I thought the worst part was over the moment I opened my eyes.
I was wrong. The worst part was still walking down the hallway toward my room, wearing my daughter’s face.
My grandson knew it. He was nine years old, and he had been guarding my bed for eleven days because he knew it.
So I closed my eyes, kept perfectly still, and listened.
Part One: Eleven Days
The first thing I knew was a sound. A steady, patient beeping somewhere to my left.
The second thing was that my body didn’t feel like mine. My arm was heavy with tape and tubes. My mouth tasted like metal. The ceiling above me was the wrong color, the light was the wrong kind of white, and for a long, frightening moment I had no idea where I was or how I’d gotten there.
Later, a doctor would explain it gently.
A car accident. A head injury. Eleven days of unconsciousness.
Eleven days of my life, simply gone.
But in that first minute, I didn’t know any of that. All I knew was that something warm was pressed against my side.
I turned my head, slowly, because everything hurt.
And there he was.
My grandson, Walter. Nine years old, curled up in a chair that had been dragged right up against my bed, his head resting on the edge of my mattress. One small hand was still wrapped around a fistful of my blanket, like he’d fallen asleep holding on and refused to let go even in his dreams.
Something in my chest cracked open.
Walter had lived with me since he was five, since the day we buried my son, Daniel. His mother had left long before that. So it had been the two of us, in my little house,
for four years. I packed his lunches. I walked him to school. I knew that he liked the crusts cut off on Mondays but not on Fridays, for reasons he’d never explain. I knew which night-light stayed on when the bad dreams came.
I knew him the way you know your own heartbeat.
