Karen tries to move an arm and the effort is torture. Her nose itches, but her tendons are too unexercised for her to reach and scratch. Her body is in complete but dreadfully creaky shape. Her jaw hurts and she feels like a chopped-down tree. I'm so far gone. My body! Wait—this is too much. I can't worry about this now. She is immobile but alert, and she is curious. She shuts her eyes and opens them and finds all that she sees hard to believe. She doesn't want to talk to strangers. She wants it to be Sunday morning. She wants it to be just any other day. Just imagine—all the other people in the world have been awake for seventeen years!
Wendy leaves the room; there's noise outside the door; she comes back with a phone—no cord—and seeing that Karen's awake, asks her to say hi to Mom and Dad, which seems odd as she only just saw them last night. After the call, she quizzed Wendy: "What year is it again, Wendy?"
"1997."
"Oh. Oh my."
"Karen, I want to ask you a favor." Wendy's voice was hedgy. "Hamilton and Pam are really sick, but they'll be okay soon enough. They need something to give them hope."
"They're hopeless?"
"In a way. They're without hope. It's in their heads. Can I bring them up here with you? It'll help them." "Are they really doing drugs?"Doing drugs—what an old-fashioned word. "Yes. Pathetic as it sounds. Drugs are different these days. You'll learn it all soon. How do you feel?"
"Fantastically awake. They OD'd?"
"Yup."
"Bring them in—I want to have lots of people around me. But only people I know."
"Your mom won't be too thrilled."
"I'll deal with her." She smacks her lips. "Can I have a sip of water?" Wendy rushes over and holds a glass. Karen notices her wedding ring. "Thanks. How long have you and Linus been married?"
George and Lois nudge the door open soundlessly. The room is dim. The parents are startled to see Megan and Richard there on the bed with her—Unorthodox, but then hospitals aren't the same citadels of reflex cruelty and loneliness they once were. Richard is snoring and Megan is breathing warmly. And there is Karen. Her eyes are open and smiling. "Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad," she says under her breath. "Shhhhh … the kids are asleep." Her jaw aches.
Her voice! She's back! George blubbers while smooching Karen's cheeks, oblivious to the scene he creates. "Hi Dad." George is lost to emotion, as Karen smiles and raises happy eyebrows over George's shoulders toward Lois. Karen winks. It is hard for Karen to be sentimental, because in her mind she has only had a quick nap since 1979.
Richard awakens just then. "Hi, George. Oh. Excuse me. Here. Oh. Let me move out of the way and down off this thing. Lois. Hi—" Richard clambers off, the top part of his silver astronaut suit dragging behind him like a beaver tail. George hugs Richard. Lois, meanwhile, has stayed away from the bed. Her purse is clutched to her chest. She comes nearer. She locks eyeballs with her daughter.
"Hey, MOOT." Karen says.
There is a silence. "Hello, Karen." Another silence. "Welcome back." Lois gives Karen a small kiss.George and Richard shut up. Karen sees that time has done little to alter her mother. Some gray hair here, a wrinkle there—the posture and voice are timeless. "You look as good as ever, Mom," Karen says.
"Thank you, dear." Lois has not visited Karen for almost a year now. She is finding it hard to overlook Karen's deterioration. "Can you eat now, sweetie? Are you hungry?" The old food games have begun already. "I brought an owl figurine to cheer you up."
"Thanks." It's as if seventeen years have never happened.
Megan touches her mother, holds her neck and rubs it with her hands. Karen's gray hair is limp and sad and has been cut with blunt scissors; Megan holds it to her nose and the hair smells dusty and sweet. All her life Megan has felt jinxed, that people around her would come to bad ends. Richard, too, has felt the same way for years, though neither of them knew it of the other. Megan has been dressing in black for so long now, and has been chasing an early death; it seemed only fitting—the drugs, the fearsome boyfriends, and the fast cars. Why would anybody miss her? Richard—whoops Dad—might miss her, but then he'd most likely go drink himself into the center of the Earth to forget her. That's unfair. He did quit drinking for real. But then didn't he fob her off on Lois and George? Lois—glad to have me out of her hair. George? George is nice, but he's always liked Karen better.
Megan soon accompanies Richard, Lois, George, Wendy, and Linus into another room. The hallways have been cleared. Wheels squeak. It's quiet.
The group arrives at a new, larger room. Inside, Uncle Hamilton and Aunt Pam are already there, conked out in separate beds, resembling dead extras in a sci-fi movie. Drugged out losers, Megan thinks, but then she reminds herself that she really has no right to condemn on that front. Where does this judgmental streak come from? Megan decides she's going to go straight edge: She's never going to do a drug ever again. Even aspirin. She is going to be the mother that Karen never had. She is going to protect her—keep her smart, make herwhole. And then Megan remembers why she is even at the hospitaclass="underline" last night with Skitter on the mattress in Yale's basement, a pot dealer friend of Skitter. She'd told Linus that the morning-after pill was for her friend, Jenny, but it wasn't. Megan knows that she is pregnant. It was meant to be.
17 EVERYBODY'S LYING
"I want them all in the same room because they'll all give each other intentive to get well."
Pam and Hamilton hear Wendy's voice and open their fogged eyes to see white curtains. They hear background snatches of other voices. Hamilton's throat hacks up a clump of blood-phlegm; Wendy, standing beside him says poker-faced, "Welcome back to prime time, douche bag."
"Wendy? Ooh. Ahh. I feel like a paper sack of burning dog shit. What time is it?"
"Time to change your life, you screwed-up junkie."
"Hamilton—are you there?" calls Pam.
"Assuming we're not dead, yes, dear. What time is it, Wendy? Where are we? What are we doing here?" Lifting his head feels like lifting a swarm of hornets,
"It's Sunday, kids. And you are both in the hospital. You're here for emergency supernumerary mammectomies."
"Super what*."
"We're removing your third nipples."
" What? Ow! Don't talk like that, Wendy."
"Hospital humor. It's my style—oh and don't give me that little wounded look: 'Ooh, I'm so surprised.' You came one eyelash close to death, you bastard." She walks over and looks into Hamilton's eyes and then slaps him gently.
"Ow, shit, Wendy, whaddya do that for? You screwed up a fantastic high. I was on a roll last night."
"Why? You were almost dead last night, scuzz bucket." Wendy approaches Pam in the bed to the left and pecks her on the forehead. "You both scared the hell out us. You're too old to be so pathetic doing junk. I don't need to be friends with junkie losers. And having said that, I want you to sit up and have a look across the room."
Pam says, "My head hurts, I—"
"Just look, you two losers."
With two push-button controls, Wendy elevates Pam and Hamilton's backrests, then opens the curtains, allowing them to see Richard and Karen across the room; Richard is holding Karen's arm, wagging it back and forth, and the two of them are making faces. Karen is wearing a shirt Lois brought along with her—the same Levi's shirt she wore in high schooclass="underline" rough cotton, embroidered parakeets.