Five

Everything hurts. I’m screaming so loudly I’m pretty sure I woke myself up. I figure out quickly that the screaming must just be in my mind because there’s a tube jammed down my throat. There’s a machine near me that’s making noises that sound like sucking. I know from watching all those hospital TV shows that it’s a ventilator and it’s breathing for me.

Which brings up the questions, “why aren’t I breathing for myself?” and “where the hell am I?”

I try to move, but my arms are pinned down and my chest feels like it’s being stood on by an elephant. Everything in the room seems to be beeping and clanging. I’m drowning in sound, and pain, and fear.

The only thing that doesn’t hurt is that someone is holding my hand. I move my eyes slowly, and I’m rewarded for the effort by seeing Spencer standing next to me, a blue paper gown over his clothes and a yellow mask over his mouth. He looks bruised, like he’s been in a bad fight.

But then he tears up and I have to wonder what’s going on that’s so bad it’s making Spencer Yeats cry. A nurse pushes him out of the way and shines a bright light in my eyes. My back arches with a burst of pain that feels like fire surging through my chest. I want the nurse to go away. I want Spencer to come back and tell me what the hell is going on.

I inhale that horrible antiseptic hospital smell and wonder if someone is playing a joke on me. I don’t remember being sick. I just remember driving.

And then another memory starts to sneak in, slowly at first like it isn’t sure it wants to be remembered. I can’t quite get my mind to hold onto it. There’s something big—really big —coming closer and closer, and then everything goes black. But there’s also something else that keeps slipping away; something warm and wet, and it’s climbing inside me like a nightmare.

The nurse fiddles with tubes and bags, and puts a pump with a button in my hand and tells me to push it when the pain gets too bad. I’m not sure how to judge “too bad.” All I know is that I feel worse than I ever have, even after I tore a tendon a couple of years ago sliding into third. I push the button and the memory, or whatever it is, lies back down and goes back to sleep. And so do I.

The next time I wake up, my parents are here. Both of them. For some reason, that makes me even more worried. My parents are always working. Always. I can’t imagine what could have happened that would possibly drag them away from their jobs when nothing else ever has, including my junior high graduation (Mom had to take a deposition), my Little League championship ceremony (Dad was on a business trip), and parent-teacher conferences (I don’t think they’ve made it to one since third grade).

My usually well-dressed mom looks tired. Her eyes are rimmed with red and I’m pretty sure she randomly picked her wrinkled clothes out of the laundry basket. She has her hand on my forehead like she used to when I was little and sick and she wasn’t working in court all the time. It would feel good if it wasn’t so unusual. Plus, Dad is standing awkwardly at the foot of the bed and he keeps glancing at the door like he’d bolt if he thought he could get away with it.

The damned tube is still down my throat so I can’t talk, but I’m not sure what I’d say anyhow. I don’t see Spencer and that makes me wonder where Lizzie is. If something is wrong, she’d be here.

The nurse scurries back; it’s a different one this time. This one smells like vanilla and it makes me think of Ally, which makes me wince.

“I know it hurts, honey, but let’s try to stay awake for a little bit if you can,” the nurse says. I’d laugh if I could, but the nurse doesn’t need to know that I’m trapped here in bed aching for a girl I’ve never spoken to.

My parents are ushered out and a woman I assume is another nurse, or maybe a doctor, positions herself next to me. “We’re going to sit you up and then try to take this tube out of your throat, okay?”

It sounds like a great idea until I hear the mechanism for the bed starting up and more pain goes ripping through me. The bed only tilts up a little bit, but it feels like all of my skin has been pulled too tight across my chest.

“Okay, Cal … nod your head if you understand what I’m saying … we’re going to wean you off the ventilator to make sure you can breathe on your own.”

I want to scream more than I want to breathe, but I nod and grip the metal railing on the side of the bed, pretending the cool metal is really my mom’s hand or Spencer’s. In anticipation, I grit my teeth.

The nurse goes to flip a switch on the machine and says, “I’m going to count to three and then I’m going to turn this off. I’m not going to disconnect you until we’re sure that you’re breathing.”

I nod again as she starts the countdown and for some reason it makes me think about baseball. About how you only get three strikes before you’re out. About how I have a pretty great on-base percentage. I want to knock this out of the park, but I’m not totally sure what’s expected of me. Breathing, I guess. How hard can that be?

I hear her get to “three” and the machine clicks off. I take in air, and let it out, and do it a few more times. She watches like she’s waiting for me to do something wrong, but I don’t. I just breathe.

After a few minutes the nurse pats my leg. “Good boy,” she says, like I’m five or something. “So now we’re going to pull the tube out and this might be a little uncomfortable.”

Just for the record, I HATE when people use the “royal we.” It’s fine if you’re the Pope or the Queen, but otherwise it really isn’t necessary. I made the mistake of telling Lizzie that once and for two weeks Spencer and I had to put up with her walking around saying “we would like lunch now” and “we are having a thoroughly fucking bad day.”

The nurse untapes the tube and says, “When I start pulling, I want you to give me a little cough.” She pulls, I cough, and my chest feels like it’s going to explode as the rubber slides out of me.

I lie back and feel my heart racing. I try to talk, but not much comes out. All I manage is a strangled, “Why?”

“Don’t you try to talk too much, Sugar. I’ll send your parents in.”

I close my eyes. When I open them again my parents aren’t there, but Spencer is. He puts his hand on my arm and gives it a little squeeze, but doesn’t say anything.

“What is it, Yeats?” I whisper with my scratchy voice. “What happened?”

Spencer looks uncomfortable, like he’s found the one circumstance he can’t act his way out of.

“I’m not really supposed to tell you. I promised your parents, but I know how you are, and … ” His voice is soft and when he stops, I feel tears press up against the backs of my eyes. I beg: “Please.” I can’t imagine what he could possibly tell me that would be worse than this not knowing.

He drags a blue chair over, one of the crappy plastic ones they always have in hospitals, and sits down, his hand on my arm.

“We … we had a car accident.”

I try to remember something, anything, and I get that flash again of something flying towards us and that one shard of feeling that something has slithered into me that doesn’t belong there.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

He laughs, but it isn’t a funny sound. It’s a sad one and he turns away. I’ve never seen him like this, and seeing Spencer in pain is the very worst thing, even worse than being in pain myself and the not knowing what’s happened.

“Yeats?” I call to him as loudly as I can, but really it’s still only a whisper.

He turns back to me and I can tell from the way that his mask rises that he’s trying to smile. “I’m fine. Really. I’m fine. Just a little banged up.”

That’s all good news; but it’s obvious there are things he isn’t telling me. Bad things. Things he doesn’t want to say and that I won’t want to hear.

I open my mouth again to ask about Lizzie, but he cuts me off and rests his hand on my arm. “Cal. You need to take it easy. I’m already going to hear it for telling you about the accident. I’ll be back later though, after school, okay?”

“School?”

“Yeah, we’re having an assembly.” He rolls his eyes.

“What time is it?” I ask, although there are a million questions queued up in my brain and none of them involve the time.

“It’s twelve thirty. Lunch time. I just drove over to see you.”

I nod and realize how tired I am from talking and wondering. I close my eyes and don’t even hear him leave.