Rosebush

  I gaped at the mirror. “Mirror,” I said. “Look.”

  “Your voice is back, honey!” Loretta said as she turned to look at the mirror and my eyes followed hers.

  Nothing was there. Opening the door had stirred up the steam and made the letters disappear. Condensation dripped down the surface, but the writing had vanished. Loretta reached out to wipe the fog away.

  “No, wait. Don’t you see it? Someone wrote a message on the mirror. They wrote that I should have died.”

  I thought I could make out a faint trace of the letters, but it could also just have been water droplets. Loretta peered at the mirror, shook her head, and wiped it with a cloth.

  “You’re on some pretty heavy narcotics and one of the side effects can be—”

  “Not a side effect. It was there. Words.” I was crying now in frustration. “A threat.”

  “But sweetheart, no one came in or out of here while I was gone.”

  I stared at her. “Must have.”

  “I was just outside the door. Your room is empty.”

  I focused on the steamed-up mirror. Was I going crazy? Had I hallucinated the words?

  The only other option was—

  “Loretta,” I said, trying to sound casual.

  “Yes, kitten?” She was filling the plastic tub she’d gone to get with water, but she looked at me over her shoulder. Her expression was open and honest and kind and I knew, with every bone in my body, that she wouldn’t have done anything to mess with me.

  “Nothing. I just—you’re sure no one could have snuck in while you stepped out? I can’t believe I just imagined it.”

  “Don’t feel bad, kitten,” she said. “Nearly everyone sees something odd when they’re on as much medicine as you are.” She dipped a cloth into the basin of hot water. “Was one patient in here, swore he saw a rainbow donkey piñata hanging just above his bed like one he had at a birthday party as a child.”

  She shifted my weight. “And a little girl was convinced that fuzzy mice were running around her bed. Her mother said she’d been asking for a pet mouse for ages. Best I can imagine is that the hallucinations come from something buried in your mind, maybe a wish.”

  “I don’t wish I was dead.”

  “No, I suppose you don’t. But it did get you talking again. Maybe you were just looking for the right trigger to get your words back.”

  Maybe she was right. After all, not being able to talk had turned out to be temporary like she said.

  By the time she was done bathing me, I’d stopped shaking and nearly accepted the fact that I must have hallucinated the message. I mean, if no one had come in or out of my room, let alone the bathroom, wish or no wish, it had to have been in my head.

  Which meant no one wanted me dead. No one hated me. I’d made it all up.

  “Your mother will be happy that you can speak again, no matter what caused it.”

  My mother. She’d be thrilled with a new sign of my return to “normal,” but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t like the hallucination part.

  “Is there any way we could keep this from her? I mean since it was just something I made up and not a real threat? I don’t want to make a big deal of it.” I cleared my throat. It felt raw—I guessed from the breathing tube that had been down it.

  “How about I’ll tell Dr. Connolly what happened and let him decide about telling your parents, how’s that?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now let’s get you dressed,” she said, deftly sliding my arms into a new hospital gown, this one white and green. She pushed me in front of the mirror as she combed my hair out.

  “What do you think?”

  My first thought was, At least I still have my hair. David loved my hair. Maybe it was that, or maybe because the swelling had started to go down in my face or because I was prepared from the time before, but this time looking at my reflection, I was more fascinated than horrified. The white grid of the tiles framed my face—black eye, hash marks on the cheek, fat lip—as though it was on a drawing board like an avatar being created. Not the avatar I would have created for myself, though. This one would definitely have been some kind of underworld villain.

  But I could recognize my eyes, my hair, my lips, my smile. I could imagine them coming back how they had been. I could be pretty again. Me again.

  “Well?”

  “The green dots on the hospital gown really bring out the yellow around my black eye,” I said.

  “There’s that twinkle in those beautiful eyes your mother told me about. She said you had a great sense of humor.”

  “Is there any chance at all you could put some of my mother’s mascara on me? On my good eye. I don’t want anyone to see me like this.”

  “I promise you, everyone is just going to be glad you’re alive. No matter how you look, you’ll be beautiful to them.”

  “You don’t know my friends.”

  “Teenagers.” She shook her head, but she rifled through my mother’s makeup bag and found the mascara. “Look down, I don’t want to poke you and cause any more damage.” When she was done, she said, “Okay, kitten, are you ready to meet your public?”

  “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  “No.”

  I took a deep breath.

  Loretta wheeled me out of the bathroom and tucked me back into my bed, covering the diaper with a blanket, before opening the door to the outside corridor. She went out and Annie came in. By herself, I was relieved to see.

  She started talking immediately. “We went to the cafeteria. They make good hot chocolate there, but Joe says to stay away from the cinnamon rolls. There’s a police officer outside waiting to talk to you. Your hair looks pretty.” She stopped abruptly, then swiveled her head from side to side as though desperate for something else to say. “Look.” She pointed at the windowsill, where a large bouquet of roses had appeared with some kind of object tucked next to it. “You got another bouquet, and it came with a teddy bear. Cute.” She picked the bear up and held it toward me. It was wearing a muscle shirt that said GET WELL BEARY SOON!

  I grimaced. “That’s not cute, that’s awful. You better tell Mom who it’s from so she can add it to the list.”

  “The card says ‘from your secret admi—’” She dropped the card and looked at me. “You can talk!”

  She swung toward the door, clutching the doorjamb and leaning out into the hallway to yell, “Mom, Mom, Jane can talk!”

  There was a chorus of “shhhs” from the nurses’ station, followed by the sound of high heels running up the corridor fast.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said when she rushed into the room.

  There were tears in her eyes. “Oh, thank God,” she said, taking up her place at the side of my bed again. “I was—we all were—thank God you can talk. How did it happen? When? Oh, thank God, thank God.”

  “All of a sudden in the bathroom I just had my voice back.” It wasn’t a complete lie. My mother looked at my hand. “Just my voice. I still can’t move the rest of my body.”

  “That’s enough for now,” Joe said heartily. “We’ll just be patient and you’ll be good as new in no time.”

  I couldn’t move, but I could still feel anger rising inside of me. “How do you know? Did you get a medical degree while I was in the shower?”

  “Jane!” my mother said warningly. “There is no cause for rudeness.”

  A quiet tapping on the door spared me the rest of whatever she would have said and woman with dark hair in a navy-blue police uniform stepped into the room. “I’m sorry to bother you so soon into your recovery,” she said, “but I have a few questions that could help us find who did this to you.” She gave the impression of being competent and tidy, from the neat bun of her hair to the clear polish on her short fingernails.

  My mother assumed her best authoritative manner. “Officer—”

  “Rowley, ma’am.”

  “Officer Rowley, my daughter only just came out of a coma.” I had this feeling like she said the w
ord as though she was savoring it. I could already hear her spinning it for cocktail parties, using the anecdote to highlight how brave and capable she was. “This is hardly the time for her to be grilled.”

  “I know, ma’am, but your daughter is the only one who can help us figure out what happened to her. It’s imperative that we get as much information as we can, as quickly as we can, and Dr. Connolly says if she can speak, your daughter is up to answering questions.” She turned to me. “Do you remember why you were walking alone on the street so late at night?”

  Walking? Alone? I didn’t remember anything. My mind was completely blank. “No.”

  “Was there a particular reason you went to Dove Street?”

  Dove Street? I’d never heard of it. “No. Where is that? Is that near here?”

  My mother’s lips got tight and she swallowed. “Dr. Connolly says that this forgetfulness is normal but that she’ll probably recover her memory soon. He’s one of the best in the country.”

  That did it. “Stop saying I’m normal, that I’m going to be fine,” I said, raising my voice. It shook. “You don’t know that. You just want to make yourself feel better. I’m paralyzed, Mother. Paralyzed. For once look at me. See me for what I really am.”

  My mother’s lip trembled. “Jane. Don’t say that. This isn’t you, this is just temporary.”

  “You don’t know that. You don’t know what’s going to happen. No one knows. I could be like this forever.” I tasted tears on my tongue.

  “Jane, please. Not now.”

  “Why does the time matter? Why not at”—my eyes went to the clock—“three ten? Will it be better at four fifteen? Five twenty-seven? Anyone can see that I’m a mess. That we all are.”

  Now tears quivered in my mother’s eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why are you?” I demanded back.

  It sounded like the beginning of a hundred fights we’d had over the last two years. “I’m just trying to do my best for us, Jane. For all of us. Why are you so angry at me?” she’d say, and I’d shoot back, “Why are you so angry at me?”

  And we’d look at each other the way you do when you see someone on the street you think you recognize, but not quite. Someone you wish with all your heart were there but who is actually just a stranger. And you feel a kind of deep longing that hurts like a huge gash and your inability to fix it leaves you frustrated and angry and bone-deep lonely.

  Now my mother shifted her eyes to the policewoman and when she spoke, her voice was even, but I could see her knuckles were white and clenched. “I apologize for interrupting,” she said to the officer. “We’re all under a lot of stress. Please go on.”

  The policewoman gave her a benign smile and returned her focus to me. “The night of the party. You stepped outside. Maybe you were just getting some fresh air? Or meeting someone?”

  Meeting someone? Had I been? I have a sudden flash of memory, of being on a street talking on the phone. “Where’s my cell phone?”

  “No cell phone was found with you. Could you have left it at the party?”

  “I just—I have this idea that I was talking to someone on it. When I was walking around.”

  “It hasn’t been recovered, and there was no sign of one around the scene of the accident. Do you remember anything else? Anything about the car that hit you?”

  “No.”

  “Wouldn’t there be marks on the car?” Joe said with an air of importance, like he just discovered nuclear fusion. “Shouldn’t you be looking into that?”

  “There is very often damage to the car in question, and certainly that’s something we’ll look at when we have a suspect.” The policewoman returned her focus to me. “Do you know of anyone who might want to harm you?”

  Before I could answer, my mother said, “No one would want to hurt Jane; she is very popular.”

  “I have to ask, ma’am.” The policewoman focused on my mother now. “What about you? Do you or your husband—”

  “I don’t have the honor of that title yet,” Joe said, with a proprietary grin. I wished I could slug him.

  “Fiancé, then. Do either of you have enemies?”

  My mother rolled her eyes. “I am a political consultant, of course I have enemies, but none that would cause physical injury, especially to a child.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “It would be bad for business,” I said.

  My mother’s mouth tightened with the effort to resist reprimanding me.

  I was interested to hear what Joe had to say about having enemies, but he just said, “That’s irrelevant.” Cop-out. Then he went on the offensive. “Is this just a fishing expedition or do you have any leads, officer?”

  “We are exploring a variety of possibilities.”

  “Meaning?” Joe challenged.

  The policewoman didn’t seem to like him any more than I did. “Meaning we are doing our job.”

  Joe stood up. “Can I talk to you outside, officer?”

  “Yes, when I’m done here, I’d be happy—”

  “You’re done here,” Joe told the woman, tilting his head toward the door.

  Their eyes locked. “I would like to have a word with Jane alone.”

  “She’s a minor,” my mother said. “I have a legal right to be present.”

  “Jane isn’t a suspect, she’s a victim, and I have some questions that she might be more comfortable answering without anyone else present.”

  “I demand—”

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I said. “I’ll talk to Officer Rowley alone.”

  My mother got the thin-lipped look again, but she went, taking Joe and Annie with her.

  Officer Rowley pulled a chair up next to the bed and sat down. Close up, I could see that her nails weren’t just short, she’d bitten them. Maybe she wasn’t so perfect after all. “Now, Jane, when I asked if you had any enemies, I felt like you had something to say before your mother stepped in. What was on your mind?”

  What had been on my mind was a feeling of someone watching me, someone who hated me. It was like a feathery flick of a memory from the party, more of a sensation than a fact. How would I explain it? “I thought someone was staring at me”? That, coupled with hallucinating a threatening message on the mirror, wouldn’t make me seem insane at all.

  No, I was going to stick with things that were concrete and I actually remembered. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “Maybe it was something that happened at the party.”

  There was a knock on the door and Loretta came in, three quarters concealed by a huge bouquet of flowers. “I’m going to have to take up weight lifting if you’re sticking around,” she said. “These are the biggest ones—” She stopped, seeing Officer Rowley for the first time. “I beg your pardon, am I interrupting?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  She set the flowers on the windowsill next to the others. “Apologies. I’ll get right out of your way.” She stopped at my bed to say, “They’re from Oliver Montero, in case you were wondering. Your mother already wrote it down.”

  “Thanks, Loretta.”

  “You okay in here alone?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  When the door closed, Officer Rowley resumed. “You said you think maybe something happened at the party. Could it have been something bad enough to make you want to commit suicide?”

  I’d been looking at Ollie’s flowers, but my eyes zoomed back to the policewoman. “What? I didn’t want to commit suicide. Why would you ask that?” Just because I hallucinated the writing on the mirror did not mean I wanted to die. A chill was starting to creep through my body, as though tendrils were wrapping around my limbs, pulling me down into a deep dark place.

  “Based on your injuries and the angle of impact needed to make them, this wasn’t a normal hit-and-run. It looks like you were kneeling in the middle of the street, waiting for the car to hit you.” She leaned back in her chair, her ankles crossed, pad on her knee like she wa
s relaxed, but I could tell she was watching me closely.

  “Kneeling? In the street?”

  “Yes. Do you have any idea why you would have been doing that?”

  I was stunned. “No. I have—no.”

  “There are generally only two explanations for that kind of behavior. Either the person is trying to kill themselves—”

  “I told you I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”

  “—or the person’s on drugs.” She let that sink in for a moment, then leaned forward, inviting confidences. “Did you take anything?”

  “No.”

  She studied me as though assessing whether I was telling the truth or not and gave a small nod. “Did you eat or drink anything at the party that could have been drugged?”

  I had to think about that longer.

  I’m in the music room with David and Ollie. I’m sitting on David’s lap. I’m—

  I’m holding a drink.

  But where did it come from? I’ve got nothing. No memory.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t remember.”

  This time she looked at me like she wasn’t sure she believed me. She closed her notebook and stood up, sliding a business card on the table next to my bed. “Here’s how to reach me if you recall anything else.”

  You should have died, bitch.

  The full impact of what she was getting at suddenly hit me. “Do you really think that someone might have drugged me on purpose? To—to hurt me? That this wasn’t an accident but someone out to get me?”

  “I don’t think anything yet. We’re investigating. Your being drugged could be unrelated to what happened,” she said. She was watching me closely. Something distrustful, maybe mocking, in her expression reminded me of my friend Bonnie from Illinois.

  “But if that’s true, then it was someone at the party,” I said. “One of my friends. Why would one of my friends want to hurt me?”

  “Only you can answer that question, Jane.” Her gaze moved toward the new bouquet. “Lilies, tulips, hydrangeas. Lovely and expensive. You have a generous boyfriend.”

  “They’re not from my boyfriend, they’re from his best friend,” I corrected.

  “Ah.” She tapped her card with a ragged fingernail and went to the door. “Call me if anything occurs to you.”