Page 61 of One Year Ago in Spain
She was an academic, her knowledge accumulated mostly from the anecdotal reports of others who had interacted with astral projections, because it was impossible to set up scientific studies on the subject. So everything Professor Hong said was conjecture. A well-educated guess, but still a guess.
How the hell was Claire supposed to know what to do then?
She wanted to punch something. But just as Claire began to ball her hand into a fist, she froze.
Could she bring Matías’s soul here and reunite it with his body with simply the press of her palm?
Claire whirled and stared at the door to his room, which now hung open, the doctors having left to take care of whatever needed to be taken care of, and the de León family back in their seats in the waiting area, hugging each other. Soledad, Armando, and Aracely were nowhere to be seen, though; they must be inside with Matías.
But Professor Hong had explicitly warned Claire that she could not tell Matías’s soul about the accident until he was ready. Even though Claire was no longer sure that the professor was right, that part still made sense—it would be a huge shock to Matías’s soul to suddenly expose him face-to-face to his own battered body, covered in stitches and bruises and splints and casts for the thirty-seven broken bones.
And Claire could not risk that discord breaking the tenuous threads that connected Matías’s soul to reality. Without the soul, Matías would die.
So Claire uncurled her fist. She just had to keep hold of hope and let the doctors run their tests and do what they could.
She took a shaky, deep breath and walked toward Matías’s room. She kept her left hand splayed open and held away from her body, no longer making contact with anything. Just in case.
—
Soledad kneeled atMatías’s bedside, praying. Armando stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder. And Aracely sat in a chair, glaring at Matías. The nurses would probably let the three-visitor rule slide for a little while.
Claire assumed her place in the chair on the opposite side of the bed, the one the family always kept open for her. Guiltstabbed at her as she sat down, aware that the seat had been vacant too long. Matías needed her here. She knew that. But he also needed her out there, with his wandering soul.
For now, though, Claire settled in, intending to be at the hospital until visiting hours ended.
She cocked her head at Aracely. “Hey. Are you okay? Why are you…scowling at him?”
“I am angry at him for scaring us,” Aracely said, her voice hot, but also shaking.
“Oh.”
“He’s my big brother. He is supposed to be strong. He is always supposed to be there, and I am supposed to be able to take him for granted. But look…” She glared harder at him.
Claire understood. When her parents had died, she’d been mad at them, too, in completely irrational ways. Mad that they’d been so eager to go on that stupid RV trip to Carhenge. Mad that they’d died without clearing it with her calendar first. Mad that they wouldn’t be there to send her off to law school, to see her get married, to meet their grandkids.
Mad that they had left her all alone, again, in the world.
“I get it,” Claire said to Aracely. “Sometimes, pain masquerades as anger, because you candosomething about anger. Pain by itself just chips away at you until you’re pockmarked with sorrow and regret. It’s better to yell and kick and punch things instead.”
“I feel like the doctors might be unhappy if I punched Matías,” Aracely said with a grim laugh.
“I can find you a spare pillow if you want,” Claire said.
A lab technician came in wheeling a mobile cart full of vials, needles, tourniquets, and other supplies. She said something in Spanish—Claire assumed telling the family she was going totake Matías’s blood—then began the process of cleaning the bend of his elbow, one of the few places not covered in bandages and casts.
Claire bit her lip. Matías’s skin there was mottled purple from all the times they’d poked him. She’d asked on the first day why they couldn’t just insert an IV and take blood from there, but the answer was that some tests required sterile collection and that meant they had to be able to clean the skin first. Claire still wasn’t sure why IVs weren’t considered sterile, but she’d seen lab techs come and go in the days since, sometimes drawing blood through an IV, and other times from the very same beaten-up site that was being used right now.
She looked away during the process. She wasn’t squeamish about blood itself, but watching them draw the literal life force from Matías’s already weakened body was too much. He seemed so much smaller in the hospital bed; it was shocking how quickly muscles lost their tone, how swiftly a patient could lose weight.
As the lab tech was leaving, a nurse came in with a portable EKG machine. Aracely stood. “I can’t be here anymore. I’m going to get some fresh air.”
When the nurse opened the front of Matías’s gown, Claire let out a cry. It was the first time since being at the hospital that she’d seen that part of him exposed. She knew there had been surgery to stop the bleeding in his internal organs, but now she could see the red welts and the thick black stitches from the incisions. The undignified patchwork shaving of the hair on his torso to clear his skin for the surgeries and heart monitor stickers, like a lawnmower had gone berserk. The slackness of his usually taut abs.
Oh god, Matías.
The rest of the afternoon went like that—nurses and lab techs in and out as more tests were ordered. They took X-rays. Couldn’t see anything obvious. Ordered a CT scan of the heart.
The chief surgeon—Soledad and Armando’s friend—returned with the cardiologist from before. Aracely and Luis were permitted in the room, even though it was crowded, to hear the results of what they’d found.
