I jolt awake. Sit up straight. I’m not floating anymore. My eyes fly around the room, darting to sliding glass doors and empty corners. My sweatshirt. Charlie’s journal. The empty chair in my room. The woman in yellow in the room across from mine. She’s waiting like my mom would. Like she must be. Where is my mom now? She must’ve stepped out for only a minute. She must be tired from sitting at my bedside. But surely the relief of finding me would make up for the exhaustion. Right? She wouldn’t leave me once she’d found me. She’d be like the woman in the yellow shirt.
“Mom?” I say. “Mom!” Louder. My voice is clear again. Strong enough to shout. The woman in yellow turns her head to look at me. Is she a mom? Does she recognize my need?
The lines on my monitor go up and down and it beeps as my heart races faster. What do the beeps mean? Do they mean I’m dying? Is everyone just waiting?
The nurse rushes in. Her name tag. Cathy. I remember her. She has new scrubs. These ones are blue. A pale green T-shirt underneath. I imagine another band. Another concert. This one all girls with pounding bass lines and screeching guitars.
“Where’s my mom?”
Nurse Cathy’s face falls.
“Honey.” She crosses to my bed. Scrunches her eyes. “Sweetie. I told you. The other day. . .”
The other day? What did she tell me the other day? I remember her shirt. Her name. The water. The fizzy feeling up my arm. I don’t remember days. I don’t remember my mom.
“Is she here?”
“We’re trying to find her.”
Everything slides out from under me. Like the legs of my bed have collapsed. Like the walls of the laundromat. It all folds in.
Memories. Hope. Want. Dread.
My mom. Charlie. Leo. My friends. All that I’ve lost and still might lose. “Have you checked her office? Have you checked our house?” I know it isn’t Nurse Cathy’s job, but it makes me angry she isn’t combing the streets looking for my mom the way I would if I could.
And then.
“Do you even know who she is? How do you know who I am?”
Nurse Cathy points to my sweatshirt. I see it for what it is now. Filthy. Torn. Beat-up. Bloody. A reminder of everything that happened in the rubble.
“We know your name is Ruby. Ruby who plays water polo for Pacific Shore High according to the big logo on the back of your sweatshirt. We’ve been waiting for you to fill in the rest.”
“I’m Ruby Babcock. I need to get out of here.” My eyes dart to my monitor. To the tube running from my hand to the clear bag of clear liquid. To the workstation filled with doctors and nurses. To the room on the other side. “I hate hospitals.”
Hospitals are where people go to die.
“I get it.”
“I have to find my mom.”
“Ruby, honey, we want to help you find her. But taking care of you comes first. And with communication down—”
“No.”
I sit up straight, pull my legs over the side of the bed, and stand up. Determined. That’s it. It’s up to me. Just like I had to get out of the rubble. Now I have to get out of the hospital. I have to get to my house. See if it’s still standing. Or I have to go to my mom’s office. Maybe she’s trapped under her desk the same way I had been trapped at the laundromat. Maybe she’s run out of water. Maybe she’s broken. Or maybe she’s in this very same hospital. I can go room-to-room. Pound on doors. Shout her name.
I step forward and my legs buckle like someone kicked me behind the knees, falling out from under me as I crumble to the floor. I push myself back up. Sway.
And then the thought I don’t want.
What if my mom is like Charlie? Buried. Anonymous. What if she’s under a sheet in a stairwell, piled up among strangers?
I hold my hands to my stomach. Try to keep the emotion in so I don’t break in the middle of this room.
Nurse Cathy tries to coax me back to the bed with a firm grip around my waist, but I twist and manage to wiggle free. I remember how strong I am in the water and summon it now. Nurse Cathy and I are wrestling in front of the goal and I need to make the shot. It’s good that I’m so much taller than she is. It gives me an advantage.
“I see you haven’t lost your athletic skills.” She grabs for but misses the back of my gown.
I push forward, pulling the pole with the metal hook holding the clear bag of clear liquid with me. The wheels scrape. Wobble unsteadily, like my knees. I stand at the opening of the sliding glass doors, but I don’t know where to go. The handful of people sitting in the workstation look up from their computer monitors and their coffee cups and the static radio. That woman’s yellow shirt lights up the room behind them. I want someone to care about me the way she cares about whoever is in that bed.
Nurse Cathy wraps a strong arm around my waist. Steadies the metal stand. “While it’s great to see you on your feet, you’re not ready. Back to bed with you.”
“No.” I untangle myself from her grasp. Push forward again. I’m wrestling in front of the goal in a water polo game, ready to shoot. But this place is blurring. Fizzy. Someone else is here. A woman wearing a lab coat with a stethoscope around her neck. She’s a flash of motion. Like the woman at the laundromat who flipped the safety switches. Her arms reach out. She’s the last thing I remember before I fall into darkness.
Gone.