Coming back to life is a tough undertaking. I’m in over my head.
Michael says I should put what happened out of my mind. Now that I’ve recovered, there’s no point in trying to bring back into memory my stay in the ER, only to dwell on it to no end. He does his best to distract me from my agonizing thoughts, not only by sending me chocolate, wine, and flowers but also by sweeping me off my feet, straight into his fantasy worlds.
Michael invites me into imagined adventures, which he constructs using the virtual reality software he’s developing. There is nothing he enjoys better than riding upon the scaly backs of dinosaurs, surveying a prehistoric landscape, or flying a spacecraft through the milky way and beyond—but lately, I have lost interest in his dreams.
First and foremost, I must contend with my own nightmares.
My silence must sound painfully long on the cellphone. Facing it, Michael begs me to set aside my pride and ask him for help any time I need it. “Don’t cut me off.”
“Have to,” I whisper. “I don’t feel like myself.”
His voice is terribly worried. “If you try to go it alone, your exhaustion will force you into making costly mistakes.”
I take a deep breath, then listen to the last remnant of it as it flutters in my throat. He’s right, of course—but I’m not going to tell him that, because compelled by the little devil in me, I’m just about to embark on my very first mistake.
I must be free to do it, right? I must decide on my own course of action—even if to others, it may seem entirely wrong.
At any rate, this mistake must be kept private. Michael should be the last person to know.
I try not to sound evasive. “Sorry. Have to go now.”
“Sweetheart,” he says, “I know you’re up to something. I can just feel it.”
I blow him a kiss as his face fades out. After a while, the cellphone screen goes dark.
Months after recovering from coma, Ash discovers that the man who performed her brain surgery has a questionable medical experience and a dark past. Should she expose him, at the risk of becoming vulnerable to his revenge?
"This book is exactly the kind of complex psycho-drama I've come to expect of Uvi Poznansky. The characters are full blown and full of contradictions and there are more plot twists than switchbacks on an Tibetan mountain side."
- Aurora Dawn, VINE VOICE
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