I never won, but once I came in second. I was pleased with myself. Finally, I was one of the last girls left standing on the stage. I was given a bouquet and crowned with a tiara just like the one Miss Tennessee wore in the autographed picture that hung above my bed. But when I met my mother by the stage door afterward, I could see right away she wasn’t happy.
So close, she said as we walked to the car. And nothing else.
So please, don’t judge me. There is no one more disappointing to me than myself.
Ma’am, I really need you to step away from the desk, said the nurse as she waved the next person forward. They’re moving her down from ICU now, and you’ll be allowed to see her in just a moment.
february had been at it long enough to know that she could not blame herself for her students’ every hurt—pain wrought by their families, by one another. And yet. Whenever a student was in crisis, she found it impossible to disengage, and the night of the play was no exception. She had even jumped in her car and sped behind the ambulance, though she realized as soon as she got to the hospital there was nothing she could do beyond crowd the waiting room.
She’d lost only one student in residence during her time as headmistress, Benjamin, a third grader, more than a decade ago. He’d had a seizure in his sleep—massive cerebral hemorrhage, nothing anyone could have done, but it had been her second year in charge and his death had marked her, a line dividing the Before and After. February, like everyone, had a few major delineations in her life, bad and good—the loss of each of her parents, but also the day she’d come out to them, the night she met Mel. She imagined these moments as force fields, once one was raised it was difficult to return to the place that sat behind it, obliging a person to remain changed and hurtling ever forward. Though it had been After Ben for a long time, time didn’t lessen his power.
So February offered to bring Charlie’s parents something from the cafeteria and then returned home to pace the upstairs hall, thinking Not your hall much longer with every turn. Mel had tried to get her to sleep, or at least sit down, coaxing her into the living room for a few minutes with a cup of tea, but it didn’t last long. After tossing and turning for a while, she caught up on emails, then dishes. More pacing. At 5:30 a.m. she got in the shower.
It was still dark when she left the house, but the first sunlight was peeking out behind Clerc by the time she got to campus. She startled a groggy Walt in the guard’s box at the gate, and he jumped up and saluted her, at which she couldn’t help but laugh. She looked at the upper dorms, pictured the students dreaming in their beds. That was the thing she loved most about River Valley—even without seeing another soul on the quad, she knew she wasn’t alone. The feeling sustained her, at least enough to get her into her office with a cup of coffee and her laptop, blank Word document open and a cursor blinking like a tapping foot, waiting for her to find the words she knew she had to say at the faculty summit in just three days.
charlie woke twice that night: once on the gurney on the way to the OR, snapping her eyes shut when the ceiling lights drilled right through her, then again in a calmer room, dim, her father asleep in a chair beside her, bent forward with his head on her leg. Was her mother here? She wanted to ask, or at least tell her father that she was awake, but nothing would move, not her tongue, not her fingers. Two languages, both useless, she thought before she sank back into the dark.
She came round again in the morning. By then her father, mother, and grandmother had all set up camp around her bed. Her mother noticed first, sprang from her chair and said a run of things Charlie couldn’t follow, kissed her forehead. Her father was next, tried using some signs with whatever he was saying, though Charlie was so overwhelmed it didn’t help. Her grandmother settled for a pat on the hand and said nothing at all.
Her mother raised the bed and adjusted Charlie’s pillows, held a Styrofoam cup before her so she could sip through a bendy straw. The water razed her throat and stung her empty stomach.
The three of them were staring at Charlie with such anticipation, she found herself thinking—what, do you want me to do a trick? But she could not wrangle her snark with the speed she was used to, and after some frustration, settled instead for, What happened?
Well, said her mother.
But Charlie’s eyes felt jumpy, and she couldn’t convert her mother’s lips into meaning. Perhaps the implant had helped more than she’d given it credit for. She looked to her father, hoping he might be able to sign, but he was out of his depth with anything medical. So she gestured at a pen; her mother took a stack of napkins from her purse and began to write.
I’ll go look for the interpreter, said her father.
Charlie watched him out the door. She wished he wouldn’t go. Her mother handed her the napkin.
Remember the implant moisture problem?
Charlie nodded. Next napkin:
There was a bit of a short circuit.
I got electrocuted?
Her mother’s eyes widened.
My implant electrocuted me. In the head.
Her mother was still frozen. Charlie looked to her grandmother.
In so many words, said her grandmother.
But they took it out? Am I gonna be okay?
Another napkin: Yes, wrote her mother. It’s out.
Her father returned, but much to Charlie’s horror, instead of an interpreter it was Austin behind him. She reached up to smooth her hair, but her hand met a clot of packed gauze and she yelped. Her mother, grandmother, and father all jumped, and Austin sucked in his cheek when he saw the wound, but she forced a smile and he returned it.
I was really worried about you, he said.
What are you doing here?
I was really worried about you.
Have you been here this whole time?
A nurse in lavender scrubs appeared, leaning in too close and speaking with exaggerated lip movements at Charlie; she and Austin both cringed.
WELL LOOK WHO’S AWAKE, she said.
Not long today. I came by yesterday.
Yesterday?
The nurse slid her stethoscope beneath Charlie’s shirt and the chill of the metal on her chest made her gasp. She closed her eyes—she couldn’t look at Austin with this woman’s hands up her shirt. Then the nurse stood and gave Charlie a thumbs-up, and began to futz with the bag of fluids on the pole above her, making notations on a whiteboard.
You’ve been out for two days.
Well shit.
HUNGRY? the nurse said, miming a spoon dramatically.
A little, she said, trying not to laugh at the woman’s clownish expression.
How do you feel?
O-k now. I think there’s some drugs in here.
She tapped the IV tether running down into her hand.
Fun.
I’LL BRING A MENU, said the nurse.
Does everyone at school hate me?
Hate you? No! Why?
I ruined the play.
That was the most interesting ending to Peter Pan ever.
Charlie smiled.
Was Gabriella mad?
Oh, she was furious. That was a bonus.
Austin tapped out a quick message on his phone, shoved it back in his pocket. Charlie laughed, then winced. Austin’s phone flashed and he looked at it with disappointment.
My mom’s out front. I gotta go.
Go, she said, shooing him toward the door.
Text me when you charge your phone?
She looked around, wondering where all her stuff was, and spotted a plastic bag with the hospital’s logo hanging on the far wall, one leg of her black jeans protruding out the top.