“What?” I manage to say.
“That you come right back if anything seems off. Hallucinations. Paranoia. Delusions,” he counts them off on his fingers.
“Is that likely?” I ask. I don't add that I already have all these things anyway.
“One never can tell with a bump on the head. Everything looks fine but the brain is a funny thing. Takes on a life of its own sometimes.”
He smiles. Surely doctors aren't supposed to smile when talking about brain damage are they? Then he hands me a card.
“Call me if you have any questions and make a follow up appointment for a week from now. I wasn’t able to get any of your medical records. I'd like to go over them and make sure everything really is fine.”
I take the card and nod. I know I won't be making any such appointment and I also know that one look at the records and he'll be hauling me back to the hospital for sure. It's only been by sheer will and much persuading on my part that Big Sally has kept me out of the lock down ward. Doctor Livingston? I know he would never be on my side.
26.
Getting discharged from the hospital is never as quick as it sounds. I wait for ages for the nurse to come and remove the IV and while I'm contemplating pulling the sucker out myself, I call the school. I need someone to come and pick me up but I can't get through. First someone there picks up and then hangs up on me before I can say anything. Then the line goes dead. I keep trying, each time the panic creeping in more and more. They don't want me there. I've been kicked out. What am I going to do? Even more pressing is the fact that I don't have any clean clothes. I want someone to bring me my stuff but I can't even get hold of anyone. By the time the nurse finally comes in I'm actually crying. I don’t know what's wrong with me. I blame the bump on the head but deep down I know it's more than that. Something is off. I should tell Doctor Livingston, insist they run more tests. I feel like I’m teetering at the edge of a very tall cliff. One wrong move and I'll plummet into the black abyss. Instead I tell the nurse that I can't get hold of anyone to pick me up and I don’t have any clean clothes.
“Well, we have stuff here you could wear,” she says. “Spare scrubs. Not exactly stylish but they'll do in a pinch. And you could call a cab.”
I thank her through my sobs. The thought of taking a cab back to Victoria College alone and in the dark makes me want to vomit. But it's what I'll have to do if I want the scholarship. My only other choice is to go home and I'm not wanted there either. With Mark I thought I’d found someone to ease the pain but I’m all alone. I know that now more than ever. My empty hospital room has been evidence of that.
The nurse comes back with clean scrubs and my discharge papers. I sign that I'm aware of my medical condition and that if it worsens then I should return to the emergency room immediately. I don't know exactly how they expect me to get there but I sign anyway. She hands me two prescriptions written out in the sprawling, illegible hand of my doctor.
“What are these?”
“The medication he wants you to try until you go back to see him.”
“He didn't say anything about any medication.”
“I don't know dear, I just hand out the papers. You'd have to talk to him about it.”
I take them and try to see what they are for. From the looks of it they are for the same medications I currently have in my suitcase back at school. The ones I've stopped taking.
I put the scrubs on in the bathroom. One glance in the mirror confirms what I thought. I look like shit. Matted hair frames my pale face, punctured by startlingly green eyes. Panic rises up in my throat like bile. Afraid to see but unable to look away, I peer in closer. This time I really might be losing my mind. For a moment I consider calling Big Sally. Asking her to come and get me. But I don't. I splash cold water on my face and don’t look at my reflection again. I'll go back to that stupid college and get my damned scholarship. I'll show them all.
I'm dressed and sitting on the side of the bed when the nurse comes back.
“Your cab is here,” she says and motions to the wheelchair. “Have to take you out in this I'm afraid. Hospital rules.”
“It's okay.”
Hospitals are always afraid you’ll fall and break a leg between your room and the exit and then sue the hospital for every dirty penny they've got. I know all about their rules. I've broken most of them but this one? It's pretty impossible to get around. You want to leave? Then you shut up and get in the wheelchair. So I do just that.
She wheels me through the hospital. It's eerily quiet. No muffled voices coming from televisions or bleeping of machines. Just rooms with doors closed or curtains drawn. Even the nurses are quiet at their stations, working on computers or looking at charts. I keep my eyes down, focusing on my feet. Afraid if someone looks hard enough they’ll see the insanity growing inside me and insist I stay.
In the elevator panic rises up like a wave as the doors close. I hold my breath. I haven't done that since I was a child. I'm not sure how holding my breath will save me if the elevator plunges to the basement but I do it anyway, watching the red numbers creep down until the doors finally open with a loud ping. I gulp in air like it's going out of fashion.
“You okay?” the nurse asks.
I nod, not answering because I know my shaky voice will betray me.
“You’re not the only one you know.”
Not the only one to what? To hear voices? See things that aren't really there?
“You know, to go home in a cab.” She pats my shoulder.
“I'm not going home,” I say. “I'm going back to school.”
“That's nice,” she says. “You'll be with your friends.”
I don't tell her that I don't have any friends, except maybe my transgender roommate Norma and Noah, the guy I'm pretty sure just wants to get into my pants. And Mark? How could he leave me all alone? I feel a hollow pain growing inside me but I push it down. Not caring is something I'm an expert at.
27.
The cab driver is a fat guy and the car smells of old doughnuts. After I tell him where to go, he doesn't say a word. The nurse wave’s goodbye and I look sadly out the window at her, too tired to even raise my arm.
The sky is black and ominous with flashes of lightening that streak across in brilliant, blinding blasts. Then the rain starts. With the windscreen wipers on high and his hands clutching the wheel, my cab driver navigates the roads like a crazed New York cabbie. I know he can't see anything and other cars appear and disappear as flashes of light that stream past us in an avalanche of water. I'm biting my nails, something I haven't done since ice skating camp. The rain whips against the window, leaving trails of water that run together. Flashes of light illuminate the world outside the window, trees with knotted branches and twisted roots where the green eyed girl could hide. The dread is back. The feeling that she's out there waiting for me is overwhelming. I try and make conversation with the driver, my voice high and strained.
“Some weather huh?”
He grunts.
“Is it always this bad here in Florida?”
This time he doesn't answer. That's when I see water trickling under the door and into the car. At first it's just a tiny river but before long it's pooling around my feet and inching up my ankles. I open my mouth to tell the driver but I can't make words. Twisted plants float on the cold surface, the same pond weed the water girl had in her hair. That's when I start to scream.
“What the hell?” the driver yells.
Now I have his attention but my eyes are closed and I'm screaming bloody murder.
“Shut the hell up will you? Do you want to get us both killed?”
His words cut through my hysteria and I imagine us crumpled like pancakes in a car that's been driven into a tree. I don't want to die in this cab with a pig man. Somehow I have to find the words to tell him.
“Water,” I whisper. “There's water.”
I point to the floor and the water that makes its way closer to the seat where I have my fe
et tucked up.
“It won't kill you,” he grumbles. “It's this dammed hurricane. It wasn't supposed to hit until tomorrow.”
“Hurricane? What hurricane?”
“You know, Elsie. She's heading straight for us. It's going to be one hell of a storm. You were lucky to get a cab. This will be my last fare before they shut us down for the night.”
A hurricane? Maybe that’s why Mark left me. Perhaps he didn’t desert me after all. My heart lifts a little as I’m flung against the door, the driver swerving around downed tree branches in the middle of the road. I should have stayed at the hospital. There it was safe. Secure. Out here nothing is. And as a hand reaches out of the water, I close my eyes and try not to scream.
28.
The driver is so preoccupied with getting us to our final destination alive, that he ignores my screams. Which are little more than squeaks anyway because no sound will come out. I keep my eyes closed, waiting for a cold hand to close around my ankle and pull me down into the swirling water where I'll surely drown. But nothing happens.
“Julia,” I plead inside my head. “Please, leave me alone.”
I repeat it over and over, a mantra to keep me from blacking out completely. Julia never answers but I finally hear a squeal of tires and the cab comes to a grinding stop.
“We made it,” the cabbie says.
I open one eye to see Victoria College looming in front of me. I hear the rumble of thunder in the distance and as I open the door the wind whips it out of my hand.
“Shit,” I say. “Is it going to get any worse?”
“You never been through a hurricane?” he raises an eyebrow.
I shake my head.
“Darling, it's going to get a hell of a lot worse than this. Now where is all this water you were screaming about?”
He looks in the back and as I stand there with my arms wrapped around me in the stupid blue scrubs, I see there is little more than a tiny puddle on the floor.
“That's what you were screaming bloody murder about? I thought the tide was coming in the way you were carrying on.”
“There was more before.”
I want to explain that it was pouring in, threatening to drown me but I know I'll sound crazy if I try. So I don't. I pay the man and thank him, grateful he delivered me in one piece and didn't just dump me off by the side of the road when I lost it in the back of his cab.
“Good luck to you,” he says.
As thunder crashes and the trees around the college are whipped up in a blast of wind, I'm pretty sure I’m going to need it.
29.
Victoria College is black and sour. With the help of Hurricane Elsie she's taken on a life of her own. Groaning and moaning as the wind whips through her. Trees that have grown too close for comfort smack against the windows, threatening to shatter every last one. I remember what Noah told me when I first arrived. She didn't fare too well through the last hurricanes she faced. I hope the renovations stand up to the test they are about to get.
I slip in through the side door and the wind snatches it from my hand and slams it against the wall a few times before I can get it closed. Trying to catch my breath, it feels like the door pants with me. Straining and bulging against a wind that is only going to get stronger. The bare bulb hanging above the door flickers erratically like some kind of crazy Morse code. I ignore it and run into the grand hall where lightning flashes through the windows, bathing everything in a ghostly wash of light. I know she could be anywhere, lurking behind the huge tables or hiding in the paintings. I try not to look at anything as I bolt my way up the stairs and through the maze of corridors.
I want to find Mark, run into his arms and never leave but the threat of the water girl keeps me away. I know somehow she is Julia and where I want to go most, that’s where she’ll be. Hiding under his bed or lurking in his bathroom, waiting to drown me or hurt Mark. I have to stay away from him until I figure things out. Finally winded and head pounding, I burst into my room.
“Jesus. Ana, is that you? You scared me half to death.”
Norma has barricaded herself against the storm by burying her large frame beneath a mound of blankets. I know why. The muggy air that usually seeps through the window frames despite the air conditioning has been replaced by an icy chill. Wind whipped from the sea and brought here by a storm that is going to make us all pay for staying in its path.
“Where is everyone?” I finally catch my breath and find my voice. “No one came to get me. I had to get a cab here and we almost didn't make it.”
“It's not safe to be out on the roads in a hurricane you know.”
“Yeah, I figured that when we almost ran off the road like five times.”
Norma laughs, then points to my scrubs. “So should I call you Dr. Ana now or something?”
“Very funny.”
“At least you look better.”
“I do?”
I don’t feel good. In fact I don’t even feel fine. I feel off, like something inside me has tilted and the whole world is sloping away from me. I don’t know why Norma can’t see that. I scowl at her, remembering how Mark wasn’t the only one who abandoned me.
“So what happened to you anyway?” she ignores my look of death. “I wanted to come and see you but I couldn't get a ride and the Professors have been all over us since you got carted off to the hospital. I think they're afraid they might get sued because we don't have enough supervision or something. It’s been like preschool for dummies around here what with all the roll calls and shit.”
“Really?” I laugh.
Despite my best intentions, I can’t stay mad at Norma. Deep down I know she’d have come to see me if she could. I sit down on the bottom bunk, feeling a bit light headed. Norma tosses a pillow and blanket down to me.
“Sorry, I bummed yours. This storm is freaking up the weather. It's so damned cold up here.”
“No kidding. It wasn't even this cold outside.” I pause for a moment, listening to the wind. “Do you think we're safe here?”
“Probably not. Most everybody went back home except for a few who couldn’t get rides.”
“How many stayed?”
“Don’t know,” Norma says. “I thought maybe you’d gone home too.”
“I can’t go home,” I mutter under my breath.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here. This is going to be the biggest storm to hit Florida in forever. If we survive it we'll be making history!”
“Great.”
My sarcasm sides right over Norma’s head as she peers down at me with a big grin.
“I know, right?”
Surviving the storm will be one thing. Surviving Julia in her new and improved state while being trapped here will be something else entirely.
“Hey, do you know if Mr. Richardson stayed?”
I hold my breath and wait for her to answer. If he went home then maybe that explains everything.
She leans over the side of the bed, her face serious. “You know there was a rumor going around that you guys had a thing. Is it true?”
I don’t answer. I know I’m a liar, the biggest one of all but how can I lie about this? I love him more than anything. Lying about love seems like the worst kind of lie there is.
“Ana!” she grins. “You didn’t. Did you?”
“Did he stay?” I ask quietly.
“Yes. He stayed. Of course he stayed. He probably stayed for you. That’s so damn cute.”
She lies back on her bed and my face breaks. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. He stayed for me but he left me in the hospital? What does that mean? I sink into the mattress, every muscle in my body aching with tension. I want to go find him. Run to his room and demand to know why. Then throw myself into his arms and never leave.
“I think I’m going to go and get some food,” Norma says. “The kitchen’s a free for all now that most everybody’s gone. You want anything?”
But I don’t answer. I pretend to be asleep until I hear Norma leave
the room. Then I get out of bed, ignoring the storm battering outside the window. I have to find Mark.
30.
I run silently through the halls, keeping to the shadows. There may not be very many people left here but the last thing I need is to get caught sneaking off to Mark’s room, especially if people already know about us. Maybe that’s why he got cold feet.
But standing outside his door, I feel small and stupid. What the hell am I doing? Of course he never loved me. It was just a fling. A stupid, childish affair. He probably sleeps with all his students. What makes me so special? I lean against his door, waiting for a reason to burst in. The fact that I love him with all my heart no longer seems like enough. Then the door opens and I tumble inside, landing on my butt in about the most ungraceful fall ever.
“Ana?”
It’s Mark, scooping me up off the floor and setting me back on my feet. I start to laugh. The whole thing is so stupid, it’s actually funny. One look at me in my silly blue scrubs and he’s laughing too. We laugh so hard, tears stream down our faces.
“Why are you always falling on your ass?” he chokes.
“I don’t know,” I wipe the tears away, smiling.
“I’m so glad you’re okay.”
He reaches out to touch me but I step back.
“You left,” I say.
“Oh God Ana, I’m so sorry. I had to. What with the storm coming and the rumors flying around, I couldn’t stay. But it broke my heart to leave.”
“It did?” I look at him, trying to see if he’s lying.
“We should shut this,” he says, closing the door. “We need to be careful. I could get in a lot of trouble.”
“I’m eighteen you know.”
I stand by the window, watching the rain pool on his balcony. I can’t see anything beyond that. The entire world has been wiped out by the storm.
“And I’m thirty three. It’s not a big deal to me but the fact that I’m a Professor here is. If anyone finds out, I’ll lose my job.”
My Deliberate Mistake Page 7
