Jessica Z

by Shawn Klomparens

Miss Nakamura puts her hands to my cheeks and looks into my eyes. She presses my stomach and feels my neck, and then she takes a blood pressure cuff from her bag and wraps it around my arm. In my head I can hear my pulse and my breath and that scream that won’t go away, and I wonder if she can hear all of that too, through her stethoscope. When she looks into my ears, I wonder if she can see it.

  “I want you to sleep. I’m going to give you something to make you sleep a little bit. Do you need to go to the bathroom?”

  I manage to shake my head. I’m made of dust inside now.

  “Can we…is there any way you can help me get her into her bed?”

  Patrick comes to my side and his arms come under me, and once again I weigh nothing as he lifts me into the air. Gretchen darts ahead to pull down my comforter and sheets before I’m eased down onto the mattress. I try to work my mouth to say thanks—to say anything—but it isn’t happening. Not yet.

  Miss Nakamura sits next to me on the bed and rolls me to my side and pulls down the elastic of my sweatpants. It’s cold on my skin where she’s swabbing me with alcohol.

  “Little stick, here.”

  There’s a pinch on my butt and a hot tingle that radiates down into my flesh, and Miss Nakamura gives the spot a pat before pulling my sweats back up.

  “This will make you sleepy. You don’t need to fight it. I want you to rest. Rest. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m going to leave some medicine with your friends. Just rest, honey. Rest.”

  She touches my cheek and turns out the lamp next to the bed, and then she’s gone and I hear more voices.

  “Thank you so much. Thank you.”

  “Obviously, she’s in a pretty serious state of shock. Physically, she’s all there, but it looks like her left eardrum has a little perforation. Okay. You take these, they’re similar to Valium. Give her two in the morning after she wakes up. You don’t need to ask if she wants them, just give them to her. I’ll be back tomorrow sometime between eleven and noon. Give her food if she wants it, keep trying to get her to drink something, water, juice, whatever. Stay with clear liquids. I think I’ve got your, yeah, I have your number. Call me if anything serious comes up.”

  I hear my door close, and then lowered voices.

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  There’s a pause. A kiss?

  “You’ll call me?”

  “I will.”

  My door closes again, and as it does, my eyes close too.

  As I sleep, I dream of tiny pieces of paper blowing through the air like leaves. Pieces and pieces of paper, an autumn of confetti tossed up and caught by the wind.

  Then I open my eyes, and it’s over.

  The room is still dark, and as I lie there, staring up at the ceiling and the patterns of light cast up through my blinds from the street, I hear breathing beyond my own. I’d be startled if I wasn’t so relaxed, and when I turn my head and let my eyes adjust further I see that Patrick has moved the recliner next to my bed and is now asleep on it.

  He’s on his side with his knees drawn up, his hand under his face with his mouth wide open. He looks like a little boy there, his face soft and blank in the bare light. He’s sleeping and breathing. And I know I love him.

  I’d go to him, curl up behind him, press my face to the back of his neck and sleep next to him if my body wasn’t lead right now. It’s all I can do to turn my head and reach toward him with my heavy hand. I look, and look, barely touching him, before I’m asleep again.

  Patrick is gone when, in the daylight, I open my eyes. The recliner is gone too, and I wonder if maybe I dreamed him being there, just like the tiny leaves of paper. The screaming in my ears seems not so bad today, but I feel a headache coming on. Feeling anything, though, seems thrilling.

  Hunger too, is exciting. Like: I’m starving. This is even more thrilling than my headache, because I know I can do something about it.

  I push myself up, and into a sitting position. There’s a moment of dizziness, but it passes, so I swing my legs to the floor and stand. Another little spin in the head comes and goes, but I know I’m doing okay.

  Patrick isn’t in the living room, and the recliner is in its normal spot. A cushion is still missing from my couch, though, so I’m sure I didn’t imagine all that. And when I get to my kitchen, I see the big foam block from inside the cushion sitting on my counter and the unzipped cover soaking in some dead suds in the sink.

  I’m blushing because I peed on my own couch.

  I find three of Patrick’s matching blue Tupperware containers in the refrigerator. The one closest to me is filled with some kind of pasta with red sauce, and as I look at it I start to cry. Then I hear my door open and close.

  “Jessica? Hey, Jess—” He comes into the kitchen. “You’re up?”

  “I think I need something besides spaghetti,” I say, gently closing the refrigerator door.

  “Oh God, Jessica.” He’s to me in an instant, his arms around me, pulling me close to him. “You’re talking,” he says. “What do you…are you hungry? What do you need? Anything, anything.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. My head is resting on his shoulder. “Could I maybe just have a piece of toast?”

  “Yes, yes. Anything you want,” he says. “Here, sit down. I’ll get it.”

  “With some peanut butter on it?”

  “Anything. I’ll be right back.”

  He runs off, and I can hear him moving around above me up in his own kitchen. Then he’s back with a plate with two pieces of peanut butter–slathered toast and a glass of what I know must be organic and expensive apple juice.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “It’s fine,” he says. “It’s okay.” Patrick has a prescription pill bottle in his hand too, and he shakes a couple tablets from it out onto the table. “I want you to take—”

  “I know, I heard her last night.”

  “You heard?”

  “Yes.” I take a bite of the toast. “This might be the most perfect thing I’ve ever tasted, Pat.”

  “You’ve got to be starving.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does your ear hurt?”

  “I think so. It’s ringing.”

  “Do you hurt anywhere else?”

  “I’m getting a headache.”

  “These will help that,” he says, and he slides the pills toward me. “Do you…” Patrick swallows, and pauses for a moment. “Jessica, do you know what happened?”

  “I can’t think about it now.”

  “Okay.” Patrick watches me as I put the pills in my mouth and take a big drink of the juice. It too is perfect.

  “But if you need to, when you want to talk about it, I mean, when you’re ready, I’m here.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Thank you. I do have a question, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you know how I got back here?”

  “I have no idea. Your door was locked, Danny got here before I did. We could hear you inside. So, no, I don’t know.”

  “You could hear me?”

  “You were crying.”

  “Oh,” I say. I take a bite of the second piece of toast and put it back down on the plate. “I think I might want to lie down again.”

  “Do you want me to carry you?” Patrick asks. “Or can you walk?”

  “I can walk,” I say, and we get to our feet, and now I do manage to smile. “I did like it when you carried me, though. You’re still pretty strong, skinny boy.”

  Patrick says nothing, but he puts his arm around me as we walk to my room.

  I’m awakened, sometime later, by the feeling of someone sitting down on my bed.

  “What?” I say as I blink my eyes open. “Oh, hi, Miss Nakamura.”

  She smiles. “So you decided to start talking again, huh?”

  “You’re supposed to tell me I can call you Elaine.”

  “You can call me whatever you want,” she says, and she checks my pulse at my wrist. “
Did you have something to eat?”

  I nod. “And the pills,” I say.

  “Good. Those are some pretty impressive black eyes you’ve got.”

  “What?”

  “Have you seen yourself in the mirror?”

  I haven’t, and I shake my head no.

  “Don’t be startled when you look. How do you feel?”

  “I’m kind of sore.”

  “I’m not surprised,” she says. “You have a big bruise on your lower back. I have something for you for that.”

  “Big bruise?”

  “I think you were knocked down.”

  “Knocked down.”

  “By the explosion.”

  “The bus blew up, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did everyone die?”

  “I don’t know, Jessica. You didn’t die.”

  “But everyone on the bus?”

  “I don’t know, honey. We can find that out later.”

  Neither of us says anything for a little bit. Finally I nod and say, “Okay.”

  “Do you want to sleep a little more?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Wait, do you mean another shot?”

  “We can do another, if that worked for you.” She reaches for her bag at the foot of the bed. “You want me to get one ready?”

  “No. No, thank you.”

  “It’s not a bother, Jessica.”

  “I just don’t want to be that sleepy. The pills are fine.”

  “Alright. You just let me know.” Miss Nakamura holds the bag in her lap. “You’re alright?”

  “I think so.”

  “That’s good. You can call me if you need me.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “How long ago did you have those pills?”

  “This morning. Like, hours.”

  “You want more? You ready to rest some more?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Let me get you a cup of water. I’m going to give you a little something for the pain in your back too.”

  “Miss Nakamura?” I ask. “If Patrick is still here, would you see if he has any more of that juice? It was the best.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she says.

  The next time I wake up, my head feels better but my body is worse. My back hurts almost too much to sit up, and by the time I finally pull myself together enough to stand, my stomach muscles feel as though I’ve been punched.

  Maybe I should have opted for the shot.

  The blinds in my room are closed, but it feels like it must be afternoon. I have no way of telling for sure, though, because the clock radio is missing from my nightstand.

  I need, I need, I need to call Katie, like right now. She must know what happened, certainly she’s heard, but I need to talk to her. The last memory I have of my cell phone is when I was dialing my sister, and I don’t think I’ve seen it anywhere in my apartment since I’ve been back. And this is a problem: I only had Katie’s new number in my cell’s speed dial and didn’t commit it to memory. If I can’t find the phone, though, I can look at my cellular statement on the computer and call her from my landline. Perfect.

  Except, maybe not so perfect. When I finally shuffle like a stooped old woman into my living room, I see that my cordless is missing from its base, and the message display alternates flashing the words “MEMORY” and “FULL.” And my computer, when I bend down enough to press the power button, seems totally dead. The amber light on the monitor just blinks at me like some kind of silent jeer.

  Damn that guy in the suit!

  So I lower myself to the one cushion left on my couch, and wait. Patrick seems to be checking in fairly regularly, so I close my eyes and slip into the easy half sleep that comes with the lingering effect of Miss Nakamura’s pills. It isn’t long before I hear the key in my door, and I keep my eyes shut.

  “There she is,” I hear Patrick say.

  “Jess?” my sister says, and my eyes snap open and I sit up straight over the protest of my stiff and painful muscles. “Jess?”

  The soreness in my back is forgotten and my skin goes tight with goose bumps as I rise up to face Katie; standing there in the doorway her hair seems darker than the last time I saw her and she looks tired. In truth, she looks older than I remember. I walk to her with my arms held forward.

  “Jessica,” she says.

  Then I try to push her back into the hallway.

  “Jess!” she says, her expression changing from relief to alarm. “What are you—”

  “What are you doing here?” I scream. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  You are not supposed to be here. Not here! Not where things blow up and people are killed and broken glass is scattered in the street. Not here, not here, no no no no!

  “Jessica!” she shouts as she pushes me back. “What are you doing?”

  “Get out of here! You’re supposed to be on your way to the boat!”

  Where it’s sunny, and safe, and things don’t explode.

  Katie wraps her arms around me and pushes me back inside. I trip on my own feet and we crumple to the floor. On the way down I see that our mother is standing next to Patrick, looking through the doorway with her hand over her mouth.

  Landing on the floor hurts my back and my head, and the way that I land on Katie’s arms knocks the wind out of me.

  “Ouch,” I say with a cough. This really, really hurts.

  Katie doesn’t let go. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “I don’t want you to be here. It’s not—”

  “Shut up. Don’t be like Mom.”

  “Mom?” I call. “Mom? Katie, please, this really hurts.”

  Our mother kneels next to us and pulls Katie’s hair out of my face. She touches my cheek and holds my hand before bending down to kiss me. Katie pulls her arms out from under me but doesn’t get up, and that’s how we stay: a big, red-haired knot on my living room floor, long after Patrick has brought up their bags from the street and gone away.

  23

  We sit, Katie and I, on the cushioned end of my couch with an afghan pulled up tight around our necks. A two-headed monster. The only thing different from the million other times we’ve sat like this is that now, because of the soreness in my back and neck and ear, I’ve asked Katie to sit to my right side instead of my left. It feels strange, like how lacing your fingers together the wrong way feels strange, but still, it’s comforting. With my sister here, I am almost myself.

  We tried to turn on the TV but got only static, so we’ve been sitting and talking about nothing important. Nothing involving explosions or dying. Right now, I’m telling her about my neighbor in the building next door. We can see his messy bureau through his open blinds.

  “He’s pretty boring,” I say.

  “Is he ever naked?”

  “He’s always dressed. The people who used to live there were much more interesting. It was this crazy Romanian guy and his family. He yelled at them all the time.”

  “Yeah,” Katie says, as if it’s entirely normal to yell at your family.

  “His oldest daughter was beautiful. He yelled at her the most.”

  “Because she was so beautiful?”

  “Maybe. Patrick gave her violin lessons while he was unemployed.”

  “Did the guy ever yell at Patrick?”

  “Don’t know. We’ll ask him.”

  Mom has been very quiet, doing something in the kitchen for the last hour or so. Once in a while she looks out at us, then disappears again.

  “Was it hard to get a flight here?” I ask Katie.

  “We drove,” she says.

  “You drove? You’re kidding?”

  “We left as soon as Patrick called Mom.”

  “He called you?”

  “As soon as he knew what was going on,” Katie says. “He hitchhiked back here from his office. Did you know that? He kept us posted.”

  All I can do is shake my head. He hitchhiked from Mountain View?

  “Ar
e you going to miss your boat?”

  “I’m not so worried about the boat right now, Jess. But I called the Woods Hole people to tell them what was going on. Mom drove pretty much nonstop. We only took a break once, for a little bit, south of Portland.”

  “To sleep?”

  “To freak out. Mom was speeding.”

  “Excuse me,” our mother calls from the kitchen. “I was driving responsibly.”

  “Mom, you were going almost ninety.”

  “That’s an exaggeration, Katie.”

  “The car wasn’t going to take it,” Katie says. “We needed to stop.”

  We hear someone running up the stairs and jangling keys outside my door, and Patrick comes in carrying two big grocery bags with green, leafy things poking out of the tops of them.

  “Hey, guys,” he says, then goes straight to the kitchen.

  “Oh, Patrick, thank you so much,” we hear Mom say.

  “The leeks were a little ragged, I tried to get the best-looking—”

  “No, no, these are perfect. How much was it all?”

  “I’ve got it, don’t worry about it.”

  “No, please—”

  “Seriously, Maureen, don’t worry about it.”

  Hearing Patrick call Mom by her first name makes us both giggle. He comes back into the living room with a glass of water and his other hand cupped to hold what I’m assuming are some of my pills.

  “What are you two laughing at?” he asks.

  “You,” I say.

  “Call her Mo,” Katie says. “All our friends in high school called her Mo. She likes it.”

  “Katie,” Mom calls, in a very Mom-like way. “Enough.”

  Patrick shakes his cupped hand like he’s about to throw a pair of dice. “Ready for your dose?”

  “Yes,” I say. Then I turn to my sister. “You want some too?”

  “What are they?” she asks.

  I shrug. Honestly, I don’t know what they are, and I don’t particularly care, as long as they work. “Bring two more. Katie needs some too.”

  Patrick gives us a funny look, but then he goes back to the kitchen and returns with two additional pills. Katie sits up and the afghan falls off us as she takes the glass of water from Patrick and holds it up for me to sip with my pills before taking her own.