Where Words Fail (26 page)

I took the deepest breath I could, which honestly wasn’t that deep and coughed. The burning sensation intensified like a thousand percent as they pulled the tube out. All I want is water and sleep. I’m so fucking tired now. And where the hell did my music go?

“Good job. Now do you remember what happened?” I thought hard, but I drew a blank. Opening my mouth, I tried to tell her no, but nothing came out. Why can’t I talk? Obviously, she can tell I’m confused or don’t remember, so she continues. “You were in a car accident.” Well, that explains why I hurt so badly. “Can you talk?” I tried again, but nothing came out. All I want to do is go back to sleep. Laying my head back against the pillow I try to close my eyes, but she tells me to stop and asks me to look out the window to the hallway and tell her if I recognize anyone.

There are five guys and a skinny brunette girl staring at me. They look scared. Kind of like I feel. Petrified. I feel like I should know them but I don’t remember. What the fuck?

Tears spring to my eyes as I shake my head. After putting some drops in my eyes, which thank fucking God helped them, they told me to try to sleep, and that they would be back soon to run some tests.

All I want is the music back so I begin looking around the room. I’m not sure if it was just in my head, but I look anyway. I need something to drown out the sound of the heart monitor.

The music makes me feel safe.

An older nurse who was checking my IV notices me looking around and smiles at me. “Looking for these dear?” She lifts up the silver iPod and wireless white headphones. I nod, and she eases the band around my neck and slides the buds into my ears again. The muffled sound of her voice makes me open my eyes again. “I’m just going to restart the last song it was on because I’m not sure what you want to hear.” I try to smile. I’m not sure if my lips cooperated or not, but she pats my leg and walks out after hitting play.

Music blares. Heavy guitar starts out with the steady beat of a drum as Three Days Grace’s
Chalk Outline
lulls me to sleep. I feel like this is something I do all the time because while the music is playing I feel safe. It doesn’t matter that I can’t talk or that I don’t remember anything. As in
anything...
I’m drawing a blank on everything except the songs playing in my ears. But as long as the music keeps playing I think I’ll be fine.

I feel at home within the beats.

Jameson

She’s awake, so that makes me happy. All I’ve wanted for the past few weeks is to see her eyes again. But staring at her through the window from the hallway I can tell something is off. When she looked at us after the doctor pointed towards the window there was something missing. The blank stare told us something was wrong.

“So the good news is that she is awake and has sensation in all her limbs so there’s no paralysis, so after her leg heals she should have full use of everything,” Dr. Cutter said. “The bad news is she doesn’t remember anything. The accident, who she is, what she does for a living or who you guys are. The other thing we’re trying to figure out is why she isn’t talking. I don’t think it’s that she can’t, because she’s trying... I think her brain isn’t sending the right signals to make it happen. So we’re going to run some tests and see where that leads us.”

“Her not remembering... Is that permanent?” Alex’s question was what was weighing on all of our minds.

“Honestly, with amnesia it’s hard to tell. Sometimes it comes back all at once, sometimes it comes back a little at a time... And sometimes it doesn’t come back at all. But I do think it’s a good thing that music is keeping her calm. I think somewhere inside her she remembers.”

I slid down the wall after she walked away. My arms resting on my folded legs and my face buried in my hands. AJ and Jason followed suit, and Alex sat in the chair on the other side of the hall with Tuesday curled up in his lap silently crying as he whispered in her ear. Paul was pacing back and forth with his head hung low.

Poor Paul. I thought. He’s feeling as bad about this as I am. He cried when they pulled her into surgery to put the pins into her leg. Alex doesn’t think he has ever cried. At least not in front of anyone. It’s obvious he cares for her as much as she does him.

A few days later a heavy hand came down on my shoulder. It wasn’t till then that I realized I couldn’t breathe. My shoulders were shaking, and my eyes were fogging up. AJ was standing next to me with a coffee trying to push it into my hands.

“She’s gunna be alright. Are you?” He asked.

“I just got her back, man. Now she doesn’t remember anything. I feel like I’m losing her all over again.”

“‘Mere,” he said while holding his hand out to me. I grabbed it, and he pulled me up and forced me towards her window.

She still hadn’t spoken. She didn’t remember anyone yet. The scans came back clean so the doctors couldn’t figure out why.

I had to keep reminding myself that everything would work out. Just the sight in front of me told me she was ok. She was breathing even though her heart stopped twice during her surgery. Even though all this shit was still going on with her, I did breathe a bit easier knowing she was awake. I’d take her not remembering or even hating me again for a while over her being gone completely.

“Watch,” he said.

My eyes followed the curve of her body. From her casted up right leg, over her blanket covered hips to the shirt she was wearing and her red hair spilling down over the front of it. She was sitting up, wearing my AC/DC shirt from the first night I started on the tour. I wasn’t even aware that Alex had brought that in for her. She looked good in it.

The doctors asked us not to tell her who we were because they wanted to know if she was actually remembering, not just taking what we told her and trying to piece it together. It was hard, but we all complied.

“She looks good today.” My words were barely a whisper but AJ heard me.

“She picked that shirt out by herself, over every other shirt in there that was actually hers. She remembers even if she doesn’t.” He shook his head. “I’ve been watching her a lot over the past few days. There’s a spark in her eyes when she sees Alex. I think she’s starting to figure out that he looks a lot like her. But when she sees you, man... It’s crazy and it took me a bit to figure it out...”

“What?”

“Whenever you walk by her window, her face scrunches up like she’s confused... But watch her mouth.”

I turned back to watch Abby. He was right. She was staring right at me, her brows drawn together, head cocked to the side. Her mouth was moving like she was talking... No, not talking... Singing. It took me a few minutes to figure out what she was mouthing but when I did my heart soared.

“Oh my God...”

“Yeah. Every time she sees you her hand searches for the iPod, and she switches songs. Every four minutes for about a half hour she hits the button on her headphones to restart the song. You figure out what song it is yet?”

“Yeah...” My voice cracked. She was mouthing the words to
White Trash Beautiful.

My girl was still there... Somewhere.

Abby-eight days later

“Still don’t know them huh?” Dr. Cutter asked. She had been in at least twice every day since I woke up. Just to check on me, even on her days off.

“No,” I said. Finally, after six days of not being able to talk, something happened and my brain decided to stop being stupid. My throat was still a bit tender from the tube they had shoved down it. So I’m thinking not being able to talk was probably a good thing. Not being able to remember the people that visited me every day was starting to piss me off though.

They won’t tell me who they are, so I can’t even call them by name when they come in. One of them looks a lot like me, so I’m thinking we’re related somehow, but I don’t know how. He’s tall and blonde where I’m short and redheaded. He looks like he’s sick though, like really sick. I totally wish I could remember him because if he is sick and we’re related, I’d like to have time to get to know him.

The older guy makes me feel safe and treats me like his kid. Kisses my head and tells me he loves me before he leaves. I don’t think he’s my dad because we look absolutely nothing alike but maybe I’m adopted... Who knows.

There’s three other guys and that girl who keeps stopping by. Sometimes they have a little blonde girl with them. She always smiles at me even though she seems sad. I smile back, and she tells me ‘Te quiero’. I don’t know what that means, but she’s cute, so I keep smiling.

Only one of the guys in that group makes me feel like I’m missing a piece of myself. I don’t know what it is about him. Every time I see him it’s like something comes over me and someone else is controlling my hands, switching the song to Everlast’s
White Trash Beautiful.
I hit replay about seven times after I start, until my head hurts too much from thinking.

His eyes are what get me. They’re this clear sapphire color that I feel like I could drown in every time I look at him. They tell me secrets that don’t come out of his mouth. Like that he loves me and that everything is going to be alright. Who knows if what I see in his eyes are actually what he’s thinking or not. He doesn’t talk a lot so I take what I can get. But when he does I’m instantly calmed. It’s crazy that one person I can’t remember has this much effect on me.

He doesn’t leave. Like, ever. The longest I’ve seen him gone since I woke up is twenty minutes. Other than that he sits in the chair outside my room. He watches me until he realizes that I am looking at him then his eyes drop to his lap. He even sleeps in that damn chair. I wish I had the nerve to talk to him alone. Maybe get him a bed and put it in the corner. I like knowing he is close, but just can’t figure out why.

“Can I go outside today? I’m tired of being cooped up in this cell... Sorry... Room.”

Dr. Cutter laughed. “Yeah, after three weeks of being here... Awake or not... It is kind of like a cell. I'll grab a nurse and the security guy and we’ll get you some time out on the grounds.”

“Why do I need security? Was my accident not really an accident?” What I really wanted to ask was, what the fuck, is someone trying to kill me?

“It’s just a precaution. There’s been some pesky press hanging around lately and we don’t want them to get to the patients.” I nodded, but something about it didn’t add up.

The sun feels amazing beating down on my skin. I can feel my body absorbing it. I’ve missed it being stuck in that room. The nurse wheeled me down to the grass, and I slid my slipper off my foot, so I could run my toes through the grass. The view from this hospital is amazing. It looks out over the city.

The security officer was soon replaced by the old guy who visits and paces in front of my door, which leads me to believe that they aren’t telling me something pretty important. Why would I have a personal security guard? And why am I the only person outside with a guard at all?

“Hey,” a girl said as she rolled towards me. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Her head was shaved clean and her face looked hollowed out. Her eyes sparkled though.

“Hi.”

“I’m Vanessa.” She held out her fragile looking hand for me to shake. I took it carefully, avoiding her IV tubes.

“I’m Abby... Or at least that’s what they’re telling me.”

She smiled. ”Yeah. You’re Abby Irons. We’ve met before.” I must have made a face because she started to talk again. “It’s ok if you don’t remember. It was last year... You were super busy but you stopped and talked to me for like twenty minutes.”

“I’m sorry... It’s not that I don’t remember you... It’s that I don’t remember anything.”

“Car accident?”

“Yeah... How’d you know?”

“It’s everywhere. So... You really don’t remember anything?”

I shook my head and sighed. “Nope. I don’t remember who I am, what I did before the crash or who anyone is that is visiting me. It’s really making me mad...”

“I get that. All the medication they have me on makes me forgetful sometimes. I really hate waking up with no clue where I am.”

“What’s going on with you?” I looked up and down her frail body as I spoke.

“Hypoplastic Myelodysplastic Syndrome.”

“Ahh.... Yeah... I’m not even going to pretend to know what that is.”

She laughed. “It’s all good. I’m here for a bone marrow transplant. Then hopefully I’ll be ok. But the next few months are going to suck.”

“Why’s that?” I couldn’t even begin to think of everything this girl has been through.

“No germs, no fast food. Everything I eat has to be a certain temperature. No dust or cleaning. I have to wear a mask and gloves every time I’m in public. And the worst of this is, I can’t go to school for a while so I can’t sing in chorus this year.”

“You like to sing?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s the only thing keeping me going. I won’t let this crap define me until I can’t sing anymore.”

“I think I really like music too. It makes me feel... Safe... I guess.”

“I hope you like music.” She laughed.

“Will you sing something for me?”