The Space Between Words

by Michele Phoenix

  I felt myself frown, confused by her calm. By her distance. “Vonda . . . You’re—you’re just . . . leaving?”

  “I’m taking the train to Luxembourg in a little over an hour. And I have a ticket from there to Denver. The airports . . . It’s the only way I could get out of France. After the attack, and . . .”

  I saw her shudder. Her shoulders drooped. She reached for the railing at the bottom of my bed to steady herself. When she looked at me, it was with horror in her eyes. “I thought you were dead,” she said. She bit her lip and inhaled a tortured breath. “I got out through a skylight. There was a storage room a bunch of us ran to and . . . somehow we all got out that way. We ran across the roof and climbed in someone’s apartment window and waited for the police to release us. I could hear the gunshots,” she said, a sob escaping her tight control. “The whole time we were waiting, I could hear the gunshots and I didn’t know . . . I didn’t know if you were alive until the hospital called the apartment.”

  I lay back and felt tears run into my hair.

  “They held us for hours,” Vonda continued, her voice lower and more resigned now. “The police. They had to question everyone. I kept trying to call you until they took my phone, but you didn’t answer and . . . I didn’t know what to do when they released me. I’ve been cowering at Patrick’s, just . . .” Anger stiffened her shoulders, and a look of disgust crossed her face. “Just cowering. And I can’t.” She squared her shoulders. “I have to leave.”

  “Okay.” There was nothing else to say. I felt abandoned. Stranded.

  Vonda came closer, grasping my hand in both of hers, but avoided eye contact. “So this is good-bye,” she said. I heard brokenness in the word.

  “Stay until Patrick comes back,” I begged.

  “Jess . . .” She frowned as tears brimmed in her eyes, then ran down her cheeks.

  “He just left to get some coffee.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Vonda—please?”

  “My taxi’s waiting and . . . I have to leave.” She released my hand and laid it back on the white blanket. She didn’t look at me again but turned, picked up her purse, and walked out of the room.

  THREE

  “HONEY . . .” MY MOM’S VOICE ON THE OTHER END OF the phone was relieved and distraught. “Honey,” she said again, a sob in her throat.

  After nearly two days of being unable to reach me, and with the American Embassy offering little information in the chaos that followed the attack, my parents had grown frantic. A phone call from a police liaison officer had finally informed them that I was alive, but in La Pitié Salpêtrière—a hospital.

  “I’m okay, Mom,” I said into the phone.

  “Your dad’s right here next to me. We’ve got the phone on speaker.” She hesitated. “Are you—?”

  “We don’t know anything,” my dad interrupted. “The woman who answered the phone just put us through to your room, so . . . please tell us what’s going on.”

  “I was . . .” There was something terrifying about putting words to what had happened. Articulating the horrors felt like grafting them to me. Me to them.

  I took a deep breath and felt the stitches in my side pulling. I had to speak—they had to know—but the burden felt overwhelming. “I was at the Bataclan when it started,” I began, hearing the tremor in my voice. “It happened so fast and I couldn’t get out and . . .”

  “Oh, Lord,” my mother groaned. I could imagine my dad reaching for her hand to calm her.

  “I’m okay,” I hurried to say, though I doubted my own words. The reality stunned me. “I was . . . I was shot through the side. It was . . .” I stumbled. “They did surgery and . . .”

  “What kind of surgery?” My dad’s voice had hardened. “Honey, what did they do to you?”

  I knew they wanted details. I knew they needed to understand what I’d endured two nights ago. And since then. But I couldn’t bring myself to look the memories in the face. They’d already seeped too much of their paralysis into my mind.

  “The nurses tell me I was lucky,” I said, straining for a confident tone. “Really. They had to repair some damage to a portion of my intestines, but . . .” The image of a blond man lying in a pool of his own blood flashed into my mind. I shook my head to dislodge it. “But I was lucky,” I said. Lucky. The word felt insufficient. Insulting.

  There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. Then my dad cleared his throat. “I’ve got our travel agent finalizing tickets, honey. We’ll get there as fast as we can.”

  “No.” The word was out before I had time to soften it.

  “But . . .” My mom sounded surprised. When she spoke again, it was with more conviction. “Honey, we are not staying here while our daughter is in the hospital in France.”

  “It’s already taken care of,” my dad said. “We’ll let you know when our reservations are confirmed.”

  “No,” I said again. Even more firmly this time. I wasn’t sure where my reticence came from, but I knew beyond a doubt that I didn’t want them here. “It’s just . . .” I tried to soften my tone. “I may not be in the hospital much longer. The nurses say I could be out in a couple days. And Patrick’s arranging for a flight back for both of us.” It was a lie. We hadn’t so much as mentioned an exit plan. “I can stay in his apartment until I’m well enough to travel. Really. There’s no reason for you to come here when I’ll be back there in a few days.”

  “But . . . you’re injured.”

  “I know, Mom.” Impatience stirred. “But I’m not an invalid. They have me up and walking.” I thought of the massacre, of the savagery I’d witnessed. “I’m alive,” I said. My breath caught. Guilt and disbelief. “I can walk out of this hospital, when others . . .”

  “We want to come,” my dad said. I heard understanding and need dueling in his voice. “We just feel so useless sitting here. If we flew over, we could help you with—”

  “Patrick will help.”

  “Honey, we’ve been so scared.” My mom began to sob. I heard the muffled sound and felt remorse. They needed to come. They needed to see me breathing. But something in me rebelled at the thought of their presence. I didn’t want their fear—their trauma—magnifying mine.

  “I’ve been scared too,” I admitted. Then I took a breath and strove for clarity. For resolve. “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Patrick’s been here every day. He’s promised to help me until I can fly out. He’s . . .” I remembered how much my parents had balked when I’d moved in with him. They’d wondered about the optics of me living with a man. About his motivation too. “He’s taking care of me. You know how he is. And . . . and I’m fine.”

  “Are you in pain?” The concern in my dad’s voice nearly undid me.

  “A little,” I admitted. “But nothing awful. My doctor says I’m recovering quickly.”

  My mother’s sobs reached me from across the ocean again. “What you’ve been through . . .” she said, shocked and broken.

  “It’s okay, Mom. I’m okay.” I lay my head back on the stacked pillows behind me and stared at the ceiling. Every cell in my body wanted to flee—to get out of Paris as quickly as I could, the way Vonda had. To escape the pall that clung to every person, every place. But with impotence and immobility strangling the life from me, I needed this one decision to be mine.

  They tried to persuade me for a few minutes more, as fatigue descended over me. “It’s getting late,” I finally said. “And I’m too tired to think straight.”

  “Of course.” It was the same voice my mom had used when I was sick as a child. Calm and soothing. “You need to rest.”

  “Don’t buy the tickets.”

  My dad didn’t want to surrender. “Jessica . . .”

  “Don’t buy the tickets. Please.”

  There were a few moments of silence. I could picture them looking at each other, weighing the benefits of ignoring my wishes. “Let’s talk again tomorrow,” my father finally said. “Can we reconsider then?”
<
br />   I sighed. “Sure.”

  They called again the next day, when Patrick was in the room. They repeated their reasons for wanting to fly to Paris, and I tried once more to dissuade them of their plans. Seeing my distress, Patrick whispered better arguments to me, facts and reasons that would convince them not to come.

  Gratitude lifted my spirits as I heard them edging toward concession. He’d given me all the right words—the words a parent wants to hear—about my condition, my recovery, our strategy. “I’ll fly back as soon as my doctors allow it,” I finally said. “I’m in good hands. I promise you I am.”

  “Are you sure?” my mom asked one last time before hanging up. “If you’re not . . .”

  “I’m sure, Mom.”

  There was a pause. Then a sigh. Then my dad’s voice. “Okay. We can’t wait to hug you, honey. Can’t wait to see your face.”

  “I’ll be home soon.”

  I should have been elated, but there was a shroud over my mind—a muddied weight that seemed to prevent clear thought and, often, words.

  I was moved to a private room the next day. My parents had made the arrangements, and friends and strangers in my hometown had pledged to cover whatever cost my insurance didn’t. The quieter environment was comforting and terrifying.

  I tried a couple times to speak of what had happened with Patrick, fearful that my silence would anchor the memories to my DNA.

  I caught him looking at me across my dinner tray one evening.

  “I was standing over by the left side of the stage.”

  He nodded courage.

  “I wanted to get a close-up picture of the band. For you. To show you we were having fun without you.” I drew in a ragged breath. It all seemed so trivial now. “I was just about to snap the shot when—”

  My thoughts froze at that moment, as if the memories were sparing me from reexperienced terror. A sudden amnesia seemed to deaden my senses. I felt relief and fear. Relief that the details suddenly seemed scrubbed from my mind and fear that the loss was beyond my control.

  Patrick must have seen the battle playing out on my face. He rose and came to sit beside me on the bed, his soft voice comforting. “Give it time,” he said. “You’ll know when you’re ready.”

  I nodded.

  “Just give it time,” he repeated.

  I tried again before he left that night. And still the memories that had been unbearably clear the day before escaped me. I could feel their impact—the full brunt of their damage—but had lost the sights, sounds, and words of the ordeal. Part of me was grateful for the selective amnesia. Another part wondered if I had lost much more.

  The pall that hung over the hospital right after the attacks had begun to lighten. I could hear laughing nurses in those dark hours when residual pain kept me from sleeping. Not the leaden silence that had followed the influx of casualties overwhelming the hospital’s services.

  As my condition improved, traces of Patrick’s exuberance reappeared again. He distracted me with tales of his quartier’s happenings—the fishmonger caught selling three-day-old sole, squatters kicked out from the apartment across the street. There was something about the banality of the stories that allowed my mind to disengage—to focus for a moment on the ordinariness I feared I’d never know again.

  When Patrick saw my disposition changing, he redoubled his efforts to bring brightness to my world. He wore his favorite striped blazer on my fourth day in the hospital, a red and beige monstrosity that somehow looked chic on him.

  “Do not adjust your TV set,” he said as I squinted at his getup when he entered my room. “This city needs some optimism, and I am bringing it in the form of vintage Pierre Cardin.”

  “You look like a candy striper.”

  “And you look like a patient. But you’re out of bed—that’s a step in the right direction.”

  He grinned and propped a hip on the medical cabinet just inside the door. “You okay sitting up?” he asked, eyeing the pillows a nurse had propped around me in the big armchair by the window.

  “It’s fine,” I said. The pain was decreasing every day.

  “Good—then let’s talk travel.”

  He spent the next few minutes trying to talk me back into the expedition we’d planned before the attacks upended our worlds.

  “We’ll head south—take it as slow as we need to,” he said.

  “Patrick . . .”

  “No,” he said, pointing at me. “We do not let the bad guys derail our plans.”

  I thought of those who’d lost their lives, not just their plans, and felt a too-familiar weight press into me.

  Patrick sensed it and moved to sit on the end of my bed, facing my chair. There was hope on his face. “We’ll find the most beautiful places. We’ll soak in some sun. We’ll hunt for the dirtiest attics and barns we can find and dig for treasure until the next bakery calls our name too loudly to ignore.”

  “I’m recovering, remember?”

  “Fine. So I’ll do the digging and you can do the eating.”

  “My parents want me home with them.”

  “Of course they do.”

  “And . . .” I took a deep breath and looked down at my hands, ashamed of my fear. “And I really just want to get out of France.”

  “Honey,” Patrick said. He propped his chin on his clasped hands and gave me courage with his eyes. Not judgment. Not pity. “If you need to go home, do. Do what’s right for you, and of course I’ll fly back with you, but . . .” I saw a glint of rebellion cross his face. “But you’re alive. And the deudeuche is gassed up and rarin’ for an adventure, and if ever there was a time to thumb your nose at predictability by going on a treasure hunt with your slightly demented friend in a car that is really a go-cart with a rollback roof . . .”

  “I don’t want to stay in France.” I took a breath. “I’m a rational thirty-four-year-old woman who knows in her head that this country may be safer today than it’s ever been, but I’m terrified of staying here because I’m thinking like a four-year-old.”

  I could see optimism and understanding battling in Patrick’s face. He’d brought to the past couple of visits a deliberate enthusiasm, likely hoping it would seep into me if he shone it long enough. But he’d also brought a caring heart—the same that had locked us into an enduring friendship—and I could see him evaluating the toll of his cheerleading on me.

  “Aren’t your parents concerned?” I asked him. “Don’t they want you home too?”

  He gave me a look. “Jessica.” Of course. He was estranged from them—had been for years. They likely didn’t even know he’d come to Paris for the semester.

  “I think I’ll go either way,” he said. He held up his hands. “That’s not a threat or an attempt at guilting you into coming along. I just want you to know that it’s happening. If you decide not to come, I’ll fly home with you—that’s nonnegotiable—then come back over and do this trip.”

  “Patrick . . .”

  “No pressure. Just an open invitation. Okay?”

  I nodded, but knew I wouldn’t join him. This city I’d loved—this country I’d come to with anticipation and excitement, wondering if I’d put down roots here someday and stay awhile—had become the scene of horrors too soul-shattering to measure. Distance felt like a reprieve. The slow resumption of life in a world untouched by tragedy.

  I swallowed hard against the tears clogging my throat. “I could have died,” I whispered. “More than a hundred people did.” Those sounds—those awful, brutal, fatal sounds—reverberated in my mind again. “I want to leave.”

  Patrick pondered my words, a gentle, sad smile on his face. After a moment, he shook his head and expelled a long breath. “Of course you do.” There was only concern in his gaze.

  FOUR

  “ARE YOU SURE IT’S SAFE FOR ME TO GO HOME?”

  My favorite nurse, Lilly, had just handed me a prescription bottle with a two-week supply of painkillers and informed me that she had my discharge papers ready. Thou
gh the doctor had been by to check on me the day before, there was nothing in his demeanor that had hinted at my release.

  “The doctor thinks yes,” she said, her voice more lilting now than in those early, somber days. “You can wait a little more time before you go back to l’Amérique, if you prefer,” she added. “And you need someone for your suitcases, yes? To lift them for you. I have instructions . . .” She leafed through the papers she held in her hand but couldn’t find what she was looking for. “I will print them and bring them before you leave. It says no lifting heavy things for a few weeks, but as long as you listen to your—how you say? To your instinct,” she said, pronouncing the word the French way, “then it is okay for you to go home today.”

  I was stunned. And excited. And terrified. “So I can . . . leave?”

  “Yes, yes,” Lilly said, smiling broadly. “Do you want me to call your friend—the one you say you stay with?”

  “I’ll try to reach him,” I said, pulling out my phone. “He doesn’t live far.”

  I hadn’t anticipated the frenzy Lilly’s news set off in my spirit. Having waited so long for permission to go home, knowing I’d have been released much sooner from a hospital in the States, I wasted no time after the nurse left my room.

  I went to the closet and pulled out the few items Vonda had brought for me the day she’d said good-bye. I changed into them slowly, careful not to pull too much on the incision in my side.

  When I reached for my wallet, the thin leather billfold I’d tucked into my pocket on the night of the concert, I saw dark stains on one corner. Blood. I felt my pulse speed up as the static in my mind crescendoed. Memories lurched and I fought them back. There was an urgency in me—a desperation to get out, to see the sky and breathe the air outside hospital walls. I took the credit cards, euro bills, and Patrick’s apartment key from the wallet and tossed the rest into the trash can by my bed.