by Leah Raeder
“Excuse me,” a voice said from the door.
We jerked apart.
New nurse, female. She bustled in and checked my IV and vitals. Ellis skulked near the window, looking silly, a redheaded scarecrow, too tall to be inconspicuous.
“How do you feel?” the nurse said.
“Terrible.” I beamed. “It’s fucking amazing. I can actually feel stuff.”
Her eyebrow twitched. I caught the slip of a smile. Then she said, “Only immediate family is permitted after visiting hours.”
Ellis and I blinked at each other. What an absurd thing to say. No one in my life was more immediate family than her.
“She’s my best friend,” I said. “She’s—”
The nurse—Halsey, according to her ID—interrupted. “I’m sorry. Legal family only. Is she your partner?”
Strange that such an innocuous word could freeze me up so fast.
Partner.
Your best friend is your partner, right? The person you’ve lived with going on five years. Shared your life with. Shared everything with. Matching tattoos, an encyclopedia full of inside jokes, a scrapbook stuffed with memories. The person whose heart you know better than your own. Because you’ve listened to it so many nights, that small, fierce tapping against your ear, your jaw. A little bird hurling itself at the bars of its cage.
Elle stared at me, waiting for my answer.
“No,” I said.
Her mouth fell.
I wanted to disappear.
“Miss,” Halsey began, and Ellis said, in a raw voice, “It’s fine, I’m leaving,” and something rose up in my chest like a tidal wave.
“Don’t go,” I called as she reached the door. “Elle, please don’t go.”
She turned back partway, wearing that wounded expression that wrecked me every time, and words formed in my throat—Fine, she’s my partner, whatever you want to call it, just let her stay—and then heel clicks sounded from the hall, and a voice that filled me with warmth and dread.
“Here you are.”
My mother stepped into the room, flawless, as if she’d walked straight off a photo shoot and not half a day sitting in coach on some shoestring airline. Camila Pérez Bergen: nearly six feet tall, skin the tone of aged brass, bone structure that could facet diamonds. Her withering eyes sized us up in one sweep. She kissed Ellis’s cheek and hauled her by the elbow back to my bedside. I got two kisses and a series of tsks and a sigh.
“Let me see,” she said perfunctorily, plucking at the sheet.
“Mamá,” Elle said—my mother called Ellis her third daughter—“careful. She’s healing.”
“Explain this to me, chiquita. Apparently I’m the only one in this fucking hospital who speaks English. Can she work? Do art?”
My mom spoke rapid, flawless English with a Puerto Rican accent, dipping deep into vowels, rolling and hissing consonants agilely, musically. Her voice always reminded me of a song picked up in the middle, her words one long lyric.
“She has nerve damage,” Elle said, eyeing me askance. “Think of a puppet. You know how the strings move the arms? Hers were cut. Not all the way through, but bad enough.”
“Is she in pain?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m right here. You could just ask me.”
Neither looked my way.
“Yes,” Ellis said. “A lot of pain. But that’s sort of good. It means the nerves work. The doctors sewed them back together, but that’s only a partial fix. Her body has to heal them fully.”
“Gracias a Dios. I thought she was paralyzed. I was sobbing on the plane. People thought I was going to a funeral.” Yet her makeup was immaculate now, of course. Mamá rubbed Elle’s shoulders. “You should be a doctor. So much smarter than the ones here.”
Ellis blushed furiously. The nurse cleared her throat.
“Ma’am, are you the patient’s mother?”
My mother narrowed her eyes, not dignifying that with a response.
“I’m sorry, I need anyone who’s not immediate family to leave the—”
“We are all immediate family. Thank you.” Mamá gestured to the door.
Despite myself, I caught Elle’s eye and traded a small smile with her.
No one got between my mom and her family. Ever.
But the smile faded swiftly. They hadn’t told me I had nerve damage. What the extent was. The prognosis. My right arm was crawling with fire ants, but I didn’t want more painkillers. I wanted to know, for sure, that I was still whole. More specifically, to what degree.
When the door clicked shut my mother rounded on us. “What have you told the police?”
Elle blinked, owlish. I shifted in the bed.
“Did they question you?” Mamá pressed.
“Yeah. That night.” I scratched crosses into the sheet with a nail. “I told them what happened. I was driving, it was icy on the bridge. The other guy hit us.”
My eyes flicked to Ellis. She swallowed.
“And you, chiquita?”
“They didn’t question me yet. Because of my head injury.” Elle spun a lock of hair around one finger. “I’m supposed to give a statement later this week, but . . . I still don’t remember anything.”
“Do you remember getting in the car?” I said. “In the passenger’s seat?”
She squinted at me.
“I buckled you in. You drank too much and felt sick. I made sure your seat belt was secure. You were on your phone right before he hit us. Remember?”
Remember how you were breaking my heart?
Elle’s breath quickened. Very softly, she said, “Are you coaching me?”
I didn’t answer.
My mother frowned, then clapped her hands, startling us both.
“Enough for now. We can revisit it later.” Her gaze settled on me, dark and weighted with expectation. “Why don’t you tell me how you’ve been, since you don’t answer my calls anymore, mija?”
“I’m really tired.”
“Always tired, tired. Too tired to talk to your mother.”
“Too tired to hear how disappointed you are,” I snapped.
Mamá’s eyes flashed.
“Come, flaca.” She put an arm around Ellis. “I’m starving and you’re too skinny. Let’s find something to eat.”
At the door Elle glanced back at me, a specter of hurt in her face. I turned toward the window and watched dusk fall in shades of blood and old bruises. When I was alone I recited the story to myself, the car crash story, until the details were sharp and straight in my mind, honed to a razor’s edge.
* * *
My mother stayed for two days. We’d had enough of each other after two hours.
Every time doctors came by she acted like I was a baby, not twenty-two. She made them tell her everything, then had Ellis re-explain in layman’s terms while I sat there mentally headdesking.
Compound fracture of the radial head. (Broken elbow.)
Distal radius fracture. (Broken wrist.)
Multiple phalangeal fractures. (Broken fingers.)
Soft tissue injury. (Bruises on the inside.)
Injury to radial, ulnar, and carpal nerves. (Puppet strings cut.)
The doctor said, “It appears you braced against the steering column at the time of impact.” (Elle said, “Imagine trying to stop a truck with your palm.”)
The insurance investigator said, “There were two impacts. The other car rear-ended you, then you hit the bridge rail.” (Elle looked away, her eyes shadowed.)
The cop said, “We will not be pursuing criminal charges, Ms. Bergen. We wish you a speedy recovery.” (Elle was not in the room.)
When they finally let me out of bed—my arm strapped tight to my chest, throbbing through the meds—I snuck into a supply room, stole a white coat, and put it on Ellis. We made rounds and talked to the other patients. She loved this kind of stuff. Her and her big soft heart. She’d listen to any sob story, no matter how obviously fake or drug-induced. It was better than her staring at me with that
hangdog expression, her eyes glimmering with questions.
We’d both taken a Breathalyzer that first night. Standard procedure for any serious crash. I was stone-cold sober. Elle’s BAC was 0.11.
I tried not to think about white shards on black asphalt.
“He can barely see,” I said, pulling Ellis away from an old man who mistook her for his son. “He thinks you’re a boy.”
She shrugged.
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Why would it?”
“Because you’re not his son?”
“He’s alone, Vada. If it makes him happy, it doesn’t hurt to let him believe that.”
“Don’t lead people on. It’s cruel.”
She recoiled as if I’d hit her.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “My arm hurts. It’s making me bitchy.”
It was making me more than bitchy.
THINGS I COULD NO LONGER DO WITH A FUCKED-UP ARM:
1. Shower alone.
2. Dress myself.
3. Handle my fucking period.
Mamá was right to baby me, because never in my life had I felt more powerless than when I went to piss and saw blood on the paper. It hit me then, harder than anything else had: this was my life now. I couldn’t wash my own hair. I couldn’t put a bra on. I couldn’t put the fucking menstrual cup in.
Once upon a time I had a bit of a Cinderella complex. I resented the mundane chores that consume your life when you’re poor: hauling clothes to a coin laundry, lugging groceries home on city buses. I wished for freedom, fantasized about a life where my days weren’t measured in cups of rice, where I didn’t have to decide between eating protein that week or having a beer to unwind after working a double shift and studying my ass off for finals. Well, I got what I wished for. Just like in fairy tales, the wish wasn’t worth the price.
Please, I prayed. Take it back. Let me scrub my clothes in the tub again. Let me work. Let me suffer and ache.
This isn’t freedom. This is the cage. I was so wrong.
Elle knocked at the door and I wiped my tears away. “Yeah?”
She passed me my phone. On it, a text from her:
Write down anything you need. I’ll go get it. She won’t know.
I texted back, my savior.
While Ellis was gone, all Mamá talked about was my younger sister, Ariana. Ari was dating some hotshot lawyer, Ari was in love, Ari was getting engaged. My twenty-year-old sister had already been engaged twice. Instead of going to college, she majored in heartbreak.
“You could have been married by now,” my mother said, sighing. “Living in a nice house, with a baby to keep you busy. Then this never would have happened.”
Just like you, I thought. “That’s not why this happened.”
“Then why?”
Subject change. “You seriously think I’m old enough to have kids?”
“Seventeen was old enough for me.”
“I haven’t even finished college.”
“You already have a degree. Why do you need another?”
“Because I—” I cut off. Still no good answer beyond because I want it. But when I thought hard, sometimes the answer was Because I’m stalling. Because I’m not ready to be an adult yet. “I don’t know.”
“What do you know? Besides that my life isn’t good enough for you.”
“Stop projecting. No one’s judging you, Mamá.”
“Every choice you’ve made is a judgment on me.” She picked at her nails. “Ari wants children.”
“Good for her. I’m not my sister.”
“Yes. That is clear.”
Then she started talking about wedding dresses.
When Elle returned, I whispered, “Please get me out of here before I hurt myself and others.”
The doctors insisted I use a wheelchair. Ellis pushed me down eerily quiet halls in the dead of night, the harsh light tinting our faces ashen, ghoulish. When we passed the nurses she pushed me fast, sprinting down the corridors as I shrieked in surprise and glee. She grinned down at me, that rake of red hair all mussed, cheeks pink. So pretty.
“Speed demon,” she said.
I smiled, but part of me was in the car, watching the odometer tick up. Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine.
“Demon,” I agreed. “El diablo.”
The cafeteria was deserted this late, so Elle bought me gummy worms out of a vending machine. Gummy anything: my go-to comfort food.
“Do you know what tonight is?” she said.
I bit a worm and stretched it transparent. “Nope.”
“New Year’s Eve.”
The worm snapped against my teeth. I’d lost all track of time. Some friends from school were throwing a big New Year’s bash, and I’d planned to take Ellis. I’d planned to show her the latest painting I was working on. I’d planned so many things.
My mother loved to say, If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
A sinking feeling opened up in my chest, widening, plunging, and heavy things inside me slid toward that precipice.
“What are you thinking?” Ellis said.
“How much I can lose in one fucking night.”
She touched my shoulder, lightly. “I’m still here. You haven’t lost me.”
It didn’t mean much. Not when she couldn’t remember the crash. If she did, she’d take that promise back.
“What do you want to do tonight?” she said.
“Wallow.”
“Aside from that.”
“Maybe some navel-gazing. An hour or two of angst.”
“Vada.”
I sulked at the cafeteria counter. A display of kid’s meal toys caught my eye: lacy tiaras, magic wands. I pictured Ariana in a Disney princess dress.
When we were little, Mamá was our queen, looking like a million bucks in Gucci heels while scrubbing grilled cheese off the floor. Never mind that the Gucci was thrift store and the grilled cheese bought with food stamps. She wanted a do-over. Wanted us to marry rich and rewrite her life story. I was more interested in watercolor paints than wedding gowns. By the time we were teens, Mamá had shifted her hopes to Ari.
Ellis followed my gaze.
Suddenly I knew what would cheer me up.
I didn’t even have to tell her. I just smiled.
Elle was comically bad at stealing. First she looked straight up at the security cameras. Then she positioned the wheelchair to block the view, and kept repositioning to get it perfect. Then she knocked the toy display off the counter, which made all her prep pointless.
“If I go to jail for stealing a tiara,” she said, “I will never forgive you.”
“But you’ll be a legend. The prince who stole a crown for the exiled princess.”
This pleased her. She set the tiara on my head, blushing.
“We need something for you,” I said.
“No. No way am I wearing—”
I jumped up and dashed around the counter before she could stop me. I was light-headed, dizzy from poor circulation, but I grabbed a plastic apron from a bin and tossed it to Elle with a flourish.
“What am I, the royal cook?”
“No, goofus. You’re the prince. Put it on.”
Only your best fucking friend will tie an apron cape around her shoulders and pretend to be your Disney prince.
“Let us survey my lands,” I said, strolling back to the chair. “Please roll the throne to my viewing tower.”
From the roof of the parking garage you could see clear to the Atlantic. It was freezing, a hard, metallic cold that seemed to make the air ring. My breath flew away in scraps of pale tulle. Midwinter in Maine is hell. Dante’s Hell, Ninth Circle style. Ocean infused the air, salt and grit studding the breeze with a million tiny barbs. Might as well have left the blanket indoors. I used to think of myself as tough, born in a blizzard and raised on the West Side of Chicago, but I wasn’t prepared for this sheer brutality, the way each day hit you like a kick in the teeth.
Ellis took out her v
aping pen and I savored the warm steam she exhaled, the scent of sage and mint.
“What happened to the car?” I said.
“Insurance covered it.”
“Did you pick out a new one?”
“No.”
I pulled the hospital blanket tighter around my shoulders. “What are you waiting for?”
“I don’t want a new one. I don’t want anything.”
“Why not?”
Her fingers combed through my hair, grazed the nape of my neck. I shivered harder than I had at the cold. “Let’s not talk about that. Let’s just be happy tonight.”
It was right there. This thing we were skating around, the thin, fragile ice at the center of a dark pond. I could ask her. I could push us both into the black.
Instead I said, “This is our fifth New Year’s together.”
Elle sat on the stone coping of the roof. Her smile was distant, sad. “Which was your favorite?”
“The first.”
The smile wilted. “Are you sure you don’t have a brain injury?”
“What’s wrong with year one?”
“The furnace broke down. We covered the windows with garbage bags to trap the heat.”
“Then we made the best fucking pillow fort anyone’s ever made.”
“Okay, the fort was kind of awesome.”
“You kept trying to calculate the load-bearing capacity of our couch pillows.” I laughed. “Such a nerd. You got shitfaced on lemon drops.”
Elle gave a prim toss of her head, the fake cape crackling. “I didn’t know vodka could taste like candy.”
“Remember getting all handsy with me?”
“I did not!”
“You so did. God, you were so pure before we met. And now look at you.” I smirked up at her, a bit meanly. “Prince Ellis, the fallen. Getting drunk at parties. Hooking up in bathrooms.”
My toes brushed the rim of that dark heart in the proverbial pond. Elle felt us teetering near the edge, too.
“Remember?” I said. “At the party, before the accident?”
“No,” she whispered.
“But you remember wanting to go back to Chicago. I know you do, Elle. Because you still want to go. You don’t really want to be here.”
