“Joy, are you okay?”
I close my eyes so she won’t see my tears. “No. ”
“You’re scaring me. ”
I finally look at her. Through my tears, I can see how worried she is. I wish I could reassure her, but I can’t. “Will you develop my film?”
“Are you sure you want me to?”
I sigh. “Stace, I’m not sure about anything. ”
I am like an autistic with a puzzle. For the rest of my hospital stay, I study the pieces, putting them together in a dozen ways in an attempt to see the whole picture.
They tell me I didn’t walk away from the crash and I don’t believe they’re lying.
I’ve seen the newspaper stories—complete with photographs that made me physically ill. Several of the passengers, including Riegert, reported seeing me carried off the plane. As soon as they found my purse and identification, they called Stacey. I may be brain damaged and hallucinatory and drug addled, but I’m not stupid. I can add up the evidence.
I never walked away from the crash.
That’s what I know.
Somehow I have to make it what I believe.
If I could remember the crash, maybe that would make everything real. But the shrinks who now circle me like sharks in bloody water, think I’ll never remember. “Too traumatic,” they say.
I tell them “remembering” Daniel and Bobby hurts me more.
They don’t like that, the brain experts. Whenever I mention my adventure, they make tsk-tsk sounds and shake their heads.
Only Stacey lets me talk about Bobby and Daniel as if they’re real, and that—the simple act of her silent acceptance—somehow draws us together again. It seems, after all, that I am not the only one who has been changed by my near death. The nurses tell me that Stacey was my champion throughout it all, demanding the best for me, and organizing prayer and candlelight vigils in town.
Last night, she even slept in my room; this morning, she was up at the crack of dawn, readying my discharge papers.
“Are you ready to go?”
Now she is standing by the door. A nurse is next to her, with an empty wheelchair.
“I’m ready. ”
I could knit a sweater in the time it takes me to get out of bed and into the wheelchair.
No one seems to notice but me. And then we are off, tooling down the hallway. Everyone I see says: “Good bye, Joy. Good luck. ” I mumble thanks and try to look happy about going home.
Outside, Stacey rolls me over to a brand-new red minivan.
“New car, huh?”
“Thom got it for me for Christmas,” she says.
Thom. It is the first time she’s said his name to me.
We stare at each other for an uncomfortable moment longer, then she helps me into the passenger seat.
On the drive home we try to find things to say, but it isn’t easy. Suddenly, it’s as if my ex-husband is in the backseat, scenting the air between us with his aftershave.
“I got your car from the airport,” Stacey says as she turns onto Mullen Avenue.
It seems like a year ago that I turned into the long-term parking area. “How was the tree? Did it catch fire on the drive home?”