Because of me.
No matter how many times I remind them that I’ll be here when they get back, they’ve made no move to return to the road. Maybe they’ll change their minds once I’m discharged.
“I don’t suppose Dylan will stop by today,” I say. Dylan’s presence seems to bother Jess, but his visits help pass the time, and he usually has pretty interesting stories to share.
Jessie gets a weird look on her face. “No. I don’t suppose he will.”
He hasn’t been by lately, and I don’t know why. I’d ask, but I’m worried she already told me.
I hate that my short-term memory is basically useless. I still can’t remember the shooting at all, and the doctors say I probably never will, but I also can’t remember things Jessie or my therapists told me the day before. I can’t recall much of anything that happened in the months preceding the shooting.
This is what I do remember: Gabriel, the divorce, Jessie’s anger. I don’t remember all of it, but I remember enough to put together a fragmented account that is no less painful. I can also remember random, obscure details from almost twenty years ago, like the U2 Zooropa concert T-shirt I was wearing the night I met Jessie. I could say I remember those things like they happened yesterday, but the truth is it’s the things that happened yesterday that I can’t remember.
My brain is a work in progress, and my mind is a constantly changing and unsettling place to be.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JESSIE
I stop by the front desk to say hi to Erika, the daytime receptionist I’ve become friendly with since I spend so much time here.
“So a new visitor today,” she says.
“Really? Who?”
She glances at the visitor log and runs her finger down it until she comes to the most recent name. “Someone named Claire Canton signed in. Friend of yours?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know who that is.”
Why does that name ring a bell?
Dylan.
When I asked him if Daniel had a girlfriend, Dylan mentioned a woman named Claire but said we didn’t need to call her. What did he mean by that?
“Is she young? Old? Somewhere in between?” I ask nonchalantly.
“Close to your age, I guess. Frankly, she looks like you,” Erika says.
“Like me?”
“Enough that I thought it was you at first. Until she got closer.”
I vaguely remember seeing a woman with blond hair walking toward Daniel’s room as I was walking away from it. Why didn’t I pay more attention? “I think I might have passed her in the hall.”
“You probably did. I just sent her down to Daniel’s room.”
Well, this is all very interesting.
She must be a casual friend; otherwise, she would have come before now.
And it’s really none of my business.
I decide to run a few errands because the last thing I want is to pop back into Daniel’s room while Claire is there.
It might be awkward for them.
It might be awkward for me.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DANIEL
I open my eyes when the door creaks open, thinking Jessie forgot something.
But it’s not Jessie, it’s Claire.
Claire is here.
And I remember her. One day not long ago, a few memories of Claire clicked into place in my head like the tumblers of a lock. There’s a lot I still can’t remember about her, but I smile because there’s something about her that fills me with happiness.
Her visit feels significant, but the reason for that feeling remains just out of reach.
Tears fill her eyes.
“I’m okay. Don’t cry,” I say when she reaches my bedside.
“I’m not.” She sits down in the chair next to the bed and takes my hand in hers. “I’m so happy to see you.”
I give her hand a squeeze. “I’m happy to see you too.”
“I was going to text you, but it seemed so impersonal. I didn’t know if you were taking phone calls. I’ve been so worried.”
“I know.” The words are a lie. I have no idea why she would be worried, outside of the general concern most people have shown when they hear about my injury. Should I have asked someone to call her? “But I was very lucky.”
“How long will you be here?”
“About three more weeks. Then I’ll have outpatient therapy every day. I need help relearning some of my motor skills, and I have quite a bit of weakness on my left side. Recovery is going to be slow.”
“Are you in pain?”
“A little. Some days hurt more than others.”
“I’m so sorry about the reserve officer.”
I nod. “I am too.”
“Who’s taking care of you?”
“My parents are here every day. Dylan has even stopped by.”
A flicker of something I can’t identify passes over her face when I mention Dylan. “Oh, that’s good.”
“Jessie’s here too. I still had her listed as my emergency contact, and they called her when I was brought in. She was the first person I saw when I finally woke up.”
“That’s wonderful,” she says. She squeezes my hand hard and starts to cry.
I missed something there, but damn if I know what it is.
Did I tell her about Jessie?
“She’ll be back soon,” I say. The thought of Jess’s return calms me. I miss her when she’s gone.
Claire has this look on her face like that’s the best thing she’s ever heard.
“It means a lot that you came, Claire.” Maybe my memories of Claire will start to gel, just like the others. I might not remember everything that happened with her, but there was something we must have had that I lost.
“I had to. I had to see for myself that you were okay.” She leans over and kisses my forehead. “I’m going to leave so you can get some rest.”
She gives my hand a final squeeze, and I tell her good-bye.
“Take care, Daniel,” she says, and then she is gone.
I close my eyes and try to remember everything I can about Claire. The memories are hazy, but I catch a glimpse of her smile and hear snippets of her laugh. It’s disconcerting that I can’t recall more.
Something tells me that when I finally do it will hurt.
I’m watching the door for Jessie’s return. When she breezes through it half an hour later, I’m so worn out from the day’s events that all I want to do is sleep. Now that Jessie is back I can take a nap, knowing she’ll be here when I wake up.
“So that was Claire,” she says.
I panic for a moment, but I’m not sure why. “How do you know about Claire?”
“I don’t, really. The receptionist told me you had a visitor. And Dylan mentioned her once. Who is she?”
“She’s just a friend.”
“She looks like me.”
“Yes,” I say and close my eyes.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
JESSIE
Mimi and Jerry stop by in the evening a week later. They were here once already today, so I’m not sure why they’re back. I start to get an inkling when Daniel says he’s thirsty and asks me to please go find him a Coke. I linger in the hallway when I hear him start to speak.
“Amanda has already checked on it for me,” he says. Amanda is Daniel’s case manager. She’s our liaison if we have a question about insurance or benefits. “She’s been making calls and will get the ball rolling as soon as possible. She said a nurse will come every day. And the guys down at the station are going to set up a rotation so someone will always be available to stay with me at night and drive me to appointments. I won’t be alone, so you guys need to get back on the road and finish your trip.”
I take my time tracking down the can of Coke because I don’t want to walk back into the room while they’re still discussing the nurse. Hiring his own nurse is Daniel’s way of trying to gain som
e control over his life, but I also know him well enough to know that he’ll hate having a stranger watching over him in his own home. But someone has to be there. The staff has cautioned both of us repeatedly about the risk of him falling. He’ll have outpatient therapy every day, and he won’t be cleared to drive a car until he can pass a special driving test. He’ll need someone to drive him to his appointments and run his errands.
I must not have waited long enough because when I breeze back into Daniel’s room with the can of pop, everyone stops talking abruptly. I pretend to be clueless, bustling about and pouring the Coke into a glass of ice. “Here you go,” I say, handing it to Daniel.
He smiles and takes a big drink. “Thanks.”
“I think I’ll head home. I’m feeling a little tired.” Before anyone can protest, I hug Mimi and give Jerry a wave. After gathering up my things, I hurry from the room. “I’ll see you in the morning, Daniel,” I say over my shoulder.
I’m back so early the next day that Daniel isn’t even awake yet. I perch on the side of his bed, and when he finally opens his eyes, I say what I’ve spent half the night going over in my head when I couldn’t sleep.
“I overheard you talking to your parents. I don’t want you to hire a nurse. I want to go home with you so that I can help you.”
“I can’t ask you to do more,” he says, his voice groggy from sleep. “Not after all you’ve done for me already. You can’t tell me this hasn’t sucked. You must be bored out of your mind and every bit as sick and tired of these four walls as I am.”
“I wouldn’t have offered if it was something I didn’t want to do.”
He closes his eyes and doesn’t say anything. I stare at the large round clock on the wall and watch as the second hand slowly ticks on by.
“Why do you want to do this? That’s what I don’t understand.”
“Maybe you don’t remember everything that happened to our marriage after Gabriel died, but there were so many things I should have done differently. It’s my fault we split up. You never stopped trying to make the marriage work, but I pushed you away until you finally let go. I’m ashamed of the way I treated you, and I will forever carry the guilt associated with the things I said and did. My remorse is immeasurable. I was thinking we could start fresh. Try to turn back the clock and get back to a time when we were happy together.” My voice catches on the last word. “If you’re not interested in something like that, I’ll understand. I’ll still help you, but we don’t have to discuss any of the other stuff. I’d just be there to take care of you.”
Finally he says, “No one has taken better care of me since I got shot than you have, Jess.”
My eyes fill with tears.
“I don’t know about the other things. Maybe we could take it slow and just see what happens.”
“We can do whatever you want,” I promise.
“Then I’d like you to come home with me.”
Daniel’s recovery, the rebuilding of our relationship. All the things we’ll have to conquer seem so daunting, and none of them will be easy.
But I remind myself that the things that are worth fighting for rarely are.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DANIEL
I’m so ready to leave this hospital I can’t stand it. All I want is to sleep in my own bed, watch my own TV, and do what I want, when I want. Jessie is making the rounds, saying good-bye to the nurses and other staff. It takes twenty minutes because they all love her. When she finally comes back into the room, I stand, but I do it too quickly and sway a bit. Jessie notices.
“I’ll pull up the car,” she says.
“I can walk to the car.” After grabbing my bags, I head for the door, and her footsteps echo quietly as we walk down the long hallway and out into the sunlight and fresh air.
Jessie leads me to a small white Honda.
“What happened to the Pathfinder?” I ask.
“I sold it.”
“Why?”
She presses the button for the trunk, and I place my bags inside. “I didn’t need all that room anymore.”
After we buried Gabriel, I removed the car seats from both of our cars and stored them in the garage. Maybe that wasn’t enough because it seems that Jessie got rid of every piece of the life we built together. Good-bye child, husband, house, car. Now she’s a single woman living in an apartment and driving a two-door coupe.
Jess pulls into my driveway and parks in front of the garage. “I remember the code,” I say somewhat triumphantly as I rattle it off. It had come to me a few days ago, very suddenly as some of my memories do. I have no doubt Jess is ticking off imaginary boxes for everything I can now recount.
The way I am.
“Yes, that was the code,” she says. “But I changed it.”
“Why?”
“When Dylan and I came to your house to get your clothes, the code he punched in didn’t work, which means you changed it from the one you’d given him. You should have seen his face when he realized he could no longer let himself into your house. Do you remember why you changed it?”
I thought I was doing so well by remembering the code, but I’ll be damned if I can come up with why I would have changed it in the first place. I rifle through my shitty short-term memory, trying to recall the details. My frustration mounts. I think it had something to do with Dylan and Claire, but that’s all I can come up with. Finally I shrug. “I don’t know why I changed it.”
“Dylan doesn’t know this code. I’ll leave it up to you whether you want to give it to him or not.”
In the garage, my eyes are drawn to the motorcycle parked next to my car. Despite what Jess said about me riding again someday, I’m unable to fathom that possibility. Sometimes I can’t even walk straight. But there are memories floating around about this motorcycle, all of them good. Jess waits patiently as I stand beside the bike, and when I finally snap out of it, she opens the door that leads from the garage into the kitchen.
Once we’re inside, she unpacks my bags and starts a load of laundry. I’ve been gone so long that I feel like a guest in my own home. I wander through the rooms and find Jess in the spare bedroom where I keep my treadmill and weight bench, along with other assorted boxes that I never bothered to unpack when I moved out of my old house and into this one.
She’s standing in front of the empty closet. “Do you have some extra hangers?” she asks.
“You don’t have to put your clothes in here. You’re welcome to hang them with mine.”
“I don’t want them to be in your way. This is fine.”
“I’m sure there are extra hangers in my closet. Help yourself.” Before I leave the room, I turn and say, “So…I only have one bed.”
“The couch is fine.”
“You don’t have to sleep on the couch. I have a very comfortable king-size bed, and there’s no reason for you not to sleep in it with me.”
“I don’t mind.”
The practical side of me says that it’s stupid for us not to share a bed, especially since we’ve been sleeping together since the early nineties. But I won’t push it.
“All right.”
The house is clean and I noticed when we pulled into the driveway that the yard had been recently mowed. “Did you mow the lawn?” I ask. “And clean the house?”
“I hired someone to take care of the lawn. Nice kid. Drives a truck and brings his own mower. I cleaned yesterday after I left the hospital.”
“You thought of everything.” I sit down on the couch and literally twiddle my thumbs.
Jess sits down beside me. “Is everything okay?”
“I have no idea what to do with myself.”
“If you’re going stir-crazy, we could go out dinner. What about Bella Cucina? You love that place.”
“I don’t want to go out.”
“But you love Italian food.”
I could explain to Jess that I don’t feel comfortable going out in the real worl
d. Though I hated the confines of the hospital, I’m not quite ready to leave the house yet. We just got here, and I need time a little more time to get used to a different environment.
“I’d rather you cook for me. I like your cooking better.” I’m pretty sure that statement is true. I seem to remember Jess being a great cook.
“Okay,” she says, trying her best to placate me. “I’d love to cook for you. Is there anything special you want?”
“If you remember what any of my favorites are, you can choose one of them.”
“I remember. I’ll make a list and go to the store.”
“Take my wallet. It’s on the counter in the kitchen.”
Before she leaves, she clicks on the TV, and the whole time she’s gone I sit on the couch because nothing seems pressing enough to make me get up from it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JESSIE
A few days later when I’m in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher, I hear the crash. The sound came from the living room, and when I round the corner I see Daniel sprawled out on the floor next to the coffee table.
“Daniel!”
He isn’t moving.
When I crouch down next to him, his eyes are wide with confusion.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Just lost my balance,” he mumbles.
“Did you hit your head?”
“No. I’m fine.” His breath is coming in short, staccato bursts, as if the wind has been knocked out of him and he’s trying to find his natural rhythm.
“Take slow, deep breaths, okay?”
I stroke his head as he closes his eyes and nods. There’s something so vulnerable, almost pathetic, about Daniel right now. He’s been doing well, and a setback like this, no matter how minor, has probably rattled him a bit.