Next To You

by Sandra Antonelli

He learned nothing new about her condition in the morning. As with last night, the staff was unwilling to divulge patient information, and his heavy worry remained, his neck stiff with it, his fists clenched.

  Twenty minutes after visiting hours commenced, Will made his way down a long, quiet hallway to Caroline’s room, his heart shuddering in dread.

  He straightened his tie and took a deep breath to prepare himself for the worst. When he moved into the open doorway he wanted to dance. He wanted to dance like James Brown.

  But Will waited at the doorway, listening as a slim, gray-haired doctor asked a series of questions, an open medical chart resting against her left hip.

  ‘What’s your full name?’

  ‘Josephine Caroline Reginaldi Jones.’

  ‘Do you know this man?’

  Reg scooted his chair closer to the side of her bed and glanced at her and then the doctor standing on the opposite side. He raised a hand to Will.

  ‘He’s my Uncle John. Some people call him Reg. These are dumb questions, Dr. Macht.’

  ‘Just bear with me. Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘No, I don’t have a watch, but maybe eight-thirty.’

  ‘Do you know where you are?’

  Caroline huffed in annoyance, ‘The stupid St. Luke’s Hospital answering stupid questions. When can I go home? I feel fine.’

  ‘Let’s go through this first.’ Dr. Macht looked at the chart in her hand. ‘What’s your occupation?’

  ‘I’m a personal shopper.’

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘What season is it?’

  ‘Fall.’

  The doctor glanced at the chart again. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘3770 West Chase Avenue.’

  ‘When’s your birthday?’

  ‘The twenty-fifth of October.’

  ‘What’s your husband’s name?’

  ‘Drew, and he’s dead. So are my parents and my baby boy.’

  ‘Do you know how you got here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What can you tell me about before you woke up here?’

  Caroline groaned and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Alex was yelling at me.’

  ‘When was that?’ Dr. Macht ran a tube of lip balm across her lips.

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘What was he yelling about?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought he was going to hit me. I guess he did. Where is he? Was he arrested?’

  Reg shook his head. ‘He’s down in the orthopedic ward. He broke both collarbones and fractured his coccyx when he went down the stairs. He’s been asking about you. He wants to see you.’

  ‘I don’t want to see him. I don’t ever want to see him. Are we done here? Did I pass?’ Caroline looked at the doctor scribbling on the medical chart.

  ‘You’re a little out of synch with a couple of facts, but that happens with head trauma sometimes.’

  ‘What did I get wrong?’ Her tone was impatient.

  ‘It’s Friday.’

  Caroline frowned. ‘Oh, big deal. Can I please go home?’

  ‘We’ll see. It’s not unusual to be a little disoriented or confused, and I want to have a look at this morning’s MRI results before we decide anything.’

  Reg asked the doctor, ‘Could her confusion be related to the postpartum depression she had before, could it be associated to the same thing, the same events? Is that why she’s blocked out a chunk of what happened last night?’

  ‘Probably not, but I suppose it’s possible.’

  ‘Uncle John, why do you think this goes back to Drew?’

  ‘You were asking about him when you came around.’

  ‘I was?’

  ‘Yes.’ Dr. Macht nodded.

  ‘But that was such a long time ago. Why would I …’

  ‘This sort of confusion isn’t uncommon when you’ve been oxygen-deprived or through a traumatic event, Caroline. Short-term memory loss is an effect of hypoxic-anoxic injury and trauma.’

  ‘Batman.’ Caroline looked at her uncle and groaned. ‘What happened to Batman, Uncle John?’

  Dr. Macht frowned. ‘I’m sorry, did you say Batman?’

  Agitated, Caroline snapped, ‘Relax, I’m confused, remember, not nuts. Batman is my dog.’

  ‘It’s all right Puddin’. The dog is fine. I asked Bonnie Chesterman to feed him and leave his little door open.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m going to use your can, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ She waited until her uncle had closed the bathroom door before she turned to the woman. ‘Dr. Macht, tell me straight. What’s wrong with me? Why do I keep shaking, why do my feet and fingers twitch like this? How can I not know what happened to me last night, but know I don’t want to see Alex? Do I have brain damage? Did I do something illegal? Are you going to medicate me? Am I going to have to go back to Linden Oaks?’

  ‘I can see this is very frustrating for you, Caroline,’ Dr. Macht tucked the medical chart under her arm. ‘Physically you seem fine. You have some bruising on your arms and legs and some petechial hemorrhaging present in your eyes—those are the tiny red spots you saw in the whites of your eyes. They’re blood vessels that have ruptured. It often occurs with cerebral hypoxia. It will go away, and the twitching in your hands will most likely stop, but might not. I think you can go home a little later. Maybe today or tomorrow, but between now and then a staff psychiatrist will be up to see you. You’ll be given a few more cognitive tests. The psych will be able to better explain how the recent trauma may affect you. All right?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, and moved to the window.

  The doctor gave Will a nod as she slipped by him. He went into the room. Caroline was looking out the window, down to the lot below where his Volkswagen was parked, holding the floral curtain in one hand. She wore a green hospital gown, her ponytail sloppy, wisps of hair framed her face.

  ‘Caroline,’ he said.

  She turned around, dropping the curtain. Her eyes went wide, and she swallowed before she smiled. ‘Good morning.’

  Absorbing that moment, Will looked at her, and offered a silent prayer of thanks. ‘You’re up. That’s fantastic. How are you feeling?’

  ‘All right, I guess, a little sore. My neck hurts like hell, but I think a massage might help that.’

  Will took off his tinted glasses and tucked them in his outside breast pocket. He settled a hand on her shoulder as he moved closer to examine her face. She stiffened, briefly, but relaxed as his fingers slid to the nape of her neck to rub gently. ‘Let me look at you.’

  At this distance, the details of her face were washed out, but he saw enough of what was important. He held back the urge to kiss her, to envelop her in his arms and hold her because there’d be plenty of time for that later. ‘Even this close you look a hell of a lot better than you did when I found you.’

  ‘You found me?’ Her face flushed.

  ‘Yes. You scared the crap out of me. Your lips were blue, like you’d been too long in cold water. I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you last night.’

  She blinked. ‘I’m sure you had more important things to take care of.’

  ‘I should have been here with you. I should have been taking care of you,’ he said, pulling her into his arms. She drew in a breath, her hands splaying out against his chest.

  A toilet flushed. Reg came out of the bathroom, shaking water from his hands. ‘Will Murphy, I can’t begin to say how glad I am you’re with us again,’ he said, hand thrust out.

  Caroline pulled away and sank into the chair beside the bed as Will shook her uncle’s hand. ‘I’m glad to be here, Reg,’ he said.

  ‘Is everything worked out then? Alex’s still not pressing charges, is he?’

  ‘I’m in the clear unless the police decide they want to charge me.’

  ‘That’s very good news.’

  Will nodded. ‘I know I’m very lucky. In more ways that just that one, but it was an odd experience to be on the other side of the
law last night.’

  ‘Well, my favorite former neighbor, I think I’ll make myself scarce. I’ve got to get home to feed my kitties and leave you two to talk. Caroline, Puddin’, can you toss me my coat? You’re sitting on it.’

  Caroline didn’t move. She stared up at Will, her fingers twitching, but she didn’t move.

  ‘Puddin’, can I have my coat?’

  Her face went through a series of expressions that involved a lot of blinking and she continued to stare at Will. ‘Caroline, what it is?’ he asked, crouching before her.

  It took a moment for her to pull herself together and say something. ‘You were in jail last night?’

  Will let out a quiet, steady stream of air and nodded.

  ‘Were you there because of me?’

  He uncle let out a whoop of a laugh. ‘Will threw Alex down the steps, Caroline.’

  ‘What?’ She ran twitching fingers over her mouth and stared at Will. ‘I’m sorry, you did what?’

  Her uncle leaned both of his old hands on the side of the bed. ‘Oh dear, dear, dear,’ Reg shook his head. ‘Oh, dear, dear, dear.’

  The repetitive statements made her uncomfortable, made her think she needed to apologize, although she didn’t know why. ‘Wait a minute. I’m sorry. I should … I’m sorry. I’m a little confused about this.’ She rubbed her face. ‘I’m confused.’

  ‘It’s okay. It’s okay Puddin’. The doctor said that confusion is normal. Why don’t you tell us about last night, before Will found you and Alex?’

  Caroline gazed at her uncle, baffled. ‘He found me?’ She looked at Will. ‘You found me … with Alex. What … what were we … ohhh.’ Embarrassed, she wanted to hide, to run away like a chicken, and hide.

  ‘Why don’t you tell us anything you can about yesterday?’ Reg said. ‘Maybe Alex can tell us the rest when he’s not so doped up.’

  Will said. ‘Caroline, what’s the last thing you remember?’

  Hesitating, she looked at both men and made a face. ‘Alex yelled at me.’

  ‘He yelled at you and then what happened?’

  ‘I thought he was going to hit me.’

  ‘And what did you do?’

  ‘I went home. Can I go home now?’

  ‘I want you to go home too,’ Will said.

  ‘Almost hit you?’ Her uncle harrumphed and scowled. ‘Alex did more than almost hit you. If Will hadn’t found you with him, you’d be dead.’

  Caroline gripped the chair’s hard armrest. ‘What do you mean I’d be dead? I know he scared the shit out of me when he yelled, but what did Alex do?’

  Will touched her hand and she looked down at his big white fingers. He said, ‘Your brother-in-law suffocated you because he said you were screaming.’

  ‘Will beat him up pretty good.’ Reg whistled, ‘Wee-ooh, right down the steps outside your place. I always knew there was a reason he was my favorite next-door neighbor.’

  She knew her mouth was agape. ‘You chucked Alex down some stairs?’

  ‘That’s why he was in jail last night, Puddin’.’

  She pulled the band from her hair and finger-combed. ‘I don’t remember screaming. I remember … So,’ she pointed at her uncle, ‘you’re telling me Alex tried to kill me.’ She pointed at Will. ‘And you went to jail for beating him to a fucking pulp, is that right?’

  ‘It always amazes me to hear you use that kind of language.’ Reg came around and sat on the bed beside her chair. ‘Call me old-fashioned, but ladies … never mind, you’re all right now. It’s over, Caroline, you’re just a little jumbled up is all, and that’s it. Okay? Where’s that doctor who was just here? She told you it was normal to be out of sorts, a little mixed-up about stuff, and have some memory loss. I’ll go get her. She can tell you again.’

  ‘I don’t want the doctor. I just want to figure out what happened yesterday,’ she said, her voice muffled by the palms she’d put over her face.

  Will put a hand on her shoulder, like he had before. ‘Maybe if we work backward we can figure out the timeline. Is that all right with you, Caroline?’

  She nodded. Her hands fell away from her face and twitched into her lap.

  ‘Okay,’ Will said. ‘What do you remember doing after Alex yelled at you?’

  ‘I went home. I think I made coffee.’

  ‘Where were you before you went home?’

  ‘The Wellington Diner. He was already there.’ Licking her lips, her eyes swept from Will’s hair to his eyes several times, and then she smiled. ‘I went to the diner. Alex was there having coffee. He must have followed me home.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve got it, and that’s not the first time he followed you.’ Grinning, Will rose. She was a little confused, had a big blank spot over the events that brought her here, but she was safe, her injuries were minor, and she was free of Alex. She was free, and alive and sat before him, her beautiful, Veronica Lake hair spilling over her eye, and Will thanked God, Buddha, Zeus, and every deity he could think of. He started snapping his fingers, singing ‘Sugar Sugar,’ because Caroline was his candy girrrrl.

  Caroline had been expecting Julie, or the psychiatrist Dr. Macht had mentioned, but then she turned around to find a man she never thought she’d see again, and Will was shuffling his feet, clapping, singing old bubblegum pop in her hospital room, wearing a three-thousand-dollar suit. The contrast of his dark blue Dolce & Gabbana suit and satiny platinum hair against his fair skin made her wonder why his albinism never struck her as a memorable feature. Skin that impressively fair should be unforgettable, yet the image she’d held in her mind was the satin sheen of his white hair, and his lovely eyes.

  He danced and sang about pourin’ sugah on his baybee.

  For so long she’d been coming out of a long hibernation, stuck in some kind of twilight state between sleepwalking and alertness, between yesterday and today. With a hazy, sleep-crusted sort of vision, she’d made out a few very obvious details, and nothing pointed to anything Will and her uncle said happened. Yet, regardless if she couldn’t find the link to last night, one thing was very weird, very plain, and very exciting. She was awake, she was alive, and Caroline knew how she felt. She was no longer daunted by the past or future. She didn’t care. She could start again. She could grab life by the balls and start over.

  ‘Hey, hey, hey!’

  Smiling, she looked up into Will’s wide, fair face, at his shining hair, and eyes so like the iolite earrings her father had given her years ago. ‘Thank you. Thank God you live next door. I don’t remember what Alex did after the diner, and I’m mortified that you saw us, but thank God you did.’ She rose, lips pursing. ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Will smiled down at her.

  ‘Did the chocolate milk he spilled on your shoes ruin them?’

  ‘My shoes?’ He did a James Brown shuffle.

  ‘Yes, when Alex got up he knocked over his chocolate milk; it went all over your shoes. Did the milk discolor the leather?’

  Dread, ice-cold and heavy, landed in the pit of Will’s stomach. He stopped dancing.

  His shoes. Dear God, his shoes. His shoes and the chocolaty mocha Alex had upended at the Wellington Diner.

  That was the first time they’d seen each other.

  That’s where Caroline was, back in the past, back before they’d known one another, before he’d loved her.

  Horrified, desperate, Will did what he’d always done when he looked at something and missed the fine details. He tilted his head to look at her better, so he could help her to see, help her to uncover the things she’d missed, so she would find him in the picture. His throat constricted. ‘My shoes,’ he said.

  ‘Wait. You mean that wasn’t you I saw at the diner?’

  ‘Yes, that was me, those were my shoes, and they didn’t stain, but do you … do you remember … do you remember that you, that we … that I …’

  She touched his lapel. ‘You wear that suit beautifully.’

  He stared at her,
still hoping to help her see what was missing. ‘That’s what you said when I introduced myself.’

  ‘Is that what I said?’ She held her palm against his cheek. ‘You have good taste, a quietly elegant style.’

  ‘Yes,’ he rasped, his world fading, bleaching out to nothing.

  ‘Oh, dear, dear, dear,’ her uncle said.

  Will slid his hand over hers. ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘You were sitting in a booth near the window, and your hair was so shiny.’

  ‘Oh dear, dear, dear.’

  It was too bright and Will couldn’t see. He couldn’t see and she didn’t see. Memory loss, short-term memory loss that wasn’t limited to the absent events of yesterday, or last week, or … Sweet Jesus … He was simply her new neighbor, the nice guy who had lived next door to her uncle, the man who had saved her life, for which she was grateful, and maybe they’d be friends because of that, but what they’d had was missing, was lost. Will was as blank and washed out as his vision.

  ‘Puddin’, you don’t remember Will?’

  ‘I saw him at the diner.’ She blew the hair from her face. ‘Does it matter if I remember after that? No,’ she said, shrugging. ‘It doesn’t matter if I don’t remember. I don’t care if I have holes, or black spots, if bad things happened again. I don’t care if I can’t remember. I know how I feel and I’m not confused by that.’

  She reached up and snatched at the air. ‘I’m grabbing life by the balls, boys, and starting over. I’m not afraid. I spent time in a psychiatric hospital, you know. I got help. I know I don’t have to fall apart. I can chose to focus on now instead of the past, and that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t need to know what I did, or be embarrassed about how we met, or by what you saw, or by how you found me with Alex. I know how I feel.’

  ‘Oh, dear, dear, dear.’

  Will’s eyes burned, but he took her hand, kissed the center of her palm.

  ‘Ah, Will,’ Reg said behind him, hand patting his shoulder.

  Will let her go. He sank onto the side of the bed and put his head in his hands. Maybe the chest pains he’d had in the store other day had been a heart attack and he was in the hospital on life support, moving toward the blinding, obscuring light …