What Remains by Helene Dunbar Read Free Book Online Page B

spoken to.
    My parents are ushered out and a woman I assume is another nurse, or maybe a doctor, positions herself next to me. “We’re going to sit you up and then try to take this tube out of your throat, okay?”
    It sounds like a great idea until I hear the mechanism for the bed starting up and more pain goes ripping through me. The bed only tilts up a little bit, but it feels like all of my skin has been pulled too tight across my chest.
    â€œOkay, Cal … nod your head if you understand what I’m saying … we’re going to wean you off the ventilator to make sure you can breathe on your own.”
    I want to scream more than I want to breathe, but I nod and grip the metal railing on the side of the bed, pretending the cool metal is really my mom’s hand or Spencer’s. In anticipation, I grit my teeth.
    The nurse goes to flip a switch on the machine and says, “I’m going to count to three and then I’m going to turn this off. I’m not going to disconnect you until we’re sure that you’re breathing.”
    I nod again as she starts the countdown and for some reason it makes me think about baseball. About how you only get three strikes before you’re out. About how I have a pretty great on-base percentage. I want to knock this out of the park, but I’m not totally sure what’s expected of me. Breathing, I guess. How hard can that be?
    I hear her get to “three” and the machine clicks off. I take in air, and let it out, and do it a few more times. She watches like she’s waiting for me to do something wrong, but I don’t. I just breathe.
    After a few minutes the nurse pats my leg. “Good boy,” she says, like I’m five or something. “So now we’re going to pull the tube out and this might be a little uncomfortable.”
    Just for the record, I HATE when people use the “royal we.” It’s fine if you’re the Pope or the Queen, but otherwise it really isn’t necessary. I made the mistake of telling Lizzie that once and for two weeks Spencer and I had to put up with her walking around saying “we would like lunch now” and “we are having a thoroughly fucking bad day.”
    The nurse untapes the tube and says, “When I start pulling, I want you to give me a little cough.” She pulls, I cough, and my chest feels like it’s going to explode as the rubber slides out of me.
    I lie back and feel my heart racing. I try to talk, but not much comes out. All I manage is a strangled, “Why?”
    â€œDon’t you try to talk too much, Sugar. I’ll send your parents in.”
    I close my eyes. When I open them again my parents aren’t there, but Spencer is. He puts his hand on my arm and gives it a little squeeze, but doesn’t say anything.
    â€œWhat is it, Yeats?” I whisper with my scratchy voice. “What happened?”
    Spencer looks uncomfortable, like he’s found the one circumstance he can’t act his way out of.
    â€œI’m not really supposed to tell you. I promised your parents, but I know how you are, and … ” His voice is soft and when he stops, I feel tears press up against the backs of my eyes. I beg: “Please.” I can’t imagine what he could possibly tell me that would be worse than this not knowing.
    He drags a blue chair over, one of the crappy plastic ones they always have in hospitals, and sits down, his hand on my arm.
    â€œWe … we had a car accident.”
    I try to remember something, anything, and I get that flash again of something flying towards us and that one shard of feeling that something has slithered into me that doesn’t belong there.
    â€œAre you okay?” I ask.
    He laughs, but it isn’t a funny sound. It’s a sad one and he turns away. I’ve never seen him like this, and seeing Spencer in pain is the very worst thing, even worse than being in pain myself and the