I have to distract myself.
“When’s the last time you pushed a wheelchair?” I tease her, craning my neck to look at Dr. Benefield. “Don’t you have, like, people to do this?”
“Ha ha,” she says, shaking her head at me. “I wanted to talk to you.”
She wheels me into my room, parking the wheelchair by the window. I see her glance over at the iPad on my bed, the screen still on, lit up with a photo of me, Kimberly, and Sam at one of our home games. The three of us are smiling at the camera, arms wrapped around one another.
“Mind if I get nosy?” she asks, reaching out to scoop it up.
I shrug, waving her on.
She flips through the camera roll, looking at the pictures I scoured last night and this morning.
“Looking through old memories?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Looking for Marley.”
I zoomed in on every background. Every person in the stands. Every passerby. But I didn’t find her.
“You said my brain was making sense of things I saw, so I thought maybe I’d seen her somewhere.”
Dr. Benefield presses a button and the screen goes dark. She reaches out, putting it on my nightstand. “Did you find anything?”
“I didn’t make her up.” I blow past her question, trying to figure out a way to make her see. To get her to help me. “I swear.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Dr. Benefield says, taking a step toward me. “I’ve asked someone—”
She’s cut off by a knock on the door, and a doctor I’ve never seen before sticks his head in. She motions for him to come in, continuing what she was saying. “Kyle, this is Dr. Ronson. He’s a psychiatrist.”
My hopes plummet.
“So you do think I’m crazy.”
She leans down, looking me directly in the eye. “I think you’re sad,” she says. “You’ve been through a lot.”
Well, yeah. Of course I’m sad. I’ve lost an entire year. An entire year and a whole new life I was just starting to live, and more than all that, the girl I love more than I’ve ever loved anyone.
And no one will believe it.
“Just tell him what you told me. Okay? He can help you work through what you’ve experienced.”
She gives my arm a sympathetic pat and leaves as Dr. Ronson slides a chair over to sit next to me by the window.
“Kyle,” he says with an annoying amount of pep. He offers his hand to me, and I shake it. Either his grip is super firm or I’m just that weak.
“So,” he says, pushing his glasses up farther on his nose, his eyes narrowing as he studies me. “How’ve you been?”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes and glance out the window as the two of us begin to talk. I’m annoyed but so desperate for answers it doesn’t take much to open the floodgates.
Just like I did with Sam and Dr. Benefield, I tell him the story. Our story. Every moment leading up to now.
And just like them, he slowly starts trying to poke holes in it.
“Did she ever say anything that didn’t make sense? Did anyone?”
“I don’t know,” I say, frustrated. I push back at him, determined. “Everything made sense, I—”
“Or did you make it make sense?” he asks, talking over me. “That’s what we’re talking about here, Kyle. Did your mind take what you were hearing out here and turn it into a dream in there?”
He points at my head, like he knows everything.
“I could see her. Feel her,” I say. I could never make up that feeling. “I could even smell her. She smelled sweet, like orange blossoms, or jasmine, or…”
He pushes open the window, and a sweet scent drifts in from the outside, making my stomach drop another flight.
“Honeysuckle,” he says, finishing my sentence for me. He nods to the other side. “It grows wild all over the courtyard. The scent is very similar to jasmine. Or orange blossoms.”
“But…”
I try to cover up my disappointment, turning my gaze to a giant oak tree, the sunlight streaming through its branches. I think of Marley at the park, the sunlight trickling onto her face, her hazel eyes shining up at me.
“I’m sorry,” he says, staring at me. “The fact is that some people wake up with memories that never happened. Our unconscious brains process outside stimuli in ways that sometimes translate into—”
“Dreams,” I say, cutting him off. “Yeah. I get it.”
31