Page 73 of Nothing Less than Magic
One finger.
She disappears inside the bathroom and returns with a wet washcloth and uses it to wipe my lips. The water is lukewarm, not as good as the ice chip, but still, the moisture feels like heaven.
“Better?”
One finger.
“I’ll leave the cloth here for you.” She places it on top of my blanket, next to my hand, then reapplies the Vaseline.
She marks something in my chart and closes the door behind her, once again plunging my room in near darkness.
I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. And for the first time since I found myself here, I cry a pool of silent tears that soak my cheeks and neck and drip onto my hospital gown.
The final humiliation comes the next morning when an orderly comes around to empty my catheter bag.
Chapter 19
Dr. Sadie is back.
She is a leading neurologist on the West Coast, and I’m fortunate to have her on my team, according to Austin. I’m still not sure what constitutes a team or why I have one. Or how I got here. Very little has been said about the situation, only that confusion and short-term memory loss is normal.
Each day—I think it’s been four now—is a new mountain to climb. Today, I reached the tiny tube of Vaseline and was able to apply it to my lips by myself. Yesterday, it was sipping water from a straw. I nearly wept with gratitude. Tuesday, it was being able to hold my head up long enough to see Lolly silently slip out of my room. She hasn’t returned since. And Monday, I croaked my first word, “Help.” Slowly but surely, my speech has returned, and I’m speaking in full sentences now.
“Hello, Chelsea. You look exceptionally well this morning.” Dr. Sadie beams at me while holding a chart in her hands. “Your brain function is good, exactly where we want it to be. It’ll just take a little time for everything else to catch up. The key is not doing too much too fast. A trauma of the kind you’ve suffered takes a long time to recover from.”
“What about Knox?” I manage in a scratchy, barely audible voice. It’s the first time I’ve been able to ask about him, the first time I’ve been able to face the fear that I might’ve lost him.
“Knox?” She tilts her head to one side, as if I’m speaking a foreign language.
“Knox.” This time my voice is strong. “He was with me on the bridge when it broke. He pulled me out of the river.”
“River? You were hit by a cable car on California Street. As far as I know, you were the only pedestrian injured, but you should talk to the police. I’m sure there’s a report.”
“Wait,” I say, completely befuddled. “How long have I been here?”
“Two weeks and four days.”
“That’s impossible. I was at the cabin in Ghost. My vacation cabin.”
“You may have been there before the accident, and that’s what you’re remembering,” she says. “It’s not unusual for our brains to try to protect us from the memory of trauma.”
“No, I was there after the accident. That’s why I went there in the first place, to recuperate.”
“Chelsea, you came straight here in an ambulance after suffering significant head trauma. You were put into a medically induced coma so that we could reduce the swelling and pressure in your brain.” She pulls the chair in the corner of the room to the side of my bed. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Dr. Sadie sit. In all her visits, she’s brisk and businesslike, in and out in record time.
“It’s not at all uncommon for patients in induced comas to experience dreams and hallucinations, even nightmares,” she continues. “I had one patient who swore he’d joined the circus and another who believed he’d passed the bar when he was still in his first year of law school.”
“So, I’m not here because the suspension bridge at the Ghost Mine Historic State Park broke?” I’m having trouble processing that news. Maybe she’s mistaken me for another patient. Or is confused.
“No. Let me ask you, do you remember getting hit by the streetcar?”
“Yes. But other than a minor headache, I walked away, then drove two hours into the mountains to stay at my lake cabin. That’s what I remember.”
“It was a dream, Chelsea.”
“You don’t understand. I went to the annual Halloween parade with my sister. Met with friends . . . went to the farmers’ market . . . happy hour at the local inn. I had a life there . . . a good life. I had Knox.”
I reach for my handbag for proof. Knox’s number in my phone, texts from Austin. I paw through the contents, ultimately finding my check register to show the payment for my roof or the 150 dollars to Misty. But the last check I wrote was to Corrie, my housecleaner, dated three weeks ago.
