Elizabeth Earley
"Oh yes, much worse," she said with a chuckle, utterly dismissing all my hard work. She was not impressed. I stayed quiet then and let her finish cleaning it. She put a white gauze pad delicately against it then taped it in place. When she was done, she patted me on the top of the head and told me to go in and see my sister. My mom was still reading, but not quite as loudly. It was just the three of us in the room, my brother hadn't arrived yet or if he d id, he was down in the cafeteria getting dinner. I sat in the padded chair against the wall and listened to her voice reading. It was only a few more sentences to the end of the article before she folded the magazine closed and put it down. She rubbed her eyes and looked up, exhausted. "Will you come sit with her while I go get something to eat? I'm starving," she said, getting to her feet warily. I brushed passed her as I went to take her seat and she patted my shoulder. "Thanks, honey," she said and walked out, not even noticing my bandage. I sat beside June's bed and held her cold hand. She was propped up on pillows with her head, neck, and back ramrod straight, held in traction by the body and neck brace. In addition to the closed head injury, which was the worst, she had broken her ankle, both her knees, her pelvis in seven places, and her neck. I leaned forward and put my face close to hers, smelling the plastic smell of the thick tube that disappeared into her neck just beneath her Adam's apple, and something else I could never identify but that was always present on her skin. It was like the smell of a leather jacket that had been hanging in a musty closet for too long. I kissed her between the eyes and brushed my bandage against the cool skin of her cheek. "Hi June," I said and watched her face. Sometimes, her eyeballs moved beneath the lids but just then they were still. "Would you like to hear a story?" I asked. It was what she used to ask me late at night when it was dark and we were each in our beds and I couldn't sleep. From my pillow I could see the moon above the trees outside the window, how it laid down soft, white light on the windowsill where shadows of branches tangled in the wind. Her voice would rise from that moonlight, high and sweet, draw it into the room, steal its light, make it her own. That day in her hospital bed, her face was pale and moonlike. Looking at it, I could hear her voice in my head. I told her a story she once told to me, as much as I remembered of it. I wondered if she heard me, certain that somehow, somewhere, she did.
3. There was a routine each day at the hospital: arrive through the west park ing garage after school, pass by the gift shop and cafe, stick my head into the red chapel and quickly check in with God, depress the elevator button that protrudes from the wall like a spigot, wait too long for the doors to slide open 70
FUGUE #35