But maybe I’ve never asked her the right questions. Because now if she was going to tell Halli —
Lydia tapped her steering wheel. Like she was stalling, trying to decide how much to say.
“Okay, so this thing with Colin,” she blurted out.
“Colin? Gemma’s brother?”
“Yeah. I haven’t met him, right? But already I’m all...” Lydia took both her hands off the steering wheel and waved them in the air and spoke in a high falsetto. “Oh, Colin’s coming! I’m so excited! He’s the one for me! It’s going to be so great! We’ll get married, and we’ll live in a castle—” She dropped her hands back on the steering wheel and dropped her voice back down to normal. “Know what I mean?” she asked Halli. “I build things up in my mind, and then I’m always disappointed. It lasts a few weeks, at most, and it’s over.”
“Why?” Halli asked. “Because of you or because of him?”
“Either,” Lydia said. “Both. It varies. But it’s always the same.”
I’ve noticed that, too, of course, but she’s never wanted to talk to me about it.
And the truth is, I’ve never been brave enough to ask. It hasn’t felt like it was my business. I’ve always assumed if she wanted to tell me, she would. So I’ve just been waiting all this time.
“I’ve had that happen,” Halli said.
“When?” Lydia answered. “Who have you ever even liked? Besides my brother, I mean.”
Oh. So she knew. Oh.
But Halli handled it well.
“He’s the perfect example,” she said. “I can make up a whole story in my head about how things would be, but do you ever see me act on it? No. Because it could never live up to the dream.”
“Trust me,” Lydia said, “Will is no dream. You’ve never had to live with a boy—they’re disgusting. But I’m glad you’re finally willing to admit you like him. It’s been ridiculous.”
“We’re not talking about me,” Halli said. “We’re talking about you.”
“So you’ll see,” Lydia said. “This Saturday. I’ll be all googy-eyed about Colin, and probably fall head-over-heels for him, and we’ll probably make out somewhere, and then he’ll leave, and we’ll write...” She said this all in a bored tone, like it was predictable and inevitable. “And he’ll be telling me from afar, ‘Oh, I love you so much. I can’t live without you,’ and I’ll already be over it because that’s just how I am.”
Halli gave a little snicker.
“I’m serious,” Lydia said. “You watch.”
“Or...you could do something different,” Halli suggested. “Just this once.”
“It’s no use,” Lydia said. “Even when I’m not trying, it always goes the same way. I get all hepped up, the guys are all infatuated, then blip, bing, never mind. Over.”
They had reached my house. Lydia shifted the car into park while Halli got my backpack out of the back. Before she left, Halli leaned in and offered Lydia a useful piece of advice:
“Break the habit,” she said. “Colin is here for only a short time, right? So don’t go after him.”
“It won’t matter,” Lydia said. “He’ll probably go after me.” She didn’t say it arrogantly, but just factually. She’s obviously been through it enough times before that she knows how guys react to her. And I’ve seen it, too: Lydia is very beautiful, and she’s always had plenty of attention.
“Still worth a try,” Halli said. “I’ve always found I can turn it on or turn it off. If I feel like making a connection, I do. If I want to be left alone, I am.”
“Yeah, Audie, whatever you say,” Lydia answered with a laugh. “Guess you’ve been off for what, almost eighteen years now?”
It was pointless, Halli knew. She could tell Lydia didn’t actually want advice. She just wanted to complain about the problem.
And maybe Lydia didn’t even see it as a problem—not really. Maybe she liked things exactly as they were, never having to spend more than a few weeks on any one relationship. Halli knew people like that. Sometimes she was a person like that. She’d been happy enough to have just a week-long fling with that guy Karl. She told me at the time she didn’t plan on keeping in touch with him once we all left the Alps. So Halli understood Lydia better than my friend could know.
Which made everything that happened after that so much stranger.
41
I woke up not knowing what day it was, what hour, even whether it was day or night. The windows of my hospital room were covered, and the lighting was the same it always was.
I pushed my way up through the fog. It wasn’t as bad as it had been in the days before, but it still had a weight to it, tugging on my mind and trying to keep me from thinking clearly. But enough was enough. Halli’s body felt doughy and sluggish, her mouth was constantly dry, and whatever there was of me inside her was sick to death of always feeling wrong—off—drugged into this kind of mental lethargy that made me feel stupider by the hour.
I enjoy my brain. I always have. I wanted to enjoy Halli’s brain, too, if they’d just let me.
“Hello?” I called out. I wasn’t sure if anyone could hear me, but sure enough, within a minute or so a friendly young nurse appeared at my door.
“Yes, Miss Markham? How are you feeling?”
“Do you have coffee or something?” I asked. It was the only thing I could think of. “Or tea?” I knew the British loved their tea, but so far it hadn’t given me the kind of kick a strong cup of coffee did—especially the way Halli brewed it for me a few times. I didn’t have that option, of course, but I’d take what I could get.
“I’ll bring a tray,” the nurse said. Then she pressed the button on her collar. No doubt summoning someone higher up to say whether she was actually allowed to give me what I asked for.
So I wasn’t that surprised to see Dr. Rios coming in with the tray herself.
“I understand you’ve asked for my speciality,” she said, pronouncing it with an extra i. “I keep my own supplies, for special patients. Have you ever tried Turkish coffee?”
I shook my head no. Even though Halli probably had.
“Then just a little, I think,” Dr. Rios said, pouring out half a cup. “Not so much to shock the system. But first have some bread. Your stomach needs a base.”
So I ate a few bites of the soft, sweet bread she offered me, then took a sip of the coffee. Then another, then another. It tasted like mud, like dark, earthy medicine, but it also felt like life. Like the opposite of whatever they’d been dripping into Halli’s veins.
“Thank you,” I said after I’d drained the whole cup. “That feels really, really good.”
“Have some more bread and I’ll give you some more,” she promised. Then she pulled out her tablet and set it on the bed.
“I have a mystery to discuss with you,” she said.
“Uh-oh, another one?”
“This one much simpler, I think.” She swooped her fingers over the screen, poked it a few times, and the familiar lights started swirling above it.
But this time, instead of the lights forming themselves into a 3-D image of Halli’s brain, they organized themselves into a graph, with lines spiking and dipping from left to right.
“The red,” Dr. Rios said, pointing to one of the lines, “is the automatically-delivered pain medication. The green is your blood pressure. Blue is your pulse. Black is the activity in your pain receptors.”
She tapped the screen once, and the lines rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm.
“These are the days you’ve been with us,” Dr. Rios said. She pointed to the mountains and valleys of the graph. “Your pain peaked on the first day, lessened within twenty-four hours, reduced in the days that followed, but see here—” She pointed to a couple of areas of the graph with very noticeable spikes. “Do you know what was happening during these times?”
“No.”
She pointed to the first spike. “This was a visit with your mother.” She pointed to the second one. “This was a visit from
Jake. This was your visit from Miss Everett—”
I started to protest, but Dr. Rios held up her hand.
“This is the beginning of your visit with Miss Everett.” She pointed to a nice long valley on the graph. “Your pain levels were almost non-existent. Then later in the visit...” She pointed to the spike. “Do you know what was happening here?”
I briefly explained about the fight between Jake and Sarah. Dr. Rios nodded. “You see the pattern, don’t you?”
“Yes. If I’m relaxed, no pain medication. If I’m stressed...”
“So we know what we have to work on, don’t we?” Dr. Rios said.
Sure. Just cut out all the stress in my life. Good luck with that.
“I’ve been considering your request,” Dr. Rios said. “About Daniel Everett.”
That made me sit up.
“The visit from his sister and your dog was, I think, healthy. Therapeutic. Would you agree?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“Until the argument,” she said.
“Right.”
“In fact,” Dr. Rios said, “one might look at these results and conclude that it is in the best interest of my patient to allow her certain visitors—her dog, for example? And perhaps one human visitor each day to bring the dog to her?”
My eyes must have lit up like sparklers. I could see where she was going with this, but I didn’t want to jinx it by speaking.
“We must be careful,” Dr. Rios said, “not to overwhelm you. I’m still concerned that you have any pain levels at all. But I would like to attempt this experiment, if you are willing.”
“Yes, please,” I said as calmly as I could.
“Good. Then we’ll begin this afternoon, shall we?”
“So Daniel can come? Is that what you’re saying?”
“If he brings your dog, yes. That is his primary purpose, you understand?”
“I understand.” Boy, did I. Dr. Rios was giving me the best gift she could have. I wasn’t sure why, exactly, but I wasn’t going to ask too many questions. I didn’t want her to change her mind.
But I couldn’t help asking this: “What about Jake, and my mother, and the people on her list?”
“I’ll answer for that,” Dr. Rios said. “But your responsibility is to remain calm, do you understand?”
“Yes. I will. I promise.”
“Then perhaps we can lessen the medication,” Dr. Rios said. “Let us see.”
She shut off the swirling lights and got up off the bed.
“Dr. Rios, I really appreciate this.”
She smiled. “I know you think we enjoy having you here as our guest, but I prefer to see you out in the world.”
“I prefer that, too,” I said.
“Tell me something,” Dr. Rios said. She sat on the edge of my bed again. “Weren’t you ever frightened, out there with your grandmother, just the two of you all alone in so many life-and-death circumstances?”
“Of course I was.” I felt like it was all right to make that admission. Obviously I would have been a hundred thousand times more scared than Halli ever was, but I couldn’t imagine she was never scared. She was a human, after all, not a robot.
“Which do you think was the most frightening?” Dr. Rios asked.
Now that was trickier. I quickly scanned my memory for any and all of the stories I’d ever heard about Halli, whether from her or from Daniel or Sarah.
“Probably the sharks,” I guessed.
“Ah, yes. A very reasonable thing to fear. Although I’m certain the polar bears were just as unnerving.” She smiled and patted my foot. “I have other patients to see. But I’ll ask the duty nurse to call Mr. Everett and pass along the good news, shall I?”
I smiled back. “I think you’re my favorite doctor.”
Dr. Rios laughed. “A high compliment! I happen to know some of my colleagues who have treated you over the years—Dr. Montrose, for example, who set your leg in Kenya. But I’ll try not to allow it to overwhelm my ego.”
She left and I settled back onto the pillow. And for once, felt hopeful. Daniel was coming. Daniel would help me fix everything.
It’s not that I expected him to understand any of the complicated physics—that wasn’t it at all. But what I valued most was his clear-headedness. His analytical mind. His calm reasoning in the face of utterly crazy circumstances.
Okay, that wasn’t the only thing I valued. Or even what I valued most. Now that I was lucid again—or at least lucid for that moment, without the brain-muddling effects of the drugs—I could remember very clearly how much I liked him. Maybe, if I wanted to be honest, even loved him. I missed his honesty. His decency. The warmth and kindness I felt whenever I was with him.
Maybe he didn’t have that same irresistible charm that Jake did, but Daniel didn’t need it. He was the kind of person who grew on you. And then once he did, you never wanted him to go.
And there was this: he knew who I was. He wasn’t like Jake, thinking the lips he kissed belonged to the real Halli Markham—to the girl he’d had a crush on since he was a kid. No, when Daniel looked at me he saw the same Halli exterior, but he also saw beneath it to the person I really was.
And that was the person he preferred. Talk about irresistible.
Between Daniel’s calm rationality and my knowledge of physics, the two of us could figure this out. I had faith in us. And I had a reason to keep trying:
I wanted me back. Daniel wanted me back. And Jake wanted Halli Markham.
If I worked at it hard enough, maybe I could give all of us our wish.
42
“Feeling better, luv?” It was one of the day nurses, Laura, who seemed to trade off most often with Bertrise. I liked her, but the two of them were very different. Laura didn’t coddle me the way Bertrise did. Instead, she had this kind of efficiency about her that made me feel like I should sit up a little straighter, wipe the gunk out of my eyes, ask for a toothbrush. Which I did.
“Feeling a little sour?” she asked, smacking her own mouth like she’d just eaten something nasty. “Not surprised. We’ll fix you right up.”
I was happy for the chance. If Daniel really was coming—maybe within a few hours, if I was lucky—I wanted to at least feel presentable.
Nurse Laura helped me to the bathroom and set me up with some grooming supplies while she changed my sheets.
As I stood at the sink splashing my face and brushing my teeth, I was surprised Halli’s legs didn’t feel weaker. I hadn’t used them in days. But the treatments the nurses were giving them must have helped. They rubbed some kind of gel on them every few hours and then encased them in long thigh-to-ankle cuffs that were filled with gel, too, like squishy shoe inserts. Then the cuffs would start pulsating, very gently, squeezing different parts of my legs at different times, making them feel like toothpaste being pushed around in a tube. The sessions I was awake for felt weird, but also very relaxing.
Laura came in to check on me. “Now then, feeling up to a proper wash?” She pointed to the shower in the corner of the bathroom.
“Oh, my gosh, I would love you forever.” Considering that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken a shower—five days? More?—you bet I wanted one. It’s not like I was filthy—the nurses had been wiping me down with warm, scented water—but standing under a stream of hot water sounded so delicious, I could hardly wait.
She set up a chair for me just so I wouldn’t overtire those legs, and I sat under the hot water for as long as I could, just feeling the clean. When I was done, Laura helped me into fresh pajamas and back into bed.
“There now, quite an improvement, eh?” she asked.
“Quite,” I agreed.
“Would you like some holey?”
“Excuse me?”
She pointed into the air just above my bed. “The holey. Thought you might like a change.”
“Oh...okay.” I still didn’t understand what she was talking about, but so far all of Laura’s suggestions had made me start to
feel human again. I wasn’t going to say no.
She reached for a device hanging from the side of the bed, swept her thumb across it, and activated some 3-D projector that had lights swirling above my bed exactly where she’d pointed moments before.
It was a holograph. I should have realized. The same way some British people in my world might call television “the telly.”
“Which History, luv?” Laura asked.
“Which...history?”
“Which channel?” She was starting to look at me like I was stupid. She stood with her finger poised over the device, waiting.
“Oh, um, which do you think? Actually,” I interrupted before she could answer, “is there an adventure one?”
Finally, I thought, I might have a chance to see some of the footage from Halli’s and Ginny’s travels that I’d heard so much about. I knew there was no guarantee a program about them would be on at that moment—I mean, really, the chances were pretty slim—but I thought it was worth a try.
But as soon as the lights formed into an image, I could see it wasn’t them. Instead it was a small man, about the size of a two-liter bottle of soda, floating above my bed, dressed in full winter gear, and painstakingly climbing up a frozen waterfall. I could hear some sort of commentary in the background, but the volume was too low. It didn’t matter, though, I could get the idea just from the action.
Laura watched for a moment, then shook her head. “You people are mad, the things you come up with.” Then she pointed her finger at me. “And don’t you go getting any fresh ideas from this, Miss Markham. I’ll never forgive myself if we patch you up and you leave here in the pink, only to go strap yourself to the wing of an airplane or some such lunacy.”
“I promise.” What I didn’t tell her was that I agreed with her completely. Even though I knew the real Halli probably would have thought that scaling an icicle waterfall or riding the wing of an airplane were both perfectly fine pursuits.
“I’m off to swap more bedding. You all right here for a bit?”
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
She handed me the remote control, or whatever they called that device, then bustled out the door.
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