The Girl He Used to Know

by Tracey Garvis Graves

  * * *

  At the hospital, a nurse kept asking if I knew how far along I was. I was having a hard time focusing and there were so many people surrounding me, cutting off my T-shirt and underwear, taking my blood pressure. I tried to say no, that I wasn’t pregnant because I was on the pill and had recently had a period, but I drifted in and out as they brought in a machine and ran a wand over my abdomen. Later, I would find out that the ultrasound was inconclusive because there was so much blood in my abdominal cavity they couldn’t see anything.

  Everyone seemed to be shouting. The nurses were giving instructions and Jonathan was trying to give them the information they wanted. I faded in and out as my pulse and blood pressure dropped dangerously low. Then they made Jonathan leave and I tried to yell, to tell them I wanted him to stay, but I was so cold and so tired.

  They wheeled me into the operating room, where they performed emergency surgery to stop me from bleeding to death. I had most definitely been pregnant, and the period I thought I’d had wasn’t a period at all, but rather the first sign that things had started to go wrong. The embryo had implanted in my fallopian tube and when it grew too large, the tube burst, more than likely right before they loaded me in the ambulance.

  The doctors were unable to save it.

  30

  Annika

  THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

  AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

  1992

  My parents and Jonathan were at my bedside when I woke up. I had been gravely ill and required a blood transfusion, but by the time my parents arrived at the hospital, my condition had stabilized. Because my tube had ruptured, I had a more invasive procedure than I would have had the ectopic pregnancy been caught sooner. The doctors had to cut me open instead of going in laparoscopically, and because of this, they said, I would need to stay in the hospital for several days and it could take up to six weeks before I recovered fully.

  Janice was there, too. She wrapped her arms around me and cried so hard, I asked her if she was okay.

  “I was just so worried when I got the call from Jonathan. I’m so sorry.” She said it over and over.

  I didn’t know what she had to be sorry about, because I was the one who’d caused this. Jonathan had had the forethought to grab my purse before following the paramedics down the stairs. He’d assumed my wallet would contain my insurance card, and it had. But my birth control pills were also in there, and it didn’t take the hospital staff long to piece together that I’d missed taking quite a few of them. I had been almost certain that I took one every day, because my intentions were to take them exactly the way I was supposed to. I hadn’t forgotten on purpose, and I did not want a baby, because I could barely take care of myself. I’d simply forgotten in the way I sometimes forgot to brush my hair, or eat breakfast, or take out the trash when it was my turn.

  And in the case of the pills, I had forgotten enough times that we made a baby.

  * * *

  My parents stayed at the hospital from sunrise to sundown and then retired to a nearby hotel rather than make the daily four-hour round trip home and back. Jonathan stayed by my side and only left briefly when he would run home to shower and change. He spent the nights sleeping in a recliner by my bedside as I drifted in and out of a painkiller-induced haze. The first night, after my parents had finally left after receiving enough assurances from the doctor that I was no longer in danger, he clutched my hand tightly in his and there were tears in his eyes. “I was so scared, Annika.”

  “Me too,” I whispered. But what I didn’t tell him was that my grief over what had happened outweighed the fear of what had not. During my more lucid moments, I’d thought about the baby growing in my fallopian tube. The doctor had told me that with an ectopic pregnancy there was no way to save the baby, and it was true that I was in no way equipped to have one.

  But that didn’t stop my heart from breaking for the tiny living thing that never had a chance.

  * * *

  Janice brought a pair of my pajamas and helped me change into them in the bathroom, leaving my parents and Jonathan to make small talk in my room. “I know you must hate wearing these,” Janice said as she slipped the hospital gown from my shoulders and replaced it with the long-sleeved top to my pajamas. She held open the waistband of the bottoms, and I stepped into them—gingerly, because even the slightest movement caused a painful, pulling sensation in my incision.

  I didn’t mind the gowns, actually. They were loose and somewhat soft, probably from the repeated washings. What I hated the most about being in the hospital was the noises and smells. The sharp smell of the antiseptic and the repeated announcements over the intercom interfered with whatever semblance of calm I had been able to achieve. All I wanted was to stay asleep, to escape from this nightmare in the only way I knew how. But that didn’t keep the nurses from coming in hourly to poke and prod me, to take my temperature and blood pressure. My wound needed its own care to make sure there was no infection. I had caught a glimpse of the angry line of stitches when the nurse helped me go to the bathroom for the first time after they removed the catheter, and I made sure never to look down again.

  Janice opened the door and put her arm around my shoulders to help me walk out of the bathroom. I was still light-headed and the nurses warned that I should not get out of bed unless someone was at my side to make sure I didn’t fall.

  “I told your mom I’d go around and talk to all your professors and see what they wanted to do about keeping you in the loop for these last few weeks of school,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll allow you to turn in the work late and make some other concession for the final exams.”

  I didn’t say anything, because I could only focus on one thing at a time, and at the moment all I really wanted was for Janice to put me back in bed.

  * * *

  “I’ll leave as soon as classes are over on Friday,” Jonathan said on the day they allowed me to go home.

  “Leave to go where?”

  “Your house. I want to be with you.”

  “Okay,” I said. I was still tired and weak, and all I wanted to do when I got home was go back to sleep, but it would feel good to have Jonathan with me.

  My parents arrived and while we waited for the discharge paperwork, Jonathan said, “Is it all right if I visit Annika this weekend?”

  “Of course,” my mother said.

  When the nurse said it was okay for me to leave, my dad left to bring the car around.

  “I’ll just be out in the hallway,” my mom said.

  Jonathan pulled me close, crushing me in his hug. I didn’t mind, though. When he let go, he kissed my forehead. “I love you. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “I love you too,” I said. I didn’t address the second part of his statement, because I didn’t believe that anything would ever be okay again.

  I climbed into the backseat of my parents’ car, lay down across the seat, and went to sleep.

  * * *

  “What can I get you?” my mom asked after she tucked me into my bed like a child. The perfume Jonathan had given me for Christmas and I’d callously left behind was directly in my line of vision, and I asked her to give it to me.

  I clutched the perfume bottle in my hand, and I cried myself to sleep over the sadness of what I’d done, and for the baby Jonathan and I had made and lost.

  * * *

  He came on Friday just like he promised, and he was there when I woke up from one of my many naps. He brushed the hair back from my face. “How’s my Sleeping Beauty?”

  I smiled, because his face was one of the few things that still brought me joy. He pulled back the covers and climbed into my bed, and I settled my head in the small crook between his neck and shoulder. “I’m fine,” I said, though I had never lied to him before.

  The first lie made the ones that followed so much easier to tell.

  The door opened late on Saturday night. “Annika?” Jonathan said, his voice only slightly louder than a whisper.
/>   “I’m awake,” I said. My mom had put Jonathan’s things in Will’s room when he arrived, but my parents weren’t overly strict about that sort of thing, and I knew my mom wouldn’t care if she found us together in my bed or Will’s. The reason I was awake when Jonathan came in was because I’d slept so much of the day away that for once, I couldn’t sleep. Instead I’d been lying in bed ruminating over the state of my life. Other people’s mistakes seemed small in comparison to the ones I’d made. Mine seemed to be getting bigger, and now they were hurting other people.

  He slipped under the covers. “I know it won’t be easy to get caught up, but you can do it. You can graduate and you can still come to New York on time.”

  Jonathan had big plans, and goals he’d been working toward since high school. I wasn’t so clueless and out of touch that I couldn’t see how my involvement in his life might negatively affect those things. Even if I managed to catch up with my schoolwork and graduate on time, I would only be a hindrance to him and would never be able to pull my weight in New York. And if I was being honest with myself, it seemed overwhelmingly exhausting to even consider it. I would need way more time to recover from not only the physical effects of what had happened, but also the emotional.

  I simply did not have anything left to give, even to Jonathan, whom I’d finally realized I loved much more than I would ever love Mr. Bojangles.

  * * *

  The veil of depression that descended upon me was heavy, dark black, and suffocating. I did not leave my bedroom other than to attend my follow-up medical appointments, and only then because my mother threatened to have my dad physically place me in the car. The hospital had sent us home with a bottle of pain pills and I’d watched my mother put them in the cupboard when I said I could manage my pain without them. I could go into the bathroom and open that cupboard and swallow all of them. A sleep that would top all the others. Permanent. I spent two whole days thinking about it. Turning it over in my mind. It would be so easy! It probably wouldn’t even hurt.

  I had gone so far as to get out from under the covers to walk to the bathroom when my dad came into my room to check on me. He was never one to talk, and that day he didn’t say anything at all. But he pulled my desk chair over to the side of the bed and reached for my hand, holding it loosely in his smooth, dry palm as the tears slid down my cheeks.

  He stayed all day.

  I never told anyone that my dad was the one who kept me tethered to this life, but I did tell my mom she should dispose of the pills because I didn’t need them anymore.

  Jonathan finally confronted me when it was clear I’d done none of the things I said I would do. “I know you’re still recovering, but there’s no way you can catch up when you haven’t even started.” I didn’t respond. “Annika, I need you to talk to me.”

  “I want you to go to New York and start your job. I’ll go back to school next fall and when I graduate in December, I promise I’ll join you then.”

  He looked as defeated as I’d ever seen him look. “I want to believe you,” he said.

  So on a beautiful Saturday in May, Jonathan received his degree. The next day, he boarded a plane to New York to crash on a friend’s couch while he started his new job and looked for a place for us to live. No one read my name aloud on graduation day. I would have to repeat the semester in order to complete my undergraduate education. Janice told me later that she spoke with Jonathan after the ceremony. “I invited him and his mom to come to dinner with my family, but he politely declined.”

  “How did he look?” I asked.

  “Not as happy as he should have.”

  * * *

  May turned to June, and then July. I might have decided to live, but my mom grew frustrated with me because I was still sleeping way too much. “You cannot lie in this bed and let life pass you by,” she shouted.

  “What, this life?” I shouted back, gesturing toward the four walls. “A life inside this room is the only life I’m equipped for.” I pointed toward the door, the windows. “I hate everything out there. Everything out there sucks! You know why? Because you never told me what to expect. You never helped me develop any coping skills. You just … you let me stay in this house playing school, isolated from everything, and then you sent me off to college, completely unprepared. Janice is the only one who ever taught me anything about real life.”

  And Jonathan, a small voice said inside my head.

  “I had no choice. I couldn’t let you stay at that school, let those bitches torment you or hurt you again. Seventh grade!” she cried. “How can children be that cruel at such a young age? I had to take you out, keep you here with me where I knew you’d be safe.” My mom had never spoken to me using such language before, and she was wrong because the girls were worse than bitches. They were evil.

  She sat down on the edge of my bed. “Your dad told me of the bullying and abuse he’d suffered as a child, and how no one did anything about it because boys were strong and they were expected to tough it out. I swore I would never let that happen to you. Someday when you have children of your own, you will understand.”

  “If I can even have them,” I said.

  “You’ve still got one tube. You will have them if you want them.” She wiped the corner of her eye. “I started preparing you for life outside these four walls from the day you were born. I did what I thought was right, and I did it until I couldn’t do it anymore because there was no more. You were ready and the only way to help you was to send you out into the world. Do you think I wasn’t scared? Do you think I wanted to put your welfare in the hands of an eighteen-year-old girl? Someone who was essentially a stranger to us both?”

  I had no idea what my mom was talking about. “What do you mean?”

  “I called Janice’s mother the day after we received your roommate assignment from the university. My hand was shaking as I held the phone because I didn’t know how she’d respond to what I was about to ask her for. I just wanted another set of eyes on you. It was a lot to ask of Janice and I wanted to make sure her mother didn’t mind. She agreed and so did Janice. I called your dorm room after you asked us to come get you that day three weeks into your freshman year, when you wanted to give up. Thankfully Janice answered the phone.”

  I remembered that day. The phone ringing and Janice taking it out into the hall. Asking me to walk to the union for lemonade. Finding the chess club.

  “And before you start thinking she was only your friend because I asked her to be, I want you to know that Janice loves you like the sister she never had. I remember the end of your freshman year when I called to see if she might consider rooming with you again. She said, ‘Linda, I can’t imagine living with anyone else. Annika is a true friend.’ She has told me multiple times how much she cares about you and how much your friendship means to her.”

  Now my mother and I were both wiping our eyes. The amount of gratitude I felt toward Janice and what she’d done to get me through college was immeasurable.

  “You have wonderful gifts to offer people, Annika. You are honest and loyal. Not everyone will appreciate that, and there are people who will dislike you anyway. Life isn’t easy for anyone. We all have challenges. We all face adversity. It’s how we overcome it that makes us who we are.”

  I was still too young back then, too self-centered, too overwhelmed by the trauma of losing the baby and the daily battle to fight my way back toward the light, to understand that my mother had given me the greatest gift a parent could give a child. But years later I would recognize and appreciate that everything my mother had hoped for me had come to fruition only because she’d kicked me out of the nest, and it had mostly worked, despite a few bumps along the way.

  “You will always have to do things you don’t want to do, and they’ll be harder for you than they are for your brother, or Janice, or Jonathan, or me. But I truly believe there will always be people in your life who will help you. Who will love you just the way you are.”

  It was only after she l
eft the room that I realized she hadn’t included my father in that list.

  31

  Annika

  THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

  AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

  1992

  I returned to the University of Illinois campus for the fall semester, in August of 1992. I rented a one-bedroom apartment in the same complex Janice and I had lived in. Jonathan was the first person to leave a message on my new answering machine.

  “Hey, it’s me. I hope you’re all settled in. I have some good news. I finally found an apartment for us. It’s a dump, Annika. I’m not gonna lie. But I told you it probably would be. Hey, at least we won’t have to share my buddy’s couch, so there’s that. When you get out here we can fix it up together. I don’t have a lot of time to do it now anyway. It’s like a competition to see who can be the first one here in the morning and the last one out the door at night. Weekends, too. I’m sure it won’t always be like this. Call me when you can. I miss you so much. I love you.”

  I glanced at the clock and called him back even though I knew he probably wouldn’t be home. “Hi, it’s Annika. I’m all moved in. The apartment’s nice. It looks a lot like my old one. I’m glad you found a place and don’t have to sleep on the couch anymore. I miss you, too. I love you, Jonathan.”