She looked at the children, wanted them to have their innocence and joy for as long as possible.
“There was an accident.”
It was as if all of her systems stopped at once. Heartbeat, lungs, thoughts. The terrible purgatorial pause.
“An aide was moving Henry into his chair and I guess he lost his grip on him and he fell. They took him to the ER. They ran tests. There was a minor brain bleed, which is why I called you the other night. I assumed it would resolve. But there continues to be some swelling on the brain. On his breathing center.” Vivian paused. “He’s on a ventilator now.”
The world seemed to dilate around her. Too big, too loud, too much. And she too small to hold so much sorrow. But just as quickly, hope leaked in. “Okay...that’s not good. Obviously. But he’s still okay, right?”
He had been on a ventilator once before. He still had the trach scar.
Eventually they had gotten him off. He’d been okay.
Silence on the other end of the line.
Tears sprang. “They can treat it, right? I mean, even if he has to stay on the machine for a while?”
Hannah’s throat constricted.
She heard a sigh. “I had a long talk with the doctors again today,” Vivian said. “Hannah, I think we need to consider whether...”
Hannah braced. “Whether what?”
“We’ve held out hope for so long,” Vivian said finally. “He wouldn’t want this. For him or for us.”
“What are you saying? No—you can’t.”
“Please consider—”
“There’s nothing to consider! Vivian, please!” People on the beach were looking at her. She didn’t care. “You’re not thinking straight.”
“I think it might be time to come home,” Vivian said. “It would be good for you to see him. And then we can talk about it in person. And you can talk to the doctors. I’m really sorry. I didn’t want to disrupt your trip.”
“I’ll be there in...” She tried to remember how much time the drive to DC took, but her brain was shutting down. “Like five or six hours. Please, I beg you, don’t make any decisions without me.”
She hung up, returned to her friends, aware only of the dissonant joy all around her, of carrying her body in a new way, like an overfull glass. The sky brightened and sparked, jarring and surreal in its absolute separateness from her. Tears pushed. She shoved them back. No time. She would drive there; she would stop this.
Maya held her arms out when she saw her.
Hannah thought she might collapse, that her bones would not hold her anymore.
“We need to go. Right now.”
They stopped at the house, packed quickly and silently, shoved their bags into the trunk. If they left anything behind, Blue could have it sent.
“I’m driving,” Hannah said. She did not wait for their response, though she felt their surprise. She didn’t bother to address it. She just knew she needed to be in control of something.
Maya handed her the keys.
Hannah got in, put her hands on the wheel, reoriented herself to the driver’s seat. She heard the sound of three seat belts clicking as she backed out and onto the road. She felt no apprehension in driving—only necessity—as if her fear had always been one of speeding into the inevitability of this moment when tragedy would strike again. And now that it was here, her mind was so preoccupied with trying to survive it that her body became a separate automatic animal, quietly taking over all functioning without thought.
Almost immediately they hit traffic, vacationers leaving the beach, and all at once she was slamming her palms down on the wheel. “Come on, come on.” Lying on the horn at cars that were just as helplessly stalled as she. Honking at the unfairness of everything, at the cruel randomness of the world.
“It’s okay,” Maya said. “We’ll get there.”
“I never should have left him,” Hannah said.
“You didn’t cause this,” Maya said.
“They’ve never dropped him when I was there.” She slammed the horn again. “Go, dammit!” To Maya she said, “Don’t try to make this better for me.”
She slipped into herself as if behind a door, trying to manage feelings too big to share. She couldn’t bear to sit in the uncertainty again, this most violent of places.
At last the traffic eased slightly, just enough. Soon they’d be off Route 27, and she could press down on the pedal, make the minutes fly. There was no caution in this car today. No frightened Hannah. Only determined, only racing, only please, please, please.
MAYA
Maya watched as they sped through the streets that had carried them here, framed in the last tangy light of sunset. The fruit stands on Montauk Highway were already closed and boarded for the day. The sky ahead was turning dim and gray as the road, as if evening were a city they’d soon be passing through. In her mind she kept going over everything she’d packed, unable to shake the nagging feeling that she’d left behind something important. What was it?
She wanted to turn on the radio, the silence too loud, Hannah’s desperation radiating off her like a nuclear spill and nothing Maya could do about it. Never before had she been so aware of love’s limitations—how it could soothe but not save, help but not fix. How some sadnesses were so big they came with a moat around them, stranded a person in their grief. She was right beside her best friend and utterly helpless to stop her pain. How did anyone accept love’s false promise—an end to aloneness? How to forgive people for that? And how to be forgiven in return?
They merged onto the Sunrise Highway, where the traffic was lighter. Maya watched the speedometer rise as Hannah pressed down on the gas. Slow down a little, she thought. We’re going too fast. But it wasn’t even Hannah she wanted to say it to.
She glanced at Blue and Renee, their faces tight and worried.
Would it be so bad? she wondered. To let Henry go. Wasn’t he just a body now?
And yet the thought of just losing her house was so gutting, to say goodbye forever to a place that held her memories, provided security and comfort. And what was a body if not that? What was a body if not love made tangible by borders so that it could be recognized and touched, provide refuge, contain history inside it? Without Henry, Hannah would be homeless, totally and utterly. The thought made her swallow on something sharp.
Hannah’s phone pinged. Maya reached for it, read the text from Vivian out loud so Hannah could keep her eyes on the road.
“Still stable,” she said. She watched as Hannah breathed with relief. There was time.