There was an accident outside my house yesterday morning; one half of the thing ended up in a tree, the other in a lamp post. I was in the car.  In the morning, the sun rays knocked on my hospital window, and I thought they were kind of like a message in a bottle. I asked the doctor if I could run around a little, because the early morning seemed appealing. He looked at me strangely, then coughed lightly.

“Maybe another day,” he said, but really he meant “No fucking way.”

“Am I going to die?” This was a much more reasonable question. He looked up, smiled, and coughed. I couldn’t even convince him to open my window.

An Asian woman walked into the room. She had a lot of blush on one side of her face, as if she had started putting on makeup and abandoned the task midway. It was my stepmother.   I had forgotten about her. She had a bag in her hands. She titled her head back, and her stringy hair rested on her shoulders.

She sat on my bed for quite some time. When I told her I thought my doctor had mono, she smiled lightly. I was awakened by the sun, and a creature walked in my room. He walked around the bed and took off his scarf hastily.

“Wow. My sister looks awful.” He laughed real hard and I didn’t answer. Daniel never had a way with words.

“Can’t stand Helen. I heard she came by to see you yesterday. She calls me up…” He was making a lot of hand gestures and was laughing real hard.

“Why don’t you like Helen?” I had never asked him. I was hoping it would make him leave. It didn’t. He ignored the question. He seemed to continue on forever. Maybe he did. He made me feel uneasy. I wanted to leave but it was impossible.

“How’s Marc?” I asked. He stared at me blankly.

“Marc is perfectly fine. You got most of the impact,” he said softly.

He was looking at me. Even when we were kids, he was never really able to look at anything.  But for once he was looking directly at me.

“You look like my mother.”

He smiled genuinely.

 “She was my fucking mother too.”

He took a step back and seemed to swallow. His eyes darted around the room, as if she was in the room too and hadn’t heard it. I wanted him to leave.

“Go back to med school. Go back.” I spat. He walked over to the side table.

He picked up his scarf. 

“I know what this is about.”

I laughed, not an honest laugh, but I laughed.

“It hasn’t been easy for me, either. I mean ever since dad…”

He paused for a very long time. I closed my eyes because the hospital lights were too bright.

“Got remarried.”

I remember the day my father brought Helen home. I was seven. When the door opened, we all shuffled to the corridor.

“That was ten years ago.”

He darted back and forth and didn’t say anything. I wanted to ask him about when I was going to get out.

“Did you look at my case file, Mr. Medical School?”

He paused. “I did, but I don’t really understand it.” 

“Could you open the window?” I asked.

“I don’t think I can do that.”

“Come on.”

“Marc would do it.” He bit his lips.

“Why did he come out perfectly all right from the crash?” I asked.

He was shifting back and forth more and more quickly.

“I don’t know, the car crashed onto your side and…”

“I didn’t know another car was involved,” I said.

At this point he stopped hopping around and clutched his scarf. I seemed to be antagonizing him again.

“Could you open the window?”

I was exasperated.

The sun was coming down.

“The other car…” he continued.

“Why won’t anyone open this goddamn window?”

He laughed. But it was an awful laugh, one of those about-to-cry laughs. I was really getting to him, and I didn’t know why. If only I could get out of here.

Soon after my mother died, my father would leave us home alone for hours. One hot summer, Daniel locked me inside the car with the windows down and watched me bang on the windows. He had the same look on his face. Maybe that’s why I hated him. Maybe that’s why I felt trapped in here. Maybe.

“When dad left that day, he went to see Helen. He left us all the time, just to see her. Maybe that’s why…” He spoke softly. I could barely hear him. Marc walked in.

“How are you?” Marc asked.

“Can you open the window?” I asked him right away.

Instead he sat on my bed. He looked okay. Just okay, though.

“I’m very sorry but – Mr. Ivy League obviously didn’t tell you.”

Daniel seemed to lose his cool. “Can you both give me a break? I worked hard to get into goddamn med school, it’s not my fault you…”

He completely ignored him.

“I wasn’t with you in the car. I forgot my keys in the house. I got out of the car.”

Helen walked in the door. She looked awful. She had a bag in her hand.

Helen suddenly sat down on the floor like my mother use to. My mother would sit anywhere, in line at a grocery store, in a train station, wherever.

Outside, the trees shifted, the light finally seemed to fully enter my room. Ashes were floating everywhere.

“Just tell her.” Daniel shuffled. He pulled out a lighter.

“Well, let’s just say, and this is a bit figurative, but let’s just say we’re all here.”

Daniel stopped playing with the lighter and his eyes fell on the bag. Helen did not move at all. Only the ashes moved delicately in the wind. But suddenly, it was as if the window almost opened.