Roses in December
Chapter 2
Every time I fall asleep, a recurring dream plays like a projector against the backs of my eyelids. It's winter. Snow is lightly falling as we glide across the ice, Gil and me. His arm is around my waist, and when he stumbles a little I throw back my head, laughing into the night sky. Snowflakes land on my tongue, and I wonder whether heaven could be so sweet.
The tug on an arm or bandage invariably wakes me, and I try to glare at whichever nurse has dared disturb my sleep. But the dream has me in too good a mood, and when I purse my lips at them, the nurses just smirk in reply.
I can't bring myself to ask Gil if the dream is a memory, if just because I want it to be. I can see his face so clearly, relaxed and beaming. His nose looks like a strawberry, and I can't stop smiling at it.
He comes to visit after shift each day. It's embarrassing how much I look forward the sound of to his tired feet shuffling through the doorway. He shoots me a grin, perching on his chair next to my bed, and we begin the word game.
I'm not sure how it started, exactly. One day he arrived to find me in tears because I couldn't remember the utensil that went with a fork and knife. Why could I remember forks and knives so easily, but not spoons? It was sometime after that day that he came in cheerful and intent on getting me to play a game with him.
The rules were easy enough to follow. You had to form a chain with connected ideas. So if you started with smile, you could go to teeth, because when you smile you show your teeth. Then from teeth you could go to dentist, because a dentist takes care of your teeth. And so on, and so forth.
We always start with smile.
I doubt Gil knows how much I look forward to the game. It's my only chance to stretch my brain, flexing against the restraints that this damn bandage has me under.
Today he looks exhausted, and for a second I'm afraid that he won't want to play. Then he pours himself a cup of water and leans forward. "Smile."
I try to suck in my sigh of relief, but it hisses out and I know he hears it. "Glad, because you smile when you're glad."
His eyes are red. I wish I could ask him why. "Bag," he says, "because there's a brand of trash bags called Glad bags."
This I hadn't known, and I file it away with the other gems he's given me: nail polish, snow cones, and Wheat Chex. "Pipes, because there's a." I freeze, stuck on a word. What's that thing that you play to make music? The frustration makes me want to bite clear through my tongue until the blood runs down my face and no one could possibly think about something like music. "Because there's a thing you play called bagpipes."
He knows what I mean, and he doesn't correct me. "Pipe bomb, because there is a kind of explosive device called a pipe bomb." It's the second or third time that he's worked in a term that I know we must encounter in our jobs.
"Bomb shelter, because that's a place that you hide in when bombs are falling."
Catherine, the older blonde, visits me too, usually in the late afternoon. She brings scented towelettes and wipes down my face softly, telling me about her daughter, whose name is Lindsey and who sounds like a nightmare. She brings powdered shampoo, combing it through my hair with gentle fingers, soothing away my headaches until I wonder if she's redirecting her maternal instincts my way.
It's Catherine who first hands me a mirror, garnering me the chance to finally see myself. There's a giant wad of gauze on my head, and my hair sticks out of it oddly, and my face is kind of beat up. But still, I can tell. I'm pretty. I'm older than I expected, early thirties or so, with big, sad brown eyes. There's a space between my two front teeth, and I bet before the accident I knew how to whistle through it.
Sometimes Catherine's visits coincide with Nick's. When he strides in, flashing his white teeth and puffing out his chest, I still think it's Superman, and this always earns him a big smile. He likes to tell me about Texas, where everything's bigger. His voice is like warm molasses, and I'm not even sure what molasses is, but I do know it's like his voice.
There's other visitors, every once in a while. The spiky-haired kid, a balding detective, the guy with the unbuttoned shirts (seriously, what is that?). But Gil is my constant. I wish I could tell him that. Maybe I'll get a chance, if constant comes up in the word game.
"Shelter from the storm," he says, and before he can explain his reasoning, Dr. Shedden is beckoning from the doorway. They disappear together, sneaking off to talk about me. So stealthy, like I won't figure it out.
Gil comes back looking disappointed, and I know Dr. Shedden has told him what little progress I've made. He sits back down, not quite meeting my eyes. "Where were we?" he asks. His heart's not in the game. It occurs to me, maybe his heart's not in any of this.
The tears are on my cheeks before I can even feel them coming, and he looks alarmed, asking me what's wrong. He leans close, as if to better hear me, and I notice through his beard that he's got a cleft in his chin. Like Superman.
"I'm sorry," I whisper, not because I want to whisper, but because he seems to expect it.
"Why are you sorry?" He shakes his head, lost.
"I'm sorry I'm not Sara."
This renders him speechless for a moment, and his eyes dart across my face. He bites his lip and grabs my left hand. "See this?" His finger traces a scar on my palm. "This is from the lab explosion." He's struggling.
"Yeah, okay, I'm Sara on the outside," I concede. "Superficially. Like an alien wearing a Sara suit."
"No," he says firmly. "Memories are just the byproducts of what's made us who we are. And you are Sara."
"I'm not, though." My words are hurting him, but I'm only saying what we're both been thinking. "I've heard people's stories. I can read between the lines. Sara was serious, and brooding, and haunted. I'm not like that, Gil. I'm not sure I want to be like that."
His jaw is clenched tight as he listens, and he's trembling. I draw my hand up to his head, smoothing down his hair, feeling a little like Catherine. "I know you miss her, Gil."
He buries his head in my lap, exhaustion and stress making him sob, or at least that's what I figure. I stroke his hair over and over, singing to him softly the first song that comes to mind; which, oddly, is "River," by Joni Mitchell. I get to the part about having a river to skate away on and I wonder again about my dream.
"Tell me a quote about memory, Gil." He has a quote for everything. He plucks quotes out of the air effortlessly while I try to figure out what it is that I use to eat my yogurt.
He's still in my lap, breathing in and out slowly. "Do you remember who Peter Pan is?"
I nod. "He's the boy who never grows old."
"That's right. He was the creation of a Scotsman named J.M. Barrie. And there's a quote by Barrie. He said, 'God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December.'"
I ponder that for a while. "Times have changed," I say.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, nowadays if I want roses in December, I can pick them up at a flower shop." I know there's a metaphor there that I'm ignoring, but I don't care. "Or you could pick them up for me."
He smiles a little, sitting back up, and I breathe easier. "Have you ever bought me flowers, Gil?"
"I bought you a plant once, does that count?" I shrug, terribly pleased.
Picking up my hand, he traces my scar again. "I know you're impatient about your progress," he says. "You've always been impatient." Winking, he adds, "That's how I know you're Sara."
True to form, I guess, I've run out of patience. "Gil, have we ever gone ice skating on a frozen pond?"
His eyebrows furrow. "Ice skating? No, why?"
"Just a dream I had." My heart sinks. "I was hoping it was a memory."
His eyes are kind, and light, the color of the sky before a snowstorm. "Not many opportunities for frozen ponds in Las Vegas."
He reads to me from an entomology text, telling me about water bugs, and I can feel myself falling asleep. His visits always end this way. I suppose I should apologize for this, but he doesn't seem to mind, as he rattles off words like Hemiptera and metamorphosis, thick words that tumble off his tongue. He describes the way that a water bug travels across the tops of quiet streams, and my mind travels back to the frozen pond. We are sliding over the ice together, moving as one, and there is beauty in the symmetry. I comment on that beauty, and incongruously he whispers "Since I met you," making my heart hiccup. He holds both my hands and makes me glide in a circle around him, spinning. The pond is so blurry, and all I can see is him.