they quickly exit the room. Not a good sign.
“Yes,” he says quietly. “You were pronounced DOA by the ambulance technicians.”
He gives me a minute to take this in. The sky is turning a deeper shade of gray; the sun must be setting somewhere beyond the bank of clouds. I wonder what day it is.
“You’d been underwater for at least two hours before the firefighters were able to pull you out of the well.”
“A well.” Such a small word for such a terrifying abyss.
“An improperly sealed well in the basement, yes. You fell through the plywood covering into about thirty feet of water. They tried to resuscitate you…”
Tried?
“But you didn’t have a pulse; you weren’t breathing and your body was stiff. So you were brought to the morgue. Prematurely, I guess we can say.”
Understatement of the century. “That’s what you meant by litigant. The hospital is afraid I’m going to sue.”
“Well, yes.” Dr. Conway slips his pen in his pocket and grabs a small metal stool on wheels. He sits on it, looking at the polished linoleum floor for a few moments, obviously thinking through what to say next.
“To be honest, we don’t know for sure what happened. There are cases of hypothermia where children who’ve been underwater in extremely cold temperatures have been revived after an hour. But never an adult. And never after such an extended period of time. You didn’t regain consciousness for almost twenty-four hours. It’s a good thing that the coroner called in sick…”
I’m not sure I want to know the reason why, but I can guess. For a moment neither one of us says anything. I listen to the blip, blip, blip of the heart monitor.
“Is there anyone you want us to call?”
Is there? Aunt Lucy, who I don’t know very well outside of our lovely time together preparing for my parents’ funeral, or my neighbor Doug, who could at least tell my landlord to not throw my stuff out just yet. Nate’s probably busy getting my obituary prepped for the next day’s paper (Mac got his headline, the little fucker). But no, I have no one really in my life, which makes an entirely depressing situation even worse, so that it’s hard to appreciate the fact that I did wake up before two inexperienced residents dissected my still living body.
“There was a girl in the ambulance,” says Dr. Conway, who is starting to sound distant, but in a pleasant way.
“Lisa,” I manage to say as my eyelids begin to droop. I struggle but can’t manage to remember her last name. The darkness is softly edging into my consciousness again, and I feel like my body is slowly stretching out, like I’m as long as the hospital room—no, make that as long as the New Goshen River. Me like these drugs.
“Crosslands,” I say, wanting to add more, but then I drift to a place where I can’t say or do anything else, and I listen as the door quietly clicks shut behind the doctor. I am left partly awake, partly asleep and completely prey to the cold, dark thoughts that creep in through the windowsill, past the door.
My parents’ obituary gnaws at me. If I’m honest with myself—an act I try to avoid as much as possible—the painful truth is I wouldn’t have been able to add much more.
My mother had a near-obsessive dedication to the domestic arts, which in the age of feminism are not arts at all—they’re conceptual chains of bondage imposed by a patriarchal society that serves to demean women. This translates in my generation to pulling out one’s laundry from the dryer, giving it a good shake, and assigning a kind of retro-chic factor to wrinkled and worn clothes. But if you had entered our ranch house on any given day during my childhood, you would have had to admit that there was an artist at work, or maybe even a domestic dominatrix. For one thing, every article of cloth, including washrags, dinner linens, and my underwear, was steamed, pressed and ironed into submission with a lavender scent. Then there was the food.
“Yes,” he says quietly. “You were pronounced DOA by the ambulance technicians.”
He gives me a minute to take this in. The sky is turning a deeper shade of gray; the sun must be setting somewhere beyond the bank of clouds. I wonder what day it is.
“You’d been underwater for at least two hours before the firefighters were able to pull you out of the well.”
“A well.” Such a small word for such a terrifying abyss.
“An improperly sealed well in the basement, yes. You fell through the plywood covering into about thirty feet of water. They tried to resuscitate you…”
Tried?
“But you didn’t have a pulse; you weren’t breathing and your body was stiff. So you were brought to the morgue. Prematurely, I guess we can say.”
Understatement of the century. “That’s what you meant by litigant. The hospital is afraid I’m going to sue.”
“Well, yes.” Dr. Conway slips his pen in his pocket and grabs a small metal stool on wheels. He sits on it, looking at the polished linoleum floor for a few moments, obviously thinking through what to say next.
“To be honest, we don’t know for sure what happened. There are cases of hypothermia where children who’ve been underwater in extremely cold temperatures have been revived after an hour. But never an adult. And never after such an extended period of time. You didn’t regain consciousness for almost twenty-four hours. It’s a good thing that the coroner called in sick…”
I’m not sure I want to know the reason why, but I can guess. For a moment neither one of us says anything. I listen to the blip, blip, blip of the heart monitor.
“Is there anyone you want us to call?”
Is there? Aunt Lucy, who I don’t know very well outside of our lovely time together preparing for my parents’ funeral, or my neighbor Doug, who could at least tell my landlord to not throw my stuff out just yet. Nate’s probably busy getting my obituary prepped for the next day’s paper (Mac got his headline, the little fucker). But no, I have no one really in my life, which makes an entirely depressing situation even worse, so that it’s hard to appreciate the fact that I did wake up before two inexperienced residents dissected my still living body.
“There was a girl in the ambulance,” says Dr. Conway, who is starting to sound distant, but in a pleasant way.
“Lisa,” I manage to say as my eyelids begin to droop. I struggle but can’t manage to remember her last name. The darkness is softly edging into my consciousness again, and I feel like my body is slowly stretching out, like I’m as long as the hospital room—no, make that as long as the New Goshen River. Me like these drugs.
“Crosslands,” I say, wanting to add more, but then I drift to a place where I can’t say or do anything else, and I listen as the door quietly clicks shut behind the doctor. I am left partly awake, partly asleep and completely prey to the cold, dark thoughts that creep in through the windowsill, past the door.
My parents’ obituary gnaws at me. If I’m honest with myself—an act I try to avoid as much as possible—the painful truth is I wouldn’t have been able to add much more.
My mother had a near-obsessive dedication to the domestic arts, which in the age of feminism are not arts at all—they’re conceptual chains of bondage imposed by a patriarchal society that serves to demean women. This translates in my generation to pulling out one’s laundry from the dryer, giving it a good shake, and assigning a kind of retro-chic factor to wrinkled and worn clothes. But if you had entered our ranch house on any given day during my childhood, you would have had to admit that there was an artist at work, or maybe even a domestic dominatrix. For one thing, every article of cloth, including washrags, dinner linens, and my underwear, was steamed, pressed and ironed into submission with a lavender scent. Then there was the food.
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