Now that I can place her from before my coma, does that mean my brain just created a whole persona for her?
Do I even know her?
Does she know me?
* * *
Exactly twenty-four hours later, I limp back to the same Cardiology waiting room, hoping she’ll be there again. I round the corner to see her sitting in one of the green leather chairs.
It’s still as shocking as it was two days ago. To see her after I gave her up. To see her looking so different.
Her long hair hangs around her face, and she’s focused on a book open in her lap. In the chair next to her sits a book bag, unzipped.
She must feel my presence because her head snaps up, and when she sees me, she flinches. I take a small step toward her, but she shakes her head, jumping up and darting into the bathroom, the door slamming shut behind her.
“Marley!” I call to her. “You know me.”
But then I hesitate. “Don’t you?”
Slowly, I approach the bathroom door, knocking lightly and resting my forehead against the wood.
“I don’t want to scare you. I’m sorry if I did. I just need to know if you’re the Marley I think you are, or if I just saw your face and then made up everything else about you.” Actually hearing myself say it sounds even crazier than I expected.
I stop talking and hold my breath, hoping that doesn’t sound stalkerish. When she doesn’t say anything, I continue. “Just please can you tell me if you know me? Tell me if you’re… you.”
I wait for an answer, but minutes pass and it doesn’t come.
I think of the girl at the house. The wrong Marley and how scared she looked. I’m doing it again. I’m an idiot for thinking she actually knows me and that I actually know her. I mean, I was asleep the whole time.
Why is it I never considered that if she was real, she wouldn’t love me?
“I’m sorry. I—shit.” I take a step away from the door, shaking my head. “I’m sorry. I’m leaving now.”
I curse at myself. When the hell am I going to learn? In my rush to get out of there, the bottom of my left crutch tangles on something, and as I struggle to right myself, there’s a loud thud behind me. I look down to see the strap of her book bag wrapped around the crutch, her bag lying open on the floor.
Great. Now she’ll think I was going through her stuff.
I grab for it, picking up a few loose pencils that have tumbled out onto the floor.
But as I slip them back inside, I see the corner of a bright-yellow notebook.
I glance back at the closed door, before carefully picking it up. On the front, handwritten in familiar neat calligraphy, is her name: Marley Phelps.
“You do have a last name,” I murmur. Take that, Sam.
Before I can think better of it, I flip to a random page, my eyes widening when I see what’s written on it.
It’s the story of the two of us at Halloween, all of it exactly the same as it happened. Or how I dreamed it, I guess. My zombie football player costume, me tossing the entire bowl of candy to the kids, her hands reaching up to unclip her shell.
I keep searching, seeing tiny glimpses as I skim, memories I had. The Winter Festival, getting Georgia, eating hot dogs by the pond.
All of it right here.
I’m shaking. If this was all in my head, how does she know?
My eyes land on a single word. “Storyteller.” I think about our conversation that day at the park. When she told me the best part about telling stories.
The audience. Without an audience, a storyteller is just talking to the air, but when someone’s listening…
Someone was listening. I was listening.
Quickly, I close the notebook and put it away, but as I do, a feather falls out of the back and drifts slowly onto the floor.
A duck feather.
I hold it up to the light, smiling. It’s her. I do know her.
And she knows me. At least some part of her does, even though we’ve never actually met.
Gently, I place the feather on top of the notebook and reach into my pocket to pull out a cherry blossom petal I plucked off a flower in the courtyard today. I slide it over the feather, hoping she sees it.
Hoping it means something to her, too.
37
I wait impatiently outside the double doors of the hospital, scanning the parking lot for Kimberly. I check my watch for the millionth time, groaning, hoping she won’t be too late. Now is so not the moment for us to be operating on Kim Standard Time.
It’s almost 7:10. She’s going to miss it.
Finally, under the parking lot lights, I see her blond head bobbing its way around the parked cars.