Perfect Strangers

“…But if you ask me, babe, he was one sad individual. All the obsession with war and death? Blech. And don’t get me started on the whole bullfighting thing. That’s just toxic masculinity, right there. You can keep your beloved Ernest Hemingway—I’m sticking with Nicholas Sparks. At least he knows how to write a happy ending.”

Dressed in a pretty floral summer dress, her dark hair gathered into a low bun at the base of her neck, Kelly snaps shut the book in her hand and sighs.

She’s sitting across from me in an uncomfortable looking metal chair. The room is cold, white, and smells sharply of antiseptic. The door to the room is open. Outside in the hall, a bald man dressed in a starched white uniform pushes a mechanical buffer over the yellow linoleum floor.

The sound it makes is loud and irritating.

“Anyway, I gotta get going. I’ll be back again tomorrow, same time as usual. Hopefully we can get through this story so I can read you something more cheerful.” Under her breath, she says, “The friggin’ obituaries would be more cheerful.”

Reaching for a bulky striped handbag on the small plastic table next to her chair, Kelly stuffs the book into it.

I catch sight of the title—For Whom the Bell Tolls—and make a small sound of grief.

Jerking her head up, Kelly stares at me with long-lashed brown eyes. Eyes quickly growing huge in disbelief.

In a raspy, reed-thin voice that sounds as if it hasn’t been used in a while, I whisper, “I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other. And feel now. Thou hast no heart but mine.”

I start to sob. Deep, chest-wracking sobs that are unstoppable.

Kelly leaps to her feet, frantically shouting, “Doctor! Help! Nurse—somebody get in here!” She bolts to the door, grabs the orderly in the hall by the arm, and points at me with a shaking finger. “We need help in here right now!” she hollers into his startled face.

In my lap is an afghan I somehow know was knitted for me by Estelle. I look at my hands, thin and white, curled atop the afghan into ugly, bent shapes. Distorted shapes, like claws.

I try to move my legs, but can’t.

And the chair I’m sitting in has large rubber wheels on either side.

Through my sobs, I start to scream again.

The drug I’m administered through a shot in the arm works quickly. The tall African-American nurse who gives it to me speaks to me in dulcet tones, gently stroking my damp hair off my forehead and promising me everything is going to be okay as the room begins to spin, then darken.

“You’re safe, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “Don’t worry, you’re safe here.”

When I awaken sometime later, my room is full of people in white lab coats. They all stare at me with bated breath and an air of heightened expectation, as if I’ve returned from the dead.

Which apparently I have.

“Olivia,” says one of them. “Hello. How are you feeling?”

He’s short, elderly, and seems to be in charge. His bowtie is slightly askew. His French accent is pronounced.

“Let me guess,” I say dully. “You’re Edmond.”

His smile looks delighted. I must be doing well. “Yes, I’m Dr. Chevalier! Very good. Very good.”

Everyone nods and murmurs to each other how very good it is, indeed.

I think I’m going to be sick. I want to cover my mouth with my hand, but can’t. The will to do it and the effect it’s supposed to have are disconnected.

“Why can’t I move my arms or legs?”

That shuts everyone up for a good thirty seconds. Edmond makes a motion that the others should leave, which they do, whispering amongst themselves. When the room is emptied, Edmond approaches my bedside—apparently I was transferred to a bed while unconscious—and rests his hand on the metal safety rail alongside it.

“We don’t have to talk now, Olivia. Why don’t you rest for a while? We can speak later.”

I gaze at him, willing his head to explode. “Don’t fucking patronize me, Edmond. I’m in no mood to be treated like a child.”

If he’s insulted or surprised by my words, he doesn’t show it. He merely looks at me with fatherly concern, his cotton lab coat so white it’s almost blinding.

When he asks, “Can you tell me where you are?” I understand it’s a test. He’s worried I’m too fragile to deal with the reason I’m paralyzed. He’s thinks starting with a little light incarceration will get the conversation flowing.

“All signs point to the Rockland Psychiatric Center in Orangeburg, New York.”

He takes a moment to assess my expression. Whatever he finds there must satisfy him, because he smiles. “Correct. And do you know why you’re here?”

I search my memory. It’s fuzzy, at best. “Because…I’m unwell?”

Another pause to examine my face. Then, his French accent flowing gently over the words, he says, “You’ve had some mental health challenges that we’re helping you with.”

Feeling sick again, I close my eyes. “I had a mental breakdown.”

“A single, isolated episode of catatonic psychosis,” he replies in a soothing tone. Like it’s really not so bad since it only happened once. “You’ve been with us for some time now.”

“How long?”

“Three months.”

Since the start of summer. I never took a trip to Paris. That trip was all inside my head.

The pain that forms around my heart is so huge and burning it leaves me breathless.

James.

I want to kill myself, but without a working set of arms or legs, I doubt that will be possible.

“Your husband is coming to visit you tonight.”

My eyes snap open. I stare at Edmond in horror. “Husband?”

He says warily, “Yes. Christopher. Do you remember him?”

Oh my God. I’m still married to Chris. I know if I start screaming again, I’ll get another shot in the arm, so I simply bite my tongue and nod, focusing on the poster someone tacked up on the wall opposite my bed.

Glowing an unearthly shade of violet and blue, the lavender fields of Provence carpet a lush valley, stretching far into the distance until they disappear into mist.

“Hey, Olivia.”

With an expression like he’s attending his best friend’s funeral, Chris stands in the doorway to my room. His blond hair is greasy and disheveled. There’s a food stain on the front of his T-shirt, just below the Budweiser logo. He’s wearing threadbare jeans and a pair of ratty Converse sneakers that look as if he’s had them since college.

He’s also short and paunchy, with the red nose and sallow skin tone one acquires through years of hard drinking.

When I smile, thinking how funny it is that I’d made him so much more handsome and sophisticated in my hallucination, his eyes narrow.

He doesn’t like me smiling at him. Interesting.

“Can I come in?”

I try to gesture toward the ugly metal chair Kelly sat in earlier, but can’t. So far, no one at the hospital has been willing to tell me what’s wrong with my body. I’m guessing they think it would be too much for me to handle, considering I’ve only just returned from my trip to La La Land.

But I’ll bet I’m about to find out from dear hubby, here.

“Have a seat.”

Chris glances at the chair, but apparently decides he won’t be staying that long, because he remains standing. He edges a few feet closer to my bed. “So you’re awake.”

And you’re not the US ambassador to the UN. A hysterical laugh threatens to break from my lips, but I fight it back. I can’t have the natives thinking I’m a total whack job, or I’ll never get out of this place.

“I’m awake.” I watch him shift his weight from foot to foot. His gaze darts all around the room but refuses to stay on me for more than a second.

I wonder why he’s so unsettled. Obviously, having your spouse wake up unexpectedly from a catatonic episode would be a tad startling for anyone, but there are no hugs or tears, no I’ve missed you so much, darling. He’s bothered by something else.

My memories surrounding our relationship are murky, almost as if my brain is willfully trying to block them out.

The memories or him.

He says, “You still…?” With his index finger, he makes a loopy motion next to one of his ears.

Charming. Biting back a smartass reply, I try to be polite. “I’m feeling good, thank you.”

“Huh. Well, that’s great. That’s just great.”

He’s got the best-friend-funeral expression again. Apparently my unexpected return from comaville isn’t exactly cause for a party.

“How are you, Chris?”

He’d been staring at my claw-shaped hands resting in my lap with faint distaste, but now his gaze flashes up to mine. He snaps, “That supposed to be fuckin’ funny or something?”

Ah. So the baggage between us is hefty and full of dismembered bodies.

“No. I’m sorry. I’m having trouble with my memory. Are we…” There’s no delicate way to say it. And you’ve literally got nothing left to lose. Full steam ahead. “Are we estranged?”Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

He snorts as if I’ve said something extremely funny. “Estranged? More like strangers. After what happened to Emmie, you totally checked out.”

What happened to Emmie.

Suddenly, my head is flooded with images—images too horrible to bear.

I’m in the car, backing out of our driveway. It’s a big car, Chris’s car, an older model SUV. I never liked it, but my sporty little Honda had been rear-ended the week before and was in the shop. So it was the loud, hulking Bronco I was taking to the grocery store that day.

The Bronco that didn’t have a back up camera.

Or back up sensors.

Or good brakes.

At first, I think that bump is the recycle can. It was trash day, and for some unknown reason, the garbage collectors always left the garbage cans in the middle of the driveway when they were emptied. I hadn’t looked when I’d opened the garage door, and the Bronco sat so high I probably wouldn’t have been able to see the cans, anyway.

But when I heard our next door neighbor Beth’s scream and looked over to see her white-faced and horrified at the edge of her yard as she stared at the ground behind the car, I knew what I’d hit wasn’t a garbage can.

Then, when I threw the car into park and jumped out, I discovered the worst. The impossible.

I ran over a child.

My child.

I thought she was taking a nap inside. Chris was home, it was a Saturday afternoon, he was supposed to be watching her. But he was drinking beer in front of the television and didn’t notice when she wandered out.

Her small body was crushed under the Bronco’s big rear wheel. She was dead long before the ambulance arrived. She was cold by the time they loaded her onto the gurney and closed the doors.

Emmie’s eyes were wide open when she died. They were hazel, like her father’s. A gorgeous, deep green-brown flecked with gold.

This time when I start to scream, the nice African-American orderly has to give me three shots before he can get me to stop.