“Next thing I knew, I was in the stairwell. The desk was too. The explosion pushed us both clear out of the apartment. I felt like I’d been hit by a wave.”
I was listening so intently—I was so with him—that I felt the wave of heat and fear almost as a physical sensation.
“But it wasn’t just the bomb. What pushed me back—” He looked for my eyes with his. I think he needed to be sure I was really there. And I was. I’d forgot where and even who I was, I was so completely focused on what he was telling me. “Jules,” he said. “It was something else.”
“What?”
“My feeling,” he said. “My feeling pushed me. I could see that my life is—was—wrong.”
When I didn’t nod or show that I was following, he went on. “I’m not talking about my life now, the way I am with you. I’m talking about my life in the future. How I felt was—Juliet, I didn’t want to go.”
“And that was the feeling that pushed you out of the room? You think a feeling did that?”
“You’ve got to understand how strong it was. It was—it came from every fiber of my being.”
Lucas was speaking so softly I had to lean in close to hear him.
“I landed in the hallway. On top of one of my guys—
Halleck. His AK, I think it discharged. I felt it. He probably hit someone. I don’t know.”
I held my head. Dizzy.
“When you die, you do see your life flash before your eyes,” Lucas said.
“Okay,” I said.
“The flashing—it’s where you and I are right now. All this time that we’ve been together, I’ve been in Baghdad too, or somewhere, dying. Seeing you, being here—it’s been a gift. From … the universe.”
“You’re real, Lucas,” I reminded him. “I’m touching you.”
“Not really,” he said. “But I’ll take it. I’ve loved every touch, being with you, being seventeen again.”
“You are seventeen,” I said. “You’re going to stay seventeen.”
“No,” he murmured, growing weaker. “Iraq—what’s happening to me there. I think it’s almost over.”
“But you think you’re dying in Iraq,” I repeated stupidly. I could feel my voice cracking. “And that can’t be, because you’re here, with me.” I shook my head. The tears were flowing down my cheeks. “You’re here because of the strap on your helmet,” I insisted. “This is a head injury, and the doctors are going to figure it all out.”
“No, Juliet,” he whispered. “The strap has nothing to do with this. Maybe it sped up what was going to happen anyway. Maybe not. I can’t control this. The future, that’s what’s in control.”
I started to argue, but he stopped me. “I’m sure,” he said.
“I’m in a dream here with you, and I just need to not wake up.” I could see that it was taking all his strength to talk. “I love this dream,” he said. “When I think back … to the beginning, when I didn’t even know … what was happening to me …” I could see he was getting sleepy again. He might have drifted off as he was talking. “I just got to see you again … to smell you … to kiss you … to stand with you … in the snow … skating with my little brothers …” He stopped. “When I skied to your house.” His voice broke. “I would give anything. To keep this. To keep the dream.”
“You have to believe me, Lucas. This is real,” I said. “I know it’s real. I am real.”
Lucas blinked slowly.
“What year is it, then?” I said. “In the future, the place you think is real? How can you remember so many things and not remember the date?”
Lucas closed his eyes, as if the light he was looking at had gotten too bright.
“I’m going to hold on,” he said. “As long as I can.”
I thought about his mom. I thought about calling her. But I didn’t know what would happen if I let go of Lucas, even for an instant. He seemed that weak and afraid. I was holding his hand, trying not to squeeze too hard, because when I did, I stopped being able to feel him squeezing me back.
“You will have a good life,” he said. “You will forget me.”
“I won’t forget you,” I choked through sobs. “I couldn’t. I can’t.”
“You’d be surprised.” He was speaking so softly now I had to strain to understand him.
“No,” I said through clenched teeth, surprised at the anger I felt toward him.
He tried to smile. “Write it down if you want.” He swallowed with difficulty. “But, Juliet? Before? Can I hold you? Can I … just … have you?” My anger lifted.
I climbed onto the bed with Lucas. We lay on our sides, facing each other, our heads resting on the same pillow. I looked into his eyes, tracing the way the lines of darker blue mixed into the light. I watched him blink until I stopped being able to see it. The rhythm of our blinking, our heartbeats, became the same. He leaned toward me to kiss me and then we just lay that close, our noses touching, our lips an inch apart, our eyes locked. I don’t know for how long.
A feeling of sweetness came over me. Over us, I believe; I am certain Lucas felt it too. “Lucas,” I said, feeling so sure of the way he loved me that I could be sure about everything else too. I could step off a cliff and know that he would keep me from falling. He held my hand.
“Lucas,” I said. “I will never let go of you.”
“You will,” he said, sounding just as drugged as I felt, just as unwilling to disturb the still surface of the pond.
“I think you’re fighting it,” I said. “And I want you to. I want you to fight this.”
Lucas made a noise, part groan, part sign. “I want …,” he said. “So much.” He was fading. When he blinked his eyes, they stayed closed.
“Keep fighting,” I repeated.
I said the words half-asleep, feeling as if I were gazing down on the room from above. And looking back, I remember it that way. I see the stark white bed, the shiny steel bed rails, the dark question marks of Lucas’s and my bodies curled toward each other, our noses touching, sharing the same air, as if nothing bad were ever going to happen to us.
I heard my mother’s voice. “Juliet!”
I sat up quickly, before I was fully awake. I felt wonderful, like I’d slept for hours, or taken a nap on the beach. The light of the hospital room was blinding, but it didn’t bother me. It took me a second to remember where I was and why, and even after I did, the feeling of peace did not dissipate.
How could I feel so amazing? I couldn’t have been asleep long. Or at least, Lucas couldn’t have, because the nurses would have come in to wake him two minutes after I’d failed to do so.
“Your shoes,” my mom said, frowning in disapproval. I looked down. I was wearing black ankle boots that weren’t the cleanest, and yet here they were, defiling a hospital bed. My mom doesn’t like dirty shoes anywhere—but especially not in a setting that’s aiming for sterile.
“Oops,” I said.
“The nurses told me the Dunreadys are in some kind of big meeting with all the doctors and they’ll be back any minute,” my mom hissed. “Get off the bed.”
I slid down. Lucas slept on. It was probably getting close to the time when I should wake him, I thought. My mom brushed the dirt from the bed with the flat of her palm.
“You came back?” I asked.
“I was worried about you,” she said. “I left work a little early. I thought I’d check in.”
At this, I felt like Mom had snatched off a warm quilt I’d been cozily sleeping under. “A little early?” I said. Last time I’d checked the clock, it was 2:23. My mom leaves her office at five. “What time is it now?”
“Three-thirty. Actually, a little after.”
“How long did we sleep?” I screeched. My mom just stared at me, afraid of my voice. She didn’t understand. It was impossible for her to be right about the time.
“Lucas!” I said, rushing to the side of the bed. “Lucas, wake up!” I shook his shoulder. Gently, because of how weak he was. Then more firmly, because
I was panicking. I pressed the button to call a nurse. Then I stepped into the hall. I shouted, “Nurse! Nurse!” because nothing was happening. Lucas wasn’t opening his eyes.
No one came for what felt like forever. I remember my mother’s voice: “What’s going on?” I remember thinking, How does she not know? She’s my mother. She’s supposed to know everything.
Then the nurse with the puppies on her scrubs was frowning, running. The room filled. There were questions with no answers. Someone was on a phone, paging doctors, requesting medications, supplies. A nurse I’d never seen before attached a syringe to the port in the tube coming out of Lucas’s arm.
“What are you doing to him?” I asked, though I knew I should just let them work. “What is that?”
“A stimulant,” the nurse said. She was calm, with her hair brushed neatly into a bun at the base of her neck.
And just as Mrs. Dunready burst into the room trailing Lucas’s team of doctors, all at a run, Lucas shot up in bed.
Bolt upright. For an instant, I swear, even his curly hair straightened. He gasped for air like someone had held him underwater nearly to the point of drowning. His eyes were open wide. His fingers—I remember noticing them—were straining, his arms extended like he was grasping for something just out of reach.
He let out this noise. I hate to even think of it. It was part moan, part strangled cry. It was a noise I can only describe as naked. Internal. It was the kind of noise you make when you are rolling a two-hundred-pound rock off your own crushed leg.
“Lucas!” Mrs. Dunready shouted. While Mr. Dunready hung back, gripping the chair rail on the wall behind him, she charged to the bed and grabbed Lucas’s hands, moving quickly, in the way of a nurse used to handling patients. “You’re here. You’re here,” she repeated. “Stay with us, baby, stay here.” Mr. Dunready was shifting from foot to foot, as if he wanted to run but couldn’t look away.
Lucas’s straight back relaxed and his eyes found his mom’s. Then his dad’s. He shook his head as if he’d been swimming and was getting the hair off his face. Then he slumped forward into his mother’s strong arms.
“You’re here,” Mrs. Dunready repeated.
A pair of orderlies rushed into the room with a gurney. And then a nurse with a bucket of towels and shaving cream. I learned later she was tasked with shaving Lucas’s head in preparation for emergency surgery. “What, him?” she said. She looked at the nearest nurse, then at Lucas. “I thought this was a Code Seven.”
My mom was the one who explained. “He just sat up,” she whispered. “Something the other nurse gave him.”
Yet another nurse pushed past the orderlies, this one wheeling a cart with what I thought was a cash register on top until I realized it was a machine I’d seen used a million times in that TV show ER. A crash cart.
I actually thought for a second that the nurse with the crash cart was just storing it in Lucas’s room, that she had used it on another patient and was returning it. That made more sense than what I learned later.
You see, Lucas hadn’t been sleeping. He’d been flatlining. Not for long—thirty-five, forty seconds. Not enough time for brain damage, but enough to scare everyone on the floor half to death. Enough for his mom, hearing the coded announcement and knowing what it meant, to believe that Lucas had died.
Mr. Dunready elbowed his way through the crowd to lay a hand on the rail of Lucas’s bed. Mrs. Dunready was crying, gasping for air, as if relief was choking her. The nurses had stepped between her and Lucas. They were making Lucas lie down. My mom moved behind them. She put a hand on my arm.
A doctor I didn’t recognize was paging through Lucas’s chart, and Dr. Katz was just watching the whole scene unfold with one hand on his chin, like he was waiting, or thinking, or waiting to think.
I learned later that during a shift change at the nurses’ station, someone had accidentally turned off the timer on Lucas’s monitor, so when he and I were lying on the bed together, he had fallen deeper into sleep than he was supposed to.
Later, Lucas would tell me his mother thought the deep sleep was what saved him, but I knew it wasn’t. I went so far as to re-create the timing, repeating every word we’d spoken and pacing out the steps I’d taken. This convinced me that Lucas had slipped away—started to flatline—only after I’d let go of him and climbed down from the bed. His heart had stopped and his breathing had ceased only when I’d gotten up. He must have been holding on because of me, and when I’d let go of him, he had died.
Dr. Katz shone a light in Lucas’s eyes, asked him if he knew where he was. “The hospital,” Lucas replied easily, all traces of slurred speech gone.
“How long have you been here?”
“I’m not sure. I remember the team dinner. I wasn’t feeling well.”
“I’m going to palpate your skull. Please let me know if you feel any tenderness or pain.” He put his thumbs under Lucas’s jaw, pressed the base of his neck with his fingertips. “Anything?” he said.
“Not a thing.”
He moved his thumbs to Lucas’s temples. “Here?”
“No.”
“Who was president the year you were born?”
“Carter.”
“Who’s president now?”
“Michael Jackson?” No one in the room laughed except Mr. Dunready, who immediately apologized. Lucas rolled his eyes. “It’s Clinton.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
For the first time during this series of questions, Lucas paused. He looked over at me. “Juliet,” he said, as if he was remembering me from a long time before. “I didn’t know you were here.” He furrowed his brow. “The last few days … I don’t remember them all that clearly. It’s not that I don’t remember being here. It’s just …”
“Your body was in a state of severe distress.” Mrs. Dunready was leaning down from behind, the closest she could get to him in the sea of nurses and residents measuring, checking, updating. She laid a hand on his shoulder.
“What happened to me?” Lucas asked. He looked around the room, which was rapidly clearing out—the orderlies with the gurney and the nurse with the crash cart departing, floor nurses getting called into other rooms, residents and med students checking their pagers, stepping out to use the phone at the nurses’ station. Finally, it was just Dr. Katz, the nurse with the puppy scrubs, Lucas’s mom and dad, my mom, and me.
“We don’t actually know,” Dr. Katz said, looking Lucas in the eye in a way that I had to assume was reassuring to him. “There may have been a bleed, or at least some swelling, in your cranium that caused you to be symptomatic. No concussion was observed from your fall on the ice, and though your behavioral response concerned us enough to order scans, we found nothing unusual. Clearly something was going on with you. We just don’t know what.”
Lucas’s gaze strayed to me again. “I fell on the ice?”
I stared.
“Dad?” Lucas said. “You’re back?”
If he didn’t remember the fall … If he didn’t remember that his dad had been here for days … If he didn’t remember me either … What did he remember?
Then Lucas laughed.
It was a nervous laugh. I’d seen Lucas nervous before, but I’d never seen him laugh in response to that feeling. Usually he’d do the opposite, looking at whatever he was afraid of straight on, willing himself to stay calm, tell the truth, get what he wanted.
I walked to the bed, put a hand on the mattress next to him. I didn’t touch him. But I leaned over, close to his face, so that even if everyone else in the room could hear us, there would at least be the illusion of intimacy. “Do you remember that dream you’ve been having?” I said. “About the war?”
“Dream?” Lucas said.
“It’s not unusual to lose memories in a situation like this,” Dr. Katz dipped in to explain. “In situations of trauma.”
I looked at Lucas. He met my gaze and then quickly looked away. But it was enough for me to pinpoint what was mi
ssing: it was in his eyes. Before, they had always flashed and sparkled, suggesting that he knew more than people might assume. Now his eyes were flat, staring, fixed forward in the way of someone who can’t see. Younger, less knowing eyes.
“Stop looking at me like that, Jules.” He laughed that nervous laugh again.
“You can lose a memory,” Dr. Katz continued. “No one yet has a precise, or even rough, understanding of how memory works. All we know is that the memories are likely still there, stored in various regions of the brain. What you lose is your ability to reassemble them.”
“You don’t remember the dream?” I asked Lucas again quietly.
He shrugged. “I guess I kind of remember that I had a dream,” he said. “Was it intense?”
“That’s an understatement.”
“She told us you were convinced this dream was real,” Mrs. Dunready said. Using “she,” as if I weren’t in the room. “She said you had delusions about predicting the future.”
Lucas looked at me again. “I did?”
“You weren’t exactly seeing the future,” I said. “It was more like you could remember it.”
“Did I think—” he began. His face, gray only moments earlier, was now nearly scarlet with embarrassment. “I thought I had time-traveled?”
Mr. Dunready drew his head back and shuddered, like he was recoiling from the sight of something revolting.
“You have no memory of that now?” Mrs. Dunready asked. I half believed she had her fingers crossed behind her back, begging the universe for the return of her firstborn son from the land of crazy. Just as I had mine crossed as I prayed, Please remember, please, please.
“No,” Lucas said. He looked at me, as if I would tell him if that was the right answer.
And I guess I smiled. Maybe I shrugged.
How do you react when a face you have touched with your hands, your mouth, eyes you have memorized, imagined, stared into, watched watching you—how do you react when it’s become the face of a stranger?
I Remember You Page 17
