by Chelsie Hill
“Where am I?” I finally squeaked out in something that sounded more like a cartoon mouse than my own voice.
“You’re in the hospital, sweetie.” Mom’s voice also sounded nothing like her. She was never this quiet and tentative unless she knew I wouldn’t like what she was going to say.
I blinked and blinked and blinked again, trying to break through the thick fog in my brain and my mouth. “Hospital?” My voice sounded a little more solid the more I used it, so I kept going. “Why?”
Dad cleared his own throat and tightened his grip on my arm. “Can you tell us what you remember?” Dad asked. “What’s the last thing you remember doing?”
“Sleep,” I said. All I could get a handle on was the deep sleep I had just come out of.
From their faces, I sensed that this was the wrong answer, so I closed my eyes and struggled to focus on a memory, something concrete. Something before the sounds and smells and yanking my eyes open to this strange room with my crying parents. After a moment, something flashed through my head.
“Party. Rob Chang’s party.” It occurred to me as soon as I said it that I never actually told them about the party. Mom thought I had been at the movies with Amanda. I couldn’t remember why I was in the hospital, but I could remember that I’d lied to my parents.
“Good,” Mom said, and I was relieved she didn’t bring up the lie or even look mad about it. “Anything else? Do you remember what happened?”
“Curt. Um, we fought,” I said slowly. The memory of our argument danced around the edge of my mind. I couldn’t place what we fought about, but I knew I desperately wanted to talk to him. Had he been here, waiting for me? Was he out in the waiting room or getting coffee? Hopefully he’d be in here soon. And hopefully, like with my mom, the argument wouldn’t even really matter anymore, since I was okay now after … whatever had happened to me. “I left alone.”
“Okay, good,” Dad said. “I’m glad you remember all of this.”
“Hungry,” I said. Cobwebs cleared my head one by one, and details crept in. “Curt and I fought. I left alone. I was hungry. Wanted Taco Bell.” A fact popped into my head, one that I felt was very important to tell my parents. “Wasn’t drinking,” I said. “Only water at the party. Not—”
“We know, sweetie.”
“How?” Now that my eyes and my brain were cooperating, I really noticed how haggard my parents looked. Mom was always put together, even for a run to the store, but today her hair was pulled up in a sloppy topknot, her hoodie had a coffee stain on the chest, and dark circles pooled under her eyes. And Dad, in an old UCLA T-shirt and a baseball cap, neither of which had ever been worn outside the backyard, looked as if he hadn’t shaved or even slept in days.
Waking up in the hospital was enough of a red flag, but the disheveled state of my parents was the truly alarming thing. My dad loved to tell me how my mom did her whole beauty routine—Velcro rollers in her hair, blow-out, full face of makeup—while in labor with me, contractions and all, because she didn’t want to look bedraggled in the “I just had a baby!” photos. Mom didn’t do unkempt, so seeing her like this sent a severe sense of dread pulsing through my body. Something was really wrong here.
“The doctors ran a blood test,” Dad said. His lips pressed together in a line, like he was attempting to smile, but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. “You’re fine. We know you weren’t drinking.”
I tried to let out a long sigh, but it caused more discomfort than relief. Thanks to the uneasy dread I was feeling, my body wasn’t able to relax enough to sigh the way I wanted to. “That’s all I remember.” The words came more easily now. “Can’t remember after I left Rob’s house for food. Not a single thing after that.” Disappointment crept into my voice; why couldn’t I come up with anything useful? Something obviously got me from my car to this hospital room, and it was annoying not to be able to make a single connection between the two. “Tell me what happened.”
“Kara, honey.” Dad took off his hat, ran his hand through his thinning hair, and returned the hat to his head and his hand to my arm. “The doctor is going to be in here in just a second to explain all of this to you, okay?”
“But I want to know now. Can’t you just tell me now?
Dad sighed, and looked at the door. When the doctor didn’t magically appear to field this question, he stood up, sat back down again, then stared intently at his knees. “There was an accident. You were in a very bad car accident.”
“Accident?”
Dad cleared his throat. “A drunk driver ran a red light and hit your car.”
“You’re lucky to be alive,” Mom said. She patted my arm and stared at me, probably waiting for some sort of reaction. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to react, though. This whole situation was so over-the-top and ABC Family; I had no idea how real-life people reacted to this sort of news.
“Was anyone else in the car?” I thought I remembered leaving the party alone, but my memory was so shaky that anything could have happened. Was that it? The dread? Did someone die? Curt? One of my friends? “Is everyone okay?”
“You were by yourself in the car,” Mom said.
Dad cleared his throat again and his voice got tight. Angry. “And the driver who hit you, he didn’t make it.”
Process, process, process. A drunk guy ran a red light and hit me while I was driving alone. He died. I’m lucky to be alive. I heard the words, but none of them clicked in my brain. None of them eased the wrongness hanging thick in the air.
“I don’t understand,” I finally said. I was still blinking repeatedly, waiting for this to make sense. Why didn’t I remember being in an accident?
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Mom said. “The doctor said you probably wouldn’t remember everything right away. Your body went into shock to protect itself. It’s totally normal.”
“We’re just so glad you’re awake, honey. We’ve been so worried about you.”
“Have I been asleep long?” I didn’t feel rested at all. In fact, just talking to my parents was exhausting me, and I couldn’t deny that closing my eyes and dozing off sounded more appealing than anything else. I could find out these details later, and maybe after a nap, the dread would ease and this would all make more sense.
Mom and Dad both took their hands off my arm, and through my fluttering eyes I noticed them shifting around on their chairs. I was so sleepy, I didn’t even remember exactly what I’d just asked them, but it obviously made them squirm.
“How are you feeling?” Dad asked. “You look tired. You should go back to sleep.”
“I don’t know.” It was all I could think to answer as I struggled to keep my eyes open. Other than tired and confused, I honestly couldn’t get a handle on how I was feeling. Was “let me think about it” an acceptable answer to that question? I was in an accident that almost killed me. I felt like something was terribly wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. Shouldn’t I be in more pain? Or was that what all these IVs were for? Pumping me full of painkillers?
“I’m going to get the doctor,” Dad said, standing up.
“The doctor will be here in a minute.” Mom’s voice was strained. “You should stay here with your daughter.”
“I’ll stay with my daughter as soon as I get the doctor,” Dad said. “I’ll be right back.”
Oh, yeah. All this focus on what I could remember had shifted my attention from what I wished I could forget. My parents getting a divorce. The constant fighting. They’d managed to keep it reined in for an entire ten minutes to worry about me as a team, but that didn’t last long. Was that why I felt like something huge was wrong?
“Fine. I’ll just wait here while you—”
“Stop it. Please.” I barely squeaked the words out, but with how quickly my voice silenced the room, you’d think I screamed at full volume.
“Sorry, honey,” Dad said, looking at me sheepishly. “I’m just going to run and get the doctor, okay? Then I’ll be right back.”
Mom wa
tched him go, her eyebrows pulled together so tightly, a deep crease formed above her nose. Then, just like that, her face was back to normal again. “Everybody’s been worried about you, honey,” she said, obviously desperate to move us both away from the lingering tension of their argument. She leaned forward and brushed my hair from my face with her fingers, a tired smile on her face. “Can you see all the flowers in here?” She cocked her head toward the colorful floral arrangements, small balloons poking out of plants, and cheerful stuffed animals that filled the room. “They’re all from your friends at school and the studio. Everyone’s going to be so happy to hear that you’re awake. Everyone’s been praying for you, sweetie.”
“Wow,” I said, my voice small and quiet.
“See those sunflowers?” Mom said, pointing at a large arrangement by the window. “Those are from the dance studio. And that big one there with the gerbera daisies is from Jack and Amanda. Isn’t that sweet of them?”
“Which flowers are from Curt?” Ever since I’d remembered our fight, it was one of the only things my brain managed to focus on. I needed to talk to him. I couldn’t stand this feeling of things being unresolved between us.
“Well, sweetie,” Mom said, patting my arm again. “Curt has, uh … he’s been very busy with school and water polo.”
“What? How long have I been here?” The dread came to life under my skin. That sinking feeling plus the talking had me more awake, and I remembered my question from earlier. “How long have I been sleeping?”
Mom’s eyes darted to the door of my room, as if she hoped someone would come in and keep her from having to answer this question. Too bad she already drove Dad out the door. “It’s been about two weeks now.”
Her words slammed into me at full force. “What? Two weeks? I’ve been…” My mind reeled again, and I couldn’t even seem to form a coherent sentence. I thought I’d been asleep for one night, maybe two. But two weeks? I lost the last two weeks of my life?
Two weeks of dance rehearsal gone, and now I’d be behind all the other girls for the recital routine. And what was going to happen to my hip-hop duet? There was no way we could pull it together now with the recital so close. Curt was supposed to take me out to a fancy dinner at the beach to celebrate our nine-month anniversary, but we didn’t even get to celebrate. And missing two weeks of school? That was so much homework. So many tests, right at the beginning of the school year. I’d be so far behind. The thoughts of everything I’d missed made the beeping on the machine beside my bed speed up.
And I still had that feeling. The feeling that this wasn’t even the worst of it. But something kept me from verbalizing it. I didn’t want Mom to confirm that I was right.
“We’ve been here every day, Kara,” Mom said, shooting glances between the monitor and my anxiety-ridden face. “Your dad and I have been sitting right here, praying for you to wake up. It took some time, but your body was healing. And so was your brain.”
Dad walked back in the room and cleared his throat once more. “The doctor is coming,” he said, and he took his place next to my mom at my bedside. Mom leaned over and whispered in his ear, and this time he was the one with the forehead wrinkle. They both turned to look at me, faces serious and scared, and didn’t say anything.
Suddenly I was painfully uncomfortable in this hospital bed with my parents staring at me like some kind of science experiment.
“That’s a long time,” I said, the panic inside me creeping out through my voice. “Two weeks is a really long time. That’s not normal. What’s wrong with me?”
“Honey, when the paramedics got to the scene of the accident, they didn’t even think you’d survive the ambulance ride to the hospital.” Dad’s voice was a gravelly whisper, and it was obvious that this was hard for him to talk about. I guess it should have been difficult for me to hear, too, but it still didn’t even feel like my life. Maybe I was still in that shock Mom was talking about. “Your body underwent so much trauma. And you had to have an operation on your back. You needed the time to recover. It’s okay that you were out that long. In fact, the doctors said it could have been months. We’re so glad you are awake now.”
I couldn’t ignore the dread for another second, not with their tight lips and wrinkled brows. I knew those faces; there was something they weren’t sharing with me. Something more than the fact that no one thought I would make it. “So, I’m going to be fine, then? Now that I’m awake, everything is fine?”
My parents shared a look, one I’d seen a million times since I was a kid. It was a look that said there was something they needed to tell me, but they were having a silent argument over which one of them would deliver the bad news.
“Come on,” I pleaded. “What are you not telling me?” I tried to brace myself for what could possibly come out of their mouths as the dread pumped through my body. Did they officially file for divorce already? Did I need another operation? How awful could this be?
In an effort to prepare myself to hear their bad news, I moved my arms up and tried to use my elbows to readjust my position on the bed. And as I did that, a tingly feeling spread up and down my arms, like they’d fallen asleep. There was an unusual feeling in my midsection, a definite soreness in my upper back, and … that was it.
That was it besides the dread, cold and complete, overtaking my body and my brain, because I couldn’t feel anything below the middle of my back.
There was no pain. No tingling. No discomfort at all. Just nothingness on my bottom half, as if my body ended somewhere around my middle.
And I realized slowly, maybe more slowly than I should have, but denial is tricky that way, that I couldn’t feel my legs.
At all.
CHAPTER 6
I tried squirming around on the bed, but I couldn’t make the feeling come back into my legs. It wasn’t the tingly falling-asleep feeling I’d had in my arms. It was a nothing is there at all feeling, and it freaked me out in ways I couldn’t even begin to explain. The more I moved around and didn’t feel anything, the more I panicked. My heart pounded like crazy, sending the monitors I was attached to beeping out of control, and, within seconds it seemed, my room was flooded with nurses and doctors as my parents flailed and cried and I screamed. “My legs!” I screeched as loudly as I could. “What’s wrong with my legs?”
People in scrubs and white coats sped around the hospital room, checking monitors and shouting out things to each other and to my parents. One of the nurses came right up to me, rested her hand gently on my shoulder, and leaned over so she was right in my ear. “It’s okay, Kara,” she said. “Just relax. It’s okay.”
A doctor scanned my charts and asked my parents questions, and Mom and Dad kept flapping around and trying to answer him and doing their best not to freak out.
Like I was.
All the air I tried to take in caught in my throat, like no amount of effort could get the oxygen to my body. My heart pounded in my chest and in my ears, and I tried to roll myself over, just to see what would happen, but the bed’s side rails pinned me in place. I clawed at the tubes attached to me, because this had to be a dream, and I needed to do something to wake myself up.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. And I felt nothing past my midsection. How could I not feel my legs?
I jerked everything on my body I could feel, every way I could, until two nurses held me down. “We need you to get your heart rate down,” one of them said into my ear. “Everything will be okay, Kara. You just need to do your best to get calm.” I wanted everything to be okay, more than anything ever in the world, so I followed her lead and sucked in as many deep breaths as I could.
Eventually my heart rate slowed back to normal, and the doctor who’d read my chart, a tall Asian guy who was surprisingly young-looking to be a doctor, came to my bedside and smiled at me. “I’m glad to see you awake, Kara. I’m Dr. Nguyen.” His tone was a little lighter than the no-nonsense voice I expected from a doctor. “Now, I’m sure you have some—”
&nbs
p; “What’s wrong with me?” I yelled, panicky and confused. “Why can’t I feel my legs?” While I was glad he was cool, I wasn’t going to calm down until we dealt with the elephant in the room.
“I’m not sure what your parents have told you since you woke up, but—”
“They told me I was in a car accident. That I’ve been asleep for two weeks. That’s pretty much it.”
“I’m sure that was a lot for you to take in,” he said. “But there’s more I need to tell you. You sustained a spinal cord injury as a result of the accident. Because of that injury to your vertebrae, you’ve suffered paralysis from the waist down.” His jaw clenched, and he said, “I’m so sorry.”
What? Paralysis? I was paralyzed? No. That couldn’t be right. He had to be wrong. He had to be. Fighting back the tears that welled up in my eyes, I looked over at Mom and Dad for some kind of signal from them that this was a joke. Some slight smile creeping up Dad’s face, or a crinkle in the corner of Mom’s eyes that would tell me they were playing some horrible, elaborate prank on me. That Dr. Nguyen was actually one the guys my dad worked with, promised an extra day off or something to goof on the boss’s daughter. There was absolutely no way that this was real life.
But all I saw on Mom’s face was heartbreak. And Dad showed nothing but sadness and grief. They weren’t stifling laughter at this epic joke; their faces mirrored exactly what I was feeling inside. Tears welled up in my eyes and hovered there, right on the brink of spilling. I wanted to cry, but the tears held their ground. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and swallowed down the lump forming in my throat; then I pulled my hands away and made every effort to keep myself together.
“Forever?” I asked them, my voice wobbly. But I didn’t even wait for an answer. I knew. I’d known the second that feeling of dread crept across my skin when I woke up.
I’d never be able to use my legs again.
Dr. Nguyen was talking about operations and physical therapy and wheelchairs. Recovery and statistics and adaptations. But I wasn’t listening. I tuned out after he said “paralyzed,” because that was when my life stopped being my life and my future stopped being my future, and I stopped having any idea who I even was.
