The Other Side of Dark Read Free

clatter, and someone races out. He pauses on the second step as we stare at each other. But I can’t see his face!
    “Show me your face,” I say aloud. “You’re someone I know. I remember that much!”
    The face is blank. But there’s something in his hand. It’s a gun. He points it at me. I can’t move. I can’t make a sound. I want to cry out, “Mom!”
    Mom.
    Some part of my mind has clutched and hidden what Dad told me about Mom; but now his words spill out, and I have to face them. I roll onto my stomach andcry, the pillow stuffed against my mouth. I cry until no more tears will come, and dry, hiccuping shudders shake my body. The soggy pillow smells sour, so I push it to the floor. I’ll never see my mother again.
    The door snaps open, and a tall, angular nurse, who matches the crispness of her uniform, strides to my bed. “Well, hi,” she says. “I’m Alice.” I can tell that she’s taking in the pillow on the floor and my swollen eyes, but she doesn’t react until all the temperature-pulse business has been accomplished. She checks under the bandage on my hip, makes a note on her chart, puts it down, and for the first time looks at me as though I were a person. “How about a shower before breakfast?” she asks. “It will help you feel a lot better.”
    “Yesterday I got kind of dizzy when I tried to sit up.”
    “That was yesterday, and that was the medication.”
    “Have I got out of bed to take showers before?”
    She smiles. “Every day, and I’m usually the one who’s given them to you.”
    My face is hot. I’m embarrassed that I blushed, but she doesn’t seem to notice. The shower does make me feel better on the outside. I hold my face up to the water, feeling its sting on my forehead and scalp.
    But nothing has helped on the inside. Maybe I can’t be helped, because a hollow has been carved in there, and inside that hollow there are no feelings at all.
    Alice, making sure I’m steady on my feet, leaves me to towel-dry my hair. She hums under her breath as she makes my bed.
    There’s a small mirror over the sink in my bathroom.I drop the towel and study myself in the mirror. It’s the weirdest sensation. I feel that I’m looking at Donna the way Donna looked when I was thirteen. The person in that mirror is different from the one I was used to seeing. The face is thinner with shadows under the cheekbones. I remember when my best friend, Jan, and I would stick our faces toward the mirror and suck in our cheeks and say, “This is what we’ll look like when we grow up and are beautiful!”
    I wonder how the eyes in the mirror can droop with so much pain when I feel absolutely empty inside.
    Alice brings me a short gown sprigged with blue violets. “The nurses thought you’d like something pretty,” she says, adding, “Norma picked it out.”
    I don’t know what to say. I think I mumble, “Thank you.”
    She glances at me from the corners of her eyes. The shyness doesn’t match her efficient look. “We’re all so glad that you recovered. We really care about our patients, especially the young ones. Especially you, Stacy. You’ve got most of your life ahead of you, and we—” She stops, and the briskness takes over. “Your sister’s going to bring some of her clothes for you.”
    “Don’t I have any clothes here? What did I wear?”
    “During the day we put you into cotton knit jumpsuits, which you could wear when the therapist helped you ride the exercise bike and use the other equipment.” She reaches into the small closet, pulls out a shapeless gray thing, and holds it up, its arms and legs dangling. It looks like an ad showing what happens when you use the wrong brand of soap.
    All I can say is “Yeech!”
    She laughs and tucks me between the stiff sheets, cranks my bed until I’m sitting upright, and hands me a hairbrush so that I can brush my hair.
    Breakfast is brought in, and while I’m munching through the eggs’ curly brown edges, a girl appears in