The Girl He Used to Know (Page 32)

I didn’t mind the gowns, actually. They were loose and somewhat soft, probably from the repeated washings. What I hated the most about being in the hospital was the noises and smells. The sharp smell of the antiseptic and the repeated announcements over the intercom interfered with whatever semblance of calm I had been able to achieve. All I wanted was to stay asleep, to escape from this nightmare in the only way I knew how. But that didn’t keep the nurses from coming in hourly to poke and prod me, to take my temperature and blood pressure. My wound needed its own care to make sure there was no infection. I had caught a glimpse of the angry line of stitches when the nurse helped me go to the bathroom for the first time after they removed the catheter, and I made sure never to look down again.

Janice opened the door and put her arm around my shoulders to help me walk out of the bathroom. I was still light-headed and the nurses warned that I should not get out of bed unless someone was at my side to make sure I didn’t fall.

“I told your mom I’d go around and talk to all your professors and see what they wanted to do about keeping you in the loop for these last few weeks of school,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll allow you to turn in the work late and make some other concession for the final exams.”

I didn’t say anything, because I could only focus on one thing at a time, and at the moment all I really wanted was for Janice to put me back in bed.

* * *

“I’ll leave as soon as classes are over on Friday,” Jonathan said on the day they allowed me to go home.

“Leave to go where?”

“Your house. I want to be with you.”

“Okay,” I said. I was still tired and weak, and all I wanted to do when I got home was go back to sleep, but it would feel good to have Jonathan with me.

My parents arrived and while we waited for the discharge paperwork, Jonathan said, “Is it all right if I visit Annika this weekend?”

“Of course,” my mother said.

When the nurse said it was okay for me to leave, my dad left to bring the car around.

“I’ll just be out in the hallway,” my mom said.

Jonathan pulled me close, crushing me in his hug. I didn’t mind, though. When he let go, he kissed my forehead. “I love you. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“I love you too,” I said. I didn’t address the second part of his statement, because I didn’t believe that anything would ever be okay again.

I climbed into the backseat of my parents’ car, lay down across the seat, and went to sleep.

* * *

“What can I get you?” my mom asked after she tucked me into my bed like a child. The perfume Jonathan had given me for Christmas and I’d callously left behind was directly in my line of vision, and I asked her to give it to me.

I clutched the perfume bottle in my hand, and I cried myself to sleep over the sadness of what I’d done, and for the baby Jonathan and I had made and lost.

* * *

He came on Friday just like he promised, and he was there when I woke up from one of my many naps. He brushed the hair back from my face. “How’s my Sleeping Beauty?”

I smiled, because his face was one of the few things that still brought me joy. He pulled back the covers and climbed into my bed, and I settled my head in the small crook between his neck and shoulder. “I’m fine,” I said, though I had never lied to him before.

The first lie made the ones that followed so much easier to tell.

The door opened late on Saturday night. “Annika?” Jonathan said, his voice only slightly louder than a whisper.

“I’m awake,” I said. My mom had put Jonathan’s things in Will’s room when he arrived, but my parents weren’t overly strict about that sort of thing, and I knew my mom wouldn’t care if she found us together in my bed or Will’s. The reason I was awake when Jonathan came in was because I’d slept so much of the day away that for once, I couldn’t sleep. Instead I’d been lying in bed ruminating over the state of my life. Other people’s mistakes seemed small in comparison to the ones I’d made. Mine seemed to be getting bigger, and now they were hurting other people.

He slipped under the covers. “I know it won’t be easy to get caught up, but you can do it. You can graduate and you can still come to New York on time.”

Jonathan had big plans, and goals he’d been working toward since high school. I wasn’t so clueless and out of touch that I couldn’t see how my involvement in his life might negatively affect those things. Even if I managed to catch up with my schoolwork and graduate on time, I would only be a hindrance to him and would never be able to pull my weight in New York. And if I was being honest with myself, it seemed overwhelmingly exhausting to even consider it. I would need way more time to recover from not only the physical effects of what had happened, but also the emotional.

I simply did not have anything left to give, even to Jonathan, whom I’d finally realized I loved much more than I would ever love Mr. Bojangles.

* * *

The veil of depression that descended upon me was heavy, dark black, and suffocating. I did not leave my bedroom other than to attend my follow-up medical appointments, and only then because my mother threatened to have my dad physically place me in the car. The hospital had sent us home with a bottle of pain pills and I’d watched my mother put them in the cupboard when I said I could manage my pain without them. I could go into the bathroom and open that cupboard and swallow all of them. A sleep that would top all the others. Permanent. I spent two whole days thinking about it. Turning it over in my mind. It would be so easy! It probably wouldn’t even hurt.

I had gone so far as to get out from under the covers to walk to the bathroom when my dad came into my room to check on me. He was never one to talk, and that day he didn’t say anything at all. But he pulled my desk chair over to the side of the bed and reached for my hand, holding it loosely in his smooth, dry palm as the tears slid down my cheeks.

He stayed all day.

I never told anyone that my dad was the one who kept me tethered to this life, but I did tell my mom she should dispose of the pills because I didn’t need them anymore.

Jonathan finally confronted me when it was clear I’d done none of the things I said I would do. “I know you’re still recovering, but there’s no way you can catch up when you haven’t even started.” I didn’t respond. “Annika, I need you to talk to me.”

“I want you to go to New York and start your job. I’ll go back to school next fall and when I graduate in December, I promise I’ll join you then.”

He looked as defeated as I’d ever seen him look. “I want to believe you,” he said.

So on a beautiful Saturday in May, Jonathan received his degree. The next day, he boarded a plane to New York to crash on a friend’s couch while he started his new job and looked for a place for us to live. No one read my name aloud on graduation day. I would have to repeat the semester in order to complete my undergraduate education. Janice told me later that she spoke with Jonathan after the ceremony. “I invited him and his mom to come to dinner with my family, but he politely declined.”

“How did he look?” I asked.

“Not as happy as he should have.”

* * *

May turned to June, and then July. I might have decided to live, but my mom grew frustrated with me because I was still sleeping way too much. “You cannot lie in this bed and let life pass you by,” she shouted.

“What, this life?” I shouted back, gesturing toward the four walls. “A life inside this room is the only life I’m equipped for.” I pointed toward the door, the windows. “I hate everything out there. Everything out there sucks! You know why? Because you never told me what to expect. You never helped me develop any coping skills. You just … you let me stay in this house playing school, isolated from everything, and then you sent me off to college, completely unprepared. Janice is the only one who ever taught me anything about real life.”

And Jonathan, a small voice said inside my head.

“I had no choice. I couldn’t let you stay at that school, let those bitches torment you or hurt you again. Seventh grade!” she cried. “How can children be that cruel at such a young age? I had to take you out, keep you here with me where I knew you’d be safe.” My mom had never spoken to me using such language before, and she was wrong because the girls were worse than bitches. They were evil.

She sat down on the edge of my bed. “Your dad told me of the bullying and abuse he’d suffered as a child, and how no one did anything about it because boys were strong and they were expected to tough it out. I swore I would never let that happen to you. Someday when you have children of your own, you will understand.”

“If I can even have them,” I said.

“You’ve still got one tube. You will have them if you want them.” She wiped the corner of her eye. “I started preparing you for life outside these four walls from the day you were born. I did what I thought was right, and I did it until I couldn’t do it anymore because there was no more. You were ready and the only way to help you was to send you out into the world. Do you think I wasn’t scared? Do you think I wanted to put your welfare in the hands of an eighteen-year-old girl? Someone who was essentially a stranger to us both?”