Chapter Three
Through fog, a woman’s voice.
intracranial
contusion
edema
lucky
I cling to this last one, lucky, and the fog begins to recede. My mom’s voice now, simultaneously hushed and high-pitched.
“But she’s . . . okay?” That word again. Not three syllables this time, a hurried two.
“It’s still too early to know,” the other voice replies. She has an accent, I hear it now, Australian maybe. “But her scans look really look good. I’m optimistic. Like I said, she’s a lucky girl. Let’s just see what happens as we try to bring her out.”
“Thank god. And . . . her face?”
Cotton edges sharpen. I am awake.
Eyelids spring open. Light floods in. The light recedes a little and two dark blobs emerge. blob blob blob, the word pounds in my brain.
“Jessa, honey?” The sound is coming from the blob on the left. Mom. I turn my head in her direction and my skull explodes in pain. I can’t see her. I can’t see anything except darkness and light. No faces, no color, no anything, just two shapeless masses against a bright void. I blink and blink and blink but nothing comes into focus. My head pounds with the effort. “Jessa,” she repeats. “Can you hear me?”
I swallow. My mouth is acid and sand.
“Jessa, I’m Dr. Voss,” the other blob says, the one on my right. Australian accent. It’s the voice I heard before. Now I see a third blob, moving behind her, hear the sound of cabinets opening and closing, the whoosh of an automatic sink. “You were in a car accident last night,” Dr. Voss goes on. “You’re in the hospital now.”
Dread pools in my stomach. I squeeze my eyes shut.
“What’s wrong with my eyes?” I ask thickly. My words are garbled, like I have marbles in my mouth.
“Your eyes?” Mom. She sounds confused.
“I can’t—I can’t see.”
The dark patches go still.
Then, the doctor’s voice. Measured. Calm. “You can’t see anything at all?”
“Blobs,” I say weakly. “I just see two dark blobs.”
“Someone get me a pen light,” Dr. Voss says sharply. Behind her, another cabinet opens. Quick footsteps. An almost inaudible click. The blobs shift and then disappear, burned out by light.
“Pupillary response is normal,” she says, to someone else, not to me. “Can we bring up her scans on the screen, please?”
“What’s happening?” Mom demands. “You didn’t say anything about a problem with her eyes. Why can‘t she see?“
“There’s nothing wrong with her eyes,” Dr. Voss says calmly. “What Jessa is experiencing is called cortical blindness, which originates in the brain. I suspect that some of the blood vessels in Jessa’s visual cortex may be spasming,” Dr. Voss goes on, “which is restricting blood flow to the region responsible for sight. If I’m right, then her vision should return to normal as soon as those arteries relax.”
and if you’re wrong?
Footsteps in the distance. Someone else enters the room.
“Acute bilateral neurological visual impairment with visual acuity of light perception and motion detection only,” I hear Dr. Voss say. Each word lands with a thud in my brain. “No evidence of vasogenic edema. Her vitals are normal.”
Another blob appears over me. “Let’s try five hundred milligrams of methylprednisolone.”
I swallow thickly. Out of the void in my skull I have the thought, I want my dad. I try to picture his face in my head, but can’t. My vision blurs even more. Tears spill over but I can’t feel them on my face.
oh my god
I try to sit up. Pressure against my shoulders, someone’s hands, pressing me back down. I try to picture those hands, any hands, but can’t. what do hands look like? fingers? ears? I can’t see anything in my head.
“Hold still, baby girl,” a new voice says. Female, older, kind. “The doctors are giving you some medicine to help with your vision. Let’s give it a chance to work, okay?”
“I can’t,” I blurt out. “I can’t breathe.”
“BP spiking,” someone barks.
The hands push harder against my shoulders and now the bed is reclining and I am flat on my back. A blob hovers over me. Something cool and rubbery on my chin and both sides my nose. An oxygen mask, pressing against my face.
I suck air through my nose, feel my lungs inflate. The panic sputters out.
As I exhale, the blob above me becomes less of a blob, more of a woman, or at least the form of one. Her face is still out of focus, but I can make out the shape of her head, the curve of her shoulders, the difference between the paleness of her skin and the darkness of her hair.
“It’s getting better,” I say, muffled under the oxygen mask. I hear the relief in my voice.
The quick step of shoes on my right. Another person appears over me now, out of focus but still a person, another woman, with cropped hair and purple scrubs under her doctor’s coat. pink I can see pink, and all at once I can see other colors, too. The red of the pen in the doctor’s breast pocket, the blondness of her hair, the purple of her scrubs.
There is a sensation in my skull like someone turning up the color volume, every hue saturating, intensifying, driving itself in. Then, everything sharpens into shape, takes on an edge. The texture of the ceiling, the hairs on my forearm, the fibers of my sheet. Every detail screaming, every molecule jutting out.
I close my eyes, dizzy from the onslaught. Behind my eyelids there are no colors, no shapes, no light. Out of nowhere, a tune plays in my head, words I only half remember, a song I can’t place.
was blind but now i see
“Jessa?” Dr. Voss asks. The song cuts out.
“It’s better,” I mumble through the mask. “Normal, I think.” normal, there is nothing normal about this moment. I force my eyes back open and immediately flinch. The florescent light above me is uncomfortably bright. “I—I need to sit up.”
“Sure,” Dr. Voss says, and the bed begins to move. Now my mom comes into view. Her sweater is so black it stings my eyes. Someone lifts the mask off my face.
“Hi, honey,” Mom says in a voice that is tight with effort, the effort not to cry.
I raise my gaze to her face and blanch. There’s a dark purple splotch on her jaw, and another one by her temple. My brain fumbles to name them, then grabs hold of the word bruise.
“Mom. What happened?”
She glances at Dr. Voss. “You were in a car accident, honey. Last night. On New Year’s Eve.”
These words bounce off me, unheard. “But what happened to you?” It’s not just the bruise. Her hair is too yellow, her eyes are too blue, her freckles too dark. Her chin is uncomfortably sharp.
“Nothing happened to me, honey.” Her lips move weirdly. “I’ve just been here, worried to death about you.” She might be trying to smile, but she is failing. Her mouth won’t hold the shape.
Dr. Voss steps forward, edging my mom out. “Jessa, it’s completely natural for you to feel a bit disoriented right now. Just try to breathe normally and stay relaxed, okay?”
All of a sudden I feel them. The bandages on my face. The gauze wrapped around my head. The words that bounced off me now dig their way in.
you were in an accident last night
you’re in the hospital now
“How bad is it?” I whisper.
“This is a lot to take in all at once,” Dr. Voss says gently. There are tiny hairs on her upper lip, a narrow gap between her two front teeth. “How about I give you some time with your mom and we can talk about your injuries after you’ve—”
“I want to know now,” I say.
Dr. Voss hesitates, then nods. “Okay. I’ll keep it as simple as I can and we can go over it again any time, alright?”
I manage a tiny nod.
“Here’s the big picture,” she says. “The airbag that saved your life gave you a serious knock to the head. It hit you so hard it caused your brain to hit the back of your skull. It also shattered your left cheekbone, fractured your jaw, and cracked the wall of your left eye socket.” She’s matter-of-fact, and that makes me feel better, because if she’s matter-of-fact it can’t be that bad.
Quick breath, then she charges on. “The left side of your face was essentially in pieces when you arrived. Which turned out to be a good thing, relatively speaking, because the shattered bones helped to reduce the pressure on your brain. It gave your brain room to breathe while we repaired your cheekbone and jaw.”
“What about my face?” I ask weakly
“She was talking about your face, sweetie,” my mom says patronizingly, patting my leg again. I twist out of her reach.
“I mean the outside,” I say. I hear hollowness in my voice, empty spaces between the words where emotion should be. But my feelings are trapped in tiny jars inside me, where I need to keep them, because if I let them out they’ll swallow me. “The glass. After the crash, I felt chunks of glass in my face.”
Dr. Voss nods. “There was quite a bit of glass in your face. Fortunately, because the window was shatterproof glass, it broke into tiny little balls that made fairly clean incisions. We were able to extract them without much tissue damage. As long as you keep the wounds clean and follow your postoperative care plan, you should end up with thin, mostly flat scars.”
scars
In all the you’ll get better, there it is, the end of the sentence: but not all the way.
“It was lucky you were wearing that leather jacket,” Dr. Voss adds. “A chunk of glass in your neck and we could’ve been dealing with a very different situation.”
I look down at the brace on my right arm. One of the Velcro straps dangles, half open, exposed, hooks pulled away from loops. I stare at it and something shifts and suddenly the loops aren’t made of fabric anymore, they are knotted wires, tangled hair, spiders’ legs. I feel as if I am outside my body, pulled away from it, a strap hanging loose.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” I hear Dr. Voss say gently. “But the hospital has resources,” Dr. Voss says gently. Outside the room I hear two sets of footsteps. “People you can talk to as you—”
“Jessa?” Wren’s voice cuts through everything. “Babe, are you okay? I tried to come yesterday but they wouldn’t let me into the ICU.”
A flash of relief. thank god wren is here. Then I smell his cologne, and it flips a switch.
Scalding water on frozen fingers. The sharp sting of sensation rushing back.
“No,” I whisper, as the piñata inside my gut cracks open. Fury and envy and sadness and shame, these feelings spew out like spin art, flinging themselves against the wall, except there are no walls, I cannot build them fast enough.
i am drowning i am gasping for breath
My ears are ringing, roaring, pressure from the inside out. Every part of me is shaking.
The doctor looks at me. My eyes lock on her nose.
“This is Jessa’s boyfriend,” my mom says, and Wren steps into view. His hair is so dark it burns my eyes.
His lips move hey babe but the sound is drowned out by the roar in my head. I squeeze my eyes shut and the room disappears, Wren disappears, everything blinks out.
“You can’t be here,” Dr. Voss says sharply. “Family only.”
“But Wren is like family,” my mom protests. She touches my arm. I yank it away. “Jessa, honey, tell—”
The doctor cuts her off. “Out. Now. Both of you.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” my mom scoffs. “She’s my daughter.”
“She is, but she’s also my patient.” Dr. Voss’s voice is iron and ice. “And what my patient needs right now is some space.”
My mom makes a huffing sound. Bracelets jangle as she grabs her handbag. Fall collection, blue anchor printed “Dylan” satchel, the only design of hers to ever make it into Vogue. Named after one of the twins. None of her bags are named after me.
“Thank you,” I whisper hoarsely when the room gets quiet. My lips are sticky plastic, coated in film. Dr. Voss hands me a tissue.
“You bit your lip,” she says. I stare at the tissue in my hands, watch it tremble because my hands are trembling. I press my lips together, ball the tissue up in my fist. The trembling stops. I touch the tissue to my mouth, blot away the blood.
“Can I have some water?” I whisper.
“Absolutely,” she replies. She fills a blue cup the size of a thimble and holds it to my lips. I tilt my head back to drink it and feel a thunderbolt of pain in my jaw. I focus on the sensation of cool liquid in my throat, the crumpled tissue in my hand. Ignoring the dribble on my chin, the swollen feeling in my lips. I finish the water and hand her the cup.
Dr. Voss is studying me. “Tell me what just happened.”
I swallow. “A panic attack, I guess. I get them sometimes.”
“How often is sometimes?”
I shrug. “A couple times a year, maybe.” three times last year. seven times the year before that. in eighth grade there were too many to count. “I don’t really keep track.”
She points at the empty cup. “More?”
I nod. “Thanks.”
“So when was your first one?” she asks, her back to me, from the sink.
the day my dad left. “Seventh grade.”
“What do you think caused it? That first one.”
I make air quotes with my fingers. “Generalized Anxiety Disorder.”
“Ah. Says…?”
“Dr. Rothschild, therapist to the stars and their dysfunctional children.”
“So you went to therapy?” She hands me back the cup. “After your parents’ divorce?”
I drain it, still thirsty, so thirsty, then nod. “Twice a week for three months. My mom’s idea.”
“Did it help?”
“No. Can I please have some more water?”
“Sure.” She goes back to the sink. “So what’s the story on your boyfriend?”
My ribcage contracts. “He’s not my boyfriend.” These words are agony to say.
“He didn’t seem to know that.”
She turns off the water. Pulls a paper towel from the dispenser on the wall, wipes off the cup. “Are there friends you do want to see?” she asks. “It’s important that you don’t isolate yourself. Maybe in a couple days, when you’re—”
“How long will I be here?” I ask abruptly.
“A week. Maybe ten days.” She hands me the cup.
“And then what?”
“Then you get on with your life,” she says.
i didn’t have a life
i only had wren
Reflexively, my fingers start twirling. Left hand lifts, reaches for a strand of hair. But the piece I touch is stiff and matted, dreadlocked with dried blood. Suddenly I smell it, hair and blood and tea tree oil shampoo. I choke back a gag. The cup jerks. Water sloshes onto my cotton gown.
“I’ll send a nurse in to get you cleaned up,” I hear Dr. Voss say.
“Uh huh,” I say because it’s all I can say without throwing up.
I grab at the loose Velcro, tugging it open even more so the whole strap is free, then roll the fabric around my fingers up and under up and under over and over again. “Emotional self-regulation,” Dr. Rothschild called it, except that back then it was hair twisting instead of twirling, twisting twisting twisting until the blond strands broke. Not (as Rothschild insisted, kept insisting, tried to force me to admit) because I felt “compelled” to rip my hair out, or because I “enjoyed the sensation” when the follicles tore. It wasn’t about the hair at all. Not that Rothschild cared what it was really about, he just wanted to give me 100mg of Clomipramine and an “OCD with trichotillomania” diagnosis and call it a day. I hated every second of the fifty-five minutes I spent in his office every week. Hated him. So I switched from twisting to the less “maladaptive” twirling just to piss him off. The Shel Silverstein poem I memorized later, when the twins were born and things got bad again and my mind learned how to un-distract itself, my anxiety like a magnet, always pulling my thoughts back in.
Twirling the strap helps. My pulse stops throbbing in my temples, my breathing slows. My mind starts to empty itself, thoughts draining out, the way I’ve trained it to do. If I don’t think, I can’t feel. And I don’t want to feel this. I don’t want to feel anything at all.
“Hi, Jessa,” an older woman’s voice says from the door. The nurse Dr. Voss mentioned, here to clean me up.
can you do insides, too?
She takes out the catheter I didn’t know I had and hooks my IV bag onto a rolling rack. “Take it real slow,” she says as she helps me to my feet. As if there is any other way to take it. Every part of me aches. My brain feels too big for my skull.
I shuffle toward the bathroom. There is a towel hanging over the mirror, tucked in tight at the sides. Its presence there, the fact that someone felt the need to hang it, sucks the air from my chest. I sway on my feet, lightheaded with fear.
“Easy now,” the nurse says, catching my arm. She flips down the handicapped seat in the shower, gestures for me to sit. “This’ll be more of a half-shower,” she says apologetically, as she starts peeling the bandages off my face. “We can’t get your head wet. But I can wash the bottom half of your hair with the hand shower. At least get the blood out of your ends.”
I stare past her at the grey tiled wall and let my gaze blur. I feel her movements, the brush of gauze on my shoulders as she unwinds the bandage, lets it fall, but cannot feel my face. I have no sense of where my cheekbones are in space, how far my nose sticks out, what is bloodied cotton and what is bloodied skin.
“You’re lucky they didn’t have to shave any of it,” the nurse is saying. “Usually they do, for this kind of thing.” this kind of thing. The kind of thing where heads crack like eggshells and whole lives come apart?
The last piece of gauze sticks a little, and her brow furrows as she carefully peels it from my forehead. “There,” she says when it’s off. “Now you can breathe a little.” She shoves the mound of gauze into the trash bin by the sink and lets the metal lid fall.
Out of nowhere, my face starts to itch. The sensation doesn’t tickle. It’s fire beneath the surface, it makes me want to rip off my skin.
My hands fly to my face, but the nurse is quick. She catches them before they touch skin. “Where does it itch?” she asks, holding my wrists with her hands.
“I don’t know. I—I can’t tell. My left cheek, I think?” The itch is all consuming. I want to claw my skin off, to dig the creepy crawly out with my fingernails. “I just need to—,” I pull away from her, trying to get my hands free. Pain erupts in my fractured wrist.
“I can put Vaseline on it, and that’ll help, but, sweetheart, I can’t let you touch it. Not yet. I know it itches, and an itch you can’t scratch can drive a person crazy. But your skin is raw right now and we’ve got to keep it clean.” She lets go of my wrists and reaches into her shower caddy for a jar of Vaseline. She gently rubs it onto my cheeks.
The itch is so intense that my eyes are watering. I dig my nails into my palms, hard. “Why does it itch so much?”
“The nerves are starting to heal,” she explains. “It’s a good sign, that you’re getting sensation back so soon.”
i don’t want sensation back. numbness doesn’t hurt.
She sets the Vaseline aside and unties my hospital gown, sliding it down so it’s a heap around my waist. It registers that I am sitting here topless, but this body I am in doesn’t feel like mine anymore so the half-nakedness seems irrelevant, like a rumor, something I’m supposed to care about but don’t. The nurse is busy with her washcloth, rubbing the blood off my collarbones, gently scrubbing my armpits and my back. I notice the sensation on my skin, the rub of wet cloth, the slippery slickness of soapy lather running off elbows and tailbone and chin, but it feels far off, like I am far off, like I am no where at all.
At some point, the water stops. The nurse pats me dry with a thin, scratchy towel and helps me into a clean hospital gown, this one purple with tiny yellow birds. “Your parents can bring you some pajamas from home,” she says as she ties the new gown behind my neck. “You’ll feel more like yourself, in your own clothes.”
I nod, though I feel like laughing, like screaming, at the absurdity of this.
“Your dinner should be here in a few minutes,” she says as she helps me back into bed. “You’re on a soft food diet for the next seventy-two hours, so it’ll probably be soup, some applesauce, jello. Your parents can bring you something else if you want it, a smoothie or ice cream.” She smiles conspiratorially. “There’s a Pinkberry down the street.”
My parents. It’s the second time she’s said it. I resist the urge to correct her, no, my parents aren’t here, my dad lives in colorado, it’s just my mom and carl, the guy she married a year after my dad left, who i can promise won’t be doing a pinkberry run because it’s the twins’ bath time right now and he couldn’t possibly miss that.
“Do you want me to get them?” she asks. “Now that you’re all cleaned up?”
“No, that’s okay.”
“But your mom—”
“Could you just tell her I’m really tired, and I’ll see her tomorrow?” I ask. “It’s my brothers’ bedtime, and I’m sure she wants to see them before they go to bed.” I am aware of how ridiculous that sounds. But I also know that my mom will leave as soon as someone gives her permission to go, and that is reason enough to send her away.
There’s a knock at the door. “Do you mind if we come in?” a male voice asks. Two police officers, in uniform, are standing in the hall. “We’d just like to ask Jessa some questions about the accident for our report.”
“Jessa needs her rest,” the nurse says firmly.
“It’ll only take a few minutes,” one of the cops says, voice friendly, as they step inside the room. He’s young, and really cute. The other one is older, the skin on his face twisted with scars.
My stomach churns. Partly for how uncomfortable the older guy’s scars are making me, mostly from the realization that I probably look worse.
“It’s okay,” I say, because the truth is I don’t actually want to be alone. “I’ll talk to them.”
“I should get her mother, then.” The nurse moves toward the door.
The one with the scars steps aside to let her pass. “But we’re not here to interrogate Jessa. We only need her statement. We know the accident wasn’t her fault.” His voice is so kind it makes my heart sting because I am staring at my hands to avoid his face. I force my eyes to space between his eyebrows, the only inch of smooth flesh. “What do you want to know?”
“Your recollection of what happened,” he replies.
“A car hit me,” I say mechanically. I leave out the crunch of metal, the sharp crackle of glass, the sensation of the world being sucked toward me, my hope being sucked out.
“Did you see it enter the intersection? The vehicle that hit you?”
I shake my head. “I— I heard the brakes. Then I was spinning, and then I hit a tree. The guy who fixed my wrist said I hit a fire hydrant, too. But I only remember the tree.”
“What guy?” the younger cop is asking. “An EMT?”
“No, before that. There was a man who came to my window. A doctor. In a white coat. He popped my wrist back and told me the ambulance was on its way.”
The cop flips back through his notes. “Okay. According to the driver of the other vehicle, she called 911. When the ambulance arrived, there was no one else at the scene.”
“That’s not right,” I say. “He was definitely there when the ambulance got there.”
The younger cop looks at the older one. “None of the witnesses said anything about a doctor on the scene.”
“Let’s back up,” the older cop says. “Before all that. Your mom said you were coming from a party in the Hollywood Hills.”
“I don’t want to talk about the party,” I say abruptly. The cops exchange a glance.
“Let’s start from the moment you turned on Laurel Canyon, then.”
the moment i turned on laurel canyon i was having a panic attack
the moment i turned on laurel canyon my heart was exploding in my chest
My hand jerks to my hair. The cops exchange another glance.
I force my mind back to that moment. My foot on the gas pedal, white knuckles on the wheel, the line of brake lights snaking up the hill. I remember the stuck feeling, the sensation of spiders under my skin. But I can’t see it.
I can’t see anything in my head.
“I can’t—,” I almost say remember, but it’s not the memory that’s missing. The memory is right there, here, pressing in from all sides. Headlights. The crunch of metal. Fragments of glass hanging in the air, suspended for a nanosecond, for an eternity, before they’re vacuum-sucked into my face.
so why can’t i see it?
There’s a sharp pain at my scalp. A broken strand in my fist.
The older man’s mouth moves with a question I don’t hear. I close my eyes and try to picture him, the guy in a uniform with scars on his face who’s standing on the other side of my eyelids. I was just staring at his eyebrows. was his hair dark or light?
I open my eyes. dark. His hair is dark.
“It’s common to have trouble remembering a traumatic event,” the younger cop is saying. His hair is light, his eyes are blue. “It’s usually best to go back to an earlier moment and move forward from there.” His tone is so patronizing I want to punch him in the face.
There’s a commotion in the hall behind them.
I hear my mom’s voice first, high and shrill. “She just woke up from a medically induced coma. Can’t they wait?”
“She said she wanted to talk to them,” the nurse says.
“I should’ve been consulted.”
“I’m consulting you now.”
“They’re already in there!”
“Lydia,” another voice says firmly. “Stop.”
daddy
My brain whirls through memories. Dad taking me to Disneyland, Dad making frozen lemonade in the summer, Dad singing along with the radio as he drives. Dad packing suitcases. Dad leaving a stack of old CDs on my bed. These moments are there, but they’re not. I remember them, but can’t see a single one in my head.
His face is there but not there also. Wiry eyebrows, eyes the color of apple cider, a dimple on his chin. I used to press my finger to it, pretending it was a button that would make him laugh. He always did.
dad where are you dad?
He’s there, right there. He’s nowhere in my head.
“We’re not married anymore,” Mom is saying. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
Dad sighs. “Can we please not make this about us right now? I’m here to see my daughter.” The cops move out of the doorway to let him in.
“Hey, Bear,” he says, and my eyes leap to his face.
no that’s not right
It’s not my dad. It can’t be my dad. I’m looking at the wrong man, I’m looking at the police officer with the scars on his face.
Except I’m not. The police officer is in uniform and he’s holding a clipboard and making notes. The man standing beside my bed is wearing a UC-Boulder t-shirt and jeans and there is a dimple in his chin because he’s trying his best to smile but his eyes look like maybe his heart might break. The man standing beside my bed just called me Bear, my dad’s nickname for me, and his voice is my dad’s voice. But the man standing beside my bed is covered in bruises, so many bruises, and there’s an ugly tangle of scars on his cheek.
The room blurs.
Lightheaded, I fumble for the plastic railing on my bed, trying to catch my breath as black seeps in on the edges.
“Her blood pressure is dropping,” someone says.
“Jessa,” my mom says. “Jessa, honey, you’re hyperventilating. Focus on my voice.”
But I don’t want to focus on her voice, I don’t want to focus on anything. So instead I just give into it. I let myself pass out.