I…” I exhale, rubbing my hands together. I don’t know how to explain to them that I am in one place, my body is in another.
Foster turns to Lev. “Urgent Care.”
“No,” Lev says. Then, to me, “Lo, you’re in the Garrett Farmhouse. You were in an accident.” He pauses. “Just not one you think.”
Foster looks me over, asks questions with a certain kind of authority that must speak to a certain former life. When Lev finally explains Foster used to work in a hospital, it makes too much sense. I feel like I’m in the hospital.
I bring my hand to my forehead. Dried blood flakes beneath my nails. I squint at the ceiling. The light fixture there is old, the glow of the bulb is cold.
“The Garrett Farmhouse,” I say.
The hospital was cold.
“Yes,” Lev says.
“I don’t feel right,” I whisper.
“I’m going to get her some water,” Foster says.
He disappears and I close my eyes. I imagine standing outside of my body and then stepping into my body and when I open my eyes again, Foster is holding out a glass of water to me. I take it, not realizing until this exact moment how thirsty I am, and I down half of it in one go before my throat seizes and I choke. I cough, my eyes watering, and hand the empty glass back. I don’t remember finishing it.
Lev watches from the doorway, his arms crossed.
“Will it scar, do you think?”
Scar. I bring one hand up to my face, to my cheek, expecting my finger to slip into the open space, the wound, but they meet that ugly gathering of skin. They’d stitched it up so hastily the first time, they had to open it up just to close it again, properly, making the damage worse.
“Shouldn’t. It’s shallow. Head just bleeds a lot. Steri-Strips should take care of it.”
“Bring me the kit. And then start making calls about the car…”
I close my eyes and inhale through my teeth, listening to the sounds of Foster leaving the room. I think about the Buick out there in the ditch, crushed.
How? How did I…?
Foster comes back and disappears again. Then the sound of Lev’s quiet footfalls as he moves closer to me. I open my eyes slowly and he’s pulled a chair from the writing desk in the corner of the room. He sits, a first aid kit in his hands, and digs into it, frowning slightly as he decides what he needs and what he doesn’t.
“What happened?” I need someone to tell me.
“I heard the horn,” Lev says, setting certain things aside, bandages, alcohol. “I’m going to get a little closer to you now.”
He skirts the chair forward and then reaches for the bottle of alcohol, opening it, shaking it into a cotton ball. He dabs the cotton against my head with such care, I barely feel it. My gaze drifts to his necklace. My brow furrows. I reach for it again, letting it sit in my palm. It’s small, round and cold, silver. I can finally make out the etching on it: an anchor.
“What does that mean?” I ask him.
Lev gently removes it from my grip and lets it fall back against his throat.
“Bea gave it to me.”
“Why?”
“For when Emmy was born.”
It quiets me. Lev takes a couple of Steri-Strips and presses them against the cut, and only after it’s done do I realize that I just let him do it.
I stare at my hands.
“How do you feel?” he asks, and then, “Not good, I’m sure.”
“I don’t know what happened,” I say.
I close my eyes and I see it all, the semi, the intersection, my phone—I open my eyes.
“Where’s my bag? My phone—”
“We have it. Don’t worry.”
“And the car—”
“We have people on it.”
“I need to go back to Morel.”
I don’t know that this is true.
“You should stay.”
“I need to go.”
I stand and my stomach turns. Lev grasps my arms and forces me to sit back down before I’m entirely vertical.
“Lo,” he says. He lets me go, carefully, and then reaches down and begins to untie my bootlaces. He slips my right foot, then my left foot from them. The roiling in my gut reminds me of that moment when everything wasn’t where it was supposed to be. The road gone, falling into the ditch, the tree. The semi. I don’t remember the accident, but I imagine I do; my parents in the front seat, Dad briefly smiling at Mom when the truck twists into our lane.