Hallucinating. I must be hallucinating again.
My eyes felt heavy, and I let them drift closed.
“I heard the surgery was pretty intense.” The floor nurse spoke to her colleague in a hushed tone.
“It was close. But they think the lightning actually cauterized the wound—helped stop the bleeding. She didn’t even need blood ...”
Their voices faded and I was thankful for the quiet. Maybe I was already dreaming.
Chapter Two
When I opened my eyes, I had no idea how long I’d been sleeping. The pain returned. I forced my eyelids shut. Opening them to slits, I studied the ceiling. The air seemed to ripple as if made of translucent fabric. Interesting. I blinked.
If the air above me wasn’t made of cloth, how could it tear? Only a little at first, but it continued to peel back. The stark white ceiling remained in place, but on top of it or behind it was something else. Gray and red. Why?
The hole widened and frayed along the edges, revealing a sky. It wasn’t like any sky I’d seen before. It was the wrong color. There were no clouds, no sun. Was it daytime?
There were no stars, either. The room felt different. It was hot and dry. The hole widened, slipped along the edges of my room, bled down the walls. Where had I seen this place before?
I was back on the grass of that night, waiting to die. The sky had opened onto this exact scene. The gray of the sky came closer, blending into the disappearing white walls. With a jolt, I remembered the face of the man I’d seen there—no, not a man. The thing.
Over the quick pulse of the monitor, the sound of my blood pumping hammered in my ears. My heart felt like it was going to explode. What was happening to me?
Through the haze, I thought I need to close it. If it were fabric, I would sew the tear closed. I fought rising panic and forced myself to concentrate on where the gray sky met the white of the hospital room. I imagined it moving back, getting smaller. Slowly, the white returned and the gray faded. A little more. The edges retreated. Slowly. Smaller. And then it was a single dot. Then a ripple.
Then it was gone, and my room was my room. My head was my own and my body was on fire. I reached for the call button but willed my hands back to my bed. I didn’t know what the nurse was giving me but, whatever it was, I didn’t want it.
I thought about Jared. If anyone could get me through this, he could. If I just focused on him, maybe I wouldn’t feel this overwhelming pain. I pictured his face.
I’d always known he had a thing for me. He’d been so excited about the meteor shower. If it clouded over too quickly, our show would be cut short.
Why had he brought the gun with him?
I lost my hold on the pain. I watched the clock above the doorway. Just make it through one minute. Seconds ticked by. One minute. Another sixty seconds. One minute at a time. I’d get through this.
The door opened, but I didn’t shift my gaze from the face of the clock. One more minute. Just one more minute.
“Rachel! What’s going on?” The voice was thick with worry. “Nurse. Nurse!”
I opened my mouth to tell my father it was okay. But all that came was a low, animal groan of pain.
“Nurse!” he called again.
The nurse returned. She turned to my father. “She didn’t call.”
He shouted, a rush of angry words, at the nurse, at the hospital in general.
I felt the familiar, smooth calm offered by the medication and relaxed my head into the pillow. I was fine. No more pain. But he continued to demand to see my doctor.
I felt bad for my father. He wanted to be better than he was but, despite his personal failings, he loved me. I was his only child. I peered through the growing fog from him to his wife. My gaze traveled down from her perfect, heart-shaped face to the curve of her belly. Not that she’d been skinny before the pregnancy, but she was one of those women who was beautiful at any size. No wonder my mom couldn’t stand her. Soon, I would have a sibling.
I’d felt excited at first, when they’d told me. I was going to be a sister. The baby would probably be blonde, with blue eyes, like Dad and Evelyn, but maybe we’d have the same smile.
Maybe we’d like the same things. As evidence of the baby became apparent, I wondered if it would change the way Dad felt about me. For that moment, though, I was the only one in the room who mattered. And he was overreacting.
“I’m okay, Dad.” My words slurred, and I wasn’t sure he understood them. I tried again. “It’s alright.”
He looked at me closely and touched my hand. A wave of calm washed over me. I was loved. I was safe, he was here. Then he sat heavily in the chair beside my bed.
He glanced toward the door. “Doctor,” he said, not moving from his chair. His voice shook slightly; he was fighting to keep it under control. “When my wife and I arrived here, my daughter was writhing in pain. What’s going on in this hospital?”
My gaze shifted toward the face of the man in the room, and my breath caught, trapped in my throat. The hazel eyes were unmistakable. He was the man I’d seen when the nurse touched me, the one working over top of my body to save my life. I was sure I’d never really seen him before. But here he was. How was my hallucination standing in my room?
“Is she okay?” My father had noticed the increase in heart rate on the monitor.
The doctor, holding a brown clipboard, scanned it briefly, and then pushed a button on the machine beside my bed, reading the information there. “She’s fine.” He spoke softly, trying to put my father at ease, murmuring explanations.
As he talked to them, my stepmother came toward my father and put her hand on his shoulder. A flash, and then I was with her on a grassy field beside a headstone. She was holding onto my father with one arm and a small child with the other. They were at my funeral.
There was no question about it, whatever the hallucinations were, they told me she wished I’d died. As I looked up at her face, I figured it was probably true. Not that I blamed her for wishing I was gone. She, like me, had a vested interest in being the most important girl in his life. With a child on the way, she’d naturally be worried he would never love the baby as much as he loved me. Cold comfort, but comfort nonetheless.
I fell asleep sometime during their visit, after an awkward interview with the police officer. The small, slightly graying man managed to completely ignore my father’s crossed arms and steady glare, but he left with no new information and nothing to charge me with. I’d gotten the distinct impression he’d thought I was hiding something, but whether he suspected some teenage drama or horrible criminal secret was anyone’s guess.
Afterwards, Dad and Evelyn stayed too long.
When I opened my eyes in the dark room, I was thankful they were gone. I wasn’t in as much pain, either, and my mind was clearer.
I thought about the visions again. If they were hallucinations, why did they seem so real? I pictured the flash of light in the sky, right before we were hit. Maybe they had something to do with the lightning. I mentally ran through the possibilities. What could give someone visions like that? Not just visions, though. Feelings. Impressions. When my mother was upset, I felt it. When my father’s hand was on me, I knew he wanted to protect me and I was safe.
I recalled the strange way the hospital ceiling peeled back to reveal another sky, and how I’d seen the same vision in the field before I’d been struck. That, at least, couldn’t have been because of the lightning or the medication.
What was happening to me?
It occurred to me that my pain wasn’t returning, even though my mind was completely clear. The night was mostly a blank, though. I lay in the bed and stared up at the ceiling again. I thought about calling Lisa, but I wasn’t sure what time it was. I didn’t have her number anymore, anyway. It had been in my phone, and my phone was nowhere to be seen. Fried, most likely. Which meant I would need to get everyone’s numbers again.
Awkward and embarrassing, especially for someone like me. I preferred to be invis
ible.
My legs felt stiff and, although it was dark outside, I desperately wanted to get up and walk. I studied the IV taped to my wrist with white gauze wrapping and the cord running from me to the monitor. Obviously, I wasn’t going anywhere. I craned my neck to peer out the window, but the bed’s angle only afforded me the view of a narrow rectangle. Uncomfortable, I turned my head and caught sight of the approaching morning, pinkish orange on the edge of the horizon, reflected in the vanity mirror. Even from the hospital bed, even in reflection, it was beautiful. This time of year, dawn was always beautiful when the sky was clear.
Jared occasionally ventured to my window early enough to catch the sunrise with me. He’d knock and somehow convince me to get out of bed and invite him in. I’d offer to make him coffee but he’d always refuse. We’d sit on the edge of my bed and watch out the window. He’d explain to me why the sky makes those colors, why we see colors the way we see them, and why it appears the sun touches the gray of the sky and turns it blue, bringing it to life. Watching the dawn was another of our things we would never do together again.
I didn’t look away from the sunrise. It was a gift he’d given me. I watched until the sun was high, and the sky returned to its ordinary shade of blue, and a new nurse brought what was supposed to be breakfast. She put the tray, with a small cup of liquid and a bowl of something beige and runny, overtop of me and smiled blankly.
“I’ll be back after breakfast to help you get up and moving.” She left without waiting for a reply. It was early, and she had other things to do.
Unlike me, with nothing to do but wait.
Getting up and being afforded some movement was easier than I thought it would be and over much too quickly. As I lay in bed again, time seemed to move more slowly, if that were possible, despite the fact Dad had stopped by with a new phone, my math binder, and a list of assignments I’d missed.
The sky didn’t open up again though, which I appreciated, and I avoided touch altogether. I needed time to get back to normal. The visions would pass, once I was out of the hospital, and, until then, I would just control my thoughts. I did my algebra, which had been due the day after I died.
When the doctor came to see how my wounds were healing and to talk about skin grafts, it stirred an unpleasant sensation. I wasn’t looking forward to having the hole in my abdomen examined. He brought a gray rolling chair in with him and, sitting casually, wheeled himself closer to the bed. Mom sat stiffly on a chair beside me.
“Have you been in a lot of pain?” His expression was serious, concerned—professional. “When the operating nurse stopped in to check on you after her shift the other day, she said you were uncomfortable, but I notice you haven’t been utilizing the pain management we have in place.”
Uncomfortable. One word for it. “The pain’s okay,” I told him. In fact, since sunrise, I’d barely had any pain at all.
“Okay. Let’s take a look then, shall we?” The question was rhetorical. “It might hurt a little when I take off the gauze.” I felt a slight tug as he removed the tape and pulled back the white gauze. His eyes widened. A moment later, I felt his fingers on my skin. “It’s healing much better than I expected.”
“What?” I refused to look at the damage.
“What do you see?” Mom was leaning over with him now. She raised her eyes to meet the doctor’s again. Sitting up and bringing my head in close to theirs, I felt an odd prickling sensation down my spine as I gazed at my skin. It was far from perfect—there were thin, white and pink, branchlike lines extending from a blackish circular indentation on my abdomen. But the damage wasn’t nearly as severe as I thought it would be.
“I don’t—” He broke off, his brow furrowed deeply. “Sit up, please. Lean forward.” I did so, and I felt him unwrap the bandages on my back to see the exit wound, of both the bullet and the electricity. “Also much better than expected.” He picked up his clipboard, flipping through the pages, scanning them.
“Well ...” he said slowly, straightening up and frowning, “the body’s an amazing thing. At this rate, I’d guess the scarring will be minimal.” He paused. I sensed his mind working, trying to make medical sense of the extent of my recovery. Finally, he shook his head and turned to my mother. “Sometimes our resiliency surprises us. She’s healing very well. I’d like to document this thoroughly before we discharge her, though. I’ll send a nurse in to re-dress the wound and to show you how to change her dressing. We’ll want to book some follow up, to continue to monitor her progress. We can decide later if you want the referral for reconstructive surgery.”
We all stared down at the thin, slightly pink marks and the small, already healing wound.
“I think it will be fine,” I answered for her. “I don’t mind it.” I forced myself to not think, not wonder, not ask. I just wanted to get back home, to pretend everything was normal.
But nothing was normal.
Nothing would ever be normal again.
Chapter Three
Mom took the last of her holiday time to cook my breakfast and drop me off in front of the school. As the gray structure loomed up before me, I clasped my shaking hands in my lap. Normally, I’d have no problem walking the ten-minute stretch to the school. I’d have picked Jared up along the way. But this time, I passed his house in the car. I missed his funeral. Nobody told me when it was. As if I wouldn’t have wanted to be there. As if I wouldn’t have wanted to say goodbye. Why hadn’t anyone given me the chance to say goodbye? Had he known I wasn’t angry with him?
As I neared the school, people were staring, already. Usually, I was invisible. Aside from Jared and Lisa, nobody ever really saw me. And I hadn’t talked to Lisa since I’d been in the hospital.
I didn’t want to be here. Living. No, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t the living I minded. I wanted to be back on that field, watching the meteor shower with Jared.
“Hey, Rachel.” Lisa’s soft voice startled me. With her blonde hair pulled away from her face into a tight, high ponytail, she appeared paler than ever. She smiled and averted her eyes.
I’d worked at not caring that she hadn’t called or visited but, as I forced a smile, my resolve wavered. I was surprised at how relieved I was to have her standing at my locker, not hating me, not ignoring me. I’d been wondering how I was going to handle the day alone.
“Sorry I couldn’t make it to the hospital to see you,” she said quietly.
“No problem.” I shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “I wasn’t at my best.”
“I’m sorry anyway,” she said, and I could tell she meant it as she leaned over and hugged me. Unexpectedly, I was at Jared’s funeral, listening to his father say goodbye. Was I losing my mind? Lisa let go and took my hand again. “I’m so glad you’re back,” she said, and I realized something that had never occurred to me before: she felt guilty for missing Jared. It made sense. He’d tried to kill me, and she missed him.
“I miss him, too.” I spoke without thinking.
She was suddenly busy adjusting the strap on her bag. As we started toward class, she asked, not yet looking at me, “So why did he do it?”
“I wish I knew. I honestly can’t remember.” We stopped at the entrance to First Period English. “One moment, we were watching the meteor shower. And the next, I was lying on the grass.” I fell silent as a few people walked by. They openly stared at me as they passed. I waited until they were seated.
“They said in the paper they thought it was a jealousy thing. Or drugs or something.”
“It’s not true.” I didn’t think it was. “He tried to save my life.”
She nodded, tears filling her eyes.
Mrs. Reimer's heels approached from down the hall, and we ducked into the classroom. We moved to our usual places in the back corner of the class. I took the seat closest to the wall. The chatter in the classroom fell silent as Mrs. Reimer came in.
Her eyebrows rose when she saw me. “Rachel, it’s good to have you back.”
I smiled weakly.
People were staring again. After a beat, she launched into a lecture on the trouble with Hamlet.
Was it failure to act or true madness that did him in, in the end? I thought it was because he was stabbed with a sharpened, poisoned sword, but what did I know?
I was relieved, though, that most of my classmates had turned their attention away from me and toward the front of the classroom or to their text conversations. A few were playing games. Nobody stared at me anymore.
Actually, that wasn’t accurate. As I glanced at the door, I noticed somebody’s eyes on me. They were dark—a darker brown than mine.
He was two rows ahead of me, against the other wall, and he studied me intently. He didn’t seem curious or pitying, like most of them. He seemed ... angry. I recognized him, but barely. I mostly remembered the earrings. Black, industrial barbells high in both ears, as well as thick black crescents in his lobes that had to be at least one gauge. The left ear also had some sort of spiral along the rim. A small metal bar, pointed at each end, ran through his right brow. I remembered he only came to enough classes to stay enrolled. Kyle, or Ryan, or something equally forgettable. I thought back to the beginning of the year. His name had been called repeatedly since he was so often absent. Tyler.
I’d never spoken to him. I looked away. Let him stare. Minutes later, when I glanced back at him, he was still staring. Enough. I turned slightly to stare back. He met my eyes, unflinching. I wondered if anyone else noticed our strange sort of staring contest.
Finally, I rolled my eyes pointedly and turned back to the front. Eventually, when I glanced back at him, he was drawing with a pen on his desk, scratching the ink into the already damaged surface. I studied his profile. He was good-looking enough, despite the piercings: jet-black hair a little too long in the front so it hung down slightly into his eyes, thick lashes, kind of olive skin. Not ugly by any stretch. But neither was he, at first glance, extraordinary. He turned his head at an angle as he permanently effaced the school property.
Infusion Page 2
