Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

If anyone would look hard now, though, they would see that she is close to blinking. As close as you can be without succeeding, and she feels like that should be noticeable. If Shannon would just pay attention, she would notice. Tara is almost certain of this. But Shannon is immersed in a phone call, and she seems concerned.

She’s holding her cell phone to her ear with her left hand and a ballpoint pen hovering above a notepad in her right, and her all-business attitude just crumbled with whatever has been said. Tara watches her face and feels a cold and certain assurance that this is the inevitable call that means the decision has been made. They are going to end her life. If life was what you called this frozen purgatory. Then Shannon speaks, and Tara realizes that it has nothing to do with her at all.

“She might have killed someone? The same woman I spoke to? Abby Kaplan, yes, that was her name, but what in the world...” She stops, clearly interrupted.

Tara is trying to follow the conversation, but it’s confusing — Abby Kaplan was one of the two strangers who’d visited her. Older than the second one, the one who pretended to be Justin Loveless and stared into Tara’s eyes like a hunter looking through a scope. That man seems right for a murderer; Abby Kaplan does not. Abby Kaplan is supposed to be part of her team, someone to help. The college hired her.

Top-notch recruiting, Hammel, Tara thinks, put that one in your brochures. She wants to laugh, and even though she can’t, it is still a pleasant sensation. Terror is often present, and frustration is constant, but humor is beginning to appear now and then to leaven these, as if her brain has tired of the relentless sorrow. She sometimes thinks that if she could simply communicate her mere existence, the rest could be endured. She could learn to have a life with some pleasure, then. Not the life she’d imagined, of course, but still one worth living. If they just knew that she was in here. But without that...

“Her own boss?” Shannon says into the phone. “Are you kidding me? I just... no, listen, I don’t give a damn about how Hammel is going to find a better firm, what does that even mean? Your first hire just killed her boss, and now you’ll admit that you could have done better?”

Bless you, Shannon, Tara thinks.

The pen descends to the notepad, but no words are written, and Shannon’s mouth screws tight. Then she says, “I know I’m not a police officer, that’s not a revelatory bit of information, but I still possess common sense, and maybe I should talk to the police, don’t you think?”

Shannon lifts the ballpoint pen away from the pad and clicks it rapidly while she listens. The sound seems large to Tara; something about that small click embeds in her brain in a different way than other, louder things. Why was that?

Suddenly, Tara’s thumb twitches.

Stunned, she tries to do it again, without success. But... it just moved. She is positive of that. Now that her attention is on it and she can’t replicate the feat, though, the sensation begins to feel false, a phantom movement, a cruel illusion. And yet, for an instant, she’d been certain . It came from the sound, almost, from watching Shannon click that pen and hearing the accompanying sound and then it was as if her muscle memory had fired and Tara had mimicked the gesture.

But she tries again and again, and her thumb rests limply against her index finger.

She’s lost track of Shannon’s words, but now hears her say, “Listen, I might have been one of the last people to talk to her. I sure think it would be useful if I could talk directly to the police instead of through a handler from the college.”

Pause, and Tara hopes she’ll begin clicking the pen again, but the pause is brief and then Shannon says, “Fine, just please give me a call back so I can explain this to my family.”

Shannon disconnects, lowers the phone, and stares at the wall with an expression that Tara hasn’t seen many times on her sister’s face: helplessness. The only memories Tara has of this look come from early childhood, in the days after her father’s death, when her mother’s depression was the darkest, the battle with medications the worst; even big sister Shannon had no idea what to do.

Put down that phone, Shannon had told Tara one terrible day after Tara had picked up the phone to call 911 for their unconscious mother. Shannon’s helplessness was gone from her face, replaced by fury. If you call, they’ll take us away, don’t you understand that?

Tara had put down the phone. Shannon sat with their mother until dawn, washing her face with a damp cloth and making sure that her head was tilted to the side so she couldn’t choke on her own vomit. Then she made Tara breakfast and sent her to school with instructions to keep her mouth shut about the situation at home; Shannon was handling it.

She had, too. Somehow, she had handled it.

Shannon turns to her, one eyebrow cocked, and Tara could swear that they’ve bridged the void somehow. This happens with people occasionally, with Shannon more than anyone else and most frequently when they are alone in the room. Now Shannon looks at her and says, “I think you should have gone to a state school, mi hermana . You could’ve saved a lot of money in student loans for the same level of incompetence.”

Tara laughs. She doesn’t move or make a sound, of course, but she laughs, and some part of her believes that Shannon knows it.

“The college hired an investigator for your case,” Shannon says, “who then apparently killed her boss and ran away. Talk about bringing in the best and the brightest.”

She’s smiling; she always seems happiest when she’s being sarcastic or cutting, a trait that makes relationships a struggle for her. Then the smile fades, her focus shifts away from Tara, and it is evident that she feels like she is alone in the room again.

Which breaks Tara’s heart.

“Abby seemed like she cared,” Shannon says softly, clearly speaking to herself now. Then she gives a little snap-out-of-it head shake, pulls a chair to the side of the bed, sits, and looks hard at Tara’s face.

“Regardless, she gave me a good idea, T. I did some reading last night, and I made some calls this morning, and I have good news — you get to watch a movie.”

Watch a movie? The television is always on. Mostly, Tara hates that. If she were able to change the channel, it wouldn’t be so bad, but when they leave it on just for background noise, like she’s a nervous puppy, it’s infuriating.

“Dr. Pine himself approved it,” Shannon says. “Even Rick and Mom say it’s worth a try. Not just a movie, though, T. — you get a field trip.” She takes Tara’s limp hand. Her touch is warm and wonderful. So few people are willing to let their touches linger.

My thumb can move, Tara thinks. Do it again, damn it, do it now, you stupid thumb, while someone has the chance to notice.

But her thumb lies motionless against Shannon’s palm.

“They’re going to put you in an ambulance and take you to a lab about an hour away, at a university hospital where there’s a coma research program, and then they’ll hook you up to even more of these...” She lifts one of the many wires that lead from Tara’s body to the monitors beside the bed. “And then they’re going to show you a movie and wait to see if the computers can tell whether you respond to it. Whether you can track it, whether you feel anything watching it.” Shannon’s voice wavers, and she bites her lower lip and looks away.

Tara realizes just how important this test must be. If she doesn’t pass this one, if she can’t somehow let these computers know that she is in here... big decisions are going to be made soon.