Blink Once (14 page)

She turned the picture around and looked at it herself for a second, then tucked it back into the folder. “I’m glad it’s not him, to be honest,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to think that he was haunting you, or this room.” She got the wheelchair from the corner. “I guess I still feel bad, like I could have done more, should have done more for him. If it turned out that he was here as a ghost, that would be a sign that I was right. Does that make sense?” She moved in to hold me, to move me into the chair, her arm around my back, my chest over her shoulder. She lifted me and put me into the chair with more ease this time. “That orderly was right; your mom could do this for you. It’s easier every time.” She unhooked the IV bag and moved it over to the pole on the chair. “Now, let’s see if I can get this right.” She carefully switched off the respirator, reconnected the tube to the portable, and turned it on. I didn’t skip a breath. “Okay?” She came around the chair and looked into my face for a second. I blinked yes, and waited for a smile, but I didn’t get one. I was getting the feeling that Olivia was mad at me, or mad at her mom, or just mad. Maybe it was seeing that
depressing photo of the burned guy. I wanted to cheer her up, like she had done for me so many times.

“I feel like I should have tried to be friends with this guy, this”—she paused and looked at the file lying on my bed—“Paul. Maybe I could have done something, noticed something, told the nurses.”

I was thinking of the day I was running a fever and Olivia was the first one to notice it, to get a nurse. Maybe there
was
something she could have done for this guy, but who knows, maybe not. He looked like he was pretty bad off.

I blinked no at her. She couldn’t beat herself up over this. “I’m having a shitty day,” Olivia explained. “A lot of doubt, a lot of thinking.” She clicked off the bedside lamp, moved behind the chair, and pushed me out the doorway, pausing to be sure we were alone first. The hallway felt warmer than my room; it felt good to be in the light. My room was creeping me out after seeing that picture of the guy who was there before me.

“I would say we should try for a midnight stroll, but it’s about twenty degrees out there, so …” She pushed me slowly down the hall, then turned my chair into the TV room and closed the door behind us before pushing me over to the computer table and pulling up a chair.

The room was dark, but it wasn’t as scary as my room, and I was happy for the change of scenery. “So I guess you
heard me crying before, when you were asleep?” I wanted to blink yes, because I did have some idea, but instead I blinked no. I wanted her to tell me herself.

She curled up in the chair, pulling her robe over her legs. “I told you about that guy, Paul, how he had visitors at first. Then, slowly, they stopped coming.” She paused and looked at my face in the darkness, studying my reaction. “When’s the last time I had a visitor? Not my mom, I mean a friend. Anyone. Do you know?”

I tried to think, but I couldn’t remember her ever having a friend come to visit. Her mom was the only person who came. I hoped that our little party today hadn’t been what started her thinking this, but I was pretty sure it had. “You know why I don’t have any friends visiting me? They stopped coming. They stopped coming because they want to see this girl.” Olivia stood and struck a ballerina pose, up on one toe, her head cocked to the side. Suddenly, she twirled in a perfect circle on her toe, then stopped, looking me dead in the eye. “They want to see this girl.” She danced effortlessly across the room, her robe flowing behind her like a white dress. She spun and danced back to me, stopping close to the chair. I could hear her breathing.

“They don’t want this girl.” She yanked up her sleeve, showing me her shunt, that angry piece of plastic shoved under her skin, held in place with medical tape. “They don’t want to see the girl whose hair is falling out”—she grabbed
her ponytail and came away with a handful of dark hair—“whose skin is pasty, the girl who doesn’t smile.” She leaned in, so close that I could feel her breath on my face, and gave me a hateful look. “Nobody wants this girl,” she said slowly. She was so angry; I’d never seen her like this. And it frightened me.

She slumped back into her chair and put her head into her hands for a moment, then looked up at me. “So you know what was weird to me today? After dumping you, weeks ago, little blondie girlfriend just shows up here today, trots in like she owns the place, little powwow with the parents while your other buddy takes you on a stroll. The perfect girlfriend. Don’t you think that’s strange?” Olivia squinted her eyes and stared at me.

She turned to the computer and clicked it on. I was nervous about what she was going to show me. Did Allie have a new boyfriend? Was she going to show me something about my friends that I didn’t want to see? She went again to the video site, and I watched as she typed in “BMX racing.” When a list of videos popped up, she clicked the first one and sat back to watch it play. I didn’t like watching it. Seeing other guys getting air and hitting jumps while I was in this chair was not my idea of a good time. Why was she showing me this?

“You know why Allie was here today?” She said Allie’s name like it put knives in her mouth. “She was here because
she wants
that
guy.” Olivia poked her finger at the screen, pointing out the guy who was in the lead. He was in full gear, matching leathers and jacket, cool race helmet. “She wants that guy, and so does Mike, and so do your parents. And now, with this surgery, they think they’re going to get that guy back.” Olivia paused the image on the screen on a close-up of a guy hitting a corner hard, mud splashing from his tires and hitting the camera lens.

Olivia scooted her chair close to mine and her put her hands on the armrests. “They don’t care how risky it is for you, that there’s a good chance you’ll die rather than be okay again. They don’t care, because that’s how much they don’t want this.” She poked my chest hard with her finger.

“Allie dumped you because she wants the biker guy, she wants the handsome guy, she wants to
walk
down the hall with that guy, Mr. Popular”—she pointed at the screen again—“not this guy”—she hit my chest hard and I flinched. “Did you feel that?” she asked, surprised. “You did feel that, didn’t you? See!” She jumped up from the chair and spun around again, suddenly happy. “The doctors said you would get feeling back on your own, if you just waited, if you were patient. You don’t need this surgery next week. You don’t need it! You can get better slowly, safely—we can get better together. Me and you. Here.” She smiled for the first time all night and knelt down in front of me, lifting my hand to her face, placing my palm on her cheek. I wished
that I could feel it, feel her softness, her warmth, but I felt nothing.

“I don’t care how long it takes, because I love you, West. I love
you
.” She emphasized the last word, making it clear that she didn’t care what state my body was in. Moments like these, when I was dying to wrap her in my arms, being trapped in this body was so frustrating, it was torture. What she didn’t understand, what I was aching to tell her, was that I wanted to get better not just to get back to my old life, but for her, too. I wanted to help her get better, to get out of here. Wasn’t that what she wanted? For both of us to be free of this place?

I looked into her eyes. She had just told me that she loved me. That wasn’t lost in everything else. I heard it. And I loved her, too. As crazy and complicated as she was, as insane as it was to fall in love with a girl you’ve never actually talked to, we were in love. It was that simple. And she was worried about me. But she didn’t need to be. I knew it was all going to work out. I just had to convince her.

“And the dreams—your dreams, my dreams—about this place, about that guy. Those aren’t an accident. That means something. I know you want to just brush it away and forget, but you know it’s all connected. We’re connected.” She put my hand back down and laid her head into my lap, sighing.

Then suddenly she pulled her head up to stare at me.
“I have an idea. Let me talk to your mom. She’ll be here tomorrow. Let me just talk to her for two minutes. I think there’s stuff in your file that they aren’t telling her. Stuff that I looked up online. Things she might not know.”

Did I want Olivia talking to my mom? She had been on the fence about the surgery from the beginning. A concerned patient telling her that she had looked into my file, seen something there … it wouldn’t take much for my mom to change her mind, to pull the plug on the whole thing. A few words from Olivia, and my chance for surgery, for getting out of here, would be over.

I blinked no.

“No, you don’t want me to talk to your mom? Does that mean you’ll tell her that you don’t want the surgery yourself?”

I waited a moment, terrified of Olivia’s reaction.

I blinked no.

“What do you mean, no? You’re just going to do it—you’re just going to let them cut you open?”

The way she put it sounded so barbaric, but I had to blink yes. I wanted the surgery, no matter what.

“So even after all this, after everything I’m telling you, after everything I’ve done for you. You know, I could have gotten in a lot of trouble looking in those files; I could get in a lot of trouble for just being in your room, much less taking you out like this.” She motioned to the room. “After
all that, you’re telling me you want to go ahead with it? You’re ready to die for these people, for what they want you to be?”

Olivia was wrong. I wasn’t going to die, and I wasn’t doing it for them. I was doing it for me, for us. I couldn’t stay here forever with her like this. I wanted out, whichever way out was.

She watched my face and then shook her head. She stood and walked to the windows, putting her hand on the glass. “And what about me? I’ll still be here, and someone new will be moved into your room, someone who’s been in an accident, someone who needs a friend. And I’ll have nothing left to give, because you will have broken my heart.” She sniffled and I could hear her crying again, quietly. “I guess I mean nothing to you. How I feel means nothing to you; you’re just going to do what you want—what they want. And I go back to being stuck here, alone.”

I blinked no, but she wasn’t looking at my face. A memory washed through my mind. A girl crying, cleaning out a drawer in my room. Was that Olivia? Was she crying and taking out my things after … after I was gone? No, that was just a dream, the ghost of a dream, a nightmare. That girl was a child, smaller than Olivia, younger. It didn’t mean anything.

I was going to come through the surgery, I was going to be okay, and I was coming back here for her. Whatever
happened, I was coming back here for Olivia. She might not believe that now, but it was true.

“I thought you were different. But you’re just like them.” She stood behind my chair and turned me toward the door. “I should have known better,” she said quietly, as if to herself.

Who was she talking about? Her friends, the ones who never visited her? I wasn’t like them. Just because I was choosing to take a chance on myself, on the surgery, that didn’t make me selfish. I had to do it. But she was right about one thing. I had taken her for granted. The visits, reading to me, sneaking files, the whiteboard, her patience, listening to my dreams, taking me on midnight walks. I pictured her pushing my hair from my eyes—how many countless times had she done that? Curling up with me in bed, even if it meant the nurses might catch us. Telling me I could do it—that I could write, I could feel, I was still West. I was important, I was still alive. Olivia had done that for me. She had been my connection to the world of the living. Someone who I felt real with. The only person I felt real with.

Olivia pushed me back to my room in silence, quietly and slowly put me back into bed, moving as if she were in a trance, an emotionless robot. After putting the wheelchair away, she lowered the bed back down so I could lie flat, and arranged my hands carefully. Then she leaned over me,
pushing my hair back from my eyes, her hand trailing down my face lightly, along my cheek, a butterfly touch.

“Good-bye, West,” she whispered, as if I were already dead. I blinked no, but she didn’t see it, or didn’t care anymore.

When I woke up the next morning, it was a bright winter day—the kind of day where the sun seems too white, too stark, and you imagine for a second that you’re on another planet, in a sci-fi movie. The clock read only 9:30. Was it Sunday or Monday? I couldn’t remember at first. Then I did. It was Sunday. Yesterday was Saturday. Mom and Dad and Allie and Mike. And Olivia. Her face last night, that kiss, her telling me good-bye. But she didn’t mean it. I knew her, just like she knew me. And I knew that any minute I would hear the divider slide open, and she would be there, pulling her IV stand behind her, looking down at her feet, feeling shy because of how she had acted, the things she had said last night. She had told me she loved me. Not that it was a surprise—it was one of those unspoken things between
us—but still she had said it, and that meant something. I knew exactly how much it took to say that to someone, to be the first one to say it, because of Allie.

One afternoon, after school, we were walking to the bus stop—I didn’t really need to stay after school that day since my work on the sets was pretty much done, but I did anyhow. I used some excuse to stay and watch Allie onstage. She was good, I had noticed before, but now that we were hanging out, I felt this overwhelming sense of pride watching her move onstage, deliver her lines. She slipped into character so smoothly, from joking around backstage to really being the girl she was supposed to be in the play. I imagined her famous someday; it could happen, she was talented and really pretty. And there was just something about her, she had that special thing that made you want to get close to her. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who noticed it.

When we left the school two hours later, it was freezing out, almost dark, and we walked close. Allie was wearing that puffy blue coat. She looked like a blue marshmallow with a white hat on; cute, even though I knew she didn’t think so. I kept grabbing her, squeezing her, hard enough to push the air out of the down jacket, but it would just puff right up again. “Knock it off.” She laughed. “Put me down!” but I kept doing it until she was almost actually annoyed with me.