Left Neglected (7 page)

Ricky’s mom, Mrs. Sullivan, tells us that the pool isn’t ready yet. Mr. Sullivan still needs to vacuum and backwash it. The water is cloudy and littered with rotten brown leaves and looks more like pond water than pool water, but we don’t care. It’s the first day of summer vacation, and we can’t wait for Mr. Sullivan.

I find an orange water wing and pull it onto my left arm up to my scrawny bicep. I rummage through the trunk of floats and water toys but can’t find the other wing. I look up, and Nate is wearing it like it’s an elbow pad.

“Give it,” I say, and I strip it off his arm.

He usually throws a hissy fit whenever he doesn’t get what he wants, so I’m surprised that he just lets me do this. Maybe I’m finally getting the respect an older sister deserves. I slide the orange wing onto my other arm, and Nate finds a mask and a kickboard.

I dip my big toe into the water and jump back.

“It’s FREEZING!”

“Baby,” says Ricky as he runs past me and cannonballs in.

I wish I could be just like him, but the water’s too cold.

I go up onto the deck and sit on the stretchy plastic slat chair next to Mom. Mom and Mrs. Sullivan are lying on cushioned lounge chairs angled toward the sun. They’re drinking cans of Tab and smoking Marlboro Lights, and they’re talking to each other with their eyes closed. Mom’s toenails are painted Hot Tamale Red. I wish I could be just like her.

I pull off my water wings and turn my chair to face the sun, too. Mrs. Sullivan is complaining about her asshole husband, and I’m embarrassed to hear her say “Asshole” because I know it’s a swear word, and I would get slapped across the face if I said it. I’m careful not to make any noise or fidget because I think Mom doesn’t notice that I’m listening, and I feel embarrassed, but I want to hear more illegal words about Mr. Sullivan.

Ricky shows up on the deck, teeth chattering.

“I’m freezing.”

“Told ya,” I say, stupidly blowing my cover.

“Towels are in the bathroom. Go play Atari,” says Mrs. Sullivan. “You want to go inside, too, Sarah?”

I shake my head.

“She wants to stay with the girls. Right, honey?” Mom asks.

I nod. She reaches over and pats my leg. I smile and feel special.

Ricky goes into the house, Mom and Mrs. Sullivan talk, and I close my eyes and listen. But Mrs. Sullivan doesn’t say anything bad about Mr. Sullivan, and I get bored of listening, and I think maybe I will go inside and play Pac-Man, but Ricky’s probably playing Space Invaders, and I want to be one of the girls, so I stay.

Then all of a sudden, Mom is screaming Nate’s name. I open my eyes, and she is screaming Nate’s name and running. I stand up to see what’s happening. Nate is floating facedown in the pool. At first I think it’s a trick, and I admire him for fooling us. Then Mom is in the pool with him, and he’s still pretending, and I think he’s mean for scaring her. Then Mom turns him over, and I see his closed eyes and blue lips, and I get scared for real, and my heart falls into my stomach.

Mom carries Nate onto the grass and is making wild sounds
I’ve never heard come out of a grown-up and is blowing into Nate’s mouth and begging Nate to wake up, but Nate is just lying there. I can’t look at Nate lying on the grass and Mom blowing into Nate’s mouth anymore, so I look down at my feet, and I see the orange water wings on the deck next to my chair.

“Wake up, Nate!” Mom wails.

I can’t look. I stare at my selfish feet and the orange water wings.

“Wake up, Nate!”

“Wake up!”

“Sarah, wake up.”

“One, two, threeeee, shoot!”

My fingers are a pair of scissors. Bob’s hand is a piece of paper.

“I win!” I yell.

I never win the shoot. I snip the air with my fingers and dance a ridiculous jig, a cross between the moves of Jonathan Papelbon and Elaine Benes. Bob laughs. But the thrill of my unexpected victory is short-lived, stolen by the sight of Charlie now standing in the kitchen without his backpack.

“The Wii won’t save my level.”

“Charlie,
what
did I tell you to do?” I ask.

He just looks at me. The strings of my vocal cords wind a little tighter.

“I
told
you to bring your backpack in here twenty minutes ago.”

“I had to get to the next level.”

I grind my teeth. I know if I open my mouth, I’m going to lose it. I’ll yell and scare him, or cry and scare Bob, or rant and throw the damn Wii in the trash. Before yesterday, Charlie’s inability to listen or follow the simplest instruction annoyed me but in the typical way that I think most kids annoy most parents. Now, a tidal wave of fear and frustration rises inside me, and I have to fight to contain it, to keep it from spilling out and drowning us all. In the few seconds that I struggle to stay silent, I watch Charlie’s eyes become wide and glassy. The fear and frustration must be leaking out of my pores. Bob puts his hands on my shoulders.

“I’ll take care of this. You go,” says Bob.

I check my watch. If I leave now, I can get to work early, calm, and sane. I can even make a few phone calls on the way. I open my mouth and exhale.

“Thanks,” I say and squeeze his piece of paper hand.

I grab my bag, kiss Bob and the kids good-bye, and leave the house alone. It’s raw and raining hard outside. Without a hood or an umbrella, I run like hell to the car, but just before I throw myself into the driver’s seat, I notice a penny on the ground. I can’t resist it. I stop, pick it up, and then duck into the car. Chilly and drenched, I smile as I start the engine. I won the shoot and found a penny.

Today must be my lucky day.

R
AIN IS COMING DOWN IN
sheets, splashing onto the fogged windshield almost faster than the wipers can keep pace. The headlights click on, its sensors tricked by the dark morning into thinking that it’s nighttime. It feels like nighttime to my senses, too. It’s the kind of stormy morning that would be perfect for crawling back into bed.

But I’m not about to let the gloomy weather dampen my good mood. I have no kids to shuttle, buckets of time, and traffic is moving despite the weather. I’m going to get to work early, organized, and ready to tackle the day, instead of late, frazzled, grape juice stained, and unable to kick some inane Wiggles song out of my head.

And I’m going to get some work done on the way. I fish in my bag for my phone. I want to make a call to Harvard business school. November is our biggest recruiting month, and we’re competing with all the other top consulting firms, like McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group, to pluck the best and the brightest from this year’s crop. We never lure in as many graduates as McKinsey does, but we usually beat out BCG. After our first round of a hundred and fifty interviews, there are ten particularly impressive candidates whom we plan to woo.

I find my phone and begin searching for the Harvard number in my contact list. I can’t find it under H. That’s odd. Maybe it’s under B for Business School. I glance up at the road, and my heart seizes. Red brake lights glow everywhere, blurry through the wet and foggy windshield, unmoving, like a watercolor painting. Everything on the highway is still. Everything but me. I’m going 70 mph.

I slam on the brakes. They catch the road, and then they don’t. I’m hydroplaning. I pump the brakes. I’m hydroplaning. I’m getting closer and closer to the red lights in the painting.

Oh my God.

I turn the wheel hard to the left. Too hard. I’m now outside the last lane of the eastbound highway, spinning between east and west. I’m sure the car’s still moving very fast, but I’m experiencing the spinning like it’s happening in slow motion. And someone turned off the sound—the rain, the wipers, my heartbeat. Everything is slow and soundless, like I’m underwater.

I hit the brakes and turn the wheel the other way, hoping to either correct the spinning or stop. The landscape bends into an unmanageable slant, and the car begins to tumble end over end. The tumbling is also slow and soundless, and my thoughts while I’m tumbling are detached and strangely calm.

The air bag explodes. I notice that it’s white.

I see the loose contents of my bag and the penny I found suspended in air. I think of astronauts on the moon.

Something is choking my throat.

My car is going to be totaled.

Something hits my head.

I’m going to be late for work.

Then suddenly the tumbling stops, and the car is still.

I want to get out of the car, but I can’t move. I feel a sudden crushing and unbearable pain on the top of my head. It occurs to me for the first time that I might’ve wrecked more than my car.

I’m sorry, Bob.

The dark morning gets darker and goes blank. I don’t feel the pain in my head. There is no sight and no feeling. I wonder if I’m dead.

Please don’t let me die.

I decide I’m not dead because I can hear the sound of the rain hitting the roof of the car. I’m alive because I’m listening to the rain, and the rain becomes the hand of God strumming his fingers on the roof, deciding what to do.

I strain to listen.

Keep listening.

Listen.

But the sound fades, and the rain is gone.

The hazy bright whiteness above me focuses into a fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling. Someone is saying something over and over. As I study the brightness and shape of the light, I come to realize that someone is saying something over and over to me.

“Sarah, can you take a deep breath for me?”

I assume that I can, but as I do, my entire throat grips around something rigid, and I gag. I’m sure that I’ve stopped inhaling, but my lungs fill with air anyway. My throat feels bone dry. I want to lick my lips and swallow some saliva, but something inside my mouth won’t let me. I want to ask, “What’s happening?” but I can’t gather the reins of my breathing, lips, or tongue. My eyes fill with panic.

“Don’t try to talk. You have a tube in your mouth to help you breathe.”

There is a fluorescent light on the ceiling above my head, a tube inside my mouth to help me breathe, and a woman’s voice.

“Can you squeeze my hand?” asks the woman’s voice.

I squeeze, but I don’t feel a hand in my hand.

“Can you squeeze your other hand?”

I don’t understand the question.

“Can you show me two fingers?”

I spread my index and middle finger.

Scissors.

I won the shoot. The shoot, the rain, the car. The crash. I remember. I hear electronic beeps and the whirring of mechanical equipment. The fluorescent light, the tube, the woman’s voice. I’m in a hospital. Oh my God, what’s happened to me? I try to think past the crash, but a searing pain slices through the top of my head, and I can’t.

“Good, Sarah. Okay, that’s enough for today. We’re going to put you back to sleep so you can rest.”

Wait! The shoot, the car, the rain, the crash, and then what? What happened? Am I okay?

The fluorescent light on the ceiling grows brighter. The edges of the light dissolve. Everything blurs white.

“O
KAY
, S
ARAH
, B
REATHE OUT
as hard as you can.”

I blow as a nurse yanks the breathing tube out of me, and it

Feels like she’s dragging a sandpaper-coated speculum up the tender lining of my throat. There’s nothing delicate or hesitant about her approach to this procedure. The removal is ruthless, and the relief I feel when she’s done borders on euphoria, a bit like giving birth. I’m good and ready to hate this woman, but then she tips a Dixie cup of melting ice chips to my lips, and she’s my angel of mercy.

After a minute, she folds my hand around the cup.

“Okay, Sarah, keep sipping. I’ll be right back,” she says and leaves me alone.

I sip the cold water. My cracked and dusty lips, mouth, and throat are grateful sponges, like earth soaking in rain after a long drought. I just had a breathing tube removed. I needed a tube to breathe. That’s not good. But I don’t need one now. Why did I need a breathing tube? How long have I been here? Where is Bob?

My head feels strange, but I can’t identify the sensation at first. Then it comes to me in full Technicolor, the volume turned all the way up. My head is scorching hot. I let go of the cup of ice and touch my head. I’m stunned and horrified by the mental image drawn by what my fingers feel. A large portion of my scalp, about the size and shape of a slice of bread, is shaved, and within that bald space, my fingers discover about a dozen metal staples. Somewhere just below the staples, my brain is the temperature of volcanic magma.

I grab the Dixie cup and pour the watery ice onto my stapled head. I actually expect to hear the water sizzle, but it doesn’t. The ice doesn’t lessen the fiery pain, and I’ve just used up all of my chips.

I wait and breathe in and out without the help of a tube. Don’t panic. The nurse wouldn’t have left you alone without a breathing tube and holding a disposable cup of ice if your brain were melting. But maybe it is melting. Check to see if it works.

Who are you?
I’m Sarah Nickerson.
Good. You know your name.
My husband is Bob. I have three kids—Charlie, Lucy, and Linus. I’m the VP of HR at Berkley. We live in Welmont. I’m thirty-seven years old
. Good. Sarah, you’re fine. I touch the staples and trace the shape of the bald patch.
They don’t shave your head and insert metal hardware into your scalp if you’re fine.

Where is Bob? someone should tell Bob where I am and what’s happened. Oh God, someone should tell work where I am and what’s happened. How long have I been here? What happened?

Other than during and following childbirth, I’ve never needed any medical attention beyond a few Motrin and a couple of Band-Aids. I stare at the fluorescent light. I don’t like this one bit. Where is the nurse? Please come back. Isn’t there a button somewhere I can push to call her? I look for a button, a phone, a speaker to yell into. I see the fluorescent light on the ceiling and an ugly beige curtain hanging next to me. Nothing else. No window, no TV, no phone, nothing. This room sucks.

I wait. My head is too hot. I try to call out for the nurse, but my brutalized throat can manage only a raspy whisper.

“Hello?”

I wait.

“Bob?”

I wait. I wait forever as I picture my brain and everything I love melting away.

T
HE FLUORESCENT
L
IGHT AGAIN
. I must’ve dozed off. My world is this fluorescent light. The light and the low, continuous, electronic whirring and beeping of whatever equipment might be monitoring me. Monitoring me and keeping me alive? God, I hope not. My world is meetings and deadlines, emails and airports, Bob and my kids. How did my world get reduced to this? How long have I been lying under this ugly light?

I move my hand beneath the bedsheet and down to my leg. Oh no. I’m feeling at least a week’s worth of stubble. The hair on my legs is fair-colored, almost blond, but I have a ton of it, and I usually shave every day. I rub my hand up and down my thigh like I’m petting a goat at the zoo.

Oh God, my chin. I have a cluster of five hairs on the left side of my chin. They’re coarse and wiry, like boar hair, and for the past couple of years, they’ve been my hideous secret and my sworn enemies. They sprout up every couple of days, and so I have to be vigilant. I keep my weapons—Revlon tweezers and a 10X magnifying mirror—at home, in my Sherpa bag, and in my desk drawer at work, so in theory, I can be anywhere, and if one of those evil little weeds pokes through the surface, I can yank it. I’ve been in meetings with CEOs, some of the most powerful men in the world, and could barely stay focused on what they were saying because I’d inadvertently touched my chin and become obsessed with the idea of destroying five microscopic hairs. I hate them, and I’m terrified of someone else noticing them before I do, but I have to admit, there is almost nothing more satisfying than pulling them out.

I stroke my chin, expecting to feel my Little Pig beard, but touch only smooth skin. My leg feels like a farm animal, which suggests I haven’t shaved in at least a week, but my chin is bare, which would put me in this bed for less than two days. My body hair isn’t making any sense. I hear nurses’ voices in conversation coming from what I imagine is the hallway outside my room.

I hear something else. It’s not the machine that may or may not be keeping me alive, not the nurses’ chatter, not even the faint buzz of the fluorescent light. I hold my breath and listen. It’s Bob’s snore!

I turn my head, and there he is, asleep in a chair in front of the beige curtain.

“Bob?”

He opens his eyes. He sees me seeing him and pops upright.

“You’re awake,” he says.

“What happened?”

“You were in a car accident.”

“Am I okay?”

He looks at the top of my head and then into my eyes and purposefully not at the top of my head.

“You’re going to be fine.”

His expression reminds me of what happens to his face when he’s watching the Red Sox. It’s bottom of the ninth, two outs, the count is 3 and 2, there’s nobody on, and they’re four runs down. He wants to believe that they can still win, but he knows they’ve probably already lost. And it’s breaking his heart.

I touch the staples on my head.

“They did surgery, to relieve the pressure. The doctor said You did really well.”

His voice shakes as he says this. Not only are the Sox losing, they’re playing the Yankees.

“How long have I been here?”

“Eight days. They had you sedated. You’ve been asleep for most of it.”

Eight days. I’ve been unconscious for eight days. I touch my bald head again.

“I must look horrible.”

“You’re beautiful.”

Oh please. I’m about to tease him for being so corny when he starts crying, and I’m stunned silent. In the ten years that I’ve known and loved him, I’ve never seen him cry. I’ve seen him tear up—when the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 and when our babies were born—but I’ve never seen him cry. I’m an easy crier. I cry watching the news, whenever anyone sings the National Anthem, when someone’s dog dies, when I get overwhelmed at work, when I get overwhelmed at home. And now when Bob cries.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I say, weeping with him.

“Don’t be sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

I reach over and touch his wet, contorted face. I can tell he’s struggling to pull his emotions back in, but he’s like a shaken bottle of champagne, and I just popped the cork. Only nobody’s celebrating.

“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t leave me, Sarah.”

“Look at me,” I say, pointing to my head. “Do I look like I’m going anywhere?”

He laughs and wipes his nose with his sleeve.

“I’m going to be fine,” I say with teary determination.

We nod and squeeze hands, agreeing to a certainty we both know nothing about.

“Do the kids know?” I ask.

“I told them you’re away for work. They’re good, business as usual.”

Good. I’m glad he didn’t tell them that I’m in the hospital. No need to scare them. I’m normally home with them for the hour or two before school and for the last hour of their day, but it’s also normal for there to be times when I have to work late and miss seeing them before they go to bed. And they’re also used to my frequent travel schedule and me being entirely away for many days at a time. Still, when I travel, I’m not usually gone for more than a week. I wonder how long I’d need to be here for them to really wonder where I am.

“Does work know?”

“Yes, they sent most of the cards. They said not to worry about anything and to get better.”

“What cards?”

“Over there, taped to the wall.”

I look over at the wall, but I don’t see anything taped to it. They must be on the wall behind the curtain.

“How long do I need to stay here?”

“I don’t know. How are you feeling?” he asks.

My head is no longer on fire, and it surprisingly doesn’t hurt much. I’m sore all over, though, like how I imagine a boxer must feel after a fight. The boxer who lost. I also have intense cramping in my leg. I’ve noticed that sometimes there is some sort of device on my leg that massages the muscles, which helps. And I have no energy. Just talking to Bob these past few minutes has tuckered me out.

“Honestly?”

“Yeah,” he says, and I can tell he’s bracing himself for something gruesome.

“I’m starving.”

He smiles, relieved.

“What do you feel like having? Anything you want.”

“How about soup?” I suggest, thinking soup is probably safe. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to eat anything I want yet.

“You got it. I’ll be right back.”

He leans over and kisses my chapped lips. I wipe the tears off his cheek and chin and smile. Then he disappears behind the ugly beige curtain.

It’s just me and the fluorescent light again. The fluorescent light, the beeping and whirring, and the beige curtain. And somewhere behind the curtain, wonderful get-well cards from work on the wall.