As she pulled back up to Port Authority, she spotted Maya on the corner, standing out among the throngs—the only person in New York without her guard up, the only person smiling. It was in part this careless beauty that drew people to Maya. There was something so compelling about an adult who was as trusting as a puppy on its back. Blue rolled down the window and shouted Maya’s name twice before she noticed.
Maya took one look at the frumpy green sedan Blue had rented and then bent down to look at her with disgust. “You’re kidding me,” she said, climbing in. “You rented a Jolly Rancher.”
“Sorry you’re late,” Blue replied.
Maya laughed and her eyes flashed with love. “Let’s try this again.” She leaned across the front seat and held her arms out wide and warm and welcoming as a beach. “Hi! You look amazing!”
“Hi!” Blue said back, and the feeling of having someone be so truly, openly happy to see her was like the sun shining right into her chest, brightening the place up a bit. In all her busyness it had been over a year since they’d last seen each other in person, and she’d forgotten what it felt like to see in someone’s face that she mattered. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would like her enough to give her such a reception. But that was the thing about old friends. The love was built-in to the innocent bones of youth, long before a proper assessment of each other’s qualities could be made.
Now Blue accepted Maya’s hug, then surrendered it just as quickly, aware of her own awkwardness, how she’d forgotten how to be close.
“It’s been way too long,” Maya said. “But really, you’re joking with this car, right?” She eyed the roof like it had insulted her. “How are we supposed to re-create our fun trip without a convertible?”
“I think we’ll be okay,” Blue said.
“We’ll just have to improvise. I assume you’ve got a chainsaw at the house?”
Blue rolled her eyes. “Buckle up. Poor Hannah is probably freaking out that we’re not there yet.”
“Wait, you didn’t tell her we were going to be late?”
HANNAH
Hannah sat beside her suitcase with her phone in hand. On the other line, Vivian’s voice buzzed with excitement.
“It happened again! I was wheeling Henry outside for some air and he looked up at me, his eyes so clear and present—you know how they can be sometimes—and he said, ‘Hi, Mom’! Just like that! ‘Hi, Mom.’”
The smile on Hannah’s face was so big she could feel the stretch of it. “Ooh,” she said, “that’s amazing!” And there it was, just like every other occasion when Henry had spoken or squeezed a hand or flashed a smile—sudden irrepressible, delicious hope. On those days everything was okay again, everything was worth it, all the waiting and worrying and caretaking and loneliness and sleepless nights and gray despair, all of it worth it because he was still there, he was still in there, her Henry, her love, her one. He was still capable of coming back. Oh, how she wished she’d been there to see it!
She glanced at the clock, sorry to have to rush Vivian off the phone, but the girls would be here any minute. As soon as she hung up, she thought of Henry in the care facility, imagined him wide awake and conscious, back for good. There was still some brain activity. And advancing medicine. Miracles did happen. Even the doctors said that. There was that kid who woke up after eighteen years—turned out he’d heard everything around him. There was just so much they didn’t know.
But then, another thought: What if he woke up again, even briefly, while she was away? She imagined him confused, disoriented, swallowed inside a lights-out loneliness in that sterile, loveless room. Imagined him saying “Hannah?” and getting no reply. It was the wrong time to be leaving for a trip. She couldn’t even bring herself to mention to Vivian that she was going. She should back out of it right now. But her friends were already en route, driving a considerable distance in the wrong direction just to get her, knowing she’d never come if they didn’t show up at her doorstep and drag her along. Knowing she wouldn’t, couldn’t, get behind the wheel of a car ever since that night she’d inadvertently driven them into a hell they couldn’t have imagined.
She unzipped her suitcase, double-checked that everything she needed was in there. There were so many self-created systems that had to be followed for her to feel like she could go. She had to pack everything in plastic vacuum bags, sealed tight against germs and bugs. Any item of clothing taken out would need to be hot washed and dried in the dryer for at least an hour before it could be returned to the bag. The suitcase itself could not touch the ground or else that would have to be discarded. And of course, she needed her bleach packs, her Purell. And then all her medications—she couldn’t go five feet without those. There was half a drugstore in her purse. Vicodin in case she got hurt, antibiotics in case she got an infection, muscle relaxers in case she got stiff, et cetera. And then there were the rules: no large crowds (terrorism), no driving through tunnels (claustrophobia), no swimming in the ocean (sharks, drowning), no shellfish (she could be allergic—who knew for sure?), no sharing utensils or towels or sheets or anything, really—oh, she had to be so careful not to slip, to stay ever vigilant. It was exhausting to live in a state of “just in case” and “better safe than sorry.” To try to avoid more disaster and regret.
She checked her watch. Maya and Blue were almost an hour late. Darkness pressed against her windows, pushed into her thoughts. She considered calling to find out where they were, but to do so would telegraph her irrational fear/hope that they’d forgotten her entirely.
She glanced out the window overlooking the street, up at the stars glowing politely in the sky. Waiting was such an intolerable state for her, being in limbo, unable to relax and settle into any one place yet. Hell, sometimes just the mere transition of crossing from one side of the room to the other gave her a dim existential anxiety, like she could disappear inside the cavity of neither here nor there.
Years ago, in the early days of Henry’s coma, she’d talked to her psychiatrist, Dr. Maloney, about this. She’d been failing to cope with the unendurable in-between place where hope was on one side, despair on the other, and she was never sure upon which side to wait. It wasn’t even just the uncertainty of Henry’s condition, she explained, but the uncertainty of everything, the way her whole life, every decision she made, forced an internal battle between possibility and dread, until the only choice seemed not to make a choice at all.
“You were alone that night,” Dr. Maloney told her. “Just like in your childhood. You had no idea if anyone was coming. And yet you knew if no one came, you’d die. That gets wired into the brain. So now every time you’re confronted with a stress situation, like a void of information or an undetermined outcome, your brain reacts as if it’s life or death. You are launched back into that unbearable state, caught between the possibility of rescue and the threat of annihilation.”