My world whirs. I go out. I go in. Vision blurry. Brain hazy.
I try to move, but it feels like swimming. Like I’m trying to grip the lip of the pool gutter but never getting there, my fingertips slipping down the edge whenever I grab for it.
I struggle to focus. I’m in a new room. A room within a room. I’m covered in gauze and tender bruises and crisp clean sheets. There’s a clear plastic bag with clear liquid inside. It’s hanging from a hook on a portable metal stand next to me. I follow the tube from the bag to my hand.
Am I like my dad? Am I waiting to die?
There aren’t any windows, and the air is blue-gray from dimmed lights. A chair sits in the corner with my dirty sweatshirt on it. Charlie’s journal on top. A reminder of who I am and where I came from and who I know. The life I have outside of here. The life I had before. My eyes scrape across the sliding glass doors of my room and focus on the workstation outside. It sits in the middle and the doors to other hospital rooms make an octagon around it. The workstation reminds me of a spaceship; a futuristic-looking pod full of desks and computers where the doctors and nurses can monitor patients. And in the center of all that is the static of a voice on a radio sounding newsy and informative, relaying only the most important information. The sliding glass doors of other rooms are spread out like an octagon around the workstation. I can see into the one across from mine. There’s a woman in a chair. She wears a yellow shirt as bright as the sun.
She holds the hand of someone in the bed.
Wait.
Charlie?
Did the big hands and the calm voice get him out, too?
My body wakes with hope. A rush of warmth to my insides. I try to sit up. I want to stand. I want to go to him. I want to hear him call me Ruby Tuesday.
But all too quickly the sinking crush of truth comes.
Charlie isn’t here. Charlie is dead. I held his hand. I know.
His words are in a journal on top of my sweatshirt.
I deflate with the pain of it.
Why him and not me?
I want to shout it. I want to know where I am. I want to change positions but this bed is too small. The sheets are too tight. I kick my feet to loosen them.
I roll to the side.
The tube to my arm pinches. Hurts.
I hiss.
Next to me, something beeps. I look up. I’m a summary of jagged lines and numbers on a screen.
A nurse in pale pink scrubs rushes in. Her hair is pulled into a bun that sits slumped on top of her head. I squint. Make out the blurry name tag on her shirt. Cathy.
“You’re awake,” she says, smiling. Gentle. Calm. Reassuring.
“I—”
She checks the monitor. Rights me to my back. Tucks in my sheet. Too tight again. I kick it free as soon as she finishes, all of it so much effort. She takes note. Lets it be. When she reaches up to adjust the plastic bag of clear liquid, I notice a faded black T-shirt hanging out of the bottom of her scratchy scrubs. I want it to be a concert tee. I want to ask her about which band it is and when she saw them. Are they her favorite? Did she sing along to all their songs? The shirt brushes my arm. So soft. Like a baby blanket. It’s a comfort against my raw skin, making me miss my mom and my own bed.
My mom.
I look for her. In this room. In this blue-gray light. I want to reach out and touch her. See her sitting in a chair, waiting for me, like that woman across the pod in the bright yellow shirt. Keeping watch. Radiating like sunlight.
But there is only emptiness.
Where is she?
“Mom.” My voice is raspy. Indecipherable.
“Let’s see if this helps.”
Nurse Cathy untwists the safety seal from a small bottled water in her pocket. She reaches over to fill a blue plastic cup on a nearby table. She sticks a straw in the cup. Helps me sit. Holds the straw to my lips.
I suck. Swallow. But my throat is swollen. Raw. I wince. Nurse Cathy pulls the cup away.
“Okay?” she asks.
I nod. Push my open face toward the cup. I want more. I smack my lips. A baby bird in the nest. She holds the straw to my mouth. I suck again. It doesn’t hurt as bad to swallow this time. It coats my dry throat. It makes me think I can form words. The water isn’t enough.
“Food?”
“You’re getting there. IV for now. No solids yet.”
When the small cup is drained, I manage another word. “Mom?”
Nurse Cathy squeezes my shoulder. Shakes her head. My eyes pool. Wet. Glassy. And Nurse Cathy goes swirly in my vision.
I need to ask more, but then the next thought comes swooping in.
“Charlie?”
Nurse Cathy’s eyebrows crease in the middle, the barely-there wrinkle transforms into a deep crevice. “Is your name Charlie?”
Does she not know who I am? Does she not know my name is Ruby? I thought the woman in the white coat wrote it down. Nobody here knows anything about me. And if I’m not awake to tell them, they’ll never know. I could end up being just another someone piled in the stairwell landing. Or like Charlie in the laundromat. If someone finds him, how will they know who he is? I need to tell someone where to find him. To name him.
I shake my head. Try again to say what I mean. “Charlie.”
She flicks her gaze to me. “We have John Does. Jane Does. I haven’t met a Charlie, but that doesn’t mean they’re not here.”
That’s not what I mean. I know he isn’t here. He’s in the laundromat. Gone. I want someone to get him. To bring him home.
I sink back into the pillows.
I am a lump. I am a bruise. I am a broken heart. I am alone.
“You need to rest,” Nurse Cathy says, pushing a syringe of clear liquid into the port attached to my hand. I feel the warmth of it go up my arm. A sudden flash of heat like when I peed in the rubble. The warmth stays this time. The pain falls away.
“Where is. . . my. . . mom?” The words stumble out. Wobbly. Halfway there. “Is . . . she. . . at work? Is. . . she. . . here?”
“I don’t know. People are everywhere.” Nurse Cathy’s voice drifts, like the beginning of a bedtime story. The medicine in my veins reaches my brain, and I see people floating around in the air, above the earth, arms and legs splayed, like slow-motion jumpers on a trampoline.
I reach my hand out to catch them but only my fingers flutter.
People are everywhere. Don’t you see them floating by?