Read Online What Remains by Helene Dunbar - Free Book Online Page A

rupture,” which means that part of my aorta, the largest vein in my body, was almost ripped from my heart in the collision. They talk about the fact that most people die pretty quickly from this. My usual love of stats fails when they start talking about how eighty percent of people who have this happen in a car accident die before reaching the hospital. When they move on to “coronary artery dissection” and “massive myocardial infarction” I tune out and don’t even ask them to explain what those mean. All I catch is that I’m “lucky that I’m young” and “lucky that I’m in good shape.”
    I don’t know how they can use that word. “Lucky” is the very last thing I feel.
    My parents have been pretty much living at the hospital. We’ve met with doctors and social workers, nutritionists and physical therapists. It’s the most I’ve seen Mom and Dad since I was in elementary school. And to think, all I had to do was almost die.
    The hospital team drills me over and over about what my life will be like. Everything will revolve around exercise, healthy food, routines. It sounds a lot like my in-season regime, until they review the anti-rejection medications I’ll need to take for the rest of my life so that my body doesn’t think of the heart like the foreign object that it is.
    They tell me I’ll be on steroids for a year. That on its own means the death of my baseball career in the short term, but I also find out that contact sports could kill me. As a varsity shortstop, there is no guarantee that someone isn’t going to slide into me. That I’m not going to have a mid-field collision.
    Finding out there’s no chance of playing real ball should depress the hell out of me, but I don’t feel much of anything. Compared to Lizzie being dead, nothing seems important.
    There are visitors in and out of my room: some guys from the team, a few teachers, Spencer, his parents, my parents. I have nothing to say to any of them. I don’t know why they’re bothering. It’s like they won’t admit what I’ve done. I don’t deserve their friendship, or their concern, or their love. But still, they parade through my room like spectators at the zoo.
    All the time I try to keep a fake smile pasted on my face. I wait for the door to open and for a police officer to walk in and drag me off to jail for killing one of my best friends. It never happens and I don’t understand why.
    And then there’s the voice.
    It doesn’t tell me to hurt anyone else or myself. It’s more like a sarcastic running commentary to what’s going on. Sometimes I catch myself laughing in response, which gets me the kind of looks you’d imagine.
    It doesn’t matter what I do, I can’t get it to stop. I even tried not taking my pain meds one day to see if that helped, but all it made me do was cry like a little girl. I can’t tell anyone. They’ll think I’ve gone nuts on top of everything.
    Maybe I have.

    On my last day in the hospital, Dr. Collins says he has a surprise for me. I’m expecting him to say that maybe my medical record has been mixed up with someone else’s and I can go back to living my life. Or that Lizzie was found alive somewhere and has been playing a really sick joke on all of us.
    Instead, he opens the door to my room and waves a girl in. She’s a few years older than me, with pale red rings around her eyes and the look of someone who’s been through hell. She’s pretty in the same way that Lizzie was. The way that makes you sit up and take notice not because she’s so overly beautiful, but because it’s clear that she isn’t taking any shit from anybody.
    I try to cover myself up because I’m lying here in only a stupid hospital gown. Meeting a girl is the last thing on my mind, but still I’d rather not look like some invalid kid.
    You’d