Blink Once

by Cylin Busby

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Cylin Busby

  For Dad, who has been there and back

  All that we see or seem

  Is but a dream within a dream.

  —EDGAR ALLAN POE

  Chapter 1

  Someone is crying. A girl. Not a pretty kind of crying, like actresses do, tears delicately streaming down a beautiful face. This is sobbing, sniffling, gasping for air. Crying hard. I have to wake up. I have to help her, whoever she is. I force my eyes open, but I don’t see anyone. I see a white wall with a machine attached to it. I make out a blood-pressure cuff and a large dial, like in a doctor’s office. The crying suddenly stops. Where is she, the crying girl? I have to find her. Something is wrong, really wrong. I try to sit up, get out of bed, but I can’t. My arms are strapped down. My legs are trapped somehow; I’m flat on a bed and I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can’t move my head, can’t move my mouth. My heart is racing. I’m falling, I’m falling. My throat was killing me. So dry, raw, I couldn’t swallow. Like the worst sore throat ever. I opened my eyes. Was it a school day? What time was it? What day was it? I felt like I was lying at a strange angle—I was on my stomach, but I could see the floor below me. It seemed I was hovering, floating there. And I couldn’t move. I saw the tile floor under me; it was green and white. I’m falling, I thought. But I’m not falling. I’m hanging.

  I blacked out.

  When I woke up again, I was looking at white tiles—ceiling tiles this time. I knew one thing: I was in a hospital. My throat hurt so bad, the pain was deafening. I couldn’t think about anything except for how badly it hurt. Then I heard a sound; it was my own voice going “Ahhhhhhhhh.”

  Around me, it was quiet. I could hear some kind of machine running—pumping, swooshing air right next to my head. There was a beeping sound on the other side, very steady. Beep. Pause. Beep. Pause. Beep.

  I was able to look around a little bit but not much. Something circled around my head, my shoulders, something big and white; I could see it if I moved my eyes all the way to the right or left, but I couldn’t actually turn my head. “Ahhhhhhhhhhh,” I kept saying. I tried to say, “Thirsty.” But I was so dry, the words didn’t work. Something was up my nose. I tried to touch my hand to my face and feel what was there. But my hand couldn’t move; there was something across my wrist, holding it down. I couldn’t see it by looking down. My other wrist too. What was going on? Who did this to me? Why?

  There was a woman next to the bed when I woke up again. She was holding my arm at the wrist and staring at a machine. I was able to look down and see my arm in her hands. It looked okay, not swollen or anything, just my regular arm. But it felt funny, like it was covered in a layer of blubber. “Ahhhhhhhh,” I said to her. She looked over at me and smiled. I felt my muscles relax. Thank God, an actual person to tell me what was going on.

  “How are you doing, Mr. West?” she asked me, but then looked away like it was no big deal that I was awake. Had I been here long? Where were my parents? “Ahhhhhhhhh,” I tried again.

  “Okay.” The nurse patted my arm. “You’re okay.” I saw her put my hand down and rub the back of it, then she slid my arm under something that looked like a wide belt across the bed. It felt weird, like she was wearing a thick glove. She snapped something metal down by my feet and did the same thing above my head. “Here we go,” she said softly, then somehow the bed turned and I was suddenly lying sideways, at a ninety-degree angle. I must have been strapped in or I would have fallen right onto the floor. But I didn’t. I just lay there rigid, strapped to the bed, looking at a wall and a doorway. And that’s when I met Olivia.

  I didn’t really meet her; I heard her. That’s not right either—I heard her mother.

  After rolling me sideways, the nurse left without even asking me if I wanted some water. I heard shoes, high-heeled shoes clicking on the tile floor, and saw a woman pass the doorway. She was tall and thin and wearing something red, a suit or a long jacket or something. She walked past my doorway, into the room next door to mine. There wasn’t a real wall between the rooms, just one of those big, thick accordion-screen things. It was all the way closed, but I could still hear almost everything. “Hello, darling!” a voice said brightly. I assumed it was the woman in red.

  “I’ve brought you your favorite flowers, pink roses. See how tiny they are? They’re called miniature roses. I thought you’d like these.” I liked listening to her voice. She sounded foreign, like she was French or Italian or something. I heard her pull a chair across the floor. “Let me tell you about my day. I wish you could have been with me. I went to Nordstrom’s and I tried on so many bathing suits. C’était terrible.”

  I waited to hear a response from the person she was talking to, but she said nothing, just listened to this woman’s boring shopping story. Then I started thinking about bathing suits. Wait. It was winter. Why would someone be shopping for a bathing suit in the winter? I felt hot all over, sweat on my face like I was having a panic attack. What month was it? Then the woman mentioned a trip she was going on with some man and how happy she would be to get away from this “snow and dreadful weather” and how she wished she could take her “little angel” with her. I was so happy to hear that it was still winter.

  Her voice got softer and softer as she went on, so soothing, I could tell she loved the person she was talking to. I realized she was saying everything I wanted to hear: that it was all going to be okay, that she was here now. My eyes closed for a second, and when I opened them again, I was still staring at the same wall.

  Over the sound of the machines around me, I listened for the French lady. I could hear someone humming. I tried to speak, but just ended up making that sound again.

  “So, you’re awake,” a voice floated over to me from somewhere I couldn’t see, somewhere behind me. “I’m your neighbor, Olivia. I already know your name is West. Don’t bother trying to talk. You have a respirator tube in.”

  The second she said it, the feeling in my throat made sense: a tube. That whooshing machine: a ventilator. What did that mean, how bad off was I? I heard the sound of something being rolled and then there was a girl in front of me. A small girl with huge dark eyes. “And by the way, you’re paralyzed, in case no one’s told you yet.”

  No. That couldn’t be right. I was not paralyzed. I could move. I tried to wiggle my hands, but my wrists were strapped down. I wasn’t paralyzed, just strapped in. I tried to lift my fingers to show her, but I couldn’t be sure they were moving.

  “Don’t believe me?” she asked. She moved to my bed, pulling her IV stand along beside her. There were tubes going into her arm and the back of her hand. I saw her reach out one arm. “Feel that?” she said, standing at the foot of the bed. “Of course you don’t—you’re paralyzed, that’s why.”

  I tried to check in with my lower body. I could feel it, I could feel the weight of my legs attached to me. They were there. I tried to move my foot. Did it move? I couldn’t tell
; it felt like my legs were strapped down too, like they were wrapped up in something thick. But if I could feel that, didn’t that mean something? I felt my heart start to beat fast again, that awful sweaty, cold feeling sweeping through me. This girl was wrong. Why would she come in here and start telling me this horrible stuff like it was no big deal?

  Olivia rolled her IV stand to the chair in the corner and gathered her white robe around her tiny body as she sat. “Sorry if you didn’t already know. I’m sure you’re bummed. I’m a dancer, so if that happened to me, if I were paralyzed, I would just … I don’t know what I would do,” she said quietly.

  I’m not paralyzed! I wanted to yell at her. Get out, just get out. Until my parents can get here and explain to me what is going on, I don’t want to hear what you have to say.

  She looked down at her feet and pointed and flexed them a few times. “I bet you’re wondering why I’m here,” she said, pushing her dark bangs from her eyes. “I used to weigh about eighty-five pounds, but I’m sure I look so different now, you’d never know. It’s from lying in a bed all day, and this”—she pointed to her IV bag on the metal pole—“that’s liquid nutrition. So tasty!” She smiled, and I noticed her teeth were tiny, like a child’s, and a funny color, like a dark white, but maybe that’s because her skin was so white her teeth looked strange next to it.

  I knew girls like her. Crazy eating-disorder chicks. She was probably going to sit in here all day and tell me about every calorie she ate.

  “You were on a mountain bike when you had an accident; I heard your parents talking about it.” She watched my face. “Do you remember?” She stared hard at my face, like I could answer. “Just blink once for yes and twice for no,” she sighed, exasperated.

  I blinked once, then blinked twice fast. Was I blinking? It felt like I was; maybe my face was paralyzed too. I felt like I couldn’t move my lips.

  “You do remember it, or not?” Her eyes were like black marbles, no pupil. They were pretty but in a scary way, with her pale skin and dark hair. I blinked twice this time, just to answer her, but really I was confused. I couldn’t totally feel my legs and my arms felt so funny.

  I tried hard to remember what the last thing was before … here. It was foggy, like a dream the morning after you sleep too much. I remembered Allie, my girlfriend. Her blond hair blowing in her eyes, she’s watching me. I’m at the dirt-bike trail by the quarry in the woods with Mike; we’re doing jumps. And … and then, what happened next? I had only fragments. Suddenly I did remember. Something bad had happened. Someone got hurt. Someone was crying.

  Olivia’s voice cut through my thoughts. “I didn’t think you’d remember it, not yet,” she said. “It’ll probably come back to you later,” she added quietly. “That’s how it was for me, too.” I wanted her to stop talking for a second so I could think. But my thoughts were all scrambled. I couldn’t focus on one thing for more than a few seconds. My throat was killing me.

  Olivia watched me; her face looked sad for a second, then she stood up and pulled her IV stand behind her. “It’s almost six. That means your mom will be here soon—she always comes around then.” She pulled her baggy robe around her and left without saying anything, even good-bye.

  “There’s my boy.” At the sound of Mom’s voice, I woke up. Had I been sleeping? Was it still the same day—wasn’t that girl just here? My mom. I wanted to see her so badly.

  “Hi, hon.” Mom came around the bed to where I could see her, and it was her. She was acting so normal, looking so normal in her same old clothes, her long navy-blue wool coat, it was like she had just come home and found me sitting on the couch watching TV. She pulled over the chair and sat right beside me, pushing my hair out of my face. “I know you’ll hate me for saying this, but I think we need to do something about this hair. It’s just going to drive you crazy.”

  Her face was calm; she was smiling a little bit, looking me right in the eye. Why was everyone acting so normal? Didn’t they all get it—I was lost, I felt like I had amnesia or something. I tried to speak. “That tube is still bothering you, isn’t it?” She wiped the corner of my eyes. “I’m so sorry, I wish I could take it out but you need it in there to breathe, okay?” My hair fell across my eyes again and she pushed it back, stroking my forehead. “I’m so lucky to have you, you know that? You’re getting so much stronger every day, and pretty soon you’ll be able to go home, pretty soon.”

  I made the only sound I could, a grunt, like a throat clearing. I saw my mom look up at the doorway. “That tube is giving him a hard time again—can you check it, please?” she said to someone behind her.

  “Sure, Mrs. Spencer. It’s time to rotate his mattress again,” said a female voice. It sounded like the nurse from before, the one who checked my blood pressure, and as she came into view, I saw that it was her—an older, round woman in a nursing uniform with her hair pulled back from her face. She loosened something at the foot of the bed and then pulled the mattress back to flat, so I was lying on my back, staring at the ceiling. “He’ll need some eye drops, too.” The nurse held a tiny flashlight over my eyes for a second, making me squint. “You’re sure you don’t want us to tape his lids shut? It can help keep irritation down,” the nurse added, looking at my mom.

  “Oh no, he’d hate that, please don’t,” Mom told her.

  The nurse shrugged. “Your call.” She picked up something from a tray next to the bed and then dropped some liquid into my eyes that made my vision go all blurry and my eyes feel greasy. I felt the nurse touching my neck, my throat. She was tugging on something. “Do you mind if I flush this out while you’re here?” she asked my mom. “It can be a little messy.”

  “Actually I have to leave early today, so I’ll just say good-bye and let you get to work,” she said. She leaned over me where I could see her face. “Sorry I can’t stay too long today. Bye, sweetie. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” She kissed my cheek and gave me a smile. She never even took off her coat.

  The nurse waved to her as she left. “Your mom is a good lady,” she said softly, leaning over me as she worked on the tube in my throat. “Not everyone is so lucky.” The nurse motioned with her head to the wall that separated my room from Olivia’s. “That one’s mother is a real piece of work,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Nothing’s ever good enough for her Olivia. Piece of work,” she said again, pulling up a clear plastic tube. “No wonder this is bothering you. Let’s see that chart,” she said, walking to the foot of my bed where I couldn’t see her. She was still talking, but now it was quietly, and mostly to herself. “Have to remember to talk to Cheryl… . Thinks you can’t feel it….” I could hear her writing something on the chart, scratching the paper with a pen.

  Then she was back over me, her tight face bunched up as she worked on my throat. Her dark-brown eyes were focused on my neck. I felt cool water suddenly inside my throat. I tried to swallow, but it felt like it was too low to swallow so it just went down on its own. “Good job,” the nurse said, pushing something into my throat. “That’s better now, huh?” she asked me.

  It did feel a lot better and I wanted to tell her, so I blinked once for yes. I hope she got the message. Was that what Olivia said, once for yes, twice for no? Or was it twice for yes? The nurse took my hand and held it at the wrist while looking at her watch for a few seconds. “Okay, doing great.” She tucked my hand and arm back under the belt on the bed. “Get some rest now.” She winked at me and left the room. I stared at the ceiling, trying to soak in everything that was going on—or not going on—and listening to the noise of the machines next to my bed.

  This can’t be happening, this is a dream. A bad dream. I closed my eyes and tried to get myself to wake up. Wake up in my own bed, putting this behind me. I had learned my lesson. I would be more careful on the bike. I would not show off for Mike or anyone else. I could make this all go away. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.

  Chapter 2

  The winter sun is setting and the glar
e keeps getting in my eyes. I pull down the visor on my helmet and wipe my gloves on my jeans. “Let’s do this!” I hear Mike yell as he zooms by me, his legs pumping the pedals. He’s standing up on his bike and hits the wooden ramp going fast, almost too fast. He slides smoothly up the incline, yanking his bike to the right and his body to the left, jumping back on his wheel jacks hard and bouncing the tire up to the ramp ledge. “Whooooooooooo!” he yells, pulling his bike up on its rear wheel beside him, like a trophy fish. “Come on, hit it!”

  With the sun behind him, he looks like a photo negative, a black cutout against the red and orange sky. I flip up my visor and turn to look at Allie. She’s sitting on that big rock, watching us, but I know she must get bored with all this. She tilts her head and looks back at me, that little smile on her face. I snap the visor back down and wheel around, get far enough from the ramp to get some distance, some speed, some air.

  I’m moving fast, standing on the pedals and pushing hard. I love it when the bike just feels like another part of me, an extra limb, connected. I hit the ramp but something’s wrong. The wheel pulls to the right so I pull left—too hard. I’m gonna spill, maybe even backward. I feel it coming, that loss of control, that idiot feeling. Damn, I hate giving Mike something to talk smack about. I yank my arms up to break my fall, but they won’t move. They’re stuck, strapped down. I keep pulling them up, but I can’t … I can’t …

  And then I woke up, straining against the strap across my bed. I was still here, it was real. I was in a hospital, paralyzed, or at least that’s what the girl next door said.

  “Hey there, mister, calm down, you’re okay,” the nurse said. “Where do you think you’re going?” She pulled my arm out from under the strap and held my wrist. “Heart’s racing; what kind of dream you having?” She was looking me right in the eye, as if I could answer her. I didn’t even know how long I’d been here, but for the past two days I’d seen this same nurse. She talked to me like she knew me, but maybe all the nurses did that.