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In the elevator, today’s events
run through my brain: our visit with the Beitners’, finding out that their daughter is my real mom, and nearly getting killed by some wacko. But as crazy as all that is, what my mind keeps coming back to is David. He wanted to touch me, kiss me. I saw it in his eyes, but he didn’t do it. He could have, and he could have apologized later for touching me, for connecting with me even though I’d asked him not to. But he kept his distance. And for some reason that makes me want him in a way that is almost unbearable. I had to get away to think about all this.

The elevator doors slide open, and I head for Mama’s room. From where I am I can see that the door is ajar and the lights are off. Strange. There’s always a light on in there, even if it’s just the one above her bed offering a soft glow for the nurses to see by. I remind myself how late it is and chastise myself for being stupid.

When I reach the nurses’ station a tall, male nurse I’ve never met before glances up from a medical chart. He’s on his feet in a second. “Can I help you?” he asks, planting himself directly in my path. The badge pinned to his blue scrubs reads
Colin
.

“I’m here to see my mom.”

“Do you know what time it is, honey?” he says. “Visiting hours ended at nine.”

I don’t have time for this. I pull my hoodie up around my head and the sleeves down to my fingertips. Then I push past Colin.

“Hey! Hold on!” he calls out behind me. “You want me to call security on you?”

I stop, my feet suddenly cemented to the white tile floor. Every little sound is amplified—the elevator doors closing behind me, the voice on the intercom calling ‘code blue’, the nurse threatening me. I don’t know how long I stand there; it can’t be more than a few seconds, though somehow it feels longer—time stretches out in front of me, minutes and seconds strung along on an endless invisible thread.

My feet move again, slowly at first, then faster. I reach Mama’s room and push the door open. The room is dark, but the unnatural brightness of the light from the hall slips past me in a sharp rectangle on the floor. My eyes adjust quickly, and I see at once that something is wrong.

Am I in the right room? I look at the number on the door. I back out of the room and turn toward the nurses’ station where Colin waits with his hands on his hips.

“Has Ana Ortiz been moved?” I ask him. “To another room, I mean?”

Colin’s face goes noticeably pale. “You’re her daughter?” he asks. I nod. “Wait here a sec, okay, hon?”

His manner shifts from critical to almost motherly, exaggerated as though he were talking to a five-year-old. He walks to another room and sticks his head in. A moment later, a second nurse comes out of the room. It’s Jessie.

“Mira?” Jessie asks. “What are you doing here?”

“My mom,” I say. “Has she been moved? She’s not in her room.”

Colin turns away, busying himself with a stack of papers on the desk. I get the feeling that he doesn’t want any part of this conversation. Jessie’s eyebrows crease together. And there’s something else—something in her eyes.

“Mira, are you all right? Maybe you should go home, talk with your dad.”

“I don’t want to go home, Jessie. I want to see my mom. Could you just tell me where they’ve moved her?”

She hesitates and glances at Colin, but he avoids her gaze.

“Listen, Mira,” Jessie says to me, “I don’t really have any authority to—”

“To do what?”

“Why don’t I call Dr. Zimmerman? Or your father? He could come down and explain.”

I’m not getting anywhere. Either she doesn’t want to tell me, or she really can’t. I make it easy for her. In half a second, my hand locks around Jessie’s wrist.

The deluge of memories, thoughts and feelings burst inside me like shrapnel from a bomb, more than I can stand. More than I need. I quickly sift through chaos. I find all her early memories, everything before today, and shove them aside. And there it is—only a tiny fraction of Jessie’s psyche, just a splinter of her existence—but enough to destroy all of mine.

I let Jessie go and stumble back. My chest clutches, and I snatch breaths through the sudden onslaught of tears.

“You took her off—” The words are hot stones searing my tongue. “You took my mom off life support?”

My mind burns with the images—powering down the respirator, detaching the IV, watching the heart monitor flat line. It’s not like watching Jessie do it. Jessie’s thoughts are my thoughts now—it’s like it was me—like I killed Mama.

Jessie stares at me, her eyes wide and wet with tears. “My God,” she says, “you didn’t know. I assumed—I thought you knew.”

I’m shaking. Every cell in my body is on fire—rage, shock, despair all bore a hole through my soul. My stomach wrenches. I’d vomit, but I haven’t eaten anything since that piece of bread at the Beitners’. There’s nothing to throw up. I bend over anyway, my hands braced against my knees, and dry heave.

I hear Jessie’s voice talking. “Colin, page Dr. Zimmerman.”

But I’m seeing it all in my mind. The orders. The orders signed by Zimmerman—and another signature at the bottom of the page.

Alberto Ortiz.

I see the doctor standing by with a clipboard in his hand as a legal witness. I see Jessie flip the switch on the respirator, the cessation of air pushing in and out of Mama’s lungs. I watch the peaks on the heart monitor grow farther and farther apart until finally there are none at all. And through all this,
where is Papa
? And I remember he’s in Sacramento tonight. But how could they end her life without her husband present? The answer hits me like a cannonball. He’s Rawley’s former CEO, the hospital’s primary source of funding. They do whatever he tells them to. All he had to do was sign a form. So he was conveniently absent when Mama died, as her soul slipped from her body. Coward! But where was I? I was in Bakersfield with David trying to find out why the bastard had cheated on her.

I straighten up, tears raining down my cheeks. He promised me he would wait. He promised!

Jessie’s still beside me. Colin’s on the phone. They both look very worried. I don’t care what they think. I don’t care about anything.

“I want to see her,” I tell Jessie.

“Mira, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“I want to see her now!” I shout so loud that my vocal chords nearly burst.

Jessie turns to Colin. “Tell the doctor that I’m taking her down to see her mother.” Then she leads me to the staff elevator at the far end of the hall. She inserts a key and turns it to call it to our floor. We go down, farther down than I thought we could go. The basement level lacks the bright blue walls and the new carpet smell of the upper floors. It’s all concrete—the walls, the floors, the ceilings. Stark mesh-covered lights hang from bare metal fixtures overhead. While the hospital above resounds with a variety of noises, down here it is oddly silent.

“We don’t usually bring people down here,” says Jessie, as if reading my mind. Her voice has a hollow sound to it. The empty space here seems to swallow it up. “But it
wasn’t right, you know? I assumed he would have told you. You didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.”

I don’t say anything, but I stay close. We follow one corridor to where it turns into another. Finally we reach a set of double doors. Jessie presses a round metal plate on the wall, and one side swings open. Just inside, a guard sits behind a plain steel desk. As we walk in, he glances up from the little TV screen perched on his desk. I can hear the thump of a bat hitting a baseball and the cheers of the crowd. The guard turns the volume down. “Replay. Sorry,” he says.

Jessie shows him her badge. “Has Dr. Zimmerman called down the authorization yet?”

“This the Ortiz girl?” the guard asks. “All right.” He hefts himself out of his chair, and walks as if he’s got all the time in the world. “Wait here a minute.” Then he disappears behind another set of doors.

We wait.

About ten minutes pass and the guard returns, dropping lazily back into his seat. He turns the volume on his TV back up before telling us to go right on in.

The room we enter now is a stark contrast to the bland, barren terrain we left behind. This is a softer room, with pale yellow and green wallpaper and dark wood trim. And there are chairs with green cushions in each corner. In the center of the room is Mama.

The gurney’s metal wheels show beneath the white sheet draped over her body. That’s what my eyes lock on. I can’t seem to raise them any higher.

I feel Jessie’s hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she says. I step away from her touch.

I hear the door open again. “Take as much time as you want,” Jessie adds. “I’ll be waiting just outside if you need me.” The door closes shut.

For a long while I just stand there staring at the wheels. Then I force myself to look higher, to the hem of the sheet, and then to where the sheet bulges, covering Mama. My eyes are so blurred with tears I can hardly see. I wipe them dry with my sleeve, but more tears come. Finally I allow my gaze to wander to her face. From Jessie’s thoughts, I know that it hasn’t been long, just a few hours. Her color is just starting to fade. There are dark circles under her eyes, and a blue tint around her lips. But the shape of her face is the same, the same high cheekbones and straight Romanesque nose. I can’t help but watch her chest to see if it will rise and fall.

It doesn’t.

“Mama?” My voice is nothing but an empty whisper. “Mama, are you here?”

I blink, and more tears spill out of my eyes. It doesn’t matter that I should have known this day would come. Papa tried to prepare me when he showed me that form, but I refused to accept it. But this day came anyway—nothing I did could have stopped it.

Still…

Could there be something left, even just a trace?
Please, God
, I whisper,
please
.

I raise my hand, holding it just above her cheek. She used to stroke my cheek when I was young to comfort me when I cried. How I long to feel her touch now, to have her wipe my tears away. What I wouldn’t give to share one more memory with her, just one. Any memory would do. Please. Please, God. Don’t let this be the end.

I lower my hand until my fingertips alight on her skin. The cold takes me by surprise, frozen and firm—not at all like Mama. I spread my fingers apart allowing my palm to caress Mama’s cheek. I wait for the burst, the sudden shock of lightening. I wait for the impact of memories, of emotion.

I wait.

But nothing comes.

David waits in the ER
lobby with his bandaged leg resting on an adjacent chair, a copy of
Car & Driver
in his hands. He doesn’t see me until I’m standing in front of him. He looks at me over the top of the magazine and smiles.

“Hey, I was wondering when you’d come back for me—
if
you’d come back for me. I was beginning to think you’d found some other dashingly handsome invalid to dote on.” He pauses, his smile vanishing. “Mira? What’s wrong?”

Swiping at my tears with the heel of my hand, I shake my head. I don’t want to talk about it. Not here surrounded by a bunch of people I don’t know, but who probably know more about me and my family than they should. “Let’s go,” I mumble, and head out the door.

Outside, I wait for David to catch up. He’s hobbling along on a pair of crutches and looks like he could topple over at any second. “Wait here,” I tell him. “I’ll get the car.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me—?”

“Just wait here!” I don’t mean to raise my voice at him, but at this point I’m not interested in restraining my emotions. I jog over to the parking structure and let myself into David’s car. Alone, I grip the steering wheel in both hands and scream—a guttural, feral scream from the deepest part of me. I pound the wheel with my palms, let my tears splatter onto my lap leaving little dark stars on my jeans. Only when I manage to gain some self-control do I start the ignition and go meet David.

He’s standing on the curb when I pull up. Luckily, the rain has stopped. I wait, staring forward into the darkness as David shoves his crutches into the backseat and gets in. He looks at me, but says nothing. He knows I don’t want to talk, can’t talk. He lets the silence between us alone.

I feel like a bomb ready to go off at the slightest touch. Fury brews inside of me, a raging storm churning in a sea of loss and agony. I’ve never felt this way before. My arms are stiff as they make the turns at the intersections. I have to force them to respond. David sees all this, but he remains quiet.

We pass the park—our park—which means we’re nearly to my house. But I don’t want to go home. Not where I have to walk by Mama’s room. Not where Mama’s things are still scattered everywhere, remnants of my shattered family. I pull to the curb and turn off the engine. Then I open the car door and start walking, my arms wound around myself as if they could somehow deflect the pain.

When I reach the play gym, I stop. I just stand there staring out into the void of night. Then suddenly my whole body ruptures into gut wrenching sobs. I collapse to my knees in the sand and batter the earth with my fists. I don’t know how long I’m there, wailing like that, but eventually I simply wear myself out. The sobs turn to weeping, which turn to desperate gasps. Drained of energy, I let my body crumple against the damp ground. Once I’m lying on my back looking up, I see David sitting beside me. He’s been there all along, so close I can hear him breathe—watching, waiting, knowing I had to suffer alone, but refusing to let me be alone. He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to. I see the pain in his face, the comprehension of what has happened. He knows.

David lies down beside me, and we both look up at the stars, faint because of the city lights, but still present. The moon peeks out from behind the clouds, casting a pale, silvery glow on everything around us. After a while, I start to feel a little normal again. At least I’m not crying anymore.

“David?” My voice almost feels like an intruder in the silence.

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.”

He turns his head to look at me. “For what?”

“For just being here.”

I look at him, and he smiles at me. I try to smile back, but it’s hard.

“Well,” he says, shrugging against the sand, “I didn’t have much choice, did I? I mean I’m not in any condition to drive.”

I crack a little smile at that and land a playful punch on his arm. I let a few more moments of silence pass, but the void left behind from my emotional breakdown is suddenly filled with a million words clawing to get out.

“Why did this happen?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean me, David.
Me
. Why am I like this? Why am I so…different?”

“You’re not so different, Mira.”

“Yes, I am!” I roll to my side and get up. I can’t lie still any longer. I need to move, to let the agitation I feel out somehow. I walk over to the tall slide, the one that curls around a center pole. I climb up and sit at the top of it.

“When I was a little girl, there was a slide just like this one at our neighborhood park. I was terrified of it,” I call down to David. He’s gotten up, too, and is trying to maneuver his way across the sand, but his crutches keep sinking, making the trek more arduous than it needs to be. I keep talking. “Mama used to stand at the bottom trying to talk me into sliding down, but I wouldn’t budge. Then one day she climbed up with me. Holding me around my waist, she pushed off and we both went down together. It was the most thrilling moment of my life up to that point. The rush of air against my face, hearing my mom’s laughter, feeling so safe in her arms; after that I was never afraid again.”

By now David has reached the slide. I push off, and my body careens around the curves and comes to a gentle rest at the bottom where he’s waiting for me. I stand up in front of him, peering into his chocolate brown eyes.

“You
are
different, Mira Ortiz,” he says. “You’re different in all the right ways.”

“I’m a freak.”

“Not a freak. No, you’re—you’re amazing.”

For some reason what he says sets me off. “Stop trying to make me feel better, okay? I don’t want to feel better. I don’t want to feel anything ever again! I should be dead, not her!”

“Don’t say that.”

Tears threaten to start up again. I swipe at my eyes, trying to hold them at bay.  “Sorry.” I try to smile. “You’re right. I’m good. It’s all good.”

“No it’s not, Mira.” David steps closer. “You’re not
good
right now. You’re hurting, but I’m here. Okay? You’re not alone in this.”

“Yes I am!”

The earlier rainstorm has cooled the air. A little breeze carries the scent of damp grass and pine trees through the night.

“Don’t you get it?” I continue. “God spared me and took my mother instead.”

“What are you talking about, Mira?”

“It was too much. It was all too much, so I tried—” My voice catches in my throat, but I force the words out, “I tried to kill myself.”

The expression on David’s face is one of disbelief, shock. I grab the hem of my hoodie with both hands and jerk it up over my head. I throw it to the sand and thrust out my arm. The wound is healed now, but the deep red scar is still fresh and ugly.

“I was supposed to die! Not her!”

I don’t know what I expect from David. Revulsion? Pity? But I see nothing like that in his eyes.

He lets go of one of his crutches, still holding it beneath his arm, and reaches for me. But then he stops—hesitating. He won’t touch me. But I want him to. When he reaches out again I remain purposely still. The tiny hairs on my arm tingle as his fingers trace the air just above my scar. My skin aches for his touch.

It’s too much—this ever present barrier between us—the barricade I’ve erected between me and everyone else. I’m tired of the isolation. I want—
need
to feel again—to know in some way that someone understands me, cares about me.

Slowly I raise my arms and slide my hands over David’s shoulders. Lacing my fingers across the back of his shirt collar, I pull him toward me. He resists at first, a questioning look in his eyes. So I step closer, erasing the gap between us. Fighting my instinctive urge to turn and run, to protect myself from the pain and chaos, I press my body against his. I can feel his heart steadily beating in his chest, his lungs expanding and retracting with every breath. I close my eyes and lean into him.

The moment our lips connect my mind ignites with electric bursts. The burning is so intense I nearly pull away, but instead I kiss him harder. I see everything he is, everything he’s experienced and felt and learned in a lifetime. A little boy running barefoot down a cobbled street in a small Guatemalan town; savoring the sweet tastes of mango and coconut; standing in the warm torrential rains, arms outstretched, head tipped back, mouth wide open.

But there are bad memories, too, ones he’s buried deep. A father struggling to make ends meet, taking out his frustrations on his boy: a calloused hand, a leather belt, a wooden dowel, whatever was convenient and within reach. I feel the fear, the betrayal—too painful even for me. I move through them quickly only to discover an even darker void—the trauma of leaving his home and family behind, of entering a new country, a new world, and trying to find his place in it.

His more recent memories slip around each other like ice cubes melting on fevered skin. I see him at school watching someone from a distance, a girl—
me
. He liked me then? The realization startles me. And I see Craig, my boyfriend, and David’s intense loathing of him. Then there are his memories of seeing me at Dr. Walsh’s office, the fundraiser, everything over the past few days. I feel the depth of compassion he felt watching me fall apart tonight, wanting so much to comfort me, knowing he couldn’t.

And the longing—his agonizing longing—for me.

Our kiss ends, and I look up at him. I want to ask him, is this for real? But I know it is. I know everything about him. I know that his every thought is for me, that he wants so desperately for me to understand how he feels, but that he would never compromise my trust in him. Never.

I kiss David again, and this time he kisses me back—hard and passionate. My fingers brush up the back of his neck into his hair. I’m so consumed with him I don’t even feel the pain anymore. His lips skim along my chin and throat, the tops of my shoulders. His hands caress my back—delicate, like a whisper. He smells so good—vanilla and spice. I breathe deeply, letting him fill my senses.

I hear the crutches hit the sand as David’s arms slip around my body, holding me even closer. But I want more. Feeling a desperate hunger for contact, I grasp the hem of David’s shirt and lift it, dragging it up his arms until it comes free. Warmth radiates from his russet skin, smooth and curved over joints and muscles. Wearing just my thin cotton tank top, I feel horribly exposed. Fighting the impulse to wrap my arms defensively around myself, I wrap my arms around David instead.

Touching him again, all I see is him. His passion envelopes me completely, like the shield of warm night air that surrounds us. My hands sweep over the contours of his shoulder blades and spine down to the small of his back. Gliding up again along his sides, my fingers graze a patch of raised, irregular skin—a scar.

At that moment something inside of David shifts—a change so subtle I might not have noticed if I weren’t so connected to him. He stiffens ever so slightly in my arms, and a thought—no, not even that—an
impression
leaches from his psyche into mine:

Regret.