The nurse handed over a visitor’s pass. “Lucky timing. He’s been up at Johns Hopkins for the past few weeks. Only just got back a few days ago. Looks like his parents enrolled him in some study the university is running on long-term-care patients.”
In the elevator, she tried to talk herself into leaving. She’d signed in at the front desk. Didn’t that count as visiting? No one would know if she didn’t actually see him. Least of all Zhi himself. When the elevator opened, she meant to get off, but her feet refused to move. It wasn’t until the doors began to close that her hand shot out to hold them open. With a sigh, she got off and went down the long hall.
Zhi’s room was silent apart from the machine that breathed for him and the rhythmic beeping of the monitors. Seeing him like this always broke her heart all over again. She hurried to the window and opened the curtains. Why did they keep it so dark in here? There was a tree in the courtyard, tall and sinewy, that Zhi would have loved. Con made a circuit of the room, straightening up. Not that it was necessary—the staff did an excellent job—but this was her routine to make herself feel like she still played a part in his life. When she had finished tidying, she pulled up a chair beside the bed and took Zhi’s hand. Once, they’d been the calloused hands of a guitarist, but now they were as soft as a newborn’s. She squeezed. He didn’t squeeze back. He never would again.
Persistent vegetative state.
She didn’t think she’d ever heard three uglier words. The first year, she’d clung to the fantasy that if she kept talking and singing to him, her devotion would be rewarded. The more doctors tried to convince her that Zhi’s brain damage was irreversible, that he would never regain consciousness, the more radicalized in her certainty she became. He was special. He had a destiny. They didn’t know him, know his strength. Not like she did. So it would be up to her to help him find his way back. She’d made herself his lighthouse, resolved to keep watch until he came back to her. One day his eyes would flicker open. He would look over to her and smile and ask when they could blow this place. Like in a fucking fairy tale. Could you imagine anyone being so na?ve? But here was the thing, she still was. A pathetically stubborn woman who refused to listen to reason.
It was why she couldn’t get out of bed some mornings and why her friends had run out of patience with her. After the crash, people had respected her grief, indulged it, even admiring its spiky resilience. Their hearts and thoughts and prayers went out to her. But the luster of any tragedy eventually wore off. The narrative changed. It wasn’t as if she and Zhi had been married. Three years was long enough to mourn. Too long, some whispered. She needed to quit milking it and move on. She’d felt herself being reclassified from grieving to depressed. And depression, unlike grief, was treated as a character flaw. Not that anyone said it aloud, but who wanted to deal with some sad girl and her bum knee? Con didn’t blame them. She didn’t much want to deal with herself either.
“Merry Christmas, Zhi,” she said and put her head down and cried.
The band had played a show in DC that night and were on the way to North Carolina at the time of the accident. Con had been curled up asleep in the back, no seat belt, and woke in a hospital bed with no memory of the crash. No one could say for certain what had happened. Not even Stephie, who had improbably walked away without a scratch. All that was known was that the truck had hit them head-on and their van had been totaled. Hugh had died instantly. Tommy hung on for two days before succumbing to his injuries. Zhi had never regained consciousness. Her Zhi. Con was in the hospital for two months recuperating from multiple surgeries and missed both funerals. She hadn’t spoken to Stephie, her best friend in the world, in years.
Without noticing that she was doing it, she put her hand on her right knee and rubbed the scars beneath her jeans.
Zhi had been driving that night as he had throughout the tour, clocking unhealthy hours behind the wheel. Without discussing it with anyone first, he’d bought the band a self-drive ’27 Chevy van. The new laws required vehicles to be auto-drive but had grandfathered in older models. It was an expensive hobby. Parts were harder and harder to find, and the cost of a self-drive insurance policy was stratospheric. None of their families had that kind of money, except for Zhi’s parents, who could afford to underwrite their only child’s reckless flight of fancy.
Before leaving Texas, Con had been nominated by the rest of the band to try one last time to convince Zhi to trade in the van and get something newer. Something reliable. She was the band’s chief negotiator and had done her best, but no one ever won an argument with Zhi. Not when he dug in his heels and got that look in his eyes, talking about how a band being driven around America by computer would never truly understand where it came from. It was all soulful bullshit, but it sounded so good when Zhi said it. Everything always did. That had been Zhi’s gift. The reason Con had fallen in love with him in the first place, why she loved him even now, though it didn’t feel good anymore, and she wished that she knew how to make it stop.