Page 53 of The Caretaker
“Sorry I haven’t kept in touch much. I’m calling with a question.”
“Shoot,” he said. “I’ll do my best to answer it.”
“Did someone come around the hospital claiming to know me after the accident?”
“No,” he said. “Not that I can remember.”
“Are you sure?”
There was a long pause as he thought about it. “As a matter of fact, there was a guy. Visiting hours were over, but I’d snuck back up hoping to peek in on you without being noticed. They’d brought you out of the coma earlier that day, and you hadn’t handled the news well. I kind of thought you’d still be asleep from the heavy sedation they’d put you under, but when I got off the elevator you were awake and hysterical. Shouting the word “liar” in between asking for Stacey like you couldn’t remember what had happened. You’d wake up really disoriented in the weeks after too. Each time, we’d have to break the news to you again.” His tone held anguish, as if reliving it right then.
“Anyway, this guy was backing out of your room in a daze as the doctors and nurses piled in. He was pretty shaken up. After you’d been sedated again, I asked him how he knew you. He’dsaid you two were friends. I knew all your friends, and he wasn’t one of them. He seemed unstable. Looked like he hadn’t slept or changed his clothes in days, so I asked him to leave. One of the nurses told me later that she’d seen him hanging out in a stairwell a few times. I caught him the next day lurking outside your room, chewing his nails as he watched you sleep through the door window. I told him if he ever showed up again I’d have him arrested. We implemented a strict visitors list after that, and made sure every doctor and nurse on each shift knew about it. Security personnel too.”
“I don’t remember any of that,” I said, my heart breaking for Solace.
“That’s understandable.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this later on?”
“Honestly, it slipped my mind. There were far more important things to worry about, like breaking it to you that Stacey’s parents had buried her while you were in a coma. We thought you’d never come back from that news,” he whispered. “Washe a friend of yours?”
“No,” I said quickly, then to myself thought:He was more.“Were Stacey and I having problems?”
“What, like marital problems?”
“Yeah.”
“No way,” he scoffed. “You two were the most solid couple I’d ever come across. She was your whole world, Noon.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling weary.
“Are you remembering things?” he asked, the hope unmistakable.
“Not really. Just flashes occasionally, and dreams. More of the same. Nothing solid.”
“Well, don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll come back eventually.”
We were quiet for a while. Me staring out the windshield, watching as the night breeze caught a few pieces of litter inside its current.
“You know,” Leland started. “I’ve got some time on my hands. I could meet up with you.”
“Now’s not a good time,” I said, hating to crush him. “Being away is helping. I don’t want to get distracted. Wouldn’t want any setbacks, you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, letting me off the hook. “I’m here if you need me.”
“Hey,” I said hurriedly, hoping to catch him before he hung up.
“Yeah?”
I pressed back into the headrest again. “What I said about not remembering… That wasn’t exactly true. There is something I remember.” I hadn’t wanted to give him false hope. Hadn’t wanted him to believe this small kernel would amount to an entire crop. Telling him was the right thing to do, though. Telling him was equivalent to saying thank you. “It’s nothing, really. Something small. May not even be worth mentioning,” I said, minimizing it, attempting to manage his expectations.
“Nothing is too small,” Leland said. “Tell me.”
The memory came to me while in the shower after the photo shoot. I hadn’t even told Solace. Maybe I’d been managing his expectations too, especially after he’d been visibly affected by my episode earlier that night. The one he’d had to talk me down from.
It was a split-second memory of Leland and me as boys. Of Leland being sad, of his sadness somehow having to do with his mother, and me trying to make that sadness go away. It was the one memory of us that came with a feeling, not just an image. We’d forged a bond that night huddled together in my tiny bedroom. I’d felt it in my heart, in real time.
“Noon?” he asked, checking to make sure I was still there.
