Would You Read Online Free PDF Page B

she's protecting me.
    Trauma—our new state of being.
    There's a ceremony first. Trisha shows me how to wash my hands, how to put on the smock and the gloves and the mask. It's like on TV, all the papery garments, only I'm trembling and the clothes shiver and crackle.
    “You are not to touch her,” says Trisha. “You are to stay two feet from the bed at all times. She's very vulnerable to infection. You are not to cough or sneeze. You are not to touch any of the tubes or the equipment. You are most especially not to touch her.”
    “What
can
I do?” I say.
    “Some people talk,” she says, not so bossy now. “Some people just sit. There's research showing that if you talk she may hear you. It may be of some comfort to tell her things. Say her name a lot. Remind her who she is. It might even trigger a repair mechanism. It's a long, slow process, sodon't be disappointed if there's no response.” She taps her watch. “Five minutes.”
The Five Minutes
    The overhead lights, the fluorescent ones, are off. It's dim in here and you're on the bed.
    Claire. It's you but not you. Your hair is all gone. They shaved your head and there's this, this, oh god, it's awful, a huge
injury
on the side of your skull, swollen, with black crisscrossed stitches, holding together this
gash
, not bandaged or anything, just there for us to look at. Horrible.
    Your eyes are closed. Good. I was afraid of looking into vacant eyes. You definitely don't want to see this.
    The nurse said maybe, if anything's ticking, maybe you can hear me. Maybe you're just… gathering strength.
    Wow. Claire.
    It's hard to … believe.
    This is the way you look now. Yesterday we were getting ready to go out and … I mean,
yesterday
, you know? And I stole your black thing… and then you … didn't come home.
    Claire? Please, Claire? Be okay?
    Look, I'm wobbling here. This sucks.
    Ohgod, my voice is way too loud for being alone in the room. I mean, not alone, but…
    I'm not going to be all weepy and pathetic if there's a chance that any of this is seeping in.
    Hey. I think this is as close as I'm supposed to get.
    That's Trisha at the door, giving me the hand waggle. I'm showing her one sec with my finger, so I've only got a minute.
    Claire? I'm dragging a chair over, see? So I can be right next to you. I'm going to perform an act of supreme defiance. I'm going to—
    That's me, touching your hand.
Ew.
It feels like a balloon kept in the freezer. But I love you so much I'll keep my fingers resting there.
    I feel like … I want to …
    Okay, whoops, out of the chair. Trisha's waving again.
    I'll be back, okay?
    Mwa. I'm going.
Fluids
    Something I didn't want to mention to Claire is that she seems to have gained about twenty pounds overnight. And it's not just because she's bald so her face looks rounder. She is puffed up like someone stuck a bicycle pump in her ear and pumped fast.
    When I ask at the nurses' station, they say it's the fluids. The patient takes in massive amounts intravenously, too much for the veins to hold; the spaces
outside
theveins get soaked. The cells and tissues absorb the fluids— especially the saline solution—and swell up. Claire is now a giant bloated sponge.
    Fluids
ranks right up there with
moist
on the Ten Worst Words list.
No Cell Phones Allowed in the Hospital
    I go outside, onto the circular driveway that leads wrecked bodies to Emergency. I start to text Audrey but then I just call her.
    “Nat?” she says. I might have woken her.
    “Nat?” She has to ask twice because now's the moment I can't make a sound. Now's the moment there's a massive wave of heat and sorrow pressing up from my throat and inside my ears and behind my eyes, like lava. I'm deaf with it and blind and mute. Audrey hears me not able to speak.
    “Do you need me to come somewhere?” she says. I shake my head, but she can't see. I press End and sink onto the grass. But only for about a minute because it's damp with dew, or maybe they watered already. I