Anna Quinn - The Night Child

and when she doesn’t speak,

can’t speak

he says,

“ Say it, say, ‘ Kiss me, kiss me ,’”

A nd she hears Sister Rosa then, hears her say, “ Be brave! ” but she is too frightened to be brave and Sister Rosa says, “Pray. Pray to St. Margaret .” Her father’s hand up her Valentine’s dress, burning between her legs and she prays, St. Margaret, please, please help me, please take me away, and over his shoulder, her blurred eyes stare at the wallpaper, one white lamb, two orange kittens, three yellow chicks, one white lamb, two orange kittens, three yellow chicks, and she imagines herself into the pictures, one white lamb, two orange kittens, three yellow chicks, one pink girl, but now she is going away, her legs , her arms and hands and fingers , her face, and now there is no color and now there are no sounds and now there is —

— nothing at all.

The phone rings then, startles Nora. It rings and rings, and finally her hands lift the phone, bring it to her ear, and she hears James. James saying things to her out of the answering machine: “ Nora, Dad’s in a nursing home. Please Nora, just talk to him .” James acting as if everything is fine now, Daddy’s fine now, and then on the phone: her father’s deep voice—“ Nora? Nora? ” His voice stops her blood. How close he sounds, how familiar, as though he’s never been gone, as though nothing has happened.

Her only thought is to run.

She drops the phone and runs down the stairs, runs out the front door, runs down the sidewalk, runs across the bridge. She runs with the intensity of the pursued, through faces and bodies, red lights and sirens. An icy rain pelts down, and within moments, her clothes are soaked through, and her face drips rain. She is drowning, has fallen overboard, swallowed by an omnipotent, lightless sea. Lungs burn, water surges through her, heart closing. She is screaming, “No! No! No!” when the car slams into her. Slams into her body, slams her to the pavement hard.

She awakens in a fog and doesn’t know where she is. A florescent light flickers above, a slight medicine smell, a TV, a strange room. A hospital. Oh, God. A jagged pain rips through her head. Something wrapped tightly around it. She raises her hand to touch it, more pain—an IV stuck in her skin shocks her— God. She looks at her body. Sees a pale yellow cotton gown she doesn’t recognize.

Shit. What happened?

“Mrs. Brown?”

Nora turns to the voice. A heavyset woman in her late fifties, overpermed hair dyed a fake red, white roots a perfect stripe down the middle. She is wearing a blue uniform and a white plastic name tag that says carol. She sits in a chair by her, sets a clipboard down on the nightstand by the bed, and touches Nora’s head, takes her blood pressure and pulse, records the information on her clipboard. Shines a light in her eyes with a small flashlight. “I think the morphine must be wearing off darlin’,” she says. “We’ll give you a bit more in just a little while.”

Nora struggles to sit up, pain shooting everywhere. She opens her mouth to speak, but words don’t come out. Nothing.

“Now, don’t worry about not being able to talk,” Carol says, placing ice chips on Nora’s lips. “It happens sometimes after a concussion. You’ll be fine. Your vitals are good. You have a gash on your head and few bruised ribs, but those will heal up before you know it.” She wipes the melted water from Nora’s mouth. “Doctor Brinkley will be in to see you later. She’s been taking care of you for the last few days, so not to worry. One of Seattle’s best.”

Nora blinks rapidly. Last few days?

“Do you remember anything, darlin’?”

Nora’s eyes panicked and watering.

Carol applies another ice chip. “Some guy nearly ran you over.”

WHAT?

“Four days ago. Over on Forty-Seventh Street. The jerk didn’t even stick around. You were real lucky someone found you and called 911. Though they didn’t stick around, either.” Carol shakes her head. “Hard to say what’s wrong with people these days, they’re so afraid and such.” She pats Nora’s hand. “You could have died if that driver had been going any faster. As it was, he mostly just knocked you off your feet, knocked you out for awhile.” She walks to the window and yanks open the curtains. “Good news is you got an east-facing room. Lots of morning light. Did you know that patients stay an average of 3.67 days less in east-facing rooms?” She goes into the bathroom, comes back with a Dixie cup of water. Brings it to Nora’s lips.

“Once you can talk again, Doctor Brinkley will ask you all kinds of things—see what you remember and what you don’t. You know, like, are you married, do you have kids, who’s the president, that kind of thing.”

Fuckfuckfuck.

“Of course, I know you have a husband. And a daughter—Fiona is it? They’ve come in every day, and your brother, James, too, but we can’t let them in until you’re cleared by Dr. Brinkley.”

James? James was here? And then she remembers—her father—her father’s voice on the phone. Her body goes immediately stiff. Oh, God, please don’t let my father be here. No, no, no, please no. And adrenaline shoots and her heart races then and her throat tightens. She can’t breathe and she twists and jerks and now the car slams into her, cracking her open, and the needle rips out, kiss me, kiss me my princess, and she shrieks but there are no sounds, and Carol murmuring and now the needle in her arm and again swimming, swimming, swimming in the cold and she can’t keep her head above water.

Nora lies staring at the drip, drip, drip of the IV: the clear liquid trickles down the tube into the needle; the needle pierces the vein. Don’t think about him. Don’t think about him. Don’t think about him . She tries not to think about him, but she can’t stop thinking about him.

And now Carol brings her breakfast, encourages her to sit by the window, puts the plastic tray on her lap, says this is such a nice room for morning coffee because of the early sunlight, reminds her with a wink about the luck of an east-facing room, and leaves her, says she’ll be back soon. Nora holds onto the tray. Out the window a girl catches snowflakes on her tongue, but now the girl’s tongue becomes her own tongue on the skin of her father, and now the wheezing of a bus becomes the wheezing of his body on her body and she braces herself for impact and the tray crashes to the floor and she doesn’t know what is true and what is not, and now Carol is here stroking her hair saying everything will be all right, holding out a pink pill saying, “Here, darlin’, take this.” And Nora is tired of horror flicks in her mind, tired of the smells and sounds of him and opens her mouth and Carol says, “ Okay, yes, darlin’ ,” and folds the pink pill into Nora’s hand and offers a tiny paper cup of water with her other hand, and Nora places the pill into her mouth and swallows the water but the pill is too large and suddenly she is trying to swallow him and she gags and chokes and Carol has to thump her hard on the back until the pill shoots like a bullet from her mouth. And Carol holds her tightly, coos to her, inches her back to bed and covers her up, tells her these things happen, flashbacks happen, darlin’, and oh, you wouldn’t believe the flashbacks her son Daniel had the first year he returned from Iraq. “ You wouldn’t believe it,” Carol says over and over again until it is a song in Nora’s head, a lullaby soothing her breath back to normal.