ou see things and you say, ‘Why?’

But I dream things that never were

And say, ‘Why not?’”

—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

The next time I open my eyes, all I see is light, bright white and buzzing.

I am in bed, but it’s not my bed in Room 1A. The ceiling overhead is made up of white acoustical tiles with long tubes of fluorescent lighting.

There are people all around me, too, dressed in orange, moving in and out and around me like dancers. I can see them talking to one another, but I can’t hear anything except that buzzing in my ears and the whoosh-thunk of a machine that sounds like waves breaking on the beach.

On either side of me are machines that make noises. I see a black television screen with a green graph that moves across it in waves.

I’m in a hospital.

I must have collapsed in the park. Had a heart attack or something. I try to move, to angle up to sit so that I can see more of the room around me, but my arms and legs feel useless, heavy.

“Bobby?” I whisper. My throat burns at the effort. I’m painfully thirsty. “Daniel?”

“Hello, there, Joy. It’s nice to see you.”

A man’s face swims in front of me. I struggle to focus. I can see him in pieces: snow white hair... tan skin... blue eyes... a diamond earring.

It’s the man from the gas station.

“Wh... t?” I want to ask “what are you doing here?” but my tongue isn’t working.

He gives me an ice chip to soothe my fiery throat. “Don’t try to talk, Joy. You’ve been intubated. The soreness in your throat is normal. I’m Dr. Saunders. You gave us all quite a scare.”

“Who?...” Are you? I don’t understand what’s happening and it scares me.

“You just rest now.”

The people in my room talk among themselves in whispered tones designed to keep me from hearing. Their faces are a sea of blurry circles; everyone is frowning at me and pointing. There is a lot of head-shaking going on. One by one, they leave.

I can hear their footsteps walking away, and the opening and closing of a door.

Then there are only the machines in here with me, making their noises—a click-buzz, a thunk-whoosh; a blip-blip-blip. And I am alone, unable to move, staring up at this unfamiliar ceiling.

Poor Bobby. He must be terrified.

I won’t leave you.

And here I am, in the hospital.

I want him here, beside my bed so that I can smile and tell him I’m fine.

Behind me, the door opens again. Footsteps move haltingly toward me.

It’s Bobby. Thank God.

I feel a rush of sweet relief. He’s knows I didn’t leave him. I’m fine. Fine. In my head, the protestation is vibrant and clear, but the sound that issues from my cracked, dry lips is barely a whisper and even that useless sound tires me. Instead, I try to lift my hand to show how fine I am.

“Joy?”

It’s the wrong voice; not a boy’s. It takes forever for me to turn my head, and when I do, the pillow puffs up around my face, blocking the view from my left eye.

I can see well enough, though.

She looks smaller, somehow, like a pencil that’s been used down to the nub. Her eyes are swollen and red; there’s no mistaking the tear tracks on her cheeks.

Stacey.

I don’t understand. How is she here? How did she find me?

“Wha... here?”

She leans close, pushing the damp hair from my eyes. Her touch is quick, as if she’s not sure it will be welcomed. Almost before I feel it, she draws back. “I was so scared.”

“How” did you “fin...” me?

I can see her answering me, but there’s something wrong. I can’t hear over the buzzing in my ears. My head is pounding, too. I want to ask her where Bobby and Daniel are, but my voice is turning against me. All that comes out is, “Where?”

“They airlifted you to Bakersfield. You’re home.”

“Home?” The word comes out sounding cracked. I don’t understand. It’s Christmas “Eve?”

“No, I’m sorry. I know how much you love the holidays.”

What “Day?”

“It’s the thirtieth. You’ve had a rough two weeks, but the doctors think you’re going to be okay now.”

Her words scatter like BBs on a kitchen table; it’s impossible to grasp them all at once.

“Daniel?”

Stacey frowns. “Do you understand me, Joy? You were in a plane crash, remember? The firemen rescued you moments before it exploded. The doctors said you might have trouble with your memory.”

Rescued you. Firemen.

But I walked away from the crash, left my tattered life behind in the wreckage and went on an adventure. If anyone rescued me, it was Bobby and Daniel. I want to shake my head in denial, but I can’t seem to move. “No.”

“You were in a medically induced coma for almost ten days. Because of a head injury.”

Head injury.

It steals over me like a cold shadow, the meaning of her words. She’s saying I’ve been here, in this hospital bed, since the crash.

I don’t understand. Why would she lie to me? Because I ran away, because I let her think I was dead?

“Joy? What do you remember?”

Daniel and Bobby...

Walking away...

Dancing by the fire at the beach...

My heart starts pounding so fast I can’t breathe. Beside me, a machine starts beeping. “Lying,” I accuse in a whisper. At the word, and the effort behind it, my throat seems to catch fire.

As if from a distance, I hear my sister calling for someone. Within moments there are people in my room.

I see a needle.

“Quit thrashing,” my sister says. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Please be lying.

I feel myself fading to gray, closing my eyes. The terrible sound in my head goes still.

Lying.

I’m flying above the rainforest, looking down at the brightly lit tiara of a town. From a great and yawning distance, I see the black ribbon of a road. Moonlight gilds the center line and I follow it.

This time, I know I’m dreaming. I can hear the buzz of the fluorescent lighting overhead and the thunk-whoosh sound of the stork-like machine beside my bed. There is also a kind of low-grade thrumming in my blood, a euphoria, that comes from an IV drip. I guess it’s camouflaging a serious pain, but it’s masking it so well I don’t care.

From my place amid the silvery clouds, I see the Comfort Fishing Lodge, tucked down along the glassy gray lake. Moonlight glitters on the water.

That’s where I want to be. I close my eyes and make it happen.

When I open my eyes, I’m in the lobby, pressed against the wall. The room is still decorated. The lights of the tree are on; the mantel holds several lit candles amid the snowy town. The stereo is playing Bruce Springsteen’s version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”

I hear footsteps upstairs. This old place rattles and groans as someone races down the hall overhead, then clatters down the stairs.

It is Bobby. He is at a full Christmas morning run.

At the bottom of the stairs, he pivots left and rushes past me to Room 1A.

He pulls the door open, yelling, “Joy!” and disappears inside.

I picture him skidding to a stop beside the empty bed. The sorrow I feel at that overwhelms me, making it difficult to breathe again.

Daniel comes down the stairs and stops beside me. I long to feel the warmth of him, but I can’t. I’m close enough to see the tiny sleep lines that mark his cheek, to hear the soft strains of his breath, and yet I feel as if I’m miles away. “Boyo? I thought you’d go straight to the tree.”

Bobby steps back into the hall. He looks smaller somehow, younger. His shoulders are slumped, his mouth is shaking. I can see how hard he is trying not to cry. “She’s gone.”

I try to go to him, but I can’t push away from the wall. My legs are like lead pipes.

Bobby shuffles toward his father in that hangdog way of disappointed children everywhere. “She promised. It’s just like Mommy.”

“I’m here,” I say, desperately trying to reach out for him. “Don’t say I’m not here.”

Daniel pulls Bobby into his arms. I can tell that Bobby is crying, but it’s nearly silent, the way of a boy who has learned too early to cry and is trying to hide it.

When Bobby draws back, his eyes are red and watery.

“Remember what the doctor said?” Daniel asks, wiping his son’s tears with a gentle hand. “When you didn’t need your imaginary friend anymore, she’d leave.”

“She wasn’t imaginary, Dad.” He shakes his head. “She wasn’t. You talked to her.”

“The doctors told me to pretend.”

I feel as if I’ve been struck.

I was Bobby’s imaginary friend.

Daniel never saw me.

I scream, “It isn’t true,” but even as I say the words, I remember things. The times Daniel didn’t look at me or speak to me. When he did talk to me it was a pretense, at doctor’s orders, to make Bobby feel loved. Like the time we danced. Now I recall that Bobby pointed to where I was. She’s right there, Daddy. Dance with her.

“I can be the one you talk to, Bobby,” Daniel says. His voice cracks. I can see in his eyes how confused he is by all of this, and how afraid.

“You don’t believe me,” Bobby says stubbornly. He spins on his heel and marches over to the Christmas tree, then squats in front of it.

At Bobby’s movement, I am released. I follow him, move when he does, where he does.

When he kneels at the tree, I sit on the hearth, as I have done so many times before. To my left, the card table is still set up with Candyland. There are three men on the board.

I’ll move for Joy, Dad.

At that, another piece clicks into place. Whenever Bobby and I played with action figures, he wanted me to be Frodo, wearing the ring.

The ring that made Frodo invisible.

Bobby reaches underneath the tree and pulls out a small package. It is a crudely wrapped cylinder with ribbons on each end.

We catch our breath at the same time, Bobby and I. It’s proof of my impossible journey, isn’t it?

“Look, Dad. This is from Joy.”

“Bobby...”

“Open it.”

Daniel takes the cylinder in his hands; it looks tiny and frail against his long, tanned fingers. He unwraps it carefully, extracts the list. As he reads it, he frowns. Then he looks at Bobby. “How did you do this?”

“It’s Joy’s present to you. She told me what to write.”

He glances down at the list again.

I was here.

I was.

Surely Daniel will believe Bobby now.

Daniel looks down at his son. “You did this by yourself,” he says quietly. “Please admit it.”

“I couldn’t, Dad,” Bobby answers earnestly.

In the silence that follows, Daniel looks around. “Is she here now?”

“No. She disappeared in the park.”

“SEE ME,” I say as loudly as I can.

Daniel frowns. I can see that he’s bothered by this. He knows Bobby didn’t write that list on his own, but he doesn’t believe in me. How could he?

“Please believe me,” Bobby whispers. “It wasn’t like Mommy. Or Mr. Patches. I swear it wasn’t.”

Daniel stares at the list in his hand. The paper shivers a little, as if he’s shaking. Then he looks at his son. “You need me to believe in magic.”

Bobby’s nod brings tears to his father’s eyes, and to mine. “Mommy would believe me.”

“But...”

“Whatever.” Bobby sighs. It is a terrible, harrowing sound; in it, I hear his defeat.

At last, Daniel says, “Well, I’m Irish, and we’re a crazy lot.”

Bobby draws in a sharp breath. It’s the sound of hope, this time. “Nana used to say a leprechaun lived in her cookie jar.”

Daniel smiles at that. “My point exactly. I guess, boyo, for you I can try to believe, too. But you’ll have to show me how.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“How do I show you?”

Daniel shrugs. “Tell me about her, I guess. Keep talking until I believe.”

Bobby hurls himself into his father’s arms.

I see the way Daniel holds his son, with a ferocity that is borne of desperate love. When Bobby draws back, they are both smiling.

See me, I whisper, wanting it so much my chest hurts. Please.

“Can we open presents now?”

“Aye.”

Bobby runs to the tree and starts dispersing gifts. Most of them collect in a pile on the coffee table. On his last pass, he reaches deep under the tree and pulls out the orange Dr. Seuss book. It has a yellow ribbon stuck dead center. Carrying it carefully, he hands it to his dad, who is now seated on the sofa.

“You’re giving me your favorite book, boyo?”

“Nope.” Bobby sits down next to Daniel, then opens the book.

“You want me to read to you?” Daniel asks, frowning. “How about...”

“Be quiet. I gotta think.” He scrunches up his face, concentrating hard. One syllable at a time, he sounds out the words. “I... am... Sam. Sam... I... am...”

“Bobby.”

“Sshh, Daddy. ‘I... do... not... like... green... eggs... and... ham.’”

I listen to Bobby’s sweet, stumbling voice, but it is Daniel to whom I look. At first he is sitting upright, in control, but as his son sounds out the words, I see Daniel’s control wash away. Everything about him softens—the look in his green eyes, the shelf of his broad shoulders, and the hard line of his spine.

Love. Never have I seen it so clearly or longed for it more desperately.

I’m part of this, I say to them. See me, too.

When Bobby finishes the book, he looks up at his dad. “You’re cryin’. Did I do bad?”

Daniel touches his son’s cheek. “Your mum would be so proud of you.”

Tears sting my eyes, make everything blurry, and I’m glad. I need this moment to be out of focus.

“Joy taught me every day.”

Daniel stares down at his son for a long moment. “Did she now? Then I guess your Joy has a place here, doesn’t she?”

“I miss her, Dad.”

“I know, but you’ve got your old man, and he’s not going anywhere.”

“You promise?”

I can hear the fear in Bobby’s voice, and in the sound, I make sense of it all. That’s been Bobby’s fear all along. That he would be alone. It was the same fear that caused me to board the airplane bound for Hope.

“I promise.”

I lean forward. It is as much movement as I can make. “Believe in me,” I say desperately, willing them to see with their hearts. I focus all my mind on it, thinking over and over again: Believe.

The effort takes everything I have. When I’m done, I can hardly breathe. I feel my heartbeat speed up again. The world starts to go fuzzy and out of focus.

I am fading.

Fading.

I reach out for something to hold on to.

There’s nothing. I close my eyes and scream: No!

When I open my eyes again, I see bright white lights. A nurse is standing by my bed. It is the woman I “met” at the doctor’s office in my dream.

“How are we today?” she asks in her completely familiar voice.

“I’m fine,” I manage, closing my eyes again. I try to find my way back to the rainforest, but, this time, all I see is darkness.

I want to be on the drugs again.

Instead, I am fully awake now, and sitting up in bed. There are so many people clustered around me that I can’t see the walls behind them. A sheen of light hugs the ceiling, coming from a window I can’t see.

I find myself listening for the rain.

But I am in Bakersfield now; it’s the thirty-first of December, and the sun is shining outside.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying. Tell me again.”

The people gathered around me frown. I recognize all of them. There’s Stacey, of course. She hasn’t left the room since I woke up, except to go out for food or—no doubt—to call Thom. And the nurse I saw in my dream. She’s the day nurse who has been taking care of me. The ruddy-faced man from church is the orthopedist who put my right leg back together. Apparently I’m held together by a titanium pin of some kind. This is more than I can say for my mind, which is held together lately by nothing. The gas station guy is my cardiologist; he brought me back to life, though the real credit goes to a man and boy who probably don’t exist.

“Your right leg was broken just below the knee. And your concussion was quite severe. We worried about swelling of the brain for several days,” says the gas station attendant, whom I now have to start calling Dr. Saunders.

I want to make a joke about having a bigger brain, but words fail me.

“With a little physical therapy, you’ll be fine,” my sister says. The council nods in unison like bobbleheads in the backseat of a car.

“Can I still ice skate?” I ask, although I haven’t ice skated since Melinda Carter’s ninth birthday party.

Dr. Saunders frowns. This is a question he didn’t anticipate. “In time, certainly, but... ”

“Never mind.” I try to smile. “When can I go home?”

The head bobbing starts again. This is a question they like. “You’ll have to take it easy for a while,” says Dr. Saunders.

I look down at my casted right leg. No kidding.

“But if you’re careful, and barring any unforeseen complications, we think you can go home in a few days.”

I want to smile for them. I really do. I know how hard they have all worked to help me so that I can go home.

Alone. “That’s great.”

I see how Stacey looks at me. She knows what I’m thinking. It is a bond that has been in place a long time, and apparently neither anger nor betrayal can break it.

“Thanks,” I say, meaning it.

As a group, they leave, and we are left alone, Stacey and I.

Neither one of us speaks. We obviously don’t know what to say, how to start.

It’s up to me; I know that. She has already made her move—she invited me to her wedding. It’s why I’m lying here, hooked up to machines and held together by a metal pin.

I sit up, reposition the pillows. The minute I’m up here, I know it’s a mistake. There’s no way to avoid seeing Stacey’s stomach. She has gained a few pounds already.

She notices where I’m looking. “I’m surprised you haven’t thrown me out,” she says, softly. I can hear the longing in her voice, the missing of me, and it reminds me of a dozen memories of our youth.

“At your current weight, I’d need some kind of catapult.”

She wants to smile at my lame joke; I can see the desire. But she doesn’t. Probably she can’t. Neither can I. “I haven’t gained that much.”

“If I had two good legs, I’d kick your ass, though.”

“Stop,” Stacey says. “You always make jokes when you’re hurting.”

And there it is: the core of everything. We’re sisters. We know each other intimately. Our pasts, our secrets, our fears. It is a precious gift that we tried to throw away but can’t really let go of.

Stacey bites her lower lip. It’s what she’s done her whole life when she’s scared. “I’m sorry, Joy. I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t mean...”

I hold up my hand. Of all the things we could say now, the hows and whys of what happened are at the bottom of my list. But I make my move too late; her words get through, make me angry... and hurt me. “You make it sound like you slipped on a banana peel and fell on my husband.”

“So what do we do?”

The soft tenor of her voice, the trembling of her lip, the regret in her eyes; I see it all, and in seeing it, seeing her, I lose that spark of anger, just let it go. When the plane was going down, it was Stacey whom I thought about. That’s what I need to always remember now. “We find a way to get past it. That’s all.”

“Who are you and what have you done with my sister?”

“Now who’s trying to be funny?”

Stacey stares down at me with a combination of awe and gratitude. “Two weeks ago you hated me.”

“I never hated you, Stace,” I say the words softly, realizing almost before I’ve finished that they’re not enough. What I want to say, need to say, now before I lose my nerve is what I learned in the rainforest: “We’re sisters.”

At that, Stacey starts to cry.

I wait for her to say something, but she remains quiet. Maybe, like me, she’s wondering how exactly we move forward from here. “It won’t be easy,” I say.

She wipes her eyes. “What is?” Taking a small step closer, she looks down at me, pushes a strand of hair from my eyes. “I am sorry, you know.”

“I know.” I sigh. “When I was in the rainforest,” I stop abruptly, realizing what I was about to say.

“What rainforest?”

I try to smile and fail. “If I told you, you’d think I was brain damaged. Or crazy.”

“You’re the most level-headed person I know.”

I look at her closely, trying to gauge how much to say. “On television, I heard you tell the reporters you were hoping I’d come back to you.”

Stacey frowns. “How—?”

“Just answer me. Did you say that?”

“I did. I prayed every day that you’d wake up and come back.”

Somehow, I saw that real broadcast from a fake world. “And you were wearing the yellow outfit I bought you.”

Stacey nods slowly, then leans forward, rests her arms on the rail. “You never saw that broadcast. You were in a coma.”

Who can I tell if not my sister? And I need to tell someone. I’m like the “I see dead people” kid. If I try to handle this all alone, I’ll go nuts. “After the crash, I woke up...”

She shakes her head. “No. You never regained consciousness. The paramedics... ”

“Crazy, remember?”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, I was in this clearing. There was smoke everywhere, and fire, and loud noises, and... Mom.”

Stacey goes very still. “You saw her?”

I nod.

“And?”

“She knelt beside me and told me it wasn’t my time.” I lean forward slightly, desperate to be told I’m not insane, even though I know I must be. “Tell me I’m wacko.”

“In the field... Your heart stopped for almost a minute. You were legally dead.”

I release a deep breath. There’s a strange sense of peace that comes with the news. “She made me wake up. When I did, I saw how alone I was, how far from the survivors. At first, I was going to go to them and get rescued, then I thought of you and I changed my mind. I walked away from the crash and ended up in some little town in Washington.”

“You know the plane crashed about one hundred miles northeast of here?”

It shakes me, that new bit of information. “I was never even in Washington State?”

“No.”

I’ll think about that later. For now, since I’ve started on my mad story, I want to finish it. “I found a run-down resort called The Comfort Fishing Lodge and got a room. There was a boy there, and a man.”

Stacey holds up a hand to stop me. “Wait a second.” She runs to the corner of the room, where my purse is on a mustard-yellow plastic seat. Beside it is my camera.

“My camera,” I whisper. “Did you develop my film?”

“Huh? No.” Stacey digs through my black leather tote and finally pulls out a magazine, then hurries back to my side. “I read this while you were in surgery.” She opens it to a page, hands it to me.

It’s the article on The Comfort Fishing Lodge. “I was looking at this in the airport.”

I feel as if I’m unraveling, coming apart. This is where it began. In my subconscious. I looked at the pictures of this place and longed to go there. And a morphine drip made it possible.

“This article says the lodge was torn down in 2003, to make way for a corporate retreat.”

Torn down.

“Does it mention a Daniel?”

Stacey scans the pages. “No. The resort was built by Mr. and Mrs. Melvin Hightower. They moved to Arizona when the Zimon Corporation purchased it. The new place hosts corporate shindigs and self-help seminars.”

There is no Comfort Fishing Lodge.

I was never there.

No doubt Daniel is my neurologist and Bobby is some nurse’s son who darted into my room for a second while I was sleeping.

“Joy, are you okay?”

I close my eyes so she won’t see my tears. “No.”

“You’re scaring me.”

I finally look at her. Through my tears, I can see how worried she is. I wish I could reassure her, but I can’t. “Will you develop my film?”

“Are you sure you want me to?”

I sigh. “Stace, I’m not sure about anything.”