I nod once more, because if I hear Edie’s voice, I might scream or pass out, or the shrinking-scalp thing might shrivel my brain. Or is it Edie’s brain? Either way, I don’t want a brain like a prune.
I watch him leave the room and then I take several deep breaths. Just lying here, I don’t have to look to know this is not my body. It feels different. My real body is bigger and my boobs fall into my armpits. This body is long and stick-thin and feels as if it can be snapped in half.
Ingrid promised me that I don’t have Edie’s personality or mental issues. I’m not crazy. I’m me on the inside, and since I’m the one thinking with this brain, I choose to believe it’s all mine.
I keep taking deep, even breaths and raise my eyes to the ceiling. I remember the lightning and explosion of sparks and glitter. I wonder if Valentina is still just down the hall and if Clint and the golfer are still fighting over Ana Marie Garcia Lopez in the Limbo Lounge.
Every unbelievable thing, from standing outside my body in the emergency room to getting sucked up through the ceiling, is not part of some wild dream. All of it—Valentina and the other Brittany, Jemma Jennie with the gold fringe and Pearl, Skater Tommy, and crazy Edith—is real.
My body is bagged and tagged in the morgue. Momma and Daddy are planning a funeral and I’d break down and cry if I thought I could stop once I start. The real me is in the real body of a real hateful woman. It’s true and not at all believable.
I hear a shock of quiet laughter and realize it’s me. It comes from her throat but it’s my laugh. It’s my ha-ha-ha chuckle and not her hoity-toity cackle. I don’t know how long I stare up at the ceiling, thinking about it all, before a nurse comes into my room. She puts a tray on the over-bed table and pushes it in front of me. “Are you hungry?” she asks as she raises the head of my bed. “The doctor ordered broth and crackers.” She takes plastic wrap off a glass of ice water, a cup of tea, and two small bowls. “Jell-O, too. Lime by the looks of it.”
I’ve never been a picky eater. I’ll eat most anything, excepting Jell-O. Especially green. I hate the way it jiggles and smells and slides down my throat. Mamaw Rose used to church hers up with shredded carrots and green peas and she’d snarf it up like it was ambrosia. Just the sight of it makes me nauseated. I don’t know if Edie likes Jell-O, but it’s not on Brittany Lynn’s menu.
The nurse wraps a blood pressure cuff around my left arm and squeezes the bulb. “If your system tolerates the liquid diet, you can order from the menu in the morning.”
How long until morning? I wonder, and wait until she removes the cuff to lift my left hand so I can pull the tray within reach. I recognize Edie’s long thin fingers and pink-painted nails from Ingrid’s tulip garden, but the bandage covering her wrist stops me. “What happened?” I say out loud, although I think I can figure it out.
“You don’t remember?”
I shake my head.
“You lost four pints of blood before housekeeping found you. Another few minutes and you would have died in that bathtub.”
Did Edie try to kill herself?
“The Klonopin-vodka cocktail didn’t help.”
I guess that answers my question. I have no clue what Klonopin is, and my alcohol of choice is tequila, poured into a blender filled with ice and margarita mix.
“The ER doctors didn’t think you were going to make it this time.”
This time? I put Edie’s forearms side by side and stare at the bandages with morbid fascination. “That had to hurt,” I whisper to myself. I hadn’t felt any pain until now. Now I feel a bone-deep ache radiating outward from Edie’s wrists. I hadn’t given much thought to why Edie was strapped to a bed or why she was in a coma. Now I feel a twinge of compassion for her, like I do when someone cuts off a snake’s head. I can feel bad for the snake, but that doesn’t mean I forget it’s a snake or forgive it for biting me.
“The hotel sent the toiletries they found in your room—minus sharp instruments, of course.” The nurse moves to a slim closet and pulls what looks like a brown vanity case from a piece of matching carry-on luggage. Even from across the room, I recognize the LV monogram, and I doubt it’s a knockoff from China. “You can use the water and basin to brush your teeth.” She waves her hand toward the blue pitcher and kidney-shaped bowl on the end of the table. She puts the case on the bed next to me. “Do you need anything?”
I shake my head.
“Press your call button if you can think of anything,” she says on her way out of the room.
I don’t know if a person with amnesia is supposed to know how to pour water, but I’m as thirsty as a draft horse. I reach for the glass but my fingers are numb and can’t grasp it tight enough. I can wiggle and flex all ten fingers, but I’m left-handed and can only make a fist with my right. I am somewhat ambidextrous, as most lefties tend to be. I can easily drink some ice water and tea with the right, but I can’t manage to get a spoonful of broth to my mouth without it dribbling on the way. I give up and use a straw. By the time I finish, I’m exhausted. Not the kind of exhausted that makes me fall asleep straightaway. More like the kind when I was in high school and had to play volleyball in gym class. The difference between now and then is that I’m not gasping for air and clutching my chest. My face isn’t deep red and Dingleberry isn’t calling me Tubby Toast.
I grab the vanity case next to my hip and push the food tray to one side. I’ve never come close to touching real Louis Vuitton before. My wrists hurt and the gold-colored lock dangling from the zipper slips from my fingers. I’m about to pitch a hissy when I finally get it open.
The inside is lined with beige leather and filled with skin-care products that I’ve never heard of before. The writing on the little blue pots and bottles is in a foreign language, perhaps Swedish. There’s a silver tube of Dior mascara (brown), Chanel lipstick (passion red), and Burt’s Bees lip balm. At the bottom, a hairbrush and hand mirror.
That’s it. No primer, foundation, cover-up stick, contouring bronzer, eye-shadow palette, blush, brow wax, hair curlers, or can of super-hold? I guess you don’t need a full face of makeup if you’re planning to kill yourself. Or if you’re born with Edie’s complexion. Not that it matters either way. I’m not supposed to know what to do with a tube of lipstick.
I pull out the mirror and the first thing I notice is clear tape and a nasty-looking IV stuck in Edie’s jugular. A tube with a white cap rests on her shoulder.
The day I saw her in this very room, I didn’t notice her bandaged wrists or the IV in her neck. I just saw her buckled restraints and wondered why a woman in a coma had to be strapped to a bed. Now I know she was more of a risk to herself than to anyone else.
Beneath the tape, her skin is yellow and bruised. It looks horrible and I know I should feel worse for her than I do. I should forgive and forget because it’s the Christian thing to do, but it might take me a minute.
I raise a hand and touch her throat. That hand and those fingers in the mirror do not belong
to me. I feel cool fingertips against warm skin as if they are mine. My head gets light, and I raise the mirror inch by inch until her icy blue eyes stare back at me. The last time I saw her, she looked cuckoo, but it’s me behind those ice-cold eyes this time. It’s me looking cuckoo this time, too.