Chapter VI

Myra

 It’s fitting that my original plans included a hospital, thought Myra in a blur of wind in her face and not enough air in her lungs. What better place to repair someone who has gone crazy. Then, she laughed at the absurdity of everything. So this was her life now: crying for no reason, for some boy or no boy.

             Well, that’s a bit harsh, she chided herself.

But, it’s true.

She sighed and tried to order her scrambled thoughts. She counted backward from ten, the lights and stores becoming swept together like someone had smeared paint across the canvas of her reality. As she came to a red light, she allowed herself a brief moment to close her eyes and absorb it all.

            Myra heard the cars beside her start up again, and the breath she hadn’t even known she’d been holding found a way out of her body. She started Juliet, and then she opened her eyes. She took a right turn, then a left, going on instinct instead of memory. Myra had volunteered at the hospital last summer. She arrived at St. Mark’s Hospital, pulled into the parking lot, and strode inside, ignoring the sterile air that blasted her face.

            Clara’s room was in the ICU unit of the hospital on account of her going into a coma sometime between crashing her car into a tree and getting delivered to the hospital on a gurney and in a blaze of flashing lights. She probably would have liked the dramatic edge to her arrival.

            Myra counted the number of rooms she passed before she got to the end of the long hallway and veered into Clara’s room. The petunias and teddy bear she’d purchased from the hospital gift shop hung limply at her side. She spotted a table of muffin baskets and stuffed atrocities beside Clara’s motionless form and arranged her additions to the pile so that the teddy bear looked like it was presenting Clara with the petunias.

“I didn’t know you were comatose,” Myra said to the room. She was not exactly facing Clara as she had paused to straighten her teddy bear, which had fallen on its side. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come.” Somehow, talking like this to someone who’d been in an accident seemed disrespectful. Myra added, “Not that I don’t care about you.”

 She gave a sarcastic chuckle and finally sat down in the chair near Clara’s bed. She placed her hands on the bed, next to Clara’s. The room fell silent. Myra watched the rise and fall of Clara’s chest, for her breathing was so soft she couldn’t hear it. Her gaze fell to their fingers, centimeters away from each other.

Something moved.

Myra blinked in surprise and pulled her hand back. Clara wasn’t moving now, but Myra was sure she had seen one of her fingers twitch. It’s nothing, Myra told herself. Then, she stood up and headed toward the doorway. On her way out, she stopped at the doorway and looked back.

Clara looked as pristine as she usually did. Myra wondered if there was a word for perfect people. Although there were stitches on the side of her head and her face had been cleaned of any makeup, Clara’s little, pink lips and blond, curly hair gave her the appearance of a plastic doll. She lay so motionless and still, Myra had a sudden urge to touch her and make sure she was real.

Myra, despite the little voice in the back of her head, edged away from the door. She stood at the foot of the bed and reached under the covers, grabbing a foot. Clara’s skin sent shivers down Myra’s spine. It was as though all the warmth had been leeched out of her body.

Suddenly, Myra felt a little twitch in her hand. Just small enough for her to feel and dismiss. Myra kept her hold on Clara’s foot, but the other girl seemed to show no signs of waking up. Silence permeated the room, but as Myra listened, she realized something: she could here breathing.

“Clara?” she asked, feeling ridiculous. She let go of Clara’s foot and the breathing seemed to disappear. Then, she placed her hand on Clara’s hand and it started again

What is this? Myra wondered. She looked around the room, making sure nothing else could be making the noise. As her gaze passed by the table of cards and gifts, Myra heard something else.

Myra’s head snapped down to Clara, and she realized the other girl’s lips were moving. What she was saying was incomprehensible, but this movement was all the proof Myra needed to think that Clara was awake.

“Nurse!” she called. Myra left Clara’s side reluctantly and poked her head out the window. “Nurse!” she repeated.

A second later, a mousy woman in her forties came out of a room further up the hall. She had on red nail polish and scrubs, and she looked mildly annoyed. “She’s waking up,” Myra said, gesturing inside the room. Myra watched as the nurse’s expression immediately lifted. She kicked her pace to a jog and pushed past Myra into the room.

“Are you sure?” the woman said, leaning over Clara. Myra nodded. She stood by the edge of the room warily as the woman checked stats on a monitor and listened to Clara’s heartbeat. “Her condition is the same,” the nurse said, minutes later.

“That’s not possible.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Would you like a doctor to come and back me up?”

Myra nearly said yes, but she glanced at Clara and realized what the woman said was truth. Even though she’d felt Clara’s foot twitch and seen her lips move, all of those signs were gone now, replaced by the same stillness Myra had seen when she entered the room. Myra pressed her lips together tightly and shook her head. Even though she knew what she saw, any doctor would reach the same verdict as the nurse.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Myra said numbly as the nurse strode into the hallway. She turned around and followed the woman with her gaze.

            Myra turned back to the room and Clara, confused. She knew she’d seen Clara move, but it was so obvious now that there were nothing. Sighing, Myra realized she’d spent longer at the hospital than she’d planned. She turned her eyes away and slid along the walls of the hospital, up a flight of stairs despite the elevator available to her, and out the sliding doors.

            Emerging into the afternoon sunlight, Myra had to shield her eyes from the glare. The world around her, full of fast cars and fast people, seemed so ordinary. She felt a sudden wrench in her gut: fear - of becoming part of a routine that history liked to play out before it made something exciting happened. It wasn’t that she wanted to lead a revolution; it was that she didn’t want to lead a life that just kept repeating her days like a filler episode.

            What if Sean really was the one? Myra couldn’t help but wonder what they would have been doing if she hadn’t freaked out. If she hadn’t left. Everything felt so unreal and dangerous when she was around him, like he was the portal into a parallel universe where ordinary people could start a war or set fire to the world with just a flick of the wrist.

            At the same time, though, Sean felt like the most real thing in the world.

            Myra looked at her hand and thought of Clara. She knew she had seen her move, had seen her mouth form words. But then, people in comas twitched all the time. It wasn’t like Clara had jolted out of the bed and screamed bloody murder.

            Myra shook her head. For some reason, a part of her had hoped she was the reason Clara had moved.

            Even if Myra wasn’t special though, she was sure there was more to Sean than just a pretty boy with right words, like she’d first assumed. Now, there just lingered regret that she would never seen him again after this rejection…and fear that she had just ruined her chances of something more.

            Two of Clara’s friends walked past Myra. She could feel their stares on her back, probably wondering where they had seen her or, more likely, why Myra was staring at her hands like it was the first time she was seeing them. Shrugging off their curiosity, Myra jumped onto Juliet and pulled out of the parking lot.

            The streetlights blurred into each other as Myra worked her way home through the gears and cogs of traffic. When she finally pulled into her driveway after what felt like forever, her backpack felt like it was filled with stones and the thought of Melissa waiting for her to microwave dinner only made the hopelessness in Myra’s belly become heavier.

            Then, as Myra hooked her helmet on Juliet’s handlebars and shook out her sweaty hair, she saw a bright, yellow hitchhiker on the back of her motorcycle. A sticky-note. In a messy scrawl, seven numbers chased each other across the little square of paper. Carefully, Myra turned it over. On the back, someone had written, Call me.

            Myra’s face remained blank for a moment as her mind processed the words. Then, despite the crap-ton of work she had waiting for her behind the door of her house, a grin broke out on her face. Gripping the note like a lifeline in her palm, she slipped through her door.