Pieces of Hope (45 page)

“I wish
I could pull the plug on that guy!” he sputtered in a rage. “Or maybe I could
wait for him to wake up and beat him senseless!” He rambled on like that for a
while. After what felt like an eternity, he calmed down enough for me to get a
few words in edgewise.

“That’s
really going to hurt tomorrow.” I was staring at his left eye. I reached up,
not quite touching it, and winced for him.

“Good!”
he growled. “It will stop me from feeling sorry for that loser lying comatose
in the hospital. It’ll remind me how the coward tried to kill me in my sleep!”

At this,
I laughed. “You realize you sound absolutely ridiculous.”

Ethan
didn’t laugh. “Were you really going to ask me to kill myself, Hope?” His
expression darkened, showing pain. I couldn’t look at him. I was too ashamed.
“No, don’t answer that. I don’t think I want to hear it.” Absently he dug a
trench in the sand with one of his bare feet. “But tell me what happened back
there . . . between the two of you.”

“What?” I
tried to skate around it. “I . . . stopped him. That’s all.”

“That’s
all?” Ethan fixed his eyes on mine.

I nodded
again, holding my breath in anticipation of his next question.

“That’s
not all!” His tone was icy. He stared off somewhere over my head. “I can’t
believe you would lie to me. Help me to understand, Hope.” He paused to
breathe, forcing himself to calm down. “Maybe there were extenuating
circumstances. Tell me there’s more to the story that I don’t know about . . .”

“Ethan,
what are you—” Fear trickled down my spine.

“I know
about the kiss. Don’t bother denying it,” he seethed. “I know it happened. I know
because—because—”

I gasped
in horror, a realization coming over me. “Because Daniel told you?”
 

“He told
me just before I rammed my head into his chest.”

“He . .
. told you?” I mumbled. “But that’s impossible Why didn’t I hear it?”

“It was
strange. His mouth didn’t move. He spoke in my head.”

Incredulous,
I stared at him. Daniel had spoken telepathically to Ethan, and he had somehow
me out? Where had he learned to do that?

 
“But that’s beside the point. Everything here
is strange.” Ethan grew impatient. “I know something happened back there
between the two of you, and I want to know what it was. And don’t lie to me
this time.
Don’t
,” he threatened.

I took
my time answering, avoiding the worst details, the most intimate ones, and
skipping over a melding of souls as best I could to avoid causing Ethan any
further harm. His face remained expressionless, as if I were telling him a
story of someone he scarcely knew. But I knew I’d hurt him. I heard it in the
rhythm of his breath.

“And
what now, Hope. Are you going to stay with him—here? Are you planning to spend
your eternity with Daniel
Hartlein
?” Ethan’s voice
was cutting, his tone severe enough to slice through my skin. It dazed me to
see, when I looked down, that there was no blood. I wanted to bleed. Somehow,
it would have been less painful.

“It’s
nothing like that!” I shouted. But my stupid voice betrayed me. I didn’t sound
as sure of myself as I thought I should. My head felt muddy and tired. “My
mother is near! I only need a few more days. She’s very, very near.”

“You’ve
been saying that for a while now. Do you know that? How much of what I told you
about your condition do you remember?”

“All of
it!” I snapped. “I’m bodiless not brain-dead!” Why wasn’t he listening to me? My
mother was near! What part of that didn’t he remember?

“You may
not have that kind of time,” Ethan insisted.

“You
said at any minute I could wake up, that my injuries were . . . what was the
word? Oh, yeah. . .
superficial
,” I snapped.

“That
used to be true . . . Before your so-called heart attack and your scuffle with
Daniel and whatever else you won’t tell me that went on at that Station—yes, it
used to be true.”

My
eyebrows flew up by accident. How did he know I’d skimmed the details?

“I know
you don’t tell me everything,” he said. “I’m not a total idiot, Hope.”

No . . .
Of course he wasn’t . . . I was. I was.

“Since
that little episode,” he said bitterly, “you’ve been back in the ICU, and it’s
been a struggle ever since. That was three days ago. No one can make any sense
of it.”

I ticked
off the time on my fingers—three days initially in the ICU, then five in a
second ward, plus three more in the ICU . . . 3 + 5 + 3 . . . ELEVEN DAYS?

“How can
that be?” I muttered under my breath.

“Your
body isn’t responding to the normal tests, reflexes and pain stimuli—”

“You let
them inflict pain on me?” I asked, incredulous.

“Normal
tests. Nothing crazy. What am I supposed to tell them? ‘Hey, don’t do that.
That’s my girlfriend and she’s coming back. She tells me every night in my
dreams?’”

I had to
hand it to him there, and I backed down.

“In one
of the tests,” he went on, “we run the sharp end of the reflex hammer along the
bottom of your foot—your toes are supposed to curl under. It’s called a
Babinski
reflex.” Ethan shook his head. “Your body shows no
reaction. It’s an indication that your mind isn’t sending pain signals to your
body. It’s like a disconnected circuit.”

“If I
didn’t know better, it almost sounds like you’re saying”—my voice caught as I
realized the implications—“I’m dying?”

His eyes
looked wet in the moonlight. The sound of the ebb and flow of the waves nearly
concealed his response. He spoke so softly I had to strain to hear him.

“The
truth is I don’t know how much time you have left. I don’t even know if you can
return . . . Oh, and I quit my job at the hospital.” When I protested, he
shrugged. “I had to. I refused to leave your bedside and, as you know,
hospitals tend to frown on that sort of thing.” He smiled sadly. “Your family has
been great. They no longer think it’s odd . . . my connection to you. But as
far as they know, I’m still just the guy who takes care of you.

He
smiled sadly. “But David seems to understand the most. Imagine it—your dad. I
haven’t said it, but he knows I love you—and for some reason he doesn’t care and
doesn’t ask. I’ve sometimes wondered if your mother is influencing him. If I
were in his shoes, I don’t know that I would be as cool about it as he is.

“I’ve
watched him, Hope—all of them. Gigi, so brave, cracking jokes to keep the mood
light. Brody and she tell you a joke a day, and they keep waiting for you to
wake up and tell them it isn’t funny. And your sister, well, she reads to you
every day. She found a book on your nightstand. Brody seems to enjoy it the
most, but I think that’s because Claire is the reader. Still, it’s hard to
tell. Most of the time, everyone’s in such a fog that it’s difficult to enjoy
much of anything . . .” He seemed to rest his eyes on something in the
distance, but it might have simply been an image in his mind.

“The
waiting . . . that’s the worst part.” He began to absently dig a trench in the
sand with one of his bare feet. “In the evenings we get a slight reprieve when
Clarence and Linda bring Derek and Tyler up to see you. Tyler has some crush on you. He makes a new
card for you every day. They’re all signed with X’s and O’s, and read in giant
letters, ‘GET WELL SOON!’ He’s not much of an artist, but he’s got a big
heart.” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat a couple of times. “Yesterday,
he told me a giant angel with black wings had come to him in a dream. He said
the angel told him you’d be waking up soon.” There was a long pause. Ethan
didn’t look up, nor did he stop digging. “Just this once, I wished the kid was
right.”

“But I
am coming back,” I insisted, pleading for him to listen. “It’s just . . . I
need to speak to my mother first.” Without giving away details, I hoped to make
him understand, to ease his worries. But my task was made more difficult
because I had several worries of my own—colossal-sized ones that refused to be
ignored.

“I just don’t
know if you’ll have that choice,” he said. “And I don’t know if I can sit back
and wait for you to—” He finally looked at me. I was terrified by what I saw
there, the desperation. “You’ve put me in an impossible situation. I don’t know
how much more I can take . . . I go to sleep with you every night and wake up
every morning with the smell of you on my skin. And then all day long, I watch
you lying there—dying.”

There
was an immeasurable pause. Then he slowly got to his feet and began to walk
away. “Hang on,” I called, jumping up to follow. “Where are you going?”

He
turned momentarily, but with enormous difficulty, as if his limbs had turned to
stone. His words, obscured by the wind, were not ones that needed repeating.
His morose expression told me everything I didn’t want to know.

Nevertheless,
I’d heard them.

As if
they were the pealing sound of a giant bell struck too close to my head, the
words echoed painfully in my ears. I stumbled backwards on my feet. Then
another kind of pain radiated outward from the middle of my chest.

“No,
Ethan. You can’t mean it!” I cried, my voice fast and high. “You can’t mean it!
You found me! You finally found me! We’ve searched for too long—”

I looked
for it, but it never came. There was no question in his eyes, no lingering
uncertainty. And just like that, without a flicker, as though someone had
snuffed out the light of a candle, Ethan and everything around me disappeared.
His words haunted me. He hadn’t meant them. He simply couldn’t have . . .

“I guess
this is goodbye,” he said.

21
Somebody
Else’s Nightmare

On the
one hand, I knew what he’d said. And on the other, I knew what he must have
meant. Surely, he wasn’t speaking of forever. It was probably one of those dot
dot
dot
sentences. Something more
like,
I guess this is goodbye
. . .
until I cool off. Or possibly, I guess this is goodbye . . .
until you remind me how much you love
me.
 

Yes, that
had to be it. And I did plan to remind him. Soon.

Daniel
had been very accommodating, his mood as ebullient as a bottle of bubbles. He
seemed happy that we were alone, not that he’d asked anything about Ethan or
why I was sitting alone in the blackness calling Daniel’s name. And his joy had
turned to jubilation when I said I wasn’t returning to the Station; again, no
questions, for which I was a little too relieved.

How
could I explain that the mere thought of returning to the Station filled me
with such apprehension (and a nervous kind of gut-wrenching guilt) that I
actually feared going back? I kept imagining a game of twenty million questions
from my friends. How had Ethan fallen from the cliff? Why was I alone here,
with Daniel? And most importantly—why had I not returned to my body? Not a soul
seemed to grasp the reason why except for Daniel, who felt his mother’s
presence as easily as I felt Vivienne’s. I was tired of explaining it to people
who refused to listen. Exhausted, really. Why did I feel so bone-numbing tired?

I’d
called out to Daniel only a few times before he came to get me, pulling me out
of the darkness and into a decked-out version of his former green beater. It
looked and smelled brand new, with an olive green hood and slick white interior.

“The
1970
LeMans
. . .” he began in a tone of admiration,
and although I’d just been yanked from total darkness into the car that had
sent me into a coma, it wasn’t the slightest bit odd or uncomfortable. “The last
of the muscle cars. Want to take her for a spin?” Daniel patted the dashboard
affectionately. I leaned back into the seat, purposely ignoring the seat belt.
For once, I had no use for them.

Daniel
revved the engine several times. It roared to life like an animal that had been
trapped in a cage all its life and was finally set free. There was some sort of
funny gadget on the floor between the bucket seats that zipped to the right as
he revved it. Pausing to give me a delighted smile, he then punched the
accelerator to the floor.

The road
twisted in complete disarray before us. Hairpin turns that seemed to stretch on
forever—ones that, in the living realm, would have been impossible to
navigate—were nothing for us here. It was like being trapped inside a video
game, one in which the cars never wrecked and the people couldn’t die. There
were several times when we rode on two wheels; at other moments, we nearly
crashed into one of the thousands of pines encroaching on the road, and yet not
at any moment was I ever frightened. It was beyond amazing. I felt invincible.

I did,
however, become petrified when Daniel offered up an invitation. “Come with me
to the living realm. It’s an adrenaline rush like you can’t imagine!” I looked
into his face, eager as a child’s, and for the first time, believed he had totally
lost his mind.

“Are you
crazy?” We kept on careening through the countryside, wheels crunching on the
gravel road, dust flying for miles behind us, the massive engine roaring. “Not
in a million years. Someone might walk through me!” It was the ickiest thing I
could imagine.

His
sparkly eyes studied mine (more sky than storm today) and he wore a hint of a
smile on his face. “Think of the places we haven’t seen and the places we’ve
talked about going. I know how much you love it here, but it’s different
there—without bodies, I mean. We’ll never get another opportunity like this
one.” Daniel wasn’t looking at the road now, but that wasn’t what scared me.
“Say you will, Hope. I promise to keep you safe. It’s so alive there!”

Alive?
That was just what I was afraid of. What if someone living walked through me?
Someone consumed with rage or overwhelmed by grief? Someone with the power to
incapacitate me? A shudder threatened to surface.