Family Tree (4 page)

O
pen your eyes.”

An unfamiliar voice drifted overhead. She couldn't tell if the spoken words were in her mind or in the room. The sound floated away into silence, punctuated by hissing and a low hum. Despite the request, she couldn't open her eyes. The room didn't exist. Only blackness. She was swimming in dark water, yet for some reason, she could breathe in and out as though the water nourished her lungs.

Other sounds filled the space around her, but she couldn't identify them—the rhythmic suck and sigh of a machine, maybe a dishwasher or a mechanical pump of some kind. A hydraulic pump?

She smelled . . . something. Flowers in bloom. Maybe bug spray. No, flowers. Lilies. Stargazer lilies.

Lilies of the field. Wasn't that from the Sermon on the Mount? It was the name of a high school play. Yes, her friend Gordy had won the Sidney Poitier role in the production.

“. . . more activity by the hour. She's progressed to minimal consciousness. The night aide caught it. Dr. King ordered another EEG and a new series of scans.”

A stranger's voice. That accent. “Caught” sounded like “cot.” Losing the
r
in “ordered” and “another.” That was known as non-rhotic pronunciation. She remembered this from broadcast journalism training. Lose
the caught-cot merger. Speak the rhotic
r
. Never let anyone guess where you come from.

The mystery speaker's accent was straight out of northern Vermont.

“Help me with this EEG, will you?” Something jarred her head.

Knock it off.

Ma'am, this is a hard-hat area
. Were they putting a hard hat on her? No, a hairnet. No, a swim cap.

Swimmers, take your marks
.

She could see herself bending, coiled like a spring, toes curled over the edge of the starting block. She was one of the fastest swimmers on the high school team, the Switchback Wildcats. Senior year, she'd broken the state record for the one-hundred-meter breast. Senior year, she'd seen her life roll out like an endless, shimmering river, with everything in front of her. Senior year, she'd fallen in love for the first time.

“. . . always wondered how I'd look with short hair like this,” said one of the voices.
Shawt hay-ah
. The non-rhotic
r
.

Beep.
The starting tone buzzed through the aquatic center. Annie plunged.

Dry. Why was her throat dry even though she wasn't thirsty? Why couldn't she swallow? Something stiff confined her neck.
Take it off. Need to breathe
.

She floated some more. Water the same temperature as her body. She had to pee. And then she didn't have to pee. After a while, there were no more physical sensations, only feelings pulsating through her head and neck and chest. Panic and grief. Rage. Why?

She was known for her calm demeanor. Annie will fix it. She fixed people's accents. Lighting problems. Set design. Stuck valves.

Lefty loosey, righty tighty
. With the maple leaf key chain in her hand, she demonstrated.

“See? That movement—it's not random.”

A voice again.

“She's left-handed.”

Another voice.

“I know she's left-handed. So am I.”

Mom
. Mom?

“She looks the same,” said the mom voice. Yes, it was unmistakable. “I don't see any change at all. How can you tell me she's waking up?”

“It's not exactly waking up. It's a transition into a more conscious state. The EEG shows increased activity. It's a hopeful sign.”

A different voice. “People don't suddenly wake up from something like this; they come around gradually, drifting in and out. Annie. Annie, can you open your eyes?”

No. Can't.

“Squeeze my finger.”

No. Can't.

“Can you wiggle your toes?”

No.
Jesus
.

“It can be a lengthy process,” the voice said. “And unpredictable, but we're optimistic. The scans show no permanent damage. Her respiration has been excellent since we removed the tracheostomy tube.”

Trache . . .
what?
Wasn't that like a hole in her windpipe?
Gross
. Was that why it hurt to swallow, to breathe?

“I'm sorry.” The mom voice was thick with tears. “It's just so hard to see . . .”

“I understand. But this is a time to feel encouraged. She's avoided so many of the common complications—pulmonary infection, contractures, joint changes, thrombosis . . . so much that could have gone wrong simply didn't. And that's a good thing.”

“How do I see something good here?” Mom whispered.

“I know it's been difficult for you, but believe me, she's one of the
lucky ones. With this new activity, the care team thinks she's turned the corner. We're staying positive.”

“All right. Then so am I.” Mom's voice, soft with desperate hope. “But if . . . when she wakes up, what if she's different? Will she remember what happened? Will she still be our Annie?”

“It's too soon to know if there will be deficits.”

“What do you mean,
deficits
?” The voice sounded thin and strained. Panicky.

“We have to take this process one step at a time. There'll be lots of testing in the days and weeks to come—cognitive, physical, neurological. Psychological. The results will give us a better idea of the best way to help her.”

“Okay,” the mom voice said, “how will we tell her everything? What if she asks for him? What do I say?”

Him
. Who was he? Someone who felt like a heavy sadness, pressing her down.

“We're going to take each moment as it comes. And of course, we'll continue to monitor her constantly.”

“Oh God. What if—”

“Listen. And, Annie, if you can hear us, you listen, too. You're young and strong and you survived the worst of it. We're expecting you to make a good recovery.”

I'm young, thought Annie. Well, duh.

Then she wondered how old she was. Weird how she couldn't remember . . . She could easily recall being just four or five, in the sugarhouse with Gran.
See how it coats the spatula so perfectly? That means the sap has turned into syrup
.
We can use the thermometer, but we must use our eyes, too.

Then she was ten, standing on the front porch of the farmhouse, watching her father leave in a storm of pink petals from the apple trees. The truck was crammed with moving boxes, and Dad walked with a
stiff, resolute gait. Behind her, sobs drifted from the parlor, where Mom was curled up on the couch while Gran tried to soothe her.

Annie's world had cracked in two that day. She couldn't put it back together because she didn't understand how it had broken apart. There was a crack in her heart, too.

“You should go, Caroline,” someone said. “Get some rest. This process—it can take days, maybe weeks. She'll be monitored round the clock, and we'll call you at the first sign of any change.”

Hesitation. A soft sigh. “I see. So then, I'll be back tomorrow,” said Mom. “In the meantime, call me if there's any change at all. It doesn't matter if it's the middle of the night.”

“Of course. Drive safely.”

Footsteps fading away.
Come back
. The voice in her head was a man's voice. She didn't want to hear it. She tried to listen to the other people in the room.

“. . . knew her in high school. She's from that big family farm on Rush Mountain over in Switchback.” The voice was a gossipy chirp.

“Wow, you're right. I swam against her at State one year. Small world.”

“Ay-up. She used to go around with Fletcher Wyndham. Remember him?”

“Oh my gosh. Who doesn't? She should have kept going.”

Fletcher. Fletcher Wyndham. Annie's mind kept circling back to the name until it matched an image she held in her heart. She remembered the sensation of love that filled every cell of her body, nourishing her like oxygen, warmed her through and through. Did she still love him? The voice had said she used to go around with him, so maybe the love was gone. How had she lost it? Why? What had happened?
We're not finished
. She remembered him saying that to her.
We're not finished
. But of course, they were.

She remembered high school, and swimming and boys, and the most important person in her life—Fletcher Wyndham. There was college
, and Fletcher again, and then there was a great cracking sound and he was gone.

She felt herself sinking as sleep closed over her. A phantom warmth lay across her legs and turned the darkness to a dense orange color, as though a light shone from above. Trying to stay with her thoughts, she wandered in the wilderness, a dreamscape of disjointed images—laughter turning to sadness, a journey to a destination she didn't recognize. After that, she sensed a long blank page with unrecognizable flickers around the edges.

No, she didn't know her age.

She didn't know anything. Only confusion, pain, breathing through water.

Swimmers, take your marks
.

And Annie raced away.

Music. Soundgarden? “The Day I Tried to Live.” And then Aerosmith. “Dream On.” Why? Mom and Dad used to dance to the oldies when they played on the radio. At sugar parties during the tapping and boiling, they'd boogie down while the boom box shook in the sugarhouse. Gran would make fried doughboys sprinkled with maple crystals, and people would come from all over to sample the wares.

During the sugar season, there were parties every weekend on Rush Mountain. It was a time of hopeful transition, a sign that winter was finally yielding to sunny spring. The frozen nights, followed by warming days, caused a thaw, triggering a rush of sap during the daylight hours. The shifting season also brought on a rush of music, food, laughter, as the family hosted gatherings around the big steamy evaporator in the sugarhouse.

Dad used to put a tent board sign out by the road:
Sugar Rush—Warmest Place on the Mountain.

More music drifted through the air—the Police. Hunters & Collectors. The B-52's. Song after song took Annie back to her childhood. “Love Shack” was the most popular dance tune of them all. Only a few people knew that the nickname for the Rush sugarhouse was “the Love Shack.” Even fewer knew the reason for that.

In the winter of her senior year of high school, Annie had lost her virginity in the sugarhouse, surrounded by maple-scented steam as she sweetly yielded to the soft kisses of a boy she thought would be hers forever.

She'd never understood why people said “lost” her virginity. Annie had not lost a thing that night. She had given herself away—virginity, heart, self, soul. To the town bad boy, Fletcher Wyndham. So no, she hadn't lost anything. She'd gained . . . something new and unexpected and achingly beautiful. The world had changed color for her that night, like the crowns of the maples at the first touch of autumn frost.

He's bad for you
. Mom had been adamant about that.

As if Annie's mother had become some kind of relationship expert after Dad left.

The space behind Annie's eyes hurt. She squeezed her eyelids together. Blinked. Big mistake. She felt a sharp flash of light, straight to the brain.
Ouch.

The flashing made her curious, so she blinked some more despite the pain. Tried to rub her eyes, but her hands wouldn't work. Then something brushed her face. Cold drops touched her eyes. She held them shut until the cold was gone. Her hands wanted to work, but something kept holding them back. Tied. Her hands were tied. Not figuratively, but literally. Some kind of padding prevented her from making a fist.

More blinking, more shards of light.
Ouch
. She managed to keep her eyes open at a squint for a moment or two. She could move her eyes but not her head. Unfamiliar room. Plain beige walls. A grid of metal rails on the ceiling. For the camera mounts, right? She remembered an argument about the expense of the camera rails. Many arguments. Pain
again. Not behind her eyes. Somewhere else.
Run
. Run away from the pain.

She had to pee again.

More looking. Blurry light from the rectangular opening overhead, the one that brought her to life when the warm glow passed over her. A skylight?

She missed the sky.

Eyes slitting open again in a squint. Yes, there was a skylight. Shifting her gaze, she saw a row of windows, too. Light from outside, filtered by gauzy drapes, streamed across the floor. Heat from an old-fashioned steam radiator created invisible eddies, wafting upward. Then her eyelids fell down, and she couldn't lift them.

Footsteps. Someone came in. Did . . . something. Moved a pillow. Did something lower down and she suddenly didn't have to pee anymore.

She tried to open her eyes, but they didn't work. She had turned into a ghost again.

The footsteps faded away.

Come back
.

She concentrated on dragging her eyelids up, and this time her eyes stayed open. Confusion and sadness. Grief. Is this what grief was, this weight on her chest?

She remembered the feeling from the day a member of the tree-tapping crew came into the farmhouse and told them about Gramps. He had gone out on a four-wheeler one afternoon to cut a tree, and was crushed when a tractor overturned on him. Years later, there was that bright sunshiny morning when Gran wouldn't wake up.

Yes, Annie knew grief. Closed her eyes, but the pain didn't go away.

She struggled again to lift her eyelids. Images pulsated before her eyes and then slowly resolved into focus. There was a generic quality to the surroundings. Impersonal art prints on the wall. A budget hotel, maybe?

Her gaze moved from skylight to windowsill. Something new
there—a display of knickknacks. And these were not impersonal at all. She was certain she recognized the items from long ago. Forever ago.

Her tallest swim trophy, and a blue ribbon from the state-fair culinary-arts competition, 1998 Junior Chef Division. A copy of Gran's cookbook, its worn and homey cover evoking waves of remembrance. She tried to grab on to the memories, but each one drifted off before it was fully formed, borne away on a wave of liquid pain.