And Greer—Greeris the light.
Chapter 17
Greer
Ten years ago, when I had my first surgery, I’d woken slowly to the sounds of my family. Too tired, still, to even open my eyes, I’d merely basked in their collective noise—their messy, amassed effort being quiet. Ava’s ridiculous stage whisper, and Cary’s deep rumble of a voice, a vibration you can feel even when you can’t fully decipher his words. Humph’s paper-shuffling in the corner, the crisp way he’d turn the pages of a magazine he wasn’t even really reading. My dad’s occasional cough, more of a throat-clearing, a nervous habit I recognized from every single doctor’s visit he’d ever sat in on. My mother’s dramatic sniffles, the almost comically timed gusty sighs, always followed by a muffled patting sound—my father’s hand on her knee, tapping his solace onto her. I’d drifted in and out to that noise, appreciated its rising clamor when a nurse would arrive to check on me, the murmuredexcuse mes and sliding chairs, the clicking sounds of monitors being checked, adjusted, updated.
I’d thought, dreamily, in my anesthetized stupor, about how lucky I was.
But after the second surgery, not even a full year later, something had changed about me. I’d grown weary of my family’s cacophony, had heard it not as the sound of my own good fortune in having them, but as the sound of their bad fortune in having me. It’d be hours, I’d recognized, even in my drugged state, before I would be alert enough to open my eyes fully, to reassure at least some of them that they could go home, that I’d be fine, that I didn’t want to cause any more trouble.
Until then, though, it’d felt like being trapped in a glass cage, beating my wings bloody against their shared concern, theirfear, their mounting certainty that I’d need more protection and morecare than ever.
It’s achingly, perfectly quiet now, though, a soft landing out of what I’m experienced enough to recognize as a chemically assisted sleep. Memories of the time before this—a shouted warning, a chaotic tumble to the ground while tangled up with metal and rubber, a long, burning slice against my calf—all of it feels wispy and indistinct, like a dream I’m trying to hang on to before it tucks itself away in my subconscious.
I’m not as tired now as I was after that first surgery, but still I have to work hard to bring my other senses online. Unlikely I’ll get my eyes to open—the lids feel heavy and swollen, and even a minimal attempt to flutter them apart has my eyelashes tangling stickily together in a way that makes me think I’ve been out for a while. But with no cannula pressed against my nostrils—a good sign—I can smell the room. It’s antiseptic, mostly, but to my left there’s something richer, recognizable, something I’ve had close to my skin for weeks now. I’m so desperate to get closer to it that two of my fingers twitch against the cool sheets, a jerking motion toward the source of that perfect, longed-for smell.
“Greer.” Alex’s voice, softer than I’ve ever heard it, and for the barest, briefest second my heart tells me the same thing it did ten years ago, when I woke to the symphony of Hawthornes around me:I’m so lucky. I’m so lucky he’s here.
But then I remember. Before the warning, before the tumble, before the slice. Alex hunched in panic. Our strained conversation on the street.I’m not going to be the one whotraps you here.
“Greer, sweetheart,” he repeats, and in those words I hear a world of concern and desperation, and then his big, warm hand comes to rest on mine, his index finger curling over the top of those two fingers I’d managed to move, hugging them in the only embrace my prone form will likely allow.
I work forth a raspy noise deep in my throat—no chance of getting a word out yet; I’ll need more sleep and something to drink to get that done, I’m guessing. But the noise is enough to get Alex talking again, and he speaks quickly, almostapologetically.
“Everyone’s here, just down in the cafeteria. Your family and also Kit and Zoe and Ben and Aiden. Dennise went home, but she’ll come visit you soon. She said not to worry about anything, that it’s no problem about work.” He pauses, and I hear him take a shaky breath. “You seemed—you were a little restless, with all the noise, so I—well. I’m still pretty good with managing difficult family members, I guess. But I can go get them, if you’d want that.” I feel the soft touch of his fingertips along my hairline. “Do you think you’d want that?”
I do my best to squeeze his finger back, to let him know, in the only way I can, that no, I don’t wantthat, not yet.
“I’m so sorry this happened,” he says, his voice strained, muffled now, and that’s because he’s moved his mouth closer to my hand. When he finishes speaking, he presses his mouth against it, his warm lips on my knuckles, and I feel a shudder move through his body, feel the breath he exhales when he raises his head again. I feel something small and warm and wet track between my fingers, and I think, in that muddleheaded, slightly nonsensical way of half consciousness:Good thing I’m in a hospital. Good thing, because my heart just broke in two.
I don’t know if I fade out again, don’t know if time passes in silence or only in this drugged sleep, but when I register noise again it’s still only Alex I hear, that same soft, low voice. Alex’s hospital voice, I guess, and it’s beautiful. Beautiful and terrible, all atthe same time.
“When you get out of here, Greer, I’ll find us a place to stay, the two of us. Somewhere close to here, so it’ll be easy to go to work. I’ll—” He breaks off, a pause while he strokes the skin along my arm, stopping when his finger meets the limit of the new, stiff cast that covers almost to my elbow. “I’ll get a car, and I can take you back and forth, because the cut on your leg, I don’t...” He doesn’t finish that thought, only trails off and starts again. “And the showcase, I’m sure it’ll be fine; I’ll call Hiltunen tomorrow morning. You’ll graduate. We’ll make sureyou graduate.”
He talks, so softly like that, all through my feigned sleep, making promises and plans—how he’ll take care of me, how he’ll handle me, how he’ll shape his life to mine. And I know he means to make me feel better, stronger. I know he means to make me feel cared for, cherished. Iknow.
But right now, lying in this hospital bed, even my own damned eyelids not doing my bidding, all I can think is that these are the secret selves I never wanted Alex and me to be to each other: me in this cage, weak and trapped, and him outside—like everyone else who’s ever loved me—never wantingto let me out.
* * * *
“You’re very lucky, Greer,” says Dr. Farroukh, draping her stethoscope back over her neck, her eyes on me as her nurse comes around to the other side of the bed, rearranging the sheet and blanket that had been disrupted during her exam. It’s not necessary, really, for Dr. Farroukh to have come by; the doctor who’d treated me overnight has already been by once to check in and give the okay for work to start on my discharge papers, but Dr. Farroukh is the neurosurgeon who did my second surgery, and the one who’s overseen all my checkups and physical therapies since. Since it’s a Sunday morning, not even 10 a.m., I’m guessing this was a special trip—a call, perhaps, made at the insistence of my mom, who’d been begging nurses for her number last night.
“Yes,” I say. “I feel very lucky.”
“Still feeling a little woozy from the meds?” Her brow furrows, and I guess I wasn’t all that convincing with my tone.
“Just—um. Sore, I guess. All over.”On the inside of me.In my heart.
“I think they should keep her here another night,” says my mom, from a chair in the corner of the room. God knows how Alex got her to go even to the cafeteria overnight; maybe he shot her with a short-term tranquilizer dart or something. Since I’ve been awake this morning, she’s been like a hovercraft directly over my face. She’s only in the chair because it was hard for Dr. Farroukh to do her job with such limited access to my body. “Don’t you think they should keep her another night? Because I read something about brain bleeds, how they can show up daysafter a fall—”
Dr. Farroukh smiles at me first, a knowing commiseration that we’ve formed over years of our doctor-patient relationship, and then turns to my mom. “Very unlikely here. As Dr. Charles said last night, it’s pretty clear that the knock to the head was minimal.” She taps my cast, whisper soft, with the tip of her pencil. “That’s why she’s in this thing for a few weeks. Broke a bone, but also broke her fallsuccessfully.”
My mom wrings her hands, her eyes brimming with tears. Her liner looks spectacular, though. Maybe she got it tattooed on for herhalf birthday.
“I’m okay to go home today,” I tell the doctor, who turns back to me.
“I think so too. But I think we’ll want to do some extra physical therapy in the coming weeks. That soreness—it’s going to chase you for a while.”
