Ghosts are real.
Tara knows this because she is one.
When clarity first returns, she sees her mother, her stepfather, and her sister. She sees them and she hears Shannon’s voice and thinks: The dream is done.
She thinks, slower and more carefully, because it is so important: I am alive.
There is relief with that realization, but it is a temporary relief, because she soon determines that she is invisible.
Shannon is arguing with Rick and Mom, but she is arguing on Tara’s behalf, and Rick and Mom are facing Tara, staring right at her but not seeing her.
“She wouldn’t quit on us, and so I am not going to listen to anyone say one word about what we must consider,” Shannon snaps. “Because what you’re considering is quitting on your own daughter!”
Tara looks into her mother’s eyes and waits for recognition, awareness, something. Notice me, speak to me, touch me. But her mother just stares blankly, her eyes bloodshot and ringed by dark circles. She doesn’t seem to see Tara. Rick looks at Tara as well, his bearded face doing a poor job of hiding his annoyance with Shannon. He doesn’t see Tara either. She’s used to being ignored by Rick—and to ignoring him—but this is different. He’s looking right at her and yet for all the world he seems to be staring at a wall.
I’m invisible. Maybe I’m not alive. Maybe I’m dead, and this is what it’s like?
She is a ghost. The realization is sudden and certain. It is the only explanation for her condition.
How did I die?
“It’s too early to talk like this,” Shannon says, and Rick closes his eyes with fatigue. Mom just keeps staring. Shannon starts to speak again, then thinks better of it, shakes her head furiously, and stalks to the window. Everyone is quiet then. Tara wants to speak but her tongue is heavy and rigid and uncooperative in her mouth, and so she lies there and tries to gather her voice.
It is then that understanding begins to come, agonizingly slowly, like filling a glass one drop of water at a time.
Mom. Rick. Shannon. A television turned to CNN, but muted. A bed with a pair of feet resting on it. Wait—those are her feet. She is in the bed. The bed is not her own. The room is not her own. Her confusingly thick tongue is not a tongue at all—it is a tube. There are more tubes in other places, and she’s aware of them now, first with pain and then some shame. There are wires too, a seemingly endless amount of wires.
Hospital.
Yes, that is it. She is in a hospital, and she is not a ghost. Not just yet. What is she, though?
“Every coma is different,” Shannon says without turning, her voice trembling with barely subdued anger, and in that sentence, in that single word—coma—Tara has her answer.
She has been in a coma. This makes sense; it’s a better explanation than anything she’s come up with on her own. But she is out of the coma now, because she is awake and alert and she can see and hear. Why don’t they notice this? Why don’t they see that she is awake?
Because you haven’t said anything, dummy. Tell them!
Hello, Tara says.
No one reacts. Shannon doesn’t turn; Mom’s stare doesn’t break; Rick’s slumped shoulders don’t tense.
Panic rises then, a terrible, claustrophobic panic, and this time Tara screams, determined to be heard.
I’m right here!
Nothing. Shannon stares out the window, Mom bows her head, Rick stands slumped and weary.
This time, Tara understands, though. She didn’t make a sound. Her scream had produced…nothing.
Had she even parted her lips? Surely she had. She’d screamed at the top of her lungs, screamed in terror and confusion, and no one had reacted. How is this possible? Maybe there is a wall between them, some sort of glass partition, the kind with a mirror on their side like in the cop shows so she can see them but they can’t see her.
This thought brings logic back to an insane world, and the terror subsides. She tells herself to sit up and figure out the two-way mirror, find that glass panel and rap on it and get their attention, let them know that she is here, she is back, awake again.
Sit up.
She thinks the words, visualizes the motion, and waits. Nothing happens. She’s still lying down, and she should be upright. Just…sit up.
But she can’t.
The terror is back now.
She tries again but makes no progress, and, worse, she realizes there’s no sense of resistance, nothing holding her down, no weight or strap or anything that would block this simple command to her body. Even if she is injured—and she’s in a hospital with tubes and IVs in her, so of course she has been injured—she should be able to fight upward.
She can issue the command, but her body can’t obey it.
Paralyzed. Oh no, not that…
She starts to cry then. To cry and shake.
No tears come. No sounds.
Shannon turns and looks down at her, right into her eyes, and Tara stares back into her older sister’s loving face and pleads for help.
Shannon looks away.
“I don’t want to hear any of the spiritual shit, Rick,” she says. “I do not want to hear it yet.”
“I’m sorry that shit bothers you, Shannon, but I think it’s worth talking about!” Rick answers, taking a step toward her. “You need to begin to ask yourself who this is for, your sister or her body. You need to begin to consider that there is a difference.”
“I am not considering a damn thing until we’ve seen a neurologist,” Shannon says.
“Everyone says if we just keep our faith…” Mom tries timidly, but Shannon isn’t having it.
“Everyone on your Facebook page says that. While you’re making Team Tara posts and people are offering advice from their phones between bites of their bagels, I’m suggesting we consult an actual expert.”
Mom winces, Rick sighs, and Shannon lifts her hands in regret. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be a bitch, Mom, I’m really not. The Facebook page is important. I get that. But I don’t want us to begin premature conversations.”
“Our job will be to imagine her quality of life,” Rick says softly, “and you can’t even reach that point until you know whether there is a life.”
“She’s breathing!” Shannon shouts. “Her heart is beating! Her eyes are open, she’s watching us!”
Rick points at Tara, a beaded bracelet jangling on his right wrist. He is looking directly at her but seems to see only an empty bed.
“Her body is doing those things, yes. But where is Tara?” he asks in that pastoral whisper he uses so often to calm their mother. “Look into her eyes, Shannon, and then tell me. Where is Tara right now?”
I am right fucking here! Tara shouts.
They all turn toward her then, and for a moment she thinks she’s made contact. Then she realizes they are just following Rick’s outstretched hand and considering his question.
“Tell me, Shannon,” he whispers, moving his hand to rub his graying beard. “Where…is…she?”
When Shannon says, “I don’t know,” the tears overwhelm Tara again.
No one in the room knows that she’s right there, and no one in the room knows that she’s crying.