Chapter Twenty-Two
It’s been forty-six hours since that horrible moment at the museum. Thirty-nine since Marshall came out of surgery, thirty-five since he woke up. His parents were with him when he opened his eyes late Saturday night. Hannah was asleep in a chair in the waiting room with me. I left when they came and got her, apologizing that only family was allowed, which made me feel super awkward because of course I didn’t expect to rush right in. “I’ll call you as soon as I have details,” Hannah said as I was leaving. His mom hugged me and whispered, “they’re lucky to have you,” and my throat tightened so quickly I couldn’t tell her she got it backwards, that I was lucky to have them.
I drove myself home from the hospital. When he left around six Dad offered to come back and get me when I was ready to leave, but I told him I was fine to drive myself. We both pretended he wasn’t beaming when he handed me the keys.
Hannah called just as I got home. The surgery went as well as it could have, she told me; they’d fixed the tissue damage and closed both holes in his heart. As long as his incision doesn’t get infected and he doesn’t develop any new clots, he should get to go home in a week, back to school in three. “He’s really gonna be okay,” she said at the end, her voice thick with relief, and from out of nowhere I had the thought he always was.
I slept late on Sunday, and when I woke up Dad was gone. @ church the note on the counter said. didn’t want to wake you. There were pancakes on the table, covered in foil, and juice he obviously squeezed by hand. Last year I would’ve resented him for the gesture, for trying to win me over with breakfast food, and the thought of how I would’ve reacted, how I did react, so often, crushes me with regret. I couldn’t see him, my own dad.
I see him now.
I called Mom while he was gone and told her about everything. The twins were at the park with Carl, so she wasn’t distracted for once, and it made me think of those afternoons before they were born when she’d pick me up from school and ask me about my day and then really listen when I told her. But then she asked how my scars were looking and whether I was ready to pick a date to have them “revised” by her plastic surgeon in June. The conversation ended pretty soon after that.
When Dad got home we drove to the mountains to go hiking. I didn’t want to at first, just in case Hannah or Marshall tried to call. But Dad insisted. “They mended his heart,” he told me. “Let’s spend some time on yours.” We were gone all afternoon.
This morning they’re moving Marshall out of the ICU to a regular room, which means I get to see him finally, this afternoon. Dad said I could stay home from school today, but I came anyway, early, to see Dr. I.
His secretary is eating a muffin at her desk when I walk in. “You’re back,” she says.
“Is he here today?” I ask, worried for a second that he isn’t because his office door is shut.
“Yep. Remind me your name?”
“Jessa,” I tell her. “He knows me.”
She presses the intercom button on her desk. “A student named Jessa is here to see you. She says she has a book of yours.”
A few seconds later, the office door opens and a man in a red sweater and jeans steps out into the waiting area.
“Hello,” he says.
“Hi,” I say, stepping to the side to let the man pass. He doesn’t move. I glance back at the secretary. “Um. Where’s Dr. I?”
She and the man share a look.
“I’m Edward Indelicato,” the man says. “Dr. I.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“I’m Dr. I,” he repeats. “This is my office.”
“I—I don’t understand,” I say.
where is dr. i?
“Judy, please hold my calls,” the man in the red sweater says. His secretary nods, staring at me, her mouth in the shape of a tiny “o,” muffin crumbs on her chin. “Jessa, why don’t you come inside my office for a few minutes so we can talk.”
I nod dumbly and go in.
“Sit wherever you’d like,” the man says when we’re in his office, shutting the door behind us. There are diplomas on the wall behind his desk, one from the University of Colorado and the other from Harvard Medical School, both in the name Edward James Indelicato, his name, this man’s, a man I have never seen before this moment. A man with thinning hair and bushy eyebrows and dandruff on his scalp. So who was the other guy?
I sit in a chair, avoiding the couch. I won’t be here long.
“You’re Dr. Indelicato,” I say, somehow managing to keep my voice steady.
there is an explanation for this, this is not a big deal
“You seem surprised by that,” he says.
“No, it’s just— I thought someone else was you,” I stammer. “Another teacher.”
“What other teacher?”
if i knew that we wouldn’t be having this conversation
“I don’t know his name,” I say. “He’s tall, dark hair. He eats lunch on the bench by the teacher’s parking lot, out back.”
“Why would you think this man was me?”
“I—I dunno. He seemed like a shrink.” I think back, try to remember if he ever actually introduced himself to me as Dr. I, but I don’t think he ever did.
“So there’s a man you thought was me who eats lunch here, at our school, and wears a white coat?”
I nod. “Yes.”
The man in the red sweater types something on his keyboard, then swivels his computer screen around to face me. “These are our faculty members,” he says. “Do you see the man here?”
I scan the faces on the screen. Longer than I need to. One glance and I know.
My armpits go damp.
“You don’t see him,” the man in the red sweater says. I shake my head.
“So he’s not a teacher here.”
“I don’t know. I guess not.” My mind is reeling, my heart like a jackhammer in my chest.
i made him up
oh my god i made him up
“Well, that’s a bit concerning,” the man in the red sweater says calmly. He doesn’t sound concerned at all. “If there’s a man who’s been coming on campus and speaking with students who doesn’t actually work here. What did you and this man talk about?”
“We just talked.” I hear how defensive I sound. “About my anxiety, mostly. He told me about the support group that meets across the street.” I realize at this exact moment that I’m still holding the paperback copy of Principles of Philosophy in my hands. I hold it up like it’s evidence, like it’s proof. “And Descartes. We talked about Descartes. This is his book.”
The man in the red sweater holds out his hand. I give him the book. He turns it over in his hands. “This is a library book.”
“Yeah? So?”
“From a Los Angeles County Library. Didn’t you move here from L.A.?”
“It’s not my book,” I say immediately. “He always had it with him.”
“Okay,” the man in the red sweater says neutrally.
“He’s a real person,” I insist, but I sound less certain than before. how far is the leap from hallucinating bruises to imagining tears to making whole people up?
“It’s possible,” the man in the red sweater says. “It’s possible that there’s a man out there who’s impersonating a faculty member, who somehow managed to come onto our campus undetected to eat lunch, and that he did this in order to talk to you about philosophy and tell you about a support group that’s advertised on every bulletin board in the building. All of that is possible. But it isn’t very likely, is it?”
“He never said he worked here,” I say stupidly. As if this one fact is the one that matters, that’ll resolve the whole thing. “I just thought he was you because he had on a white doctor’s coat.”
he had on a white coat
There is a sensation in my skull like fogged glass clearing, and all of sudden I see him crisply in my mind’s eye. The man who appeared at my window that night. Dark hair, kind eyes, white coat. Peering through a frame of broken glass. The face I haven’t been able to picture is there now, as if it’d always been there, the image of him as clear as a photograph in my head. A face I’ve seen several times in person since then.
it was him
The man at my window. The man I thought was Dr. I.
it was the same guy
“Do you believe in angels?” I blurt out.
The man in the red sweater blinks. “Angels,” he repeats.
I hesitiate. Then nod.
“Well. I believe there are neurological explanations for why a person might believe she’s encountered an angel,” the man in the red sweater says carefully. “But no. I don’t believe in angels. Just like I don’t believe in unicorns. No scientist reasonably could.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because there’s no evidence for them,” he says simply. “In thousands of years of supposed angel sightings, no one has ever come up with any concrete proof. What we do know, however — and what we can prove — is that the brain is remarkably capable of making things up.”
It’s tempting to just accept it. That the doctor with the Harvard degree knows better than the girl with the head injury. That the idea that I could’ve been meeting with an angel is as crazy as it sounds.
But then I remember what the man who might’ve been an angel said to me.
“The invisible world doesn’t work the way the visible world does. There isn’t concrete evidence. There isn’t physical proof. All you have to go on is your own certainty, which takes some measure of trust. In yourself. In Truth itself.”
“There was one at my accident,” I hear myself say. “Right after I hit the tree, he appeared out of nowhere in my window. In a white coat, so I thought he was a doctor. He told me I was okay, that the ambulance was on its way. My hand—” My thumb and forefinger catch my left wrist, “—it was pinned under the steering wheel. He popped it back into place.”
“How do you know he wasn’t a doctor?”
“Because no one else saw him,” I say. “And now that I think about it . . . it was kind of weird that he suddenly showed up.”
“And based on that, you came to the conclusion that he was an angel.”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“That’s one explanation,” the man in the red sweater replies. “Let me propose another one—that the mysterious stranger you thought you encountered that night was a result of the head trauma you’d just experienced. That the reason no one else saw this man was because he only existed in your head.” He leans forward on his elbows. “Which, by itself, wouldn’t worry me — abrupt hallucinations are fairly common with close head injuries. It can even be a form of neurological self-preservation — the brain’s way of keeping you from going into shock. But it sounds to me like you’re still seeing things, weeks after the fact. And that, Jessa, does worry me.”
“No,” I say firmly. “I didn’t hallucinate him. He was real.”
“I’m sure it felt that way,” the man in the red sweater replies. “And I can imagine how confusing that might be.”
And all of a sudden I’m done here. With him, with this. With always doubting myself.
“I get that you’re just doing your job,” I say then. “But you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Then I turn and walk out, ignoring the look his secretary gives me as I blow by her desk and into the hall, just as the morning bell rings.
There’s no way I’m going to class.
I keep moving, not slowing down, through the front door and down the sidewalk to the student parking lot. Thank God I drove today. My hands are shaking as I get in the car. I try to put the keys in the ignition but miss. The keys drop to the carpet.
Skull pressed against the headrest, I suck air through my teeth. The Descartes book is lying on the passenger seat, where I flung it. My bag is upside down on the floor. I reach for the book now, holding onto it with two hands, making sure of it. This one concrete thing.
There’s a stirring in my stomach. Panic ramping up.
“I don’t know what to believe,” I whisper, the confidence I felt in Dr. I’s office slipping from me, fear seeping in. As if in response, I hear a voice in my head. His voice, the man in the white coat, the man I thought was Dr. I, the man who appeared at my window that night.
“I know it’s scary, but you are okay. Do you hear me? You’re okay.”
Those words have been on repeat since my accident, you’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay, a running pep talk in my head that I’ve never actually believed, because all the evidence says it isn’t true. I’m seeing things, my boyfriend nearly died, and my best friend is addicted to prescription drugs. Nothing about my life in this moment is okay. So either the man at my window was crazy or lying or I missed the point.
It occurs to me now that maybe I misunderstood. That maybe those two words meant something different than I thought they did that night. That maybe you’re okay was his way of telling me it won’t always be like this. This is not all there is. Things will get better. This is not how my story ends.
In a way, it’s what I was trying to tell Hannah at the hospital on Saturday. Don’t lose hope, it won’t always be like this. Someday those bruises inside you will heal. You can’t know when someday will come, or what life will look like when it finally does. None of us can see around the corner like that. But in a way it doesn’t even matter because someday isn’t what we have. What we have is right now, this moment, when things aren’t okay yet, but in a sense they already are, because in the end they will be, and as long as that’s true, it’s enough.
Muscles letting go of bone, the fear releases.
i’m okay
i always was
The fact that I didn’t know it yet didn’t matter. It didn’t make it less true.
And it strikes me in this moment that Marshall was wrong. It’s not that we’re all broken inside. It’s that we’re not. Brokenness is just like beauty; it’s something we wear and carry, and if we let it define us, it will. But we are not our beauty or our brokenness, because souls are not made of beauty or brokenness. Souls are made of something permanent.
Souls are made of truth.
There’s a knock on my window. I tense up, prepared to see the real Dr. I, brandishing pills and a straight-jacket. But it’s Ayo. Backpack on his back. His face completely healed.
I open the driver’s side door. “Hey,” I say, my eyes flicking to his forehead, looking for a mark where the gash once was. But his skin is smooth. No trace of the cut, no hint of a scar.
“Going or coming?” he asks me.
“Going,” I say. “It’s been a rough morning.”
“Shit. I’m sorry. Did something happen with your friend?”
“Boyfriend,” I say, and Ayo smiles. “And, actually, yeah. A couple days ago. But he’s okay now. I’m going to see him this afternoon.”
“So he’s not the reason you’re out here.”
I shake my head. Ayo doesn’t push.
“How are things with you?” I ask. “Better, I hope?”
He hesitates, and I get my answer. The hurt isn’t painted on his face this time, but it’s there just the same. Underneath. Within.
I blink, hard, expecting the old gash to materialize on his forehead, or some new wound. But Ayo’s skin stays clear. The hurt doesn’t show.
why can’t i see it?
My eyes dart around the parking lot. There’s a teacher walking to her car. I’ve seen her before, in the halls. Covered in bruises. Now those bruises are gone.
i don’t see them anymore
For a second I am lightheaded. With certainty, with disbelief.
it’s over now
Whatever has been happening since my accident has stopped.
Ayo’s mouth is moving. He’s answering my question. I’ve forgotten what I asked.
how can it be over when i’ve only just begun
“Honestly, I don’t know anymore,” he’s saying. “My little cousin got arrested last night, and my grandma – that’s who I live with, since my mom split – laid into me, like it was my fault. Said I’m a bad influence, all that. Which, like, a year ago, I would’ve gotten, ‘cause she would’ve been right. But last few months, things have been so different, and I guess I thought people could see it. That she could at least. It’s, like, why am I making all this effort if it’s not gonna make any difference, you know?”
He’s trying to sound matter-of-fact about it, but I can tell that he’s really sad. I can tell even though I can’t see it. Because somehow, even without it being visible, I sort of still can.
He’s waiting for me to say something.
“It has made a difference,” I tell him. “You aren’t the guy you were before. All the stuff you said in group last week about turning your life around. That’s what’s true.”
“So why doesn’t she see that?”
“Probably because she’s like the rest of us,” I say. “We see what we want to see, what we expect to see, instead of what’s really there. I don’t think we do it on purpose, most of the time. We just get kind of stuck. We start thinking that the way things are is the way they’ll always be. But that’s not true. It can’t be true. Because the world is never still.”
Ayo smiles a little. “So things suck and people suck but there’s hope.”
I smile back. That’s exactly what there is. Hope. In car accidents and operating rooms and school parking lots. When we’re trudging through the middle place, in the tunnel between already and not yet. Where the light is visible but we’re still in the dark, and the best we can do is believe that eventually we’ll get there, someday, and hold each other’s hands until we do. There may not be calm or certainty or confidence, but there is hope. That the tears aren’t forever. That one day all things will be new.
“Come on,” Ayo says then, pulling my door open wider. “If I have to go inside, you do, too.”
“Says who?”
“Says me. I’m older than you and twice your size. Get your ass out of that car.”
“Do you say this kind of stuff to your grandma?” I ask, reaching for my bag. “Because it might explain her cloudy view.”
“You gonna tell me why you were hiding out in your car?” he asks as we walk inside.
“Do I have to?”
“Again: older than you and twice your size. Yes.”
I think of how to put it, without getting into the whole thing.
“I guess it’s sort of the same thing that’s happening with your grandma,” I say finally. “Except it was me who couldn’t see me all that well. I’m different since my accident . . . better. But something happened this morning to make me doubt all of that for a sec.”
“That’s what you got me for,” Ayo says as we reach the school building. “Me, and all the other kids in group. To tell you what’s what. To remind you when you forget. Like you just did for me out there. We’re like a family that way. The good kind, not the kind most of us got.”
“It’s hard for me,” I admit. “To let people in. My middle school friends bailed when my panic attacks started, and I kind of built a wall after that. Coming to group last week was honestly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
“So what got you there?”
“A friend suggested it,” I say. “Not the one who’s in the hospital. Someone else.”
“Good friend,” Ayo says.
I catch sight of my reflection in the window beside the front door. Seeing myself there, here, scarred and still a little damaged but okay, I’m swept up in a sense of gratitude for the accident. Not just that I survived it, but that I went through it at all. The wreck itself, the mind’s eye blindness, the hallucinations that maybe weren’t. Yes, it was awful and hard, and I wouldn’t wish something like that on anyone ever, but standing on the other side of it, I also wouldn’t go back. The view is so much better from here.
“I couldn’t see it,” I told the man at my window that night. The car in the intersection, that’s what I meant, but there were so many other things I couldn’t see.
The beauty in brokenness.
The power of honesty.
The way hope lights up the dark.
I see all of it now.
“Yes,” I tell Ayo. “He is.”