All's Well(104)



“Ms. Fitch,” she screams as she lunges for me.

I back away, away, out of her grasp, and when I do, I fall. Right off the stage. It’s a long way down to the theater floor. For several minutes or hours, I feel like I’m floating, floating down. Sailing through the bright, spotlighted air, screaming. I hit the floor with a loud crunch. Feel my whole skeleton rattle. My bones vibrate and explode into stars.

Black sky, bright stars. I watch them disappear one by one.





CHAPTER 30


A LIGHT. SOFT on my face. Is this death? The light of God or the devil? No. Earthly light. Theater light. I’m alive. Sitting in a bright little room. Concrete walls lined with vanity tables, lighted mirrors. And children. Children in shoddy Elizabethan costumes are gathered all around me. Sweaty faces bleeding bad makeup, looking at me with concern and fear.

“She’s awake, she’s awake,” they murmur to one another. Then they walk away from me.

I feel a cold, damp cloth on my forehead. There’s a soft hand holding mine. Paul.

“Oh, Paul,” I whisper. “You’re here, thank god. Where’s Ellie?”

“I’m right here, Miranda,” says a nearby voice. Young and soft like the hand that’s holding mine. The voice belongs to the hand, I realize.

I turn. Ellie. Not baby Ellie. Not my Ellie. Ellie full-grown. Dressed in her red Helen costume. She looks worried. “Who’s Paul?” she says.

And I see his face swallowed by the dark. A cold dark creeping at the edge of my consciousness.

“Ellie,” I whisper, “what happened?”

“Don’t you remember? You fell off the stage, Miranda.”

“I did?”

“Yes. It looked like a pretty bad fall too. At least I thought it was. We were all so worried. For a minute, we all thought we’d lost you. Luckily, there were some doctors in the audience.”

“Doctors?”

“Yes, three of them. Sitting front row center, right where you fell, can you believe that? They examined you and said you were just fine. Nothing at all broken.” She smiles. “Isn’t that lucky?”

The cold dark grips me. “Yes. So lucky.”

“Oh, Miranda, what’s wrong? You’re pale. Are you all right? Are you in any pain?”

I recall the crunch of my bones when I hit the theater floor. The rattle of my skeleton. I search my body, bracing myself. Nothing. Just a heaviness in my chest. A dull hum in my limbs that wasn’t there before.

“Pain,” I say. “I’m not sure.”

“You’re probably still in shock. I mean, considering what you just went through.”

A flash of Paul on the gray grass. The baby that never was, so soft and warm in my arms. And Grace. Oh god, Grace.

“The doctors said you would be in a lot of pain for a while, especially after the initial shock wears off. They said that’s to be expected.”

“They did?” And I realize there’s no singing in my voice anymore. No shimmer in my cells, no lightness in my blood. My voice sounds heavy, like a felled thing.

“I’m sorry, Miranda. I think it could have been so much worse. Even the doctors were shocked that you weren’t more hurt. Almost annoyed that they couldn’t doctor you more or something.” She smiles. “It’s such a good thing you took that bath. I think maybe it saved you.”

I look in the vanity mirror beside me. There’s a fork in my hair. I’m wearing the red tablecloth Paul tied over my shoulder like a toga. I’m covered in seaweed, twigs, and tiny white and purple flowers. I recall baby Ellie pulling one from my hair. Handing it to me like a gift.

I look back at Ellie, still smiling at me so hopefully, still gripping my hand. It hurts a little, I notice. The bones, the flesh. My heart. Everything.

“You still need to take it easy, of course,” she adds quickly. “Probably weak from that cut on your leg too. It was bleeding pretty badly. But they bandaged you right back up. One of the doctors had a medical bag with him, can you believe it? I’ve never even seen one of those except in the movies. It looked like a prop. I told him it looked like a prop, and he laughed. He said he liked that idea. He said he loved theater so much.”

I look down at my leg, which has indeed been freshly bandaged. The blood is finally not bleeding through. Someone has drawn a frowning face in the center of the bandage like a bull’s-eye. And then I feel it, a dull ache pulsing behind the gauze. Like a dark bruise is blooming there.

“What else did the doctors tell you, Ellie? Did they tell you anything else? Anything about the show?”

Ellie flushes now. “No, nothing.”

“They said something. What did they say, Ellie?”

Ellie just shakes her head. “Miranda, what does it even matter? They’re just doctors. What do they know about theater? Besides, art is subjective.”

“Ellie, please. Please tell me what they said.” I feel the ache in my arm, in my hand as it grips hers.

Ellie looks away from me now. “They said… to tell you that they didn’t really care for it.”

“What did they say exactly?”

“They said it was very… anticlimactic,” she says, still looking away. “Not cathartic enough. Not…” She shakes her head again.

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