She, Myself, and I Page 4

“This is still our plan,” Dr. Monzales said. “It will be your halfway house, Rosa; nothing has changed. But not quite yet. Remember, you still have about a fifteen percent chance of suffering a dangerous epileptic-type seizure.”

  “So how low can the risk actually get?”

  He said, “Realistically . . . maybe fifteen percent.”

  “So . . .”

  “It’s been a long time since you were around other people your age,” Mum put in. “In the rehab wing, you can interact, but in a safe environment. Just a few more months, Rosa. That’s all.”

  “A few more months?”

  “And the ER will be close by, just on the off chance of a seizure,” Dr. Monzales said. “But wait, Rosa, until you see the IRF! You will be in the section for patients aged fifteen to eighteen. There is a classroom for studies. But also bowling, music, video games. It is all possible here in the hospital.”

  So now I have a new room (good-bye, beige fantasy; hello, palette of greens) in this semi-self-contained wing for kids on a residential rehab program.

  Jane was sent over with me, to keep a close eye. But none of the other nurses working here know about my surgery. As far as they’re concerned, I’m just another traumatic brain injury patient.

  None of them know about me.

  Not Vinnie; not Dawn, my new educational specialist; not Dmitri, the Greek-American Manhattanite who skate-boarded right into a Rolls-Royce on Fifth Avenue; or Jess, the tiny, big-eyed sixteen-year-old from Philadelphia, who dived into a pool, hit the bottom, and sucked in water for four minutes; or Jared, whose swept-up blond hair makes me think of one of the boys in One Direction—I can’t remember his name—and who had a stroke at seventeen, and now spends half his life engaged in medically sanctioned gaming, because it strengthens the muscles in his left hand and arm.

  Dmitri, Jess, and Jared all have rooms on my corridor.

  My first encounter with Dmitri came as I was limping a little into my new room, and he was limping out of his. “Hey! Welcome. So, I’m off to a meeting on the value of graphic wall design in a pediatric inpatient setting. You have any strong opinions you’d like me to pass on?”

  “On the value of graphic wall design?”

  “In a pediatric inpatient setting.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah, me neither. If they do the place out in, like, black zigzags, I’ll blame you . . . ?” “Rosa.”

  “Dmitri.” Before turning to go, he said, “It’s on you, okay?”

  He was smiling.

  “Rosa?”

  Another kid—skinny, in low-slung jeans—was heading along the corridor from the opposite direction, earbuds dangling.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m Jared.”

  I was halfway into my room. He came to stand by me—a little too close—and leaned against the wall. “You just moving in? It’s movie night tomorrow night. Blade Runner. You want to come?”

  Was he just being inclusive with a new girl on the corridor? Was he asking me on a date? I know my cheeks flushed. I felt them get hot.

  “Um, I’m not really into sci-fi,” I told him. “But thanks.”

  He shrugged. “Dmitri was asking you about wall design?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “There won’t actually be a meeting—you should know that. It’ll be his way of making you think he’s important or something.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’re new. It’s only fair to warn you. At some point, he’ll tell you about his cousin who’s supposed to be, like, this top fashion designer in Milan. Only she works in a shop.”

  “So you and Dmitri have been here a while?”

  “Both nearly two weeks into an eight-week program. You on that, too?”

  “. . . Yeah,” I said.

  “Okay, so you want to know anything, just ask me. I’m in room eight. Try me anytime.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  He was still standing there, watching me intently, as I slipped inside my room, thinking, Was that weird just because I’m not used to normal life?

  Right now, Jared’s on the exercise bike three down from me, his scrawny calves pumping. Dmitri’s just clambered down from one of the treadmills. (He hasn’t mentioned the cousin yet.) Jess is being helped out of a gait-training harness by her mum. It’s Jared who keeps glancing at me. But actually, Dmitri looks at me, too. So do some of the others. There must be ten patients in the gym right now and twenty in total in this section of the rehab wing, and I’m conscious of their eyes often on me.

  “So?” I ask Elliot again.

  He shrugs slightly. “Yeah. I told you: They’re looking at you.”

  “More than normal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve been here three weeks.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you think . . . ?”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, they’re looking at you because—”

  We finish the sentence together.

  I say: “They know.”

  He says: “You’re cute.”

  I stare at him.

  He shrugs. “It’s true. Aula tells me. I’ve shown her a few pictures.”

  I’m cute?

  I glance back at Jared, then at Dmitri.

  I know that after I’m discharged—at which point this “trial,” as they call it, of brain transplantation will be deemed complete—the hospital is planning to tell the world what they’ve done. But my identity as that patient will not be revealed, Dr. Monzales has assured me.

  Given all the looks, though, I’d been wondering if somehow the secret got out.

  “You don’t think they know?”

  Elliot jerks his head toward Jared. “That boy down there—he’s not looking at you with what I would term medical curiosity.”

  I’m cute?

  A small white towel is draped over the handlebars of my bike. I grab it and throw it over my head so it hangs down either side, blocking out all the faces. I listen to the wheeze of my own breathing. It’s stifling in here. Suddenly, my mind feels as overheated as my body. The blinds stop me from properly seeing the midday autumn sunshine, but I can feel it. I’m burning up.

  At the back of the room is a glass door. It’s not locked. I’ve seen people come and go. I’m supposed to stay inside. But now I’m gripped by a drive to escape from the rehab wing, to get out.

  I pull off the towel and chuck it at Elliot. He fumbles the catch.

  “Distract the nurses,” I tell him.

  He frowns.

  “Ten minutes,” I say. “That’s all I want.”

  I walk away from the line of bikes, toward the door that leads to the spreading rectangle of parkland that’s adjacent to this wing and the broad-branched trees that I’ve watched other rehab patients practicing their stretching and their Tai Chi and their yoga beneath.

  “Rosa,” Elliot whispers hard.

  I don’t look back. Perhaps he’s worried. But as I stride on toward that exit, there’s a crash of something solid hitting the floor.

  I walk faster, faster, my heart palpitating, until I get to the door, and I grip the cold bar handle in my sweating hand, and I’m out.

  7.

  Oh. If I were to believe in a god, now would be the moment. Now would be the moment.

  Shivers race like scorpions under my skin. White-hot sparks erupt down the length of my body. I can’t move. I’m stunned. Biologically mesmerized. I’m standing here on grass outside the hospital, and I’m effervescing from the light. Gorgeous gigawatts of peach-gold sunlight, hurtling through space, striking me.

  I’ve never felt anything like this before. I doubt anybody has. My brain, so used to subdued, indoor signals—energy-saving lighting, a thermostatically controlled room, coolish washcloths, weakish tea—is in a state of something I think I have to call ecstasy. The heat receptors in my skin are going crazy, spiking signal after hysterical signal. I feel like a racecar that somebody
has finally thought to take onto the highway.

  The shivers strike deeper. They’re in my muscles. They’re catching at my veins. And then—bam—there’s a shock to my heart. It skips. I gasp. A lightning strike of panic—and whoompf, the shamanic buzz is gone, and I see myself as somebody else might: a girl, standing in a park, blinking in bright sunlight.

  I remain still, focused on the motions of my heart. While it’s beating fast, it seems to be stable. Thud. Thud. Thud. No irregular gaps in the thuds. Thud. Thud. Thud. That’s good. Well, it’s something. I take a breath. Count to seven in . . . eleven out . . . seven in . . . At last, the strangeness evaporates entirely, and—part relieved, part devastated—I pay attention to the data streaming into my eyes.

  I see trees. Four big ones, with generous, outstretched branches. Cedars, I think, the intense blues of the harbor and the sky shimmering behind them. And people. Everywhere. It’s lunchtime, I realize. Yes, it’s October, but it’s warm in the sun. There’s a group of nurses in green scrubs eating noodles out of boxes over near the harbor wall. A woman is pushing a stroller mounted with its own silver sun umbrella. A man in white sandals is chucking a ball at a young kid who’s wielding a child-size tennis racket.

  Through the gym window, I’ve noticed the kid with the racket before. And from my bedroom window I’ve seen the group of men over by the farthest patch of trees, a dense clustering that’s more like woodland than park. They pile their doctors’ coats and lunchboxes on a bench and hurl an American football inexpertly to one another. I’ve seen them before. But not like this. Not directly, unprotected by glass.

  I’ve never been this close. Or this exposed. I notice details I never could have detected from inside. The kid with the racket is wearing Converse shoes decorated with felt-tip rainbows. The people aren’t just mouthing words. They’re talking. And it’s mad, melodramatic conversation.

  “That’s crazy!” a woman shouts into her phone. Another says to her companion: “Yeah. Married four times before he knew.” . . . “And then you told him you were pregnant?”. . . “They still in New Orleans?” “Yeah. They were lucky with Katrina. It stopped at their doorstep.” . . . “Hey, big man, everythin’ goin’ all right?” “Yeah, how ‘bout you?” “Just chillin’, baby.” Everything sounds larger than life. Everything. English people don’t talk like this. No one in this park says: Tonight? A ready meal in front of Bake Off. Or Hmm, George, looks like rain.

  I notice something else. The bench piled with the doctors’ belongings has a plaque. It’s glinting. I find myself walking over, ignoring the background of shouts, squeals, conversation, someone singing a hymn.

  I read the word In . . . but the rest is obscured by the raw cotton handle of a reusable bag. I reach out to push it away—

  “Hey!”

  I register the word but it belongs to the din I’m doing a pretty good job of ignoring.

  “Hey!”

  The voice is closer. I squint at the letters.

  “Hey! What are you doing?”

  It’s very close.

  I look around. It’s one of the doctors, goateed, overweight, red-faced, panting.

  “This is our stuff,” he says, and I don’t miss the accusation in his tone. “What are you doing?”

  I’m about to tell him it’s none of his business, but someone else answers for me.

  “She was just reading the inscription.”

  It’s an American voice. It belongs to a boy who’s standing to my right, on the other side of the bench. Nineteen, maybe. Slim. Gray jeans. Tall. Black hair that falls over one eye. Black T-shirt. A gray canvas satchel over his shoulder. There’s a tattoo on his inner right forearm, but I can’t quite make it out. He’s looking at the doctor, not me.

  He says it again, matter-of-factly. “She was just reading.”

  The doctor swivels to face me. I say nothing. Don’t move. So he’s forced to nod uncertainly, shrug at his friends, then jog back to them.

  The boy says, “In spite of everything, she loved this bench. Denise. Forever.”

  Surprised, I glance back at the plaque. He’s on the other side of the bench. He can’t read it from where he’s standing. “You knew her?”

  “Denise? No. I just—”

  “Rosa!”

  The voice cuts through to the bone.

  “Rosa! Honey!”

  Jane.

  Jane. Jane. Jane.

  Her heavily sprinting feet make their final approach.

  “Honey, what are you doing out here?”

  We’re barely fifty feet from the hospital. But she’s breathing hard.

  “I—” I stop, unsure what to say.

  The guy with the tattoo and satchel looks at me. “Wait, it’s my line again? She was just reading.”

  Surprised—I think because this is the kind of interjection I’d associate more with Elliot than a normal human being—I smile slightly. He smiles slightly back.

  After an uncertain glance at him, Jane takes my arm. Her fingers feel red-hot. My sensory systems are confused. That peach-gold light tarnishes her face.

  “Let’s get you back,” she says, “nice and safe.”

  Beyond her, I notice Elliot by the glass door. I see him shrug that he’s sorry.

  “Honey, what were you thinking?” Jane looks worried. But there’s iron in her grip.

  There’s a phrase—I’ve heard it somewhere. It must be from a film, or something Elliot said, which perhaps still means it’s from a film: Resistance is futile.

  Option A: I meekly let Jane return me to the hospital. Option B: I convey in a single glance my not-unmitigated thanks to the guy with the tattoo (had I actually asked for a white knight?), tell Jane I still haven’t forgiven her for the lie about the mirrors, but accept that, medically speaking, maybe it’s better for me to stay inside. Option C: I punch her out and run away for cocktails and clam chowder or whatever normal people do in Boston.

  Option C. Option C!

  I turn only to find that the boy has vanished. I realize I feel disappointed. I tell Jane, “I just wanted some air.”

  I stomp toward Elliot, but halfway there, the doctors’ football comes zinging toward me. I overreact, throwing myself backward, stumbling to my right, losing my balance. The world shoots sideways. Jane is behind me. She grabs me, but not before I’ve hit the ground. She hitches me back into a standing position. “Honey,” she says, her mouth close to my ear, “we have air in the hospital. Nice, safe air.”

  I straighten myself, shrug her off. I try desperately to think of something smart to say in response. And I feel a hand on my arm. Elliot’s.

  “There, there, honey,” he says, in a passable imitation of Jane’s southern accent. “Let’s get you back for a nice cup of hot sedative and some cozy wrist restraints.”

  Jane’s expression says she can’t quite believe what she just heard.

  He winks at her. She shakes her head slightly, the corners of her mouth turning down.

  As I let Elliot lead me back toward the hospital, he bends his head toward mine. I expect him to say something like You happy now? Or Just humor them—you’re almost done.

  But he says, “I pushed over this bench and they all came over. That boy Jared was right in there, and he wasted no time. ‘Are you her boyfriend or what?’ I was tempted to tell him I was your fart coach, what with you being England’s number one fart champion, but I felt so sorry for him—he was so anxious and aggressive—that I told him the truth, and he looked so pathetically relieved. I would not recommend him for the position of first boyfriend but, hey, Rosa, it’s a start!”

  I debate who in the world I’d most like to smack right now. Jane or Elliot. It’s close.

  8.

  “It would be normal to be feeling some anxiety. An upswing in anxiety, even. On a scale of one to ten . . .”

  On a scale of one to ten, how tired am I of being asked to rate multiple factors—my pain, my level of effort, my sense of well-being, my ability to determine when I need to evacua
te my bowels?

  “. . . how would you rate your current anxiety level? Now that you are in the final stages of your time here?”

  There are three people who have to sign off on my discharge from the hospital. Dr. Monzales is one. Mum is the second. The third is, at this moment, sitting in the easy chair across from mine.

  Dr. Bailey is bald-headed and gentle-eyed. Like Dr. Monzales, he favors crisp, white shirts, open at the neck. The fact that I’ll need his clearance to be discharged isn’t my only reason for seeing him. Or at least, it didn’t used to be. He has helped me.

  I shrug. “Honestly, I don’t feel that anxious at all.”

  Right now, it’s true.

  He frowns. “What’s that on your arm? That mark?”

  My gaze drops. It’s a grass stain, I realize, from when I fell in the park. By the time I got back inside with Elliot, I had only five minutes before my meeting with Dr. Bailey, and I told Jane that if she had a problem, would she please speak to Dr. Monzales? (Yes, to my shame, I said “please.”) So I’m still in my exercise gear, and I haven’t had time to clean myself up.

  “I don’t know,” I say, rubbing at it. “Maybe it’s from the gym.”

  He looks unconvinced. But he doesn’t press it.

  “Well, Rosa, let’s talk, then, about what’s on your mind . . .”

  But I’m not sure what to say. Because all I’m thinking about is what it felt like to be outside.

  Dr. Bailey’s office is bland. Neutral-colored and silent, apart from the bubbling of the aerator in a tank of tiny iridescent fish in the far corner.

  I glance up at the high window, and at the light that’s pouring in between the slats of the blinds. I realize I’m wondering if he’s still out there, that guy who materialized, quoted the bench plaque, kind of defended my integrity, made me smile, and vanished.

  Dr. Bailey clears his throat. “The life you left will not be the one you’ll go back to, Rosa. But it’s getting close now—that release. Into the unknown.”

  I force my mind into focus. “Not really the unknown,” I say. “Mum’s shown me all these pictures—”

  “I’m not talking about your parents’ apartment.”