Here In This Place

An Honors Paper for the Department of English

By Sarah Jane Weill

Bowdoin College, 2018

©2018 Sarah Jane Weill

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Preface

She emerged from the revolving door, left hand pushing against the glass. She wore a

long grey coat buttoned nearly to her neck and tall black rain boots. Her hair was loose, falling

over her shoulders in careful waves. Some of it gathered too close to her face. Yet she made no

real effort to brush away the chunks of dark hair, as if she couldn’t decide how much she wanted

to hide.

A shapeless, deep leather bag dangled from her arm. Black. Its handle: a thick braid of

interlocking silver chains.

She should’ve picked something warmer for her feet. After walking through grimy

puddles of December rain, she shivered in the lobby. The tips of her toes: entirely numb.

All at once the noise, the heat folded in on her. Inside, people hurried: some out, others

in. She saw them all and hoped they wouldn’t notice her, notice the way she gripped her bag,

making sure it stayed closed. She told herself to breathe, just as she had practiced.

She approached the security desk with her ID in hand. Her driver’s license picture was

almost ten years old. During the past decade she had gained and lost weight, repeatedly. This

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year she let her hair grow out, ditched the bangs. But she still resembled her digitized double. As

she walked, she held the card tight. Its edges left marks on her palm.

For a moment she felt the unusual weight of her bag pull on her forearm and her stomach

was in her throat. She had never once had her bag searched here: not a typical hospital policy.

The security guard barely looked up to confirm her face mirrored the one on the driver’s

license. He offered her a half smile and asked where she was off to: cardiology. As she

rehearsed. He nodded his head to the right and told her the cardiology wing was that way, on the

third floor.

She didn’t need directions. Beyond the security desk she took a left, exited the crowded

lobby. The hallway allowed her more privacy. There weren’t as many eyes watching. She let her

bag dangle farther away than before.

She had paced atop the cheap white tile so often that now muscle memory took over. As

she navigated she didn’t have to think: left, right or straight ahead. She felt almost comfortable

with the way the harsh, fluorescent light caught in the tile, giving the interior of the whole

hospital an eerie, timeless glow. She no longer was shocked by the sterile taste of the air. She

walked these halls even in her dreams.

She arrived at her destination, poised.

It hadn’t occurred to her that people might scream. Afterwards she would realize her

stupidity. A scream, shrill and primal, was a natural reaction for anyone at the opposite end of a

readied firearm. Yet somehow, whenever she visualized how this moment would unfold there

was always silence, a sort of calm. She needed to concentrate, after all. Maybe it was arrogant, or

even negligent, but she expected everything to just stop: to wait for her to make her move.

She didn’t expect retaliation.

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Ella

“It’s only weird if it doesn’t work,” Ella’s father said, lowering the window shade just so,

the metal material crinkling as it unfolded.

Ella rolled her eyes. Her father’s mantra was always delivered without sarcasm. He

believed his superstitions worked. The half closed window shade; the same exact meal; his royal

blue jersey with a gaping hole under his right armpit from the night he drunkenly tried to undress

himself; his matching New York Rangers hat; the television volume turned up to exactly 56.

Tonight the energy in the room, according to her father, was just right.

“Chips?” her father offered. Ella took a handful. The puck dropped and the first lines

started to skate. The audience, an endless stretch of electric blue, cheered furiously. And so did

Ella’s father next to her.

“They look good don’t they?”

“Dad, the game just started.”

“But already, they look good, come on admit it. Our boys look good.”

“You don’t want to jinx anything,” Ella teased.

“I’m not jinxing, I’m admiring.”

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“Fine, okay they look good.”

“That’s my girl. Appreciates good hockey.” Her father chewed a slice of cafeteria pizza

as he praised his daughter, never taking his eyes off the screen.

Her father wore a dull silver band around his left ring finger. Ella often saw that every

once in a while he felt for the ring with his thumb. She knew he did so only when he needed to

think, when he needed motivation.

Like now: a Rangers penalty. Slashing. Down a man, the four remaining players tried to

take a defensive shape: an awkward diamond of sorts. They shifted with each opposing pass.

They were smart enough to keep from chasing the puck. A shot: hard. A defender dove and let

the black circle rebound off his shin. Her father winced.

Or like before, when her parents sat with Ella in her pediatrician’s office six years ago,

Ella nearly too big to rest on her mother’s lap. Her mother kept shifting her from leg to leg,

trying to evenly distribute the weight of her firstborn.

Leukemia. They had heard stories of other sons and daughters sick and dying from it. All

fables though: distant and cautionary. Now, a reality. They went through the motions of

discovery: shock, denial, anger, forced acceptance. They had learned the rules of illness, how to

play this particular game.

Ella watched now as her father felt for his wedding ring, his eyes focused on the moving

skaters. She always noticed when he toyed with it; she admired the habit. Especially since her

mother had removed her matching band from her own finger before the divorce was even

finalized. Before she had even moved out of the apartment. That was almost four years ago now,

but it was a detail Ella remembered. If anything, because her father had held true to all of his tics,

his rituals, while her mother in her new life abandoned all signs of who she used to be.

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There was ritual in medicine, too. Doctors visited every morning and evening. Medicine

ingested at the same exact time: little white pills delivered in flimsy paper cups by the same

hands. Chemotherapy in the same room: absorbed while sitting in the same cracked pleather

chair. Her body shivering under the same scratchy, beige blanket. Her father making the same

jokes, failing over and over again to help the time pass. Clockwork.

Her father called them superstitions. Her mother stressed positivity meditation, which she

read about in books with saccharine sounding titles. Either way, Ella was trained to rely on more

than just medicine.

Introduced into her life soon after she started her first round of treatment, the

superstitions were a way to distract Ella from the shifting world around her. New faces, daunting

terminology, days of pain and nausea. She no longer lived in simplicity; no more time spent

finger-painting and crunching on animal crackers. It was a lot at once. And she didn’t understand

any of it.

But hockey she knew. Diagnosed at only six years old and her father’s rituals were

already part of her routine. It was his idea to translate treatment into superstition.

Ella wore a striped knit cap. Navy, turquoise, white and silver lines repeated in a random

order around her head. When she was cold, she pulled it down as far as she could so that the

wool covered the tips of her ears. Her mother said the cap bought out the blue in her eyes.

Nicole, her sister, said it was ugly. Her grandmother knitted it for her when her hair had started

to fall out in thick, dead chunks. Ella’s mother wouldn’t let her preemptively shave her head. It

was too melodramatic for a child, she reasoned. So Ella wore the cap, hid her remaining hair and

forced herself to like the accessory.

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On game nights her father always told her it was the perfect thing to wear. The navy, he

argued, was the same shade as the Rangers’ home jerseys. He applauded his daughter’s spirit.

Her loyalty to their team. It was a nice gesture, but she knew he was just trying to distract her

from the obvious.

As the 2:00 minutes on the clock expired her father smiled. No goal. Penalty over. The

Blueshirts’ defense was solid, impenetrable. It was the sign of good coaching, of dedicated

players.

“That was some damn good hockey,” he assessed.

“Yup,” Ella responded. Despite her intentionally apathetic tone, she did actually agree.

After all these years watching games alongside her father, Ella couldn’t help but feel dizzy with

excitement. Her father’s belief was contagious.

*

Cold hands woke her. They shook her, not as gently as they should. The smell of latex, of

rubbing alcohol made her whole body constrict. She opened her eyes to the light blinking its

greeting: wake up! The windows revealed a world mostly still smothered in black: only a thin

strip of gold along the horizon. Not quite dawn. The blue rubber hands belonged to a nurse

carrying a bloated bag of IV fluids. This one popped her chewing gum loudly to keep herself

awake.

“Sorry, sweetie. Can you stretch out your arm for me?” Ella complied without even

thinking. “Good, just like that. Now make a fist. Squeeze tight.”

The prick of the needle was small, familiar.

When the nurse left, Ella was restless. The merry-go-round rhythm of her mind was

suddenly at work. She had never learned how to fall back to sleep after being woken so abruptly.

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There was empty space in the chair where her father had been sitting. The window shade

was still drawn just so. He must have left after she fell asleep, sometime after the postgame

discussion had ended.

An overtime loss always tasted bitter. The team worked so hard, weaving in and out of

opponent lines, finding little pockets of open net to shoot towards, diving to stop the puck from

finding the back of its own net.

Ella’s father never took losing well. He would grow quiet, squinting at the television

screen as if not sure whether he could trust it. Then he would shake his head. Sometimes if the

inevitability of the loss was evident throughout the game, he would roll his eyes, huffing. And

always, once the appropriate amount of time had passed, he would lecture his daughter about the

pitfalls of defensive breakdowns and the importance of an aggressive yet calculated offensive

powerplay. He would speak as if she had been one of the skaters suited up in blue.

Ella stared up at the ceiling. The light kept flickering. The bulb, industrial and too bright,

really did need replacing. It had been almost a week now since she first noticed it. Head tilted

upwards, she examined a crack in the white stucco. It was thin, almost invisible. Jagged, it ran

unevenly, like a scratch left by a long, sharp fingernail. She traced its pathway back and forth,

back and forth, her mind drifting. She did this every day. It was a way to pass time.

She thought about what her sister was doing without her, as she did often. In a few hours

Nicole would be getting ready for school, their mother slathering jam on toast, eggs frying in a

pan. Ella imagined the sound of the sizzle, the smell of popping oil.

Ella, meanwhile, wanted to sit at a desk and learn too. She wanted to have a collection of

freshly sharpened pencils, notebooks with blank pages ready to be filled. She wanted to ask

questions, to give answers. To be wrong sometimes and to understand what it took to be correct.

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She wanted to be frustrated trying to work out even the simplest of algebra equations, to be

fascinated tearing through book after book. Although she had no supporting evidence, Ella was

convinced in another life she would’ve been intelligent, the top of her class. If anything because

she would put the work in: she would understand that there were other lives that would be much

worse to live.

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Owen

He had said that he wanted to go to Israel. To go to Jerusalem and walk upon layers and

layers of history and myth. To go to Tel Aviv and wade through the Mediterranean, fall in love

with the city. To go to the Golan Heights and peer at Syria, in awe and terror of the violence that

once scarred those fields. To eat plates of falafel and baklava, letting honey coat his fingers. To

wander and just listen to the Hebrew in teeming, sweaty markets: to drown in its poetry.

He was nearly 25, had already dropped out of graduate school, and was unsure how his

parents would handle his request. To Owen’s surprise they helped him find a cheap plane ticket,

asked if he needed to borrow any suitcases. They agreed a trip might help him. A month, maybe

more, in Israel might do him some good. Clear his head, give him perspective.

Israel. It was a nice thought: the heat, the sand, the sun. He chose it because of Sasha.

She had always said it was her favorite place in the entire world. She had promised to take him

there. At first he had been terrified. It was a country too dramatic, too complicated for a vacation,

he assumed. But the more they had talked about it, over large glasses of merlot late at night, the

more intrigued he became. And now with the trip impossible after the car accident, the

anticipation actually hurt him.

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Owen couldn’t guess when he would be able to board a plane and head to the Middle

East. His foreseeable future consisted of just this: lying in his hospital bed, bored with getting

better.

*

Healing hurt. Owen learned quickly that pain didn’t cease when the screws were in place

and the plaster started to dry around his leg. It didn’t even fade. It persisted: the body refused to

let him forget the trauma. And that was what bothered him: the constant reminder that even if he

was healing, he wasn’t yet healed.

At least the doctors finally unwired his jaw. No more clear, tasteless liquids. He could

sound out full, intelligible words instead of just grunt. To lick his cracked, aching lips. He had no

need for the dry-erase board.

Owen had told his parents, the doctors, the police he hadn’t seen the car coming. An

SUV, black and recently washed, took the turn too quick. It was just after 6:00 at night. There

had been little light in the sky, just a ribbon of yellowish orange receding behind the horizon.

Owen had been wearing his grey Dartmouth hoodie, dark shorts. Nothing to distinguish him

from the winding blur of the black road. Biking along he hadn’t seen the car, as he reported over

and over again. And he wasn’t lying.

Owen had heard the car.

Of course he had heard that roaring monster of a car. There was no way not to; he never

biked with headphones in, music blasting. It wasn’t safe. No, that night it was just Owen, the

road and the sound of leaves rattling in the late October wind.

So he truly did hear the drone of the engine as it neared his back. He could almost feel

the heat of it on his cycling legs. And he knew he should pull off the pavement, maybe hop off

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his bike, wait for it to pass. This was a twisting, steep part of the road. Two cars could barely

drive by each other at the same time here. It wasn’t safe.

But he had dropped out of graduate school. He wasn’t going to Israel or even back to

L.A. for that matter. He was unemployed. And Sasha had stopped calling. Stopped texting.

Removed Facebook pictures of the two of them holding hands, kissing. Erased him just like she

would an awkward sentence in one of her endless research papers. Just kept relentlessly pressing

delete, delete, delete.

And in a moment of ugly lucidity Owen had swerved slightly left, into the SUV’s path,

away from safety.

As soon as he was in stable condition, Owen was transferred to Emerson Memorial

because of his aunt Kate. She made some calls, always screaming at whomever was on the other

end of the phone. She was waiting in his new, private room when he first arrived. A stack of

DVDs, from her personal collection, piled high on his bedside table for when he had the energy

to focus on something. She had even gotten him a card, cheesy and wholly out of character. And

as soon as his parents left the room that first night, she came close to his face and asked him

what the hell he had been thinking.

He had always been her favorite.

But he didn’t tell her what happened that night on his bicycle. He wouldn’t even know

what to say had he tried.

Besides, his mouth was wired shut.

They had to reset both his leg and his jaw. His punctured lung was saved, the broken rib

removed. Fifteen stitches were sewn along the length of his brow.

*

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Lying here in this bed, Owen kept arguing with himself that Sasha would want to know

what happened to him. That after almost five years together she still cared enough. And now that

his jaw was unwired he could tell her. Maybe the news would change things. Maybe she would

ask him to come home.

Suddenly his phone was unlocked and Owen was scrolling through his contacts. He

wasn’t thinking, just moving. He pressed call and imagined all of the ways in which this

conversation would go well.

It was late in the afternoon. Back out west, she should’ve been in what had been their

apartment: taking a break from her work, making herself a sandwich on whole-wheat. Sasha had

kept the keys to their L.A. apartment, forcing Owen to return to his parents in Westchester.

Sasha’s pre-recorded voicemail greeted him. He was struck by the tone of her voice: so

serious, formal. Somehow he couldn’t remember if her voice had always sounded this way.

Owen had liked to think it had been softer, sugary.

He hung up immediately without leaving a message. She probably saw his number

illuminate the screen anyway. He imagined her, glancing at his name, shaking her head with pity.

*

His aunt Kate, dressed in salmon pink scrubs, her hair in disarray, entered without

knocking. 8:33 in the morning and he could’ve been sleeping, reading, finally getting the rest he

was advised to take: she didn’t care. She brought a Coke Zero and an over-buttered cafeteria

croissant with her. Breakfast. She pulled the chair sitting below the window close to his bed and

fell into it. She unclasped her red hair and opened her soda. She sighed over the fizz.

Owen glanced at his cell phone. Since yesterday afternoon it had been just sitting there

beside him: silent. Knowing his aunt Kate would disapprove, he decided not to tell her what he

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did. She despised his ex-girlfriend. And yet, he was sure she still would figure out that he had

called Sasha. That maybe she would read it in the way he was lying in bed: ready to pounce at

the first buzz he heard.

“Good morning,” Owen quipped, aware that both he and his aunt Kate clearly disagreed

with the adjective good.

“Hey there, kiddo.” Her tone matched his, naturally. She took a long sip from the plastic

bottle, wiped her lips with the back of her hand.

“How long have you been up?”

“Since three.”

“A delivery?”

“Yup. C-section.” She took out the croissant and tore off one of its horns.

“And how’d it go? Parents weeping with joy?”

“Aren’t they always?”

Owen’s aunt Kate was a lauded neonatal specialist. Interviews she gave in major medical

journals were framed in his grandparents’ apartment. Her office was cluttered with gilded awards

and plaques. She was the most successful person he had ever met, and as much as Owen loved

his aunt, he resented her for it.

Today her eyes appeared swollen. Closer to her, Owen could now see her hair was damp

with sweat. She ate absentmindedly, not looking at her food as she ripped it to pieces. Instead she

was staring at her nephew, trying to find some sort of distraction, he imagined.

“What happened?”

His aunt Kate paused. She laced her hands together, squeezed until the skin of her

knuckles blanched. This wasn’t his aunt Kate who shared his sense of sarcasm, his dark

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morbidity. This wasn’t the woman who came to his bedside after the accident and called him a

fucking idiot.

“Nothing.”

“I don’t believe you,” he taunted.

“Well that’s too bad. Because nothing happened.” She crammed the last piece of flaking

pastry into her mouth, practically swallowing the chunk whole.

“Come on, aunt Kate, you can tell me.”

“Kid, enough,” she declared. “Take a hint. Pick a new topic.”

The morning sunlight pooling into the room caught in her square diamond studs. The

reflecting light was mesmerizing. It distracted Owen as he struggled for something to say.

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Lydia

She stood at the mirror’s edge, waiting for feedback. Lydia was given back to herself

three times over: each image tilted at a slightly different angle, showing her just a little bit more

and more. She had no escape. She had to look, had to decide.

There was something off about this one, Lydia knew almost instantly. Not enough

beading, maybe. But the last one had too much beading: sparkled furiously. Lydia took another

sip of her champagne, held the glass to her lips a few seconds longer this time.

It wasn’t about the romance, the nostalgia. She didn’t believe in all that anymore:

carriage rides into the sunset, driving off into happiness. She wasn’t sure if she ever really

believed in it.

She hated all the questions. Too many questions. How did you meet? How did he

propose? Did you cry? First of all, there was no he. There was a she, and they were already

married. And was Lydia who had proposed. But she couldn’t say all of that. Because then she

would get some confused looks, maybe even be kicked out of the store. Appointment over. No

dress. The day ruined.

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No, Lydia started spending her Saturday mornings at bridal shops for something else. It

was more of a risk.

“That looks just darling on you,” the attendant trilled, dragging out the “A” in darling.

Brittany had her blonde hair coiled so tightly on top of her head; Lydia could only imagine the

headache keeping her alert throughout the day. Her lips were coated in a bright red. The color of

the thin stripes curled around candy cane sticks.

“You think?” Lydia placed her hands up high on her sides. She let them drop: tracking

along her outline from the rungs of her ribs to the sharp point of her hips. She liked the way the

fabric slipped beneath her fingers.

“Of course! You have such a cute little figure; that cut really shows you off. I think it’s

perfect. But tell me, how do you feel in it?”

For everyone else, it was all about the feeling.

“There’s something, I don’t know, off about it. I guess I don’t like the beading. I think.”

“Honey, if you aren’t sure, you aren’t sure. Trust me, there are plenty more dresses for

you to try on. Don’t worry, you’ll find the right one.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

“Now tell me, how do you feel about lace?”

“Lace?”

“I’m gonna go pull you a dress with less beading, more lace. Similar cut though. I really

think this cut is working for you.”

And off she went. No reply necessary.

Lydia’s real dress had been all lace: a column dress with a deep neckline. Hand stitched.

Vintage. No beading, just a thin, off-white ribbon knotted tight around her waist.

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When Brittany returned with the lace option, Lydia felt something unhinge. This was

what she was trying to avoid. She was trying to stop crashing into her memories.

*

They had liked Harper for a girl. Naomi had suggested it, her body bent over a baby

name book, one of the ones with a yellow spine and rattles and pacifiers doodled all over the

cover. She was moisturizing her cracked hands as she read: taking her time to massage each

knuckle and divot between her fingers thoroughly. They kept the apartment cold, even in winter.

Naomi would always rather be swathed in a sweater than sweating in a sports bra. In turn her

skin was always so dry. The backs of her hands often bled.

Lydia remembered breathing in the smell of her wife’s lavender hand cream as she let the

name of their daughter settle on her tongue.

Both of them had always wanted a daughter: Lydia because she had a great relationship

with her mother, Naomi because she hadn’t. It was something they discovered on one of their

first dates. It was a Friday, early evening. They were sitting in Central Park next to a new mother

with her baby wrapped in pink in a stroller. When the mother left suddenly the conversation had

switched to daughters, mothers, and the general ugliness of the color pink. It was one of the first

things the two really had in common. Naomi was an environmental lawyer. Lydia had just left

her job at an art gallery down in Chelsea. The idea of daughters bonded them, in ways neither

would admit to until much later, when they both felt confident in the prospect of a joint future.

Now it all came back to her slow and lazy, like the drips of a broken faucet. Lydia would

be standing at the kitchen sink scrubbing crust off of cheap china and slip back into the waiting

room. She would be navigating crowded sidewalks and step forward into those sterilized, blank

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hallways. Or she would be standing here at the window and stare through the plastic incubator

lid at her daughter struggling to breathe.

Lydia stood, nose inches from the glass, the mug of tea in her hands untouched. Her

exhalations left a layer of fog on the otherwise clean surface. She was in old sweatpants, gray

and ripped at the hems. Her auburn hair: a tangled mess of ringlets. A wisp of steam twirled

above her mug of tea.

Saturdays were hard. At least at work she had crafted games to trick her mind into

thinking other thoughts. She would stare at the paintings, for minutes at a time, and trace out the

stories in each one. The landscapes were her favorites. She would picture herself on the canvas:

tiny and colorful as a creature of oil. Her two-dimensional avatar would race across empty

valleys, climb impossible indigo mountains, jet away on a motorboat: a stream of white froth left

trailing behind. She liked her avatar to test her limits. To go places she never will.

But then the gallery doors would lock. Lydia would leave, her painted worlds stayed

behind.

Left exposed on the weekends, grief lunged at her. It sank its teeth into her heart,

poisoning her bloodstream. It left Lydia feeling paralyzed, unable to move or think. Unable to

drink her tea.

At first Naomi had suggested staying active. Living.

“We can’t just sit, here, wishing we were dead too.” Naomi always kept her fingers

twitching, legs kicking. Lydia used to joke that in a past life she had to have been a shark.

Their activities of course were limited: a walk in the park, a matinee movie, going to the

diner for gritty black coffee and monstrous slices of chocolate cake. As they crossed days off

their calendar, the urge to move diminished. Walks lasted maybe fifteen minutes before they

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rushed to the nearest subway station or hailed a cab. Movies, they argued, were an unnecessary

luxury. Stale cookies were within reach in the kitchen cabinets.

Neighbors brought cooked meals, offered their condolences. Friends came to stay hours

at a time, until the minimal conversation became unbearable. No one knew what to say because

they couldn’t ask the questions they wanted. Lydia would always close the door behind them

feeling the pressure of oncoming tears.

Mostly now she lingered on the moments that still felt significant. She thought often

about the day Harper was diagnosed.

“It’s called omphalocele. Do you see that?” Naomi’s doctor, a tall woman with fiery hair

and high cheekbones, had pressed her finger to the ultrasound monitor. Her nail was chipped, the

edge of it rough and uneven. For a moment Lydia had held that detail against the doctor; she

didn’t even take the time to polish her own nails. The doctor had outlined a small, amorphous

thing: a lopsided lump resting atop their daughter’s stomach. Lydia knew it wasn’t an arm or a

leg. But that was all she had been certain of as she examined it. “It’s a very rare condition.”

“Is it serious? Will she be okay?” Naomi, again, had found the words that Lydia couldn’t.

“Well, you see that there,” she had outlined the blob once more, even slower this time.

“That’s a sac growing outwards through the fetus’ navel.”

“A sac?” The doctor had nodded, facing the screen instead of her patients.

“Inside of it are the fetus’ organs. It’s hard to tell just by looking at the ultrasound but

most likely the sac contains the fetus’ intestines, liver and stomach.”

“And what causes this?” Naomi asked.

And as she listened, Lydia had been certain a part of her would never leave this room.

She felt her heart seize. It felt as though it might explode, break free from its cage of skin and

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bone. Sounds had faded away. She noticed the plastic model on the shelf behind Naomi’s doctor:

a healthy fetus tucked comfortably in the womb. It was the right color, size, shape. She had

wondered briefly, if it were real, how it might walk, talk, think. But it was a mockery. She had

wanted to smash it, to feel the plastic of its stiff, contrived limbs break beneath her feet.

Lydia also thought about smaller moments. The baby shower their friends threw for

them: their dining room table concealed by a plastic purple tablecloth, ice cream cake served on

matching purple plates. The nights she and Naomi would sit quizzing each other after studying

their daughter’s condition. The nightmares she used to have.

Lydia never told Naomi about her nightmares. She would be holding the baby, Harper

giggling and reaching for her mother’s face, and suddenly the infant’s belly would burst. Out

would slide long stretches of intestine. Naomi was nowhere to be found. Lydia would have to

catch the exploding organs while still holding her daughter.

Harper’s blood splattered her shirt, her pants, her hands.

Each time she had her dream, Lydia would wake, wipe the sweat from her forehead and

look over at Naomi, sleeping with a protective hand resting atop her stomach.

At the time she didn’t think it was fair to tell Naomi about her nightmares. Each one was

a sort of fiction after all: a fear that she could shake off in the morning, maybe even laugh at

once enough time had passed. Naomi had always seemed calm, determined in her optimism.

Lydia didn’t want to burden her. So she had kept quiet, letting it all build inside: pressing against

the inside of her ribcage, her lungs, until it was too difficult to take a breath.

She didn’t want to stand here at the window remembering. It was pathetic, a waste of

energy. She needed a change, needed to get out of this apartment.

22

Lydia sipped her tea slowly and then thought of all of the boxes she had to put in storage.

This week, she told herself. She had put it off too long. The boxes were all full, almost too heavy

to lift without help. Sealed inside were stuffed bears, unused diapers, tiny socks. They had

disassembled the crib. They had taken down the mobile that had been hanging from the ceiling:

ducks dancing in the air above where Harper would’ve slept. It was all taped up in cardboard,

just sitting there in the center of the vacant nursery. They weren’t sure whether to save or donate

their daughter’s things. Maybe when enough time had passed they would need a crib, those

dozens of diapers. Maybe those little dresses would be worn. But they couldn’t say for sure. The

prospect of starting over was too daunting to even guess at now. And so the boxes would stay in

storage. Waiting.

Tomorrow. Lydia promised herself she would go then. It had to be tomorrow. If she

didn’t go then she would lose her courage. And it would be another week of procrastination, of

anxiously drinking her tea by the window: still nauseous with the thought of it all.

*

So far she had bought two dresses. One was on sale. She had three others on hold. She

had been to seven bridal shops in total. At the first store she tried on only one dress, left before

finishing the glass of water she asked for. She didn’t feel brave enough in her lie. Now she was

settled into the ritual. She learned how to fade into character. She learned to be willing to try on

the same dress more than once, to ask to see herself in a veil. She gulped down as much

champagne as she was offered.

Lydia knew her hobby, if she could even call it that, was bizarre. But it was distracting. It

finally got her out of the apartment. For a little over a month now, Saturdays became functional

again. There was a meaning to her day.

23

She got the idea from the endless reality shows about weddings. Wedding planning,

wedding shopping, wedding cake baking, wedding reception competitions. Love: a simple sell.

There were usually marathons on in the afternoon, when she used to sit numb on the couch.

Usually she would just flick through the channels. She rarely watched the moving images on the

screen, just would let the noise filter through her ears. Keep her occupied. As she explored she

would listen as the laugh track of a sitcom morphed into the voice of a talk show host, into two

characters arguing on a network drama, into the medical warnings listed in a commercial for a

new anxiety drug.

She stopped on the first marathon by accident: six straight hours of dress shopping. She

watched episode after episode as women of various sizes, shades, situations picked through dress

options. They spun in front of mirrors: dolls for strangers to watch, assess from a distance. She

watched as their family and friends, sometimes one sometimes ten, criticized and cried. Lydia

liked the arguing, the way it seemed relatives purposefully decided the dress was unsuitable for

the bride. How that one opinion was always presented as shock that required a commercial

break. Something to keep the viewer from switching to a different reality show: a baking

contests, or one of those contrived survival competitions.

There was a rhythm to each episode. A consistency. A simple premise with only two

possible endings: yes or no.

Lydia wasn’t sure when exactly the idea started to feel full, possible.

Around the time when she started turning on the television with the intention of finding

one of these marathons, maybe. When she started to recognize specific dresses appearing in

multiple episodes. Or around the time when the lawsuit started to take form, surely. When

Naomi’s efforts and research and planning began to lead to actual meetings, negotiations with

24

hospital attorneys. When it started to seem as though maybe they were going to win: in exchange

for their daughter they would be handed wealth. When the idea of holding cash in her hand

suddenly made Lydia reel.

It was then that she decided she wanted to try on one of those wedding dresses herself. A

ball gown, maybe: throw herself into a glimmering fairy tale. Or she would try a more modern

dress: shorter, maybe not even pure white.

And then, she would buy the dress.

At first, that seemed like the most important thing: handing over the check. Her

nightmares, her memories: those were both things she knew she had to forget. And she could.

She knew she could let it all evaporate: smoke fading in the wind. But not with the money still

there: the money they had saved and saved. The money they were going to use to build Harper’s

life. Clothes, toys, schooling, vacations.

Wedding dresses were expensive. She would be able to chip away at their savings in

chunks.

She knew now it didn’t have to be wedding dresses, exactly. It could’ve been anything

else. Any object whose cost was high enough, whose price tag would make her think twice in

another, saner moment. The dresses themselves weren’t integral. At least not at first.

In time Lydia realized she liked the way everything in the bridal shop glittered. Clean and

shiny, the wedding dresses disturbed her darkness well. All a dazzling white. Fantastical, almost.

Yes, white again, she knew. But it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the claustrophobic shade of

hallways, exam rooms. The ball gowns were of an entirely different color, it seemed. One Lydia

was willing to drown herself in.

25

With the wedding dresses on, Lydia could easily imagine she wasn’t this particular

person: this grieving mother. It became as close as Lydia could get to an escape. To walking

away. And when she realized that was true, then the whole of her ritual seemed more important.

Sacred.

The feel of the white dresses, smooth against her skin, then became something she

craved, as impossible as it at first seemed. She needed to be stitched into them too tight:

compressed, nearly faint trying to breathe.

“So? What do you think?” Brittany cradled the lace dress in her arms, approached Lydia

so that she could examine the fabric more closely.

Lydia stared at the dress and remembered how at her own wedding she spilled red wine

on herself. Not a full glass. But it was enough. There was still a collection of dull burgundy

splotches on the lace. At first she just kept forgetting to take the dress to the cleaners. But then

just decided to leave the stains there. Somehow she now felt they belonged on the dress. She

would look at them and remember the song they were dancing to when she dropped the glass.

Their echoing laughter.

No. This wasn’t the point.

“It’s, um, it’s not very me.”

“Don’t you worry, honey, that’s fine. I’ll go pull you something different. Just sit tight.”

26

Lydia

PRESENT

She is talented at fitting everything into one suitcase. She knows to roll her shirts instead

of just fold them, to not arrange them in a bulky stack one on top of the other. She knows to

alternate the spacing of her jeans, fitting them together along the bottom of the bag as if they are

wooden Jenga blocks. She balls up her socks and crams them into her empty shoes.

And when her clothes and jewelry and shoes are zipped up she rechecks her carry-on.

Sunglasses? Check. Computer? Check. Wallet? Check. Passport? Check.

Her boarding pass is already loaded on her iPhone.

Everything else is waiting in storage. She isn’t quite sure what she is going to do with it

all. Maybe she will have it sent to her once the new house is arranged, furnished. But she isn’t

sure if she even wants any of it anymore. She doesn’t know if she can continue on using the

objects of her past.

She feels odd having sole authority over everything: the apartment, the furniture, the

money. Months and months ago these weren’t her decisions to make.

It will be easier to buy new dishes, books, potted plants, a bed. She can get it all there.

And she will, Lydia decides.

27

Maybe she will have her mother handle it for her, sell what she can and wire the money

to her new, private bank account. Yes, that is what she will do.

For a moment, she lingers in the doorway of the room that has been empty for months.

The boxes are gone. Toys sold: still fastened and sterile in thick packing, no one will know

where they came from.

With the apartment rooms bare, the walls clean except for the scars their picture frames

left over the years, Lydia just needs to put the keys on the kitchen counter for the super and

leave.

Walk away. Fly away.

Alone.

*

But first: this.

“Identification, ma’am?”

Lydia is sure this can’t be the same security guard. That one was probably fired. His

negligence had raw consequences.

She hands over her license. She imagines the guards are all more aware now: they have

been instructed not to rush through their tasks. For the sake of the hospital, for the promise of

future paychecks. Her fingers ache from trying to keep so still. He reads slowly: as if acquainting

himself with every last letter in the word. She knows he must recognize her last name. That he

must guess who she is: a relative, a cousin at least.

Lydia stands at the desk watching everyone around her, marveling at the way normalcy

has a way of rearranging itself.

28

As he checks her name, scans to see if her face matches the image, Lydia’s stomach folds

in on itself. Even with her feet flat against this floor, she still isn’t sure she should be here. Yet

she knows she won’t leave. Lydia imagines lifting off into the open blue sky, listening to the

rumble of the plane’s engine, and regretting not doing this; her guilt would outweigh the

consequences.

She came back here yet again with a purpose.

Still, the sterile smell makes her want to heave, to reach in and rip out her stomach. Cut

the nausea right out of her.

She knows she came back here to see if there is truth laced into what they are all saying.

Everyone: on the streets, in her apartment building, on the television.

“Let her die, I say,” an older guest commentator added a few nights after the shooting. A

red-checkered bowtie tight around his neck, tilted a little too far to the left. The crimson shade

reflected in his cheeks. He was featured on one of the main news channels: his voice wasn’t to be

missed. “Don’t let the hospital spend another dollar on her. It is a waste of money; it is a waste of

medical talent. It is a crime.”

His shoulders wide, he filled the frame. He spent the rest of his fifteen-minute segment

roaring about what it would be like to spend U.S. money to stitch up perverse war criminals,

fanatic suicide bombers. “It would be a disgrace to the country’s honor,” he claimed, “and this is

the same thing. Let her die.” He refused to compromise, talked over the regular anchors when

they tried to introduce milder sentiments.

It was this particular interview that knocked hardest against Lydia’s chest. A persistent

fist. When his face finally left the screen, she pulled herself up, searched for the remote she lost

29

hours ago. Pulling it out of the depths of the couch, Lydia’s fingertips grazed loose cracker

crumbs, the cool of a spare coin. She brushed the grime from the rubber buttons. Pressed power.

Without giving herself the time to filter her thoughts, to hesitate, Lydia made her way

into the next room. She sat at her computer, opened it for the first time since the shooting without

acknowledging her fear of opening to the wrong article, of reading too much. She searched for

only two things: the names of a decent realtor, of secondhand bridal shops looking for donations.

And now she is here. The time in between seems almost irrelevant. It was that decision

that shifted her in this direction. Made her alternatives impossible.

The security guard hands her back her license, slides a visitor pass towards her: a new

hospital safety measure, she thinks. She doesn’t remember needing to stick the pink pass onto

her chest before, writing her name clean and bold for everyone to see. She can’t imagine it’s that

much of an effective practice, but she supposes there must be some value to it. Adds some

comfort. An illusion of sorts.

“Have a nice day ma’am,” the guard says, nodding as Lydia gives back his blue pen.

30

Owen

All day women touched him. They felt at his face, his leg. They pressed along the crook

of his arm. They adjusted his catheter. They checked the skin around his stitches. They wiped

away crusted blood, dripping saliva.

Their gloved fingers made him squirm.

But he couldn’t turn away, couldn’t fight their care. He remained in that bed, vulnerable

to their tests, their routines.

Their touch was meant to show concern. Yet the nurses moved automatically,

unfeelingly. To them he was just another name to check off on a list. He watched as woman after

woman, dressed always in that hospital blue, entered and exited his room. Clockwork. As soon

as they arrived he always immediately wished for them to leave, would almost yell: get the fuck

out of my room. He didn’t want to be touched. To be pricked with needles, cleaned with gauze.

He wanted to be left alone.

Of course once left alone, Owen was lonely.

The nurses’ hands reminded him of Sasha’s.

31

She never liked to burrow up against him. At night she often would tell him he was

sleeping too close to her; she was too hot. She would kick at him repeatedly until he wiggled

away to the opposite edge of the bed. He then always slept cautiously: aware he could fall off the

mattress at any moment.

He could count the few times Sasha had fallen upon him, rested on his body on purpose

out of exhaustion, excitement, despair. She was a tiny person. Her fingers were all bone. When

she did nestle up against him he was never overwhelmed by the weight of her. He would let her

body relax against his for as long as she needed.

Sasha often held his hand. She never drew attention to it; never asked if it was okay. Just

silently fit her hand into the space of his as they walked home, as they sat on the couch while the

television glowed in front of them. She clung to him tight as if she wanted their palms to meld.

Sometimes Owen wondered what it would be like to have Sasha’s hands gloved and

tending to his fractured leg, his still swollen face. She would have a terrible bedside manner. She

would find it difficult to feign interest in the progress of his pain. And yet her hands, he liked to

think, would be gentle. Familiar.

He missed her hands.

Owen hadn’t called Sasha again. Out of fear or embarrassment he wasn’t sure. He

planned everything he would say to her when he eventually called, as he still hoped to do. To

pass the time he rehearsed his speech over and over in his head. Sometimes if he was sure he

wouldn’t be interrupted he would even whisper the words out loud. Let them form slowly,

careful not to make any mistakes in his pronunciations.

It had taken some time to grow comfortable with speaking again. His jawed often

stiffened, refused to open and close as it used to. His face was bloated to twice its normal size.

32

His cheeks had a rubber feel to them. It made it difficult to move, to shape his lips. At first it had

been agony. Unwired he was liberated, but he still could barely manage the simple task of

communication. It was humiliating.

Slowly he had gotten better. He could engage in full conversations now. He owed his

progress to his aunt Kate. Her almost daily visits gave him the excuse to practice speaking, to not

give up and let the muscles in his face lose all of their strength. She was the one that prompted

him with talk, forced him to tell her even the most mindless of thoughts just to keep his jaw

moving. She was the one who insisted that he keep up with the exercises the doctors had

suggested. And she was the one who got angry when he refused.

*

“I’m sorry about yesterday, okay?” she said, leaning against the frame of the door. His

aunt Kate walked into the room, her hands hidden deep in the pockets of her stark white coat.

Today she had fastened her hair into a carefully constructed braid. It rested limp on her shoulder.

Owen guessed she hadn’t slept through the night. Whenever his aunt Kate was particularly

anxious, unable to relax into her dreams, she would always wake up hours before her alarm. She

would go for a run or flip through weeks-old tabloids screaming about fictitious celebrity

marriages, divorces, kidnappings. She would put noticeable effort into her appearance that day.

With the extra time in the morning she saw no reason not to make herself look more presentable:

whisk on some mascara, fix her startling red locks into a something presentable instead of just

hastily pulling her hair back off of her face.

“Sorry for what?”

“I shouldn’t have taken what happened out on you. That wasn’t fair of me.”

“You’re right. It wasn’t.”

33

“Well, I mean it I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” He paused, trying to figure out if today his aunt Kate was willing to share

more. “So, what happened?” Sasha used to say that Owen’s curiosity often came across as rude,

especially when he asked her what she was reading, what she was working on that day.

Owen guessed that despite his aunt Kate’s hesitation she wanted to talk. He assumed it

was the reason she came back so soon.

“One of my patients died,” she admitted, her eyes tracing the outline of the floor tiles. His

aunt Kate wasn’t a sentimental person, Owen knew. And so he didn’t recognize the person

sitting in front of him, unable to meet his gaze.

“When?”

“Almost two months ago. She got very sick quickly and there was nothing anyone could

do.”

“Two months? And you’re upset about it now? Why?”

“I, uh, had a meeting with my lawyer a couple of days ago.”

“Your lawyer?”

“Two lawyers, actually. They aren’t really mine, I guess. They work for the hospital,

manage malpractice suits.”

“Malpractice? You committed malpractice?”

“No of course not,” she placed her hands on her hips, looked again to the floor, “I don’t

know. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“You don’t get it, kid. This was a tough case. A really tough case.”

“This is really getting to you, isn’t it?”

34

“Your point being?”

“I just, I don’t know. You don’t talk about your patients like this. Or at least not usually.”

“You’re right. But this one was different.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Fuck you.” His aunt Kate looked down at her hands, started to dig out grains of dirt

from beneath her fingernails. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just feeling a little on edge.”

She started pacing, arms locked across her chest. “I really thought I could help the girl,” his aunt

Kate continued. “Harper. That was her name. I told her parents to trust me. I promised I knew

what I was doing.”

“I thought you said there was nothing anyone could do?”

“That’s just what you are supposed to say. There’s always something that could’ve been

done.”

*

Owen wished often that the ambulance hadn’t reached him so quickly that night. That the

paramedics weren’t so well trained. That the SUV had left his body more broken. That he had

remained on the pavement bleeding and bleeding until there was nothing left inside.

These last two months had left him hollow. The constant cycle of pills, pricking needles

and procedures easily distracted from the fact that there was a real world outside these walls.

That everyday things were happening constantly without him: people woke up and brewed

coffee, toasted bagels; they lost the day going through the motions of work, school; they came

home and drowned out their lives with television shows, sports games; they made and ate dinner

35

and started it all over again after hours of restless sleep. Owen was frightened by such triviality.

He was selfish enough to admit that he wanted something more satisfying, exhilarating to fill his

days. He had that back in L.A. with Sasha leaving him astounded even as she stirred milk into

her coffee, twirled a sliver of hair while thinking. He knew nobody or nothing would ever

compare. And Owen was disinterested in proving his theory wrong.

*

All at once, it seemed, December seeped into the building. Paper Christmas trees and

menorahs were suddenly pinned up on the backs of doors. Red and green and white streamers

outlined the perimeter of the hospital cafeteria. Plastic bowls of candy canes were left out at the

nurses’ stations, reception desks. Some of the more enthusiastic employees wore scrubs with

snowflakes and reindeer flying around on their shirts. They carried around little Rudolph and

Santa Claus stickers to give to the kids in the pediatric wings.

Owen was dazed by the eerie acceleration of time. To him, outside the hospital it still

should’ve been October: the air growing harsher with each passing day, brimming buckets of

candy at every doorstep, the whisper of haunted creatures at night.

In a few days Owen would be free. This month had always been the goal: as long as the

doctors were pleased with Owen’s improvement, they had planned on releasing him a month and

a half after the accident. Now he would step out into December a mostly healed person. He

would be free to leave behind this bed, escape the walls that trapped him here. He would be free

to learn to walk again. To test how many painful, belabored steps he would be able to manage

before he was finally exhausted enough to collapse. He would be free to taste home cooked

meals again. To swallow mashed potatoes, split pea soup and other soft foods. Then in a few

36

more weeks he would be free to really start to chew again, test his food limits. Maybe some

overcooked pasta or bland, shredded chicken.

Progress had its simple rewards.

Yet freedom was a relative achievement to Owen. He knew he should be excited to leave

Emerson Memorial. Anyone left lying in a hospital bed wanted nothing more than to be lying

elsewhere. But outside Owen knew he would have to reconcile his overwhelming desire to not

wake up in the morning.

Owen didn’t think he could leave the hospital without hearing Sasha say yes or no: come

home or stay there. Because although he still hadn’t called, hadn’t even attempted to dial her

number once, that was where he wanted to go when he walked out of those sliding lobby doors.

Back home, back to her.

Or, there was Tel Aviv. It was his only other option, maybe. The only other place he

imagined himself in. It was almost comical that Owen was still dreaming of the Dead Sea and

falafel. It was with that idea that everything fell apart. He had tried to fly off to distract himself

from Sasha in the first place. But his planning led him instead to take out his bicycle and go for a

ride in the fading October light. And yet the thought of Israel was something he couldn’t get out

of his mind: one of the few things that allowed him to retain just an echo of sanity.

Ten plus hours on a stifling, overbooked airplane and he could be there. Beyond

jetlagged, his legs stiff from sitting so long, Owen could walk out into the heat of the Middle

East and for the first time in months feel something like excitement. He could go see all that he

and Sasha had read about, all they had planned. 5,676 miles and he would be far away from all of

this.

37

Of course he wanted to go with Sasha. Maybe he could ask her. Maybe that would be

how he started the call: “Sash, let’s do it. Let’s go to Israel. Forget everything that happened,

let’s go. Start over.”

He wondered if he had the courage to say such a thing. To hold his breath and wait for

her response.

*

With what little physical strength he had left, Owen hurled his Dartmouth hoodie to the

floor. He sat back down on the edge of his bed, heaving, his swollen cheeks flushed.

“Fuck,” he managed to spit out the word, even though he had slept with his head turned

too far to the side and his jaw now felt too stiff to move.

He stared at the crumpled piece of clothing, frustrated.

Owen couldn’t pull the dark grey sweatshirt over his head. He had been trying

desperately for the last fifteen or so minutes. The hole for his head was much smaller than he had

ever realized. The fabric didn’t stretch. Owen never would’ve considered this a problem before.

Never would’ve noticed the sweatshirt’s inflexible size, never would’ve been enraged by it. It

only mattered now. He was supposed to keep his jaw protected, untouched. Even the rub of a

sweatshirt pulled down against his face would be too much contact to bear. Being discharged

was never contingent upon being completely healed, he was learning.

And so, unable to fully dress himself, Owen didn’t know how he could leave the hospital,

move on and slip back into normalcy. It was this thought that cycled through his mind when the

nurse returned with his discharge papers for him to sign.

“Excited?” She was one of the younger ones, wore clear lip-gloss, oversized pearl

earrings and a white headband in her strawberry blonde hair. Whenever she came to Owen’s

38

room she was always very invested in crafting a conversation. Of course Owen never seemed to

remember her name. Jenny? Jilly? Jessie?

“Sure I am,” he said, certain she hadn’t picked up on his sarcasm.

“Good you should be. You must be itching to get out of here.”

“Yup.”

Owen stared again at the useless sweatshirt.

“It’ll feel so good to go home, sleep in your own bed, wear your own clothes, eat normal

food: you’ll see. You won’t miss this place one bit.” The nurse grinned, forcing the papers in his

direction. She carried a blue pen for him to use.

“She’s right you know,” his aunt Kate joined in, just arriving at his room with under ten

minutes to spare before his parents were supposed to be parked out front. “You won’t miss this

place.”

“Or you walking into my room whenever you feel like it,” he shot back. He was still

annoyed from their conversation a few days ago.

“That too. Although I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, kid. Family is forever.”

“Yup, and isn’t it a shame?”

Owen could see the nurse tense, unsure if she was supposed to involve herself in this

particular conversation.

“Oh, you um dropped your sweatshirt,” the nurse then interrupted, not as confidently as

Owen thought she might’ve hoped.

“Thanks.” Reluctantly Owen took it back, balled it up beside him on the bed.

“Aren’t you going to put it on?” his aunt Kate asked.

“No,”

39

“Owen, come on, it’s freezing out. This rain might turn to snow later.”

“I don’t want to.” He wouldn’t look at his aunt Kate, or the sweatshirt.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“Don’t be an idiot Owen, just put on the goddamn sweatshirt.”

“You know what?” the nurse, startled, tried again to mediate aunt and nephew. “I’m

gonna go get a wheelchair for you. Just sign the papers, and you’re out of here mister.”

In the doorway the nurse froze.

From somewhere else in the building, they could hear a pop of sorts. It was foreign,

unmistakable. And then, there was another one.

40

Ella

Sometimes it was all just too much. The chemotherapy, the radiation, the doctors’

arrogance, the assumption that she would never leave this building breathing. And when it was,

when her thoughts boiled hot inside of her, Ella would create a new source of pain: squeeze her

hands into fists and drive her nails deep into the flesh of her palms; bite her lip until it felt as

though she was close to chewing through it; hit at the sides of her legs, her hips.

She would let the pain grow, burn, settle within her. She would calm.

Ella was good at causing pain, at controlling it. She had felt its numerous forms long

enough to learn how to conjure her own. But it was her secret. She never cut skin; never let any

red rise to the surface. She was smart. If she left real marks someone would find them. Her

parents or her sister or the doctors. And then they would stop her. They would call in a specialist

and she would have to explain her secret. Why she craved excess pain. Of course, the answer

was obvious. She would have felt stupid having to spell it out for some random psychiatrist,

bored and doodling in the margins of his yellow legal pad. And then after such a talk she

would’ve been in trouble.

So she was very careful.

41

Pain was finite. It took Ella years to learn this fact. And once she did, everything

changed. She no longer looked towards her days with dizzying dread. She understood that each

instance of suffering, no matter how many there were, would end. Had to end. She was

comforted by the notion that there would always be a fresh moment after her pain. A pinch of

relief. She was sure of this fact because she made it happen over and over and over again.

*

“Big game on Saturday,” her father said.

Ella imagined her father in his office: elbows on his desk, reading glasses folded and

hidden in the pocket of his shirt. She saw him with his head tilted, the phone wedged in between

his shoulder and his neck. She knew he would be smiling into the receiver as he spoke to her. To

his left, she guessed, was an empty Starbucks cup, his third or fourth of the day. Open on his

computer screen was a spreadsheet whose contents and purpose Ella couldn’t pretend to care

about. He had abandoned his work, of course; called Ella as a distraction from the tedious typing.

Deadlines didn’t intimidate him. The blinking cursor in one of the document’s empty boxes

would just have to wait.

“The Bruins,” Ella responded. She especially looked forward to weekend hockey games.

They gave her an excuse to look forward to the couple of days after Friday, like any normal kid

would.

“I hate the Bruins,” he said, a rich sourness in his voice. She grinned, rolled her eyes. Her

father hated every team that wasn’t his, in no particular order. Except for Boston. Boston was

different. The hatred there was sharp: historical. “Well, we can take ‘em Saturday, we’re ready,”

he added.

42

“Of course we are, Dad. Sure we can take ‘em.” Her sarcasm was slight enough that her

father would not take offense.

“That’s right, you’re right. My girl knows good hockey.”

“Yeah okay, Dad.”

Ella was always amused by her father’s insistence on her hockey intelligence.

Her father used to skate around suited up in his own jersey, his name stitched on the back

in big block letters. He lost every game that ever mattered, graduated college without a single

piece of metal to cherish. But playing was one of his greatest achievements, as he frequently

reminded Ella. Without a taste of regret he liked to claim that he had passed on his hockey genes

to her, that she would’ve been a smart, talented player.

“So what time are you coming then, on Saturday?”

“Hm, well puck drops at 2:00? So 1:30, at the latest. Probably earlier. Sounds good?”

“Yup, that’s fine. I’ll be here.”

Ella had never actually been to her father’s office. She just invented its layout in her

mind, pretended it was a room worthy of her father’s presence. He got promoted a couple of

years back, transferred to a more spacious office with two windows. The room faced westward

and in the afternoon caught the light of the shrinking sun as he struggled through the last of his

work. That was the first thing he told Ella after he had established himself in the new office: that

he had the best view of the sunset.

Ella couldn’t remember the last time she saw the sun disappear, those brilliant oranges

and pinks melting into the horizon. Her window faced eastward.

Her father called once a day, twice if his schedule was tiresome. Another ritual. They

talked about the same things: hockey, mostly; how she was feeling, constantly; her mother,

43

vaguely. Ella looked forward to the calls more than she ever admitted to her father. They gave

her a chance to picture the outside: to hear its sounds again.

“Okay then, I will see you Saturday at 1:30 sweetie. Need me to bring you anything? Any

special requests?”

He always asked if she wanted anything. She never did.

“No, that’s okay. I’m fine.”

“Well if you change your mind,”

“I can call you. I know, I know.”

“Good.”

Ella never knew how to respond when their conversations faded. It wasn’t fair to plead:

please daddy, stay and talk a little more, don’t hang up yet. He had work to do. And she had to

pretend that she wasn’t lonely, that she was still brave. It was part of the expectation: the sick

child’s reputation. Courage, bravery, strength. Words assigned to her as if part of the original

diagnosis.

Playing her part well, Ella let her father hang up. He had a meeting in 30 minutes, needed

time to prepare. They would see each other in a couple of days, anyway.

Ella looked for something to fill her hours. She reached for the basket of games, books,

and puzzles beneath her bed. She sifted through her possessions, hoping she would find

something inspiring.

The lap desk was meant for coloring. It came one day to Ella’s room in a box entangled

in a fat, red ribbon. Presents were common. Especially now that she had been readmitted to

Emerson Memorial with no release date anticipated. The presents just started coming and

coming.

44

She thought the kinds of gifts she received were odd. The range of toys and gadgets made

no sense. Most of the time the people sending her gifts were distant relatives, friends of her

parents. They didn’t really know her. They didn’t know what she liked. Their gifts were hollow

gestures, poor attempts at apologies. Sending things, it seemed, was just an excuse to stay away.

Ella no longer assumed she had any real friends. The kids she had once spent countless

afternoons with playing house and building train sets had disappeared from her life. They

remembered her name only because she was the one they were supposed to keep in their prayers,

whatever that meant. With no real friends, no one that shared her interests, there was no one to

send Ella something she might actually appreciate. Something that would make her smile as she

tore through shiny wrapping paper.

When her sister came to visit, mostly Tuesdays and Sundays with the occasional holiday

rotated in, she used the lap desk. After distracting Ella with anecdotes from school, her ballet

rehearsals, Nicole quickly switched her focus. She would take the lap desk and struggle through

fractions, memorize geography in the chair beneath the window. Ella just watched. She

wondered what the moving pencil felt like in her sister’s hand.

Ella knew that her sister’s visits were mandatory. Their mother’s idea. She could tell that

her sister had no desire to come sit here in this boring, stark room. More importantly, she knew

what Nicole was thinking when she did come to be with her. She was jealous. The two of them

would walk into Ella’s room and their mother would visibly forget that she had another daughter.

She would fuss over what Ella had managed to eat that day, what number she had decided to

assign her pain.

45

Her sister wasn’t coming today. Ella reached for the lap desk, placed it on her legs. She

rested her hands flat on the plastic turquoise top, her palms growing oddly sweaty against the

cool surface.

She didn’t know what made her pick out the lap desk. She didn’t even own any colored

markers. Ella just sat, clutching the idle thing, thinking she should ask a nurse to bring her some

paper, a pen. She wondered if such a request would even be worth it.

*

It was as if the building itself sparked to life and began to wail. As quickly as she could,

Ella pushed herself to a sitting position, rubbed the drowsiness from her eyes. She didn’t

remember falling asleep, or even if she had been dreaming. But at some point her eyes must have

flicked shut because here she was: startled from sleep into a sharp consciousness.

Ella felt the panic buzz in her body before she registered what she was hearing. Her blood

was hot beneath her skin; a rare sensation these days. The noise pulsed: there was a movement to

its incessant melody. At its loudest, it was unlike anything she had ever heard. Ella was sure her

eardrums would burst. She placed her palms flat over her ears and realized she was listening to

an alarm.

She had no idea what danger the noise signaled. A fire, she guessed first. But she didn’t

smell smoke. Besides, with an all-consuming fire came a certain type of urgency: men in bright

yellow helmets with water hoses knocking down doors. The ceiling would be collapsing, the

flames eating up the structure of the building. But no one was coming. As far as she could tell,

the walls retained their strict stability. She sensed no rising heat.

So then there was no fire. But still, Ella didn’t understand why an alarm was howling and

she was left lying in her bed alone.

46

Getting up was a struggle. She kicked off her blanket, letting it fall off the mattress. One

by one she carefully lifted her legs up and swung them around, placing them on the floor. Even

through her thick socks, she felt the cold of the linoleum smack against the soles of her feet. She

reached out and clutched the pole of her IV drip. Her fingers laced tight around the metal, she

pulled herself up. Almost instantly her knees felt unsteady and she hinged forward, almost

collapsed. Blood raced to her head. She straightened her spine the best she could, paused to

steady herself. Breathed.

Spending so much time lying down, her lungs were weak. Each breath she took felt

shallow, unproductive. The harder she tried to inhale, the dizzier she felt.

Ella forgot just how exhausted she was until she took that first step. Raising her foot,

placing it back down, gaining maybe an inch forward: it was all nearly impossible. After maybe

five steps she was more than ready to fall back into her empty, colorless sleep. But the alarm

kept on and on and on.

Ella forced air to sink down into her lungs and managed another shaky step.

At the window, she saw a hallway she didn’t quite recognize. The lights were dark. The

blinking red of the alarm bounced off the walls. From what Ella managed to see, every door

throughout the wing was shut. Patients’ rooms, exam rooms, the conference room, bathrooms,

even the toy room: all sealed. It wasn’t uncommon for doors to be shut. But usually at least a few

were open: letting others’ voices and cries and laughter dribble into the hallway.

The nurses’ station, just to the left of her room, was abandoned. The usually occupied

chairs were vacant. Yet Ella saw the computer monitors still illuminated, scattered papers left out

on the counter. On the wall behind the nurse’s station, opposite from Ella’s room, was a bulletin

board pinned with patients’ artwork. This month: hand-cut snowflakes. Some were more detailed

47

than others. Some kids had more strength in their fingers to cut triangles into paper. None of the

snowflakes dangling from the bulletin board were signed with Ella’s name. She rarely visited the

toy room anymore.

What really struck her was the emptiness of the hallway. There was no movement. It

seemed like a different place entirely without bodies cutting through it: nurses wheeling kids

from room to room, doctors rushing from patient to patient, family members pacing from tile to

tile. Everything was still and strange.

Yet the alarm didn’t fade. It even seemed to have gotten louder. Hurt in her ears that

much more.

She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know where to go.

And then Ella remembered her father was coming. Today was Saturday. There was a

hockey game on. The Bruins. He promised he would get there no later than 1:30.

Ella looked at the clock on the wall. 12:03. An hour and 27 minutes and her father would

be arranging the room for the game. His Rangers jersey—number eleven: Messier of course—

would be sticking out from beneath the hem of his jacket. Once finished with the

reconfigurations, he would kiss Ella on the top of her head, touch one of the navy stripes on her

cap for luck. And yet again the puck would drop and for the next few hours the sole concern of

Ella’s life would just be hockey. An hour and 27 minutes. Now 26. That was all the time she had

to wait.

48

Lydia

It was all very mechanical. Empty, Harper’s gut had shrunk. There was no room for the

organs that belonged inside. Surgery was postponed. The plan was still to operate as soon as

possible. No one knew what soon meant. There was just no space. They had to wait for her to

grow a little more, for her body to stretch to a healthier size.

Harper remained in the NICU, squirming in her incubator, her stomach and intestines and

liver supposedly sealed. At first it was almost hard to look at her: at her insides resting outside.

Her organs, displaced and defective, like misarranged puzzle pieces.

Infection was a threat since day one. It was something they discussed at length, prepared

for in any way possible. When around their daughter, Lydia and Naomi wore oversized sterile

gowns. They scrubbed their hands raw and then wore latex gloves.

They pulled little blue booties over their sneakers.

Lydia didn’t anticipate how quickly her daughter could decline. It had just been one

night. Within nine hours, calm melted into chaos. Infection raged in Harper’s body,

uncontrollable. Before long their doctor said a cruel word: sepsis. Eventually she shook her head

and said there was nothing more to be done.

49

“I’m sorry. I really am,” the doctor had said, reaching out towards Lydia’s shoulder. A

phrase so repeated, hollow, Lydia barely registered the doctor’s apology.

Touched gently by the woman who promised to fix Harper, Lydia realized she never

would get to hold her daughter alive.

The flat line that buzzed on Harper’s monitor had been green.

*

Abandoned once again, Lydia turned back to the mirror. Reevaluated the beaded

mermaid gown she had yet to step out of. This was the part that made her the most

uncomfortable: the one-on-one with her own image. She found it took effort to appear vain. With

her interest in the wedding dresses more flirtatious, she had to remember she was supposed to

look self-obsessed as scrutinized her every limb: she had to pay close attention to her torso, make

sure the fabric didn’t gather in the wrong places. She had to make sure to tell Brittany she

wanted certain curves of flesh to be obscured.

In the three-way mirror Lydia observed the people and things that filled in the space

around her reflection. She wanted to avoid her own gaze. She didn’t like the little hints of

heredity in her face: her grandmother’s almond shaped eyes, hazel and dotted with brown; her

mother’s auburn hair, fleshly brushed and straightened as part of her new Saturday morning

routine; her father’s faded freckles.

The store behind her could have been a copy of the one she visited last weekend. Pale

painted walls. A soft grey carpet. The leather couches and chairs all a bold white. Tiny

chandeliers dripped from the ceilings. Their electric bulbs produced a harsh, revealing light.

It was a small store. There weren’t that many other women shopping alongside Lydia.

That was probably the allure of this particular place: privacy equated to a sort of privilege. She

50

studied the other women. They all of course had a more conventional reason to be there. A few

were followed by troops of relatives, friends. The others were more sensible, inconspicuous:

joined by a single companion or two. They all seemed effervescent. Genuine. Hiding in white,

they all seemed to share this singular quality. An expectation: something in them that swelled.

They all spun and giggled and beamed as if their image in the mirror provided some glance into

the future. A prediction of sorts.

Lydia watched as they gazed at their reflections with a certain sort of violence: they were

ready to tear themselves down to find the dress of their dreams. She didn’t envy them, or their

optimism. She merely returned to herself and tried to copy the way they cracked their lips, bared

their freshly whitened teeth.

She wondered if the dress she had on would be worth the thousands of dollars. Or if the

next one would seem more appropriate. It wasn’t an easy logic. Each dress she agreed to try on

was more expensive than the last. Watching the chain of zeros grow with each price tag made her

lightheaded and focused all at once. Still, she had to be able to justify the choice.

There were rules to the ritual. They were necessary. She never said anything that veered

towards fact. What neighborhood she lived in, her job, her hometown, the university she went to,

her favorite movie, her favorite color: all off limits.

Still, her little fictions had to hold up. The versions of herself she pretended to be had to

seem as if they were constructed of flesh instead of thought.

She allowed herself some creativity in where she let her mind wander, designing these

other lives. Lydia never thought backwards. Never backwards. That wasn’t the point of the ritual.

But dreaming up other, pretend lives was safe. Sometimes the dream involved another wedding,

51

a new spouse, a new apartment to go home to at night. Sometimes not. Some days the dream

centered on her and Naomi pressing restart together.

Lydia enjoyed arranging the details of her impossible lives.

Recently she started researching the different theories of alternative universes. Nothing

too intense: just some brief Google searches. A year ago she never would have been interested in

thinking about the intertwining strands of the multiverse. Too dizzying a concept. But now, there

was something calming in the notion that she could have parallel lives: that across boundaries of

time and space she could be living within different walls, still raising a daughter.

It was easy to create an alternate life. Pedestrian even. It happened everyday, in some

ways. It all depended on direction, on choices. At the most basic level, a step left led into one

life, a step right into another. At least that was how Lydia liked to think about the multiverse.

Life changes didn’t have to be drastic: didn’t have to rupture normalcy so completely. They

could happen when no one was watching. When no one cared. She let that fact settle her. That

life was unstable. Permanence was a lie.

She used to believe her life was fixed. In limitlessness, in happiness, in emptiness: all in

succession. Now she realized that none of that was ever true. The most inconspicuous change

could shift everything: catapult her far into a vivid, glittery alternate life. And she could force the

change herself, if she ever needed to.

The dresses, she soon came to realize, were a way to test her limits. To see how far she

could stray into one of her alternate lives. So the trying on was just as important as the purchase.

In each dress she was a different Lydia, leading her own alternate life. Imagining herself in one

of her various forms proved to be the most convincing attempt at distraction. It was safe. It then

became just as important to toy with her alternate lives as she destroyed this old, haunted one.

52

As long as she upheld her rules, hid herself well within the skin of her disguise,

everything worked. Because she knew she was just pretending. Her life would never shift so

dramatically, permanently: she wouldn’t know how to glue together the courage.

And of course she never forgot the sacred rule: Naomi could never know. She knew

eventually it would become apparent: the chunks of cash disappearing without reason. She knew

she could’ve been more careful with the money. There were other ways to do this, ways she

could’ve figured out easily if she just did a little more research. Tried a little harder. But she

didn’t. Stealth hadn’t interested her as much as it should’ve, Lydia was aware.

For now, as long as Naomi was focused with the lawsuit, Lydia could hide in her ritual.

Her Saturdays could be hers. Still, Naomi couldn’t stay oblivious. One day soon she would

notice. Naturally. And Lydia wanted to keep that realization as far away as possible. It would

lead to something hideous.

*

Lydia had heard the clank of metal on porcelain before the slam of the apartment door.

Despite knowing that Naomi was home, her house key loudly dropped into its dish, she still

made no effort to move from the couch. Lydia kept her eyes shut. Hearing footsteps, she

squeezed them tighter, as if her eyelashes might lock together.

Lately, Lydia had been trying to retrain herself to slip into deep, uneventful sleep. The

figures of her nightmares had become more recognizable: a 4-pound body buried beneath layers

of damp earth; maggots gnawing on bones; a body in a bathtub, the water growing crimson as the

minutes ticked past. Her nights were mostly spent staring up at a blank, darkened ceiling,

wondering why time felt slow.

53

And so Lydia hunted sleep whenever she could during the day. Like now: a possible nap

before dinner.

A tap on her ankle disrupted her efforts.

Naomi was perched on the arm of the couch. Her coat was still zipped, scarf roped

around her neck. A grin cracking across her face.

“I’ve found a lawyer,” Naomi announced.

“A lawyer?”

“Yes. For us,” Naomi said, pleased with herself: as if she deserved a gold star.

“For us?”

“To represent us.”

“I’m not following you.”

Lydia sat up, realizing this conversation could have consequences.

“In the lawsuit.”

“What lawsuit?”

“The malpractice suit.”

“What are you talking about, Naomi?” Lydia asked.

“The malpractice suit against the hospital. We talked about this, don’t you remember?

We agreed it was the right thing to do. The next logical step. I said I would ask around and find

us a good lawyer, the best lawyer, and now I have.”

“I would’ve remembered saying I wanted to sue the hospital. That’s not something you

easily forget,” Lydia replied.

“Well don’t you?”

“Don’t I what?”

54

“Want to sue the hospital?”

“I’m not sure.” Lydia paused, straightened her spine fully. “No. No, I don’t think so. I

don’t understand what good would come of it.”

“Don’t you want an apology?”

“A settlement is not an apology.”

“But at least it’s something.”

The argument returned over and over in the following days, weeks: poking out in even

the most banal of conversations. One word and the discussion would veer towards a dead end.

There was little shouting, no crying. That wasn’t how they handled their disagreements. Just

sharp words and shut doors and layered silences.

And yet even without an agreement to move forward together, Naomi had pursued the

case. Endlessly.

*

Brittany returned with a completely different option for her, beaming. Lydia knew the

back room housed hundreds of dresses, each varying more and more from the last version. She

pictured them all just hanging there, protected in thick layers of water resistant plastic: dresses

waiting to be filled with their bodies.

Lydia wondered what it would cost to buy them all.

“What about this one?”

A satin A-line dress, the ribbon around its center punctuated with a silvery, crystal pin:

underwhelming. Certainly not couture, it wasn’t the gown that would stun her imagined guests.

Lydia was sure she had seen variations of this exact dress advertised in magazine after magazine.

She might’ve even seen other women wear it in person at their own weddings. Still it was

55

different from the other ones she had already bought, than the ones she tried on during this

particular appointment.

She agreed to step into it. To see how it felt.

Laced into the dress, Lydia once again was faced with herself. Now this Lydia, she

imagined, would be happy with the simple things. She wasn’t looking for something extravagant,

expensive. She didn’t feel the need to attract too much attention. She was quieter. Appreciated

the way snowflakes collected in her outstretched hand, liked to connect the patterns of bright

stars at night.

Lydia felt comfortable.

She decided to take it.

But as she felt for her checkbook, she saw her phone light up: alive. Naomi. Fuck, Lydia

thought. She let the ringing fade, deciding it was fair to listen to the voicemail in a few hours

when she would be home, surrounded again by normalcy.

She let her phone be and wrote out the check. Handing it over, she felt a sort of release:

as if her lungs could stretch out fully again, pressing up against their cage of bone.

Another dress secured. Another life experienced.

As Lydia pulled her bag to her shoulder she felt it vibrate. Her phone, again. Naomi,

again. She let the buzzing die out.

56

Owen

PRESENT

He wakes up facing a battle between green army men. The toy soldiers are fierce, staring

each other down. Some of the figurines have fallen over, now idle on their sides. Causalities. The

war at this point had dragged on for years. At least a decade, if not more, Owen guesses. That

was probably the last time he had picked up one of the men, positioned him to shoot down one of

his identical enemies.

And yet there they stand on top of his dresser: up in arms. He can’t remember why the

troops hadn’t been put away in a box: taped up and hidden in a closet with the rest of his

childhood things. Was there a reason he wanted his army men to remain frozen in battle all of

these years? Had he believed one side would win? That this particular war had a motive worth

sticking to?

Owen wakes and stares at the green men and misses the paralysis of LA rush hour. He

then remembers he should be grateful to be free at last. To sleep in a room not painted white.

Morning brings choices. Get up or stay buried beneath his comforter. Dig through job

listings or kill brain cells watching reality shows. Start drinking now or wait until the afternoon,

start at a more respectable hour.

57

Even without leaving his bedroom he knows he is alone. His parents are both in their

respective offices by now, making use of the hours that stretched ahead. The empty space makes

him feel anxious. He prefers the smaller size of his old apartment, likes the way his life could be

compressed and still feel full. He doesn’t want to wander through the rooms, stumble around the

reminders of his youth. Pictures trapped in silver frames. Plastic trophies balanced on shelves.

Books he read nestled against those he didn’t. His high school diploma tacked on the wall in the

kitchen. It will all just make him more aware of how much he has lost: how far back he has

fallen.

Besides the army men, infantile and violent, are enough of a reminder.

He should go for a run. That is what Owen decides he should do. Get some exercise:

enjoy the early spring heat pulsing outside. He needs to retrain his muscles after all. Whole and

healed there is no reason not to work for something. To train. That is what the therapist tells him

to do: reclaim his agency, run and push through it all. Don’t try to forget. Sasha, the accident, the

gun: face all of it.

Before changing his mind again he gets up, steps into a pair of shorts, pulls a t-shirt over

his head. He leaves the house and puts headphones in.

Owen makes it out almost a quarter of a mile out, bends over and begins to heave. His

muscles have a sort of amorphous feel to them. They shudder. Each time he tries to cycle his legs

it feels as though they are tied down. He coughs and coughs and brings up only air. It feels raw.

His eyes water from the stress on his lungs.

Staring at the blades of grass crumpled beneath his feet, his words come back to him.

Mortifying words. Words he wants to swallow back but it’s now too late. Captured in ink, they

will always exist. Unless she burned the pages: read the return address carefully arranged in the

58

top right corner and shook her head. Lit a match. Then they are dead. Ash. Even still, the words

aren’t just his. They are now also hers: he gave them to her and he hates himself for it.

The therapist says move on. Move on, move on. That’s what he is doing, isn’t it?

Running forward: moving. But she is still there, after everything. Even after the bullet passed

through his shoulder and pierced the ceiling above him. Even after headlines focused on his

name. After the interviews he gave were broadcasted live and then replayed online. And he can’t

figure out why she is still there. Why he craves her reply. The way it will unnerve him.

She goes straight into his bloodstream, gives him that lethal rush.

And so he knows even before he straightens his spine and retraces his route that he will

stop at the end of his parents’ driveway. He will reach into the black lacquered mailbox. The

rusted hinge will screech as it turns. If his fingers hit paper, his stomach will lurch. He might

even try to vomit again. Heave and heave and wait for relief. Still, he will pull the envelopes, the

magazines, the bills out together in a quick, almost courageous motion. And what he will find:

the possibilities could lead him anywhere and everywhere all at once. Limitless.

He sent a letter instead of a call or a text because he wants her to hold the proof in her

hands, to feel its weight. He wants her to read the interview: see the things he said. Because he

hopes it will be enough. It will point her back in his direction.

*

Somehow he feels like he knew today would be the day. He tells himself this as he holds

the envelope in his hand, recognizes the way she curls the “Y” in his last name. It seems bizarre

that he finally gets the letter. And if he were someone else looking in on his life he would think it

was a sort of cosmic joke, karma, witchcraft. Something. But it isn’t. The letter is real. It’s in his

hands. It has its own heaviness to it.

59

He paces. Where to open this letter? The letter that has kept him up night after night since

he sent his own. Here? In the open, where anyone could come up behind him, surprise him? No,

too vulnerable. Or in his room, spied on by the green army men, still fighting over such distant,

irrelevant territory? No, too claustrophobic.

He goes into the garage, opens the car door. He isn’t allowed to drive. Not yet. The leg is

still healing, endlessly it seems. The shooting didn’t exactly help his progress, he knows.

But he can still sit in the car: a navy colored station wagon, so dark it’s almost black. He

gets in, shuts the door.

Through the windshield he can see his parents’ bicycles hanging on the wall. He realizes

he never learned what happened to his own bicycle, what is left of it anyway. He imagines the

wheels, the handle bar, the seat all rusted and bent: scattered throughout a junkyard. Useless

pieces.

He wedges his finger into the envelope opening, drags it through. The paper cuts skin. He

feels a dull sting.

Owen pulls out his own letter, the newspaper clipping. They are still bound together. The

paper clip doesn’t look like it has been moved at all.

Folded around his own message is a smaller sheet of paper. Hers. He recognizes the

stationary: from a personalized stationary set her grandmother sent her for her birthday two years

ago. It sits on her desk, next to where she keeps a mason jar full of blue and red pens. She writes

her lists on this pad, things she doesn’t want to forget.

Owen remembers one night planning their trip to Israel, Sasha scribbling on that pad.

Names of recommended restaurants, the museums they had to see, information for different tour

guide groups: all organized in her careful, disciplined script on that pad.

60

He pictures her writing to him just days ago, choosing her words. Twirling her pen as she

thinks.

It isn’t a page big enough for a full letter. There isn’t enough space.

He almost doesn’t read it. He isn’t sure if that would be any better. Before he lets himself

chase after his doubt he unfolds the paper and follows the trail of blue ink she left for him.

O—

I don’t want to be writing this letter. I’ve said everything already. I’m tired of this going back

and forth. The phone calls, the texts, this letter, it all has to stop. Don’t you see that? It’s been

over a year.

I’m glad you’re okay, though. I’ll admit that. I heard what happened, your parents called back in

November. I don’t know if they ever told you that, but they did. They told me what happened with

the car accident. I can’t imagine what that was all like. And then the shooting last month, I

almost didn’t believe it when I heard.

I was going to call, but I didn’t think it was my place. At least not anymore. I thought if I called it

would’ve made everything worse. We would’ve just been going backwards, and that is what

neither of us needed.

I hope you heal soon, I truly do. For your sake, I hope you can put this all behind you soon.

Don’t write again. Please.

61

He reads the letter two, three times, tries to get his eyes to adjust to her words.

He thinks about tearing the page. Leaving it in too many pieces that he will not be able to

rearrange them, tape the letter back to life. He knows that is something he will try to do. One

night after his parents shut their bedroom door, leaving him to his silence. After that last drink.

The one he knows might be one too many. The one he will pour generously, spilling some liquor

on the table in the process.

But he decides he will leave the letter whole, the way he opened it. The way it sits in

front of him, lying limp on the center of the steering wheel. He realizes maybe this is what he has

always wanted. Something physical, small he can hold, keep, carry with him. It isn’t unlike him

to believe he deserves a sincere memento, he knows.

The therapist keeps saying the word detachment. Detachment: he thinks of a pair of

scissors snapping a taut thread in two. One swift motion. A thread that stretches across the

country, tied to his doorknob and hers. Detachment: he doesn’t like how permanent it sounds.

Even if it’s what the licensed professional advises.

62

Ella

And as she was about to hike back to the false safety of her bed, one of the vacant chairs

moved. Just barely. It swiveled to the right, colliding into its abandoned twin beside it. At first

she thought it was a trick of her imagination: too much chemotherapy, not enough clarity. But

somehow she knew her eyes weren’t lying. The chair had moved.

At first it reminded her of the books her mother used to read to her, their bodies clicked

together in the hospital bed as if two magnets. That used to be their moment, their ritual. Her

head resting on her mother’s shoulder, Ella would drift off and beneath her eyelids she saw the

worlds her mother spoke of: the characters playing and fighting and laughing. In these books odd

things often happened. Inexplicable, incredible things.

Within the fanciful confines of those pages, a twirling chair in an empty hallway would

mean something. The story would bend towards it. Ella knew any of the characters animated

with her mother’s voice would happily accept the challenge: skip off and investigate the

unknown. All those figures bounced with bravery.

63

She waited a few seconds, but the chair didn’t move again. She wasn’t quite sure whether

or not she was hoping it would continue spinning. What that would mean to her: if she needed

more evidence.

Suddenly Ella’s hand was on the handle of the door. Before she could stop herself she

turned it, heard the click of the release. She pulled the door open, aware that stepping forward

would be a decision she couldn’t take back.

Shuffling forward Ella realized the strangeness of the hallway was even more severe once

she was inside it. She knew this floor: was wheeled down it often, stared out into it from her bed

watching as people passed back and forth. Yet it felt like a different place entirely. As if she had

been transported somewhere new. It could even have been a place carved from imagination: a

setting in one of those books.

But the floor was solid beneath her feet. It was real. The white tiles, though disturbed by

the flickering red, didn’t crumble away. She wasn’t falling.

She kept going.

As she walked, Ella decided her pain was an eight and a half. Earlier, lying horizontal,

she was assured today it was just a seven: raw and sharp but manageable. Moving, she realized

otherwise.

It was a question spelled out to her at least three times a day: okay honey, now can you

tell me how bad the pain is? On a scale of one to ten.

When she was first asked to quantify her pain, Ella was nervous. She paused, dug deep

into the eyes of the inquisitive doctor, a pediatric oncologist with a rubber giraffe fastened

around her stethoscope. When squeezed, the animal squeaked.

64

Ella hoped within the doctor’s countenance there would be some sort of hint as to how

she was supposed to respond. She worried whatever answer she offered would be wrong. What if

she said two instead of three? Six instead of five? After all Ella had no frame of reference. She

was curious if a nine would feel obviously different from an eight. She imagined the doctor

would be angry receiving a random answer: she was hunting for a piece of truth, something to

work off of, Ella knew.

That first time Ella guessed four. And she went from there.

As a rule she never answered ten. At that point there was nowhere else to go. She had this

fear that the day she said ten she would wake up the next morning and feel worse. Then she

would have no answer. Eleven wasn’t an option. And Ella believed that no matter how bad it

was, there would always be a worse pain.

She was saving her ten for a certain, irrefutable pain. Her breaking point.

And so to keep herself as far away from that point as possible, Ella would stick to whole

numbers. She fleshed out the scale, gave herself more options: halves, quarters, eighths.

Right now if she had to quantify it, to strategize how to work passed it, Ella would say

the pain knocking beneath her skin was an eight and a half.

Reaching the nurse’s desk she nearly collapsed forward onto it. She steadied herself,

barely, between the length of her IV pole and the desk itself. The thin muscle left along her arms

shook almost visibly.

“Hello,” she whispered. Having just woken up, her mouth was dry: her voice had little

conviction. “Hello,” she called out again, a bit louder this time. She had to be heard between the

beats of the alarm.

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“Shh! You have to be quiet!” A pair of eyes suddenly met hers. His face poked out from

beneath the desk. Alert: a little squirrel peering out from its home, equally curious and cautious.

Of course his voice was an exaggerated whisper: much louder than her own. “That’s what Nurse

Meg said!”

It was a boy, maybe a couple of years younger than Ella, although it was hard to tell. His

face somewhat recognizable, Ella thought maybe she had seen those eyes before: green, like

lichen growing along rough, chipping tree bark. The boy was dressed as she was: decorated in

the standard issue pattern of blue squares. But he didn’t wear a cap. His head was pale and bare.

Early on Ella learned to distract herself from other people’s suffering. To not observe the

details: festering wounds, deformed limbs, defeated stares. In the hospital she saw all sorts of

broken creatures. Most of the time she encountered patients like her. She learned quickly it

wasn’t polite to stare. To picture the tumors studding other people’s flesh. To guess how fast

they multiplied, their malignancy.

Illness was individual, private. And so Ella focused only on how her own failing body

functioned.

But this was a boy she knew, maybe. A neighbor of sorts. A boy who Ella assumed, by

the way he seemed comfortable crouched beneath the nurses’ desk, had a snowflake with his

name scribbled along the edge on the board behind them.

“Nurse Meg?” Ella didn’t remember which set of scrubs belonged to that name. She gave

up on memorizing identities long ago. Her caretakers rotated so frequently it didn’t matter who

administered morphine, listened to the labored tempo of her heart.

“Yeah. Nurse Meg. We were walking before. Nurse Meg told me to wait here and be

quiet. She went to get help. She said this is serious. We have to be really, really quiet.”

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“Why? What’s going on?”

“You have to hide down here. Nurse Meg said we can’t be seen.”

“By who?”

“Come on!” The boy yanked on the hem of her gown. Slowly she descended to the floor,

scooted closer to the boy so that they both were covered. Sinking down was harder than standing

up. Ella pulled her pole as close to the desk as possible so the IV port didn’t pull too

uncomfortably within her vein.

The boy was examining her. His nose scrunched, his gaze impolite.

“You’re the girl who doesn’t leave her room.”

“I don’t know what that means.” As she spoke, Ella struggled to force air into her lungs

in between each word.

“Do you leave your room?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Right. Because you’re the girl who doesn’t leave her room. I’m Charlie. I’m nine.

Almost ten. I have bone cancer,” he said, almost confidently. As if proud that he knew what kept

him here: what made him special outside of these walls. Charlie paused, waited for Ella to react.

Maybe he was hoping she was going to report that she had bone cancer too. With the back of his

hand he rubbed at his nose. “What’s your name?”

“Ella.”

“How come you don’t leave your room?”

The blood behind her eyes throbbed. She was dizzy from shifting up and down so much.

She couldn’t focus on questions or anything really, besides the alarm.

“I don’t know. I get tired.”

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“That’s okay. You left your room now.”

And for what purpose, Ella wondered. She felt her stupidity choking her. She knew

better.

“My dad is coming,” she whispered, surprised at how instantly the words fell from her.

“Coming here?”

“He should be here now. We are going to watch the Rangers game.”

“The Rangers game?”

“A hockey game.”

Her head heavy with the day, Ella thought she might cry. But she wouldn’t let herself.

She wasn’t that person. Still, she wanted it all to end. Now. The noise, the flashing lights, the

questions forced upon her, the uncertainty. She wanted everything to be quiet and still: to hear

only the sounds of metal skates slicing across ice, of the puck thrown from stick to stick. She

didn’t understand how she woke up to find herself trapped in an angry world. Why she willingly

entered into it.

“Let’s go get him.”

“What?”

“Your dad. We should get him.”

“I thought we were supposed to stay here?”

“Your dad can help us. Nurse Meg said we needed to find help.”

Ella knew she wanted her dad here: his arms around her, his voice calm. He would know

what to do. She never wanted his presence more.

“Okay,” she said.

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Owen

Safety became an illusion. Something glittery and distant: a leftover dream.

With the second blast, it wasn’t possible to wonder if what they were hearing was false.

The first sound might’ve allowed for that sort of confusion, but not the second. No, the following

gunshot split the silence clearly. It was recognizable: a sound heard several times before from the

comfortable side of a television screen, a computer monitor.

Rising terror warmed Owen. His neck felt flush, his palms slick.

He was deeply aware that he couldn’t stand. An attempt to flee would leave him writhing

facedown on the floor. His cries for help would seem embarrassing. Mere mumbles. He would be

no match for a desperate man with a grudge and a gun.

His hands on either side of him, Owen clutched the blanket on his bed. He felt the need to

be stable, to be tethered to something.

An alarm started to whir.

His aunt Kate shifted in front of him. Owen could tell she was trying to hide him. With

one arm reached out in front of her and one behind, she looked ready to stop bullets with her

palms. In any other moment he would’ve thought her stance was comical.

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“What do we do? We should run, right? Running’s a good idea. Right? Dr. Evans?” The

nurse raced through her questions. She never once looked back at them. She remained in the

doorway, looking outwards. Her foot tapped lightly, soundlessly upon the ground.

It struck Owen that even if he could manage to run he would have no idea in which

direction to point his feet. He had no conception of the building: which way the corridors led,

how any of the rooms were patterned. He barely remembered arriving here. With his veins thick

with morphine and sedatives, he didn’t even remember the ambulance ride that transferred him

from the local hospital. He recalled looking sideways at black pavement, the feel of it hot against

his cheek. He could just barely piece together the hazy rush of the emergency room he was taken

to first: yelling and blood and the struggle to breathe. That was it. He wasn’t even sure what floor

this room was on.

“Hold on, Abby, give me a minute. I need to think.” His aunt Kate pressed a hand to her

forehead, turned her eyes towards the fluorescent light reflecting off the floor.

Abby. That was her name. Owen had been close enough, not that it mattered now.

“Where would we run to?” Owen asked.

“Owen’s right, we don’t know where it’s safe.”

“We can’t just sit here!”

Abby was also right, Owen realized. The room was sparse. There were no tables to crawl

under, no closets to lock themselves inside.

He wondered what was happening beyond. He wondered if it was reasonable to hope for

help: for armed soldiers to come and break down the walls. The gunshots sounded close, he

thought. He couldn’t be sure. But he felt it was a fair guess. They were at least loud enough.

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Suddenly he remembered his parents waiting in their navy station wagon. His father

flipping back and forth between radio stations, frustrated with the fizzy beat of the pop music he

was finding. His mother checking her lipstick in her compact mirror, firm in her belief that even

in a hospital one should look put together, glossy. Owen had no idea if they knew what was

going on, if they were safe.

Owen could feel an anxious laughter swell inside of him. The absurdity of it all was

devastating. He was on the verge of letting it all out: laughing so hard that there would be no

sound. But he bit his lip to keep from cracking; he sensed Abby would find his laughter

unsettling. He could see her falling far down into her fear.

Sasha would know how to react. He imagined her sitting beside him, her voice steady as

she whispered her plan. She always could untangle the most stressful of situations. He would

follow her. He would run for her, force himself to forget his pain.

“We need to leave,” his aunt Kate decided. She nodded as if convincing herself this was

the right decision. Their only decision. “Now.”

“Where?” Owen asked. With no alternative he had no energy to argue with her plan.

This was a panic he had always believed he would never feel. Owen had prepared for

such a crisis: hid beneath desks, within blind spots during high school drills years ago. Of course

then the real challenge was how to whisper threads of gossip, send joking text messages without

the teacher in charge of the room noticing. Avoid detention: keep the empty, limitless afternoon

from being stolen. In those moments of orchestrated chaos fear was comical. Distant. Panic

wasn’t justified. It was only a drill. And so although he had practiced hiding from a desperate

gunmen weaving through a building, Owen now realized the sense of such protocol never stuck

in his bones.

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“We need to make it to the door. We need to find help.”

“Do you think help is coming?” Abby wasn’t any calmer even with the outline of a plan.

“Yes, Abby. It has to be.”

“Okay.” Abby nodded her head, eyes closed. Owen thought she looked as if she was

trying to imagine help: the faces, the voices that would be coming for them.

“But he have to wheel Owen; he can’t walk. You need to go get that wheelchair.”

“Me? Why me?” Abby turned back to face them, eyes panicked.

“Because you know where it is, and you’re already in the door. And I need to stay with

Owen. He’s my nephew. I can’t leave him. Abby I’m telling you, you have to do this.”

“I can’t go out there myself,” she protested.

“You’ll be fine. Abby, come on. We have to go. We can’t stay here.”

Owen recognized his aunt’s stubborn, commanding tone. He had heard it several times

before. It was something he associated with her as if integral to her identity, her success. He

always imagined that without being able to conjure such authority his aunt Kate would never

have gained the respect, the esteem she did. And the way Abby looked at her now, shifting her

gaze quick between the blank floor and his aunt’s face, Owen realized such an assumption was

fair.

Abby relented, shuffling off hunched, taking cover the best she could.

72

Lydia

Lydia stepped outside, left the world of lace and champagne behind her.

With the sky above grey and irritated, she knew she should try to hail a taxi.

The weather had been relentless since she woke up. Drinking her coffee early this

morning Lydia stood at the window, watching as beads of water collected on the glass. Every

once in a while a rogue droplet streamed down the surface, engulfing all others in its wake. Rain

in December was devastating: all of the delicate white dissolving into nothing.

On the streets, snow turned to slush beneath the crush of car tires.

At least now the cold rain was slowing. The morning downpour thinned to a drizzle

while she was in the bridal shop. Now the air was heavy and damp. It chilled Lydia. A stray drop

of water hit her scalp every now and again. She had forgotten a hat this morning.

Lydia balanced on the curb, fingertips pointed upwards at the looming clouds.

Nothing. Not a single yellow car raced towards her. In fact, there weren’t many cars on

the road. She thought it was odd. Even for a waterlogged December day, there should be people

out doing things. She couldn’t have been the only person to leave her apartment today.

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Yet with no other option, Lydia walked towards her next destination. Just eleven blocks.

Today’s bridal shop was the closet one yet to the diner. She didn’t mind the distance. Besides,

she felt she needed to move again: bend her bones after standing poised in front of a mirror for

nearly three hours. With each step she picked up speed.

Constant motion was another sort of distraction.

She was still confused by Naomi’s absence this morning. She wondered if Naomi had

returned home yet. It was nearly 1:00 in the afternoon. If she just went to run some errands, or

went for a walk, or went to wander through a bookstore, then she would be home by now. And if

not, then Lydia had no other idea as to where she might be. But she wouldn’t let her worry

disrupt her day. That wasn’t the point of her Saturdays.

Suddenly there was a siren chasing her from behind. There were always sirens; they were

part of the city’s music: a key instrument. As it raced by her, the police car’s wheels spun up

murky water onto the sidewalk. Then as soon as it was here, it was gone. Lydia watched as the

vehicle disappeared down the street, shrinking until all that was left was a tiny blur of red and

blue.

And yet while the policeman drove passed her, ignored her, Lydia felt the muscle in her

chest thrash. She had no real need to be nervous, she knew. She was just another woman:

ambling along the sidewalk, triumphant after poking a hole in her bank account. Nothing illegal.

Still, the siren unsettled her.

She laughed at the next thought that sparked inside of her. She wondered if one of her

alternate lives was criminal: if that Lydia let her greed stretch to such a degree that she robbed

and looted and cheated. Then the police car would pull to the curb beside her, wouldn’t keep on

driving.

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She wondered if there had been an accident. That would explain the empty streets: if one

driver crashed into another, blocking anyone else from getting through. She could picture the

gridlock: a string of idling buses and cars, their exhaust fumes visible in the cold; car horns

singing angrily along the avenue. She then was almost relieved to have to walk through the grey,

frigid slush. She didn’t have the patience to sit stuck in traffic, listening to the taxi driver fiddle

with the radio stations.

But once the flashing lights were no longer visible, Lydia realized what else lay in the

police car’s direction. The hospital. It was that way: about twenty-five blocks straight, three to

the right. By chance, the police car was moving closer and closer to the one place Lydia was

avoiding.

Lydia hadn’t returned to the hospital since Harper died. She refused. She felt she had no

need to go back. There was something about the building that made her truly nauseous. She

pictured walking through those twisting hallways and she clutched her stomach, started to gag.

Its walls were stained with the memory of that night. Surrounded by them, Lydia would fall back

in time: be forced to relive the panic, the ensuing numbness.

The thought sobered her. The hospital. Naomi.

*

It was a process Lydia had been too familiar with: Naomi’s morning ritual. For just

fifteen minutes or so, Naomi would sit quiet and calm at the kitchen table, trying to guess which

letters fit into which boxes. She took her time with the puzzle, didn’t rush through the clues. She

skimmed the across list first, then the down.

After just reading, she starred those with answers that rushed at her: the ones that made

her feel as though she could’ve written the clues herself. It was just a tiny blue mark: four lines

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drawn through the same center. Once she did this she counted up all of her little stars. She wrote

the number at the bottom of the page. Circled it. The days she had more than fifteen stars Naomi

would smile, bite the tip of her pen.

She wrote with a steady hand. The lines of her letters always thin, straight. Each one

stretched from the top of its box to the bottom: taking full ownership of its place.

This was the extent of her progress each morning: marking down the words she didn’t

have to hunt for. An English muffin in front of her: disappearing bite by bite as she scribbled in

the empty space.

As always, Lydia watched all of this: the way Naomi dizzied herself with riddles. She

admired how Naomi focused on the pattern of overlapping consonants and vowels: finding

stillness within it. Lydia knew her wife liked crossword puzzles because there was a question and

an answer. Simple logic. A consequence if she guessed incorrectly.

Besides the morning, she filled most of her free time with her puzzles. She carried the

book everywhere.

And so the first day it happened, Lydia had thought it was just an accident. Careless.

Naomi’s mind just latching onto other, irrelevant thoughts for a change.

The book had been on the couch. Open and flat, upside down. Its pages turned to a barely

finished puzzle. Letters messily written in, scratched out. It was close to falling down in between

the couch cushions. And Naomi was already gone.

Lydia noticed the book instantly; it’s yellow cover too bright against the grey of the

couch. She thought it was odd, but not enough of a reason to call Naomi to come back to the

apartment. It was just one day. Naomi would be fine. It wasn’t that important of a talisman,

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Lydia had reasoned. Besides, she had her own morning to grapple with: she had slept through her

alarm, was already going to be late to the gallery.

She had only three hours of sleep to propel her through the day. The previous night she

fought off the fists of another nightmare, distracting herself with theories of the multiverse.

With a half empty bottle next to her, the glow of her laptop screen the only light in the

room, Lydia learned that there could be an infinite number of alternative universes. That people

believed they existed: all physical and full of life. They weren’t just theoretical. They had trees

and cities and mountains. Their surfaces could be touched, moved along. Each had its own

specific reality, the details shifting only slightly. Just a specific name, circumstance: the

variations from this universe to the next and to the next only noticeable to those affected by

them.

Reading more, she learned that a select group of people with lab coats and high security

clearance were searching through the dark of the beyond to find evidence of the multiverse. They

looked passed the stars. They looked for patterns of radiation, heat, cold. They looked for the

distorted reflection of this particular place.

With each article she clicked closed, Lydia was already scrolling for another, more

researched piece. She wanted the knowledge to seep into her like ocean into sand. She ignored

the numbers changing in the top right corner of the computer screen.

And so in the morning when she noticed the flimsy book, Lydia registered its presence

but her mind at the same time was filtering through other, more tantalizing thoughts. She was

trying to construct the outline of other universes. She was starting to realize that she could exist

in several forms: wealthier, smarter, prettier, happier.

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And so Lydia had shrugged, picked up the crossword book off the couch and placed it

back on Naomi’s nightstand. She made sure the book was straight, in line with the other ones left

on the surface. She thought Naomi would appreciate the effort.

But then it kept happening.

Some mornings the book would be on the couch, like the first day. Others it would be on

the table, on the counter in the kitchen next to the coffee pot, balancing on the edge of the

bathroom sink, in her closet, on the floor. For a while Lydia replaced the book, almost amused.

And then her frustration festered.

The neglected crossword puzzle book was a reminder not just of Naomi’s sudden frantic

behavior, her clinging to the lawsuit, but of the way they fought the previous night.

The way silence then sliced through them.

Naomi told her enough about the lawsuit that Lydia felt it would go unnoticed if she

didn’t ask for other details. She knew times of their meetings. Names. The numbers written down

on paper, slipped back and forth across the table. It would be unlike Naomi to not share these

details, even if it would lead to another argument. This was too important to Naomi, Lydia knew.

She wasn’t the kind of person to bury the thoughts swirling in her mind.

Lydia listened without investing in the facts. She let Naomi’s words bounce off her

eardrums: leave her body entirely.

And so she didn’t notice when Naomi started to recycle her information. When the

numbers the hospital attorneys offered didn’t change. Then decreased.

*

Staring off in the direction of the hospital, the police car now invisible, Lydia

remembered the lawyers. The lawsuit. Naomi’s grand plans to seek reparation. As if money was

78

a fair substitute. It was Saturday, but could Naomi have had a meeting with the lawyers? It

would explain her odd absence. That would be just like Naomi to sneak silently through their

apartment door, off to a meeting without telling Lydia. An attempt to keep the morning still,

almost peaceful.

And if that was why she was calling, with news of the lawsuit, of the compensation that

Lydia couldn’t justify, she didn’t want to hear it. Not during her Saturday.

If Naomi called again, Lydia decided she wouldn’t pick up. She had to follow her rules:

keep Naomi out of the ritual.

She shut her phone off completely.

79

Ella

PRESENT

She finds her spot on the ceiling, again. She finds it and doesn’t let go of it, traces it

round and round and round. A tiny mark in the stucco: a simple result of construction. This

particular spot is hers because she likes the shape of it: a figure eight with both holes erased. A

solid splotch of black, it is bigger than some of the ceiling’s other scars. Ella can recognize it no

matter if her body is slow with nausea, exhaustion, pain. When she feels shackled.

She holds tight to her darkened figure eight, gliding around it as if her eyes are sharp

skates training on ice, because the world is cracking into pieces around her. With everything

falling far away, she can only feel herself cold and crushed with blankets. She feels detached

from her surroundings: lost in her own space.

Her throat is sore. Even clean air makes it sting, burn. The whole night Ella keeps herself

miserable and awake, vomiting up all of the liquid in her stomach. Nothing works. No pills. No

meditation. No breathing exercises. No ginger ale. It all just keeps pouring out of her. The lining

of her mouth is stained with a sour taste.

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When her body allows her a moment of rest, she sits as if paralyzed, a string of bile

swinging from her lips. Silently, she repeats her mantra as if it’s a line of ancient prayer: this will

end, this will end; nothing is permanent.

With her insides raw, as if a layer has been peeled off like a swirl of apple skin, Ella

wonders if these next few hours would end definitively. Irrevocably. She almost hopes they will.

They don’t. Time spins on and she is able to appease her stomach. She can breathe.

At some point the sky is bright and blue and it’s a new day.

She thinks about Charlie. Her friend. She doesn’t want him to come visit her, not like

this, but she misses him. More and more each day.

The best she can, Ella turns her neck to the side towards her window, searches for the

bulletin board. Today it’s decorated with pink and red and white hearts. As always, some are

nicer than the others. Still, she can draw a line down the middle of each one, find its symmetry:

cut into folded sheets of paper, each heart has its own balance.

She knows that if Charlie were here he would’ve made a heart, covered it with random

stickers, senseless doodles. He would’ve probably convinced her to make one too, asked if their

hearts could be hung together.

But Charlie isn’t here. Ella is alone and is finding it harder and harder to distract herself

from that thought.

*

She isn’t supposed to be watching this, but she finds it easily enough and as the

commentary continues on and on and on she pushes the tiny ten-button remote away from her on

the bed. Puts it out of reach.

“She came right at me, asking where Dr. Evans was.”

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“With the gun?”

The man interviewed is a surgical intern. First year. His wants to specialize in neonatal

surgery. His wide, watery eyes make him ideal for this kind of segment, but Ella wonders how

many frightened, screaming mothers would place that much trust in such a flustered gaze.

“Yes, with the gun.”

“And what did you do?”

“Well honestly I just sort of panicked. I told her I didn’t know. Dr. Evans had cleared her

schedule for the day. A family thing.”

“So you did know?”

“Not exactly, no. But most of us that worked with her knew she had been dealing with

this family thing for a while.”

“With her nephew?”

“Yes, her nephew.”

A picture of him flashes onto the screen. A family photo, cropped tight around him:

showing his figure from just the neck up. Brown hair, eyes. No particularly distinguishing

qualities. No scars etched onto his face.

“And then what happened?”

“She made me unlock Dr. Evans’ door. She went through her desk. Found her planner,

read through her notes.”

“Sounds terrifying.”

“Yes, it was.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine.”

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Ella thinks the interview is scripted. The questions lead to tight answers. The emotion in

their voices: enough to sound affected but not unhinged.

Now that the faces on the television are starting to repeat, Ella finds she knows what they

are going to say. They have rehearsed their lines. Their memories arranged into perfect scenes: at

this point the details can’t vary. Consistency breeds credibility.

She doesn’t recognize these faces from before, of course. That would’ve been impossible.

She thinks about everyone here everyday, some working others recovering others declining, and

she knows she could never know them all. But these few she knows now.

As she watches this interview, Ella is aware of the difference of having a gun aimed at

her head, of a bullet lodged in muscle or worse. Still, she feels herself drifting from safety. She

no longer feels comfortable inhabiting her limbs. She knows what she saw was enough.

*

“We won, 4-0. A shutout.”

It’s supposed to excite her, she knows. They have a double header this weekend. It’s

easier to play the second game after a win like this one.

Ella lets the news just filter through her. The satisfaction doesn’t stick within her ribs.

She doesn’t care if her father is mad she that wouldn’t let him come watch the game

today. Or two days ago. Or won’t tomorrow. She imagines he understands, but she doesn’t care

if that is true. Because his talk of hockey only reminds her of the time when she needed to hear

him speak. When she was desperate to watch that game. When it was the only thought that kept

her mind from derailing.

“Ella, honey, did you hear me? We won.”

Speak, respond, show emotion: she commands herself.

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“Yeah, dad, I heard.”

She realizes something important. Something she knew for years but never named.

She has to make everyone else feel comfortable. To not remind them of their own

mortality, because otherwise that is what she does. Everyone else, her parents included, they see

her cough and vomit and cry and they remember that one day their own hearts will sigh and stop.

Their blood will chill within them. And people don’t like to be reminded that their bodies are

temporary. That is why the play-dates ended, the calls went unanswered: it isn’t about her. It’s

about them.

She knows this but she didn’t know how much it hurt until she found another discarded

life. Found comfort in an imperfect reflection. A friend.

Still, she needs to prove to her father that she can be strong. Brave. She knows it’s what

he needs.

Ella remembers once when watching a hockey game the camera cut to a player in blue

with his hands knotted in a fist, eyes closed, lips shivering. His first game. Just ten minutes until

warm up: this was the last thing he would do before leaving the locker room. His name: the

subject of speculation in the sports section for weeks at this point. It was a big trade. The words

potential and player maker repeated often. Her father, she remembers, was largely in favor of the

recruit.

“This is the change we need, Ella. We need fire. We need some young blood out there,

get this team motivated. This kid is going to be good for us, just you wait.”

At the time Ella let his excitement sink into her chest, crackle within her. That was almost

a year ago.

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She remembers watching the player and wanting to know what he was saying while

understanding that this should be private. The camera should’ve moved to someone, anyone else.

Whether he was whispering to some form of a god, to a dead relative, to himself: it was his

ritual. It would center him: clear his mind so that he could skate free, focused.

She remembers watching him and feeling understood. Justified.

Why this memory crystallizes in her mind at this very moment, she isn’t quite sure. Still,

Ella lets it take its shape. Expand.

She knows she is supposed to stick to her rituals. Let them keep her steady, push her

forward. But she can’t. She can’t stop thinking about everything else: her new definition of

violence.

She is used to a different kind of violence: subtle, but just as dangerous. It causes

different wounds, all permanent in their own way. Blades that open skin: aiming to do more good

than harm. Cells that multiply and attack: an army. Relentless. Stitches sewn into and then ripped

from skin. It all hurts. It all happens everyday. Within these walls, it is accepted.

Yet all violence has its own consequences.

Ella realizes she doesn’t understand this new kind of violence, and that shakes her more

than she thought it would.

It isn’t just the gun. It is the person holding it: she doesn’t understand the pain that causes

such a deliberate, conspicuous violence. It has to be pain, she thinks. Uncontrollable pain. A

feeling that maybe has another name: something deeper, beyond her experience.

Because her pain is finite, that is what Ella has always told herself. And she believed that

was true for everyone but now she isn’t sure. It confuses her more than it scares her: how people

who can’t control their pain become something unrecognizable. Shadows of themselves.

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And now she is starting to distrust her own ability to control her pain. Not to the same

degree: she would never let such spiraling thoughts drown her. But it’s getting worse. She is

nearing that fated number. It doesn’t just work to pinch her forearm, to knock her fists into her

legs. Her ten, ultimate and silencing, is getting closer. She thinks she is ready for it to come for

her.

Surrender, Ella realizes, might taste like sugar: dissolve thick and syrupy on her tongue.

Might go down easy.

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Ella

First: the tape. It was thicker than she had expected. Not like a thin strip Ella would reach

for in the toy room, taping gilded macaroni to paper. No, the clear plastic was reinforced. Its glue

was stronger than that on the backside of a Band-Aid. The tape had fused to her arm. A second

exterior layer.

She began to pick at its corner. As soon as a large enough piece was free, she peeled.

Ella’s eyes watered, but she managed not to yelp.

The raw rectangle of skin she uncovered itched.

Next: the IV port and the needle. A riskier step. Slack within her skin, the needle was

more dangerous than it was just seconds ago. Pushed even just slightly to the wrong angle, it

could rip through the wrong layer, leaving Ella with yet another jagged piece of crisis.

At first, when she realized what she had to do, Ella thought it was reasonable. Possible.

Over the last six years she watched countless hands sink the thing into her arm. Some were better

at it than others: were more experienced, less nervous. She paid attention. She studied procedure.

Ella had always thought it was easier to watch, to be present, than to avoid it all.

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She knew to keep the needle straight. To drive it horizontal into the line of indigo snaking

down her forearm. Not to plunge it straight down. To press hard once the needle was in, securing

everything in place until the swatch of tape took over the task. There was no time for indecision,

confusion.

Ella felt confident she could do it all in reverse. Peel, rip, yank: all in calm succession.

She believed she could keep her hand steady, her focus strict. The entirety of her mission would

last a minute. Maybe two.

And then: freedom.

All this time Charlie was just sitting there, studying her. His green eyes barely blinked.

He cupped his chin in his hands, rested his elbows on his knees. Every once in a while he

sniffled, too loudly. It made Ella tense. She didn’t expect Charlie to help her. She didn’t trust his

little hands to be steady. Still, she disliked the way he was so focused on her: waiting as if she

was about to dazzle him with a magic trick.

The tape lying next to her on the floor, she knew that this was it. There would be no

second chance. She had to get this right.

“One, two, three,” Ella counted.

She tipped her head upwards, waited for the pain to grow, burn, settle.

Clockwork.

“Do you need a Band-Aid?”

“A Band-Aid?”

“You’re bleeding.” Charlie aimed a finger at the bubble of blood emerging in place of the

needle. It was dark against her thin, pale skin.

“I guess, maybe. Do you have a Band-Aid?”

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“No.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Does it hurt?”

It hurt more than she thought it would. Ella felt a sharp pinch pulling the needle out of

her arm. The sensation almost complemented what she felt when originally pricked. Now the

spot ached as if her arm missed its intruder.

But it was just a six, at most: reasonable.

“It’s fine.”

“It looks like it hurts.”

Watching her, Charlie flinched as if she yanked the needle out of him instead. He reached

for his own arm. He held it protectively, Ella could see. Yet, he didn’t once turn away. He was

invested in her daring trick, she knew.

“It’s fine, Charlie.”

“Good. We have to leave now.”

Charlie crawled out into open space. He stood and waited for Ella to follow.

“Can you help me up?”

She extended her arm and Charlie took it with both of his hands. He back-pedaled, using

his whole weight to offset hers. She was impressed that he had the strength still in him.

On her feet again, the floor spun. She didn’t trust herself to take a single step. But she had

no other choice.

“This way,” Charlie held onto Ella, fitting his hand in hers. He guided her forward. She

didn’t know where he was taking her, if she could rely on his direction. But she didn’t feel she

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had the right to argue with him. She was just relieved that he had what seemed like at least the

outline of a plan.

Charlie matched her pace, whether for his benefit or hers she couldn’t tell. He walked

alongside her, offered his own wraithlike body as support. He was easily half her size, her

weight. And she imagined there was pain chewing up his spine, his legs. But still, he assumed

the role of her guide without faltering: proud of himself, she assumed. Ella was now convinced

the boy was younger than her.

The door. He was leading her towards the door.

Walking, she was barely picking up her feet. Her socks let her glide across the tile. It was

the easiest way to keep her limbs in motion. The room’s spinning had only accelerated. She

knew if she stopped, she would collapse.

Ella let more of herself lean against Charlie. They kept going.

Distraction was her talent. It was how she pushed through her days. Ella trusted her mind

to distract her now. It was the only way she was going to make it. She couldn’t let herself think

of her father, of the game. By now it had started, she guessed. Maybe someone scored already:

jumped in celebration up against the glass, the arena electric with chanting. No, she couldn’t let

herself think about what she was missing.

Her mind settled instead on her sister. Nicole hadn’t come to visit last week. She had

been too busy. A ballet recital: her first. Twenty girls in gauzy costumes: all twirling out of sync

to a song from The Nutcracker. Her sister at the end of the night probably posed for a picture,

holding a bouquet of roses twice her size. From what her father had reported the following day, it

didn’t seem like Ella had missed that much. And at the time she didn’t take offense to Nicole’s

neglect. Besides she often found it difficult to entertain her sister.

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She wondered now what her sister would do in a moment like this: trapped in an enraged,

screeching building, sneaking through the hall with a boy she just met. Recently it seemed her

sister was drifting into personhood: developing her likes and dislikes, forming opinions.

Separated from her, Ella wasn’t quite sure what that really meant for her sister. She didn’t know

if Nicole was growing into the person who would get up, fight for herself. Or if she would just sit

there in bed, shaking and alone.

It worked. They made it to the door. Ella was relieved. They were going to get out of

here, find her father and everything would be fine. Normal. They were making progress.

Together Ella and Charlie pushed against the crash bar, their hands flat against the metal.

Nothing. It would not budge. Locked. They pushed again, harder this time. The hinges of

the door rattled, stubborn. Her relief curdled.

“What do we do?” She asked.

“We can’t go that way,” Charlie responded.

He took a few steps back. At his sides, his hands shrank into fists. He stared at the door as

if trying to understand some other secret to opening it. A giant red button. A foreign sounding

spell. He wiped at his nose. Sniffled again.

Ella watched him, her stomach folding in on itself.

“How else are we going to leave? We have to get out of here.”

“It’s locked.”

“I know that Charlie. We can’t just stay here. We have to find my dad. He can get us

help. We need to get help.”

“This is the only door.”

“So what do we do?” He offered no solution. “What do we do?”

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Owen

“This is fucking nuts,” Owen said once they were alone.

“We’re going to be fine, kid. Abby’s getting the wheelchair and we will get out of here.

Just stay calm.”

“Stay calm? Some idiot is running around here with a gun.”

“Owen, trust me you have to stay calm. We’re going to get out of here and be fine.”

“You really believe that?”

“Yes. Abby will be back soon. Just hold on. ”

But Abby didn’t hurry. It took her a while to return. Owen wondered if she abandoned

them. Rushed to the elevator, descended to safety. It was possible. It was, after all, the logical

thing to do. Save herself: survival of the fittest and all. Unlike his aunt Kate, the nurse had no

investment in his life. It made no difference to her that he needed a wheelchair to escape. He

knew it was just her job that required her to feign interest: to offer care.

But Owen was wrong. She came back for them.

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Abby pushed the wheelchair back to them slow. The rubber wheels caught against the

floor and screeched, making Owen recoil. But the sound of spinning wheels meant there would

be a way to move his body. It meant safety was a possibility.

As she made her way through the door, her speed was instantly justified. She was rigid,

trying to keep from causing any unnecessary consequences.

Abby wasn’t alone. She was forced forward, the gun pressed to the back of her head.

Coming into view, the person with the gun wasn’t who Owen expected. A woman. If he

ever imagined himself to be staring back at a loaded gun, this wasn’t the person holding it. She

wasn’t that tall. There was a gap between her two front teeth, slight enough that Owen could see

someone finding the flaw endearing, attractive even. Her hair was dark brown, almost black.

Probably dyed. It fell in waved, heavy in chucks against her face. A curtain of sorts: clearly. He

imagined if she brushed it back, tucked her hair behind her ears, her eyes might stand out more.

Her eyes focused, almost squinted, he couldn’t quite make out their color. Still, her gaze was

intense. Determined.

She was put together. Well dressed: her clothes tailored. Nothing hung loose on her body,

nothing squeezed against her skin. She had the money and the interest to maintain a comfortable,

precise wardrobe. He imagined the labels sewn into her garments were inscribed with names that

would be impressive to those that cared about such details. He wondered if her planning this

moment included laying out her outfit the night before: throwing her options on her bed, making

sure the colors of she picked didn’t clash. It was all about looking composed. Confident. It made

Owen more afraid.

Only afterwards would it feel important to make sense of things, he felt. Years in the

future, if he made it that far, Owen try to untangle the why. He would peer into memory as if it

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was a kaleidoscope: rotate the tube, trying to find the right colors that turned into beauty.

Meaning.

But in this moment Owen couldn’t concentrate on the particular details. The finger that

would pull the trigger was just that: her bullet would tear through him regardless.

And yet, the people who knew her name would care about the why now. Those connected

to her would look at her face and see everything there. They would worry.

His aunt Kate faltered. Stumbling backwards she reached for his shoulder, still keeping

herself in front of her nephew. Her grip was strong. Her nails left thin, curved marks on his skin.

There was a moment before anyone said anything, a sort of twisted calm. Owen heard his

aunt’s breathing growing louder and louder. He watched as Abby tried to keep from trembling.

One wrong move and that would be it.

Owen noticed how the woman in front of him focused on his aunt Kate. On her white

coat, on the nametag swinging from her pocket.

“Who is that?” The woman flicked her gun just barely in Owen’s direction. His aunt Kate

wasn’t convincing as a shield.

“Naomi? What are you doing?”

“She didn’t say anyone was here with you. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone else in

the room.” Owen presumed she meant Abby. He wondered what it meant that the nurse tried to

keep his presence a secret: whether it was a deliberate act of protection or if she had just been

flustered, babbling.

“Naomi, I need you to put the gun down. Let’s just talk. There’s no need for a gun.”

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“You are supposed to be alone! Why is he here?” She kept the gun pointed at Abby but

brought other hand to her forehead, dragged it backwards through her hair. Owen could see she

was trying to reevaluate. She was failing.

“This is my nephew,” his aunt Kate finally answered. Maybe she thought the truth would

disrupt the tension: poke a tiny hole, release some air. “This is his room. I’m here with him

because he is being discharged today. Naomi put down the gun. Please. He has nothing to do

with this.”

“This is all wrong,” Naomi said, as if almost confused.

“I know you don’t mean any real harm, Naomi.”

“I just,” Naomi started, stopped. It was as if she had more to say but couldn’t exactly

remember the words. As if they were there, in a distant, unreachable part of her mind. Owen

wondered if she was merely wavering, losing her courage, or worse.

Owen suddenly saw her confidence was just the fabric. It was the way she presented

herself. Arrived at the door composed, well dressed: spine tall and arm straight out holding the

gun. She was neither just a confident threat or an uneasy, vulnerable thing. She was both. And it

didn’t matter.

Regardless she could still go off: tick, tick, boom.

“Naomi, can you just put the gun down? Please?” Owen could tell his aunt Kate didn’t

know what else to say. It wasn’t as though she had practice fending off a gun. It was as if all she

could do was mimic the exaggerated voices she had heard in cheap thriller movies, procedural

episodes.

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Listening, it was too surreal to believe. A gun in the room: leaving its nervous owner with

a power that only caricatured villains seemed to possess. He could feel the pressure of it all build

behind his eyes.

And yet the absurdity of it all seemed insignificant.

Owen knew his fate from the way her hand now shook. Her aim burned towards his aunt

Kate but her hand shook enough that Owen knew not to trust her shot. He wouldn’t easily be

able to move, shield himself. And behind his aunt Kate his own head was a viable target.

Helpless. Instinctively, Owen’s mind began to filter through the possible scenarios. His aunt

Kate: dead. Abby: dead. Himself: dead. Or at least any of them wounded.

Sasha flashed into his mind. He saw her as if she was there in the room: an absent body.

She smiled like she did at first, before the endless rounds of fighting. Just barely: showing no

teeth. With her image in front of him, he thought of everything he didn’t say. The calls that went

nowhere, the voicemail messages he didn’t record. He felt guilty. Small. He didn’t chase those

chances. He was waiting for something to ignite his courage. He was waiting for something like

this, he suddenly realized.

Because a bullet would change everything. Sasha might not have wanted to come back

for him with a broken rib and a punctured lung and a shattered jaw and a fractured leg. He

understood that. It hadn’t been enough, Owen now knew. But a bullet in his lung, his heart: that

was a reason to reconcile. Because it would be a bullet fired at him. Accidentally.

A bullet that wasn’t his own.

He saw it. He would survive. Maybe it would crash into his shin, his shoulder instead of

his skull. He would be badly wounded, again, and she would care this time. She would want to

help him heal. She would ask him to come home, for good.

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Lydia

The diner made her feel almost unsteady with its plastic smell. It was the booths. Maroon

and navy, all worn and cracking, covered in fat layers of protective plastic. Lydia slid into the

one the hostess had guided her to, opened the laminated menu that was twice the necessary size.

She was so hungry she felt sick. Her last meal was a midnight snack on Thursday: a couple of

slices of toast with Nutella and uneven slices of banana. Friday was just coffee and water and,

later, vodka. She wanted to play her part right: the stressed, starving bride-to-be.

Lydia was proud of her restraint, her dedication.

The Greek omelet, she decided. Spinach and tomatoes and feta. Square, crumbling

chunks of feta. Extra feta. She craved the strong, salty taste. Some home fries, a few slices of rye

toast. She liked the way they toasted their bread: letting it burn until it was almost black, but not

quite. Lydia ordered her brunch as soon as the waitress came over with utensils and a glass of

water.

The bridal shops changed every weekend, but not the diner. No, the diner was her

constant. The detail the ritual hinged upon.

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They came here once together, a few weeks before Harper was born. They were both

starving yet thought the cafeteria pot roast and macaroni and cheese, both discolored and the

wrong texture, was revolting. That opinion would fade later, when the cafeteria offered the best

alternative to the NICU. But that day they had no interest in spending forty dollars on a meal

neither of them would finish. Instead they explored the adjacent neighborhood, hoping the city

streets would offer up something more appealing.

Lydia liked this time at the diner best. At midday the crowd around her shifted

frequently. She liked watching what people ordered: how in front of her someone was slicing

chocolate chip waffles in half while to her left a different person was biting into a grilled cheese.

It was entertaining, more so than watching the other shopping brides with her in the stores. Their

behavior was contrived, glossy. Here people were just eating, had no desire to appear a certain

way. Or at least, that was what Lydia assumed.

Waiting for her food, for just a moment Lydia sank back into her real self. This wasn’t

supposed to happen, it was one of the rules of the ritual: detach herself from everything real.

Still, anxiety danced in her fingertips. She needed to get it out, scrape it out from beneath her

nails.

But she didn’t want to leave. Not yet. This morning’s Lydia deserved her food. Her

stomach was so empty it had begun to expand beneath her sweater. She was going to devour her

food, let the half melted feta crumble in her mouth. No, her Saturday wasn’t over yet.

But she could take a break, she reasoned. At least for the next few minutes until her

omelet was steaming before her.

Quickly she pulled out a pen from her bag. Lydia took her paper napkin from her lap and

began to scribble around the coffee stains, the faded imprint of her red lipstick.

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2,000. 2,500. 1,000. 3,500.

Lists soothed her. On paper, she could control what she wrote. She liked to watch as the

ink absorbed into the thin napkin. She took her time curving her zeros, even re-circled a couple

of them. Ten in total. It was dizzying to make them disappear. She wasn’t sure whether she was

excited for the day the last one vanished, or dreading it. Then it would all be over. No more

dipping in and out of her other lives. No more brunches here. That was the deal she made with

herself. When the money was gone, her ultimate goal, she had to stop. To figure out something

else.

She stared at the list, her records, and agonized over her inability to think of a way to

explain the missing money. It was unlike her. She was proud of the way she had organized the

routine of her new Saturday: the way she finally found something that drew her out from the

apartment. She should’ve been able to craft a multilayered lie by now. Something that would

stick, throw Naomi’s attention far away from the truth. It had been weeks now.

Lydia was surprised Naomi hadn’t noticed yet. That the vanishing money hadn’t fueled

any sort of suspicion. At what point does the bank call reporting unusual activity, Lydia

wondered. Was that only with identity theft? Credit cards used at cafes, shopping in foreign

countries? She knew this was something she was supposed to know. A responsible shred of

knowledge she should hold onto. But she didn’t. She had no idea. And now sometimes, removed

from her Saturdays, she had dull panic attacks during the day, forcing her to lock herself in a

bathroom stall at work. Breathe.

Lydia didn’t want to imagine the conversation. The feud that would then unfold between

them: endless and gory. In her saner moments, Lydia understood her purchases were enough to

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ignite such conflict. But she couldn’t stop. It was as if she saw all of this in slow motion: her

mistakes yanking her towards her consequences.

She needed a cunning explanation. Needed it weeks ago.

It was these few moments, when Lydia’s unease over the money rattled within her chest,

which took her out of the ritual. Sobered her. Reminded her that no matter how quickly,

efficiently she spent Harper’s money, the other lives she imagined for herself were just that.

Imagined.

She wracked her knuckles on the table, checked her watch. Just a little after 1:00. Lydia

stared at the numbers on her napkin, squinted. Nothing came to mind. She looked at the watch

again. Three more hours and she would be home. Glass in hand, the taste of vodka burning in her

throat. Only then could she let the numbers swim laps in her mind.

Not now.

She had three more hours left in her Saturday. They should be enjoyed.

Lydia folded the napkin, tucked it in her bag.

“Excuse me?” She waved over the nearest waitress. Lydia smiled, tipped her head to the

side with a bit too much flair. “Can I have another napkin, please? I dropped mine.”

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Owen

PRESENT

To his left on the table is a stack of old magazines. To his right on the wall is the clock.

Its hands twirling in perfect rhythm. He has two options: read through the hyperbolic headlines,

or let his eyes spin and follow the clocks’ appendages.

He stretches out his legs, the good one hanging straighter in the air. A jolt of discomfort

in the bad leg. His pants, now almost two sizes too big, hang awkwardly off of his body. In these

moments he is aware of how his muscle faded to soft and then to nothing.

He feels the envelope in his pocket: rectangular and flat and there.

Owen already knows this will be a reason to talk today. To sit and ramble while an out-

of-place kitchen timer tells him he has 58 minutes left. 57. 56. 55.

It doesn’t escape him: where he is and why. The frustrating cycle of his days: Another

waiting room, another clock on the wall. He should be used to bizarre temporality: the feeling of

being disconnected from the world so completely. The minutes without meaning. But he isn’t.

He never will be.

“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Owen turns his head up at the question, he snaps into focus at once.

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There is only one other person in the waiting room. It’s a private practice. A cramped

office. Usually Owen is the only one in the waiting room. He appreciates the solitude. It’s the

only pleasure tied to these appointments.

After all, there are rules to the waiting room. Eyes down. Lips shut. Chewing or slurping

or other obvious noises at a minimum, if food is allowed at all. There are no questions. No

efforts to understand anyone else’s brokenness: physical or mental or emotional. Don’t compare

suffering. Don’t try to understand.

“No.”

“Are you sure? I feel like we’ve met?”

The man speaking to Owen looked a bit older than his father. Two years, maybe three.

There was more silver in his hair than black. There was a softness to his face that suggested

going to the gym was more of a daily afterthought. A bulge to his stomach. The watch clasped

around his wrist looked like it required a considerable paycheck. White gold. A large pale face

marked with slim lines instead of curled numbers. Owen wondered how it would feel to measure

time with that on his own wrist.

He doesn’t know how to answer the man’s question. He doesn’t want to give a voice to

the right answer.

“No, I’m sorry, you must be thinking of someone else. We haven’t met before, I’m sure.”

“I know who you are! I’ve got it. You’re that guy that’s been all over the news, haven’t

you? From that shooting. The one where that doctor got shot.”

“She didn’t get shot.”

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Owen regrets his response before the man can even register his mistake. He should’ve

just denied, let the factual error go unnoticed. It doesn’t even matter that much. But he messes

up. Confesses.

“Oh, I thought she got shot. But still, you’re that guy, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

The man nods his head, quiets for a moment. He leans back, proud of his ability to

recognize a distantly familiar face.

Owen knows he can’t pull himself out of the conversation. It’s too late.

He shifts in his chair, tries to at least move the direction of his body away from the man.

Too swift of a movement: he puts too much weight on the wrong leg. Pain races back: thirsty.

“So what was it like?”

“What?”

“The thing. The shooting.”

People ask this, more often than Owen would’ve imagined. They look at him breathing

and speaking and think he is able to talk about it. They ask as if they have a right to know. It’s all

over the television, anyway. Still, this man doesn’t seem aware of what he has asked. None of

them do. The ones that think healed scars are an open invitation to make jokes, to pry.

“Oh, um,”

“Owen?” his therapist suddenly calls.

For the first time, he is thrilled to walk into her room, let her examine his every instinct,

twitch.

*

“Owen? Owen, are you listening to me?”

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His therapist crosses her legs, leans towards him as if shrinking the distance between

them will be enough to engage his attention. She is persistent.

Her office is a third of the size of the waiting room. Maybe. The couch, her desk, her

chair, the standing lamp in the corner fill the room entirely, making Owen question if he takes up

too much space. At least these walls aren’t white. They are beige. On the wall behind where the

therapist sits: three uninspired photographs of mountains. In one, the peaks are snowcapped.

Crisp as if untouched. Owen’s gaze traces those mountains, aware he can’t ski yet. Probably not

for a while.

He reaches along his leg, finds the outline of the envelope again. He knows what he

should do. Pull it out of his pocket, unfold the letter: not gently, don’t worry about tearing the

paper. Read her words out loud, slow. Enunciate. Make his jaw work like it used to.

Instead Owen pulls back his hand, joins it with the other. Locks the two into a sturdy fist.

“Sorry, I missed that. Can you say that again?”

“How are you feeling today? Any changes in mood? Diet? Your mother says you still

aren’t eating that much.”

Just ten steps to the door. Maybe less. He can get up, make it that far and yank the door

shut once he limps out of the room. And why shouldn’t he? His therapist has all the facts she

needs, it seems. His mother takes careful notes.

He sees her sitting at her desk, reading glasses fallen far down the slope of her nose. She

writes with purpose: trying to record every awkward joke he makes, every time he mentions the

words pain or jaw or leg or gun or hospital.

“I don’t know.”

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“You don’t know?”

“I guess.”

“Come on, Owen, you can do better than that.”

He studies her face, wondering what tone, what words will equate to better.

“I’m eating.”

He gives a half a nod, hopes a gesture will make the lie more convincing. Owen is

finding it more difficult to crave meals after the rotation of mashed potatoes, puréed soups. He is

offered a full plate of hard, tough, chewy food and should feel something reminiscent of

excitement but instead his stomach flips and he stands from the table. Leaves.

His therapist tilts her head to the side, reflects the same unconvinced nod back at him.

“Okay. Tell me what you did yesterday then.”

“Yesterday?”

“Did you leave the house? Talk to anyone besides your parents?”

It’s a layered question. There are people he is supposed to reach out to, others he isn’t.

One in particular, obviously. It was part of the reason for these appointments. The shooting too,

but those questions are easier to answer. The emotional fallout more justified. She is more

complicated, the real reason his parents forced him to come here, he knows.

Sitting across from him one night, almost too soon after he returned home at last, they

assured him it was the necessary thing to do now.

“We are worried about you, honey.”

His mother had her palms pressed flat against the table, as if needing to steady herself to

speak. His father was leaning back in his chair, arms folded across his chest.

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“Your mother is right. We’ve noticed a change in you and we can tell you aren’t getting

better.”

“We love you, honey, but this isn’t something we can help you with. We think you need

professional help.”

“And we’re willing to pay,” his father added, voice lowering as if there were strangers

scattered throughout their kitchen.

At the time Owen was surprised to hear this all from his mother. It was the last thing he

thought she would say. But once he agreed, he learned the conditions of these therapy sessions:

discretion, public denial. He can get the help he needs only when hidden behind protected walls.

The windows shut. The doorknob locked.

His mother did the research, wrote down relevant names and numbers. All three

therapists were close but not local. No one from town would see him, where he was going, would

guess why. She offered to take him to his first appointment.

Still unable to drive, Owen had no choice but to accept.

They listen to her dated, synthetic pop music only during the drive.

He never tells his mother what the therapist asks him during his sessions even though she

asks as soon as he closes the door, buckles his seatbelt.

The sessions have predictability to them like any other treatment. The introduction is

minimal: no use wasting any minute in the carefully planned hour. Certain questions come first,

certain issues linger in the conversation.

Owen sits down, listens, speaks, leaves. Clockwork.

Today feels different. Today he has an actual answer for what is thrown at him.

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He isn’t proud of the answer. He doesn’t even want to explain the events of the previous

day: if he tells her about the letter than it and its consequences exist. Unquestionably.

Owen knows he is only toying with the answer because he can’t get over the letter

himself. What she said. That she said it so carelessly. In so few sentences.

Sasha knew. She knew and she didn’t call. She knew and she didn’t text. She knew and

she didn’t care.

He feels it again. That ugly lucidity.

Because this is what everything hinged upon: the idea that if she knew everything would

be different. Would resume. Would unfreeze. But now that was so clearly not true. He hadn’t

seen this as a possibility, ever.

He knows this is what he is supposed to say: it’s what the therapist wants to hear. It’s a

problem she has been trained to tackle.

Owen reaches into his pocket, fingers crashing into paper. He pulls out the envelope.

Sighs.

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Ella

“Does it still hurt?”

Ella looked towards where Charlie was pointing, realized she was clutching her arm. Her

palm pressed tight over where the IV had been. She could feel a bruise starting to bloom around

it: big, blue, imperfectly shaped.

“No. It doesn’t hurt.”

It was no longer a pain but a soreness, a sensation she was somewhat less familiar with. It

radiated outwards: making her arm feel useless, as if she couldn’t bend it, raise it high above her

head. Still the tighter she gripped, the safer she felt. This was in her control, this feeling right

here. Not quite her pain, but it was enough. She told herself to focus on this: shift everything to

this one spot. Focus and control the pulsing ache and then forget the demented walls around her.

The alarm.

“Can you move it?” Charlie didn’t believe her, she could see.

“It’s fine Charlie.”

He turned back to the door, looked it up and down.

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“I think I have another way,” he said almost optimistically, as if this was all his personal

game. He could figure this out himself: make up new rules for the two of them to follow.

He started to turn around, walk in the opposite direction. The entire length of the hallway

separated their only two options, it seemed. And Charlie walked as if that was the natural

solution: if they couldn’t escape here, they must be able to escape there.

Ella could feel her control chipping away.

When she didn’t move to follow him, he reached out towards her. Again. His arm steady,

strong.

Ella believed courage was something learned. There was never a defining moment.

Instead it was a matter of consistently finding that strength. Of facing the day knowing what

happened yesterday would happened again today and then tomorrow. Clockwork. It was about

finding the things she could hold onto: dig her nails in deep.

She looked back down the length of the hallway and knew it was possible. Necessary.

She could do this: she could find something to hold onto, retrace her footsteps. It was the same

amount of steps she had just taken, after all.

“Come on, Ella, it’ll be easy.”

Hearing these words from anyone else, she would shake her head, let the truth fall from

her: you don’t understand, you don’t know what it’s like to not trust yourself in your body. Not

just today but for years.

But she could see Charlie’s arm: the bruises coloring his skin. Faded, not as fresh, but

they were there. He couldn’t exactly understand, yet at least his sentiment wasn’t hollow.

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She knew she could take his hand and again he would match her pace. That if the stress

of it all became too much and she got sick he wouldn’t turn away. For all she knew Charlie got

sick that morning, last night, an hour ago.

“Okay,” she said.

“The emergency exit is this way.”

“Emergency exit?”

“Yup.”

“Can we go that way?” Ella hadn’t even realized there was an emergency exit so close to

them. If she had, she would’ve told him that was where they should go first.

“I think so. It should open. This is an emergency, I think.”

Ella moved in reverse. She made her way back, found the right thoughts to focus on. She

let her body rely on someone else, again.

And it worked.

This door opened.

She didn’t know if it was a flaw in the design, that the emergency exit door swung open

with their simple touch. With the whirring alarm, she could only assume the real door, the one

that separated this wing of the hospital from the next, was locked for a reason. It wasn’t a

mistake they couldn’t open it.

But this one just clicked open.

They stepped through and Ella felt as though they entered a secret passage of sorts. All at

once she remembered when she was much younger, before the doctors and the extended hospital

stays: she would run through parks, explore jungle gyms pretending she was somewhere else. A

fantasyland. The rules would be different. Mixing dirt and leaves and twigs was in fact brewing

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some secret potion. Climbing to the top of a slide: she would be high up in the mountains, lush

clouds grazing her head. They were just games: forgotten scraps of that long ago sliver of her

childhood. Yet walking through that doorway felt a little bit like that: she was here but

somewhere else, her feet walking on concrete and floating in the air. This whole day had that

kind of strange quality to it, she realized.

But this was just a stairwell, she reminded herself. Ordinary. A necessary fixture in any

building, including a hospital.

Through the doorway Ella noticed the alarm again. Not that she had forgotten it, but it

was if she was hoping through the door she would find some immediate relief. They were

escaping after all. There should be a sign that things were changing. Silence.

There were two choices: up or down. In this case, Ella knew there was a right answer.

Down. It wouldn’t be any easier. Down was just as much effort as up.

Ella could feel everything in her stomach swim. One misstep and she would tumble

down: break everything in the process. Like a porcelain doll she would land at the bottom of the

stairwell: shattered. Normally such a thought would be just a trace of paranoia. But now Ella felt

it was a real possibility. She had little confidence in her balance just walking through the

hallway: on solid, predictable ground.

She peered down the length of stairwell. She wondered what it was that gave people that

push to make a decision, to be brave: why she pushed open the door to her room, why hockey

players laced up their shakes, why those ink shaped characters accepted their fates. Because the

stairs presented just another challenge: one that seemed more impossible than the others.

“It’s not that far down. I know the way now, I think,” Charlie seemed proud of himself.

He had unlocked the passageway, after all.

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“How many stairs?”

“Lots, but not too many. You can make it.”

Air began to rattle in her chest. She started to feel untethered, but not in the way that she

was used to: not in a way that felt manageable. This was something else entirely. Her hand

fluttered at her side.

She leaned over, looked down. The flights of stairs started to blend into an endless,

twisting stretch. Blurry. Charlie grabbed her arm, pulled it back towards him.

“It’s okay, we will go slow.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can.”

“You didn’t say there would be stairs. I can’t climb stairs. No.”

“This is our way out. I found it, Ella, this is how we escape!”

She sank back down to the floor, stunned by the stairs and the alarm and the lack of air in

her lungs.

It struck her that this was something she physically couldn’t do. The delusion of her

efforts so far evaporated. And while that fact wasn’t necessarily foreign to her, it crashed upon

her: hard and sudden.

“I’m not this girl. I’m the girl who doesn’t leave her room, right? That’s me. I can’t

follow you.”

“They’re just stairs. It’s easy.”

Charlie looked at her as if he didn’t understand. As if to him stairs were a simple

construction: they led from one place to another, they were everywhere. But Ella saw something

else. Something impossible. For all she knew the stairs could go on and on and on. She knew

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from a different angle this would look ridiculous. Charlie was right: they were just stairs. They

led to the rest of the hospital, floor by floor, not some dark and thorny unknown. But it was

always the little things, in the end. The crushing realization that her only way back to her father,

to hockey, to normalcy, was something she couldn’t handle. Maybe a couple of years ago, on a

different day, when there still had been hope the tumors would shrink and fade, then she

would’ve seen the stairs as something other than a mythic challenge. She would climb. Maybe

then. Not now.

“No, I need to go back to my room. I’m too tired.”

“But you already left your room. You can’t go back. We’re here now.”

“No, Charlie, you have to take me back to my room. I need to go back.”

He sat down on the floor with Ella.

Water started to collect in the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t blink it away fast enough.

“Why are you crying?”

The answers flew towards her: darts towards their board. All thoughts she forced herself

to forget. The pain she channeled out of her body. She couldn’t admit to it all. She just pulled a

needle out of her arm, after all. No fear. Just one, two, three: yank. She thought she could hold

on to that confidence, keep it clutched in her fists.

She was embarrassed to have let that sort of strength fade from her fingers so soon.

Suddenly her skin felt hot, blood pooled thick in her cheeks. Her hands fidgeted fast in

the open air, as if they were instead beating against piano keys. She let the tears charge down her

face. They splashed onto her knee. One by one they fell and fell and there was nothing she could

do to stop it. She tried to wipe the water. More just kept surfacing, spilling out of her.

“I’m too tired for this.” It was all she could say.

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Ella hated being this person. She wasn’t this person. She was her father’s daughter and in

another life she would’ve been a hockey star. Tough. Inspiring. That was what she believed:

always did. She didn’t let her emotions fly out of her: wild and dangerous.

“Me too,” Charlie agreed. It was the last thing Ella expected him to say. He curved

forward a bit, shoulders relaxed. It was as if his spine surrendered, let him hunch with

exhaustion. “I didn’t sleep well last night. Did you?”

“I slept a little, I guess.”

“It’s too noisy.”

“Noisy?”

“At night. Don’t you hear the singing?”

“The what?”

“They sing so loudly. And they never stop. Just sing and sing and it’s too loud I can’t fall

asleep.”

“Who?”

“The robots. Don’t you have robots in your room too?”

“Robots?”

“My mommy says they sing at night because she can’t come tuck me in so she can’t sing

to me like she used to. She says it’s supposed to put me to bed. But she’s wrong. They are too

loud. I don’t like their songs. They annoy me.”

Ella wiped her eyes. The monitors. Charlie believed the monitors were alive. Musically

talented. She wondered if he felt lonely even thinking his room was full of singing robots. She

wondered if this was something he needed to believe in. Days ago hearing this, Ella might’ve

thought this revelation was childish. Comical. Instead it made her start to trust him. Everyone

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had a ritual. Hockey, robots: it was all the same. They both were trying to do the same thing.

Stay sane. Survive.

She wiped her face, suddenly just a little less ashamed of the redness in her cheeks, the

way her face pinched trying to contain her cries.

“Oh yeah, the robots. They keep me up too,” she agreed. He gave her a slim smile. She

could see his lips were also chapped, the skin flaking in chunks. She wondered if it bothered him

like it did her. “And the lights,” she added. “From the hallway, they are so bright. They usually

keep me up too.”

“No, I like the lights. You’re wrong.”

“Okay.”

They sat for a moment; let the alarm overtake them again.

“See, we’re both tired. But we can do it. We have to. It’s okay because we are together.”

Ella felt something release. A pop of sorts. The frantic buzzing in her chest calmed,

ceased.

Together.

She let him reach for her hand. Again.

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Owen

He felt it as though something had changed within him, tipped the scale just far enough.

It all rushed through him. He remembered everything all at once: the last few months, the last

five years; his jaw, his leg, his rib; his unemployment; Tel Aviv; Sasha, Sasha, Sasha. He

remembered it all in reverse, the chain of events that led him here with an opportunity staring

back at him. Another chance.

It all built and built inside of him just as it did months ago: before he swerved.

Owen pulled himself up, exhaling through the pain. His lips compressed into a narrow

circle.

“Owen, sit down. What are you doing?” his aunt Kate said, alarmed. He stepped just to

the side of her. She reached for his arm to pull him back, but he managed to shake himself from

her grip.

Naomi still had Abby by the arm. Owen felt he could push her out of the way in time.

That he knew was necessary. Out of everyone in the room, she was the one who deserved a

bullet the least. She had fallen into this story as if by accident.

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Owen would make sure he knocked Abby against the wall, behind him. His aunt Kate

too, he hastily assumed he could protect. At the very least, his charging body would provide

some sort of barrier between her and the gun.

He could see Abby staring back at him, eyes bright and glassy. Pleading. She looked

young. Too young. Her clean, white headband: something the girls used to wear when he went to

high school. Middle school, even. Owen suddenly found himself wondering if they had met

outside these walls, in a bar or at a baseball game, if he would let himself fall into a conversation

with her, would find her attractive. It was possible. She bit her lip, as if trying not to yell at him

to sit, stay away. The gun so close to her chest, one frightened sound and it might’ve been her

last, Owen knew.

The moment he was stable on the soles of his feet he heard her exact words again, felt the

edges of them slice him open. Those three words. Sasha’s words.

Owen didn’t mean to attract the memory. The one he had thrown so far from his mind,

tried to let crumble into ruin. It materialized without warning.

*

A Friday night: quiet. Ordinary. The day after a rainstorm: outside the air had been

heavy, as if laced with a sort of grime. It caught in their hair, chafed against their skin. They had

decided it was the kind of night to stay indoors, pull their chairs close to the whirring air

conditioner.

“You’re too passive.” The words had just dripped off her tongue. Languidly: amber

honey drizzling from a teaspoon.

Sasha had brought her third glass of merlot to her lips. She tipped her head all the way

back. Owen had watched the muscles in her throat contract, relax, repeat. It was a long, slow sip.

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He had already stood from the table, about to carry his plate into the kitchen. He was

even going to offer to take her own plate, utensils. Scrub the leftover marinara sauce from the

ceramic while she sat, rested. The week had been endless, for both of them, he remembered.

Although he forgot exactly what made the days drag. They had been finished eating for a while

now, their conversation worn. Her revelation was then unanticipated, almost bizarre.

“Passive?” He asked. Sasha nodded, sewing her lips into a slight smile. A dot of red

marked each of the corners of her mouth.

“Mhm, yup, passive.” From the tone of her voice, Owen had been able to tell she was

proud of her diagnosis. Her epiphany. He also heard how the alcohol stunned her tongue, made

her start to slur.

“What does that mean?”

“Well look at you, Owen. Look at your life.” She had pulled her feet up to her chair,

locked her arms around her knees. Her glass now rested on the table: drained.

“My life is fine.”

“Exactly. Fine. Your life is fine.” She exaggerated the “I” in the second fine: dragging it

out into a long, uneven syllable.

Sasha reached for the bottle. There wasn’t enough wine left. Maybe half a glass.

Owen had no idea what it was exactly she was criticizing. And he didn’t want to know.

He let her pour the rest of the bottle into her glass, get up from the table and settle on the couch

in the living room. Let the conversation dissolve.

It was just the haze of wine, he told himself.

And yet, the phrase had lodged within him. Its teeth drilled in deep.

*

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Owen inhaled and was profoundly aware of the pins in his leg, his jaw. There was a

piercing sensation as his lungs filled, shoved hard against the partially mended rib. He

remembered it all and let his anger surface. The anger he tried to chew up and swallow down.

Anger at the slow, backwards steps of healing. Anger at her neglect.

When he was first admitted to the hospital, sometimes he talked to Sasha’s absent body.

Only when the world around him felt fuzzy and far away, with morphine and anesthesia

confusing his sense of place. When his eyes fluttered so often that day spilled into dream. Those

days he had felt the cold shape of her absence as if she was in fact curled against him, her palm

locked with his.

It was easier to talk to the hole she left. Then his words were never met with her

response. He could say what he felt, unafraid.

He remembered this know because he felt her there. Sitting in the corner. He saw the

outline of her there: taunting him.

Passive. Passive. Passive.

Owen felt as though he was watching himself from a distance. He moved as any broken

body would: sluggish, off-paced. At least he moved.

There was no time to imagine the consequences. Besides, he knew there was nothing else

to do. This would work. It had to work. Just one bullet.

“Owen, sit back down,” His aunt Kate repeated. Her demand didn’t feel intimidating like

he knew it could. She was nervous.

He didn’t speak. Moving his body fast as he could was enough to focus on. Besides, he

couldn’t process if there was something he had to say. He figured he should say something, but

he didn’t care.

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Instead Owen met Naomi’s gaze. He startled her, he imagined. He was a sudden

complication: one that wouldn’t sit idle. A gold chain sparkled around her neck, he noticed. It

was thin, just barely visible against her skin. The pendant lying felt at the base of her neck

trapping light, pulsing each time she turned. A tiny circle. Engraved with a mark he couldn’t

quite make out. A single letter, maybe. It was an inconsequential detail. Still it was something he

noticed. Something he felt he might remember.

Naomi tensed. The worry lines in her face surfaced: easy to trace. Highway routes on a

map. She pointed the gun now more so in his direction. He could see she didn’t want this

challenge. It wasn’t something she anticipated. She believed she deserved an easier attempt at

revenge.

Still, her hand shook. He knew that years later he would swear it was what convinced him

to move forward.

“She’s right. Sit down. This isn’t about you. You’re not supposed to be here.” Naomi’s

voice trembled like her hand. She didn’t have the control she needed. It had dissolved. He could

do this. This would work. Her cracked confidence made him sure of that. He could prove

everyone wrong. He could get this right.

One bullet. Owen could survive that. He would.

“Owen!” his aunt Kate yelled again.

He didn’t listen.

Time coiled. Each piece of the moment seemed inseparable from each other. He would

eventually remember it in this way: unable to recall exactly the order of each sound, sensation.

Without allowing himself the space to think any more, to doubt, Owen moved. Reckless.

He propelled himself towards her. Forward.

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Collecting some distant, latent strength he threw himself through the air.

And then his body fell against hers.

And there was the sound of the gun, just like he imagined. A burning in his shoulder:

tearing through him.

And they were against the floor. Together. He couldn’t support himself: with his fall he

let gravity reign. He couldn’t push himself up off of her. He heard the clatter of the gun landing

against the floor. He heard something crack open.

He could smell iron. Tasted it as if it coated his teeth, his tongue.

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Lydia

Her food was served on an oval, salmon colored plate. Steam twirled off her eggs. She

could smell the feta even before extracting her first bite.

Lydia ate her meal with a sort of rhythm. She coated her first slice of toast with ketchup,

placed a thick cut of her omelet on top. She put more ketchup on top of that and took a bite:

satisfied. She moved on to the home fries, drowning her first in the puddle of extra ketchup she

had created on her plate. Swallowing the triangle of potato, she started all over again.

Bringing egg to her mouth, Lydia scanned the rest of the room. Watching the whirl of

plates delivered and collected. She studied the people at the tables. Their faces, their clothes.

Especially those dining alone, a newspaper or a book opened flat in front of their plates. The

ones that alternated cutting their food with flipping a page. Those customers were the ones that

fit best into her game.

She began to deduce which person today’s Lydia would befriend. This had become part

of her Saturday, unplanned of course. She enjoyed it though: fleshing out the rest of her alternate

life outside the bridal shop. Imagining how this Lydia interacted with others, if she was the kind

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of person to drag a stranger into conversation, if she liked to stay huddled in her own corner, if

she was content with the people already stapled into her life. It made her seemed more real.

Today there was a limited selection. More families, couples scattered around the room

than there had been during other weeks. She always tried not to notice them, to look beyond the

kids shoving dense chunks of pancake into their mouths, coloring wildly on their paper

placemats. But today there were too many children. It was harder to block their spirited screams

from rushing into her ears.

There was one man two tables in front of her. Alone. His hair thin, colorless. His back

towards her, she couldn’t see his face. She wondered if he had glasses. Yes, in her mind he had

glasses. Fat, square ones with a silver wire rim. He had worn them for years. Even as a child he

had glasses, was mocked endlessly. Bullies at school, his two older brothers at home. Typical.

His eyes were blue: crystal and calm.

Lydia decided he had been retired for a few years now. A widower. His wife’s death

something tragic, unavoidable. A car accident maybe. Yes: a car accident. A head-on collision,

the truck crushing the passenger side almost completely. He had been driving. Had not driven a

car since. He had kids. Three: all grown and rooted in cities far from here. They all remembered

the car accident, didn’t feel the need to stay close. And so he was alone. Today and everyday. He

handled it well, much better than he did at first. He didn’t mind filling out the crossword alone

now, skipping over the hints he just couldn’t work through. Those were rare, but they happened

enough.

Today’s Lydia was untouched by such trauma. They all were, had to be. But this one in

particular lived without so much as shattering a bone, struggling through a horrific breakup. And

so she gravitated towards those soaked in melancholy, felt a lump rise in her throat seeing a

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mashed slice of road kill along the highway. The pavement beneath it stained dark. It was a little

too unreal, this saccharine alternative, Lydia knew. Still, she was an interesting figure to sink

into: an exact opposite.

Before Lydia could drown deeper into her imaginings, the man was no longer alone. A

woman entered into the diner, slid into the booth. She faced the man, laughed at something he

must’ve said. A string of pearls circled her neck.

“More coffee, sweetie?” Suddenly the waitress was back, interrupting Lydia’s meal, the

figures speaking in her head. The pot she carried was full, smelled as strong as diner coffee could

get.

“Sure, yes, thank you.”

“I like your sweater,” the waitress said as she poured the coffee. She looked close to

Lydia’s age. Her eyeliner was too thick. She wore bronzer that was a shade too dark for her

otherwise olive skin.

“Thank you,”

“It’s a real nice color on you. Brings out your eyes.”

“Thank you, that’s nice of you to say.”

The waitress nodded her head and left Lydia to her meal.

She brought the fresh coffee to her lips. The mug burned in her hands.

*

Lydia had seen the contorted wisps of smoke before she smelled them. Without

hesitation, she had unplugged the toaster, hoisted out the slabs of Rye with a dull knife. She had

wrapped the charred waste in two sheets of paper towel, threw it in the trash.

Burned toast: not exactly a crisis. An annoyance.

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“Naomi?” she had called, “You forgot about the toast. It burned.”

They had been expecting company. A little Sunday brunch: a homemade quiche crisping

in the oven, a full pitcher of fresh orange juice sparkling on the table. Another one of Naomi’s

ideas, one she crafted weeks ago. There had been no conventional excuse for the meal. Naomi

had reasoned the need for levity was enough: that they should snap on pretty faces, put their

slowly resuming lives on display. Lydia swallowed her reluctance, went along with the

planning. For Naomi.

And yet the toast burned. 20 minutes until their friends would knock at the door, hang

their coats in the cramped front hall closet. And there was no more bread in the cabinet. No old

loaf stored in the freezer.

“Naomi?” she called again. No response.

Frustration sizzled within Lydia. This had been Naomi’s idea, a way to focus on

something besides the lawsuit: to fit themselves back into normalcy. She had agonized over what

to serve, whom to invite, what time to call brunch. But when the morning arrived the apartment

was in disarray: dirty plates soaking in the sink, the pillows on the couch dented out of shape,

Naomi’s things everywhere. Her crossword book left again on the floor. The lawsuit papers

covering the surface of the kitchen table.

“You clean, I’ll cook. It’ll go faster that way,” she had said when Lydia complained that

they wouldn’t be ready in time. They did just that, rushing to be efficient in the few hours they

had. It was enough, until the toast burned. It was the easiest thing to prepare: press the button,

wait for the trill of the kitchen timer.

Lydia had let the mistake sit, untouched. She hadn’t wanted to entangle herself in

frustration. Again. Besides it was just toast, she had tried to tell herself. Nothing else.

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Just as she did with the crossword puzzle book, Lydia never once looked beyond what

she saw.

*

Certain moments ruptured time itself. For Lydia there were days she knew she would

always remember: moments that altered her perception, made the following days seem

unfamiliar. When she would recognize the walls that surrounded her, the clothes she put on her

body, the plates in the kitchen but nothing else in her life. Sometimes the sudden strangeness was

exciting. The day after she got her first job. The day after she met Naomi. The day after Naomi’s

pregnancy test finally came back positive.

Sometimes it wasn’t.

Lydia turned her head, glanced up at the television screen behind the counter by accident.

All at once her ritual, her imaginings lost their weight. The real Lydia surfaced, jerked

into consciousness.

At the bottom of the screen below the news anchors’ giant desk, ran a flashing red ribbon.

Breaking news: shooting at Emerson Memorial Hospital.

“At the moment the number of injuries and causalities is still unclear,” the female anchor

relayed. Lydia had missed the first half of the report but it didn’t matter: the blonde

newswoman’s report was clearly preliminary, unsubstantial. “The police however have

confirmed that the hospital has been officially locked down. They have not yet given details as to

the assailant’s identity or motive.”

Lydia sat motionless in her booth: detached, as if observing herself from a distance. She

heard the sound of ceramic breaking on lacquered tabletop. Felt the now dislodged handle of the

pale blue mug fall off the table and into her lap. She smelled the gritty coffee as it spilled and

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seeped into the carpet beneath the table. Yet these things seemed to be happening around her, not

because of her.

Throughout the diner, other people took notice of the news: set down their mugs, dropped

their forks onto their plates with bits of food still pierced on the prongs. Some immediately

reached for their cell phones. Others stood up, placed a few crumpled bills beside their half full

plates and left. There was a slow murmur swelling throughout: hushed sounds of shock.

“All we can do now is pray for those still trapped inside and hope for some good news

soon,” the male anchor said, his tone too mechanical: his sentiment hard and cold as if

constructed of steel.

The screen switched and there was the hospital. Shown from an aerial view the building

looked almost fragile. As if it could be stepped on: a dollhouse that could be smashed to nothing.

A collection of police cars lined the length of the sidewalk in front of the hospital. Some of the

vehicles still had their sirens on, flickering red and blue. Scattered around the car were figures

armed and waiting. Beyond them, this stretch of the avenue was completely clear. Not single car

or person dotting the slush covered pavement.

Watching the hospital surrounded, she felt something related to disbelief.

Naomi. Lydia still wasn’t sure if she was at the hospital, but maybe she was. Maybe she

was right. Maybe Naomi had mentioned a meeting with the lawyers and Lydia just hadn’t been

listening.

Lydia checked her phone. Three missed calls from Naomi this morning. No voicemails.

She had no answers, no breaking clarity.

Lydia left the diner without waiting to see what news would flash on the screen next.

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Ella

PRESENT

It scares her that she can’t trust her day like she did. The predictability, the routine: it

isn’t fixed like she thought it was. It can be broken up. The pieces fall to the floor. They splinter.

In her daydreams Ella reaches out, picks at a chipping piece of wallpaper. Peels. She can

strip away the layer of white with ease. But behind it there is always emptiness. She searches and

searches and finds nothing. Nothing concrete, stable surrounding her.

Lying in this same bed, she keeps her head turned towards the window. She looks for

lights dancing upon the wall. She listens for the melody of an alarm.

And then she closes her eyes and sees red. Red splattered faces, hands. There is no right

direction for her mind to spin into.

Just red, red, red.

*

Charlie is shy in the doorway. Ella glances over at him and pulls her hand out from

beneath her blanket it, waves. His signal.

There is just a thin layer of hair sprouting across his scalp. Almost barely there. It is

much darker than she imagined. With his eyes, she guessed his hair would be more blonde, to

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have a genuine fairness to it. Instead it’s almost the same shade as mud. It reminds her of the

color of her hair, from what she has seen in old pictures of herself.

He has something for her. A folded piece of paper: its edges aligned just so. She can

picture him throwing out two, three previous attempts beforehand. Crumbling the pieces of paper

into little balls in frustration. The drawing or words inside gone to waste.

He places the neat square onto the bed next to her. No explanation.

“Thanks,” she says. She licks her chapped lips, hoping they won’t crack as she speaks,

collect blood along the broken lines of skin.

“Do you feel better?” he asks.

“No. Do you?”

“Yeah.” He looks guilty offering his answer, but she doesn’t envy him. She smiles.

“Good.”

“Did you get good news today, Charlie?” He nods. He either doesn’t know exactly what

he learned today, the terminology of it, or he doesn’t want to taunt her anymore. “That’s good,

I’m happy for you Charlie.”

“Do you know what happened to her?” Ella knows exactly the person he is talking about;

she doesn’t need Charlie to explain.

“No.”

They still don’t know her name. They don’t know who she is, her background. They

don’t know why there was so much blood splattered across her chest, her cheeks. Someone else’s

blood, they think. That is what they had said after. The first thing they agreed upon. Once the

policeman had taken them to another room, away from the lobby. Offered them little Dixie cups

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of juice, stale cookies with too few chocolate chips. They were sure it wasn’t her blood. That had

left them with the question of whose it was. Were they hurt? Dead?

But then Ella, when she was alone days later, found the news channel. She listened to it

all. The pleas to change gun laws. The debates about mental health. The thoughts and prayers.

She learned what the rest of the country was piecing together. That the woman with the gun was

unconscious in a bed like hers, guarded in another room in this very building. That she had to be

operated on. There was a lot of controversy over that: how the doctor she hunted saved her. Yet

there was no body count, just a few bullet-pierced limbs. Miraculously, they all said, that was it.

She doesn’t know what Charlie knows. Probably nothing. She keeps her scavenged facts

to herself.

“Me neither. I hope she isn’t hurt.”

“I don’t think she is.”

“That’s good.”

“Charlie?” A woman calls from the door. His mother, Ella guesses. “Charlie say

goodbye. We have to leave now.”

“But we just got here,” he whines.

“Charlie I told you that you could say hi. You’ve said hi, now it’s time to go. Everybody

is waiting for us at home.”

Ella notices that Charlie’s mother won’t come into the room, doesn’t acknowledge her

directly. She knows it’s on purpose: she is a reminder of what could’ve happened to Charlie. The

other option. She is the body that doesn’t respond well to treatment.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie turns back to her.

“It’s okay. Thanks for the card.”

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“I’ll come see you soon?” he asks, maybe speaking more towards his mother than just

Ella.

“Sure Charlie, you can come visit me whenever,” Ella replies anyway.

She knows he won’t be back. She can feel it in the marrow of her bones. Soon this won’t

be her room. The sheets will be cleaned, exchanged. She will be replaced.

When Charlie is gone, and she can’t see him through the window anymore, she unfolds

the card. Slowly. She doesn’t want to tear his art.

Inside there are two stick figures, the lines signifying arms linked. One wears a pink

triangle: a dress. The other a blue square: pants. There is a squiggle of green beneath the lines of

their legs. A fury of blue, the color of a robin’s egg, makes up the sky. She imagines the crayon

used for this section of the drawing is now just a shaved down stick of wax. Rounded black

“M’s” fly in the sky: a cluster of birds. Hawks, maybe. A giant, grinning sun hangs above their

heads. It has sunglasses in place of eyes.

Ella focuses on their drawn limbs. All line: all bone.

Charlie didn’t label the figures: an effect of rushing to finish his work this morning, she

imagines. She doesn’t think he just forgot. Or that he didn’t care. She doesn’t mind. In fact Ella

likes the drawing better this way.

The figures are anonymous except to each other.

She knows she won’t hang it up. It isn’t for everyone else to see. It doesn’t belong pinned

high on one of the bulletin boards.

It is for her. To remind her that it is okay to pretend this drawing is real: instead of lying

here she is with Charlie, playing out in the open air. The sun warming her skin.

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Ella refolds the paper and holds it in her hand, which she sticks back under the blanket.

She is cold. Every bit of coverage counts.

She closes her eyes, dreams of herself dancing in a real pink dress: the fabric shifting,

twirling against her legs.

*

Her surprise burns her more than it should. Scalds her. Of course he is here.

She watches her father enter into the room without waiting for her wave. Her hello. The

royal blue of his jersey sticking out from beneath his zipped jacket. His hat fixed straight on his

head. He is here, insistent. It’s game day. Day two of the double header. Playoffs just a month or

so away: every second on the ice carries that weight. The lust for a trophy: tall and silver and

heavy.

As always, Ella’s father moves around the room with careful intent. He angles the

television screen, moves to the window, pulls the blind down just so. Clockwork. He reaches his

daughter, kisses her forehead. He rubs the navy stripe on her knit cap. Now he can sit.

“Are you ready?” Her father starts flicking through the channel, stops when Madison

Square Garden comes into view. At the blue lines the two starting lines face each other. An

announcer lists the ten names. Her father adjusts the volume. 56.

“I guess,”

“We win this game we’re for sure in the wild card position. We need this win.” Her

father waves the remote in the television’s direction.

The start of the game is uneventful. Later, there is a fight. Almost too early in the game:

just a few minutes into the second period. Helmets, gloves thrown to the ice. Fists raised high in

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front of faces. The two referees circle close: they have to let the first few punches go. It is the

only way to puncture the pressure, Ella knows. Let the air whistle out. There is a brief moment

before either player lunges. Before anyone can guess whose fist will collide with whose nose

first. Who will bleed.

The words stick on her tongue like tough pieces of gum. She is afraid they will catch

funny as they leave her mouth. She needs to speak clearly. She needs her father to understand not

just her question but what she is really asking.

Because there is this truth: home isn’t her father’s apartment. Home is where her mother

and sister sleep. Where her childhood things sit coated in grey grime on the shelves. Where she

last fell on the floor unresponsive, blood dribbling out of her nose. A glaze of sweat on her

forehead. The blue of her veins bright beneath her nearly translucent skin. Where a team of

paramedics had to lie her on a gurney, drive her here to the hospital. Over a month ago.

At home they don’t watch hockey. Not like this.

And so what she is about to ask isn’t just about her surrender. It’s also about the loss of

this moment. Their ritual.

He will take neither of it well, she knows.

*

It’s a lie to say she hasn’t thought of this moment. Even before the shooting.

For the third and final time their front door will swing open, swallow Ella whole. The air

won’t have that sharp, sterile taste. It will fill her lungs without making her shiver. She will take

slow, hesitant steps to her bedroom. Hers and Nicole’s. She will bury herself beneath more

comfortable blankets. A quilt. Patterned with little flowers: pink and green and yellow. The

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petals: lopsided ovals, drawn purposefully imperfect. As if they are in motion, blown in the

relentless wind.

Her spine will curve and settle against the soft of a forgiving mattress. Relax. She will

recognize how in the last month or so her sister claimed their room as solely hers. Pushed her

dolls to the front of the shelves. Left all her drawers of their vanity open, her clothes leaking out.

Kept her toys scattered on the floor: frozen in the last sequence of play.

Ella knows this all as she is wheeled down the hallway, dressed in clothes she forgot she

owned. A sweatshirt with an embroidered butterfly across the front, its outstretched wings

spanning the width of her chest; jeans that needed to be taken in with a safety pin at the waist.

Her knit hat is the only thing she recognizes, that makes her comfortable. She reaches for it, pulls

it down so that the fabric covers the tops of her ears.

Her ten now starting to sink deep into her. It lodges.

Ella’s parents walk on either side of her. Their footsteps match the pace of the turning

wheels. Her father touches his hand to her shoulder. Leaves it there. A nurse pushes her forward,

her hands tight around the handles of the chair.

Nicole is elsewhere. Unsurprisingly. At ballet practice, mimicking the steps of her

instructor. Tonight she will snuggle in sleeping bag on a friend’s bedroom floor, Ella guesses. It

was just like their mother to arrange for Nicole to be occupied, out of sight. At least until Ella is

set up: comfortable.

Wheeled down the hallway, it’s impossible for Ella not to see the image of her past self,

struggling through the length of this space. A burning in the crook of her arm. She thinks about it

too much.

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She realizes a part of her will miss the hospital. Not in a longing, sentimental way. More

like an eerie familiarity she can’t shake from her bones. As if there is a comfort of knowing a

specific space, of belonging to it. As difficult as it is to admit, she belongs here. Her body is

leaving but that will always be her room. That is how she will remember it. She will recoil at the

thought of it; she will still miss the way she knows how to function, to react in her room: a

needle cold and secure in her arm, morphine spilling into her.

She knows nothing else.

At the elevator her mother presses the down button. A swift, deliberate motion. No

turning back now. The inverted arrow suddenly burns blue.

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Owen

A part of him would always feel this moment. Not the bullet tearing through his shoulder,

not the daze of the aftermath, not the flash of the newspaper cameras destroying his vision. No,

this. This stillness. Before anyone else said anything, rushed to help both him and her. Before he

began to roar in pain yet again. This stillness when he felt someone else’s body lying beneath

him, immobile. When there was a shrill hum thrown back and forth between his eardrums. When

he already knew that in the process of being shot every part of him that was almost healed was

yet again hurting. When he felt a cold clarity: reconciled what he had just done. That it could

never be taken back.

“Owen!” his aunt Kate screamed.

He felt hands pulling him up. Four of them: two on each arm. They weren’t gentle,

gripped him: panicked.

“Your shoulder! She shot you! She actually shot you!” That was Abby.

They managed to hoist him to a sitting position, dragged him away from the doorway.

Owen imagined he was a lot lighter than he used to be: fueled only with IV fluids and juice and

chicken broth, he thinned. He was probably too easy to pull, drag, arrange. A figurine. They

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propped him up against the bed, his head placed against the side of the mattress he had been

sleeping on for weeks. Steadied against something solid, he should have felt relieved. Safe.

It worked. Just one bullet and air was still filtering through his lungs. He was conscious

enough to recognize the world around him, to be able to tell that he wasn’t spinning into some

distant oblivion. He proved himself right.

“Owen, are you okay? Can you hear me?” His aunt Kate grabbed his chin, turned his

head hard in her direction. “What the fuck were you thinking? She could have killed you.”

And at the mention of her the three of them turned to Naomi, lying still on the floor: a

dark puddle spreading slow from beneath her skull. Owen stared at the soles of her shoes. Worn,

slick rain boots. Black.

The gun was on the floor. His aunt Kate went and kicked it to the wall, crawled over to

her old patient. At Naomi’s side, she hesitated. As if unwilling to touch her: almost afraid. But

then she felt along her neck, found what she was looking for.

“She has a pulse, barely.”

“She’s bleeding,” Abby said. She held her hands to Owen’s shoulder, pressed tight. Too

tight. He wanted to hit her. Break her thin, pointed nose.

“She needs help,” his aunt Kate responded. “Now.” She placed a hand on Naomi’s

shoulder, the other on the top of her head. This wasn’t her area of expertise, Owen knew. She

handled other twisted traumas.

Owen could still hear the crack of Naomi’s head against the tile. A definitive crash: it had

stunned him into that sense of stillness.

He was surprised blood still travelled warm through her.

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But he couldn’t concentrate on her. Not anymore. The hole in his shoulder made him

nauseous, the pain so unlike what he had expected. The bullet had ripped through him. But it

wasn’t that initial pain that made him delirious. It was its reverberations: the lingering sensation

flaming inside of him. Growing hotter and hotter with each breath he attempted to take.

He shut his eyes, tried to concentrate on blankness. The red and purple crackling beneath

his eyelids. He tried to find patterns in the flashes of light, hoping the effort would be enough to

make him forget the way his pain was multiplying: turning into something ugly.

“I’ll go,” said Abby. Thrown back into the space of recognizable chaos, it seemed she

could snap into her needed role. Redeem herself.

She pressed something soft to his shoulder. His Dartmouth sweatshirt. No gauze, no

medical supplies close by, this was the only thing in reach. At least his blood wouldn’t be so

obvious against the dark green.

“Are you sure?” his aunt Kate asked.

“Yes, I’m fine now. I can go.” Abby stood, looked down at Owen. “Can you hold this,

with your other hand?”

He nodded.

“Yes.” He wasn’t sure if Abby heard his whisper. She moved towards the door anyway.

Owen reached across, winced. He pressed the sweatshirt against his shoulder, winced

again: aware it wasn’t a decent substitute for an actual bandage.

“I will be right back. I promise,” Abby said. It was the calmest he had heard her speak all

day.

Yet she was stained with blood. His blood. It was something else he felt he would

remember. Her voice calm while her face was splattered red: an unfinished painting.

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Owen wondered if his rib was okay. It probably wasn’t. It wasn’t just instinct, his body

communicating its own signals of distress. It was common sense. He had fallen forward, crushed

it. Directly against the doctor’s orders of no excess physical activity.

He watched as his aunt Kate tended to the woman who minutes ago was ready to kill her.

Owen didn’t expect his aunt to switch back into her role as she did, keeping watch over Naomi

until someone with the necessary training arrived. He didn’t expect her to find it in herself to

care. But she did.

Owen realized then that the confrontation he had witnessed, this failed attempt at

revenge, was just a fragment of something larger. More complicated.

And maybe if his own consciousness wasn’t starting to dissolve, he would let his

curiosity rise within him.

Yet each time he inhaled, exhaled his upper body moved, naturally. And even that slight

motion was too much for his shoulder.

He closed his eyes again.

“What the fuck were you thinking Owen?” She was close to him now, he could tell. Her

question delivered straight into his ear. She must have abandoned Naomi, at least temporarily.

He had no answer for his aunt. He just let her remove his rolled up sweatshirt, place it

down on the floor beside him. She examined his shoulder: pulling him forward in order to see the

back of the wound as well. A muscle strained hard along the length of his back as he tried to

keep from shaking with pain.

“You are fucking lucky, kid, it went clean through. You’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna

be fine.” Her repetition was quieter, not necessarily meant for him, Owen realized. “You’re an

idiot, Owen. Why would you do that? You’re lucky, but you’re still a fucking idiot.”

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All he could think about was the bullet. It would have been worse if it nestled within him,

rested upon a cushion of muscle. But at least there was a bullet at all. There would still be some

sort of damage.

Owen couldn’t say any of that to her.

He opened his eyes to see his aunt Kate shaking her head at him. Wordlessly. As if there

was more she wanted to say but couldn’t put together exactly what it was: for once she was

trying not to chide him.

“I’m sorry.” He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for: he had stopped her, after all.

But it was the only response he could craft.

“Don’t worry, kid, it’ll all be okay. Abby’s getting help, for real this time. You’re gonna

be fine.” He didn’t think it was the time to point out to his aunt Kate that waiting for Abby was

maybe not the safest strategy. He didn’t think she would appreciate the joke.

“Okay.”

“We just have to wait here, for just a little bit.” There was a slight snag in her voice: an

attempt to speak without shattering. Sobbing. His aunt Kate tilted his head towards her, touched

her lips quickly to his forehead.

With her thumb she rubbed off the glaze of her nearly sheer lipstick.

“Who is she?” Owen asked. Talking was a distraction, he realized. Helped a bit.

Unable to move either arm, he kicks his leg in Naomi’s direction. The one not held

together with pins; the one not irate, writhing. Re-broken.

“Who do you think?”

“She’s that patient, isn’t she? The one you told me about.”

“Owen I don’t want to get into this, please.”

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“She just came here looking for you with a gun in her hand. She shot me. You don’t want

to tell me who she is?”

“I can’t talk about this now. I just can’t.”

“Fine.”

His aunt Kate reached for his hand, squeezed it. She left his side, moved back over to

Naomi. Pressed her fingers once again to her neck, sighed. She nodded her head as if thinking to

herself: good, she was still alive. He marveled at her swift switch in emotion: from caution to

concern. There was something in her touch, Owen could see. Something deeper than just

familiarity.

Owen let his aunt Kate worry about her patient, tried not to pay too close attention. He

wasn’t part of that story, it seemed. He just barely pressed against it; felt only its slowing

currents wash against him.

He decided to ignore it. Besides, his aunt’s hands weren’t the ones he wanted to comfort

him. The ones he hoped would now finally be waiting for him, after all of this was over.

Sitting on the floor, staring at the bottom of Naomi’s feet, Owen was suddenly reminded

of his accident: how different it felt from this, how similar.

He was looking at her shoes and at once recalled the sensation of being in an ambulance:

was staring up instead at the roof of the vehicle, seeing strange faces hang above him. Their lips

moving: yelling questions that he couldn’t hear now or then. He felt the motion of it all. The way

he was strapped down to the gurney and moved involuntarily with it as the ambulance turned

down the steep, winding road.

It seemed so long ago. And yet he wondered how far he would ever travel from it.

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Lydia

Out in the open she reached for her phone. Dialed. The ringing loud in her ear, Lydia

hoped it would lead to Naomi’s voice: safe and calm. She wanted her wife to laugh at her, to tell

her she was paranoid.

Nothing. The call went unanswered.

“Naomi, it’s me. I know you’ve been trying to call me, sorry, I was at an appointment.

Have you seen the news? About the hospital? It’s crazy. I can’t believe it. Where are you? Are

you home? Look, will you just call me back, as soon as you get this? It’s important.”

The safe choice would be to go home. Lock herself in the apartment, keep the television

alive and ranting: wait for the revelations to trickle in. But she was right there. Fifteen blocks

west, give or take. And somehow logic seemed hollow. Her curiosity swelled, pressed hard

against the inside of her skull.

Lydia moved forward. Made her choice.

As she walked, she felt the December cold turn to fire in her lungs.

Naomi was probably home, anyway: asleep on the couch, maybe. Her phone: too far out

of reach for its dull ringing to wake her. It seemed true enough.

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Returning to the hospital, gun or no gun, meant reversing her ritual. Moving in this

direction, she had to untangle herself from her alternate lives. Lydia had to fit herself back into

her original skin, forget the day happened. She was going back: those hallways contained all of

her ghosts and here she was, striding to greet them.

She had to face what she had pushed aside. Even if she was only going there to stand at a

distance: observe. Right now, she could only be this Lydia.

Ignoring the lawsuit, Lydia had no reason to return to the hospital in the weeks since

Harper’s death. Naomi returned again and again with the lawyers. As the distance between her

and the building waned, she realized that was for the best. Still she couldn’t force her feet in

another direction. There was something in her that made her keep going. Something she couldn’t

name. She felt pulled to the building. She needed to see what was happened, the attack itself. She

wouldn’t go too near the building. She would retain at least a bit of sanity in her. But she would

get close enough.

As Lydia turned sharp around the corner, the hospital rose tall in front of her. Familiar.

Its name in big indigo letters on the side of the building, the hospital’s logo beyond life-size. She

wondered how far away a person could still make out the name.

Facing the exterior of the hospital, the work of her day collapsed. Her alternative lives:

just hazy figures of her imagination. All were much too far from this world. Their limbs just air.

Suddenly she felt stupid for letting such thoughts distract her, as if it the idea of alternate

lives could provide enough of a solution. Force her attention away from her memories. Because

here she was: back at the source and it all broke against her. Hard.

And yet, the hospital wasn’t the same place she had left almost two months ago, numb

and empty-handed. Not today.

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In front of her was something devastating, real. Not a glimmer of imagination.

Certain places attracted violence. Busy squares. Teeming markets. Excited arenas.

Buildings that could crash and crumble from great heights. Even places that seemed like

sanctuaries have absorbed bombs and guns and knives into their landscapes.

Lydia knew this, was prepared for it. She knew to look for exit signs in crowded spaces,

to always have a part of her aware and listening: ready to run. She liked to think she was the kind

of person who would fight, survive. Or at least she used to believe that.

But she couldn’t have imagined what it would feel like to stand surrounded by such

violence. To see how it raged, rippled.

Lydia was surprised at how instantaneously chaos snapped into being. Hours ago, she

knew, none of this was happening. The sidewalk in front of the hospital: clear except for the

usual traffic. She was sure this morning the hospital was busy, functional: operations performed,

diagnoses delivered, bones reset, stitches ripped from healed skin. Lydia wondered how many

babies had been born this morning, if they had all been evacuated from the building by now.

As she moved closer, the swollen stretch of policemen seemed infinite. The aerial view

on the news channel had made their collective bodies tiny, almost insignificant. On the ground

Lydia realized the opposite. They were a force. She knew she shouldn’t have been as surprised at

how quickly they mobilized. It was supposed to soothe her: the notion that they were trained for

this kind of situation. That they arrived here ready. Unafraid.

There were other people there, in plain clothes. Shocked. Hysterical. Or both. She

assumed most of them were those that had been evacuated. It was a large hospital: there were

ways to lead certain people to safety: those far enough away from danger. The rest of the crowd

she assumed had some immediate need to be here. Family inside. Unlucky loved ones.

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She wondered if she should ask anyone for help, for information. It seemed futile. She

didn’t even know why she was here.

She suddenly felt ridiculous: lured back to this place. Her fear of finding Naomi bobbing

in the crowd now seemed almost laughable. Impossible. Lydia felt ashamed, thinking she

belonged in this moment. That she had been drawn to it for reasons she couldn’t explain.

The policeman, the news channel helicopters circling wide in the sky above, the

ambulances waiting on standby, the uneasy shifting crowd, the people watching this unfold on

the television, the people inside, the people at a farther distance unaware: the wreckage. She

watched it all swirl around her and thought about how everything clicked together.

There was always a cause. A rogue cell. An unavoidable crash. An angered gene. There

was a specific, irreversible cause to pain and all of its possibilities.

But a gun was deliberate. Selfishly rash. Its consequences would reverberate farther than

intended. This moment wouldn’t be controlled. It could never be. Lydia knew that even now,

before knowing anything else.

All of this was happening because of one person. A person and a gun. And this idea was

one she couldn’t untangle. She wondered if the shooter in the hospital realized that his bullets

would pierce more than just flesh. She wondered if he would ever feel all that he was about to

cause: if Lydia herself would ever grasp it all.

She stepped backwards. Suddenly the eggs, the coffee all felt too heavy in her gut: large,

square bricks of cement. If it were later in the day, something stronger sloshing in her stomach,

she would have vomited. Let it all spill onto the pavement, felt no relief.

This was a mistake. A choice that led her in the wrong direction.

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Lydia didn’t want to stand here, reconcile all the violence occurring here in this place, all

at once. The past and present collapsing onto each other: this was what she worked so hard to

avoid.

This wasn’t the point of her Saturdays. There was much more safety in the lace, beading,

diners. She needed to go back to all of that. To forget.

And besides, this wasn’t about her.

*

Like the streets above, the subway car was nearly vacant. Lydia sat down, suddenly

aware of a soreness drumming at the base of her heels. A full day of walking. And with her

detour to the hospital she travelled farther than she would on a normal Saturday. She had been

grateful to have $3.00 left on her MetroCard. She would need to refill the card before work on

Monday but she didn’t mind. She needed to sit.

She flattened her spine against the plastic surface, wishing she had stayed seated in her

booth, or even standing in front of the three-way mirror. Lydia looked down, noticed her leg was

shaking. She studied its frantic rhythm, curious. As if the limb was attached to someone else’s

body.

Towards the end of the car was a family of four: a mother seated with a sleeping toddler

collapsed against her chest, a father trying to keep their son from swinging around the subway

pole. Far enough away, she could watch them without causing too much alarm.

Across from Lydia sat a woman with grey hair, large black-rimmed glasses. A collection

of shopping bags arranged at her feet. She kept looking around the car as if she misplaced

something. Finally her eyes locked with Lydia’s. She unraveled at once.

“Did you heard? About Emerson Memorial?”

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Lydia should’ve guessed she wouldn’t be able to escape it all so instantly. They both got

on at the same stop, after all, the closest one to the hospital.

“Yeah,” Lydia said. She couldn’t contribute anymore, she didn’t have the stamina.

“It’s awful. I’m just glad they stopped her.”

“Her?”

“The shooter.”

“The shooter was a woman?”

“Yes. They’ve stopped her, thankfully. That’s what the text alert I got said. No one’s

been killed, at least that’s what they think.”

“And the shooter?”

“She’s critical. That’s what they are saying. In emergency surgery still.”

“In the hospital?”

“Unbelievable, I know. Could you imagine having to operate on her? That crazy woman?

After what she’s done? She went after a doctor, her own doctor, that’s what they are saying. It’s

disgusting.”

The woman seemed relieved to voice her fears. As if now heard they were valid, keeping

her fear from appearing counterfeit. Otherwise, she was just a woman on the subway, ensnared in

a distant tragedy. Lydia could see the woman across from her wanted this insignificant,

momentary bond.

But Lydia didn’t. And so she didn’t agree with her, offer any deeper opinions. She didn’t

want to think about hands reaching into a chest, cracking open a skull. Of victims nearby,

stunned with their own pain. It was enough for her reconcile the chaos she had just fled from.

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She have it in her to decode the ethics of saving a villain, of understanding the split between

mercy and morality.

She wanted to forget it all. Sink back into thoughts of silk and lace and beading, even if

her Saturday was beginning to slow, stop.

Lydia was relieved the woman took the hint. She disengaged from the conversation,

unlocked her phone, probably waiting for more alerts.

Yet, in the still of the silence, Lydia was unsettled feeling the way her heart fidgeted.

Suddenly her phone was alive and ringing in her pocket.

It wasn’t Naomi. Lydia didn’t recognize the number.

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Ella

“Distract me,” She managed to request, in between taking her steps. She knew she

wouldn’t be able to speak at length while climbing. But Charlie could. He walked in front of her,

pulling her arm after him. Not hard. He seemed okay to let her trail as far back as she needed. He

gave her enough space to move comfortably, while remaining close in case she fell too far

forward. She didn’t ask him for such distance. He offered it himself.

Ella kept her eyes focused on the stable, concrete surface of each step. If she moved her

head too quick she knew her fear, her nausea would swell: become uncontrollable. She didn’t see

if Charlie nodded as a response, or just continued on as he thought of what he could say.

“You like hockey right? I don’t. But I went to an Islanders game last year.” Ella let the

transgression pass, bit her lip. “I don’t like hockey that much but the game was fun. I got a t-shirt

and I got to eat all the popcorn I wanted. I love popcorn. With butter. I got a lot of popcorn. My

mommy said it was okay. I think we won but I don’t remember.”

In total they climbed down four levels: eight flights of stairs, twelve steps each. Ella

counted. She found the rhythm in her movements. She let Charlie’s rambling about the Islanders

and then model airplanes and then train sets entertain her. She counted.

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One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Rest.

Finally on the ground floor Ella leaned against the wall, shut her eyes and re-centered her

focus. She let her shoulders flatten against the concrete, mold to its surface. It held her up. The

cool of the concrete: a relief.

She made it down. Proved herself, her body, wrong.

“We’re here!”

“Yup.” Ella closed her eyes. The stretch of black that filled her vision was flecked with

bits of gold, flashing blues.

She wondered if this was what it felt like after a grueling hockey game. A game that

extended through overtime into a shootout. A game that kept everyone—the players the coaches,

the fans—delirious in suspense. The guy who got the most minutes, made the impressive plays,

she wondered if he felt this unstable when it was all over: sitting in the locker room, peeling off

his soaked through layers. If he too rested against something solid, still. If he had to ground

himself, come down off his adrenaline high. She liked to imagine he did. That for once she

understood the effort, the sacrifice.

Breathless, Ella felt out of touch with the world around her. But it was a different

sensation than she was used to: with drugs drifting through her veins. This felt pure. Relief

rushed within her. Gave her buoyancy.

“Now we will find your dad and he can help us! I told you this would work.”

“Yeah Charlie, you did.”

“And you made it down! I told you!”

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“I know, I know.” It looked as though his cheeks would crack, the way he pulled back the

corners of his mouth, exposed his tiny teeth in his grin. A small black square in place of one of

his front teeth, his gums the color of a cherry sucking candy.

“Can you walk again?”

“I think so.”

They left the stairwell, walked together through the last portal. Into the unknown.

Only a couple of steps inside, Ella knew at once they should leave. It was like the

hallway they just escaped: empty and foreign and dark. But it was worse.

The hospital lobby was open. It stretched far in front of them and for a moment Ella

thought it was endless. Its front walls: thick layers of window. They drew in light, made the

room seem larger. The way an entrance should be constructed: offering some degree of a

welcome. She had been here enough times to close her eyes and remember the rush of people in

and out, in and out.

That was all gone.

The revolving door at the front was frozen. The security desk abandoned. The floor clear,

the slick tile reflecting the ceiling above instead of people moving across it. Again, Ella had the

feeling that she was looking at a twisted version of this room. Something from an amorphous

nightmare. Again, she recognized the walls but nothing else. Familiarity faded.

Unlike in the hallway, the emptiness of this room, the warped quality to it, had more of

an explanation. Here, there was more to see through the lobby windows.

Outside the hospital, Ella could see traces of chaos. A row of police cars parked along the

length of the building: red and blue lights spinning atop their roofs. The color travelled through

the window, landed on the lobby floor, the walls. It glittered against the greyish snow piled high

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along the sidewalk. Filling the spaces in between the cars were men and women: all in uniform.

All with weapons ready in their hands.

They were waiting for something, she could see.

Ella reminded herself of the characters in those books. She had to follow their lead: how

they travelled through the secret passage, down impossible heights. She mimicked the way they

straightened their spines, stared straight ahead. Moved.

She wondered if this was always where such paths led: to challenges, to consequences.

She couldn’t remember. She didn’t even know the title of the last book her mother read to her,

maybe almost a year ago.

“There’s no one here,” Charlie said, twisting his head from side to side as if looking for

somebody. Anybody.

“No one,” Ella repeated.

They shouldn’t be here. They should’ve stayed where they were, Ella thought. Their

mistake snapped at her. She felt her relief melt from her body, as if collecting into a cold, murky

puddle beneath her feet. She shivered.

“What do we do?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Something is really wrong. Really, really wrong. Right?” He stared out at the barrier of

uniforms, of sirens. It looked contrived: a movie set.

“Charlie, I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Do you think your dad is here? Is he close?”

“Close?”

“Maybe he didn’t get here yet. Should we wait here for him? Will he come here?”

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Ella didn’t know how to answer Charlie, how to numb the sting of his panic. She wasn’t

surprised at this sudden chance in confidence. Whatever was happening, it was too complicated,

dangerous for them to have imagined balancing at the top of the stairs. That was its own

obstacle: something within range of Charlie’s imagination. This was something else entirely.

And then they weren’t alone.

She came running from the other side of the lobby. Fast: her legs sliced through the air.

Another person. A nurse.

As she came closer, Ella could see there was blood on her clothes. A splatter of red:

droplets that stained her clothes in motion. It was on her shirt, her cheeks, her white headband. It

wasn’t her blood, Ella was certain. There was too much of it. It didn’t look right. Not the way

nurses’ scrubs were regularly stained with blood, vomit, pus.

Charlie reached for her hand. This time she let him squeeze her fingers, nearly splinter

her frail bones.

Suddenly her fear of the wailing, the siren lights bouncing off the snow outside, the

woman speckled with red, all clicked, slowly, into place. The details aligned. All at once, this

story had a stark clarity to it.

The nurse pushed her way around the revolving door, into the dwindling rain outside.

Ella watched as two policemen rushed to the woman, grabbed her by the shoulders. Steadied her.

Ella wondered if the two men were in charge, if they had handled situations like this before: if

that was why they hesitate.

As the nurse talked, she waved her hand behind her towards the hospital. Ella couldn’t

guess what exactly she was saying. She wondered if the nurse’s voice cracked, if it was hard for

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the policemen to understand her in between hoarse sobs. Or if she could control the pace of her

words: if her voice was calm, clear.

All at once a rush of uniformed men left their positions, marched towards the building.

The nurse, it seemed, brought them the information they needed.

They filled the lobby, determined. The first group of them turned right, headed towards

where the nurse ran from. Ella knew that was where the danger was. The nurse had been there.

Those coming in later stayed behind, in the lobby. Some were barking into their radios. Others

seemed like they were waiting for orders.

It didn’t take long for someone to notice Ella and Charlie. Hands still locked together,

standing out of place: in their gowns, out of bed.

“Hey, what are you two doing here?” One strode towards, them. Almost jogged. His arms

outstretched, emphasizing his question. Ella hoped he would be more concerned than angry.

In front of them he kneeled, put himself in their line of sight. Ella could see he was used

to being around kids.

“We got lost,” Ella stammered. She knew such an answer still made no sense, but she

couldn’t say they purposefully came here. That would be the wrong answer.

“Lost?”

“We were looking for her dad,” Charlie added, not understanding what Ella was trying to

do.

“Where’s your dad, sweetie?” The officer turned to her.

“I don’t know. He is supposed to come visit today.”

“They are going to watch the hockey game,” Charlie clarified.

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Ella realized that through it all, she had almost forgotten about the time. It seemed like

hours since she left her room, since she counted the exact minutes until the game was supposed

to start. But she wasn’t sure if she could trust her sense of time. Maybe it hadn’t been as long as

she thought. Maybe it had been longer. She was suddenly worried that the game was already

over. She pictured the ice empty, the stadium floor sticky with spilled beer. The only noise

breaking the silence swelling within the walls of Madison Square Garden: the grumbling of the

Zamboni as it scrubbed the marks out from the frozen floor.

“Have you heard from him?”

“No.”

“That’s okay. We will find him. Why don’t you two come with me?”

He stood, pointed them in the opposite direction of the rest of policemen.

The officer seemed sympathetic, as if he understood exactly her need to find her father.

Ella wanted to trust his offer to help.

They did as they were told. Ella knew it wasn’t just a suggestion. The officer wanted to

get them away from the lobby. Had to. They shouldn’t be here.

She knew it would be safer: sitting in another room, watched by someone who had some

sort of claim to authority. The badge pinned on his chest: silver and obvious.

Ella suddenly felt disappointed. Cheated.

Their book had closed: story over.

“What’s going on?” Charlie asked.

Ella wondered if he was looking at the officer’s belt, at the gun fastened against his hip,

like she was doing.

“Everything is fine. Don’t worry. You’re both safe now.”

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It should’ve been enough, she knew. Safety. This was what they were looking for, after

all: help. An adult.

And yet it didn’t feel like enough. Her stomach knotted several times over. She blinked

and blinked and still saw a woman running towards her and Charlie, red dotting her face. Like

paint. She couldn’t erase the outlines of the image.

Even then Ella knew it was something she wasn’t going to forget. It would be the image

she saw as she tried to sleep, to dream.

Something happened in this building. Something consequential. It had to have been: the

lobby was crowded with uniformed bodies. That alarm wasn’t just incessant, irritating noise. Ella

pulled herself out of bed because of it. She felt it. She now was sure that her and Charlie’s

fumbling, their adventure, was now part of something greater: an actual chunk of danger. And

she wanted to know exactly what that meant. Somehow she knew she deserved that.

She belonged to this place.

She looked over her shoulder, the lobby now too far behind her. Ella couldn’t find the

nurse. She wasn’t even sure if she was still in the room. She probably wasn’t. Ella imagined she

was leading the police somewhere else.

No, Ella felt it wasn’t enough to be steered in the opposite direction, shielded.

Something happened in this building.

She felt it harden within her: this knowledge.

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Lydia

PRESENT

She waits in the doorway. A policeman sits to the side of her, guarding the room. She

knows she is allowed to go in. There’s a little pink visitor tag stuck to her chest. Her name

scrawled small in cursive along the designated line. Still, she waits as if her invitation is delayed.

Lost.

Lydia listens to the meditative exhalations of the ventilator, tries to get her lungs to copy

its contrived pace.

She doesn’t think anyone recognized her, she was barely on the television, but she

imagines they know who she is. How could they not?

People are still talking about it. They treat her differently. Veer away from her. Only her

closest friends call. Rarely. She often wonders if they think she was in on it. It’s a cruel

assumption, but not entirely illogical.

Her phone just rings and rings and rings, even though it has been over a month.

She can’t watch the news at night, afraid it to hear their names again. Of course time

cycles on and on. There are other, fresher horrors to dissect during the evening talk shows. Still,

it makes her nervous to think they will return to the center of it all.

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When they are discussed, the details all matter. And then they don’t. And then they do

again. It’s an endless rotation of questioning, debating, reconciling. It makes Lydia want to throw

a plate at the center of the screen: watch how the glass splinters outwards from the point of

contact. It’s the only way to end the dragging debates over gun laws, mental health, ethics,

Naomi herself.

But then Lydia feels the same confusion. She wants the same answers. She decides she

wants to hurl a chair at the television instead of a thin circle of china.

Everyone wants answers that don’t belong to them.

They mostly want to know about the gun. Even privately: her friends all ask hastily, their

sentences spilling from their mouths as if each word is chained to one before it. They can’t

believe Naomi would buy a gun, they claim as if it means something. As if they still believe in

the person she used to be.

Lydia knows about the gun but she doesn’t answer their questions. It was a family object.

Something Naomi had easy access to, although Lydia doesn’t know when exactly she went off to

get it. And she tells the police that. Twice. She can picture Naomi in her father’s closet in her

parents’ apartment: pushing aside his collection of button down shirts, kneeling down in front of

his safe. She turns the dial a little to the left, a little to the right. The lock releases. The gun is

suddenly flat in her palm: a new limb, an extension of her flesh.

And then there is the question of the room she occupies in this building. The time,

energy, effort that has gone into her life.

Lydia hates how everyone feels the need to analyze Naomi. Demonize her. She hates how

she can’t even defend Naomi, not as faithfully as she should.

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Lydia won’t touch the bed. Not the guardrail. Not the blanket. She won’t look at the

handcuffs. Definitely not at the handcuffs. That will be too much. She will keep her attention on

Naomi’s face; will pretend they’re in a different room.

Lydia stares at Naomi and can’t picture her hand wrapped around a gun.

As she wavers at the edge of the bed, Lydia senses all of her alternative lives, all the

possibilities she stepped into and out of in the last couple of months. It’s as if they’re absent

bodies in the room. She can feel the cold of them press against her: they remind her of who she

isn’t. Of the person she is now choosing to be. She feels claustrophobic, her lungs seize hoping

to grasp more oxygen.

She fumbles towards a goodbye. Somehow she still thinks Naomi deserves that. Not this

Naomi, breathing and eating and peeing through tubes, a hospital blanket pulled too high up on

her chest. No. The other Naomi: the Naomi that didn’t bring a gun into this building, where their

daughter died.

Lydia wants to hear it from her. She wants to understand the exact steps Naomi took to

get to this place. The decisions. Lydia understands the reason. She still feels the reason. It

strangles her as it did Naomi. Their grief never touched, she knows. They just moved alongside

each other. Maybe that was her fault. She thinks maybe she should’ve noticed more, not let

herself obsess over her Saturday ritual. And so she needs to know the specific step that set

Naomi off in the wrong direction. She needs to know the calculations, the yes’s and the no’s, that

led Naomi down this path Lydia could never foresee.

She thinks there is guilt collecting within her. But she won’t absorb it enough so that it

weighs her down. She acknowledges it then shakes the thought of it from her body.

If someone died, she knows, her guilt would turn monstrous.

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But there was that boy: their doctor’s nephew. The hero. Lydia read articles about him.

Read his words, his version of what happened. He jumped forward and no one died. The way he

talks about it in the interviews, Lydia thinks he is trying to make himself sound impressive. As if

aware someone important is listening. He keeps adding details, she notices. Between the

different interviews she reads, watches, there is always something new he remembers.

She knows she can’t blame him for Naomi. Her broken skull and swollen brain: those are

her own consequences. By chance the nephew was in the room. By chance he decided to act. It

was self-defense.

There are now just a couple of hours until her flight.

This is enough: to see her and leave. She can’t knit together a real goodbye, say anything

out loud. She knows she needs to but she can’t.

And she hopes that this isn’t cowardly. She just isn’t interested in figuring out how to

make herself stay.

She knows she will remember this room. Out of everything this room will stick with her.

The lack of flowers and cards on the nightstand. The size of the ventilator, the space it takes up

beside the bed. Naomi’s head wrapped tight in gauze, bandages.

Lydia turns away, finally steps out of this life. Lets it unspool without her.