The tearing pain passed, and now she felt the echo of it thrumming. “I’ve been noticing. Here in New Zealand, my daydreams are about my real life, about reality, about the me I am now, not a younger version of me. Because my life here is more real. My daydreams have substance, because my life has substance. If you know what I mean?”
“Not sure I do.” Aroha’s voice was confused, but felt softer now. “Why do I hear beeping? Why am I getting another call from the police?”
“Thank you for your friendship, your whakahoahoa,” Ammalie panted. “I need to go. But I wanted to say. Because of you, I’ve learned words like whanau, family. Whenua, land. Moana, ocean. Thank you for expanding me. I’m”—and here she gasped with a shooting star of pain—“I’m truly sorry for lying. I…I had to take over other people’s lives until I could find my own. You are a wonderful person.”
She gasped out the last words and grabbed her left side and hung up the phone just before accordioning on the bed and emitting a high-pitched animal sound. She found herself thinking, once again, How very animal I’ve become! As she continued moaning, somewhere far away she heard the dog’s yelps, the gasp of the freed tree, the cry of humans and animals everywhere.
—
The young doctor was back, was asking her about her pain in her left side, was pressing on the right. “Rebound tenderness?” the doctor mumbled, and then there was another doctor, both hovering, and one was slowly pressing her fingers on the left side, then quickly letting go, which is when her right side started shooting pain. “Contralateral rebound,” and “Yes. Yes, that’s what threw me.”
“Not ovary—”
“Not this congestion syndrome—”
“Appendix!”
“The two-fer rule. Two things at once.”
“A keyhole surgery now.”
“Yes.”
“Let’s move—”
“Prep keyhole.”
Then suddenly an IV was being put into her arm. Again, the doctor was there saying something about acute appendicitis…spread to the peritoneum? We’ll see, and then another doctor came in and asked about allergies to anesthesia and smiled and told her she’d be drifting off. As she did, she could feel the wet on her cheeks and she could hear herself whispering, “Powell. Mari. Apricot. Please. I need you.”
Then, dark came.
—
She opened her eyes, closed them, rested, opened them to see a dark-haired young woman. The same one from the café was sitting beside her bed, eyes closed.
“Apolena?” Ammalie whispered.
The young woman startled. “You know who I am? God, are you okay? You don’t look so fab—”
“Are you Vincent’s daughter? Are you my step—”
The young woman scowled, but her voice was very kind. “What?” Then a soft look of understanding spread over her face, and she smiled. “Noooo, no, no,” and then she laughed a beautiful liquid laugh. “That would have made a very predictable story, no? Life is more complicated than that. But no, I am not. I am Erik’s daughter. But I do know about Vincent. He was my mother’s great love before Erik. Then Erik was her great love. Vincent was here one summer, at my grandparents’ farm in the bush, and, yes, he and my mother were lovers. And then he went off and married you! And life went on.”
Ammalie felt blurry. She blinked her eyes hard, as if that would clear her brain. “But…did you go visit Vincent in Arizona?”
“I did.”
Ammalie felt a gasp escape. “But you’re not his daughter?”
“No, no. Listen. No. My mother, Nina, married Erik, and they had me. No affairs were had. I look just like my father, don’t worry. But my mother found Vincent on Facebook years ago. She sought him out because I was in trouble. I happened to be in the States, traveling across the American West, my big OE adventure—Overseas Experience, you know?—and it was harder than I thought it would be. I was lonely and tired and broke. Guidebooks make it seem so easy! Everyone else seems to make it sound so fun! But, you know, it is not easy. It’s not always fun! Life is scary! Everything costs so much! American buses are…creepy! A man showed me his…Well, it doesn’t matter. Well, it does, actually. I was having a panic attack in Tucson. I was pretty down-and-out. So my mother was frantic and found Vincent and put us in touch and then bought me a Greyhound bus ticket. I went to see the Dark Sky with him. He picked me up at the bus stop in Portal, Arizona.”
“But your name—”
“It was a family name, on Vincent’s side, I know. My mother heard it and loved it. She asked my father, and he loved it too. It’s unusual. It’s pretty. That’s all.” Apolena laughed her liquid laugh again and shrugged. “I was born a year after your son. Who is on his way to New Zealand, by the way. With your sister and your friend.”
“What?” Ammalie tried to sit up, but her abdomen roared with pain. The Sea Creature was cowering there, full of pricks and needles and nervy blasts.
“Nan’s driver is picking them up at the airport when they arrive.”
Ammalie made a gargling, gasping sound that surprised even her. “Why…for the love of the universe, why would Nan do that?”
Apolena shrugged. “Because Nan is Nan. As she puts it, she gets a ‘kick out of you.’ She went to the house and saw how you had taken out all the pots and pans and cleaned the cupboards, which is something she’s wanted to do for years. Or hoped someone else would do. She said the residents loved your beach designs. She said you left necklaces everywhere. She said that obviously, you were a good and strange soul. And, as we all know, the world needs more of those. The problem with this planet is that we don’t have enough of those sorts.”
Those words, said so kindly, made Ammalie start to weep a gentle weeping—her body was in too much pain and too traumatized to do much more—but the tears leaked and Apolena sat nearby, holding her hand.
—
The next day came and went in a haze. A haze fostered by pharmaceuticals, by a body injured and healing, by her own exhaustion. A haze that reminded her of sea spray. A haze she clung to because it was safe. But the morning after that came, and it became clear that she was supposed to be clear. She tried to concentrate—information on painkillers, rest, incision instructions, bloating—but all she really heard was the doctor’s final words: “Though it was an emergency, it was, after all, only a minor surgery. You can go home soon.”
Ammalie blew out air. “No, thank you.” Then, “Really? I’m in too much pain for that. Also, I don’t have a home.”
“I think you can. We’ll watch you tonight, though.”
She was too groggy to think it through, but heard herself venturing, “Do you know where my necklace is? I had one on…from my late husband.”
The doctor shook her head no. “I’m sorry. Later, I’ll ask the ambulance drivers.”
With her words came a memory—oh, god, how had she forgotten?—the man in the back of the ambulance had been Richard! He’d been hovering over her, stroking her hair back from her forehead. If she remembered right, his fingers had paused on her two scars, and his eyes had shown real concern. It had felt so good, just to have that touch, that moment of someone seeing her hurt. Maybe what humans want most: another human to see the hurt borne. To see it and to care.
