While You Were Gone: A Thought I Knew You Novella (4 page)

“Well, I think you win, anyway.” He rubs his hand back and forth across his chin. “Your day was pretty awful.”

“Do you ever…” I feel the words slosh around in my mouth, my head. “Do you ever want to be someone else?”

He stares at me for so long that I wonder if I’ve said them out loud. It’s possible I just thought about saying it. I stand up, the din of the bar gaining volume, and I can’t hear myself. I like the happy-hour crowd. I’m not up for the nighttime and the men like Mikey with their pick-up lines and wedding-ring tan lines.

Finally, Greg speaks. “Only every day.”

“Maybe not someone else.” I’m swaying now, my purse over my shoulder. My tongue feels thick and heavy. “But someone who actually is first-chair violinist. With the perfect boyfriend. And a circle of friends. A brother who cares. A mother who… is a mother. I don’t want to be someone else. I want…”

“To be the very best version of you,” he finishes softly. His eyes meet mine, warm and brown, and his mouth curves up, his nose wrinkling slightly at the bridge. “Yeah, I get it.”

“How do you be that best version of yourself? That’s exactly it. Those are the perfect words.” My voice is louder than I want it to be. I inch closer to him until we are a mere foot apart. I smell his spicy hotel-soap smell, and our breath mixes in the air between us.

“I don’t know how. I just try, every day.” He stares at me intently. “All we can do is try. We can’t control anyone else. For instance, wayward running girls who don’t look where they’re going.”

“It’s just the perfect thing to say,” I repeat and feel stupid. The alcohol is fighting its way back up my esophagus, and I don’t want to vomit on his shoes. I stare into his face, his perfectly
nice face
, with his penny eyes, little white glints of light off the glass. I imagine carefully removing his glasses so that I can see his real eyes, velvety brown. I imagine my hands on either side of his face. His mouth on my mouth. “I should go.”

I sway into him, and he grips my elbow. “Let me walk you out. Are you okay?”

“I’m destined to be Paula.” Drinking brings out the melodramatic side of me. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“May I walk you home?”

I shake my head. It’s only half a mile, but I don’t want to walk it. I’m tired, and I’m afraid if I walk it, I’ll spend the entire time crying because I can’t get it together. I don’t know why I feel like crying. I was fine fifteen minutes ago. I pull my cell phone out of my purse and speed dial the cab company. They give me a ten-minute wait time, and I hang up.

“It was nice meeting you, Greg.” I offer him a watery smile.

“It was nice meeting you… but you never told me your name.”

“Karen. Karen Caughee.”

He takes my hand. His palms are hot. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I nod. “I’m fine. Sometimes it all catches up with you, and then you drink. Then you cry. I guess maybe that’s a girl thing.”

“I think there are guys who drink and cry.” He smiles, takes my arm, and leads me outside. The air slaps my face, and the wind bites at my cheeks, my chin. We wait for the cab.

“My mother wasn’t always an alcoholic.” I kick my toe into the soft gravel at the edge of the sidewalk. “My father left, maybe ten years ago. Sick of her craziness. She was always up and down, but it was after that when she started drinking.” I babble, not knowing if I’m defending my mother or complaining about her. “But he was no angel. He was a drunk, too. I’m doomed.”

Greg reaches out, touches my shoulder. We stand like that, a foot of distance between us, his hand on my back, resting warm and comforting between my shoulder blades. Without thinking, I lean up on my toes and press my lips to his. It feels the way I thought it would, warm and soft, like chocolate chip cookies straight from the oven, like fires and thick blankets on a rainy day. His mouth moves a little under mine, unsure and hesitant. My fingers curl around the fabric of his jacket and pull him tighter.

The cab pulls up. Greg leans back and gives me a confused look, clouded eyes and knitted brows. I climb into the back seat. He leans down to the open window.

“Be careful, okay?”

I nod, and the cab pulls away. I watch him on the sidewalk and wonder if I should have given him my number or asked him for his. I know that I’ve never really met someone who I thought could maybe, possibly
see me, right down to my soul, as though I wore it like a patch on my shirt, a blinking shiny thing:
this is me, all that I am
—which is such a stupid way to think. I met a man for forty minutes in a bar and had one very nice, close conversation with him. Shared one drunken kiss that I can still feel, twitching all between my thighs and curling my toes. Somehow, that conversation has wormed its way into my body and squeezed around my heart. I wonder if it’s possible for a person to fundamentally change who you are, even if you only knew them for less than an hour. Because as ridiculous as it sounds, his words rattle around in my brain.
The very best version of you.

We’re stopped at a light. The light flicks green, and we pull into the intersection. Greg stands on the sidewalk, his hand raised in a half wave. I’m still watching him watch me when I hear it. The squeal, a scream. I turn my head just in time to see headlights, glaring and white in the window, closer than they should be, and coming toward me very fast. A sickening, horrible, loud crunch. When I look up, the sidewalk is sideways, and Greg is running, his mouth open. He’s yelling, his hand waving in the air. My ears flood with fluid, but I can’t hear anything. I feel drunk and tired and wonder why the car isn’t moving. There’s more screaming.

Everything goes black.

Chapter 3

“H
ellooo! You’re awake!”

I struggle to sit up, pushed back by a tangle of tubes and a thick, cottony fog. “Was I not awake?” I try to ask, but my tongue gets caught up, tangled in the words and too fat for my mouth.

“Oh, you have some bruising, but you’ll live, I swear it. You’ve been sleeping for a while.”

She smells like peaches, a tacky, cloying Yankee Candle smell, and her acrylic nails clack together as she untangles the wires. My eyes follow the plastic lines right into my arms—well, one arm. The other is wrapped and suspended in a sling that hangs from the ceiling. My eyes trace the outline of my body under the hospital sheet and land on my leg, balancing much in the way my arm is. I’m in traction. I remember the cab, the screeching, the screaming. The man running. I realize it wasn’t his scream I heard. Too high pitched, too panicky. It must have been my own.

“Where am I?”

“TGH, dear. Best hands in Ontario. You’ll be just fine. I’m Donna.” She perches on the bedside chair, her green scrubs pulling tight against her ample thighs, the fabric strained. I wonder if my own legs are thatched with scrapes and bruises, thick, oozing scabs. The nurse reaches out, lightly touches my unbandaged hand, and I pull it back reflexively. “Karen,” she says, and I wonder quickly how she knows my name, and then it all comes together: my purse in the car. The cab that crashed. Or was crashed into. All the memories past that are hazy, bright blinking hospital lights, doctors and nurses talking at me about anesthesia and surgery.

“How did I get here?” I wonder this one out loud.

“An ambulance. You’ve been in and out for about a day or so. You had a concussion and surgery for a compound fracture of your ulna. You have an IV, and we’ve been giving you pain medication, which has knocked you out. We’ve dialed that back a bit, now. You should feel less groggy. The doctor can tell you about it more when he comes in.”

I remember this, the surgery. She takes my hand again. This time, I don’t pull away. I look at her face for the first time: a round, happy face, the kind of mouth that smiles even when she’s not smiling. I have the opposite. I have perpetual bitch-face. I envy this bubbly nurse in her too-tight scrubs with her bright-pink lips that are lined just a shade too dark and clumpy mascara. She’s pretty and not afraid to take my hand. Not nearly as afraid as I am to accept it.

“Honey, I need to call someone for you,” she says gently, and I wonder why this is a big issue. “It’s been about twenty-four hours. We asked you earlier, and you said to call Scott. He was in your phone. But he didn’t pick up, and we haven’t heard back.”

“Scott is my boyfriend.” I realize then, with a sickening swoop, that it’s no longer true. “He
was
my boyfriend. He won’t pick up for my number.”

She clucks, a soft, quick sound filled with too much sympathy. I touch my eyebrow with my good hand just to get it out of her pitying grip.

“You can call my brother. Or my mom,” I say, thinking. “Pete or Paula in my phone.” Then I remember the issue. A new phone, several months ago, and I’ve yet to program anyone. I’ve been dialing by memory. Scott made it in. So did Nikolai. And House of Thai. I flinch at how I must look. They’ve got to be all tiptoeing around me at the nurses’ station, showing each other my contact list and sighing with compassion.
Oh, poor thing.

I reach over gingerly to pull the rolling tray between the nurse and me, and she scoots back. I grab the pen and TGH letterhead notepad and scribble Pete’s number. I rip off the sheet and flutter it in her direction. “This is my brother’s number. Call from the nurse’s station, not my phone. He might not pick up if he sees my number.” Realizing too late that I said the same thing about Scott, I wince. “He’s my brother,” I explain, as if that makes it better, but I know that looks worse. I’m suddenly too tired to care. A headache pulses behind the bridge of my nose. “I have a broken arm?” I should care more than I do. A broken arm would have devastated me a mere week ago.

“And a few broken ribs. Your ankle has a hairline fracture. We’ll get you some more ice and a walking cast, and you’ll walk out of here in a few days. The doctor can go through all this with you when he comes in, okay?”

“Okay,” I say stupidly and take a deep breath, just to see if I can. Pain slices through my midsection, and I realize the dull throb has been there the whole time.

“I’ll get you more pain meds, hon.” She pats my good leg and bustles out the door, her pants swooshing as she walks, her rubber soles squeaking on the floor. The door swings behind her, and I wish her back, but nothing happens. A steady, soft beeping comes from the tower of machines next to me. It occurs to me that if I’d stayed semiconscious, who would they have called? Thai takeout? My ex-boyfriend? The question that floats around my brain crystallizes: how long until someone would have noticed I was gone? They would have contacted the police for sure. Then what? Find Paula and Pete? I imagine Pete, a child clinging to each leg, glancing at his ringing phone only to hit decline when he doesn’t recognize the number. The truth of that turns my stomach, and I close my eyes.

“Here you go!” Donna comes back in, as cheerily as she left, with a medicine cup of pills and a Styrofoam tumbler of water with a straw. She sets both on the tray and steeples her fingers at me. “You do have a visitor. He claims he doesn’t really know you. I’ve asked him to wait in the hall to make sure you’d want to see him.” She cocks her head to the side.

“Who is it?”

“His name is Greg Randolf.”

Greg. The very-best-version-of-me Greg. My mouth forms a little O, and I think I say send him in, but I can’t be sure. Before I can think, he’s standing in the doorway, all tweed coat and big shoulders. He looks like hell.

“Thank God you’re okay. I’ve never… seen anything like that.” His voice is hoarse, and his eyes are shot with red, swollen. I wonder if he’s slept.

“Hi. Thank you. For coming.” I’ve broken my tongue as well as my arm. I think back through the night, the last things I remember. My lips on his, so soft, and his cheek under my fingertips. I remember his face at the bar when I told him about Paula. He looked at me, not with pity, like Scott and Amy always did, but with compassion. Understanding. He spoke my language. “Sit.” I pat the bed next to me and scoot as much as I can, which is about an inch. In his hand is my violin case, the strap dangling loose. He holds it up in my direction before resting it against the wall. He pulls the chair next to my bed.

“You saved my violin,” I blurt.

“Interesting… priorities.” He laughs softly. His glasses crinkle up on his cheekbones. He rests his hand on mine, an intimate gesture born of fear and courage and something else, the thread between us just like it was in the bar, a zinging current, an electric jolt that leaves my tongue loose and reckless.

“Is this okay?” he asks, and I laugh. “No?” He moves his hand away from mine, and I grab it back, the tips of my fingers grasping at the tips of his.

“I thought you were dead,” he says. “When the cops came and they loaded you in that ambulance, there was so much blood…” His voice trails off, and reflexively, I tap the bandage at my forehead and wince in pain.

“Well, the head, I guess. How is the driver? Both drivers, I mean.” The back of my throat tastes rancid. “Did they…”

“The cab driver is fine. You took the brunt of the impact. The driver of the other car, he ran a red light. He’s in the ICU, has had a few surgeries. Critical condition.”

I wonder if he had a family, a child. I wonder if he’ll die that way, running a red light, trying to get home from work. I feel irrationally sad in a way that is stupid because the accident was his fault:
he
ran the red light. I try to conjure anger, but I can’t. The sadness sits, lumpy and foul in my throat.

Perky Donna is back. “Dear,” she singsongs from the doorway. “The police are here. They’d like to talk to Mr. Randolf.” Greg jumps back, dropping my hand like it’s a hot iron, and he coughs, clears his throat.

“The police? Why?” He wipes a palm on the knee of his khakis.

“Don’t look so scared! What, are you a wanted man?” Donna bubbles up. “It’s only natural, right?”

“Why natural?” I ask, absently smoothing my blankets down with my good hand, covering my exposed good leg.

“Because Greg here pulled you out of that burning car.” She gives us both a wink. “You didn’t know? Your boyfriend saved your life.”