But then the bag moves. Not an obvious move—a tiny one. Perhaps a mouse stirred the leaves inside the bag. The form takes another shape. Evan slams the gear shift into “Park” and jump out of the car.
The bag of leaves has a head and two legs, curled up in a fetal position.
Evan’s ribs turn into rubber and gravity compresses all the air from his lungs.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Little invisible bugs eat away at my head while someone holds me down and pours acid on my legs. With my eyes closed, I concentrate on breathing. Breathe in and breathe out. When air fills my lungs, the bugs chomp faster, then they slow down when I exhale. The oxygen causes them to fester or mate or scrape my brains or whatever the hell they’re doing to make my head throb so horrendously.
If someone would turn off the faucet leaking all over my face, then I could concentrate on the pain, on leaving my body to forget it, block it, kill it, anything to stop it. My shell, a prison for my soul, is on fire. It’s tired and needs to rest.
Light bathes my eyelids. I force them open. A blur of light through the downpour. God has finally come for me. I’m so ready for the pain to disappear, but it doesn’t. Then something tramples the wet cold ground around me, rushing toward me. Footsteps, perhaps.
I recognize the timbre of a young man’s voice. Slurred words, unrecognizable. He bends over me, a dark shadow, all handsome and strong. His voice resonates, caring and loving and kind, but I don’t understand. Why isn’t he taking me to Heaven? Aren’t I dying? Why isn’t the pain going away? Please God, take the pain away.
Breathe in and breathe out. Breath fills my ears, like swimming or bathing under the water. The sweet melodious voice purrs in the background. He strokes my hair. It puts some of the bugs to sleep, but not all of them. Most continue to chomp away. They eat the back of my eyeballs. Soon, I’ll be blind and unable to see this glorious angel waiting to escort me to the afterlife. Is he waiting for me to die?
A giant sword swung by a knight on a tall horse stabs me in the back. He cuts from my shoulder all the way down to my hips. He totally severs my spine. I close my eyes and scream, but that’s only background noise too. It wakes the bugs and pisses them off good. Then the blade disappears and I open my eyes to see Shadow Man taking a step back. Now he seems apologetic, remorseful.
He runs off. Please don’t go. Don’t leave me alone.
It gets quiet. The bugs stop being bugs and the acid stops burning. Only the rain pricks my body—cool and refreshing. It plops and dances on the pavement next to my ears. Fast and hard and then soft and slow.
Rainy would have liked to hear it as I am now. She enjoys the rain, the clouds, the trees, everything about the forest.
Like me, Rainy hates dream smashers.
I should have been more supportive, a better friend.
If I have another chance, I’ll make it right between me and Rainy. Please God, please give me another chance.
Shadow Man comes back. He holds my hand. His thumb strokes the top of mine. He rubs the beads on my bracelet. I recognize his touch. I recognize his caring, clear eyes.
He leans in closer.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“Stay still Autumn, help is coming,” Evan says into her ear, but he doesn’t know if she understands. She’s so broken—beautifully, painfully broken and there is nothing he can do about it. Not a damn thing. Autumn has been ripped from the world and there she lies, in the rain, on the wet dark road with limbs twisted every which way.
“Help is coming. I promise,” he assures her to no avail and lies down next to her on the ground.
She mumbles something he can’t understand.
He inches closer, feeling the heat of her breath, smelling the salty metallic blood. “Shhh. It’s okay. You don’t need to talk. Everything’s going to be fine.”
The whites of her eyes are stained red. She mumbles again. “Evan, are you saving me?”
A wad of pain chokes his airway closed. He can’t help but smile at this sweet girl and wish to God that he could save her. Please, make her alright. Make everything better.
A tiny cut on her lip starts to bleed, or maybe it bled all along and he just now notices her broken but soft lips and her pale skin against the vibrant red liquid. How the headlights glimmer off her wet face, as if the water is glitter and she is a rock star.
He moves closer, to brush against her lips, just gently. This may be his last chance, her last chance, and he needs to let her know. They are as soft as he suspected. His lips lock with hers and she returns the kiss with unexpected force.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Wednesday, November 18th
Voices in the dark keep me from slipping. They plant me firmly into the bed beneath my aching back. I would prefer to slide further into the darkness. It would be so easy. But the voices keep pleading, and praying, and crying. If not for the cries, the familiar sound of a weeping old lady, sleep would feel as good as a hot bubble bath, but better.
They get louder as time passes. Soon, I understand distinct words. “Love, stay, hold-on, everything’s gonna be fine, tomorrow, broken.” Two voices are recognizable. The others are strangers.
A familiar hand strokes mine. Strong, masculine, but loving. I know this hand.
Evan.
“Wake up, Autumn,” he says in a calming voice. He should be a counselor or preacher or yoga teacher or something like that, because he has the calmest voice I’ve ever heard. “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”
I do.
“Good, good.” He lets out a relieved laugh and I imagine seeing it. Daisies and trees and sunshine and chocolate. His clear blue eyes light up the entire room. His giant gleaming smile always makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. “Now, can you open your eyes?” He sounds hopeful.
I open them.
Blurry world. The dimmed lights cause a glowing illumination from the far side of the room. It takes several seconds and blinks for the world to focus. When it does, Evan’s face beams just as I imagined—beautiful and warm.
“Good morning, sleepy head.”
“Hi.” I clear my dry, sore throat.
“Here.” Evan holds a salmon-colored plastic mug with a bendy straw close to my face.
I sip from the fountain of arctic waters, putting the fire out, sizzling and popping, filling the deepest crevices of my stomach. Harder I suck and slurp. My brain turns to ice and pricks the backs of my eyes and bites the inner most workings of my ears. But my throat sure feels better.
“Whoa.” He pulls the mug away and I’d say he finds my thirst amusing.
“What?” My voice scratches over sandpaper.
“Nothing.” He smiles. “It’s just…well, you were drinking so fast I thought you might drown or something.”
I laugh. It hurts my tonsils and my head, but I don’t mind. It’s not nearly as bad as when the bugs ate my brains. I touch my head now, remembering what happened. But the memories aren’t entirely there. Just that it hurt and Evan was there, and the rain. Evan takes my hand.
“Wait. I’ll get you a mirror.” He stands, walks across the room, and brings back a small mirror from the counter. “The doctors took the bandages off, so you shouldn’t touch it.”
Bandages? I hesitate. Maybe I don’t want to see it.
As if reading my thoughts, Evan says, “Don’t worry. You’re still beautiful.” Like it is a fact of life or something.
Even now, my face gets hot and I can’t help but smile.
In the reflection I see my eyes first. They are the same ugly brown. Then lips and nose—all normal—right cheek has abrasions on it, and then the gruesome part. It isn’t my head. It must be someone else’s—a zombie’s head from one of those haunted houses or scary movies. My hair is still long on the left side, but the right side is shaved. I turn with trepidation, trying to comprehend the entire scene.
“It’s not that bad. The doctors say it will heal and your hair will grow back. No one will even see a scar because it will
be under your hair.” His eyes plead with me to be okay.
But I’m not okay.
I look like Frankenstein’s bride. A giant gash tore from my right temple to the back of my head, sewn closed with stitches. “What happened?” I try to sound like it’s no big deal, but it sounds more like someone died.
“You were hit by a car.” He pauses as if waiting for me to remember. I just remember the dark forest and then a bright light. No car. “I found you in the street next to the school, just outside of the forest. The car and driver were nowhere to be found though.”
I try to sit up. A clamp squeezes down on my right leg, crushing it. A scream scrapes from my mouth.
Evan presses on my shoulder. “You need to rest and you can’t be moving around just yet. Please, please stay still.”
“What the fuck! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” I squirm and try to get away from the pain and stay still at the same time. But a hot knife stabs my leg and it isn’t easy to just not freak out.
“Shhh….it’s okay. Breathe…breathe…” Calming words, calming sounds.
I concentrate on his voice. Push the pain away, breathe.
“Lord, please help Autumn through this tough time. Help her stay still and heal. And help her deal with the pain. Amen.”
His words are even more uncomfortable than my leg, but, hell, whatever—anything to take the pain away. Sleep. I need to sleep. Drift, please let me drift. Closing my eyes, I listen to Evan’s mumbling, “Good. Rest now, beautiful girl.” He strokes my hand and then raises it to his lips.
Drifting, drifting, in a boat on the calm sea, with Evan protecting me, so I don’t capsize and drown. He holds me safe in his hands.
Please take the pain away, dear God. And thank you for my warm sweet Evan.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Thursday, November 19th
Evan watches her rest peacefully. A beautiful pearl nestled into an ugly oyster.
Dusty rose, mauve, pink, no matter the names, some psychotic interior designer of hospital rooms decorated with these awful colors. They must not have been thinking clearly in the 1980’s. Barbie exploded into a million pieces in this room.
Night darkens most of it. The last nurse turned off all but one single florescent light beneath the cupboard above the sink. The muted television creates a blue glow about the room.
Evan’s salvation from pink countertops, walls, cupboards, and window dressings comes by way of white ceiling and floor tiles. Ninety-two ceiling tiles and exactly two-hundred and four floor tiles make up Autumn’s hospital room. He knows because, unlike Grams, he’s not able to fall asleep in this sterile, noisy place, and counting tiles should put most people to sleep—not Evan.
With carts banging and people talking in the halls, beeping machines, and nasal snoring, who could sleep? Not to mention that people die here every single day. Probably hundreds of dead bodies lie in the basement right now, stored in plastic zip-lock bags in cold refrigerators until the people from the morgue, or wherever dead bodies go, come to collect them. Their souls, he has faith, have gone where they need to be and are not presently in the building.
The door creaks open, allowing a stream of light to saturate the room. A giant woman wearing aqua scrubs and a short haircut enters, pushing a small cart. She winks at Evan, then goes about her business of plugging and unplugging tubes into machines, injecting fluid into IV’s, changing the urine bag, cleaning the counter tops, and all the other things that nurses have been doing every two hours for the last couple of days.
When the nurse exits, she leaves the door ajar. The stream of light points to Autumn’s backpack that Evan found in the forest and brought back for her. A leather bound book hangs out of the half-zippered pack.
Out of instinct, he looks around the room, not sure what he’s looking for. Maybe he just wants to make sure no one will see him snoop through the book—into Autumn’s world, her backpack. It’s not snooping though. He’s bored. A good book will help alleviate the boredom. No doubt Autumn has great taste in books.
He pulls it out of the bag. Loose pages feather from behind the worn and frayed brown leather cover and a large rubber band wraps around the entire thing, keeping the pages safe from falling out. It’s larger than a regular book—about the size of a three-ring binder without the rings.
Grams snorts, smacks her lips, and murmurs something unrecognizable in a phlegm-deep-voice. She coughs.
Evan drops the book, sits back down, closes his eyes and pretends to sleep. Like he did something wrong, like he broke into a secret treasure vault which now lays sprawled out on the floor, with a broken rubber band and pages spilled upon the cold hard tiles.
His ears flush.
Grams snores again.
Evan snakes down to one knee, scanning the pages, not touching them. They aren’t just regular pages. They are Evan, they are Grams, they are Jacinda, they are Rainy, they are an old man, they are James and Angel, they are strangers and homeless people, they are workers from the Share Home—they are Autumn. They are perfect pencil drawings.
Of course they are perfect. Autumn drew them. She sees, she knows, she must have faith.
There she sleeps peacefully, impeccably broken in every way—as is everyone. They have crossed paths for a reason. At this very moment, Evan feels that their journey together might last a very long time.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Friday, November 20th
Day three of really bad hair and absolute boredom. Re-runs of Oprah Winfrey wore thin about five minutes after they started. I mean, how many topics can Oprah really talk about? She makes Grams happy, though, and that’s all that matters.
Grams sits in the far corner with her knitting needles in hands and remote control placed meticulously on the table next to her. Little invisible thieves often steal the remote from Grams if she doesn’t keep a close eye on it. We spend many hours at home turning up couch cushions seeking a stolen remote. There is no better place for the thieves to hide a remote than under the couch cushions. She watches it like a hawk out of habit now, every few moments glancing away from her knitting to assure its safe. At home she glued Velcro to the table and the remote. The only way—really—to keep the invisible thieves away. They aren’t strong enough to rip it off Velcro.
“Well.” Grams puts her knitting down. “I’m going to wander downstairs and get some coffee. You hungry?” She stands and stretches the kinks out of her frail body. I don’t remember her being so thin, so tired.
“Nah. I’m sure if I eat anything, it will spoil the magnificent feast the hospital is cooking up for me now. I think roast beef is in store tonight.” I smile. Contrary to the rumors I’ve heard in the past, hospital food is rather rad. Not as good as Grams’ cooking, of course, but better than school food.
Grams shrugs. “You really are a strange bird, you know that?” She coughs and moves out the door in a torpid fashion, which reminds me that I should take better care of her. She’s not going to live forever, albeit that would be super-dee-duperly splendid. Even if we discover a fountain of youth that would sustain Grams to the end of eternity, nothing could fight off the sludge living in her lungs. That would take a miracle or a lung transplant.
My eyes droop.
The door creaks, waking me from my chimera. A breath of fresh air enters and when it does, a ray of sunshine points it out for me from the gap in the top rails of the broken mini-blinds on the far side of the room. She shimmers in the light and smiles a sad smile down at me. “Hi you,” she says and sits in a faux pas of interior design chair next to the bed.
“Rainy?” I fumble for the bed controller. Damn remote thieves. She finds it hanging off the side and hands it to me. “Oh my God. I can’t believe you came here. I’m totally so, so, so, so, so sorry for how retarded and stupid I was the other day.” I push the button that raises the bed to a seated position. The mechanical hydraulic thingies rumble before it jerks to a stop. “I’m even more sorry about James…” My voice trails off.
Her eyes glimmer moist and pink. “Shhh.” Her lips turn punch red and quiver. She opens her arms and crushes me with her weight.
But I don’t care.
I don’t care that the side railing of the bed, the remote and her body squishes my right hand. I sure as hell don’t care that the needle in my arm burns, as if being ripped out or pushed in further—I can’t tell. I don’t care because Rainy is here and she is crying and hugging me. She doesn’t ever cry. She doesn’t ever hug for that matter. I’m the one who always hugs her stone cold body. But she’s no longer cold, she’s warm and soft.
With my left hand, I brush her blond hair off her shoulder and try to hug her back. Even if I want to say something, I don’t know what words to say. So I cry instead.
She pulls away and laughs. “You always were a fucking crybaby.”
“Shut up!” I laugh and wipe the tears away.
She flops back down in the most uncomfortable chair in the world. Or, at least, it looks uncomfortable, and ugly, too.
Blood seeps from my arm—cherry and vibrant against the white gown and sheets. Before we can say or do anything about it, a nurse comes strolling in to check on the broken patient lying helplessly in her bed. She fixes my arm by taking the gigantic needle out for good, saying I probably won’t need it anymore and that we messed up that vein anyway.
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