Perched on top of my jewelry box is a stuffed puffer fish.
I don’t breathe. I feel as though the world shuts off around me.
When I suck in air again, the spell breaks. I hear cars outside the window. I smell the cleaning supplies that we doused the apartment in last night. And I see the fish, fragile and brittle and old and beautiful.
Trembling, I reach out and touch a spine. It’s pliable under my finger and very real. I draw my hand back. I stare at it, at its puckered lips and unblinking eyes.
Maybe my mother put it here. There were several weeks between when I fell into the coma and when she checked into the hospital. She could have found this somewhere, a yard sale, a store that sells oddities, eBay, and placed it here for me to find when I woke up. It would be like her to leave me a present. She likes to surprise me with things she thinks I’ll like. One morning, when I was around fifteen, I woke up to discover an entire bag of sea glass on my plate for breakfast, in lieu of toast. I used it to make a mosaic mirror frame. It hangs in Mom’s bedroom. I could bring the mirror to the hospital, I think, except I don’t think she’d like to look in the mirror right now. It’ll stay here.
I’m aware that my thoughts are spinning, spiraling. I can’t stop them.
I need to get to the hospital, to ask Mom about the puffer fish. She must have put it here, but how would it enter my dream if she bought it after the car accident? Maybe it was here before, and the accident had wiped the memory away. It had wiped away the memory of the crash itself. Who knows what else I’ve forgotten?
I comb through the apartment, looking for other differences. I find minute ones: different books on Mom’s bedside table, a beige sweater I’ve never seen, new magazines...all things easily explained by the weeks I was in the coma. I return to the puffer fish.
There’s a knock on my door.
William.
Grabbing a blanket off my bed, I wrap it around me and waddle to the door. I open it, but I can’t make myself smile. “Hi.”
“Are you all right?” He looks perfect, impeccable in his scrubs.
“Just...didn’t sleep well,” I tell him. “Worried about my mother. Overslept. I’m not dressed yet. Sorry.”
“Sure. I understand.” But he looks worried now. I wish I could explain. I definitely cannotexplain. He comes inside, and I shut the door behind him.
I want to be with Mom now. I have to know if...Stop,I tell myself. The fish had to be from Mom. I was in a coma. Of course I was. Every doctor in the hospital thinks so. There are X-rays and photos and hospital records. Plus William talked to me while I was in my coma. I’d momentarily forgotten that. “What did you talk to me about? When I was in a coma. What did you say?”
“Described things in the hospital. Read to you sometimes. Just a visit or two a day, so you’d know someone was out here. You had friends that stopped by, too. Coworkers. Especially in the beginning.” He pauses. “Do you want coffee? I was going to grab some coffee. There’s a Peet’s Coffee on the corner of Hempsted and Latoya.”
“Okay. Yes. Thanks.”
He leans forward as if to kiss me, but I feel as if my brain is mired in sludge and I don’t react fast enough. His lips brush my cheek. He withdraws. We look at each other for a moment. My smile is strained, and I’m certain he can tell, though that doesn’t register in his face. The silence grows awkward.
“I’ll fetch the coffee,” he says.
“I’ll shower,” I say simultaneously.
I shower in record time and am dressed and staring again at the puffer fish by the time he returns. He rings the doorbell, and I let him in again. “Can we drink it in the car?” I ask.
“Of course.”
I’m silent on the drive, pretending that sipping the coffee takes all my concentration. My heart, though, is beating fast as a hummingbird’s wings. At every stop sign and traffic light, William shoots glances at me. His forehead wrinkles as he looks at me, and several times he seems on the verge of speaking but stops himself. I feel vaguely guilty for making the drive so uncomfortable, but all I can think about is Lost.
One very important facet of Lost.
No one leaves Lost. Not without the Missing Man. Even the dead don’t leave.
If it’s real... The hope hurts so much that I don’t complete the thought.
At the hospital, I sign in at the front desk, and then I ride the elevator up with William. He pushes the button for seven—he has lockers there with spare scrubs for days when he’s in the hospital twenty-four hours. “Lauren...” he begins. He sounds unhappy.
“I’m only worried about my mother,” I lie. “Really. I slept terribly.”
He believes me. The circles under my eyes must be even darker than I thought they were. The elevator doors open, and I manage to smile at him as he exits. The instant the doors shut, I drop the smile, and I pace. The elevator rises. I know I’m clinging to an impossible hope. I’m supposed to be reconciled to my mom’s fate. I thought I had come to terms with it. But here I am, hoping for the impossible. It is far, far more likely that I simply forgot the puffer fish and it entered my subconscious and joined my coma dream.
The elevator reaches Mom’s floor. I wave to the nurses, who jot down my name on the visitors register. I think that this is the first time they’ve seen me in my own clothes. I speed to Mom’s room. I want to burst in with my question. But I check myself at the door. I tiptoe inside.
