I think I might’ve been half-hoping one of them would say something; I was mostly relieved, yet simultaneously depressed, when they didn’t. Still, as so often happens, reality conspired against my dramatic exit when, outside by the elevators, I heard rapid footsteps and turned to see Simon trotting up to me. “Oh, God,” I sighed. “Simon, I’m so sorry about all this—all that, too. I didn’t mean—”
“Lois, look, it’s okay—” He caught himself, with a snort. “Well no, actually, it’s not okay, but we’ll talk about it later. Here.” He held out my iPhone and I swore; I’d completely forgotten giving it to him. “It’s Safie, for you. She called about ten seconds after you left.”
I swore again then thanked him and took it.
“Hey,” I said. “Sorry if I’m late, I was just on my—”
“Forget that,” she replied. “You seen the news yet?”
“No, why?”
“Just watch it, Miss.”
“Um, all right. What station?”
A pause passed between us, stretching far longer than I expected it to.
“Any should do,” she said.
That was how I found out.
ACT THREE
SCREENING
It’s amazing, really, when you think about it: film has a language all its own, a vocabulary of visual storytelling, and it was people like Mrs. Whitcomb and her contemporaries who invented it over an amazingly small period of time. Everything since has been nothing but elaboration, technical change. George Méliès laid the basis for every special effect we have today.
I’d love it if real life came equipped with those sorts of narrative short cuts, you know? Especially when things get complex, start to accelerate, just like they will—like they did. Irises, fades, dissolves, wipes . . . smash cuts to black.
If life worked that way, then that’s where this chapter could start, right now: a black screen then a
title card—TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER. Because that’ll be when I wake up, back in hospital again. And the light’s on, I can tell it is; feel it on my skin somehow, like a warm touch, a red intimation inside my skull. But I can’t see it, because I can’t see anything.
I’m blind.
And somebody’s sitting beside my bed, holding my hand very gently. And I want to believe it’s Mom—I really do. But even then, even right then, I know it’s not.
And then there’s a breath, near my ear. Somebody leaning in. That voice I know so well, inside the hollow of my own ear. Saying, sadly—
Sister, I tried. I tried so very hard. But you wouldn’t listen, and now here you are.
Here we are, in the dark, together.
If my life was a movie, this is the exact moment—
(this space between frames, flickering past too fast to see, conveying only the illusion of forward motion in the service of a closed loop, a forever-predestined end)
—where I’d scream out loud.
Smash cut to black again; rewind, re-set. Another title card.
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS EARLIER.
Moments after Safie suggested I get myself to a TV set, Simon and I stood in the SickKids waiting room once more watching CITY TV’s all-day local news coverage on the screen nearest the door, having managed to persuade the staff member managing the information desk to switch the channel. Or rather, I watched—iPhone still clutched in one hand with Safie on speaker, providing occasional commentary—while Simon surfed, cross-checking as many sites as he could on the iPad. Mom hovered beside us both, obviously still not happy with my previous behaviour, but having perked up considerably when we came back in.
“What’s wrong?” she’d asked, seeing my expression; “I don’t know,” I’d replied. Then added, hastily: “Not yet.”
Well, now we did, all of us—the story was pretty much the same on every media forum, and it was bad. It was, in fact, the very worst.