Blink Once (25 page)

Norris was silent for a moment. “I don’t know.” She took a deep breath. “I learned a hard lesson when I came to work here. When I first started out, I thought I could save everybody. I thought with enough kindness, with enough attention, maybe …” She shook her head. “But most of these patients, they won’t get better. That’s hard. It’s hard to come to work every day and to know that, to keep going, keep caring, when you know how it will end, every time,
that the patients you take care of for years will never get better.”

She looked at my face to be sure I was following her. “It’s just hard, West, and I wish you didn’t have to know about it.”

I looked down at my sneakers. I felt empty inside, hollow. I thought maybe Nurse Norris would have an answer. The fact that she believed me—that she confirmed what I already knew—was important, but yet it had gotten me nowhere. The people I thought were ghosts haunting the hospital weren’t ghosts at all. They were alive, or some version of being alive. They were trapped between being living and being somewhere else. And they were all so deeply unhappy, so sad, lost.

“Why don’t you sit with Olivia for a while?” Nurse Norris asked, pulling me from my thoughts. I nodded and she patted the back of my hand. “I think she’d like that,” she said, and motioned toward room 203. My knees almost buckled as I moved to walk down the hall; I had forgotten that I’d left my braces at home. Nurse Norris helped me get my balance.

“Come say good-bye before you head out, okay?” She squeezed my arm as I walked down the hall.

When I rounded the doorway to 203, for a split second I expected to see Olivia, my Olivia, sitting in bed, looking up from a magazine, her long hair down around her shoulders,
surprised and happy to see me, a smile slowly crossing her face. But she looked exactly as she had the last time; a body in a bed, her dark hair short, the long, deep pink scar across one cheek. I hardly saw those things, though. I knew the girl in the bed wasn’t her, wasn’t where she was or how she really looked.

I pulled up a chair alongside the bed and took her hand. “It’s West,” I whispered. “Olivia, it’s me.” I listened to the sound of the ventilator pushing air into her body, over and over again. The rhythmic, muted beep of the heart monitor.

You have to come back for me.

I thought about how she didn’t want me to leave, how hard she tried to convince me not to have the surgery. How scared she was for me.

Don’t leave me here.

But how much did she know? Did she understand that waking up would take me away from her, away from wherever we were together? Maybe she was terrified of being alone.

Promise me you’ll come back for me.

Or maybe she knew there was only one way out. It was a place you didn’t come back from. She had seen others go there before me.

Sometimes I think I’m never going to get out of here.

She was waiting for me to come back. And here I was.

I pulled my chair closer to the bed and put her hand up to my cheek and felt her warmth. “Olivia,” I whispered, “I came back for you. Just like you wanted me to.” I took a deep breath. “The things we saw, the things we felt, it’s all real.” I stopped and leaned in, putting my face close to hers. “Those people—the dreams I had. They aren’t dreams. Or ghosts. They’re real people, but they’re stuck here. They can’t move on, can’t let go.”

I glanced at the machine next to the bed that registered her heartbeat, and it stayed rhythmic and calm.

She was one of them. And she didn’t know it.

She didn’t know that she wasn’t going to get better. That’s what they were all waiting for. Paul. The little girl, Katie. Olivia. Me, when I was there. We all wanted to live again. But some of us were never going to make it back. I had been lucky.

“I don’t want you to be like them.” I laid my head on her shoulder and listened to the sound of her heart beating. I hoped she could hear me, could understand me. Minutes passed as we sat quietly like that, listening to the sounds of her body still working, being kept alive. We were together, both of us, in this room. Our bodies were here. But I knew that part of her wasn’t here. And it never would be.

I looked at the wires to the machines, plugged into the wall, and into each other. It wouldn’t take much to show her I had kept my promise. That I had come back for her.
I realized what Olivia had taught me; she had shown me how to disconnect the ventilator without setting off alarms, without signaling the nurses. She had known all about the feeding tube, the IV. How to disconnect the shunt so no one would know. It would be hours before they noticed. She knew their schedule, and I did, too. Why did she show me those things, unless she wanted me to use that knowledge?

I thought about the steps I would need to go through. I could do it. If that’s what she wanted.

“Olivia.” I looked at her face. “I can get you out of here. Tell me if that’s what you want, and I’ll do it.” I studied her, waiting for a sign. “Blink once for yes, like you taught me.”

Her face remained calm and beautiful, silent. “Blink,” I begged. “Please, Olivia, show me that you understand.” I sat watching her, but there was no change. “I can’t leave you like this, with the rest of them. You don’t belong here.”

“Oh—” a voice said suddenly behind me, and I jerked away from Olivia, spinning around to see a young nurse pushing a cart into the room. “I didn’t know Ms. Kemple had a visitor. So nice to see a friend here.” The nurse smiled.

I looked back at Olivia’s face, but it was unchanged. The way the nurse talked to her made me sick, that cloying baby talk. I wanted to shake Olivia, to make her understand. To make her answer me. Did she know I was here at all?

I grabbed my coat and stood to leave.

“Don’t go on my account … ,” the nurse started to say,
but I left the room without a backward glance. I couldn’t sit there and stare at Olivia—at that girl in the bed—any longer. Coming here had been a mistake. I couldn’t help her; I couldn’t help any of them. I had failed. I had let her down. I walked by the nurses’ station on my way to the doors. Norris was there, doing some paperwork. I looked at her silently, and she nodded.

“You call me anytime. Your mom has my number. I mean that, anytime at all,” she said. I gave her a weak smile and moved to the door before she could stand up. I didn’t want to drag it out—I didn’t want another hug from her, or a long good-bye. I just wanted to get out of the dimly lit hallway, the open door to room 203, the sounds of machines clicking and beeping, keeping all these people alive.

When I stepped outside, I saw the cab waiting for me. I opened the back door and climbed in. The driver was staring out the windshield to the mountains on the horizon. “Snow’s melting,” he said without looking back at me. I looked up and saw that he was right. The soft white snow-caps that I had seen from my hospital window for all those months were now gone, replaced with the sharp black mountain range that formed the familiar skyline for the city. He slipped the car into gear without even asking where I wanted to go. I guess he assumed I was ready to go home, and I was. He didn’t try to make conversation on the drive back, and I was grateful for the silence.

When we got back to my house, I again pulled out my wallet to pay, noticing for the first time that the electronic taximeter was black—he hadn’t turned it on. “Save your money, kid,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “I hope your friend gets out of that place soon.”

I opened the back door. “Me too,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Me too.”

I’m holding her hand, warm and small in mine. She looks the same, the girl I knew: her hair is long and dark and swirls around her face and the white pillow. “I’ve never had a friend that I could trust like you, West. You said you would come back for me, and you did.” She smiles, and her face takes on a warm light. “I had never been in love before I met you,” she says quietly. “You showed me. You showed me what love is.” Her eyes meet mine. “Thank you, West.” Such a small thing to say—thank you—but I feel her words wash over me and I’m overwhelmed. It’s all okay. I didn’t let her down. I came back for her. She knows I’m here. She’s not trapped in that dark place anymore, with the rest of them. She’s with me, safe.

“I’m so tired. Will you stay with me? Just stay with me
until I’m asleep.” Her eyes are closed, her face calm. There are no scars; she’s whole again. I look to the machine next to the bed and see that it is slowly winding down, as if I am willing it to. I want it to stop. The beeping becomes slower and slower, then fades altogether. The ventilator stops pumping. The room is quiet; we are alone. “I’m here, Olivia,” I tell her. I know that she can hear me. She’s free. I stay with her like that as the room grows dark around us. “I won’t leave,” I whisper to her. “I won’t ever leave you.”

The call came three days later. Mom was in the kitchen putting groceries away when the phone rang. I heard her say, “It’s so nice to hear your voice,” and then she went on to tell whoever was calling about how well I was doing. When I walked into the kitchen, Mom mouthed to me, “Nurse Norris,” and pointed at the phone. I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to talk to her, not yet.

“He’s in the shower right now, but I’ll have him give you a call later, or tomorrow,” Mom said, getting off the phone. “Why didn’t you want to speak to her? It’s so nice of her to call and check up on you, don’t you think? She always was my favorite nurse.” Mom turned to put something in the fridge and I was relieved she couldn’t see my face. She had no way of knowing that I just been at Wilson two days before, and obviously Norris had kept my secret for me.

“Yeah, she was my favorite too.”

“You should give her a call tomorrow,” Mom said, washing her hands at the sink. “Now, what should we have for dinner?”

I knew I wasn’t going to call Norris, not tomorrow, not ever. What would I say? I had been haunted by a dream since my visit to Wilson. I couldn’t stop thinking about Olivia being there, being trapped there. About all of them. I didn’t know how I was going to move on while she was still there. It seemed impossible. But I didn’t know what else to do. I had promised Olivia I would be there for her. I wanted to keep my promise, but I didn’t know exactly what that meant. And it was killing me.

The next day when my cell rang and flashed “unknown caller,” I picked it up without thinking. I just assumed it was my physical therapist, who usually called around that time to set up our schedule. But it wasn’t.

“West, it’s Nurse Norris. I tried you last night, but you weren’t available,” she said.

“Oh yeah, Mom told me. I’m sorry, I’ve just been busy….”

“That’s good. I’m happy to hear that you’re busy, that you’ve been getting back to your life,” Norris said.

I took a deep breath. I didn’t know what to say to her.

“West, I’m calling with some difficult news for you. Do you feel like you’re ready to hear it?”

Suddenly I felt a cold wave wash over me. I wanted to hang up on her, to pretend the call had never come. But that wouldn’t stop it from being true. “You can tell me.”

“It’s the patient from room 203, Olivia Kemple. I’m sorry to tell you that she passed. It was early yesterday morning.”

I swallowed hard but said nothing.

“Unfortunately she suffered heart failure. There was nothing we could do. It’s not uncommon to have organ failure in a long-term coma patient.”

I was silent.

“West, are you there?”

“I’m here,” I answered.

“If you would like, I can get you the information about the memorial that her mother is planning. If you want to go. I’ll be there.”

I paused, trying to take in what she was telling me. Olivia was gone. The girl at Wilson, the body in the bed. She wasn’t being kept alive there anymore. My Olivia.

“West, I’ll be going, if you want to come with me. I’ll be there for you,” Norris went on.

“I don’t want to go,” I said quickly. “I can’t, I’m sorry.” I snapped the phone off and sat down on my bed. I didn’t want to see Olivia’s mother, in her grief, looking so much like Olivia. I knew I couldn’t face it. And her friends, the ones who never came to visit her, now standing around at
her funeral, talking about how much they cared. I couldn’t look at those people without screaming. None of them could ever understand.