She's Not Here

by Mandi Lynn

“Hi, Dr. Ash.” He jumped when a nurse passed him. She smiled as Dr. Ash walked by, and if she noticed that anything was off, she didn’t say anything.

  Chapter 21

  The pup was staring at her. That’s what Sam was sure of. The pup had been sitting, perfectly still, without once needing to blink. She watched him, stunned by his resilience. How does he do it, she wondered. She mimicked him as he sat. Two hind legs out to the side, front legs perfectly straight in front of her. Head level, eyes unblinking. Getting the eyes right was the hardest. No matter how hard she tried, she always had to blink.

  “Come on, Pup,” she said. She begged him to blink, but he never did.

  Pup had become her greatest companion. He was the only one that was always there. Sometimes nurses or doctors come in and took her out of the room for tests, but when she came back he was always there, waiting for her. She never remembered anyone’s name, but she knew his: Pup. And that was all that she needed to know.

  She knew Avery had brought her Pup. Avery came most days. She always sat at the edge of the bed and talked to her about her day. Lately, she had stopped asking how Sam was doing and instead told her how she was doing. Admittedly, Sam had a hard time understanding Avery. She spoke too fast for her to follow, but as long as Avery didn’t know, she was okay with not catching thewhole conversation.

  Sam heard people walking by in the hall and she finally looked away from Pup. He could win the staring contest again, she supposed. She watched at the door, hoping Avery was going to peek through. She placed Pup on her lap so he could watch as well, but he didn’t pay as much attention as her.

  Two nurses walked by her door, talking about something she didn’t care about. She held her breath, hoping Avery was close behind, but no one else came. The sounds of footsteps in the hall disappeared.

  “Want to find Avery?” Sam asked Pup. She looked to Pup for his response, but he never barked or sniffled. She stood up and sat him on her bed pillow. “Watch my bed while I’m gone.”

  She strode from the room, Pup watching her back as she strode away. The hallway was mostly empty except for a few pieces of equipment the nurses rolled around. People were in the halls too, some dressed normally but a few had scrubs on, so Sam knew they were nurses. She liked her nurses, but they never let her explore the hallway, so she steered clear of them.

  Sam tip-toed to each doorway, poking her head through the entry to see if Avery was within. For the most part, the rooms held only one or two people. Every now and then she would see a nurse and turn away before they heard her. Eventually, Sam came to a room full of people. The sound of laughter is what pulled her in.

  “Ricky, look at this!”

  A little boy was sitting in the hospital bed. A woman was holding out a baseball, and he was staring at it in wonder. Sam found herself being drawn into the room. Ricky’s visitors slowly turned one-by-one as they each noticed the strange girl walking into the room. They looked at each other, but no one knew who she was. The woman who had given Ricky the baseball stepped away from his bed and came over to Sam.

  “Are you lost?” she asked.

  Sam gazed past her and to the baseball in Ricky’s hand. His face was placid as he looked back at Sam. The smile he had a few seconds ago was gone.

  “No,” Sam said. She tried to walk past the woman but she wouldn’t let her.

  “Sweetie, this isn’t your room. Let me go find a nurse.” The woman reached for Sam’s hand, but she pulled away, backing out of the room herself.

  “No,” she said again, this time louder. Everyone in the room was staring at her, this she knew, but she wanted to know what Ricky had. What was so special about a baseball?

  “It’s okay,” the woman said. She walked closer to Sam and Sam backed away. She didn’t want to be touched by this stranger.

  She was about to turn around when she backed into someone. Whoever it was wrapped her hands around Sam’s wrists.

  “Come on, Sam,” the voice said. A nurse with curly hair was pulling her out of the room gently. Sam pulled away in protest once she saw the nurse. She couldn’t bring the nurse’s name to mind, but a pinch in her gut dropped when she saw her. The nurse looked tired, and if she looked closely enough Sam could see smudges of mascara around her eyes.

  Sam thought about protesting more, but the nurse’s hands were still at her wrist, grasping a bit too firm. As she was pulled from the room, she looked back at the boy Ricky. He still held his baseball, but the excitement was gone. She was sorry to have ruined the moment.

  “I need to find it,” Sam said once she was pulled far from the boy’s room. They were turning back in the direction she had come from. All the ground she had covered, all the time she had spent searching, wasted!

  “Find what?” the nurse said. Her grip relaxed on Sam’s hand, but her voice had an edge of exhaustion to it.

  Sam paused at her question. She knew that she was looking for something, but she couldn’t remember what it was. She hoped that if she did find it, she would know it when she saw that, but even that was questionable.

  “I need to find it,” she said again, but she followed the nurse anyways.

  The nurse led her through the door of a room, and as soon as they stepped through, Sam saw Pup waiting for her. She leapt forward and wrapped her arms around him before he had a chance to run away.

  “Pup,” she whispered in his ear.

  The nurse watched from behind as Sam sat on the bed with the little stuffed dog cradled in her hands.

  “Was that what you were looking for?” Willow said.

  She looked behind her to the doorway. She almost expected Randy to come through, ordering her to get away from Sam before she did any more harm. There were no footsteps in the hallway, so she stepped closer.

  Sam paused to look at Pup. He didn’t smile back at her. His little mouth was always in the same straight line. She was waiting for her memory to jog and remind her that Pup was what she had been looking for, but nothing ever clicked.

  “I think so,” she finally said.

  Willow stood at her bed, silently watching as Sam ventured off into her own world. She was quiet on her bed, mumbling only loud enough for the little dog to hear.

  Slowly, Willow backed out of the room. She watched Sam with every step, taking in her movement and her soft whispers. How quickly the girl had changed. The serum was potent and the effects were clear. The girl she used to be wasn’t there anymore.

  — — — — —

  “Randy?” His office door was unlocked. When she looked in, she saw him sitting at his desk, face buried in his hands. Papers were strewn everywhere and a coffee mug was beside him.

  “Is that coffee?” she asked.

  He looked up, and she could tell he had been crying. It was something she saw only on rare occasions. The last time she had seen it was the night her father died. That night he was crying not for her farther, but for the pain Willow had to endure. Her pain was his pain, and that was never more evident than right now.

  “Yes,” he said. His voice was stiff. It had been two days since he discovered what she had done and while it was clear he thought about it every second, he refused to bring it up in subject.

  “You don’t drink coffee,” she said. Willow came to his desk and took the coffee mug away. When she lifted it, she saw the print-outs of Sam’s MRI scans. They stared back at her with a menace.

  “I know,” he said, gripping the mug back out of her hands. He did it gently, but the gesture still stung.

  She looked at the papers in front of him. They were pages of his notes from all the past appointments with Sam. Notes from when he didn’t know what was wrong with her. They had been nothing but pen scrapping but now they were glittered with highlights and notes in the margins.

  “Willow, I need you to leave,” he said. An edge of anger was there. He refused to look at her, yet she couldn’t stop looking at him.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  He slammed his hands to the
desk. The coffee he had taken out of her hands spilled onto the MRI scans and blurred the ink. When she saw the mess part of her felt relieved. One piece of evidence removed.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He was finally looking at her again but knew her eyes were averted to the coffee stain. The smell of the black coffee filled the room. It wasn’t a scent either of them was used to. “I should turn you in.”

  Willow looked up at her husband and her face dropped. She felt the tips of her fingers go numb, and she wasn’t sure if she had heard him correctly. Turn her in?

  His eyes teared up, and she never said a word. He hated himself for what he said.

  “I should turn you in and forget any of this ever happened.” His mouth turned into a hard line. “But that’s not how it would work. If I turned you in, I’d be turning myself in. If I turned you in, I’d never be able to forget.”

  “But you didn’t do anything,” she said.

  “I loved you,” he said. “I loved you and I let you do this to yourself. I let you do this to a stranger, a girl who has already lost so much, but she doesn’t even know it because she can’t remember.”

  “Isn’t it better that way?” Willow said. She tried not to let herself notice the fact that he said loved, not love. It was like a nit was biting away at her, urging her to pick at his words. She knew what she had done to him. She knew she didn’t deserve his love or forgiveness but the words stung.

  Randy paused to look at her. Was she joking?

  Her eyes spoke something she couldn’t get herself to say. They were searching for a solution, but most of all they were searching for a cure, and whoever got in her way was to pay the price.

  “Do you hear yourself, Willow?” he said.

  She blinked away and looked at the MRI scans again. With the combination of the coffee with the darkened cells, Willow felt like she was looking at an ink blot test. What did she see? The closer she looked the less she saw. There was nothing.

  She sucked in a breath, terrified of what he might be thinking. In these quiet days, where she was left alone to think about what her husband might do, was he thinking about all the reasons she didn’t deserve his love and mercy anymore? All the reasons he needed to turn her in?

  He put his arm out to rest on Willow’s shoulder. She knew he wanted her to look up, but she couldn’t do it. Standing in this room, having everything so exposed, she felt raw. So much time spent healing and fixing, finding a cure to this disease, and here it was laid out in front of her. It was ripped from her hands. She felt crazed, desperate and raw with no way of healing.

  There were still moments in the days where her memory lapsed and a pit in her stomach formed. She was becoming her father and she imagined herself in a few years sitting on a couch, her eyes just as vacant as her father’s. Her fear is what fueled her, and it was a fear she couldn’t admit to Randy. If she told him she thought she had Alzheimer’s, what would he think? Would he be just as desperate to save her before she lost herself more than she already had?

  “We could learn so much,” she said. Her rationale for finding the cure was completely selfish. She let it guide her.

  Randy couldn’t speak. He let the air in his lungs release. He looked at his wife, at the woman he loved, and wondered just how long ago he had lost her. Was it the day her father had died? Was this determination to find a cure stemmed from her loss, or did it go back farther than that?

  “It’s not ethical,” Randy said.

  “I found Sam in the halls today.” She looked up at him. A spark was in her eye. There was excitement there, and when Randy looked at her he knew that this spark was what ignited her to act. “She was wandering, looking for something, but she wasn’t sure what. She shows clear signs of Alzheimer’s, but she’s so young. Even her MRI scans are similar to those of Alzheimer’s patients.” She pointed to the scans but the gesture was futile.

  “It’s a tragedy,” Randy said. He refused to let his eyes wander off her face.

  She turned to him and her hopes diminished.

  “But if we found a cure, it would be worth it.”

  Randy knew what she was saying and he knew exactly how she wanted to proceed with the experiment. But he kept picturing Sam in his mind, diving deeper and deeper into some place far beyond his reach. What if they did find a cure? Would it be worth it?

  Willow smiled because she could see Randy was thinking. He was thinking of the possibilities, but in Willow’s mind it wasn’t just a possibility. If Randy let her proceed, she would make it a reality. She stood by, her nerves jumping, ready to do something, anything.

  “I need to find a cure,” she said. Her voice broke and her eyes diminished as some far-away emotion took over her body.

  Chapter 22

  Shelly was holding Paul’s hand because he wanted nothing to do with being in the hospital. He was seething as they sat in the cold room with Sam. Today was a good day for her. She was quiet, and sometimes her being quiet made it easier to forget she was sick.

  “I want her out of here,” Paul said.

  The two were sitting next to each other in fold-up chairs beside Sam’s bed. Each time Paul spoke, Shelly tightened her grip on him. She was terrified that he might just run out of the room.

  “I want to see what Dr. Ash has to say,” she said.

  “You heard what he had to say, he thinks Sam is crazy!” Already he was wound up, ready to blow up to whoever had the audacity to disagree with him.

  “No, we didn’t get to hear what he had to say because you stormed out of the room,” she said.

  “Of course, I—,” he stopped talking.

  Avery stepped into the room. Her pale skin seemed luminescent in the light of the hospital room.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you guys were going to be here. I thought it would just be me and Sam today. I can come back later.” She started to turn away, but she looked behind Shellyand Paul. Sam was on the bed, very much awake, staring out the window of the room.

  “No, Avery, stay. I’m sure Sam would love to see you,” Shelly said.

  Sam was still looking out the window when Avery came over. All eyes were turned to Sam, and when she heard someone approaching, she looked up at Avery and smiled.

  “Hi,” Sam said.

  “Where’s the doctor?” Paul said. She stood up, letting go of Shelly’s hand. “He’s supposed to be here by now.”

  “Paul,” Shelly said. He walked out of the room. “I’ll be right back girls.” Shelly followed behind him without another word.

  Avery sat in Shelly’s seat beside Sam once they left.

  “Is everything okay?” Avery asked.

  Sam smiled, just half of her face rising, and for a moment there was a spark of the old Sam. The crooked smile was Sam’s signature. She was there for a moment, and then she was gone when she looked away and pulled Pup to her. She held onto him, not gingerly like a child might to their favorite toy, but with a loose, flopping grip. He was upside down when she held him.

  “Sam?” she said. It was the first time she had visited Sam in a few days, but it was eerie how much she had changed. Everything about her was the same, but she held herself differently. She slouched forward and curled in on herself.

  “You brought me Pup?” Her eyes were glossed over. She was looking at Avery, but to Avery it felt like she was looking past her to something else.

  “Arnold,” she said. She put her hand out to grab the dog. Sam let go of him as Avery put him on the side table, sitting right-side-up.

  “Arnold,” Sam repeated. Her eyebrows furled in. A small crease formed on her forehead. “Was that his name?”

  Avery watched Sam. Puzzle pieces were clicking into place. Her glazed over eyes focused and everything in the room became clear.

  “Sam?” Avery said. Something flittered in Sam’s eyes. A change.

  “Something’s wrong,” Sam whispered. Her heart began to race, and she looked around the room, searching for something. It wasn’t the same mindless se
arching that she had been doing through the halls. This time she felt guided to something, but she wasn’t sure what.

  “What’s wrong?” Avery said. She learned towards Sam. Her hand inched towards the call button, but she was terrified to let anyone else in the room. For a moment, Sam was present and as terrified as she might have been, she was there.

  Sam looked at the IV in her hand and reached to take it out. As soon as Avery saw what she was doing, she pulled Sam’s hand away. Sam wouldn’t look at Avery. Her eyes never wavered from the needle.

  “Sam?” Avery said.

  “Get it out,” she said. Tears were in her eyes. Her hand twitched as Avery held it down to the bed so she wouldn’t rip the IV out. Avery adjusted her grip to hold her down with one hand and used the other to reach for the call button.

  Sam’s eyes darted to the button, and the small click echoed across the room.

  “Get it out,” she said again.

  “Sam, it’s okay.” Avery covered Sam’s arm with her other hand. Sam’s skin was warm, a thin layer of sweat coating her arm.

  “No.” The words that came out of Sam’s mouth were a whine. The word was barely audible, nothing more than a breath, but Avery heard the desperation there. Her eyes, tired and dark, watered as tears began to stream.

  “What’s wrong?” A nurse came into the room, and whatever had been holding Sam disappeared. It was like an elastic band snapping into place. For a moment, Sam was there, and then she was gone. Her muscles weakened as her body slumped and her eyes glazed. If a stranger was watching, they wouldn’t have seen the difference, but Avery looked on in terror.

  The nurse began working before Avery responded and calmed Sam until her heart rate slowed back to a normal pace. She replaced the IV bag, and Avery couldn’t help but watch in horror as the IV bag was carried around the room. They began pumping her with a medication to sedate her: relax and cool the body.

  “Sam?” she asked, standing up as the nurse began checking her vitals again.

  “Where’s Pup?” Sam asked. And in that moment it felt like she would never have her sister back.