Anything but Ordinary(4)
You don’t want to get in here anyway, little guy. The cicada finally landed, inches from her cheek. Its long, bean-sized body looked like it was covered in armor. Its wings were like lace. Slowly, slowly, she picked up her hand from where it rested on the sill and brought it to the window. As her fingertips got closer, the glass got hotter. Not hot in a way that burned her, but warm and bright at the same time. She withdrew, wondering. Suddenly, the glass was liquid, melting away with light at the edges, and there was a hole big enough to reach through. The cicada stayed where it was, frozen like a bug in amber.
She put her hand toward the glowing gap and curled her fingers around the insect. She had it! Bryce brought the cicada back through, feeling its wings flap against her palm. She held it close to her face.
A flash of heat, and a blink, and it was gone. There was no melting or glowing. She was leaning against the window under the fluorescent buzz of room 3B, clutching at nothing.
“Weird,” she said aloud. She looked around to see if anyone was watching, and then she tried it again, moving her fingers slowly toward the glass, but they hit the cool pane with a thud.
Bryce turned her wheelchair away from the window. She had been awake for a few weeks now, and as time went on, it became clear: something felt different, and not just about her; a filter colored everything. It was like at the optometrist’s office when he flipped lenses in front of her eyes through a machine and asked her which one was clearer. Number one, or number two, he would say, but there were no blurry circles now. Each circle was clearer than the one before, crisp with the most precise details.
It was probably cabin fever. Anyone would start seeing things when their sights were limited to beige linoleum and cheesy paintings of waterfalls and castles. Bryce was surprised she hadn’t started talking to herself. Apart from her family, she hadn’t had all that many visitors. She had wanted to see Gabby and Greg immediately, but she got a visit from Elena, Gabby’s mom instead. Elena told her Gabby and Greg were backpacking with a group of their friends around Europe since graduating from Stanford. Why Stanford? Bryce had wanted to ask. Vanderbilt had offered them all scholarships. They hadn’t even been thinking of West Coast schools before the accident. Now they were across an entire ocean. She wondered idly if there were any places to go cliff-diving in Europe. She had always wanted to do that.
There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Bryce said as her nurse, Jane, held open the door for an older man in a sport jacket. He was either a reporter or a doctor. She had already lost track of how many magazines and medical journals had interviewed her. She had told her parents to approve everyone who asked for an interview because the Grahams often got paid for the stories, and even though Bryce’s parents refused to talk about it, she knew her treatment must be costing them a fortune. Her mom’s design business had taken off in the last year, and her dad was still coaching at Vanderbilt, but it couldn’t be enough.
Bryce ran her hands nervously through her hair in case he was going to take a photo, trying to remember who he was.
“You okay then, corncake?” Jane asked as she backed out the door.
“Well, um—” Bryce started, but Jane’s Garfield-printed scrubs were already disappearing out the door.
“Hello there, Ms. Graham. My name is Dr. Felding.” She shook his warm, dry hand. He was barrel-chested and balding. He looked like a coach, Bryce thought. “I’m the head of research for neurology at Cornell.”
Bryce just smiled thinly, tuning him out. She had already answered a million questions from researchers at Columbia and Johns Hopkins. At this point, doctors across the country knew her brain better than she did. Apparently not only was her waking up after five years a miracle, her ability to talk and scoot around made her some sort of medical phenomenon.
Bryce had a hard time feeling miraculous when most of the conversations she had in the past month revolved around who was going to cut her toenails or walk her to physical therapy twice a day. She envied Sydney, breezing in and out for her obligatory five minutes a day at the hospital, wearing short skirts, smelling like the outside. Bryce did not feel like a miracle. She felt like a freak of nature. She felt bored.
The doctor was still talking. “…so I was hoping we could schedule a further evaluation at our facility, once you’re up for travel.”
Bryce just shrugged. “We’ll see,” she said, gesturing to her wheelchair, as if it might make the decision for her.
“So, Bryce.” He took a seat on the chair next to her, taking out a notepad. “What was it like to wake up?”
“Like being dipped in a bucket of ice water,” she began. This was her go-to response.
“Could you hear and see right away, then?”
Bryce recalled the lights pooling above her, the sounds of machines kicking in. “I could. It took a little bit—”
“Unbelievable,” Dr. Felding interrupted in awe. “According to your charts, you are recovering more rapidly than any other documented case. And your journal mentions that you’ve even stood up a couple of times?”
“You have my journal?” Bryce’s stomach twisted. It was just a notebook in her now scratchy, second-grade handwriting that Dr. Warren told her to keep, so she could remember new skills that came each day, or side effects of certain medicines. But still. It was hers.
Bryce tried to glance behind the doctor, hoping Jane might come back.