The Italian reporter took me at a gallop, mike in hand, sound and lights trailing behind her. “Aurelia Perla, La Stampa. How do you feel about what is happening to your niece?”
I held up my hand to shield my face and made a run for the reception area.
Aurelia ran after me. “Was Quinn enjoying her exchange before the accident?”
Desperate not to be filmed, I flung myself through the doors and didn’t stop until I got to reception. There Sister Agnès, the receptionist who had gazed at me so cynically over half-moon specs the day before, was all sympathy.
“Really these journalists should not do that, but—” she sighed, patting my hand “—the best we can do is to keep them outside of here.”
Sister Agnès introduced me to Sister Eglantine, the other nun from the previous day. Ever since the conversation with Bill, I’d been dreading the inevitable moment of discovery: a tap on the shoulder, an unmarked police car pulling up alongside me, a rogue tweet trending, Quinn’s real family showing up. The nuns were so kind to me, so pleased that I was there for Quinn, that I began to feel something I hadn’t anticipated: guilty. Their faith in me made me uneasy. Maybe in this world of paranoia and Google, unquestioning acceptance was the weirdest experience of all.
In her little room, Quinn lay unmoving, tucked under starched sheets, looking more than ever like a fairy tale princess under a curse. Sister Eglantine bustled around, opening the blinds, placing a stack of cardboard bedpans in a drawer. I held Quinn’s hand and kept half an eye on Eglantine. One of the drawers she opened contained a plastic tray full of personal effects: a scatter of coins, a hair band, and a pair of earrings shaped like bats. An iPhone with a broken screen.
She must have felt me watching her, because she turned to me and explained in her usual delicate English, “The things she had with her, when …” As if the thought of this had upset her, she abruptly left the room.
I sat for a while, staring at the pale arms of birches waving in the hospital grounds, pure blue sky spilling between their branches like paint. I wondered how these nuns got to be so nice, when the ones in my high school were witches. Turning my attention to the bed, I looked at Quinn’s hand lying in mine, the groove of her lifeline casting a faint shadow. Her skin felt so new, as if it had just been made. If she never woke and the truth never came to light, what would happen? Would the nuns just keep her here sleeping forever, like Snow White in her glass case?
Make a difference, Bill had said. That’s what all this was about. It was why I let Quinn’s hand rest on the sheets and crossed the room to the chest of drawers. It was why I reached into the plastic tray until my fingertips found the rough lifeline in the glass of the broken phone. It was why I slipped it into my purse.
JULY 31, 2015
The phone was charging, the battery percentage nudging slowly up. I’d found an outlet under Quinn’s bed and plugged it in with my charger, arranging my bag and feet on the floor to hide it from view. Every time a trolley squeaked past the doorway, I twitched around, trying not to look too suspicious and reasoning that if someone did come in I would just say the phone was mine.
As soon as the battery looked more green than red, I unplugged it and went to the bathroom, latching the door with unsteady hands. I sat on the toilet and clicked the phone on, feeling a passing moment of triumph that there was no passcode. I studied the wallpaper photo, of Quinn and Raphael Blavette huddled under a towel. They were beaded with water, grinning, his arm slung over her shoulders, her head half on his chest. They looked more than close—intimate. I wondered if they’d been an item, before whatever went wrong went wrong.
The big discovery was her blog on the Blogger app, which I glanced at with the same blushing fascination with which I read my older sister’s diary when I was a nerdy middle schooler and she was a popular senior, navigating the world of crushes and boys and Shakespearean friendship dramas. The blog’s title—Sympathy for the Devil—revealed an unexpected side to Quinn Perkins, one kept invisible in her Facebook account.
I made a note of the url and flicked through the phone’s other apps, cryptic emblems of the mysterious life of the teenager—Tumblr and Spotify, Tinder and Snapchat. The photos were much like her Instagram account—snaps of the sunny beach and hunks at the pool, though there were quite a few more of Raphael, including some glowing selfies of the two of them together that only confirmed my sense that they were involved.
The time caught my eye—I’d been in the cubicle for nearly twenty minutes, though it had felt like five. I hurried out of the cubicle and back to the room, glancing up and down the corridor before I went in. I didn’t see anyone, so it seemed safe to go to the chest of drawers and slip the phone back into the plastic tray. As I did, I noticed a pink iPod shuffle lying tangled in the hair band. I remembered reading an article about how familiar music stimulates the brains of comatose patients. Some patients who were thought beyond hope had woken after hearing their favorite songs.
No sooner had I taken the shuffle out than I heard Sister Eglantine’s voice from behind me. “I’m afraid visiting time is almost over,” she said apologetically.
“No worries,” I said, turning around slowly and trying not to look guilty.
“Look at her sleeping,” she said, putting her head to one side. “The poor angel. Anything you need—truly—you must inform us. We are here to hold you up in your necessity.”
“Well, there is one thing,” I said.
Eglantine hovered nervously while I pushed the earbuds into her patient’s ears, noting how their delicate folds looked translucent in the light streaming in from the window. As if she was carved from wax, not flesh. I tried to explain the coma theory. Embarrassed at not understanding me, she smiled and nodded and drifted away, reminding me one last time about visiting hours.
I pressed Play on the shuffle. Some Tom Waits song or other started up, sounding tinny and warped. I don’t know how long I stood over her, but my strongest impression from the whisper of the songs was that she had music taste a lot like my dad.
After a while, I had to sit down because my legs were shaking. I’d been standing so still, worried that she would move and I’d miss it. I don’t know if it was because I’d looked through her photos, her blog, but something had changed. I felt as if I belonged there somehow, with her. I noticed new things about her—the pale purple shadows under her eyes, the scars on her face knitting together, the new growth of hair on the shaved part of her head. I held her hand, and this time it wasn’t a lie.
I was just unplugging the charge from under the bed when I saw something out of the corner of my eye: a tiny movement, just like before. I looked up. Nothing. She was as still as a waxen effigy or a statue carved on a tomb. Perhaps it was wishful thinking or a trick of the mind or something. I dropped the charger in my bag.
As soon as I did, there it was again. And this time I saw it clearly: a twitch of her littlest finger, tiny, but definitely a movement. And then a twitch of all of her fingers, as if she were clutching at the sheets.
“Sister Eglantine,” I called.
She didn’t answer, so I called louder, my voice hoarse with excitement. It had worked. Her P300 wave or whatever was responding to meaningful stimulus, which meant she could wake up.
Sister Eglantine came in and I hurriedly explained. She summoned the doctor. They prodded and poked and checked the machines, but when they saw nothing, the mood turned into one of vague disappointment. Eglantine smiled apologetically. The doctor cautioned me not to feel too hopeful.
Like all relatives, of course I did secretly feel hopeful: that she would wake. And unlike relatives, I secretly worried: that she would wake.