A second chance.

I went to see a dead girl yesterday. I spoke to her and she replied. She heard me and I heard her. I didn’t think this was possible.

I drove many hours to sit and talk to her for minutes. I had the foresight to print out the directions, but the absentmindedness to leave them at home. I waited for a friend to accompany me, as I have spent too much time alone lately, and was late in leaving because of it. The freeway exit was closed, so I got lost trying to find my way around.

The fantastic lady at the receptions desk gave me a room number but no directions, so after a moment and some wrong turns I found myself several stories in the air looking through an open door.

“An open door may tempt a saint.”

There is a magic about open doors; an unspoken promise. The idea that you can walk through this portal and enter a new reality, new air, new surroundings. The uncertain broken mangled me that exists in the Nurse’s station cannot pass through this door into the semi-dark beyond. The trial waiting in here is not for this man. It is for a greater individual than I feel I can be; but still I must.

The grey and haggard lady in bed 1 stares at me, tubes in her nose and need in her eyes. I walk past. I know she is near the window. Rounding the curtain I notice two things. She is tiny; even smaller than I remember. It’s no surprise that we all thought she was so much younger. I thought her hair was darker.

I speak her name and she is hardly aware of me. From what I can see of her arm, raw red and angry, I’m sure that she has some painkillers flowing through her. She looks up and doesn’t smile. I can’t blame her. The antiseptic smell of the hospital and the chattering old woman on the other side of the curtain would rob anyone of a happy face even without the wires and the knowledge of a father’s death.

I call her by name and she responds, looking elsewhere as if uncertain that the voice was mine; peering at a space where I might have been standing in another moment. I tell her I was at her accident.

The one from a few years ago?

“No. Last week. We talked, rather, I talked to you until help arrived. We haven’t… we haven’t actually met.”

Oh.

I’m not sure of what to do, so I set the flowers down on the rolling table next to the foot of her bed. She didn’t notice I was carrying them. Flowers can’t fix this situation anyway. I’m on edge, my mouth is dry. I’m talking to a dead girl, so I guess it’s understandable that I don’t know what to say.

“Are they treating you well? I heard you got out of ICU two days ago.”

The tests, she says. They have to run so many tests. I wish they could test better. Maybe it wouldn’t take so long. If they could test better.

I’m aware of the I-V’s now. I’m aware of the mind numbing cold that is being pumped through her delicate veins to keep her tranquil in the presence of so much horror. I’m aware that she may not even know why I am here and may not remember me after I leave. How is this so different from anyone else in the world, though? She simply has a reason for it. Maybe that should be comforting. I suppose it is in this moment.

I sit because that’s what friends do when they visit. She is so small that even in the normally restrictive hospital bed her frame uses almost no area with her knees tucked up close and the crown of her head resting on the bedside bars a few inches from me.

“I hear they released your mother. Is she gone? Do you still get to see her often?”

Not as often as I used to. With the testing and all.

She moves her head and shifts her body. Wincing, she jerks her head away from the side of the bed and I glimpse the stitches. I don’t remember them from the accident. Maybe that’s where the blood came from.

She starts to lay her head down on the rail again and, wincing, jerks it away in as rapid a motion as the heroin running through her veins will allow. Her tiny legs twist under the blankets; the full motion requiring several attempts before she can lay on her other side, curled up into a minuscule ball of holy humanity nestling her head into the bleached antiseptic of the snow blanket pillow beneath her.

I wish they could test better. Maybe then it wouldn’t take so long. The tests. There are so many tests.

Her voice is slower now. Drugs bearing it down under the sheer weight of that incessant drip-drip-drip. She closes those dark eyes and for a moment, I remember. I remember and I feel sick.

Over the bile and illness rising in my throat I swallow. I ask,”Are you going to take a nap now?”

I think so.

This girl needs sleep. She needs to remove her consciousness and let it blank out. I don’t believe for a minute that the nightmares will leave her alone, but sometimes there is peace is autonomy. A small measure of innocence in unthinking horrors rather than those that stalk you in the waking hours.

We’ve been talking for perhaps 10 minutes. That’s a healthy estimation. I stand to leave her to the dark of her rest and I need to say just one thing; as much to hear my voice say it as for her to hear.

“I don’t know if this means anything, but seeing you alive has made this the best day of my year.”

She turns now, just her head because even though her body is tiny, moving it around requires more effort than this shattered angel can muster. She looks at me with terrible lucid clarity in her eyes; those dark, deep eyes, finally holding a color in my mind. Now she knows me.

Thank you, is all she says. The eyes hold mine for indetermined seconds and close again as she settles her head gently into the pillow so I can clearly see the stitches lacing the side of her head; holding it together. Her breathing settles and begins a rhythmic pace in moments while i watch. The smell of the flowers rises above that of the hospital as I turn and walk out of the room.

Bed 1 asks me if the girl is asleep again. I nod my reply and walk out, uncertain of the feelings; buffeted by relief and unease.

Justin is waiting outside. Justin the monster. Justin the Giant. As if I were her caretaker, her guardian angel, he asks me if he can go see her. In thinking about this I understand why. Justin could eat her in two bites if he were hungry enough.

“Of course. She’s sleeping now, so be quiet.” I guess I am her guardian.

He returns from the room shocked at how small she is; how frail and delicate she seems. We all look small when we are hurt, no matter who you are.

I’m glad for his company on the ride home as I was on the ride down. He is an intensely learned and smart individual with a discerning eye and humor to ply the darkness within all of us.

I’m returning to see this girl again. I make plans to come down twice a week until she is released. I left a note with the flowers with her mothers name on it in hopes that she will call if the need arises. I want to be needed. When so much is gone, what is there left but desire, need, hope. I want to be hope. I want to be someones hope.