Crash: The Wild Sequence, Book Two Read online

  “I’m gonna be right outside, okay?” She squeezes my fingers tight. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m gonna wait right here until they’ve fixed you up.” And so quietly, so quietly: “jeg er glad i deg.”

  My Norwegian is mostly swearing, but Hanne’s been like my sister long enough for me to know that one. Not that it’s like her to say I love you.

  I guess I’m really fucked.

  The doctor appears again, touching something that tugs on my hand. “Count back from one hundred for me, James.”

  I don’t really care about anything at all.

  Nothing matters.

  Hanne, my second sister. Wherever Chase is. Brooke, stumbling about on the snow.

  “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, nine…”

  Raquel

  When is love over?

  We like to pretend it’s as simple as dating the end of a relationship. We broke up on Christmas, on my birthday, on a Wednesday, on the fifth. But that’s the description of a machine’s process, not the human heart.

  Love has roots, and they go deep. When they come up, it’s not without disturbing the earth about them.

  One year ago I made the decision never to receive a call like the one I wake up to. I sacrificed everything I loved to make sure that I never had to listen to a faraway nurse saying these words. The easy way out, Hanne said, but it wasn’t easy. I tore off a living, breathing part of myself to protect the greater whole.

  It’s amazing what you’ll do, when you’re desperate. Like an animal in a trap, I chewed off a part of myself to keep the rest of me alive.

  If Hanne thinks that was easy, she’s an idiot.

  I did everything I could to avoid this call because I didn’t think I could survive it—that greater, phantom pain lurking in the future like a predator. I couldn’t see a way to exist beyond hearing those words. A message which would turn the world so utterly upside down that I would be lost, a tiny vessel on a great, uncaring ocean.

  I gave up everything just to prevent this call, and now it’s happening.

  There’s a scream inside of me that won’t come out. I slam into the unforgiving wall of the universe, and fate doesn’t care about my choices at all.

  “Raquel Sfeir. James Schneider’s fiancée?”

  The woman only wants confirmation. She can’t know she’s found nothing solid at all.

  JJ’s fiancée. I was, once. Now…

  I’ll think about it, in these moments that spread to hours, the hours that bleed together to one long unbearable moment.

  The bond between JJ and I could never come off as easily as that ring.

  I don’t even remember what she says. Spine. Operation. Stabilize. Concussion. Unclear. Come.

  I know those things as feelings instead of words. A knowledge that comes instantaneously, or has always been there, as if the tie between JJ and I was never broken.

  One year ago, I decided I would never receive this call. I was sure that I couldn’t survive it. It lurked in the future, an undateable certainty. A break in my dreams, beyond which everything was too dark to make out.

  What came after that call would be an unthinkable, unknowable existence.

  And now it has happened, even after my choice. After JJ’s. After my sacrifice.

  I didn’t know what I would do when I received this call.

  Now that I’ve heard that voice on the other end of the line, I don’t have to think at all.

  My feet lead me to a taxi. To Charles de Gaulle airport.

  To JJ, to whom the worst has happened.

  I’ve moved beyond time. In the artificial light of Vancouver Airport I stand disconnected, out of place. It could be day or night or neither.

  The border officer looks up from my passport. “What’s the purpose of your visit, Ms. Sfeir?”

  I’m here to see my ex-fiancé.

  I’m here to visit a past I told myself I’d buried.

  I’ve flown halfway across the world for a lost cause.

  I force myself to speak, the lies ashes in my mouth. “I’m here to see an old friend. He’s in hospital.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  The sound of the stamp still echoes in my ears as my feet carry me on and on, to another taxi, another sidewalk.

  An old friend. It could mean a long-time friend. It could mean a friend who was, but now isn’t.

  It could mean, it could…

  But I don’t know what anything means anymore.

  * * *

  Why am I here?

  I stand in one of the restrooms in Vancouver General, and beneath my feet the world tips and sways, all of its steadiness gone.

  The woman in the restroom mirror has no answers for me. She’s as lost as she’s tired. Bone tired, the kind that goes deep. The sickly fluorescent light leaves sleepless shadows on her sallow skin. Her eyes are bloodshot and wide.

  Focus. I reach beneath the faucet, ducking to flick the tepid water over my skin. Focus. It’s what I teach them to do—athletes, business executives, entrepreneurs. Visualize what will happen.

  But when I close my eyes the only thing I can see is JJ’s broken body, contorted in a tomb of snow.

  The future that was always coming for me has arrived, and nothing I did could stop it.

  Whatever I tried, I couldn’t save—

  “Stop it.”

  Thank god no one’s here to hear me talking to myself. Once I’ve dried my face with a rough paper towel I turn back to the mirror, taking a deep breath. It creaks painfully through my chest.

  I can do this. I will do this. I am doing this.

  My hands are shaking, but I still manage to straighten my collar and neaten the buttons of my blouse. I sweep powder over my face and apply balm to my lips. I loosen my ponytail and brush it out before fixing it neatly again, every strand in its place.

  And then I stand, waiting, with no more armor left to put on. In the mirror a woman looks back to me. She’s small in her trench coat. Lost. Though she’s presentable enough, all the perfectly coiffed hair in the world couldn’t hide the look in her eyes.

  Haunted.

  Like I’ve seen a ghost.

  The ping of my cell makes me start. Beneath the six missed calls, Claire’s new messages blink at me.

  Why did they call you?!

  He’s going to be fine. I don’t think you should go

  Hey?

  Please reply to me. Don’t do this to yourself

  Why are you going?

  Why. It feels like an accusation. I want to throw it back to her. To the world. To myself, since I’m the one who got on that goddamn plane.

  Why am I here?

  Why have I been dragged back into this thing I tried to leave?

  Why did he keep flipping and flipping that coin which we all knew would one day come up tails?

  Why does my chest hurt so much I can hardly breathe?

  I’ll call you later, I tap back, autocorrect covering for the shaky fumbling of my fingers.

  * * *

  His room.

  I stop and stare at the door, and the feet which led me here won’t do anything at all. As if only opening that door will make things real.

  As if by standing here forever, what happened won’t have happened.

  I stand alone in the corridor, nausea writhing in my belly and my pulse pounding my ears, and don’t know if I go in. If I stay out. What it means that I was called. The significance of what I was and wasn’t told. If I could even remember what I was told, around the fog in my head, the endless confusion of the mixed-up now.

  Beyond that door I can feel him, unseen. The air between us is packed with things said and unsaid, with the wreckage not only of us but of something more.

  There’s nothing I want more than to go in there and be with him.

  There’s nothing I want less.

  Not because I’m angry—though I am angry, so much so that it’s a sick bile taste in the back of my throat.

  Not because he
betrayed me.

  Because if I go any closer, I might break into a thousand pieces.

  I have always loved JJ Schneider.

  He always loved his sport more than me.

  Now my feet have carried me here as if it isn’t a choice. As if we’re still tied together.

  There’s a place beyond pain. A place where your heart has taken all that it can, and you are left numb.

  I stand and look through the glass at JJ’s unconscious body, and around me the world is only darkness. An empty wasteland, and the memories come rushing in.

  It can’t be JJ on that bed. Not my JJ. Not the man who picked me up and whirled me around when he met me in airports. Not the man whose body moved over mine in the night. Not the one who hiked with me, who did yoga with me, who danced with me every summer, slowly and lazily twisting over the festival field.

  My JJ is golden and glowing, his honey-blond hair ruffled by his fingers, his skin tan over lean muscles. This man is pale and withered, his closed eyes sunken deep into his skull.

  There’s so much. There’s so little. I reach up and press my hand to the safety glass, my fingertips touching tentative before I press my flat palm to the coldness.

  His name is in my mouth, but I can’t say it. It tastes of tears. I hear myself as if I’m underwater: quiet, desperate sobs. Hopeless noises that I’m too weak to hold back.

  I never meant for this to happen. Not ever.

  JJ lies wrapped and motionless, and only the beeping of his machines tells me that the man who I used to think was mine is still alive.

  JJ

  What’s left after you lose it all?

  When I wake up, my old life is dead.

  It all fades in and out. The drugs. The pain that pushes through them in jagged scrapes and a low throbbing.

  Doctors’ faces. Nurses. The beeping of machines.

  I have a concussion. I know enough to understand that. It’s not like I could miss it with how confused I am. With the headache that no painkillers can touch.

  There was an avalanche. I remember it hazily, like a dream. Brooke was in it, too, but she’s okay.

  Somehow she walked out with a broken arm.

  Me…

  I woke up with a metal spine, and the certainty that I’ve lost it all. Lost everything.

  As I lie in my bed and drift, I keep thinking if I just blink hard enough I’ll wake up properly. I’ll be out of this nightmare. I’ll be normal. Life will be as it was—as it should be.

  This nightmare, though—it’s my real life.

  I lie on my bed and feel like I’m a hundred million miles away from everything.

  Adrift, alone, in a sea of misery and pain and confusion.

  * * *

  They won’t tell me what’s going on.

  The surgery was a success, they say. Your spine is stable, they say. The scans are looking good.

  But no one will answer the questions that matter. They say I have to wait to see the doctor later. When? “When things have had a chance to settle.”

  As if this isn’t my life. As if it isn’t everything.

  The worst bit is, I can see it on their faces when I ask, over and over: will I board again?

  No, their faces say.

  The nurses.

  My parents.

  My friends might tell me the truth, if I’d see them, but I can’t. I won’t. I want them so badly to be here. But at the same time, seeing them would kill me.

  I can’t see them yet. Not until I know that I can—that I’ll be able to—

  I sleep and wait until the doctor can finally see me, late in the evening.

  “Are you sure you don’t want your family here?”

  I swallow down a surge of nausea and force myself to focus on the doctor.

  “I want to know first,” I croak back, the words coming up like lumps of sandpaper through my throat. “You can tell them after.”

  The doctor sighs like he’d really rather not. In his hands he fiddles with my chart, looking at the figures as if they might have an answer.

  “The operation was a success. Your spine is stable—”

  I shake my head, wincing against the pain of it. “I know. They told me. I want to know how long it’s going to take to get back to snowboarding.”

  The doctor keeps looking at me. His control over his expression is good—but not good enough to hide the tiny wince of his eyes.

  I’m going to be sick.

  “When you first came in yesterday, James, I wasn’t sure you were going to be able to walk again.”

  My chest is tight, like all that snow is still piled up over me, crushing my life out. “The physio says I can start standing up tomorrow.”

  The doctor nods like he doesn’t know that already. “We’re all very happy with how your operation went. You’ll be in here for five days, a week at the longest, getting your feet back under you. Then we can talk about longer-term rehab. For what happened to you—this really is incredible.” He flashes me a smile.

  I could punch it. If I could move. If I weren’t trapped here, in a body that’s broken, with a mind that’s surging with fear and rage I’ve never felt before.

  “When am I boarding?” I say again. When he reaches out to touch my hand I jerk it away. “I mean it. Next winter? The winter after?”

  The doctor’s smile is sad. “James, it’s far too early to be discussing this…”

  I want to know. I’m desperate for it. I want this thing to hit me, now, so I don’t have to live with it hanging over me. With these unbearable, crushing moments before the doctor speaks.

  “Tell me.”

  He sighs, flicking through the chart again before he looks back up at me. “I don’t think it’s realistic to discuss you being able to snowboard like you used to. With the damage your spine has already taken—those jumps…”

  There’s a rushing in my ears. I’ve squeezed my hands into fists so tight that they hurt.

  “What do you mean?” My voice sounds hollow. “Of course I’m going to be able to.”

  The doctor shrugs helplessly. “If those shards had moved another millimeter or two into your spinal canal, we’d be having a very different conversation. Do you understand? It’s a miracle that you’ll walk out of this hospital. Be grateful for that.”

  The room rocks on its axis.

  Everything’s darker than it was before. I can’t make my hands into fists anymore. They’re shaking. I’m shaking.

  Someone is shouting.

  “You don’t know me! Just because you’ve seen inside my fucking spine doesn’t mean you know about me!”

  It’s me. Me shouting, my chest heaving, my throat on fire, my face wet.

  I have to ride again.

  I’m going to ride again.

  I’ve already lost the woman I love. I lost her because of this thing.

  If I lose boarding now…

  I have nothing left.

  Raquel

  In silence I sit with my ex-fiancé’s family and the doctor.

  The air is thick with unspoken words. A looming, growing pressure to match the storm system that’s blowing in from the moody Pacific outside. Robin keeps worrying the tissue in her hands. Bob is staring at the window, watching crows ride the snowy gusts above the street outside.

  In my lap I turn my folded sweater over and over, smoothing down imaginary creases, picking infinitesimal pieces of lint from the cashmere.

  There’s a sound, now and again, that comes from the deepest part of Robin’s core. Her lips are motionless, pressed thin and white, but only a mother could make that noise.

  I’m so sorry, I want to say to her, but the words were already so much ash the first time I tried to get them out. They wouldn’t mean anything—nothing important—and anyhow, they wouldn’t come. They weren’t necessary.

  I was wandering the corridors when JJ’s mother found me. Shocked and shaken, unable to process what I’d seen. The moment she saw me she grabbed me close, and her dark eyes were like h
is. For years, Robin and Bob Schneider were my family. My not-yet-in-laws, I called them. The people who would be two of the four grandparents of my babies.

  When I sent back JJ’s ring, I knew what I was doing. I knew that his family—his parents, his sister, her own family—would pass out of my life. I thought that I’d managed it. It hurt, and I cried, but I wrote Robin to tell her that I still loved her and I was thankful, and I walked away. I thought it was over.

  Now every sound she makes stabs into my heart, and I realize that while my relationship with JJ clearly ended, my relationship with Robin never did.

  Not once since I arrived has Robin Schneider asked why I’m here. She’s simply accepted me like the family I used to be.

  I sit beside my mother-not-in-law, my left hand in her lap, and she clings to it as if holding onto me is all that prevents her from drowning.

  Doctor Liu is young, fresh-faced, and every now and again he repeats the important words of his information. Like burst.

  I write it in neat cursive, beneath thoracolumbar junction and cage. B-u-r-s-t. I look at it for a long beat, because if I looked at Robin—if I saw the shaking I can feel through my off hand—I don’t think I could cope.

  “What does burst mean?” I ask, my voice steady despite the storm inside of me.

  The doctor’s voice is earnest, steady. I think I’m grateful that he’s so matter-of-fact. And yet does it feel wrong to JJ’s parents, too—that this man who held JJ’s life quite literally in his hands feels nothing for him?

  He carved pumpkins, I want to say, stupidly. Every year. He made waffles on holiday mornings. He would pick me up and throw me into the pool.

  Dr. Liu raises his hands to demonstrate in the air. “When the force of the avalanche caught James against the tree, the impact on his spine caused fragments of vertebrae—little shards of bone—to break free. During the operation, we had to clear those fragments away so that they no longer threatened James’ spinal cord.” He makes a disturbing slashing motion with one finger. “We then placed a cage into his spine to stabilize the vertebrae. Over time, the bone will fuse with the implant.”