Girl With a Past by Sherri Leigh James

you . . . or your mother. It’s unbearable.” Carol
shuddered as she squeezed me tight enough to hinder my
breathing.
    “We’ve been through that once, it was hell,
the worst ––” She choked, then hesitated before continuing. “We
each blamed ourselves for encouraging her, hell, fucking pushing
her to go on that date. If I’d just let her stay locked in her
studio . . . it was my fault.” Carol sighed again. “I guess
everyone involved felt the same. But really it was me, I made her
go. Anyway, our mutual guilt drew us all together. We became like a
family, the realization that one of us could be gone, just all of a
sudden disappear from our lives. Facing the fact of one’s own
mortality is especially hard when you are young, when life is just
beginning, but having a contemporary die brings the fact of death
home.” She released me and shook her head.
    We linked arms while we walked to the bench.
My knees shook, I sat down just as Steven walked around the corner
of Kroeber Hall. Carol released my hand to wave at him.
    I’d forgotten to tell him something that
could be important.
    I stood and ran to my brother.
    And the unthinkable happened.
    I had twenty feet to go to reach him when I
heard a shot whiz by my ear and seconds later felt something slam
into the side of my head.
     

 
     

CHAPTER
    12
     
     
     
     
    Where was I? My eyelids felt glued shut, my
limbs heavy, yet I was floating out of touch with my body in a
cloud of fog.
    I concentrated, tried to pick up a hand, but
something was attached to it. Could I lift a finger? The effort to
move made me aware of the intense pain shooting through my
head.
    Elevator bells chimed; phones rang in the
distance. Voices muttered nearby. I couldn’t make sense of what
they said. Too much work. I was too sleepy.
    I drifted back to the dream.
    I had misjudged the rock outcropping
overhead on the trail above me and slammed my head right into a few
tons of granite. Shit that hurt! I spun in black and stars, grabbed
a bush that had managed to grow in a crack, and prayed I wouldn’t
tumble down the rocky cliff. A hundred feet below, waves crashed
against jagged crags embedded in a narrow strip of sand. Screams
from the beach were faint, nearly drowned in the undulating roar of
the breakers.
    My friend Jeff and I had been climbing down
the cliff face to join a party on the beach in Big Sur when we
heard a sharp yell followed by cries for help. Jeff who had some
emergency medical experience opted to continue the climb down, but
had sent me back up to the road to get help. Without Jeff calling
out each foot placement, I was fighting the urge to sit down,
frozen in place by fear. Rock climbing, particularly without any
safety gear, or expert guidance scared the shit out of me.
    The stars floating around my head gave me an
excuse to rest at least until the spinning stopped. Afraid the
black that drifted in and out of my consciousness would lead to a
fall, I laid down on the warm dirt ledge.
    On the edge of my awareness, Jeff’s faint,
insistent voice called my name. I wanted to answer, if only the
whirling would slow down. I knew I had to hurry. I had to get
up.
     

 
     

CHAPTER
    13
    Berkeley, Alta Bates Hospital, March 2008
     
     
     
    “Al, Alexandra.” Jeff squeezed his
daughter’s hand, whispered her name as though he could call her
back to them. “Alexandra.”
    Steven couldn’t believe how fucked up this
was. His sister lying there, her face as white as the hospital
bedding and bandages covered her blonde head. Tubes ran out of her
mouth, across her nose, and out the top of her hands. The hum of
machines attached to her arms and chest drowned her occasional
moan.
    Dad had said, “Thank God she’s still alive,”
and seemed unaffected by her comatose state. Spending his adult
life prosecuting murders had hardened him. Steven vowed anew not to
be cold like his father.
    “Where the hell is Mom?” Steven asked
again.
    Jeff shrugged, but his hands shook and