The Girl He Used to Know(77)
The next time he wakes up, he seems a little more coherent. Not much, but enough that he utters, “Annika?” His voice is so hoarse from the tube that I can barely hear him.
“Yes, yes it’s me. It’s Annika. You’re okay. I mean, you have a lot of broken bones and some respiratory issues, but you’re going to be fine.”
Jonathan’s pelvis is not so much broken as it is shattered, and the legs are a mess, too. Pretty much every bone from the waist down has some kind of damage, but the doctors say he will heal in time. His respiratory health is still the biggest hurdle he’ll have to overcome.
“How did you get here so fast?” he asks, because it must be confusing to lose so many days the way Jonathan has. Maybe he thinks it’s still September eleventh.
“I didn’t arrive until three days after the planes hit. No one could fly after that. I had to drive.”
He blinks like he’s confused. “For a minute, I thought you said you drove.”
“I did. You needed me, Jonathan, and here I am.”
45
Annika
Jonathan is discharged from the hospital three months later and we fly home on a gray drizzly day in December. It doesn’t feel dreary to us, though. It feels like heaven to finally leave the confines of his hospital room and walk outside, to breathe fresh winter air that is only vaguely tinged with the smell of smoke. Or maybe I’m just imagining it.
There have been endless, grueling weeks of physical therapy and breathing treatments. There have been some setbacks, including another very scary bout of pneumonia. The antibiotics weren’t working, and Dr. Arnett, whom I had come to know very well, pulled me aside and warned me that Jonathan might not survive.
“I know this is difficult to hear,” he said. “But I want you to be prepared. His condition is very grave.”
That seemed so unfair to me. To make it out of the tower only for your lungs to succumb to an infection one month later. Janice and Clay came to the hospital; Will was already at my side. Everyone seemed resigned to the fact that Jonathan would not be granted another reprieve. His fever rose and nothing the doctors tried was working, and I spent the better part of a day sobbing on someone’s shoulder.
But Jonathan is the strongest person I know, and he did survive. And now we are leaving the hospital hand in hand, the way I always told him we would even on those days I wasn’t so sure I believed it myself.
Will arranged for a car to take us to the airport. He came by earlier to say good-bye. I cried in my brother’s arms, overcome by all he had done for me, and when he pulled away there were tears in his eyes, too. I feel like Jonathan and Will are almost brothers now, considering how much time they spent together. Will was great about watching over Jonathan while I ran to his apartment to grab clean clothes or take a shower.
I used every bit of vacation I had, and when it ran out, I put in my resignation at the library. They said they’ll hire me back when I’m ready to return to work, and Jonathan said it shows how much they value me as an employee. It makes me feel really good to hear things like that, because I never really know what people think of me, at least the ones who don’t say rude things to my face. I will go back, because I love my job at the library, but I’ll wait until Jonathan is fully recovered, because right now he still needs me a lot.
His bones are healing and he’s walking okay. A little slow, but who cares. Well, he does. But I know he’ll get faster.
He doesn’t know what he wants to do, but he’s not going to work for Brad anymore.
Life’s too short, he said.
* * *
My parents are there to pick us up at the airport. It makes me sad that Jonathan’s mom isn’t here, too, and that he doesn’t really have any family left. We’re going to live at my apartment. Jonathan knows how attached I am to it, and since he still has a lot of recovering to do, he said he doesn’t care at all where we live as long as we’re together. By the time we arrive home from the airport and I walk Jonathan into the bedroom, he’s leaning heavily on me. He doesn’t admit that he’s hurting, but sadly, I know all too well what Jonathan’s pain face looks like. I get him settled in bed and crawl under the covers with him. He wraps his arms around me and kisses the top of my head.
“You amaze me,” he says. He’s probably said it twenty times by now, but it always makes me smile. “It feels so good to hold you again.”
It feels good to me, too. It’s been so long since we’ve been able to stretch out alongside each other. “It’s the best feeling in the world,” I say. We kiss for a while, which is something else we haven’t done in a long time. They’re the kind of slow, deep kisses that say more than words ever will, and they make me feel loved and cherished. He’s half-asleep when we finally stop. We have the rest of our lives to kiss, so I whisper that it’s time for him to take a nap. He murmurs his assent without opening his eyes, and I slip from the bed and leave the room.
He coughs for a while and then I don’t hear any sound coming from the bedroom. I sneak back in and check on him, watching his chest until I see it rise and fall. Then I softly close the door.
* * *
While Jonathan sleeps, I go through the mail my mom has been collecting for me and find an envelope with no return address. I pry open the flap, and inside are two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and the words “thank you” written on a piece of paper. There is also a child’s drawing. It’s of a woman with blond hair and she is driving a car. There’s a princess crown on her head and a man in the passenger seat.