Colorblind (18 page)

“I don’t think I can do this right now, Dad,” I murmured. “I can’t.”

“Okay,” was all he said. He rested his hand on my back and it felt heavy and uncomfortable, but I didn’t complain.

“Why do you think bad things happen to good people?” I asked him abruptly.

He took a moment to respond. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “As cruel as it is, I think it might just be bad luck.”

“And you’re okay with that? You can go through life every day having accepted that?”

He pat my back once with his hand. “I think I have to be okay with it. And I think that everyone struggles with it. Some people make themselves okay with it by believing that there’s a God with a plan, and that good people die because there’s something better waiting on the other side. For those of us who don’t believe that… We just have to learn to be okay.”

* * *

Robbie brought pillows and blankets back, but I didn’t fall asleep for a while. None of us did. I paced back and forth instead, restless, and Dad stayed up to watch me, I knew, even if he didn’t say it. I knew he was worried I’d leave again, but I didn’t plan on it. I was going to see this through to the end, whenever it came.

I curled up in a chair in the corner of the room eventually and closed my eyes. I didn’t believe in a God, I knew, because God was meant to be the epitome of everything good, and I couldn’t believe anything completely good was holding the giant magnifying glass given the life I’d had. But I didn’t believe anything wholly bad was responsible either. Robbie was probably right. It probably was just fate. But God and the Devil supposedly came with ears, so maybe fate did, too.

“Maybe you’re not listening. Maybe you can’t listen. But if you can, and you are… you can take whatever you want,” I mouthed, my eyes still closed. “Take ten of my years. Take all of them. Just give her more time. She deserves more time. She wants it more than anyone. Give her just a little more time.”

* * *

Chloe’s parents came to our waiting room around noon the next day. I’d drifted in and out of sleep for a few hours up until then, but as soon as I saw them, I was alert.

Their eyes were red and puffy and their faces were no less tear-streaked than they had been when I’d seen them the night before. But Hayley approached me, offered me a weak smile, and asked, “Would you like to see her?”

I opened and closed my mouth, stunned. “How-?”

“She’s in and out of consciousness, but she’s stable.”

“What?” I shook my head, not daring to believe it. Was this another drowning? Was she meant to survive this? Was Hayley mistaken; was something going to go wrong?

“We’ll wait for her here,” Dad cut in, nodding thankfully to Hayley. I got to my feet and followed her. Kent stayed behind.

We wound through hallways and past nurses and beeping machines, and then into the ICU. Hayley led me to the last bed on the right, where a curtain shielded it from view, and then paused and took a deep breath. Then she pulled the curtain aside and let me go in alone.

Chloe was battered and bruised and hooked up to more machines than I thought possible for a single person. I started crying on the spot as I moved to her side, and her eyes fluttered open to look at me. The top of her head was wrapped in bandages; covering everything above her eyes.

She opened her mouth, and, stunned, I realized that she could speak. “Oh, no, don’t cry, Harper,” she murmured. Her hand stretched out toward me and I took it, careful not to squeeze too tightly. “Don’t cry.”

I shook my head wordlessly, speechless, and for a minute or so, we didn’t speak. I just watched her, tears streaming down my cheeks as her hand squeezed mine.

“Baxter has got to stop slipping his collar and running out in front of cars during his bathroom breaks,” she said at last. It was too soon for me to laugh. “He’s in big trouble when I get home.”

“Did they say you’re going to be okay?” I asked her.

She cleared her throat, and then winced. Breathing seemed to be a little difficult for her, and she had a mask over her mouth. She was using her free hand to remove it over and over again when she spoke. “I heard them tell Mom and Dad that I died for a few seconds during surgery. Kid who hit me had a hood ornament that caught me in the lung. Lots of blood in lungs and one collapsed. Then lots of surgery and stitches. Not good. But if I can survive all that, I think I’ll be okay.” She hesitated, and then joked, “Told you I wasn’t going anywhere.”

I studied her for a moment, my throat closing up. I didn’t dare to be hopeful even as I asked, “Are you allowed to mess with your bandage?”

She let out a slow breath. “I hope so. It’s itchy. It’d be great if you could adjust it a bit, actually.”

I glanced toward the door to double check that Hayley wasn’t coming in, then reached for Chloe’s bandage and gently tugged up the left side until her forehead was exposed. The number rested there, clear as day, as though it had been there all along.

84.

Epilogue

Chloe’s stay in the hospital was not short. I was back in school before they felt comfortable releasing her. But she did get released, eventually.

In addition to the collapsed lung, she’d had a mild concussion, and she’d broken her leg in too many places to count. Once she was out of the hospital, she had to start physical therapy for that. I immediately began helping as often as I could, between my classes and my new job serving ice cream at the movie theater.

Deborah moved in with me and Dad just a few months after that. I wondered sometimes if she questioned the day I somehow knew I needed to be with Chloe, or if her placing her hand on her stomach had been some kind of indication that she’d felt that same feeling before, too. I knew she couldn’t see the numbers, but maybe sensing that something terrible was going to happen to a loved one wasn’t something totally exclusive to people like Robbie and me.

Robbie and I continued hanging out at least twice a week. When I wasn’t with Chloe, working, or in school, I was usually with him. Ever since I’d stepped away from that cliff, Robbie was more determined than ever to avoid giving me any more details about my number. I supposed I wouldn’t know what it was until it was time for me to go. I was surprisingly okay with that.

Seeing Chloe’s number change didn’t make me gain faith in some sort of benevolent omniscient being, but it did change what it was like to be with her. The dark cloud over our relationship vanished. We spent our days enjoying the present, and happily, idly pondering the future. I didn’t worry so much about her anymore. Maybe I got a little less cynical. Maybe I smiled a little wider and a little bit more often, and maybe the sky looked a little bluer; the grass a little more green.

I had no way of knowing what or who decided how we lived, or how long we lived, or what the consequences of our actions and decisions were. I would almost certainly never know. When I died, I wouldn’t know what chain of events had led directly to my death, and I wouldn’t know what I would’ve been able to do to change it, or even if it ever could’ve been changed. Bad things were inevitable. Death was inevitable. But maybe the reverse was true: that good things were equally inevitable. And maybe sometimes inevitability liked to take a back seat to second chances.

Though I knew it couldn’t last forever, I decided it was about time I let myself be happy. I was alive. Chloe was alive. Robbie was alive, and my father was alive and dating a woman who was well on her way to becoming his fiancée. And although it’d taken me a while to warm up to Deborah, I knew now that if Mom had been able to meet her, she’d have approved.

And for the time being, at least… all of that was good enough for me.