Anything but Ordinary(2)

Dr. Warren kept writing on her clipboard. “Do you know what you are recovering from?”

Bryce swallowed. Her throat felt like sand. She could do this. Push yourself. “I was asleep.”

Dr. Warren nodded. “You were in a coma. You suffered serious head trauma. In order to heal, your brain eliminated your consciousness for quite some time.”

The dive, Bryce thought, the blinding crack coming back to her in a flash of pain. The memory replayed itself again as Dr. Warren spoke, and for a strange moment Bryce could see herself from the stands, a blur in a colorful swimsuit, falling to the water.

“The good news is that your brain’s healing progress was not as absent or slow as we had thought. We’ll do some more MRIs, but it looks like your cognitive functions will continue to improve.”

“Why can’t I move?” Bryce asked. Beside her, the heart monitor began to beep more quickly, as if warning her. As if her body knew something she did not.

“Your recovery depends on how well your muscles return from extended disuse,” Dr. Warren replied carefully.

Recovery. Her brain was foggy, but the word never meant much to her. She avoided injury. For competitive athletes, there was could or could not. There was no recover. She looked at her hands. They didn’t move much, but they looked fine, a little pale and thin maybe.

“How long was I asleep?”

Dr. Warren looked at Bryce’s mother, her eyebrows raised in a silent question. Her mother nodded at Dr. Warren. The doctor started in slowly. “Bryce, you’ve been unconscious for a while. Some things have changed.”

Bryce felt blood rush to her cheeks. She ignored the doctor’s steady gaze, trying and failing to clench her fists, feeling for the first time the presence of tubes stuck in her forearm.

“Where’s Sydney?” Bryce’s curly-haired twelve-year-old sister was probably taking advantage of her stay at the hospital that very moment, going through her stuff, putting on her junior prom dress and pretending she was a Broadway star.

“Your sister is out,” her father said, crossing his arms.

“Out?” Bryce responded. “Doing what?”

“Syd—well.” Her mother tightened the tie on her pink bathrobe. “She’s…gotten older. We all have, even you.” She laughed a little.

Bryce noticed the circles underneath her mother’s light blue eyes, the gray glinting in her dad’s close-cropped hair. They hadn’t answered her.

“How long—”

She was interrupted by fast footsteps, the squeak of the handle, a bang on the wall as the door flung open. A tall, pale teenage girl loped in. She looked familiar.

Bryce’s mother sprung up. “Not now.” She stood between Bryce and the girl.

“Yes, now! Are you kidding?” the girl responded.

“Please,” her mother said, but it was more like a command.

From the other side of the bed, Bryce’s father said loudly, “Elizabeth—just…” He finished his sentence by shaking his head.

The girl wore fishnets and heavy-soled boots. Bryce glanced at her parents, but their eyes were fixed on the floor. Back to the girl. Dark waves. Their father’s big dark eyes.

Sydney. The girl was Sydney. Bryce’s heart skipped a beat.

Her mother stood over the chair. “Please. She’s not ready. She’s disoriented.”

“Seriously, Mom,” Sydney said through gritted teeth. “Maybe now would be a good time to pretend I’m part of this family.”

Dr. Warren moved toward the door. “I’ll give you all some time.”

“Bryce.” The girl grasped the support poles on either side of the hospital bed, as if the sight of Bryce made her dizzy. The smell of cigarettes filled Bryce’s nose. She frantically looked for the dark freckle near Sydney’s ear, the one Sydney pretended was an earring. It was there. “You’re…awake,” Sydney whispered.

“How—” Bryce began but stopped when Sydney looked straight at her, mascara streaked on her round cheeks. “How—how old are you?”

“Me?” Sydney landed her black fingernails on her chest. Bryce noticed for the first time a small hoop piercing her lip. “I’m seventeen.”

Seventeen.

Bryce felt like she was underwater, trying to swim to the surface. She’d been asleep for five years? She was…twenty-two?

“Oh, my god,” Bryce breathed. Her blood was pumping so hard it felt like it was trying to escape her fingers. Tears leaked out from her eyes, running down her face. She thought of her calculus exam, the one she’d barely studied for. Olympic Trials. Graduating from Hilwood High. She was supposed to stand next to Gabby. They’d planned it. Greg would be at her other side.

What now?

She couldn’t look at anyone, though they were all looking at her. She closed her eyes.

Bile welled in her throat, and heat grew on her forehead, stabbed by pinpricks of pain. The hospital window was imprinted on the back of her eyelids, the world outside of it changing from night to day, and in another moment she felt the room was bathed in moonlight and sunlight, dusk and dawn.

A hospital room. The shades drawn.

Bryce realized she was looking at her own sleeping form on a strange, distant afternoon. Her family drifted around the hospital bed, looking like they used to. Her mother’s eyes were glazed, as if they had been emptied of tears. She laid her head on the bed next to Bryce’s body. Her father paced the room, his coaching whistle around his neck, anxiously running a hand through his dark hair. Sydney was still twelve years old. She sat in the patterned chair in the corner, her head in her hands, her body shaking silently. Nobody moved to comfort her.