The Lost Summer (17 page)

B
eep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep . . .

T
he sound was even, steady. At first I thought it was the instruments on the boat. Then maybe my heart. My eyes opened, slits through which I could see out but no one could see in. Only there was no one there, just a wall of machines to my left and right.

The beeps continued in a tinny march through the fog that swaddled my brain. I opened my eyes wider, and pain shot to the back of my skull. The lights in the room were bright, almost blinding. Fluoride? Fluorescent? What was the word?

With great care I rolled my head on the pillow, and my eyes roved over the small room. Beige. A metal chart hung on the back of the door.

My chin dropped to my chest. On the pilled blue cotton bedspread lay a pale slender arm. It surprised me to follow the hand to the forearm to the elbow to the shoulder . . . and realize it was my own. Clear tubes snaked from the—my—bandaged wrist, tethering me to the bed, to the room, to the world.

My brain strained, wanting to lift my other hand to pull the tubes from the veins coursing like thin blue rivers under the skin of my inner wrist. My fingers twitched, but my arm lay there as heavy as lead. My heart seemed to rattle my ribs like a prisoner on iron bars. My breath was coming shorter and faster now. The beeping of the machines didn't reassure me anymore; it jangled my nerves.

Where? Why? The words rose out of a messy, murky mind. The beeps grew faster, frantic. Suddenly an alarm sounded, high-pitched and shrieking. What was happening? Where was I? Why was I alone?

The door swung open, the metal clipboard nearly falling from its hook. A heavyset black woman in pink pajamas trundled toward my bed, yelling to the two women who followed her. She took my tender wrist, feeling for my pulse. Words flew above my head, words I did not recognize, as the nurses—that's what they were? Nurses?—studied the glowing green peaks and valleys on the beeping machines that screamed in the way I wanted to but couldn't find the voice.

The large woman leaned over me, her breasts in my face.

“Where am I?” I tried to ask. “What happened?” But nothing came.

I searched the faces around me for an answer, some sort of reassurance. More people had entered the room now, people with name tags on white coats.

“I'm gonna need an EEG!” one of the white-coated men shouted, lifting my eyelid, then the other. He waved a pen in front of my eyes. “Page Dr. Fiennes,” he ordered, speaking in my face but not to me.

“What happened?” I tried again, but it came out as a strangled squawk.

My right leg jerked involuntarily, but my left remained immobile. Then a pressure on my wrist as the nurse inserted a needle into my IV and another nurse massaged the bag swinging from its metal pole.

Reality became as liquid as the clear fluid in the bag. I was sinking as peacefully as a rock to the bottom of a green lake shot through with light. Only I wasn't scared this time. The urgent beeping continued, but it didn't matter. I just wanted to sleep a little more; I wanted to explain to the tense, urgent faces around me,
Don't worry. I'm safe and warm here. Just a little longer . . .

I didn't know how much time had passed, but when I woke again, the benevolent fuzziness was gone. I hurt all over with a dull, vibrating pain. There was a warm weight on my hand, someone holding it. Carefully I turned my head and saw that the person holding my hand was my mother. Her eyes filled with tears as she reached to brush my hair from my cheek.

“Hi, honey.” A tear slipped from her eye and ran down her cheek, leaving a stripe of mascara.

“What happens?” My voice came out strange and thin. I knew I wasn't speaking right. Something was off. My joints ached and my throat felt dry, like tissue paper. My body didn't belong to me.

“Why? Why?” I repeated my question without meaning to. “Why?”

“Shhh.” Another inky tear. “Helena,” my mother said in a tight, controlled voice, “honey, you were in an accident. At camp. Your boat ran into another one, and you fell overboard. You hit your head.”

I remembered now, driving the boat, the panicked moment when we cut away to avoid the skier, the edge of the boat catching me as I fell over the side. . . .

“You am okay?”

My mother flinched. “Yes, honey, you're gonna be okay. You've been . . . asleep for a while. There was some trauma to your head. But the doctors say you're gonna be fine.”

I looked around the room. It smelled like beach. Bleach, I corrected in my head. Why were my words getting all confused?

“Ruby,” I said suddenly.

My mother knit her brow, trying to understand me, thinking I'd misplaced my words again.

“Ransome. Melanie . . .” I struggled but couldn't remember the other girl's name.

“The other kids in the boat?” My mom finally understood. “They're fine, sweetie. One of the boys, Ransome, broke his leg, and the girls had a few bumps and bruises, but they're fine. You were the only one who sustained . . .” The words were too much for her, and she cut off, crying into her hands.

“Mom,” I said, squeezing her hand. At the slight pressure, her mood lightened, and she dabbed at her cheeks with a stained tissue.

“You're gonna be fine too,” she repeated, as much to herself as to me. “Fine” was the word of the moment.

“My head hurts.”

“I know, sweetie.”

“Is Dad here?”

“Yes. He went to get some coffee. Do you want to see him?”

“Not yet.”

She nodded.

“I might sleep now.”

“Okay.” She sounded hesitant. But I had already closed my eyes and was drifting back to the warm, dark place.

I was dreaming of camp. It was so vivid, more real than any dream I'd ever had. Every detail, every smell and sight and sound and taste . . . But someone was insistently saying my name.

“Helena . . . Helena . . . you have a visitor.”

It was dark outside now. The only light in the room came from the lamp beside my bed. The nurse, the one in pink from earlier, only now she was in purple, was standing over me again. She smiled when I opened my eyes.

“Sorry to wake you, baby, but the doctors said it'd be good for you to talk some, and she's been waiting. Visiting hours are almost over.”

She stepped back to reveal Katie Bell.

“Hey, Hel.”

I smiled. “Hey. Thanks for coming.” It felt like the right thing to say.

“Are you kidding?” She swatted away the impossible idea that she might not come, and perched on the side of my bed. “Oh!” she exclaimed, jumping up and looking at the nurse, who was fiddling with a knob on one of my machines. “Is it okay if I sit on her bed?”

“Sure, baby. You've got fifteen minutes before visiting hours are over, but I'll give you twenty.” The nurse winked and shuffled out of the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

Katie Bell sat awkwardly again on the side of the bed.

“It's okay,” I said. “You can really sit. It doesn't hurt.”

She pushed herself back. “How are you?”

I'd never been so glad to see her. After all the drama, maybe we'd be okay. I sighed, not too deeply, as it hurt my head. “Fine—or that's what my mom keeps telling me.” I forced a smile.

“Good.”

“I bet everyone at camp's freaking out, huh? Is Fred pissed?”

Katie Bell gave me a strange look. She tried to hide it quickly, but I'd already seen it.

“What?” I asked.

“Hel . . .” she said softly, in a very un-Katie-Bell-like voice.

“What? Katie Bell, you're scaring me. Did something happen to Ruby or Ransome or—”

“No, no,” she said quickly. “That's not it. It's just . . . Camp's over, Helena. It ended three weeks ago.”

I looked at her, confused, not fully grasping what she was trying to tell me.

Her expression changed from one of confusion to one of sympathy. “Hel,” she said, “you've been in a coma for almost five weeks.”

“F
ive weeks?” I asked.

Katie Bell nodded slowly. “I thought they told you. I thought . . .”

I blinked and swallowed down a wave of bile trying to force itself from my empty stomach. The vividness of my dreams swept over me again. The smell of hay was suddenly as strong as if there was a bale of it in the hospital room.

“Is . . . is Ransome here?” I asked, changing the subject. I wanted to see him. I wanted him to hold my hand and explain what had happened.

Katie Bell inhaled sharply. “No, Hel. He
was
here, after the accident. Almost every day. But the doctors, they didn't know . . . He had to go back to school.”

The same bile rose again in my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut against the tears. “He went back?”

“Yeah, Hel. He had to, but—”

“Katie Bell . . . I had sex with him.” Finally I had told someone.

Surprise cast a momentary shadow over Katie Bell's eyes, but she hid it instantly. “It'sokay,” she said. She paused, and a crooked smile crept to her mouth. “Was it good?”

“I don't know.” I laughed, but it hurt. I tried to remember, but the details of my dreams and my memories were all jumbled. “Yeah, I guess. But . . . he's not here?”

I quickly glanced at the door as if there might have been some mistake, and Ransome was, in fact, waiting for me behind the door with a fistful of purple tulips, even though he couldn't know they were my favorites, because I'd never had the chance to tell him.

Of course he wasn't there, and Katie Bell shook her head gently to confirm this when my eyes returned to her face.

“But there is someone else here to see you,” she said hopefully. “Do you think you're up for it?”

I had no idea who it would be—maybe a friend from home? Fred and Marjorie?

“Yeah,” I answered, pushing myself up against the pillows. “Who is it?”

“Hang on a sec. . . .”

Katie Bell opened the door and stepped out into the hall. Moments later the door swung open again, and behind Katie Bell stood Winn. She took a tentative step toward my bed. Winn was the last person I expected to see in my hospital room—especially with Katie Bell.

“Hey,” she said quietly. “I heard you were up.”

I felt Katie Bell watching me for my reaction, maybe to see if I remembered the way things had been with Winn before the accident.

For a second I didn't remember. I only felt the return of a vague clawing anxiety in my stomach. But when she spoke, it all came rushing back—what Katie Bell had told me about Winn and Ransome, questioning Ransome about it in the hayloft, being dragged out to the softball diamond to be interrogated, and then dropped.

Suddenly I felt very tired again. But I didn't want to sleep. I'd been sleeping for five weeks.

Katie Bell must have thought I was wondering how Winn knew I was awake, because she quickly pointed out that Winn had been e-mailing her to check on me.

I nodded and reached for the plastic cup filled with water by my bed, but couldn't reach it. Winn, who was closest, jumped to put it in my hand.

“Thanks,” I murmured.

Something in Winn's pale blue eyes said she wanted to tell me something very badly, but she didn't know how. It made me nervous and unsure of how to act. I accidentally dropped the cup, and it went clattering across the linoleum floor. The sound was startling in the quiet of the hospital. My grip still wasn't strong, and my clumsiness embarrassed me.

Both girls sprang to the floor. Katie Bell replaced the cup on my bedside table as Winn mopped uselessly at the water with a couple of napkins left over from a lunch of broth and Jell-O. I was starving, but my stomach was queasy from the medications I was on.

“I think I saw a nurse's station down the hall. I'll go get some more napkins,” said Katie Bell, avoiding my eyes because she knew they would plead with her not to go.

“Okay,” Winn agreed, crouching on the floor. She stood, wadding the soaked napkins in her hands, and went to throw them in the wastebasket in the corner of the room.

There was something about Winn's appearance that was throwing me off. At first I attributed it to my condition and the general feeling I had about everything around me, like when a word was on the tip of your tongue—but the
world
was on the tip of my tongue.

Then I realized what it was. Winn was dressed in fall clothes, not the normal summer stuff I was used to seeing her in. The bathing suit had been replaced by jeans and a short-sleeve, button-up shirt. Instead of flip-flops, Winn wore red flats, and weirdest of all, she was wearing jewelry: large pearl earrings and a gold signet ring on her right hand. She saw me looking at it, and instinctively, her hand moved to cover it.

“It's my school ring,” she explained, almost apologetically.

I nodded, realizing that if as much time had passed as Katie Bell said, my friends at home were probably receiving theirs any day now.

Winn and I looked at each other without a word passing between us until it was obvious Katie Bell was not coming back with paper towels just yet. The clock ticked on the wall behind me, each tock more awkward than the last.

Finally Winn sat in one of the mauve pleather chairs at the foot of my bed. “Helena, I'm sorry.”

It's only because you feel guilty, I thought. Because I might not have been on that boat if I'd still felt welcome on the swim dock.

“And it's not because I feel guilty,” Winn continued, making me wonder if one of the side effects of head trauma was the ability of others to suddenly read your mind. “I was sorry before the accident. I just didn't know how to say it.”

“Why?” I asked, relieved I could speak again without involuntarily repeating myself or using the wrong words.

“Maybe I was just being proud or stubborn. I don't know. . . .”

“No. I meant, why are you sorry? Why did you ditch me? I thought we were friends, and then suddenly you . . . turned on me.” I couldn't control the betrayal and hurt in my voice.

Winn's eyes glistened. Tears were a familiar sight in my room these days. Only, strangely, I was the only one not shedding them. Still not a tear since I'd woken up, as if my tear ducts had been injured in the accident as well.

“We
were
friends. I mean, we
are
. . . I hope we are.” Winn's voice quavered. She held her elbows tightly, as if looking for something to hold on to and finding only herself.

“Part of me was embarrassed and jealous about Ransome, I guess. He chose you. I had liked him and he'd barely even noticed me, and then you came along. . . . But it was more than that too.” Winn considered her words as she said them. “I kind of felt like your older sister, ya know? I was looking out for you, and you looked up to me . . . or, I felt like you did. Then all of a sudden, it was like you could see through me, and I wasn't your older sister anymore. I was just some jealous girl. I felt stupid.”

It was the completely wrong reaction, I knew even as it happened (they had told me my emotions might be out of whack), but I laughed. It started as a silent chuckle. Then it grew until I was shaking in the bed, and there were finally tears running down my face. Winn looked startled, unsure of what to do, afraid I was suffering some kind of breakdown, but as the laughter rose and overtook me, she also started.

“Why are we laughing?” she finally gasped, wiping at her cheeks.

“I don't know,” I said, giving up and shrugging as I smiled. “I don't know.” I meant to say it twice this time. “You wanted me to look up to you, and all I wanted was for you to think I was cool and not some annoying kid who always followed you around.”

As I said it, Katie Bell appeared in the door with a roll of brown paper towels. She stopped when she saw us crying and laughing at the same time. I turned to her, remembering our conversation on the softball diamond. “We all just wanted to be grown-up, but now . . . we are and . . .”

Katie Bell's gray eyes held mine as the reality crashed in on me. I had had my last Southpoint summer. The door had closed on that part of my life as the water had closed over me.

Suddenly I was crying real tears—hot, salty, broken tears. “It's over,” I sobbed. “I can't go back.”

“Yes, you can,” soothed Winn. “You can go back next summer.”

“No,” I insisted, “it's over.” She didn't understand what I meant. The Southpoint I was crying for was gone for me forever.

As I buried my wet face in my hands, I felt four arms twine around me. Katie Bell and Winn sat on either side of me on the hospital bed. They enveloped me.

Winn's chin rested on my bent head. “It's not over Lumberjack,” she said.

“It's not, Hel,” said Katie Bell.

They held me and rocked me like a little girl until I fell asleep, and I let them.

I dreamed of camp again, more vivid even than the last time. I was in the cabin at night listening to the frogs, then suddenly at the barn—no, on the dock.

When I woke up, I was thirsty, so thirsty my throat felt scratchy and tight, like someone had filled it with sand in my sleep. I turned to my bedside table for the cup of water the nurses kept there. Beside it was the pen and notepad my mother had brought to leave me notes when I fell asleep and she slipped out for coffee or the vending machines. Next to the notepad was something that hadn't been there before: a photograph. I picked it up and studied it.

The photo was of Ruby and Melanie on the last day of camp, at closing ceremonies. Ruby's left arm was in a sling that had been signed in every color of Magic Marker imaginable. Between them, the girls proudly held the plaque bearing the name of the latest winner of the Spirit Award. At first I assumed they had broken tradition and given the girls the award in recognition of the ordeal they'd been through, but then I looked closer. Painted in alternating letters of green and white, next to the year, was stenciled my name.

Two voices in the hallway grew louder until they were outside my room. I quickly wiped the tears from my eyes. It was Katie Bell and Winn.

“I thought you'd left,” I said. Their bags were gone, so I'd assumed they went home.

“Nah,” answered Katie Bell. “You can't get rid of us that easily.”

Winn smiled. “We just went to get you something.”

From behind her back, Katie Bell produced a lime green, ice-cold can of Sun-Drop.

“I asked your doctor if you could have caffeine,” she said, handing the can to me. “The cute young one. Just don't tell anyone where you got it, 'cause I had to give him a back rub for it.” She gave a mischievous shrug of her eyebrows and laughed.

Gratefully, I popped the top of the can and tilted the sweet liquid sunshine to my lips. And for a second, with my eyes closed, I was back at Southpoint, on the cabin porch with Katie Bell, ten again.