Second Star

34

I’ve been awake for a while now, but I haven’t opened my eyes yet. I’m not sure I want to open my eyes ever again. I try to force myself back to sleep, but it’s so noisy that I wonder how I ever slept here at all. There is the beep of some machine near my head that seems to be registering my pulse, the sound of footsteps, an echo of laughter, and, from somewhere nearby, an urgent call for a nurse.

I’m in a hospital. That much is obvious. I can feel an IV stuck into my left arm. My entire body aches, and my neck feels so stiff that I don’t think I can turn my head; I’ll learn later that my collarbone is broken, along with several ribs.

It’s my lungs that give me away; I try to take a deep breath and instead begin coughing violently. My lungs still feel like they’re full of water.

I wonder just how close I came to drowning. I hear footsteps rushing in, a nurse coming to check on me.

I open my eyes.

“Well hello there, sleepyhead,” the nurse says in an overly cheerful voice. Her scrubs are pink with little teddy bears running down the middle. Maybe I’m in the pediatric unit.

I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t stop coughing. The nurse hands me a plastic cup of water, and I shake my head. Water is the last thing I need. I need someone to stick their hands down my throat and wring out my water-soaked lungs. But that’s not, obviously, an option, so I reach for the cup. That’s when I discover that my arms are in restraints. Loosely, but still. I look accusingly at the nurse, sweat beading up at the back of my neck despite the fact that the room is cool.

“I’ll untie that for you,” the nurse says obligingly, undoing the restraint around my right arm. She watches as I drink. I empty the cup slowly, scared that the minute I finish she’s going to tie me back up.

But instead she says she’s going to get my parents. Her tone seems to imply that she’ll be back in just a minute, so it’s not worth my trying anything. I get the feeling this is some kind of test to see what I’ll do with my new freedom. So I don’t untie my other wrist.

My parents come in, walking in step like soldiers marching into battle. They don’t rush to hug me; instead they stand at the foot of my bed, like they’re scared that if they touch me I’ll break.

“Where am I exactly?” I ask. I don’t bother saying hello.

The water is the last thing I remember. Jas’s arms around me. He must have gotten me back to the boat somehow; they must have made it back to the harbor and rushed us to the hospital. I must have swallowed too much water, lost consciousness.

“You’re in the hospital,” my mother says.

I glance at my left arm, still tightly bound by restraints. I don’t think I’m in the pediatric wing after all.

“Where exactly in the hospital am I?” I ask.

My mother glances at the nurse and bites her lip.

“Mom?” I prompt.

It’s the nurse who speaks, but by the time she does, the answer has already become clear: I’m in the psych ward. She calls it “the psychiatric unit,” but we both know that’s just a euphemism.

I try to sit up, the loose hospital pajamas I’m wearing rustling like they’re made of paper. “Why am I tied up?”

“You kept trying to run away,” my mother blurts out, then looks apologetically at the nurse. The nurse comes and sits on the edge of my bed and takes my hand in hers. I have to resist the urge to glance accusingly at my parents; this is their job, not some stranger’s, to sit beside me and comfort me.

“You’ve been unconscious for days. We think you were having something like nightmares. Do you remember what you saw?”

I shake my head.

“You called out names, insisted that you had to go back and make sure they were okay. You kept trying to get up. We finally had to restrain you, just to help you stay put.”

She laughs as she says the last words, like she’s trying to make the restraints seem cute. Like I was a kid falling out of bed and they didn’t want me to hurt myself.

“Do you remember what names you called?”

I shake my head, though I can guess. Belle is probably somewhere in this hospital, too, her leg wrapped in bandages, crisscrossed with stitches. Maybe Jas is waiting outside; maybe they wouldn’t let him in because he’s not family.

“Can I see them?” I ask finally.

“See who?”

“Belle,” I say, wincing at the memory of the bloody gash in her leg. “I’ll go to her room if she can’t be moved. And Pete and Jas.”

The nurse cocks her head to the side, the same way Nana does when she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Evidently, the names have no meaning to her, beyond being the names I cried out in the night.

“Come on,” I say, begging. “The people who brought me here. The people who were on the boat with me.”

“What boat, Wendy?”

“The boat. The only boat that was stupid enough to go out on the water.”

My parents look desperately at the nurse, as though they believe she has all the answers. I narrow my eyes, staring at her. Nurses wear name tags, and this woman doesn’t. I don’t think she is the type to have forgotten it at home.

I sit up, the remaining restraint tightening around my left wrist, the muscles in my back aching in protest. “What’s your name?” I ask.

“Mary,” she answers.

“Are you a nurse?”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I’m your doctor, Wendy. Your therapist.”

I nod; I think I knew that.

“Wendy,” Mary continues, her voice frustratingly calm, a perfectly rehearsed monotone. “You were found on the sand near Pebble Beach; you’d tried to swim out into the storm, but the water was just too rough.”

I shake my head. “That’s not what happened,” I begin to say.

But Mary continues. “You were found just down the beach from where the police found your brothers’ surfboards. Were you looking for John and Michael?”

“Yes,” I say too quickly. “I mean, no. I mean, when I went there, I thought that maybe I could find them.”

My parents exchange a look. Each time I glance their way they seem more stricken than the last.

I shake my head. “But I know that they drowned out there. I understand that now.”

Mary lowers her achingly calm voice like we’re about to share a secret. “Did you think you could join them?”

I open my mouth to say no, but I close it before any words can come out. Because I remember being in the water, shivering in the cold, believing that I might be able to find them still, if I just let myself sink.

“Wendy,” Mary says, “we don’t have to cover everything today. You’re awake, you’re coherent, you’re not trying to run.” She leans over and unties the restraint, but my left arm stays resting on the bed. “That’s better isn’t it?” she says, like she’s done me some huge favor.

“Wait,” I say, desperate. Somehow Mary took control of this conversation, changed the subject on me. I try to get it back on track. “Belle, Pete, Jas, the captain—where are they? The boat made it back to the harbor, didn’t it?”

Mary looks at me blankly, barely even blinking as the words tumble out of my mouth. I try to explain: I went out with my friends that day, to watch them surf. Conditions were rough. Belle got hurt. I got thrown overboard.

My heart is pounding in my chest.

Mary just shakes her head firmly. “No boats were allowed out on the water that day,” she says. “The Coast Guard shut the harbor down.”

“I know,” I answer. “We shouldn’t have gone out there.” Maybe I just need to sound contrite. Maybe they’re just mad at me for taking the risks I took.

But then a realization washes over me, just another wave crashing over my head.

“You said I was found on the beach? No one brought me here?” Mary nods, smiling, pleased that I’ve begun to understand. But I know that she’s the one who doesn’t understand.

I must have drifted away somehow, far from the boat and Jas and Pete and Belle. The current carried me back to shore. That’s why I was shouting for them in my sleep, begging to go back and find them.

I sit up quickly, so fast that it startles Mary, who backs away from me, her hands out in front of her as though she thinks I might hurt her. But instead I stand. My broken bones shoot pain through my body defiantly and my legs wobble underneath me, as though the muscles have forgotten how to hold me up. I wonder just how long I was lying in that bed.

“Where are my clothes?” I ask, looking not at Mary but at my parents. “Come on,” I plead. “We have to go. They haven’t even looked for them. They might be alive.” Surely my parents at least will spring into action once they understand: a boat is missing with four people on it. Send out the Coast Guard, search and rescue, the National Guard, whoever takes over at times like this.

But my parents avoid my gaze, and I don’t see Mary press the little yellow button she wears tucked into the waistband of her pants. Later, I’ll learn that it’s called a panic button. Today, I just learn that when she presses it, people much stronger than I am enter the room and force me back into the bed.

I struggle at first. I call for Belle; she’d be strong enough to escape these guys, even with the gash in her leg. I shout the word Kensington, the word Pete, the words Witch Tree. I try to shout Jas’s name, but the word gets caught behind the lump in my throat, choking me. By the time they’re tying the restraints around my wrists again, I’ve lost the strength to fight anymore.

Finally, I ask, “What do you mean, something like nightmares?”

Mary doesn’t blink, doesn’t break eye contact for a second, before she says the word hallucinations.

Where the restraints touch my wrists, my skin burns like it’s on fire.