I remember Collette cutting off my hospital bracelet four days after the surgery. What would that have been? Day Twenty? Day Twenty. I was like a dog freed from her leash. But it was also like I didn’t need the leash. Like I was going to be fine on my own. I left it there on the swingy table, along with that horrid plastic pitcher and the plastic blue box with these three Ping-Pong-like balls I was supposed to raise up by sucking in air ten times an hour to keep the fluid out of my lungs. I didn’t look at my IVs, the connections dangling from the stand like alien tentacles.
Zoe had taken Frog home, and I left everything else. Pulled back my thin, unwashed hair in an elastic band, tugged on my way-too-big jeans, tied my Converses, walked into the hallway, and waved good-bye.
I was so weak and stooped over from all the incisions, but I was so strong.
I could feel the bag pulling at my stomach, a mysterious tug as I stepped into the elevator with my mother. I had been on the twelfth floor. Who knew? I don’t recall ever noticing, I thought, as I walked out of the hospital and into the sun. My father was waiting there, the car idling in the circular drive, like he was picking us up from a hotel. I wanted to drive, and I did have my learner’s permit after all. It was the oddest thing how much I wanted to drive, but even I knew I was too weak, that if anything happened, I didn’t have the reflexes to prevent an accident.
“Can you imagine?” my mother said when I brought up the idea. “After all this?”
Yes, that made me think of Connor. Every time I got into a car after leaving the hospital, I thought of Connor watching a car crash, over and over again. It was good, I thought, to think of someone else for once. So: I tried to be in Connor’s head for a moment, seeing the world as he saw it, watching that girl die like that. And then, as my mother helped me into the front seat where she thought I’d be most comfortable, I tried to see me through Connor’s eyes. Here he is watching me put on my seat belt, here he watches me buckle it, so carefully, my stomach still stapled. It’s all I can do to sit up straight. So what does he see? Someone who is leaving way different than when she arrived. It’s like I was in transition, not yet hatched, waiting to be this new fixed and damaged me.
I thought of Connor watching me pull up to my house. My house! I had left it before camp, in July. It was almost mid-September, already fall, and my father’s rhododendron had already flowered, petals fallen, and waxy leaves flanked the house, along with the flowerless little branches of the azalea bushes. Zoe came outside, pulling the door shut behind her, just after Mabel ran out barking wildly in the front yard. I got out of the car, slow as an old person. After the surgery, my stomach hurt differently. It was like a wound now, something healing, becoming a scab that is becoming a scar. I ignored the crinkling of the bag and the fear I would always carry that it could come undone.
I focused on the healing part, on being out of that hospital with its smells and its sounds and the needles and thermometers and the heart monitor I was hooked up to after the surgery. I focused on the surgery being over, not on the pain of waking up from it. I focused on Mabel, moving toward me, her ears swinging, her dog smile and dog sounds.
“Mabel!” I bent down with considerable discomfort and let her lick my face. “Mwah!” I said. “Mabel!” I could still be a vet, I was thinking. If I got super into physics (this year) and dissecting the fetal pigs, which were next year’s victims, maybe I could do it.
That’s when I saw him, his red-blond hair catching the afternoon light, as if a halo hovered above him. He had on his wrinkled jeans, a frayed blue-and-white-striped oxford, unbuttoned, a Sunshine House T-shirt peeking out beneath. My jeans were so loose on me, and I pulled them up as I placed my hand over my eyes to shield them from the sun.
Bright, glowing Connor. In a surf shirt.
“Welcome home,” he said, helping me to my feet.
My mother got out of the backseat and gave a hard look to Zoe.
“What?” she said. “He just showed up here.”
Everyone looked at Connor, including my dad, who, feigning exhaustion, sort of threw himself across the car hood that ticked with heat.
Connor smiled. How can I describe it? Cockeyed, charming, devilish, mocking, sweet. Cocky. All in one boy’s crooked smile. “Hi.”
My mother inhaled deeply. “Connor,” she said. “Darling. We have to get Lizzie settled in. We’ve just arrived, as you can see. You have to give us some time.”
He nodded quickly, swallowing. “Can I just take a minute with Lizzie? I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry to barge in like this.”
I saw my mother go from really hard to really soft in one moment. “Of course,” she said. “We’ll just be inside.”
My family walked up the steps and into the house. I sat down on the steps and scratched Mabel’s soft scruff. Connor said, “Why, hello, Mabel!” and then he sat down next to me and I felt like I’d known him forever.
“I wanted to see you outside of that place.”
I nodded. It felt like we were now equal. I was dressed, for one, and upright, but also I felt different. I leaned my head on his shoulder. Because I wanted to. It was as natural as breathing. I breathed.
He shook me off him. “Hey, so, I just wanted to see you, okay? I’m just saying.”
I looked at him. His eyes were so blue, but they were very far away. It was almost like I could see clouds passing across them. “Okay.” I righted my head.
“I have to go now,” he said. “Anyway, your family is waiting.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “They understand.”
“I have to go,” Connor said. That’s what Connor Bryant, on my front steps, said.
“Go where?” I looked straight ahead at the Dominicos’ house across the street. They had painted their shutters green while I’d been gone.
Connor kissed my cheek and got up. “I’m going. I just have to go.”
I could hear his keys jingling, the key chain twirling around his finger, as he walked down the drive.
I touched my cheek. I did! Wait for me, I thought, my heart in my throat.
Before I’d even said hello, Connor was telling me good-bye.