“Not so's you'd notice.”
“Maybe that's not him.”
“Oh, that's him, all right. Just tinkering, going about his day. Like he's got a tomorrow.”
Being a Lifeguard
I learned to swim at this same Y. I bet Mom and Dad did too. It's not some gleaming modern aquatic center, it's a moldy little old-fashioned pool-in-the-ground.
The first time I made it from the ladder to Mom's arms eight feet away, Claire was hopping up and down, yelling “Go, Nat, go! Go, Nat, go!” Everybody in the pool joined in and I doggy-paddled as if I were finishing a triathlon. I try to pass along that triumph to the Tadpoles, making them blow bubbles, get their faces wet.
Of course, mostly I just have to tell them the rules ten times per lesson.
“Hey, Milo,” I say. “No running. You know better than that.”
And he grins at me, that little-boy-with-one-tooth-missing grin, as in, If I flash my cutest smile you won't notice that I'm gonna run again the second you turn your lifeguard head.
And he does, only this time he slips on a wet patch and wipes out, thwack, skull to the tiles. The sound echoes like a bark and I'm blowing my whistle, shreet shreet shreet, before I even think about blowing my whistle.
The kids all know, I've drilled them; they're out of the pool and shivering on the side, gaping at Milo. And Milo, he's lying there like … ohgod, like Claire, still as stone. But before I get to him, before his mother's off the bleacher, he lets out a wail that's the sweetest sound I ever heard. Crying kids I can deal with. Breath-sucking silence I can't. Suddenly I'm infected with Responsibility: it's up to me. I'm guarding their lives, and anything can happen.
Zack
Zack meets me at the Y as a surprise.
“Yay, Zack.”
“Audrey made red velvet cake.” He takes my swim bag so I can fiddle with my bike lock. “Come over.”
“I don't know.” I'm afraid Zack might look me in the eye and expect someone to be there.
“Why are you working, anyway?”
“Routine,” I say.
“But everything's different.”
I unlock my bike. “It sure is.”
“So?”
“It's hard to be at home. They're kind of… marooned by mourning.” That phrase came to me beside the pool and now I'm saying it out loud.
“Aren't you?” he says.
The lock slips out of my hand and clanks on the ground. How can I still have a crush like a kid when the rest of me is … grappling with real stuff? “I am too.”
“Audrey told me to bring you home.” Zack picks up the lock and hands it over. “But maybe you just want to go to the hospital.”
“Yeah.” I reach for my bag and cram it into my basket.
“What's it like?” he says. “I can't even …”
I notice we're almost whispering.
“I've been trying to imagine,” he says. “If it was Audrey.”
I shudder. “I keep thinking it's not true. I wake up and trick myself every time. Today it'll be all fixed. But it's still true.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, you know. I'm okay.”
“What should I tell Audrey?”
“How about if I meet you guys later?”
But then.
“Zack.”
And he turns back, eyebrows up.
“I'm faking,” I whisper. “I'm not okay at all.”
My bike is suddenly too heavy to hold and I lay it down.
Zack scoops his arms around me. Zack. Who knows not to say anything stupid. I'm smelling his ice-cream-sticky shirt and sort of pressing into him. In a way I never have before.
For one second I consider pulling back and making a joke. But I think, Anything can happen at any moment. What if a car leaps out at me and I've never kissed Zack?
And then I'm kissing him like crazy; hot and tongues, chlorine and vanilla. I'm gripping his new gardening shoulders and his T-shirt soft as tissue, washed a hundred times. His hands are cupping my face, and I feel… cherished. I like this skinny boy so much … but now I'm crying too, tears streaming, and the kiss turns salty, like we're bobbing in the ocean.
Of course it has to end. And here we are outside the Y, with traffic and a wasp and summer dust and each other's faces in a new light.
Whoa
“What just happened?” he says.
I laugh and sob together, unzip my bag and pull out the damp towel to hold over my face, my burning eyes.
“Nat?”
I shake my head, inhaling the pool.
“Nat, just so you know … I…”
I wait, still hiding.
“That was …” He tugs at the towel. He wraps his arms around me again. “You mad?”
I shake my head.
There's No One to Tell
Because I sure won't be saying anything to Audrey. And what's the point of telling Claire?
The Regulations Seem to Be Loosening
Mom and Dad are both in Claire's room, sitting side by side, holding ungloved hands and not wearing their masks. They're using both chairs, so I sit on the floor next to Mom, where she can rest her other hand on my head. I slide my own mask down. Maybe it'll be good luck if we're all breathing the same air.
Can You Imagine?
“Wouldn't it be the most awful feeling to hit someone with your car?” Leila can't let it go.
“Since I've decided I'm never going to drive,” I say, “that's one experience I will definitely avoid.”
“Amaxophobic,” says Zack, “and stick with your instincts.”
We look at him.
“Afraid of riding in cars.”
“Does anyone notice how sick this conversation is?” Audrey asks. “Considering?”
I Can't Think About It
All night Zack is watching me, but I'm not letting my eye get caught. Finally he snags me alone outside the Ding-Dong ladies' room.
“Hey, Nat.”
“Hey.”
“Was I dreaming this afternoon?”
I laugh. “No.”
“So?”
“I'm in kind of a weird zone, Zack.”
“Well, yeah.” So …
“Just please don't say ‘Let's pretend it never happened.’”
“I couldn't pretend that,” I say, not wanting to grin under the circumstances, but knowing we sort of just shook hands on a deal. “But I can't think about this right now.”
He leans over and I hold my breath. He touches his nose to my neck, so lightly.
“Whenever you can,” he says.
Dream
I hate when people tell you their dreams, like they mean anything to anyone but the person who dreams them. But I just dreamt about you. I dreamt that my cell phone rang and the display said CLACK, like I used to call you. So I answered and you said “Hi, Natty” and my breath caught in my throat and in my dream I felt like my head would pop open.
“Claire!” I said, giddy with relief. “Claire! Everybody thinks you're dead.”
And you laughed. “Well, here I am,” you said. “Everybody's wrong, as usual.”
And I was holding the phone, pressing it against my ear like I was breathing through it. “Where are you?” I said.
“I'm going to LA.” you said. “Get it? The City of Angels.”
“Don't go,” I said. “I need to talk.”
But I couldn't hear anymore and I woke up with my hand hot against my ear.
My clock says 2:09 and I'm so awake I'm electric. I can't hear you breathing from the other bed. I look over and the duvet's bunched up but you're not there. You're really not there. It was a dream.
Visiting Hours
I feel like I have to see her now and not wait till morning. What if this is one of those cosmic moments where she's calling me in my dream but I go back to sleep and only think about it later when they tell me Time of Death, 2:09 a.m.?
I splash water on my face and put a cold, damp hand on the back of my neck to startle myself. I
trade boxers for shorts and sneak out of the house, which is so easy I should do it more often. Dad snores and Mom's on drugs. The garage door makes that bent-metal screech, but really, who's going to wake up or care? I pat my bike like she's a pony, waiting for me in her stall.
At the hospital I avoid the main entrance. They probably won't let me in. I go through the Emergency door and sit in the waiting room while I figure it out.
There's a mother holding a little boy who is chalk faced and breathing weird. An old lady is clutching her purse, but I can't tell what's wrong, other than she needs a comb. There's a guy who is piss drunk, with a face somebody punched, his lip puffed up like a donut.
Only medical personnel are supposed to go through the swinging doors, but the nurse at reception is tapping away at her computer and not watching the room. So when the old lady gets everyone's attention by starting to cry, I slip through and head for the elevator.
On the fifth floor, intensive care, I expect Claire's room to be dark, but when I step into the scrub room I realize there's a light, and a nurse sitting inside next to the bed, knitting. I haven't seen this one before. She's older than the day nurses, gray hair cut short, as in hacked off with nail scissors to look like a molting mouse. I wonder what's she doing here. Should I leave? Do I hide and wait for her break? Do I just go in?
I wash my hands and put on the gown and the mask. I open the door and the nurse looks up.
“Oh,” she says, “who are you?”
“I'm the sister. I mean, I'm Claire's sister. I'm Natalie.”
“Hello, Natalie.”
“I know it's not really visiting hours … but…”
She looks at her watch and laughs, “No, not really.”
“But I really wanted to see her,” I say. “I had a … I had a dream.” That sounds lame. “I just wanted… Has anything changed? Is there any difference?”
Now that I'm looking at Claire, I think, How could there be any difference?
She shakes her head, feeling sorry for me, I bet. “No, dear.”
“Do you think… I mean, you must have seen situations like this before,” I say. “Lots of times … Is there ever any hope?”
She considers me for a moment. “Depends on what you're hoping for,” she says.
Quiet.
I turn to look at Claire. What am I hoping for?
My heart hammers like when a wave knocks you head over heels. I know. What I've been hoping for is impossible.
Claire will never be Claire again. She might not even open her eyes again, and she sure isn't going to go to college in the fall, or play soccer, or marry Joe-boy or anyone else. She won't ride a bike or pool-hop or scarf cookie dough or dance with me on our beds till we fall ploof onto the duvets. Her life took eighteen years to make and now it's over.
My life is over too, the one I had coming up right behind her, attached to her, sewn onto her even when I was swimming in the opposite direction.
What would Claire think? Would Claire like this? How would Claire do it? I don't care what Claire says! Claire, Claire, Claire … the only one who knows all the stuff about my life, the only witness.
This nurse seems to know what's careening through my head. She puts a cupped palm under my elbow and sits me down. I see her knitting tucked into a tote bag. Pale, fluffy, hopeful pink, tiny needles; must be for a baby. Someone just beginning.
I stare at Claire. She'd never, ever want to know that this is where she is. It's time to find something new to hope for.
An Alternative
I wake up sweating with my arm trapped in a twisted sheet and I almost scream getting it out.
What if all this had happened to me instead of to Claire? What would Claire do?
Today's List
Things I'll Never Be
A nurse who dyes her hair a really bad color
A nurse of any kind
A ballet dancer
An astronaut
A driver
An aunt
Electroencephalogram
It's Dr. Hazel who tells us all the jazz about the EEG, aka ee-leck-tro-N-ceph-A-low-gram.
“It's a noninvasive procedure,” he says. “To observe whether or not there is any activity in the brain. We attach electrodes to the scalp that will pick up any electric signals produced by the brain …”
Who can listen?
Why Medical School Takes Five Extra Years
So they can learn how to confuse patients with jargon and convoluted sentence structure.
Drama
I meet Audrey before she goes to work. She's unsnarling her hair, cursing and jabbing the comb like a machete. Zack is there and I tell them about Claire's EEG.
“The brain's electric?” says Audrey.
“Not the way you're thinking,” says Zack. “It's not a toaster. It produces electrical signals, sort of like microscopic sparks. They use an EEG in this situation to detect whether … if Claire … if there's any flicker of action.”
“That's pretty much what the doctor said,” I say.
“Okay, you can disappear now, Brain Child.” Audrey pushes him. “I need to speak to Nat.”
“Can we see Claire?” says Zack
“Uh, well, they say family only. But maybe.”
Zack rubs my hair and leaves.
I ask Audrey, “So?”
She doesn't look at me, but suddenly she's smirking. Uh-oh, I think. Does she know about Zack and me?
“I had an inappropriate coupling,” she says.
“A coupling?”
She doesn't know.
“Well, not actually, but partially.”
“Who?” I ask.
“Don't laugh.”
“I won't.”
“Don't yell at me,” she says.
“Oh crap, who was it, Audrey?”
She looks over her shoulder.
“How inappropriate can this have been?” I say. “I'm trying to think of the worst possible—”
“Carson.”
“Carson?”
“Sssh!”
“You're joking, right?”
“See? I knew you'd be a butt about it.”
“I'm not, wait, I'm not anything about it yet. I'm just trying to find out if you're telling me— Wait, Carson? The one we've known since junior kindergarten Carson? The one who wears tighty whiteys and farts when he eats hot dogs Carson? The one who says the wrong thing every time Carson? The one who—”
“Okay, Natalie, I think we both know which Carson we're talking about here.”
“You hooked UP with him?”
She grins right at me.
“What? It was good?”
“He's the best kisser,” says Audrey.
“So why are you in a crap mood?”
She remembers, and scowls. “He said it was a one-time only. He doesn't want to ruin our friendship.”
“But—”
“I know, how dare he?”
And she stomps off.
There's always drama.
What's the point, otherwise?
After the EEG
I keep thinking how I'm so mad at you, only then of course I can't be mad at you, but I keep getting jolted with dark, steaming thoughts … like Why the hell did you stumble into the road, you idiot? How upset could you be, since you were the one breaking up with him? Why were you so deranged as to step in front of a car?
Another Visit
“These are my cousins,” I say. “Audrey and Zachary.”
Trisha looks them up and down, pausing to read Zack's T-shirt: HELL IS A STATE OF MIND.
“One visitor at a time,” she says.
“Oh, please, Trisha! It's not like we're going to tire her out!”
“You bite your tongue, girl.” But she makes a point of turning her back so we can file into the little scrub room.
“You've got to swipe me one of these gowns,” says Audrey. “My bag's too small, but get me one, okay? I've got this idea, to turn it into—”
“Oh, and I want
a hat,” says Zack, tugging on the paper shower cap.
“Take it,” I say. “All yours. Your very special souvenir from Claire World.”
Zack checks my face to see if I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not. I know what they don't know. They're going to walk through the inner door onto another planet. Nothing will ever be the same.
Suited up all together with our masks on, we look like a team from a bio-horror flick. Good thing Carson's not here to comment.
We stand beside Claire's bed, speechless. For a long time.
Then, “Wow,” Audrey whispers.
“Her hair,” says Zack.
“Or not,” says Audrey, and then slaps a hand to her mask. “Sorry.”
They stand some more.
“We shouldn't be just standing here,” says Zack.
“What do you do when you're here alone?” Audrey asks.
“I talk to her.”
“Wow.”
“The nurses say, you know, maybe she can hear. So I tell her stuff.”
I move closer to the bed and stroke her hand. Her puffy, purply hand.
“Hey, Claire,” I say. “You've got company.”
Zack is next to me so close his chin is hooked over my shoulder. Audrey goes to the other side of the bed.
In the quiet the machine is like a heartbeat. Well, bi-bip, bi-bip, like a robot heartbeat.
“It's sort of holy, eh?” says Audrey. “Like we're in a cathedral and she's one of those stone crypt things, you know? Lady Claire.”
“She's not dead,” I say.
“Oh god, sorry. Sorry. But it's … so still. That beep is sort of like praying monks, you know? An incantation …”
Audrey begins to hum, this pure, melancholy note, and Zack jumps right in, lower, in harmony. I can't help it, I pick a note and join in. We start out solemn, chanting the way they do in recordings of medieval rituals. Then Zack introduces some bebop and Audrey starts snapping her fingers. I'm swaying and the room is adding echoes while we Rip It Open for Claire.
Would You Page 8
