one that’s open.
Inside, I sit down on a conference table and draw my knees to my chest.
The worst part of it is that everything Joe said is true. My father wouldn’t be lying in a hospital bed if it weren’t for me. He never would have gone out on the roads that night. In some other, better world, he’s still looking after captive packs of wolves, with his cheerful, obedient daughter by his side.
The doorknob turns, and suddenly Edward is standing in front of me. “If you want to hide,” he says, “you have to lock the door. Take it from me.”
“You’re the last person I want to see right now.”
“Well, everyone’s looking for you. Mom thinks you’ve wigged out and run away again. Joe feels like crap, but he was just doing his job. And your lawyer… God, I don’t know. I guess she’s off making goat cheese or something.”
Against my will, a laugh bubbles out of me, carbonated emotion. “Don’t do that,” I say.
“Do what?”
“It’s easier when I can hate you,” I admit.
“You
“Why can’t you just wait a month or two? And then if nothing happens, you can still do what you want to do. But it doesn’t work the other way around. If you take him off life support now, we’ll never know if he could have gotten better.”
He hops up on the table next to me. “Nothing’s going to be different in a month,” Edward says.
I can think of so many things that will be different. I’ll be out of this sling. I’ll be back at school. Maybe I will even have gotten used to having Edward back here in Beresford.
I realize that we are having the conversation Edward didn’t have with me before he pulled the plug. So that’s changed, too.
I look up at him. “I’m sorry I got you arrested and put into jail.”
He grins. “No you’re not.”
I kick his foot, swinging next to mine. “Well. Maybe just a little.”
When I was tiny, the county fair came through town. Our parents took us, and got tickets for the rides, even though I was scared to death of all of them. Edward was the one who convinced me to go on the merry-go-round. He put me up on one of the wooden horses and he told me the horse was magic, and might turn real right underneath me, but only if I didn’t look down. So I didn’t. I stared out at the pinwheeling crowd and searched for him. Even when I started to get dizzy or thought I might throw up, the circle would come around again and there he was. After a while, I stopped thinking about the horse being magic, or even how terrified I was, and instead, I made a game out of finding Edward.
I think that’s what family feels like. A ride that takes you back to the same place over and over.
“Edward,” I ask. “Could you drive me somewhere?”
If my mother and Joe are surprised to hear that Edward is the one taking me to see my father, they hide it well. It is a fifteen-mile ride, but it feels much longer. This nondescript rental car isn’t Edward’s old beater and I am not hauling a backpack, but we’ve slipped seamlessly into the same spots we used to be in when Edward drove me to school as a kid. I fiddle around with the radio station until I find one of the French Canadian FM ones. Although Edward had taken six years of French in school, he used to mock-translate for me, making up outrageous news stories about live goldfish found in public drinking fountains and a pet donkey named Mr. LeFoux who was unwittingly elected to the town selectboard. I wait for him to start translating again, but he just frowns and turns on some classic rock.
When we get to the hospital, Edward pulls up right to the front. “Aren’t you coming in?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I’ll come back later.”
It’s funny. All this time, when Edward was gone, I never felt like I was alone. But now that he’s back, as I watch him drive off, I feel lonely.
The nurses at the ICU desk all say hello to me, ask me how my shoulder feels. They tell me my dad has been a good patient, and I’m not sure if this is supposed to be some kind of joke, so I pretend to smile before I go into his room.
He is lying just the way he was the last time I visited, his arms tucked on top of the thin blanket, his head canted back on the pillow.
The pillows here suck. I know this from experience. They are too thick, and they are wrapped in plastic so your scalp sweats.
I walk toward my dad and gently reposition the pillow so it doesn’t set his neck at that weird angle. “Better, right?” I say, and I sit down on the foot of the bed.
Behind him is the weird techno-array of machines and computer monitors, like he is the star of a sci-fi movie.
For a moment, I watch just in case.
A nurse, an LPN, comes into the room. Her name is Rita, and she has a canary named Justin Bieber. She has a picture of the bird on her hospital ID tag. “Cara,” she says. “How are you doing today?” Then she pats my father on his shoulder. “And how’s my own personal Fabio?”
She calls him that because of his hair, or what’s left of it where it hasn’t been shaved. I guess the real Fabio is Mr. Romance Novel Cover, although I’ve never read one of those. I only know him as the guy who shilled I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!, and who got hit in the face by a bird on a Disney World ride.
While Rita hangs a new IV bag, I stare at my father’s hand on the blanket and try to imagine it touching a woman I cannot even picture in my memory anymore. I imagine him driving her to the clinic for her abortion. She would have been sitting in my seat.
I lean forward, as if I’m going to kiss his cheek, but really I’m doing this so Rita can’t hear me. “Dad,” I whisper. “How about I forgive you, if you forgive me?”
And just like that, he opens his eyes.
“Oh, my God,” I cry.
Alarmed, Rita looks down at her patient. She reaches for the intercom behind the bed and pages the nurses’ desk. “Get neurology up here,” she says.
“Daddy!” I get off the bed and walk around it so that I can sit closer to him. His eyes slide to the left as I walk in that direction. “You saw that, didn’t you?” I say to Rita. “How he followed me?” I put my hands on his cheeks. “Can you hear me?”
His eyes are locked on mine. I’ve forgotten how blue they are, so bright and clear they almost hurt to look at, like the sky the morning after a snowstorm. “I’m fighting for you,” I tell him. “I won’t give up if you don’t.”
My father’s head lolls to the side, and his eyes drift shut. “Dad!” I shout. “Daddy?”
I cry and I shake him-nothing happens. Even after Dr. Saint-Clare comes in and tries to make him react with more clinical tests, my father does not respond.
But for fifteen seconds-for fifteen glorious seconds-he did.
My mother is pacing in the hospital lobby when I race across it, ten minutes late for our scheduled pickup. “You’re going to be late for court,” she says, but I throw myself into her arms.
“He woke up,” I say. “He woke up and looked at me!”
It takes a moment for my words to sink in. “What? Just now?” She grabs my hand and starts running toward the elevator.
I stop her. “It was only for a little bit. But there was a nurse in there who saw it, too. He looked right at me and his eyes followed me when I walked around the bed and I could see he was trying to tell me something-” I break off, hugging her tight around the neck. “I told you so.”
My mother pulls her cell phone out of her pocket and dials a number. “Tell Zirconia.”
Which is how, twenty minutes later, I find myself racing back into the courtroom as Judge LaPierre begins to speak. “Ms. Notch, I understand you have something you need to say?”
“Yes, Your Honor. I need to recall my client and a new witness to the stand. Some evidence has come to light that I think the court needs to hear.”
Joe stands up. “You rested your case,” he argues.
