Page 59 of One Year Ago in Spain
Matías made a big show of eating the rest of the almendrados and then tipping the crumbs from the bag into his mouth. At least, that’s what Claire thought he was doing. She couldn’t actually see.
Her phone chimed with several text notifications, and then it rang again.
On the couch, Matías looked nearly solid now.
“Claire, take the call.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. See?” He rose from the sofa and remained steady on his feet.
Her phone was still ringing.
“Okay. Then sorry. I have to go!” Claire ran toward the open door, taking a route along the perimeter of the studio to make sure she wouldn’t plow through anything invisible.
But by the time she hurtled out of the building, Aracely had hung up.
Claire punched at her phone to call her back as she sprinted toward the subway.
She had to get to the hospital.
She had to know if, by recklessly touching Matías’s soul, she’d stepped over an uncrossable line.
Claire
She got Aracelyon the phone steps before the subway entrance.
“Claire—”
“What happened?”
“We don’t know! Luis and I were sitting with Matías and his brain and heart activity had been elevated again, in a good way. We thought maybe it was a sign that he would come out of the coma. But a few minutes ago, his heart rate shot up, past what it would even for someone who was sprinting, and all the alarms went off. The nurses kicked us out of the room and the doctors are coming.”
“Oh god.”
“Claire, you have to get back to the hospital.”
“I just left Matías’s studio. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
—
The subway ridefelt interminable. It seemed like the conductor stopped at every station longer than he had to, and just when the train was about to depart, a tardy passenger would inevitably come stampeding down the stairs, and do-gooder passengers would hold the doors open for thirty more precious seconds.
Come on, come on, come on,Claire thought. She paced thelength of the car, constantly checking the subway map on the wall as if she could possibly will them to the next stations faster. But every time she did that, the train would inevitably slow down in the middle of the tunnel. Or it would take its sweet time cruising into a stop, and then just sit there, and sit there, and sit there. Probably waiting for some unseen traffic ahead to clear, but still.
She crammed in her earbuds and tried to listen to a Spanish language lesson. But Claire’s mind would not focus. Verb conjugations and new vocabulary fluttered from the phone to her ears and then straight out into the train stations, not bothering to stick around in her head for even a second. Sentences she had understood at the end of the previous lesson yesterday at Matías’s bedside now sounded like gibberish to her.
No, even less, because she hardly even registered the sounds; the worried chatter of her thoughts drowned all the Spanish out.
When they finally reached her stop, Claire flung herself out of the train and ran all the way to the hospital, shoving through people on the sidewalks, yelling “¡Perdón!” over and over while not really meaning it, because she didn’t care how they felt. All she cared about was getting to Matías, and it had taken way too long.
She burst into the hospital and almost crashed into an orderly in the lobby. She barely managed to avoid him as she hurried onward, into the elevator, up to the third floor, and down the hall past the other wards.
As soon as she ran through the doors of Matías’s unit, Soledad and Aracely descended on her, both crying, both gathering Claire into their arms.
“Oh god. Is it bad?” she choked out. Claire both wanted anddidn’twant to know what the doctors had concluded while she was stuck on the subway.
“We still don’t know anything,” Aracely said.
