One Minute Till Tomorrow

Chapter Eleven: Looking in From the Outside

I sat up in the hospital bed, disoriented. Tubes and wires were stuck in my arms and stomach. I looked in the corner. Caleb sat, asleep in a small chair. He was restless, but still asleep. I looked around. Multiple monitors were hooked up to me, the room was small. The bed I was in had cheap sheets and there was a clip board on the edge of my bed.

Caleb was tossing and turning, his restlessness increasing. He startled himself to the point of waking up. He looked at me then stood up. “Gwen, please wake up.”

“I am awake.” I said, but it was like he couldn’t hear me.

“I need you, Gwen.”

“Caleb, I’m right here.” I swung my legs over the bed and stood up.

Caleb reached towards my bed. His hand passed through me—through me. Caleb’s arm was reaching through my stomach. I was completely solid up until his hand. Around his arm was a wave of transparence.

I felt sick. “Caleb, what. The. Hell?”

I sidestepped so Caleb’s arm was out of my stomach. I turned around to see what he was holding. He was holding my hand. My hand. There I was, lying in the bed, tubes and machinery hooked up to me. Caleb was holding my hand, a grim look on his face.

But if I was there… then…

I looked down at my—the… real me?—I was in a hospital gown, identical to the one that the other me wore. “Caleb?”

He didn’t look up. I reached my hand out to touch Caleb’s shoulder, to get his attention. My hand passed through his shoulder. “What am I?” I whispered.

He didn’t answer.

I ran out of the hospital room, running through the door. I ran down the hall, pushing nurses out of my way. “Someone help me! Please! Somebody!” I was screaming. No one listened. It was like I was… a ghost.

I stopped at the busiest spot in the hall. People passed through me. I just stood there, the room spinning around me.

I turned around. Caleb was walked towards me. He looked sad, like he aged a decade since I woke up. He walked through me like all the others and I followed him. He got in his car and I sat down in that passenger’s seat, back in Piece O’Shit.

Caleb drove to his dad’s house. I followed him through the door and into his room. His dad didn’t say a word to him as Caleb passed him in the hallway. Caleb went straight to his room. He sat down on his bed and I sat down across from him.

“Okay,” Caleb said, pulling a journal from under his pillow. “They said this would help. Uh, Gwen, if you’re out there somewhere, just… give me a sign.”

“I would if I knew how.”

He grabbed a pen from his nightstand and opened the cover of his notebook. Just a plain black cover.

I watched as he wrote:

Dear Gwen,

I really need you. It’s weird without you. You’ve now been asleep for three days and no one wondered where you were at school. I spent all my time at the hospital by your side as I could. I just wish you’d wake up. I’m worried that you won’t ever wake up. That the doctors will pull the plug. I don’t want that. Ever.

I love you and need you. I feel like it’s all my fault—even though everyone tells me it’s not my fault. That it was slick and the driver just tried to make a left hand turn. That he didn’t mean to hit our car. But he did. He hit your side of the damn SUV. But I still feel like it’s my fault. The doctors are calling it survivor’s guilt. Survivor’s guilt my ass. I’m guilty all the same.