It doesn’t break, but a crack appears, running from one end of the unicorn to the other. I miss the little ledge where it sits though, and it hits the floor. Now Tess doesn’t do anything, and I put the unicorn down.
I thought that sounded a bit beyond Tess, who dealt in the here and now and in being adored, but when Beth put the thing in Tess’s limp hands, I swear she almost blinked. She said she knew Tess would like it, that it was all about impossibilities. “Wake up, Tess,” I say, loud enough for my breath to stir her hair, and pick up the glass unicorn Beth brought the first time she visited. When I realized I had to bring Tess back. That’s when I realized I had to start coming by myself. I chewed and swallowed and chewed and swallowed even though the cupcakes tasted like rubber, and my parents watched Tess’s face, waiting. They got me cupcakes from the vending machine and sang when I opened them. I was still visiting Tess with my parents. It was two weeks and two days after the accident. They floated around for a while and then wilted, fell. She turned twenty in this room, four days after the call that sent us all rushing here. At doing the right thing, at making people happy. Instead, her car hit a patch of ice and slammed into a tree. She’d waited to come home because she didn’t want to risk getting into an accident with a drunk driver. She was in a car accident on New Year’s Day, driving home the morning after a party. And Tess has been in this bed, in this room, in this hospital, for six weeks. I guess “coma” doesn’t sound as good when you’re trying to sell stories where everything ends up okay.Ĭoma. Like a princess in a fairy tale, Tess is asleep. I used to visit Tess with Mom and Dad, used to wait with them for the doctor, but the news never changed and I got so I couldn’t bear to see my parents’ faces, washed out and exhausted and sad.
Tess’s eyes stay closed, and her body lies limp, punctured with needles and surrounded by machines. “If you don’t do something, Tess, I-I’ll sing for you.” I lean in, so close I can see the tiny blue lines on her eyelids marking where her blood still pumps, still flows. Sunday is a day of prayer after all, isn’t it? So here’s mine: I’ve been here so often that sometimes I think they’re her way of replying. The machines that keep Tess alive beep at me. with her husband and firmly believes you can never own too many books. Elizabeth Scott is the author of Bloom, Perfect You, Living Dead Girl, Something Maybe, The Unwritten Rule, Between Here and Forever, and Miracle, among others.
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