As I watch her go, the pain of it all crashes down on me. I press the call button, and the nurse comes to give me another dose of pain medicine.
I don’t want to think about what’s real or not real. I don’t want to think about why Kim is here and Marley isn’t. I want to be knocked out.
Finally the drugs start to do their job, and for a moment there’s relief.
* * *
“And her happily ever after was over.…”
Before I even open my eyes, I know I’m back where I belong.
I feel her fingers in my hair, lightly tracing the outline of my cheek. I press my hand over hers, holding it firmly against my face. I know this skin, this touch. This is real.
Marley.
Her fingers feel small beneath mine. Delicate. I squeeze them and gather my courage, praying with everything in me that when I open my eyes, she’ll still be there. I let my lids open slightly, peeking, hoping.
Marley’s face is inches from mine, so close I can count her eyelashes. I smile and pull her even closer, overjoyed at the feel of her, the realness of her.
“God, I missed you,” I whisper into her hair. “Where were you? Everyone was telling me that—”
Suddenly she sobs and pulls away.
“You promised me,” she whispers, her voice strained as she looks at me, her eyes full of pain and betrayal. “You said no more sad stories. You promised.”
It guts me.
I did make that promise.
My eyes close as I think of how to tell her what’s happening, how I woke up in a hospital room and my world was turned upside down. I grip her fingers and pull her hand back to my cheek, wanting to tell her that I won’t ever fail her again. That I’m back and everything is fine now.
“Marley, I…”
But when I open my eyes again, she’s gone. Oh no. NO.
Then I see her shadow leaving the room.
“Marley, wait!” I bolt from the bed to chase after her.
But the second I move, I jolt awake. Back in the hospital. Alone. My good leg hanging off the side of the bed.
I struggle to catch my breath as I look around at the beeping machines. I feel the tug of the IV in my hand. The stupid cast wrapped tightly around my leg.
“Marley,” I whisper.
I heard her, felt her touch on my cheek. I can feel the exact spot her fingers had been, the skin still buzzing.
She was real. I’m awake now. My brain couldn’t have just made her up. Right?
I see her face, the tears, the clouds consuming her expression.
You said no more sad stories. You promised.
I hear the hollowness in her words, matching the emptiness I feel every second without her. And it’s all my fault because I can’t get back to her.
I turn the light on, fumbling in the bag of stuff my mom brought me earlier for my iPad. I pull it out and open Facebook. Tapping the search bar, I type in her name, thousands of results cascading down the screen.
I scroll through, faces blurring in front of my eyes, blond hair, brown hair, blue hair, none of them the right Marley.
But I keep looking. Because she’s real.
I know she is.
30
The next afternoon I stare at a commercial with toilet paper dancing across the TV screen, trying to ignore the tension that’s been building between me and Kim since she got here fifteen minutes ago.
My mom left to give us some “alone time,” and I… really wish she hadn’t.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see she’s sitting with her arms crossed, her leg shaking, her jaw locked in a way that screams she’s biting something back. Finally she grabs the remote off the bed and the TV goes dark.
“Kyle. What is going on?” she says as she tosses the remote onto my bedside table.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say as I avoid her gaze.
She pushes her chair back and stands up, the legs squeaking loudly against the floor as she grabs her duffel bag and spins around to face me.
“If you’d just tell me what’s going on with you, maybe I can help,” she argues, clutching the bag to her chest.
“You can’t,” I insist. It would be impossible for her to understand. How am I supposed to tell her I’m in love with someone else when she thinks we just broke up?
“You don’t know that,” she fires back, her blue eyes flashing in a way that I almost forgot about, her cheeks blushing in anger.
I think of Marley, and all the days, all the hours, we spent together, how we never fought like this. A wave of longing comes over me as I watch Kim fume.
I remember our relationship before. Before the accident. Before Marley. The charm bracelet. Always trying to patch the holes instead of looking at what was making them.