Chapter Four

Chevelle

There’s a beeping sound close to my head, and I hate it before I know what it is. Sometimes it stays slow, other times it races when I try to move.

I don’t know if I’m actually moving or only thinking about it.

My body feels too heavy to belong to me, like somebody filled every part of it with wet sand and left me at the bottom of something deep.

Voices drift in and out. But I catch the sound of a woman's voice as she says a name.

Chevelle.

I don’t know who that is, but every time she says it, she’s closer to me, so maybe it’s me. That feels like a stupid way to learn your own name, but I don’t have a better option.

“Her heart rate’s climbing again,” another woman says.

“I can see that.”

“Do you think she hears us?”

“I think we should act like she does.”

That answer makes me like the first woman, even though I can’t see her and don’t know what liking somebody is supposed to feel like when I don’t know myself.

I hear you.

I try to say it but nothing happens. My throat burns, my eyes feel glued shut, and the harder I fight them, the more tired I get. Panic starts low in my stomach and spreads until the beeping races with it.

“Chevelle, you’re at St. Mary’s Regional Hospital,” the woman says. “My name is Lora. You’re safe. Nobody needs you to do anything right now except rest.”

Hospital.

I know what the word means. White walls. Needles. People wearing badges and shoes that squeak against clean floors. I know what a nurse is, what an alarm means, and that something pinching my finger is probably measuring me. I know all of that while having no idea why I’m here, what happened, or whether Chevelle is actually my name. That’s almost worse than knowing nothing.

Safe.

The word doesn’t fit inside me. A dark room flashes behind my eyes. A hand around my wrist. Somebody whispering too close while I stare at a door that won’t open. The picture disappears before I can hold it.

Time doesn’t move like time. It comes as pressure against my heels, cold wipes, hands turning my body, voices asking me to look, reach, blink, open, close. I do some of it. I think I do. Then the voices say no response, and I wonder whether I only imagined obeying. There’s a man who talks about dragons.

His voice arrives on days I can’t count. Sometimes he reads from a book I don’t understand. Sometimes he complains about the writing and tells me the villain needs a hobby. Once he tells me a kid stole a spaceship because everybody kept saying he was too young to fly. I know his voice before I know his name.

“Hey, Chevy. It’s River.”

River.

The word moves through the dark like water finding a crack. He talks even when I can’t reach him. He tells me about a woman at the bank who called a dachshund a dick dog, then laughs so hard he has to stop reading. He tells me a professor thinks sleep is more important than ambition. He tells me another patient would be furious if River destroyed Earth in a story again. He never asks me to wake up.

Other people do.

“Come on, honey.”

“Show us you’re in there.”

“Squeeze my hand.”

“Look at me.”

River says, “You don’t owe anybody a performance today. I’m reading either way.”

I like him for that too. Maybe liking is only recognizing the person who doesn’t make the dark feel like a test. A smell follows one voice I don’t like. Not River. Something sharp and sweet. Whiskey, maybe. I know the word without knowing why my stomach twists. A square ring catches light in a place that isn’t the hospital. A younger girl cries behind a wall. I’m holding a doorknob that won’t turn.

Then River is talking about a moon sacrificing itself, and the picture breaks apart. I try to move toward him. My body stays where it is. Later, somebody props me upright. Blood rushes out of my head and the whole world tilts even though my eyes are closed. Hands hold my shoulders, knees, ankles. A woman says tilt table. Another says pressure is dropping. I want to tell them I’m falling.

Nothing comes out.

The dark takes me again. There are days when my eyes open. I don’t understand light. Faces pass above me, but they don’t stay long enough to become people. I follow something silver once. A mirror. A face inside it stares back with hollow cheeks and hair spread across a pillow.

I don’t know her.

The mirror moves left.

I try to keep watching. The effort feels like dragging a car with my eyes.

“She followed it,” somebody says.

“Chevelle, look right.”

I can’t.

The mirror disappears. Voices talk about inconsistent response and fatigue. I want to explain that I did what they asked the first time and there wasn’t anything left for the second.

River comes later.

He reads the same paragraph twice. I know because the villain laughs darkly both times and River mutters, “Still embarrassing.”

I want to laugh.

The thought exists. My mouth doesn’t move.

“Chevy?” he says. His voice is closer.

I try to look.

Light breaks across my eyes. A dark shape sits beside the bed. I can’t make his face stay still, but the voice belongs to him.

River.

“Don’t push,” a woman says. Lora. “Same pace.”

He keeps reading.

My hand feels far away, but I search for it anyway. Fingers. Palm. Blanket beneath them. I think about opening.

Nothing.

I try again.

One finger shifts.

The room changes. Feet move. The beeping speeds up. Everybody starts talking at once, which makes the dark rush closer.

“Reduce stimulation.”

“Chevelle, can you do that again?”

“Give her time.”

River says nothing.

His silence is louder than the rest of them.

I hold onto it.

The voices change as time changes, but I can’t tell which comes first. Sometimes people talk about October. Then somebody hangs paper snowflakes near the window, and the word December floats past me. Music comes from the hallway. A man with bells on his shoes says Merry Christmas, and the sound is so bright it hurts.

I know what Christmas means. Trees. Lights. Food. People who belong to one another. But none of the pictures attach to a life that I can see. Someone places a photograph in front of me during one of the lighter moments. Faces blur together. A woman. A younger girl. Boys. Another girl with dark hair and an arm around the woman who might be me.

“Look at the photograph, Chevelle.”

I do.

“Do you recognize anyone?”

The question doesn’t come with a way to answer. Even if it did, recognize feels too large. The faces make my chest hurt. Maybe that means they belong to me. Maybe it means I’m afraid of people looking at me and waiting for something I can’t give.

My eyes move away.

“That’s okay,” a woman says. “We’ll try again another time.”

Another time could mean an hour or a month. Both disappear the same way. My body learns parts of the hospital before I do. The cold wipe before a needle. The pull in my shoulder when people turn me. The pressure under my feet when they strap me upright. The quiet warning before suction near the place in my throat that used to hold a tube. The awful relief when somebody moistens my mouth. I know River’s days by stories.

Space means Brody. Dragons mean Angelica. Bank means the women who tell him to eat. School means Professor Sloan or Dr. Patel thinks he’s ruining his life. Jack means River is angry before he says the name and sad afterward. One day River tells me Jack says he’s a coward. “I’m not confirming or denying that,” River says. “I’m only reporting the accusation.”

I want to know why. The question moves inside me, clear for a second, then breaks before it reaches anywhere useful.

River turns a page. “Fynn says everybody is a coward about something. His thing is spiders. Which is embarrassing because he’s six foot two and once jumped onto my couch over something smaller than a penny.”

I see a couch.

Not his. Another one. Brown fabric. A younger girl curled beneath a blanket while a man stands in the doorway. The man says, You know what happens if you tell.

The image tears away.

My heart monitor speeds up. River stops reading.

“Hey. You don’t have to do anything.”

His voice brings the room back. Not all of it. Enough. I try to turn toward him. My neck moves before my eyes, and pain cuts down my shoulder.

“There you are,” he says quietly.

I don’t know what he sees. I only know he sounds relieved, and the relief makes me want to find him again. I search for my hand again, but it’s already gone somewhere I can’t reach. The dark closes, and the last thing I hear is River telling somebody not to exhaust me trying to force the movement again just because it happened once.