The First Time I Died Read online

  “—that help got to you so quickly. The boy’s friend had run to get help, and Chief Jackson was already on the way and calling the paramedics when you went into the water. Plus, you weren’t too deep down; he found you floating just beneath the surface.”

  That was surprising. It had felt like I’d been in that water for ages, and that I’d sunk to the very bottom of the pond. But I knew that the norepinephrine secreted during the body’s fight-or-flight reaction could mess with time perception and memory. There was a name for it. Something like tachypsychia, or maybe temporopsychia. My foggy brain struggled to dredge up the term.

  “So, we don’t know exactly how long you were under, but it couldn’t have been too long,” Dad said.

  My mother tutted. “It was long enough. Your heart stopped. You had to be brought back from the dead.”

  “What?”

  “You drowned! You went into the life beyond,” she said, sounding both excited and impressed.

  “They did CPR on you,” my father explained. “Chief Jackson first, then the paramedics on the ambulance journey here to Randolph.”

  “They shocked you with that machine of theirs — twice. And you came back!” My mother said. “It just wasn't your time to go.”

  “God wasn’t ready, and the devil didn't want you,” Dad said with a gentle smile.

  The nurse returned, wrapped a manual blood pressure cuff around my arm, inflated it and lifted my hand, fingers over the pulse point on my wrist. A strong wave of fatigue swept through me; it was all I could do to keep my eyes open.

  “That all seems normal,” she said, noting her results on the chart. “How are you feeling?”

  “Exhausted. Like I’ve been on my feet for twenty-four hours.”

  “Spiritual jetlag,” my mother murmured.

  I gave her the look that deserved. “And my head hurts.”

  My mother pressed something into my left hand. “Here, you just hold onto this.” It was a white stone with a striated, crystalline surface.

  “What the …?”

  “That’s selenite, for healing. It’ll help with the headache.”

  I handed it to Dad and said to the nurse, “I think I’m going to need something a little stronger.”

  “Sure, honey. I’ll bring you meds for the pain, but what you really need now is rest.” She looked at my parents. “You can visit again tonight.”

  “Tonight? Can’t I go home? I feel—” I wanted to say “fine,” but the word that came out was “okay.” Truth was, I felt a little weird. Kind of spaced out and not myself.

  “We’ll see what the doctor says after his examination. He’ll probably want to keep you in for another night, just to be safe.”

  “We’ve got a room at an inn in town,” Dad said. “We’ll stay another night if you have to, then drive you back to Pitchford tomorrow.”

  “The boy — is he okay?” I asked, ashamed that I’d only just remembered him.

  “Nicholas? He’s as fine as a fiddle. The Coopers are very grateful to you,” Mom said. “They sent those beautiful flowers. And a lovely note, too.”

  My father beamed at me. “You’re a hero, kiddo. You saved his life!”

  Part of me felt proud. Part of me wondered if he would have been saved anyway, without my clumsy efforts. Without me having to go through all of this.

  “And my car?”

  “Already at home,” Dad said. “Don’t you worry about anything.”

  “Time to go, folks,” the nurse said firmly, taking hold of the handles of my mother’s wheelchair. “Are you hungry, Garnet?”

  I nodded, suddenly realizing I was ravenous. When had I last eaten?

  “I’ll bring you some soft food. Any dietary requirements?”

  “She’s allergic to shellfish,” my mother said quickly.

  “No lobster bisque, then,” Nurse Henshaw said with a wink at me, and expertly wheeled my mother out of the room. My father kissed me on the forehead, promised to visit again later, and followed them. In the silence left by their departure, I felt a pang of guilt. I hadn’t asked my mother how her foot was.

  They’d only just left when the neurologist — a tall beanpole of a man, with a circle of graying hair like a monk’s tonsure — came to examine me.

  “To begin with, I’m going to name four objects, and I want you to say them back to me,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “War, orange, north, duck.”

  The duck made me think of the pond. Everything made me think of that damn pond.

  “Can you repeat them back to me?”

  “War, orange, duck, and … uhm … north.”

  War, orange, duck, north, I repeated them silently to myself, while, at his instruction, I stood up, balanced on each leg and walked in a straight line, like a field sobriety test. I was familiar with the mini mental state examination he put me through — I’d learned it when we covered traumatic brain injuries in neuropsychology — and was glad to discover I knew the day and date, and remembered both my own and the president’s full names.

  I could waggle my tongue, lift my arms above my head, smile, follow his moving finger with my gaze and feel it when he lightly touched my arms, legs, feet and face with a Q-tip.

  “War, orange, duck, north,” I repeated when prompted.

  The doctor seemed satisfied with my reactions and responses, but he frowned when he shone a light into my eyes.

  “Have your eyes always been like this?”

  “Like what?” I asked, worried that my pupils weren’t constricting, which I knew could be a sign of brain damage.

  “Heterochromic.”

  “Hetero-what now?”

  “Your irises are slightly different colors.”

  “No, they aren’t.”

  “Take a look for yourself.”

  I walked over to the basin at the end of the room and peered into the mirror above it. Above my unusually pale face, my left eye did indeed look a little darker than the right. Almost as if it had a hint of brown running through the blue.

  “That’s new,” I said. “And bizarre. Should I be worried?”

  “It’s unusual but not unheard of for eye color to change following injury. The iris is like a layer with loose pigmentation scattered along its sides, and trauma can sometimes disperse the pigment, leaving lighter or darker areas. Of course,” he added, “that’s usually following a direct blow to the eye region.”

  “It’s not a bleed in my brain, or something?”

  “We did scans last night, and there’s no bleeding and no fracture of the skull. How are you feeling?”

  I shifted my attention away from the mirror and considered. “My chest and throat are sore, and I have a headache, but otherwise I feel okay. Maybe a little … dizzy?”

  It came out sounding like a question, because dizzy wasn’t the right word, but I didn’t know how to describe what I was feeling. Dissociated maybe. Like when they dragged me out of that pond and pulled me back into the land of the living, not all of me came back. Like there was a part of me still outside my body.

  “It’s possible you have some concussion; there’s an area of swelling and contusion at the back of your head. Sit down, let me examine it.”

  I climbed back into the bed and winced as the doctor’s fingers felt around the tender lump.

  “How did you injure it?”

  An image flared in my mind’s eye. Someone swinging a fist at the side of my head. Pain exploding in a shower of sparks. Involuntarily I flinched away from the doctor.

  “Someone hit me.” Why did I say that? “No, I mean, it felt like someone punched my lights out, but actually I just fell on the ice and knocked my head. And before that on the sidewalk.”

  “Hmm.” He contemplated me with an assessing gaze. “I think we’ll keep you in for another night’s observation.”

  At my sigh of disappointment, he added, “If all goes well in the night, and you’re feeling … clearer … about what happened, we’ll release you in the mor
ning.”

  He wrote up his notes on the chart, and after he left, the nurse returned, placed a tray of food on the table at the end of my bed, and wheeled it up closer to my head. She injected a clear substance into the drip, saying, “There you go, you’ll feel better soon. Now eat up.”

  Though it hurt to swallow, I did as she said, finishing half the tasteless, mud-colored soup and all the luminous pink jello.

  “What’s the matter with my fingers?” I asked.

  “The surface skin is ripped off, so they’re raw. But they should heal up nicely within a week or two.”

  I remembered the pond, my fingers frozen to the ice, and shuddered.

  “Now you get some rest,” she said. “I’ll pop in later and check on you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, lying back on the cool pillows, and sighing with relief when she closed the window blinds against the light. I shut my eyes, hoping to drift back off to sleep, but images of the past day flashed through my mind.

  I tried to piece together what had happened in some kind of coherent order, but it was all a muddle. The kid in red on the ice. His friend — the little girl running — panicked and crying. I hadn’t seen that, of course, but I could imagine it clearly in my mind’s eye. The pond, the creaking ice, the dark night. No, that wasn’t right. It had been afternoon, not night.

  I recalled the water — the shocking cold of it, the sensation of being pulled back into it, hands holding me under. No, that was wrong, too. I hadn’t been held under. It had just felt that way, like between them, the pond and the dead weight of my coat had forced me down.

  With a pang of intense feeling that felt almost like longing, I remembered the part at the end — the warmth and the musical silence, the golden light. What the hell had that been? Probably a consequence of lack of oxygen to the brain, I reasoned, trying to remember if anoxia could cause visual and auditory hallucinations. Whatever its cause, it had been eerily calm and peaceful, such a contrast to this place with its banging and clanging, and a nurse coming in every hour to check on me and to complain about the equipment, most of which didn’t seem to be working properly. A bit like my brain.

  12

  NOW

  Sunday December 17, 2017

  That night, I got a visit from Police Chief Ryan Jackson.

  “Hey, Garnet.”

  “Hey, Ryan.”

  For a few moments we stared at each other, taking in the difference the years had made. He had to be four or five years older than me, but he looked good. Unlike Pete, he still had a full head of thick black hair, and his waist was as trim as it had been back when he dated Vanessa Beaumont. Had he married her eventually?

  “You’re looking good,” he said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Well, you’re looking alive, which is kinda the same thing. It was still touch and go when they took you away, so I wanted to see for myself that you made it.”

  “My father tells me that you saved my life.”

  He shrugged. “I did CPR until the paramedics arrived. But they’re the ones who brought you back.”

  “Thank you,” I said gruffly.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “No, seriously — I’m super-glad I’m not dead. Thanks for not giving up on me.”

  “Anytime. Thanks for saving the kid.” There was a moment’s silence, then he fished a plush toy out of the paper bag he was holding. “I bought you a get-well gift.”

  It was a blue bear, wearing a cheerful It’s a boy! T-shirt.

  I raised an eyebrow. “I know I’m a little confused, but I think I would have remembered having had a baby.”

  “The options in the gift store downstairs were limited.”

  “They don’t sell beer there, do they? I could kill a beer.”

  Where did that come from? I didn’t even like beer.

  It was his turn to raise his brows. “You probably shouldn’t be drinking right now.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  He sat the bear on the tray table at the foot of my bed and said, “When you’re up and about, maybe we could have coffee?”

  “Sure,” I said, unenthusiastically.

  My plan was to persuade my mother to shut up shop, help my father to clear it out, spend Christmas with them, and then head back to Boston directly after. I had no desire to hang around town socializing with the locals.

  My parents arrived at that moment. My mother thanked Ryan loudly and effusively, and my father headed straight for me, frowning in concern.

  Saying he needed to get back to work, Ryan wished me well and headed out. As he left, the blue bear toppled over and fell to the ground.

  “Oh, look, it fell. Bob, hand that to me, will you?” my mother said. “Thank you, dear. Isn’t it just darling, Garnet? Where should I put it?”

  I gestured to the empty chair on the left side of my bed, but she tucked it into the bed beside me.

  “It’s so cute! And so is Ryan, I must say. I do like tall men, and he has a calm and steady aura. And he gave you the kiss of life!”

  I ignored her. I was good at that. Dad spoke softly about the weather. The intense cold had lifted, and we were in for a warmer spell.

  Just like a decade ago.

  Mom stroked my hand, wondering out loud whether her peonies and asters would think it was a false spring, and whether I knew that asters were an enchanted flower that symbolized love and patience. I must have drifted off because when next I opened my eyes, the room was dark and quiet, and my parents had gone, although there was someone behind me on the other side of the bed. I was lying on my side, facing the doorway, and by the crack of light coming in from the hallway beyond, I could see that the blue bear had fallen again and lay on the ground well out of my reach.

  I shivered as a rash of goose bumps tightened my skin. Snuggling deeper under the blankets, I asked, “Would you mind picking up the bear?”

  There was no response. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that no one was there. Funny, I could’ve sworn someone was with me. Maybe I was still asleep and dreaming.

  I dreamed more after that — a pleasant mishmash of scenes of Colby and I together, laughing, talking and kissing. Then we were squatting side-by-side on our haunches, in the grass beside the bandstand down by Plover Pond, facing a row of purple asters. We had small gardening trowels in our hands, and we were digging in the dirt, planting something.

  Or perhaps digging something up.

  “You go on upstairs, I’ll fetch your suitcase from your car,” my father said as we arrived at my parents’ house in Pitchford the next day.

  “I’ll get lunch ready,” my mother said, swinging herself into the kitchen on her crutches.

  My old bedroom looked exactly as it had on the day I left — cherrywood pencil-post bed, patchwork quilt in shades of forest green, braided rug on the floor, and a free-standing oval mirror in the corner. The large corkboard on the wall above my desk was still pinned with the sentimental scraps of an eighteen-year-old’s life — concert ticket stubs; a strip of photo booth shots of Jessica and me wearing witches’ hats from the time we went on a school outing to Salem; a faded magazine picture of Robert Pattinson in full Edward Cullen mode; and a printed quote reminding me that where there was love, there was life.

  Nothing in the room had been changed. Had my parents been waiting for me to return, to step back into my old life all this time?

  My father came in, carrying my suitcase and the flower arrangement from the kid’s parents. “Where do you want these?”

  I took the flowers and said, “You can put the suitcase on the bed, thanks, Dad.”

  “Welcome home, kiddo. Hope you stay a long while.”

  Not if I could help it.

  He gave me a tight hug and then left, saying over his shoulder, “Don’t be too long unpacking, okay? I’m starving.”

  I wondered if he’d had anything to eat today; he and my mother had been at the hospital bright and early to check on me. After a problem-free night
, I’d been given a more-or-less clean bill of health and discharged with painkillers, sleeping tablets (“Just in case,”) and a warning to take it easy and keep a lookout for symptoms of concussion.

  I felt stiff and sore, but more than that, I felt strange, not wholly myself. Safe and alone in the comfortable familiarity of my old room, the realization finally hit me that I had nearly died. Hell, I had died. My knees felt suddenly wobbly, and tears pricked my eyes. Screw this bad-luck, pimped-up, no-good excuse for a town, and especially that damned pond that lurked like a malevolent spider at the center of it. And at the center of my life.

  I dumped the flowers on one side of my dressing table, trying, and failing, to keep my gaze from straying to the cluster of framed photographs set out on the other. My throat tightened painfully as I took in the frozen memories of Colby and I staring at each other in picture after picture. We’d been so in love. I remembered feeling it like a dazzling light in the core of my being, an ignition of my senses, a spark of awareness electrifying my skin, a gravitational pull toward him. I hadn’t felt anything near half as strong since.

  My gaze traveled over the photographs. Colby and I smiled out from a snapshot of us at our lunch table in the school cafeteria. Jessica, I recalled, had been behind the camera, urging us to keep straight faces, which had only made us laugh more.

  I leaned closer to examine a picture taken on the day of the school trip to the old Beaumont Brothers bottling plant. It was after Colby had broken up with Judy, but before he and I had started dating, which would’ve made it sometime in May 2007. I’d wanted to take a photograph of Colby without making it obvious, so I’d wandered around snapping shots of groups of kids I had no interest in before taking his. He was looking directly into the camera, grinning widely. He’d probably seen right through my schemes. Pete and Judy, who’d already hooked up by then, were in the background. Pete looked bored, but Judy was smiling, and — was she looking at Colby? Could be. She’d never wanted their breakup, and in anyone’s book, Pete was a poor replacement for Colby.

  Rubbing the bandaged edge of my thumb across my lips, I studied a photo of Colby wearing new khaki chinos and a neatly pressed blue shirt and standing, hands on hips, in front of the big sugar maple tree in his back yard. Mrs. Beaumont had taken it on the first day of his summer job at the town clerk’s office, and later printed off a copy for me to keep.