Noelle August - Boomerang

“How critical, Mom?” Mia says finally, her voice thin and shaky. It’s quiet again as she listens. Then, “but she’s going to live, right? She’ll be okay, right?”

Fuck the job. Fuck everything.

I put my arm around her shoulders, and her eyes are still far away, in Los Angeles, but her weight shifts slightly onto me.

“Okay,” Mia says. “Okay. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine, okay? You just worry about Nana. I love you. Bye.” She hands Adam his phone and says, “Thank you,” and we’re all standing there waiting for her to explain, but she doesn’t. She’s off the phone, but it’s like she’s still listening to her mother’s voice.

“Mia,” I say. “What happened to Nana?”

She looks up. When she speaks, it’s only to me. “She was hit by a car. She’s in bad shape. All broken. They don’t even know how badly yet. And she has some internal bleeding, and she hit her head, and—” her voice breaks, and I tighten my arms around her.

“It’s okay, Mia. What else?”

“The doctors don’t know if she’ll make it.”

I draw her against me because she’s so close to the edge now, so close to losing control. I can feel it like it’s me, my own body. And I can’t give her privacy but I can give her me. My arms will have to do right now.

“I’m going back with her,” I say to Adam.

It should have been a question. He’s my boss. But it wasn’t.

Paolo’s here. I only notice him when he speaks. “We just checked all the major airlines,” he says. “Flights are booked out of Vegas until noon. You’d get there faster if you drove.”

Adam looks from Paolo to me. He fishes his keys out of his pocket and holds them out. “It’s faster than her Prius,” he says, handing them to me.

I take them, tuck Mia under my arm, and we’re gone.

Back to Los Angeles.

Mia

Q: Who always has your back?

The drive back to Los Angeles goes by in a blur. Highway. Desert. Dust.

My dad calls at one point to fill me in, and I find out that my grandmother wandered down the canyon road in her nightgown. In the dead of night. The car that struck her had a seventeen-year-old girl at the wheel, the daughter of new neighbors my parents just had over for dinner.

I give Ethan the report. “Nana’s in surgery to stop the bleeding and repair a punctured lung. She’s got a broken hip, a broken nose, and one of her legs is completely shattered. They still don’t know . . .” But I can’t say the rest of it.

“It’s going to be okay, Curls,” Ethan says, his voice soft but so filled with certainty, he almost convinces me. He takes my hand and squeezes it. “Let’s just get you there.”

And he does. Faster than should be possible, we pull up to the entrance of Cedars-Sinai.

“I’ll park and find you,” he says. Then he lifts my hand to his lips, and immediately, the tears I’ve been working so hard not to shed spill out of me. “I’ll be right there. Go.”

Vision fogged, I race through the sliding glass doors and find my way through a maze of sterile hallways to the Surgical Intensive Care Unit, in a totally different building. There they have me call from the lobby before I’m allowed to head up to the surgical floor. By the time the elevator doors close, my body is drenched in sweat, and I can’t stop the tears from coming. I feel like I’m in a nightmare where letters blur to nothing in front of my eyes and where every step feels like it takes an inhuman effort.

Finally, I find the waiting area. My mom sits on a vinyl-cushioned chair, staring up at a monitor that lists patient names and statuses. She sees me and gets to her feet. We collide in a clumsy hug, and my mom’s tears wet my cheek. I tighten my arms around her, and we stand there for a bit, then she sinks into a chair and pulls me down beside her.

“Where’s Dad?”

“He went for coffee,” she replies. “And your grandmother’s on her way out of her first surgery. They stopped the bleeding and repaired the damage to her lung. I guess they did what they could with her broken bones too. But . . .” It feels like my heart stops beating while I wait for her to finish. “We have to see if she wakes from surgery. Her brain’s injured, and she just might not . . . regain consciousness.”

I think about the photos she just showed me and of that bold, wry look on her face, the same expression I’ve seen a thousand times. That girl who marched in Alabama, who was one of only nineteen women in all of New York State to receive a paralegal degree in 1963, still lives in my grandmother. I can’t imagine this is the end of that person or the end of the life she’s lived since.

Even though she’s been slipping away for years, I’m not ready to let her go.

“She’ll wake up,” I say. “She’s so strong.”

“And stubborn.”

I smile. “That too.”

My dad arrives with a cardboard holder loaded with coffee cups. He sets them down on a scratched laminate table and gives me a fierce hug. Then he smooths the hair back from my face and kisses my forehead.

“Where’s Ethan?” he asks.

“He’ll be up soon.”

“I’m glad he brought you,” my mother says. “I couldn’t stand to think of you traveling here alone.”

I know what she means. I’ve had this feeling since we left Las Vegas of being more vulnerable, of having spent my life in some kind of protective bubble that burst with Nana’s accident. I know it’s crazy, that no such bubble exists, but I’m still drenched in that feeling of fragility.

“What happened? Why was she out there this time?”

My mom shoots a look at my dad, but neither of them speaks.

“What? What it is?”

My dad sits down next to me and puts a cup of coffee in my hands. “She got on a tear this afternoon. Going on and on about that girl again. The one she thinks keeps stealing things from her.”

“Who is that girl? Is it one of the home health aides?” I don’t believe she’s stealing from Nana, but I can believe my Nana would get that idea in her head and not let go. “What was she missing this time?”

“Her photos,” my mom says softly, and she gives me a strange, sad look. “And the film reel from Selma.”

“She gave those to me.” I start, and then the reality sweeps through me, and it’s like a punch in the gut. “Wait. I’m the girl?” How can that be?

But I can’t deny the sense of it. The way she constantly tried to give me things—her jewelry and old photos. That video. And the last home health aide I met was Grace, an older woman. I don’t know why I didn’t put it together sooner.

I sit with it for a while, a cold ache in my chest. It’s devastating to imagine myself so thoroughly rewritten in my Nana’s mind. It feels like such a betrayal. But I know that’s wishful thinking in a way, like my protective bubble. Even though it’s totally unfair, it’s as real to my Nana as the rest of her unreliable thoughts.

A doctor comes out in scrubs, his surgical mask wadded beneath his chin. At the same moment, the elevator doors open, and Ethan steps out. Seeing the doctor, he hangs back, but my mom beckons him over.

“Well, she’s a fighter,” the doctor says. “She’s coming around from the anesthesia.”

I start to sob on the spot, I’m so happy.

My mom squeezes my hand. “Oh, thank God.”

“But she’s got a long uphill battle, and a tough one given your reports of dementia. Her leg’s going to be held together with pins for months, and between that and damage to her spine, it’s unlikely she’ll ever walk again.”

“But she’s alive,” my dad points out, and the doctor nods.

He goes on to detail her injuries, which were even more horrific and extensive than I’d imagined, and then takes us through her surgeries, which sound even more gruesome—though completely miraculous, too.

“When can we see her?” I ask.

“You can go in now, though she’ll be asleep for a while still. They only let one person into SICU at a time and only for five minutes each hour. Your grandmother still requires a great deal of care, so we need to keep the room as clear as possible.”

“Mia Moré,” my dad says. “Why don’t you go in first?”

“Me? Shouldn’t that be Mom?”

But my mother shakes her head and says, “No, he’s right. You go. Then we’ll find you a flight back to Las Vegas.”

“No, I don’t need to—”

“Mia,” my mother says. “Your grandmother’s in excellent hands, and we’re only allowed to see her for five minutes at a time. She’d be thoroughly livid to think she kept you from an opportunity. You can see her tomorrow morning and then head back.”

“I can’t leave her.”

“We’ll call you if anything happens, kiddo,” my dad says. “And you’ll be back in what? A day and a half? We’ll be fine.”

“And I know you don’t want to let Adam down,” my mom adds. “Okay?”

I look at the two of them and feel a surge of love so strong it practically lifts me off my feet.

“Fine,” I tell them. “You win.” To Ethan, I add. “I’ll be out in five minutes, okay?”

He nods and takes a seat in one of the uncomfortable chairs. When he looks at me, his eyes are filled with warmth and concern. “I’ll be right here,” he says. “For as long as you need.”

I follow the nurse down a long hall with glass-fronted recovery suites on either side. She pushes aside the drape in my grandmother’s room and pats my shoulder as I pass.

“You come from strong stock, my dear,” she says.

But at the moment, I feel anything but strong. I feel like my body’s been pulled inside out, and all my nerves are on the outside, aching and exposed.

I tremble as I approach Nana’s bed. Tears spill from my eyes; my nose runs; and I’m so afraid of what I’ll see, but my feet move me across the linoleum floor to the shrunken figure lying half-buried between tubes and wires, encased in bandages.

This person looks nothing like Nana. Her face is bloated and has a strange, jaundiced sheen. Her eyelids are purple bruises, practically the only part of her visible atop an oxygen mask and a white sheet pulled up to her chin.

I hover there, taking a painful inventory of the metal cage encasing her leg, the bandages on her arms, across her chest, the blood seeping through gauze. I want to touch her, to give her a kiss, but I’m afraid I’ll shatter her with even a breath.

Drawing a chair up to her bed, I see her arm dangling off the bed. I brush my fingers along a patch of soft skin on the inside of her wrist and then tuck her hand back beneath the sheet. I close my eyes and pray for her, sending all of my love and strength to her body.

“Mia,” she said to me the other day. “It all goes so fast, but you never feel different inside.” She’d put her hand on my heart and said, “We’re the same age. In here.”

I put my own hand against my heart, feeling her life beat inside me. Then I get up to go find Ethan.

Ethan

Q: Finish this phrase: The feeling of skin on skin is____?

Where are we going?” Mia asks.

It’s a testament to how deep in shock she still is that I’m almost pulling up to my apartment. She’s been quiet since we left the hospital and it seemed more important to respect her mood than to get into logistics, so I didn’t run my plan by her.

“My place.” I edge Adam’s Bugatti against the curb. This has to be the first time this car’s ever been parallel-parked. “It’s almost rush hour, so I thought we could make a pit stop for a few hours.” I turn off the engine, and the deep thrum quiets. “You’re exhausted, Mia. You need to rest. And you haven’t eaten all day. I’d feel better if you had some food in you.”

She looks at me for a long moment, and I can’t tell whether she’s worried about getting back to Vegas or Nana or what. But then she nods and says, “Okay. That sounds like a good idea.”

My apartment is clean and empty. Mia stops just inside the door and looks around. “Your place looks so different,” she says after a long moment.

It must. I’ve adjusted to the new furniture—the fresh flowers and colorful rugs and abstract prints on the walls—but I can only imagine how it’s hitting Mia, considering what she saw the last time she was here.

“Isis,” I say, dropping Adam’s keys on a table. “She civilized us. They’re out for the night, so we’ve got the place to ourselves.” I realize that might sound like I’m looking for something to happen between us, so I add, “I figured you’d appreciate the quiet.”

I lead her to the couch and make her sit down. Then I unzip her boots and set them aside. Mia watches me with tired eyes.