Undertow (12 page)

“Miss Johansen?”

She opened her eyes to see who owned this voice that interrupted her attempted escape. Thick pads of flesh plumped the woman’s cheeks; her brow was furrowed, but the eyes seemed kind.

Two hefty men wearing scrubs the same color as the wall pushed past the nurse. One held a syringe in front of his face.

“Wait!” Nurse Mendova said.

The men froze and faced the nurse.

“It’s okay. I think Miss Johansen is settling down on her own.” She looked at Marissa. “Isn’t that right, honey?”

She turned away and wept.

“Let’s see if she’ll just take a pill to calm down,” the nurse said.

Sobbing harder, Marissa beat against the sheets. She moaned. “No . . . no . . . no . . . why am I here? Where is He?” A primal noise escaped her lips, a harrowing cry like the plaintive howl of a wolf.

Nineteen

W
hen she woke, no one noticed; she was a ghost, invisible. After a long moment, the conversation taking place near her door came into focus and she strained to follow the words.

“Why is she being kept sedated? Don’t you
want
her to wake up?” Her mother’s angry voice carried through the room.

“Of course we want her to come out of her coma, Ms. Johansen.” She recognized the young doctor’s voice. “But it’s quite common for patients to be agitated when they begin to emerge. The sedation is to protect her; any over-excitation is dangerous to her brain functioning. She is still quite fragile.”

“How much longer?”

“Every case is different. We need to prepare for anything from a long recovery to a very short one.”

“Will she be . . . normal?”

“Once she wakes from the coma, we’ll assess the extent of any damage.” His voice sounded less confident, like he was hedging. “With rehabilitation, she may substantially recover. A critical consideration, however, is her pre-injury state.”

“What do you mean?” Her mother’s voice lifted an octave.

“Her psychiatric condition, to put it plainly. If there is any preexistent impairment in her brain . . .  structural or metabolic . . . it affects her prognosis.”

“What are you implying?”

Marissa cringed, wishing her mother would shut up.

“Ma’am, I’m not implying anything,” he said. “Your daughter walked into the ocean. She may have been either suicidal or delusional, possibly psychotic. The specialists will be able to tell us more soon. For now, we have reason to be optimistic. Your daughter survived. She’s alive.”

Marissa squeezed her eyes shut and pretended to be asleep. She sensed her mother’s presence before she heard her soft weeping.

“I love you, sweetheart,” she said. “I always have. Please come back.”

She remained rigid as she attempted to make sense of what she’d heard.
Coma.
Suicidal.
Psychotic.
Although she leaped at the words like a girl hunting butterflies with a net, they evaded capture. Pain from her parched nostrils combined with a growing discomfort in her limbs. She swatted at the oxygen tubes but succeeded only in striking herself in the forehead. Startled at the impact, she coughed and her eyelids flung open involuntarily.

In an instant, her mother was on her feet shouting. “Mari! Oh my God. Mari!” She ran to the door and stuck her head into the hall. “She’s awake! She’s awake!”

A few seconds later, her mother was back at her side, seizing Marissa’s face with both hands and staring into her eyes. “Oh, sweetie, you’re back!”

“Stay calm, please, Ma’am.” Her mother’s hysteria had summoned a black man in the standard green uniform to her room. He gave Marissa a brilliant smile. “So, you woke up again, did you? Well, how long you planning to stay with us this time?”

“Don’t say that! She’s awake. She’ll
stay
awake.” Her mother glared at him.

He shook his head. “Whoa, Ma’am . . . ”

“Shannon. My name is Shannon. And don’t patronize me.”

“Shannon, then. No offense intended.” His voice was low and his eyes were shielded under deep lids as he looked at her mother. “It’s just that, well, working here . . . you see how they bob up and down like corks in the water as they come out of it. Your daughter, though—she’ll do great, I just know it.”

The man faced her and grinned again. “Isn’t that right, Missy? You’re planning on sticking around now, right?” Taking her wrist in his hand, he felt for the pulse. “I’m Nurse Whitcomb. It’s nice to finally make your acquaintance, Miss Johansen.”

After performing a routine vitals check, he assured her mother that he’d tell the doctor about this latest development and left.

Her mother beamed at her and approached the bed cautiously as though Marissa was a delicate bird which might take wing at any moment. “Are you really awake, Mari? Can you hear me? How do you feel? Are you in any pain?”

She shook her head and the effort wore her out. Closing her eyes, she locked her mother out of her mind. Where is
He
? His face, more precious than any other, shimmered above the abyss to which she ached to return. The image obliterated all other sensation as she relinquished control and slipped beneath the undertow.

“Mari.” The voice shattered the mirage and sent shards flying through her brain. The pain shocked her into opening her eyes to find her mother’s anxious face hovered inches above her own. “Mari, stay here, please. Stay awake, sweetie. Please.”

Twenty

O
n the third day after she “emerged,” as everyone referred to the end of her coma, a woman with slick black hair that fell to her shoulders stared at her. The badge hanging from a lanyard around her neck said,
Legacy Hospital
. Underneath the photo, her name was printed in bold letters:
Elizabeth Summers
.

“I’m sorry about your accident at the beach,” she said when Dr. Spencer introduced them.

The doctor leaned close to the woman and whispered, “She walked into the ocean—there were witnesses.”

Her lips tightened and Dr. Summers squinted at Marissa as though she were some kind of bizarre animal.

Recovering her composure, she escorted her to a room the size of a large closet. Without a word, the doctor busied herself arranging a book, stopwatch, and clipboard. When everything was ready, she gestured at Marissa to sit in the sole chair and briefly explained the purpose of the test she planned to administer. Apparently, the woman’s job was to figure out how much damage was done to Marissa’s brain during her “incident.” She said the word as though it had a vile taste.

Across the narrow table, the doctor froze her face in a non-judgmental mask as she commanded Marissa to perform one “task” after another until she failed each one. After about an hour or so, her head throbbed.

“Watch me make a design with these blocks. Now, you make one that looks the same.” Dr. Summers glanced back and forth from her stopwatch to Marissa’s hands as they frantically tried to piece together the puzzle like some kind of trained chimp. She jotted down notes on the clipboard as if each movement of Marissa’s fingers signified something of vital importance, until out of the blue she shouted, “Stop.”

Frustrated, Marissa dropped the last block. She wondered who made these stupid games up, and what blocks proved anyway.

“That’s enough for one day, Miss Johansen. You did very well. Thank you for working so hard.” Dr. Summers set her pen and clipboard down.

“I’m done? That’s it?” Maybe it was the last time she would have to see the weird doctor.

“Yes, for today. Next week we’ll try some new puzzles.” The woman smiled, a thin, perfunctory tightening of her lips.

As if there weren’t enough puzzles in her life to solve already.

 At lunch, the fake burger she’d selected from the menu was delivered hiding under a silver dome with tiny tubs of mustard and ketchup beside a lone pickle on the plate. Her mother showed up as Marissa took her last bite.

“Hi there,” her mother said. The cheerfulness was forced, like usual. “How’d it go?”

She yawned, suddenly exhausted. “Just grand.”

Her mother pinched her lips together and stared at her in an effort to force a confession.

Not up for the drama, Marissa said, “I’m really wiped out right now, Mom. I’m going to take a nap.”

“Fine.” She walked over and dropped into the visitor’s chair. “Go ahead and nap, Mari. We’ll talk when you’re rested”

“Thanks.”

“Marissa?”

“Yeah?” She was already dozing off and the word came out mushy, like her tongue was too thick.

“I love you.” Her mother’s speech sounded uncertain, unpracticed. Or tentative, as if she thought she should tell her that she loved her, but wasn’t really sure whether Marissa cared to hear it.

“I know Mom,” she mumbled back. “I love you too.”

Before she managed to sleep for more than a few minutes, the aide brusquely woke her. The woman’s bedside manner was abysmal, Marissa decided.
Bustling around her bed, she efficiently took her pulse, temperature, and blood pressure and recorded the stats on a chart she clasped like a shield.

“You’re doing just fine today,” she said. “I’ll let Nurse Mendova know you’re ready.” Her expression conveyed her disapproval.

The aide departed before Marissa could ask what she should get ready for.

Enough time passed that she decided she might try to nap again. Before Marissa succumbed to the lure, Nurse Mendova appeared with a skinny young man standing in her considerable shadow. His hair was like an orange mop.

“Well, well.” The nurse tilted her head and clucked her tongue. Solid as a boulder, she stood with her hands on her hips and grinned like she was genuinely glad to see her. “Decided to join the rest of us living folk for a while, did you?”

Gesturing to the man beside her, she said, “Andrew here is a physical therapist. He’ll be working with you this afternoon, giving those lazy limbs of yours a workout.” The nurse winked. Putting her hand aside her cheek, she pretended to whisper, “And you be nice to him, you hear? He’s new at this.”

Andrew glared at her, his mouth open, ready to protest.

Nurse Mendova laughed, a guttural noise, and shook her head. “Now, now, young man, don’t get all in a stew about it. Everybody’s got to start somewhere.”

Great,
she thought,
I’m a guinea pig.

The nurse helped her to her feet. “Here you go, honey. You’ll be good as new before you know it.”

“Miss Johansen, let me have you sit in the wheelchair. I’ll wheel you down to the therapy room,” Andrew said, wrapping his long fingers around her bicep.