Page 68 of What You Left Me

“Mom, please stop,” Katie says.

Mama Dorothy does one last shake. “All right, that’s enough. I need to go see my boy. Who’s coming with me?”

“I am,” I say. It falls out of my mouth before I can consider it. This time around, it makes more sense for me to see him.

Martin McGee is not a stranger to me anymore.

“Let’s get to it,” Mama Dorothy says.

We walk down the hallway to those same doors I buzzed through on Saturday morning. Our hearts are heavy, but our heads are high, one foot in front of the other. The nurse lets us in, and we go to Martin’s room. Right away I head straight to his bedside. Some of the swelling on his face has gone down, but he looks…distant. His haircut is already growing out a little, filling in those small patches I’d noticed on Saturday. No movement beneath his eyelids.

In my mind, I start a conversation with him. Maybe this is what it takes. Talking to him when I’m awake like I do when I’m asleep.

Hi, Martin, I start. I decide to fill him in on what I’m seeing. I don’t know how any of this works. It’s worth a try. Maybe he will be able to see it too. Or hear me.

Please hear me.

Your right eye is swollen shut, I continue.It’s bulbous and purple, like a baseball is caught underneath your skin. You have a tube in your throat. It’s ugly and cruel, but it keeps you breathing because I guess you aren’t doing it on your own. I’m hovering over you, examining the tiny details I promised myself on Saturday I wouldn’t get to know. I’m double-checking them against the face I’ve come to know so well in my dreams.

That little scar above your lip, on the left side, uncorrupted by the crash. When we danced, before I put my head back on your shoulder and that song we both knew but couldn’t hear was on, I caught a glimpse of it there. I put my finger over it when I shushed you. It’s an old scar, level with your skin, a little whiter than the rest. I want to know how you got it, Martin. I want you to tell me that, in your own words, in the here and now, not in some airplane I’ve created in my brain to have some great symbolism about the lack of control in my life or whatever.

You’ve seen my fears. Literally. And you keep showing up. You keep asking to be there. You held me so nicely when we danced, close, but not too close. Maybe we can do that in real life.

But it would have to be here, Martin.

I’m supposed to head off to college. It’s really happening now. I passed my last exam. That’s two months from now, though. Look how much we’ve accomplished in three days. In two months—wow—what could we do with two whole months? Even if it was here, you in the hospital relearning how to use your good hand or learning how to talk again or whatever it is you need to learn. I would help you. Whatever it takes.

But it would have to be here, Martin.

My pleas are probably so empty. Maybe I don’t mean to you what you’ve come to mean to me. Maybe it’s silly to make you mean so much, but somehow, you do. Maybe the you in my head isn’t the one that’s lying here on this hospital bed, but this voice deep inside of me tells me it is.

Earlier today, when I dreamed of us at your party, you started to say I’d shown you what there is to love about this place. I’ve been thinking about that. It’s who you’re with that makes a place great, you know? I have these fantastic friends. They’ve been with me every day since your accident happened. They are what make this ordinary town so extraordinary. I’d like you to meet them, like I’ve gotten to meet your friends. We all get along so well. You’d fit right in.

But it would have to be here, Martin.

I can’t say any of these things aloud. Your mom, who is extraordinary too, I must say, is standing over my shoulder. I’m telling you here, in my mind. Isn’t it amazing how full a mind is, all these deep, complex thoughts happening inside, when in reality, my body is just standing? Your body has betrayed you altogether, and yet I know your mind is still spinning. I know it.

It doesn’t make sense.

It’s been only three days, Martin. Such a short amount of time in the bigger picture. In the long, full life waiting for you on the other side of your eyelids. Just open them up and it’s yours.

I don’t know what else to say. All you have to do is open your eyes. Prove the doctors wrong. Doctors can be wrong. Life may seem like a science, but I’m learning that it’s never black and white. Be the gray. Be the miracle. Whatever you want to call it.

Prove that kindness can be fairness.

Come back, Martin.

Please.

• • •

Don’t do this to me, Petra. It’s like I can feel you here, so close, hovering over me, listening to what I’m saying to Spitty, telling me to think this through. I have, Petra. I swear I have.

You reminded me to be patient, and that’s the only reason I noticed this stuff in the first place. You don’t understand what this is like.

I know. That’s a cop-out. I’ve tried so many times now to explain it all the way, but all I ever say is that I’m stuck and I can’t wake up and I need help. That’s not deep enough. Have you ever really been stuck? Like, as a kid, did you ever get your head caught between the banisters of a staircase? Or climb all the way up a tree and look down, realizing you have no idea how to get back? You feel helpless. This place is like that times a billion.

I bet you’re thinking that every person that’s ever been stuck has managed to get out. I wish you’d seenBack to the Futurebecause it would help me explain my point. Long story short, the main guy, Marty McFly, gets stuck in 1955, and his mom kind of falls in love with him. I know that sounds wild, but you gotta watch it. Anyway, spoiler alert, he gets back to the time he’s from by the end, which isn’t that bad of a spoiler because I doubt it would be such a universally loved movie if he didn’t.