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My subconscious made it all up. Three years of wishing for love and a sapphire necklace was all it took for my mind to create a fantasy.
But what if ...?I look around my room, shadowed by the glow of the phone. There aren’t any windows, there isn’t any outside light, but what if there could be? What if I tried to talk to Max?What if ...?
I shake my head, wincing at the sharp, protesting pain.
If it was real, then he would call?—
My phone rings.
I screech in surprise. I grab it and scramble to my feet. There’s an unknown number on the screen.
My heart pounds and my finger shakes as I answer the call.
“Max?” My voice wobbles and there’s a quiet joy blooming inside me.He called. He remembers. He?—
“Is this Anna Benoit?”
It’s not Max.
The joy and the hope and the elation incinerate in an instant.
It’s a woman, speaking in French, with a Genevan accent. In the background there are more voices speaking rapidly, and a mechanical beeping noise.
“Yes?”
“You are listed as the emergency contact for Dorene Laporte.”
“Yes.” I nod even though she can’t see me, then I flick on the lamp at the edge of my bed. It bathes the room with a cold light, and I wince at the brightness. “What’s happened?”
When she tells me, I throw on the first outfit I see—a dirty pair of jeans and a wrinkled sweatshirt on the floor—I shove my feet into a pair of sneakers, and I shout for my mom. Then I sprint down the building stairs and out into the too-bright morning sun with another wish chasing me down the street.Let her be okay.
I don’t have much luck with wishes. All the same, I still wish.
Not for me, but for my friend.
33
For the firsttime in days the hospital room is quiet. Emme is asleep, curled up on the blue vinyl chair in the corner of the room, her arms wrapped around Bijou, her stuffed dog. My mom stepped out for a breath of fresh air, citing the need for coffee.
I almost went with her, but I haven’t left the hospital in six days, and the thought of stepping outside and blinking into the bright sun, breathing in the early June heat, and facing the reality of Geneva without Max—I can’t.
It feels like if I stepped outside the unchanging constancy of the hospital and acknowledged the movement of the city, then ... I’d acknowledge that I have to move on too.
Geneva is moving, changing. In the week we’ve been here, the small window details a sky that has shifted from the wet blue of May to the blooming sunshine of June. The yellow tulips lining the sidewalk below have given way to a profusion of purple, fuchsia, and red petunias, spilling like a vibrant river over the flower beds.
I try not to look at them. Every time I glimpse the petunias I hear Max growling, “You’re not a damn petunia. You’re a woman.” And then, “Let’s promise each other that whatever happens, neither of us will regret anything.”
I’ve acknowledged that none of it was real, but all the same, itfeelslike it was.
I can still smell the petunias in Paris. I can taste the hazelnut macaron on my lips as Max kissed me. I can feel his mouth teasing mine and his hands scraping over my hips. I can hear him laughing as he rolls me beneath him and presses me into warm sand, daring me to break free and jump into the cool water. I can see it all, just as clearly as I can see the petunias blooming outside, the June blue of the sky, and the spare rectangular buildings rising around the hospital.
All the same, it wasn’t real.
What’s real is the small square of this hospital room. The sterile white walls, the cords and machines, the ammonia-like smell, and the dry air that steals all the moisture from your skin and lips and eyes. The nurses that come like clockwork to check on Dorene. The food tray delivered three times a day: banana, bread, yogurt, hardboiled egg, cheese, green beans, beef.
The sounds of the hallway: a squeaky wheel on a janitor’s cart, the heavy footsteps of an orderly, the whispers of a worried family, the loud hello of a phlebotomist come to draw blood.
Reality has winnowed down to a single room and the people inside it.
