We headed into the girls’ wing, but before we were halfway down the hall, footsteps squeaked on the tile ahead and a woman in purple scrubs emerged from one room carrying a clipboard with a pen chained to the metal clasp. I stood frozen in the middle of the hall, suddenly sure she’d see me, in spite of Tod’s assurance to the contrary.
“Relax.” He squeezed my hand. “She can’t see either of us, and I don’t think she can hear you, either.” When the nurse got too close for comfort, I stepped out of her way, still clinging to Tod’s hand, and was both fascinated and a little scared of the fact that she obviously had no idea we were there. She didn’t hesitate or look up from her clipboard. If she got any telltale chills or weird feelings, I saw no sign. It was like Tod and I existed in our own world, population two, surrounded by the real world, but not a part of it.
“Is it always like this for you?” I asked in a spontaneous moment of bravery, and I couldn’t resist a sigh of relief when the nurse kept walking. She hadn’t heard me.
“Like what?” Tod asked from inches away, and suddenly I was very aware of his hand in mine, his fingers rough and real against my own, in spite of how very tenuous the rest of reality felt in that moment.
“Like this.” I gestured at the rest of the building as the first residents stepped into the hallway, girls with stringy hair and sweatpants, most wearing slippers or laceless shoes. Dinner was over. “Like you’re alone in a crowd. Like you’re not really here at all.”
Tod stared at me like I wasn’t making any sense. Or like I was making
As the girls shuffled toward us, a couple blinking in medicated dazes, several guys headed in the opposite direction, toward the boys’ wing, and I glimpsed a dark head that might have been Scott’s. Or might not have been. I wanted to check on him, but business came first.
Still holding Tod’s hand, I stared into the faces of the girls as they passed me, waiting for one of them to turn into room 304. I had no idea what Farrah Combs looked like—she could have been any one of the girls passing us. A couple of the faces did look familiar—it creeped me out to think we may have been residents together.
But none of them went into room 304, and before I could pull Tod into the room to wait for its resident, the woman in purple scrubs stepped in front of me and knocked on that very door. Surprised, I pulled Tod with me as she pushed the door open and stepped into the doorway, just far enough into the room to get the resident’s attention.
“Farrah?” she said, and my heart leapt into my throat. If there was a reply from inside, I couldn’t hear it. “You didn’t even touch your tray today. The doctor says if you don’t eat, they’ll have to feed you intravenously. You don’t want that, do you?”
Again, there was no audible response, and based on the nurse’s frown, there was no silent gesture, either.
I edged down the hall toward 304, my pulse racing fast enough to make me light-headed and Tod came with me.
“Normally we don’t make these kinds of accommodations,” the nurse said. “But considering your situation… Is there anything I can get you? Anything you’d particularly like to eat?”
Again there was no answer, and I was actually starting to feel sorry for the nurse. And to wish there’d been more like her when I was there…
“Okay then,” she said, in response to nothing I’d heard. “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make you feel better.”
Wow. She was really going out of her way for one resident.
I flattened myself against the wall when the nurse headed down the hall again, but Tod let her walk right through him. “What does that feel like?” I asked, whispering out of instinct. Talking when no one else could hear me felt weird.
He shrugged, looking right into my eyes. “Right now, this is all I feel.” He held our intertwined hands up for me to see and I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t break the hold his gaze had on me, like he could see more than anyone else saw. Things I couldn’t even see myself.
I didn’t know what to say—I could hardly remember how to take my next breath—but then he looked away first, like maybe he wished he could take it back. So I let him tug me toward the open door still swimming in confusion.
I stepped inside first with Tod close at my back. The room was a double, with two identical low beds against opposite walls. There were two sets of metal shelves bolted to the walls in place of dressers, and a door on the left led to a tiny private bathroom.
The bed on the right was empty and sort of haphazardly made, the plain white blanket pulled up and the pillow tossed on top. But Farrah Combs—it had to be her—sat cross-legged on the other mattress, white sheet and blanket shoved to the bottom of the bed, waist-length, greasy brown hair hanging like a curtain over her face and half her body. She stared at a book open on the bed in front of her, and I desperately wanted to see her face.
“Can you let her see and hear us?” I asked Tod, acutely aware of his hand in mine. “Just her?”
He nodded, and I turned back to the girl on the bed. “Hi, Farrah,” I said, and she looked up slowly, like she’d heard me on some kind of a delay. Her face was gaunt and deeply shad owed, her arms thin and knobby at the wrists and elbows. When my gaze met hers, I realized two things immediately about Farrah Combs. First, she was sick, and not just mentally.
And second…she was very, very pregnant.
“Farrah?” I said, finally. “Are you Farrah Combs?”
“I used to be,” she said, her voice higher and sweeter than I’d expected.
I glanced at Tod, but he could only shrug.
“So…you’re not Farrah Combs now?” I asked, and she shook her head slowly. “Then who are you?”
“No one,” she said. “I’m not real.” Her brown eyes widened in sudden interest. “Are
“Yeah. For a few more days, anyway…” I said, and Tod’s hand squeezed mine again. “Farrah, can I talk to you about your baby?”
She shrugged and glanced at her round belly, barely covered by the T-shirt stretched over it. “He’s not real, either. Feels real, though.” She flinched and pressed one hand against her bulging stomach.
“Can you tell me who the father is?” I asked, and she shook her head solemnly. “Please, Farrah? It’s very important.”
“I can’t…” Her voice faded into a whisper on the last sound.
“Why not?”
“Because he’s real.” She barely breathed the words, and the tears standing in her eyes made my heart ache. “He’s still real, and I was real when he touched me, but he doesn’t touch me anymore. But I remember being real.” She looked at her book again and turned a page she couldn’t possibly have seen through her tears.
“Why do you think you’re not real, Farrah?” I asked, dropping into a squat next to her bed with Tod at my side.
“He told me. I’m not real, and this place isn’t real, so none of this matters. Soon it will all be over.”
“Are you sure you’re real?” she asked, and I could only nod, still trying to understand what she wasn’t really saying. “What about him?” She looked right at Tod and he gave her a small smile.
“Yes, Farrah, I’m real, too.”
Her frown was a child’s pout, innocently skeptical. “You ask a lot of questions for real people.”
“Yeah, I guess we do,” I said, though I had no idea what she meant. “Farrah, what can you tell me about your baby’s father? Can you tell me his name?”
She shook her head again, and long brown hair fell over her face, half hiding one brown eye. “The baby isn’t real,” she said. “So he doesn’t get a name, either.”
I stood, frustrated, and nearly jumped out of my own skin when cloth rustled behind me.
