

My voice is sharp. “I already did talk to you, Dr. Hong. But you never listened.”

He nods. “Fair enough.” He holds out his hand for me to shake. I hesitate, but take it. “I’m very glad you’re back.”

“Me, too.”

When Dad comes to take me home, there’s a light dusting of snow melting on his shoulders.

“Snow? Already?”

“It’s Wisconsin,” he shrugs. He wraps my winter coat and scarf around me and, because of hospital policy, rolls me in a wheelchair out to the parking lot. On the passenger seat of his car is a paper bag filled with Twix and Nestle Crunch bars. I pick it up with a lump in my throat.

“I have a feeling you won’t need to hide them anymore,” Dad says when I set the bag gently on my lap. “Your mom will cut you some slack for a while.”

I smile at him and then he takes me back to the house he no longer lives in. When I open the door I breathe in the scent of the place. It smells like potpourri and charred vegetables. It smells like home. Mom and Sam have decorated the place with purple and green crepe paper, long streamers hanging from the light fixtures and the doorways. They’ve gone all out — there’s even a cake, a fancy bakery one, one that’s full of trans-fats. Mom beams at me while I shovel in forkful after forkful.

The four of us sit around the kitchen table eating cake and playing Dad’s beat-up Parcheesi game. I feel a strange settling in my stomach when I look at my parents and my brother licking frosting off their lips and moving their colored pawns around the board. It’s like we’re a family. A real family. That is, until Dad says, “I’d better get going.”

“Now?” A thin needle of pain pierces my chest.

Dad grins and pats my head like I’m a Labrador. “It’s midnight. I don’t want to turn into a pumpkin.”

“What about the snow?”

“It’s light, Sylvie. Don’t worry.” He hugs me. I squeeze him back hard.

Mom walks Dad to the door. “Thanks, Nicole.” Dad’s voice is soft as velour. Mom touches his upper arm briefly before he leaves. Sam and I exchange hopeful glances that they might still work it out yet.

“We should all get to bed; especially you, Sylvie,” Mom says.

“You guys go on ahead. I kind of want to sit here by myself for a bit.”

They both hesitate. Mom can’t seem to make her feet move. But they eventually go upstairs and leave me to my own devices. I listen to the water running in the bathroom, the floorboards creaking above my head. This house is noisier than Kevin’s. But better. So much better.

After a bit, I go up to my room and bite down on my tongue to stop from crying. I love this place. Love the artwork on the walls, the desk stained with ink.

I sit at my desk chair and take in the fact that I’ll be sleeping in my own room tonight. My cell phone rests in its charger. On the screen it says
1 message
.

I open it and see the text. It’s from Nelson:

“Offr 4 bnfire still stnds. We cn talk. bout evrything.

And mybe try anothr kiss?”

The tears take over, but there’s a smile underneath.

Forty-Two

Two Girls on Either Side of the Hedge

I can’t sleep. I go downstairs into the living room and sit down on the couch. There’s a dim light shining in the driveway between my house and Cassie’s. I get up and lean against the window, stretching my neck to try and see if Cassie’s bedroom lights are on. They are.

I wonder if she’s already painted over her butterfly mural. Already thrown out everything I’ve ever given her.