Link’s eyes struggled to focus. They were too droopy to open any wider. He heard a voice, a woman's raspy voice he thought, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying. He managed to catch the word “anaesthetic,” or was it “diabetic?” The ceiling above him was moving. His thoughts scrambled. The throbbing in his head made it difficult to concentrate. The smell of lavender soap drifted through the air. Bright lights were passing over him. So bright it felt as if he was staring directly into the sun.
Someone told Link to open his mouth. He listened. Cold water ran down his dry throat. He scrunched his eyes shut, attempting to rid himself of the agonizing headache. When he opened them, the world was dark again.
Link sat bolt upright, panting, eyes darting around his surroundings. His head felt clear, his thoughts coherent again. The figure of the dead gorlac was directly ahead of him, still as a statue. Alex was to his left. A silhouette propped up on her elbows, rubbing her eyes. He was back in the chilly cave again.
“What’s wrong? Are you all right?” Alex asked, looking around the cave for potential danger.
“Yeah,” Link said, short of breath. “Yeah, I think I just had a bad nightmare.”
She let out a lengthy yawn. “I was sleeping on your chest, doofus. You nearly knocked my head off.”
“Sorry,” he said, still trying to steady himself. “Just . . . just go back to sleep.”
Alex grunted and rolled over to her side, tucking her knees to her chest. It took Link a while to regain his composure. He was too scared to close his eyes again, to even think about sleep.
He stared at the thin icicles on the roof of the cave for ages, hands interlaced behind his head, trying to piece together everything that had just occurred. That was when the icy stalactites began spinning in circles above him. He shot up, pinning his back against the cave wall. Before long, complete darkness encased his vision.
The first thing Link noticed was the sound of laughter in the distance. Not real laughter. Fake, forced laughter, like from the crowd of a sitcom on TV. Then he recognized a funky bass tab and everything fell into place. It was the intro of Seinfeld.
He opened his eyes. It took them a while to adjust to the blurry room. There was a bright green light to his left. A heart monitor? Yes, he could hear the beeping now. Wait a second, a heart monitor?
Link jerked his head up in shock, which caused pain to shoot through every part of his body. A pale green semi-circled curtain bordered his bed. The pungent smell of lemon disinfectant was heavy in the air. Dad was sitting bedside, inspecting his fingernails, positioned awkwardly in a foldable chair. He was within arm’s length. Link attempted to reach out and shake him, ask him what was happening, but something stopped him.
His arm was restricted, encased by a thick layer of plaster. Panic creeped in. The monitor by his side was beeping as rapidly as a smoke alarm. In the distance, he heard Jerry talking George out of something on Seinfeld. Then whoever was watching the TV changed the channel.
Link attempted to sit up, but it felt like someone had stuck a knife deep into his ribcage. He collapsed back into the hospital bed, gasping. Looking down, he found a large gauze covered the left side of his body, blood splotches seeping through the fabric. Cuts and bruises riddled him from head to toe.
“Link, just relax,” Dad murmured. He was standing by his son’s side now, gently brushing the hair from his forehead. “How are you feeling?”
“What happened?”
Dad didn’t respond. Instead, he continued to stroke Link’s hair.
“Dad! What happened?”
Dad took Link’s good hand in both his own. His crystal blue eyes were bloodshot and watery. Has he been crying? Link thought. Dad never cries.
Dad looked down at the floor and took a deep breath. His voice wavered when he spoke. “You’ve been in a car accident, son.”
The heart monitor picked up the pace again. From the corner of his eye, Link could see it was nearing the hundred and twenties. His head reeled trying to remember anything about a car crash. The last thing he could recall was in Nocera, trapped in the cave with Alex, the gorlac crammed in the entrance. Or was that all just a dream?
“Car accident?” Link choked. “What car accident?” He attempted to sit up again, forgetting about his ribs. The crippling pain immobilized him.
“Lay back down,” Dad pleaded. “Your injuries need to heal.”
“Dad, what the hell’s going on?”
The curtain opened abruptly and in hurried a nurse. “Lincoln, I need you to relax for me, please,” she said, placing a warm and reassuring hand on his forearm. Dad sat back in his chair crying, hunched over, knees to his elbows. Link had never seen him act like this before. It was scaring the hell out of him.
“This may come as a shock to you, but you were in a car accident on the way to school,” the nurse said gently. “You’ve been under general anaesthetic for the past three hours or so. You’ve just woken up from surgery. Right now, you’re in a Post-Anaesthesia Care Unit. You’re fine now, though, perfectly fine, so just try and calm down for me, please.”
The nurse's mouth continued to move, but all Link heard was white noise. As soon as she’d said the word “school,” it was like a trigger. The fog cleared. Memories found their way back to him.
He remembered waking up from his sleep and getting ready for school. He and Alex had eaten their breakfast—she had Lucky Charms and he had pancakes—and then they both got in his shabby Mustang. Like always, it took a while for his engine to start. Link fiddled with the A/C for a bit, trying to position the vents so Alex had two facing her and he had two facing him. Then there was a gap. The last thing he could remember was buckling his seatbelt, but then the memories seemed to skip forwards.
There was complete and utter fear in Alex’s sapphire eyes. She was screaming. He was screaming. The car was rolling, rattling them both around like two pennies in a tin can. There were shards of glass everywhere. And blood. Lots of blood. The memories were making Link sick to his stomach, and he tried his best to shut them out. But they kept coming, playing before his eyes without consent.
The paramedics were pulling Alex’s limp body out from the mangled wreckage of crushed metal. And there he laid, in the middle of the road, pain shooting through his body, helplessly watching on as they lifted his unconscious sister onto a stretcher. My little sister.
“Where is Alex?” Link blurted out. “Is she OK?”
“Just a moment,” the nurse said apprehensively. “I’m going to get Dr Mansell and tell him you’ve awoken; he’ll answer all of the questions you have. Won’t be but a sec.” She disappeared in a hurry behind the curtain.
Link rubbed his eyes and then turned to Dad. He was expecting the worst at that point. “Where’s Alex?”
Dad looked around the room desperately, as if he was expecting someone else to answer the question. Everything went quiet. The only sound was from the TV blaring in the distance. Whoever was watching had changed the channel to a basketball game. The Celtics were up by four.
“Dad! Where is Alex?” he shouted.
Dad jumped a bit, then he cleared his throat, his crystal blue eyes sparkling with tears. Nothing could have prepared Link for what he said next.
“Alex is in a coma.”
At first, Link thought he hadn’t heard him right. Then he replayed the sentence repeatedly, trying to find ways he could have misheard him. Link shook his head reluctantly.
He’s wrong, he thought. The nurses or doctors must have mixed up the clipboards or something. Yep, that’s it. Just a huge stuff up.
Then, all at once the full weight of Dad’s words sunk in, and he laid there dumbfounded, unsure of how to breathe. Like he hadn’t been doing it his whole life.
Not Alex. Not my little sister. Somebody must be playing a sick joke on me. They have to be.
“Right now, they’re trying their best to get her into a stable condition,” Dad continued, his voice breaking this time. “The other driver’s OK, though. He was in a pickup truck. His bull bar took the brunt of it—”
Link thumped the hospital bed with his good hand, unintentionally startling Dad. He wanted to scream, curse, smash the stupid heart monitor, anything he could get his hand on.
“This can’t be happening,” he whimpered.
Dad placed a shaky hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“She doesn’t deserve this,” Link said, jaw clenched. “She’s just a kid. It should be me!”
“Linco—”
“She’s only fifteen!”
“Come here.” Dad opened his arms and Link immediately buried his face into his chest. He ignored the pain in his ribs and let the tears fall.
“We have to be strong,” Dad sobbed. “She’d want us to be strong.”
“It should be me!” he repeated.
Dad patted his son softly on the back of his head. “Shhh, don’t say that. Don’t say that. It’s unfair, I know. It’s unfair.”
Dad kept repeating the line “it’s unfair,” until it lost its meaning, and Link kept saying “it should be me,” until the words couldn’t find their way out of his mouth anymore. They remained like that for a while, a muddled tangle of tears and sobs, until Link figured he was finally ready to ask the question.
“Was it my fault?”
Dad’s body heaved against Link’s head. “That’s not important.”
“Dad, tell me,” he demanded. “I need to know.”
“I . . . ” Dad paused and exhaled, “I honestly don’t kno—”
“—You do.”
Dad cleared his throat and tried to strengthen his voice, but it was still shaky. “These things happen, Lincoln. It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. What’s done is done.”
He was deliberately evading his question. Which Link knew could only mean . . . . He wrapped his good arm around his Dad’s waist and held him tight, his fingers clenching a handful of his blue and white flannelette shirt. At that moment, Link had not only forgotten how to breathe, but how to think—how to do anything.
All he felt was a gut-wrenching pain coursing throughout his body. A tightness in his chest like he was drowning. Drowning like he was weighed down by cinder blocks with only a small breath of air left in his lungs. That’s when the unbearable realization hit him harder than the stranger’s truck did.
This is all my doing. Alex is in a coma because of me.
Link couldn’t remember how long he remained in Dad’s embrace, but Dad was his rock at that moment, weathering the waves of tears that smashed against him. Dad tried his best to calm him down, offering him soothing words and holding him so tight it hurt. But no amount of wise words could block out the pain Link was experiencing.
Dad and Link parted when a young doctor with spiky, frosted tipped hair yanked open the curtain. He approached the foot of Link’s bed, talking in the same soft, deliberate voice the nurse used. The type you’d use on a child or someone who had English as their second language.
Dr Mansell discussed the extent of Link’s injuries, but he had tuned out by that stage. His sister was in a coma, fighting for her life. Why would he care what bones he had broken? He was alive and breathing and she could be on the verge of death. His stomach twisted at that thought.
Nonetheless, Link nodded at the doctor, acting like he was interested in what he was saying. He was sure Dad was paying attention. After several minutes, Dr Mansell left, and the nurse took his place to check his vitals. She informed Link that after surgery he wasn't supposed to eat solid foods, although he didn’t have much of an appetite anyway. She jabbed a needle in his arm, took his blood, and then disappeared.
Dad was next to depart. He was swapping places with Mom who had been waiting in the ICU this whole time. He told Link she’d want to see him now that he had woken up. Link watched his father walk out the door with his head lowered. Then he was left alone. Memories resurfaced unwillingly.
They were right before the accident this time. Him, not forcing Alex to put her seatbelt on; him not checking for cars before he pulled out of the intersection. The truck driver in the rear-view mirror, slamming on his brakes as he desperately tried to swerve to avoid them. Link scrunched his eyes shut, trying to stop the tears threatening to pour out, trying to rid himself of the unbearable memories. Luckily, it wasn’t long before the curtain rattled, and in came Mom.
“My darling,” she said, half smiling and half crying. “How do you feel?” Her amber eyes were red and raw. Link wondered how long she’d been crying. He tried his best to force a smile, to show her he was OK. But the smile didn’t reach his lips.
“How’s Alex?” he practically blurted.
Mom stepped over to his good side and lightly hugged him, being cautious not to bump his arm or put pressure on his ribs. “No updates on her condition so far,” she said, her smile fading. Her eyes fell to his plastered arm, full of sympathy, and her voice softened. “How are you feeling? Have you had something to eat yet?”
“Does she look OK?” Link asked, ignoring her questions. “How bad are her injuries?”
“She’s fine,” Mom said, smiling. She gently raised his head and fluffed up the pillow underneath. “Just a few cuts and bruises, no broken bones. Now, don’t make me ask you again.”
“The nurse said I’m not allowed to eat.”
“For how long?”
“A few hours I think; she didn’t really specify. I’m not hungry anyway, Mom.”
“Nonsense, you just got out of surgery; you must be starving,” she said. “I’ll find the nurse and ask her how long the period is before you can eat.”
“Mom, I’m really not that hungry.”
“Suit yourself.” She placed her overstuffed handbag on the bedside table and scrimmaged through it impatiently. She was fighting back tears. Link couldn’t begin to imagine what these last few hours must have been like for her. Receiving the news her two children had been in an accident. Getting out of work and racing to the hospital, not knowing what to expect.
“I bought you some sports magazines and a book from the hospital gift shop,” she said, placing them by Link’s bedside table. “Hope you like them. I haven’t had the chance to go home yet. I’m just waiting until we’re updated on Alex’s condition. Want me to grab anything when I do?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Very well,” she said, forcing another smile. A long silence ensued. Link knew she was desperately trying to think of a topic to keep the conversation alive.
“Can you believe how much they’re charging for hospital parking?” she finally asked. But knowing it was a rhetorical question, he didn’t respond.
“Six dollars an hour,” she groaned. “Six dollars an hour to see your loved ones. How is that justifiable?”
“It’s not,” Link replied mechanically. “It’s criminal.” He knew this was Mom’s way of dealing with problems. Her coping mechanism, to pretend like they didn’t exist by masking them with small talk. So, he let her continue. He nodded occasionally and asked “Really?” whenever the occasion called for it.
Mom continued to discuss the problems with her colleagues at work, Link’s latest scholarship offers, and who was breaking up with who on the latest trashy TV show. For a while he got lost in her gossip, but only ever momentarily. No matter how interesting the stories she told were, his mind was focused on his lapse of judgment. If his little sister didn’t wake up from her coma, how could he ever live with himself? The guilt would be unimaginable.
After Mom had finished going over the reasons why she should host the next Tupperware party and not her best friend Angie, she tied her frizzy hair in a bun and smiled at Link weakly. “Oh, I almost forgot. I took the liberty of contacting Nadine. She should fly in tomorrow at 2:30 PM; that’s if I’ve calculated the time zones correctly . . . .” She bit the bottom of her lip in thought. “Jeepers, I hope I did . . . .”
Suddenly Link was filled with a deep remorse. Nadine had completely slipped his mind. He threw his head back and groaned.
“What,” Mom asked, concerned. “Need painkillers?”
“Her trip,” he said through gritted teeth. “What about her trip?”
Link’s girlfriend, Nadine, was in Indiana for her grandmother's funeral. The actual funeral was a few days ago, but she’d planned to spend the following week with her close relatives, catching up and reminiscing. To think Link had cut her trip short only added on to his ever-growing pang of guilt.
“What about her trip?” Mom parroted, eyebrows raised. “I’m sure if the shoe were on the other foot you’d be flying back to her as well.” She grabbed his hand, her thumb tracing circles in his palm. “We all care about you, darling. All your friends and family are in the waiting room downstairs. Kenji’s here as well.” Her mouth curled into a smile. “And I’d never thought I’d see the day Elijah and Sam could be dragged away from their PlayStation. But, lo and behold, they’re down there.” Her smile faded when she saw his blank expression.
“I know, I just . . . .” Link stopped and took a breath. “I don’t think I’m ready to see anyone just yet, Mom.”
Especially not his younger cousins Elijah and Samantha. They idolized Alex. How could he explain this to them? That he was the reason why his sister, their cousin, was fighting for her life?
Mom nodded, her face full of sincerity. “I understand. This is a lot to take in.” She took a deep breath and then kissed him softly on the cheek. “But just know Dad and I will be here every step of the way. Through thick and thin, Link. It’s the Hunter way.”
For once, Mom had nothing else to say. And in the silence that followed, another memory of the car crash wriggled its way into Link’s head. It was different from the others, though, a happy one, before the accident this time. Alex was smiling at him with her dimples, recording him on her phone as he rapped along to “It’s Tricky” by Run-DMC on the radio. Would he ever see that smile again?
Link covered his eyes and took a shuddering breath. “Do you hate me?” he asked, his voice slightly uneven.
“Hate you?” Mom replied in shock. “My darling, how could I ever hate you?”
“Bec—” He cleared his throat, trying to find his voice. “Because I’m the reason for all of this. If-If I had just looked both ways before I—”
“Don’t speak like that,” Mom said sternly. “You didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” Her hands tightened around his. “What’s done is done, Link. Look at me . . . Look at me.” He shifted his head up and considered her watery eyes. “She’s going to get through this, OK? Trust me. She will.”
Mom got up from her chair and climbed into the hospital bed beside him. Link wrapped his good arm around her and they both lay in silence for quite some time, only separating when the nurse came in to check his vitals.
When the nurse undid the pressure cuff around Link’s arm and left, he checked out the book Mom had bought him. In a nutshell, the story was about a ninja who was single-handedly trying to destroy an army of samurai.
This will be a riveting read, Link thought dismally.
He read it while Mom flicked through one of her gossip magazines. Now and then she would stop to inform him about what was going on in the celebrity world, and he would nod and pretend as if he was intrigued. Two chapters into his ninja book, Link realized it was just a huge gore fest, with no indication of a plot line whatsoever. He felt it was his fault. He should’ve known what he was in for when he read the cover: One Versus One Thousand.
Seven chapters into his book, Link looked up to find it was twilight outside. By then his stomach was rumbling so bad that Mom kept accusing him of farting. Luckily, the hospital workers came around with a tray of roast beef and mashed potatoes for dinner. Link practically inhaled it as soon as the tray was put in front of him, and the belly rumbling ceased (as well as Mom’s wild accusations). Just as the hospital staff has cleared away his empty tray, Mom received a text message from their not-so-tech-savvy Dad:
No ^date on Alx cndition so far <3 u
After decoding his message, Link and Mom both continued to read their books as the night passed. Occasionally, Mom would get a message, and both their heads would spring up in anticipation. But none were from Dad. It was always a friend or relative, offering their condolences or wanting to visit. Link felt like a coward for not seeing them. But he knew he was nowhere near prepared. Perhaps he would be tomorrow.
A few hours later, a nurse came in and politely informed them visiting hours were over. Mom must have kissed Link one hundred times on the forehead before she told him she’d see him tomorrow morning. She was going to spend the night with Dad in the ICU. She left her phone with Link so they could keep him posted with any news, and then, with one last forehead kiss, she reluctantly departed.
It didn’t take Link long to realize he wouldn’t be getting to sleep anytime soon. He was a light sleeper, so he figured the odds were already stacked against him. But when you throw into the works—patients snoring, the heart monitors’ agonizing, rhythmic beeping, nurses whispering to one another in the hallway, and a guy adjacent to his bed that had a raspy breathing apparatus—sleep was about as improbable as him beating Lebron James at one-on-one.
But it wasn’t just the noises that kept Link up. His mind was working on overdrive, vividly replaying the car crash until it felt like he hadn’t suffered any memory loss at all. He exhaled shakily, and pain surged through his body in sharp bursts. Never had he felt so powerless. Bedridden while his sister was in the same hospital fighting for her life.
The last twenty-four hours had felt so surreal, like they had happened to a stranger and not him. It still felt as if he were in a bad dream: the car crash, the cave in Nocera, everything. And a part of him hoped that’s all it was. But the other part told him that was wishful thinking.
Lying in that firm hospital bed, it took a while before his eyes grew heavy. He closed them and drifted off. But instead of finding sleep, somehow Link found himself on the slope of a steep mountain.