Chapter 10: Eyes Wide Open
The girl woke up with tears in her bright blue eyes, spreading from the creased corners of her lashes to the cherries of her cheeks fluidly as each lid fluttered open to greet a world so strange and new. With each drop of emotion that fell to her chin, the girl fought off a sob of anguish, the light within this new life dwindling to sorrow and pain. Her head was crying out to her as though her skull were constricting upon the fragile brain inside her head, and it took the girl all of her strength to wipe the dew of sadness from her skin without uttering a shout in response. Where was she? Why was she here? Who was she?
There were noises coming from somewhere in the room, a voice was speaking to her through a static signal as the sun violated her field of view with its rays too bright for the head of the beholder. Overstimulation was currently a possibility, and with every laborious breath she took, she willed the light and noise to go away so that she might find some false sense of peace in this world of too much. If nothingness were truly something she could obtain, the lack of all senses handed to her in a gift-wrapped box, this girl would've abandoned this world without a second thought or look behind.
Her headache was subsiding now, the strength leaving a dull soreness upon her frontal lobe as an imprint of it being there, a memory, just in case she forgot what true pain was. Even as she opened her eyes to gaze around at the world surrounding her, she knew nothing of her whereabouts or why she might be there; in fact, she really didn't know anything, even concerning herself. Her eyes strayed down to her outstretched hands-fingernails chipped but painted a brilliant and bright blue, arms scratched but only lightly so, fingers short and chubby-hoping that maybe one of these miniscule details would clue her into who she was and why she was here. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and she just felt like an idiot looking at her hands intensely.
"Ah, you're awake. That's perfect, I have a few questions for you," a voice called from the doorway of what the girl assumed was a hospital room, taking into consideration that she was absolutely sure that this man, dressed in a white jacket with a stethoscope around his neck, was a doctor. He clicked off the TV, playing an older version of the Scooby Doo series, before sitting in a wheelie-chair next to the hand sanitizer dispenser and picking up a notepad and pen. Even though she knew he was only there to help, the girl felt somewhat intruded upon, and pulled her blanket further up her chest.
"Now, my name is . I've been taking care of you since you came in here Saturday, today being the Monday directly after. Would you mind telling me your name, miss?" He smiled, readying his little notepad to be written on as he expected an answer.
Now, this was a really difficult question, and the girl was feeling sort of frustrated that she was expected to know something so important so soon in her small life. As far as she was concerned, she had just been born this morning, and this man had no right to force her to think of such frivolous things as a name-she had just assumed that it would come a lot later, when she had some time to think and choose. Still, she racked her brain as hard as she could for a suitable answer to the question she so hated, wondering if she should just choose one at random or let one claim her though time. How did people come up with names anyway?
"Ma'am, I just need your name, please. We found some identification on you, but we need to make sure that's who you truly are. Can you tell me your name?"
Now she was angry that he was rushing her, and so the girl shot daggers at the doctor sitting next to her so calmly, crossing her arms and filling her voice with snake venom, "How am I supposed to know something like that? I don't even know where I am."
This took the doctor by surprise, preventing his hand from moving as he gaped slightly at the girl. Then, all at once, something clicked in his brain, and the doctor began writing furiously on his little notepad, whispering silently to himself as he did so.
"Ma'am, when is your birthday?"
Again, the girl took some time to think angrily to herself, wishing that the doctor would stop asking her such useless questions and let her figure them out for herself. As she thought back as far as she could, the only memories she had were remnants from since she woke up. If she thought hard enough, flashes of emotion came to her in short bursts, but nothing as vivid as what she knew she had experienced that day.
"I...I don't know, is that something I'm supposed to know by now?"
continued writing, not even looking up at her as his hand moved rhythmically back and forth across the page, "And who is our current president?"
She shook her head, not even trying to think back this time. Nothing in her limited memory had to do with trivia, and she hadn't heard of a president on Scooby Doo. There would be nothing in her fragmented brain that would help her with this question.
"Alright, I want to schedule you for a few brain scans immediately to make sure your brain is safe and sound, but you may be experiencing a form of amnesia. You came into the hospital with a very minor concussion, but it may have been more serious than we thought-usually with traumatic experiences, any amnesia relates back to the accident, but you seem to have forgotten a lot more than just Saturday night. Is there anything you'd like me to call you, or would you rather wait and see if one of the contacts we called in your phone come in to answer for you?"
"I guess you can just call me-"
"Vivienne. Her name is Vivienne." A voice called out from the entrance of the room, the outline of a man standing vigil in the doorway with his long hands rested upon the frame. He was thin, not very tall, and overall somewhat wimpy looking with wide eyes and the jerkiness of anxiety making his movements abrupt. For some reason, the girl felt like she knew him from somewhere, as though he had been a part of her life before her birth this morning.
"May I ask who you are, sir?" The doctor questioned, looking at him skeptically as he clipped his pen to his notepad. The man cleared his throat, somewhat uncomfortable, almost as though he didn't like social interaction and wanted to be anywhere but here, speaking to anyone but the mirror. That was it, she must know this man.
"I'm...I'm her father," he attempted a smile, offering his hand stiffly to the doctor next to the girl's bed with beads of sweat forming on his brow, "Julian Stronack. Her name is Vivienne Stronack, I've come to pick her up and take her back home, we have quite a drive ahead of us."
Vivienne sounded like good name, but she didn't like it. Something about it felt negative, as though it were something she should leave behind, something she already had left behind; and hi name, Julian...the girl looked up at the man with distrust in her eyes, feeling as though he were not someone she could trust. Whoever this man was, he had done something unspeakable to her, an action sh could not forgive. The girl lifted her head proudly to disagree with the man, to give this unlikely stranger a piece of her mind, but another voice entered the room before she could even think to answer.
"Like hell you're her father."
Heels clacking upon the floor of the hospital, a very tall and very thin woman hurried in with the presence of an angry high school principal, her brown hair packed tightly into a neat bun on the back of her head. The woman's lips were pursed and eyes nothing but slits, and she looked as though she were about to tear the man limb from limb. He glanced at her with the fluttering of his heart worn upon his face, evident in the quick breaths he took, terrified of the woman yet still wishing to stand up to her. Like a defiant baby bird, he puffed out his chest and tried his best to look half as intimidating as she did.
"Yes, I am her father. Who are you exactly? You don't have a right to be in here."
"I have more of a right to be in here than your sorry ass. I'm Mary Blecher, the woman who raised your child from middle school onward," She was in front of the girl now, looking directly into her eyes as she grabbed the sides of her face with worry, "Are you alright Vivi? I got here as quickly as I could, I was just upstairs with Arthur before his surgery, you weren't up yet. Do you need anything? I can run down and grab your sweater from the Mystery Van if you like, you look cold."
The girl shook her head, somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of people claiming to be very diverse and important aspects of a life she wasn't sure she was even really a part of. Her thoughts and feelings were all turned around, and bits of her memories were interfering with her own assumptions. Despite the terrifying and intimidating actions and aura of the woman in front of her, she felt safe when she placed her hand upon her shoulder protectively, and even though he seemed mild and just as terrified as she was, the girl couldn't stand the presence of the man who claimed to be her father.
"I'll tell you what she told me many years ago, what she has continued to tell me ever since I met her. Her name is Vivi Mystery, and she long ago abandoned the name Stronack because she didn't want to be anything like you. She didn't want any part of her to lead back to you because you left her to fend for herself when she was too young to even tie her shoes right. When I asked to meet you to thank the man who reared the daughter who saved my son, she denied that she even had a father, claiming that he died a long time ago, and if she hadn't confided in me the truth, I would still think you dead. I have quite a few bones to pick with you, mister, and if we weren't on public property, you would be a dead man. Either you turn tail and run right now, or I do what any parent worth their salt would do and chase you out of here myself, do you hear?" The woman ordered the man, her hand tightening its grip on the girl's shoulder as her voice was raised to a passionately strong shout. Somehow, the words and memories the woman recalled felt strangely right, and the girl-Vivi, as she began to remember-felt that she was hearing the truth from the woman's mouth. In response, she leaned a bit closer into the woman's grasp, allowing her to comfort Vivi further.
The man looked as though he were either about to burst into an angry rage or cry profusely, surprise lighting his face in a shade of embarrassed crimson cheeks. His voice was hardly anything more than a whimper as he tried to take a step forward, to regain the ground he had lost under the scrutiny of the woman guarding his offspring, "I...I have a right to be here. She is my blood, and-"
"I may be your blood, but I am not your family." Vivi spoke up, surprising herself with the darkness in her voice, the low growl that she had resorted to when talking to him. There was a new kind of courage in her veins, filling her with fire, "I may not remember anything, but I know to trust my instinct, and my instinct says that you need to leave. I am Vivi Mystery, and I am not in any way but biology your daughter."
The man sputtered as though he were going to argue with these words, but any determination that had been shown on his face had died the moment she spoke up, and he was left in silence. His eyes grew soft, his mouth downturned, and he bit his lip gently and nervously as he mulled over something deep in his brain. One, two, three steps he took back before finally he turned around and fled just as had asked; the woman had some seriously commanding presence, and Vivi could only imagine how terrifying it must be when you were on the opposite side of her affections. All in all, Vivi was glad to have this woman on her side, and as the tension in the room died down to a light sizzle, everyone within began to relax. Vivi turned to the woman with a little bit of confusion tinting her face, even more confused after the scene that had just played out in front of her.
"You said your name is Mary Blecher. Where do I know you from?" Vivi began to ask, but as the words slipped past her lips and reached into the room, a picture flashed across her mind with the most lucidity she had experienced upon waking, a picture of a boy. He was her age, early twenties, with the same frame as the woman in front of her with hair a near amber orange with a small clump of brunette sticking up rebelliously from the middle, an overall cowardly, scared young man. As vividly as the room in front of her, she remembered this boy she had never seen as though he were standing right beside her. She grasped onto that little bit of memory-an actual picture in a blank, white room-with all of might in hopes that she could hold onto it, explore it, keep it as her own. It was something stable, something familiar in its unfamiliarity, something she needed even if she didn't know how.
"Arthur! You remind me of Arthur! Where is he? Who is he? I must see him, I need to see him." She cried out, grasping frantically at as she tried to climb from her bed. Both the woman and the doctor stood up to push her back into the blankets, trying to prevent her from overworking her aching and sore, sleep-weary body to a point of injuring herself, but Vivi fought them off as best she could. She needed to see the only memory she had, the only person she truly remembered as existing in a world before her rebirth.
"Easy there, tiger," Ms. Blecher tutted, giving the girl a final, firm push back into the bed before straightening her white blouse and adjusting her glasses. Vivi gave into the strength of her two keepers, looking up at the woman with a hurt expression, "Even if you were one hundred percent healthy and able to come and go as you please, Arthur just went into surgery and won't be out for another hour at least."
This startled Vivi, and she could feel her heart sink to the bottom of her empty stomach like a cracked and rusted anchor upon the ocean floor, "Is he okay? What happened?"
With this question she was met by an eerie silence, and if the pain in her heart was anything to go by, Vivi didn't like silence one bit. The doctor stood up, bowed slightly as a farewell with a few kind words, and left the two alone in the room to discuss the boy she remembered so clearly. As he walked out, readied herself to speak with her hands placed neatly on the lap of her pencil skirt.
"Well, Vivi, we don't really know what happened the night that you two came in. Last Saturday, or so the doctor tells me, you and my boy were found in Arthur's van on the side of a fairly deserted road. The ambulance came after you called for emergency help. All the way here neither of you would wake up, so they don't know what really happened in that car, but y Arthur was...he didn't…"
She covered her mouth lightly with a gentle hand, tears edging the corner of her eyes with the threat of falling noiselessly to the floor. stared forward and into the distance as though she hoped that, if she didn't blink, she might not let those precious gems fall from her lids. The woman swallowed the stone in her throat and spoke back with a voice sporting as much control as a drill sergeant, ditching any emotion to look once again at Vivi with glistening eyes, "His arm was ripped off, his entire arm was just...gone. You called and they got down just in time to stop him from bleeding to death, all the doctor's call it a miracle, but he lost his arm. You've both been unconscious for the past few days, and I've been so worried…"
She reached down to hug Vivi fully, embracing the girl and gripping onto her long and hard with the shaking of silent sobs racking her thin body, trying her best to contain them but failing as she curled her fingers in the blue head of the daughter she thought she had lost, "They don't know when he'll wake up, if he'll wake up. They said you had given up, it looked like you wouldn't wake up either, Vivi. I thought I was going to lose both of you at the same time, both of my beautiful children, my two lucky stars. I'm just...I'm so glad you woke up, Vivi. I'm so happy you're okay."
They lingered like that, intertwined as mother and daughter emotionally if not by blood. Something in her embrace was frantic, suffocating, but still Vivi wished she'd never let go of her. In this world of too much, in this moment she wanted more of the woman who she felt so attached to, the woman who had protected her at the most vulnerable of her days.
As pulled away, tears still glistening on her very edgy and prominent face, Vivi felt remnants coming back to her, memories of a childhood long gone in a broken down apartment covered in the knick-knacks of a young and loving girl, littered with scraps of her heart in the form of porcelain figurines and superhero posters. She remembered the orange-haired boy, and she remembered days spent eating at the dinner table of the stern-faced Ms. Mary Blecher, the cheerful girl who'd befriended her son chattering to the quiet family of everything all at once.
"Can I ask you for a favor?" she asked, looking into the amber-orange eyes of the woman who had cared for her for so many years as a daughter of her own, even if she lived apart and was a tad quirky for the serious family she had been adopted into. As Vivi expected, the woman nodded silently.
"Tell me everything, from the moment you met me to the last time I saw you, spoke to you, anything. Tell me every single detail of every single day of you and Arthur and my life, even the miniscule details you don't care about," she pleaded, grabbing the hands of in her own, "I don't know if I'll remember anything, but I know I loved you, and I know I loved Arthur. Tell me everything."
, a bittersweet smile lighting her stone cheeks, was more than happy with this request. She bowed her head slightly as she thought as far back as was possible, her hands still clasped in the chubby fingers of her adopted daughter.
"Well, it all began when a blue-haired angel jumped from her balcony to save my boy…"
"I see you're still lazing around."
She was standing in the doorway of the hospital room, dog on her heels and flowers wrapped up in her hands, a hand-picked assortment of bright blue and magenta daisies filling a simple glass vase with bursts of bright color, like fireworks at midnight. Everything about her-posture, expression, even movement-denoted a kind of mourning that not even she could understand, and the girl who only wore blue was dressed entirely in black. Gently, she placed the vase of flowers upon the table next to Arthur's bed, watching as Mystery placed his paws on their friend's bed to catch a glimpse of the sleeping boy.
Vivi sat down in a chair next to him, looking out into the night beyond his window with a quiet kind of melancholy that had wrapped its fingers around her, suffocating any chance that she might be cheerful in the days following her rebirth. The only smiles she had nowadays were reserved for Arthur and Mary. Her voice was raw as she spoke, her throat dry and speech crackling.
"I know you'll wake up soon, I just wish you'd hurry up. It's been a week now, Arty, and I'm getting pretty lonely with just your Mom for company," She tried to tease, pulling the chair she sat in just a tad bit closer to the bed, "I mean, don't rush it if you feel you need it to recover, you need to worry about yourself being healthy. I can wait, just don't milk it if you can."
It was silent for a few moments, the lack of noise whirling around Vivi threateningly and driving her just a little bit crazy. With the remote on Arthur's bedside table, she flipped on Scooby Doo as she always did, the only thing she really remembered liking, "You know, it was super hard getting Mystery in here. I'm pretty sure if the nurses find him in here again they'll kick me out for good. I was hoping maybe seeing him again would help you to wake up, but I guess not. He really misses you. I really miss you."
Her hands had snaked up to grab Arthur's remaining one, rubbing circles on the inside of his palm with her thumb gently to comfort herself more than anything, "I've been going through our van-I hope you don't mind, I kinda snooped around in your stuff by accident. I'm guessing your stuff is orange and mine is blue and pink, right? Or maybe you like pink? I don't know, but all of the pink stuff in our van makes me feel...safe, especially the big sweaters. That's why I got you blue and pink flowers, so you'd know they were from me when you woke up."
She looked back down at Arthur from her gaze on the colorful daisies, his eyes still closed in sleep as they always had been with his breathing deep and slow, "I'm starting to remember some things. Your Mom is really helping me with the old stuff, but I feel like there's something missing, Arty. Something important." Vivi tightened her grip slightly, feeling her voice crack just the slightest as she looked down at her black dress, her mourning clothes, "I don't know why, but my heart hurts really bad, like I lost something special and close to me. Maybe I just miss you, talking to you and travelling around and stuff." she licked her lips as her tears subsided, pushing them back into the depths of her mind without indulging them, her mind wandering as it always did, "Did I love you? As more than a friend, or am I thinking too hard? I really don't know, Arthur."
As her words came to an end, Vivi felt her mind fall blank like it so often did without memories to mull over. With nothing else to report or ponder, she fell into the silence she so hated, worshipping the antics on TV without anything else to keep her sane. She leaned down to place a kiss gently upon Arthur's forehead, hoping her touch would bring him back to life as all the fairytales had told her. Her lips lingered just the slightest upon his brow as she tried to feel something more than despair, tried to gauge if she had once felt something towards the ginger-headed boy. Then, without anything more to do, she felt her head lean forward into the crook of his elbow, and Vivi's eyes closed, sleep touching her gently and giving her release.
As she fell into the darkness of night without dreams, Arthur's arm shifted lightly beneath her. Eyes open and hands clenched, he looked up at the ceiling with nothing but regret touching his tattered soul.