Velda breezed into the hospital room like a breath of frosty air.
It was August. Where did the frost come from?
Maybe not so much frosty as brisk. If truly frost, then it was the kind that sparkled. Velda had always been that way, clear and energetic.
“How’s my baby sister this afternoon? I’m sorry I couldn’t come earlier. I was all engrossed. It’s a group I’m working on. Three figures all connected. It’s intricate. Here, I took a picture.”
Velda reached into her handbag. Kelsey tried to pretend she was interested as the camera came out and Velda scrolled through the photos on it.
Her family was so weird, with Velda trying to pretend nothing had happened. Mom was sad and tried to hide a faint reproach, as in how could Kelsey have let it happen to herself? Stepdad was distant and taciturn. Angry and disapproving and trying not to show it.
Maybe it really was her own fault. She shouldn’t have drunk so much. She hadn’t realized how much it was until she was too drunk to care. Certainly, she never dreamed they would take advantage of her. So stupidly innocent.
Velda cranked her bed into a sitting position and held the camera to her face. The figures stood back to back and wore long draped garments that seemed to melt into each other. Only their heads gave them away as distinct, androgynous beings.
“Mmm,” Kelsey said, and tried to form the word “nice.” She didn’t really care, but had to say something.
No one seemed to realize that she had gone beyond her everyday life. It didn’t interest her anymore, not even the prospect of college. That made her shudder. All those people. Maybe a convent would be better, even though she wasn’t Catholic. Would they accept her after what happened? She couldn’t even accept herself.
“Have you been up yet?” Velda asked. “Is it okay for you to get up? We could walk around out in the corridor. I’ll ask.” She reached for the call button near Kelsey’s hand.
Kelsey shook her head.
“Not okay?” Velda asked.
No one had talked about it, and anyway Kelsey didn’t feel like walking. Or anything except lying in bed. No visitors except the nurses, a doctor or two, and Mom and stepdad. And Velda, in spite of her bubbling. Velda couldn’t help it. She just didn’t understand. In fact, she tried very hard not to understand.
Kelsey rolled her head toward the window. “What’s out there?” It came out a monotone.
“What’s out there? The world!” Velda said.
As if that would help. Velda brought her head down to Kelsey’s level. “You can see the top of a tree.” She straightened up and walked over to the window.
“It’s lovely. It’s a hill with a little rock garden. As if the ground was chopped away to make it level for the building and they planted a rock garden where it slopes up. When you can get up and sit in the chair, then you’ll be able to see it.”
Kelsey didn’t want to sit in the chair. She knew patients were supposed to do that, as a first step toward regaining their strength. But it would put her that much closer to getting up and getting out. She wondered if there was any way she could stay in the hospital forever.
Velda sat down again and leaned toward her. “Can you read?”
“Mmm?”
“Books. Magazines. To entertain yourself. Would you like to have the TV on? I suppose we have to get someone to turn it on. It’s a franchise. I’ll pay for it.”
Kelsey shook her head. “Just want . . . to sleep.”
Her sister looked alarmed. “That’s no good. You need to work on staying awake at least for a while.” Velda could be exhausting at times.
“I did,” Kelsey said. “I’m awake now. I want to sleep.”
“That’s true, you are. You’ve been doing very well, considering.”
Considering what?
The poison? Kelsey didn’t even know what she took. A bunch of things. Whatever it was, it seemed to be working until they interrupted her.
Velda stayed and stayed. Read her an article about college because Kelsey didn’t have the energy—or the interest—to read it herself.
She stayed until they brought her a liquid dinner. Chicken broth. Strawberry Jell-O.
“Oh, look!” Velda exclaimed. “They sent you some crackers to go with the broth. That’s progress, isn’t it?”
“Not hungry,” Kelsey said. “You can eat them.”
“No, they’re yours, honey. You eat them and get strong and healthy.”
Phooey. Nobody got strong and healthy on soda crackers. She didn’t want to be there anyway. Never strong and healthy again.
She was aware of Velda patting her arm and saying goodbye. Good, she was leaving. Kelsey slept, but not long enough. Her parents came.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mom sighed.
Not again. Kelsey closed her eyes. “Sorry.”
“Oh, sweetie, you know I didn’t mean that.”
Clumsily, stepdad patted her shoulder. “The police are working on it.”
Working on it. What was there to work on? She had gotten herself drunk and she shouldn’t have done that.
They were her classmates. How could she have known they would do what they did?
She knew it happened other times. But not to her or anyone she knew.
Stepdad muttered something about “punks.” And “not fast enough.”
It wouldn’t have happened if I stayed sober.
Maybe it would have. How could she know? But if she’d been sober she could have screamed and kicked and made a huge fuss. It might have brought someone, maybe Glynis. Or Cindy Brandon. She closed her eyes and thought of all the things she could have done. And hadn’t. As Velda would say, “Hindsight is wonderful.”
Her eyes stayed closed as she imagined a world where everyone had a little handheld device that could take you back to the point where you goofed and let you have another chance.
Just one chance. There had to be limits. But it wasn’t fair that you didn’t get any.
Ben Canfield would have liked that. She used to talk science fiction with Ben, until things went bad. He had a lot of interesting ideas. She wished she could tell him that one.
If she could talk to him, which she couldn’t. He had scared her so much. But it might not have been entirely his fault.
She felt her mother’s lips on her forehead. “We’ll be going now, sweetheart. You need your rest.”
Stepdad gave her shoulder another pat. “Get well soon, baby.”
Like she could ever get well. Not from that, she couldn’t. People just didn’t understand.
* * * *
When she woke again, her room was nearly dark. A dim nightlight shone from a fixture at the head of her bed. The other times she’d been awake, it was mostly in a semi-conscious haze.
The door to her room stood ajar. A private room. She was glad of that. The hall outside was lit but even those lights were dimmed. It was too dark to read the wall clock, but it must have been somewhere in the small hours.
She rolled over to be sure everyone was gone. There had been some talk about a private duty nurse but she didn’t see anyone. She was alone.
Her watch was gone along with everything else. It all seemed very quiet except for some distant voices and a burst of laughter. She knew she was alive. She wasn’t supposed to be. All she remembered was a policeman, an ambulance, and then Velda. And a lot of people hovering around jabbing her with needles. She hurt, even though they weren’t doing it now. Hurt all over, not only where the needles went. Where did they go? That part, she couldn’t remember. It was as though it all happened to somebody else, but she knew it was herself.
The door swung open, letting in more light. She closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.
It didn’t fool them. There must have been two. One of them said, “We’re just going to take your blood pressure, honey.”
She felt a hand on her forehead. A cooling hand. They lifted her arm and she felt the blood pressure cuff. What could they tell from her blood pressure? They didn’t know what was on her mind. Or how it felt to be her. She could have asked for a painkiller but that wouldn’t do any good. The pain was everywhere, in her heart and soul as well as her body.
They inflated the cuff, then deflated and removed it. In low voices, they talked figures back and forth. She kept her eyes closed. When they asked if there was anything she needed, she couldn’t answer. What could they do? Erase the past? Then they were gone.
Someone had lowered her bed so it was almost flat. She found the button and raised it to a sitting position. Her head didn’t want to cooperate. She had to wait until it steadied.
Her feet came next. They had something on them. Some kind of sock things. They would keep her from walking on the bare floor.
There was a fence in the way. Like a railing. She couldn’t make it move, and so she had to move herself toward the foot of the bed, to get past it. She slid her legs over the side.
Again, she had to steady herself. This was taking too long. She had to do it before someone else came barging in. If they caught her this time, they would tie her to the bed. No one seemed to understand how it was. She kept hoping they wouldn’t send in Dr. Schiff.
She had forgotten about the tubes. How could she forget the one in her hand? It was covered with tape. She worked the tape loose, and then pulled it off. That took time, and it hurt.
The tube hurt even more but finally it was out. She didn’t care if she left a mess.
The next tube was down there. She couldn’t feel it until she got it out. That was it? No more tubes?
She gripped the rolling table next to her bed. It didn’t give much support. It was meant for holding dinner trays, not her weight, and it had legs on only one side, with casters.
Gradually she straightened her knees, then her back. She was standing, keeping hold of the table. She couldn’t put pressure on it, but it gave her moral support. Slowly, with the table’s help, she inched her way toward the window. It was only a few feet but it felt like eternity.
The windowsill was covered with some kind of grillwork. Air blew up through it. Not frigid, not warm, just air. The blind was closed. She couldn’t possibly raise it. She had to save her strength for the window and hoped it wasn’t locked.
Why would it be locked? Nobody could get in that way. She could tell from what she saw in the daytime that she wasn’t on the ground floor. She pushed herself up under the blind.
She ought to leave a note. But she’d done that the first time. Her motive ought to be clear enough to anyone who knew what happened. And who in the world, or at least in Southbridge, didn’t?
The window had handles, one on each side. She grasped them and pulled upward.
It rose more easily than she expected.