Chapter 2: Time Lapse

“Will someone please tell me,” Kris began the following morning, “how long I was asleep?”

Reese and Carnerie exchanged shocked glances. She had requested that information while spooning Fruit Loops into her mouth. Now she was chewing, looking back at them expectantly, her long lashed, deep blue eyes wide.

When they didn’t say anything, she became only slightly surprised at the lack of response.

“What? Was it that long? Like what- a month?” she chuckled, not expecting the silence to continue. When it did, she was disconcerted. “You guys, talk to me. I need to know more about the condition I was in after the accident!”

They hadn’t let her use a computer and she didn’t have her phone, so she was pretty much at their mercy, but she wanted to know the truth.

Reese opened his mouth then shut it again.

“Let’s not make this a guessing game, because I could go on forever.” She was beginning to panic. “I need to know Reese.”

She turned to his sister. “Carrie, tell me. Based on the years we’ve known each other you would think I would know more, but I could hardly recognize you yesterday until you showed me those pictures and stuff.” She shook her head and raised her voice in frustration, “I don’t want to live like that!”

When they were quiet for another moment, she continued, her volume rising. “Tell me damn it! Tell me anything, you can’t just hold me like a political prisoner without rights!”Carnerie gasped at that, but Kris continued to rant, finally banging a fist on the table, upsetting her mug a little.

Watching the hot liquid slosh out of the cup, Reese silenced her with a sharp, “I’ve had enough.”

He looked at Kristina, all tenderness gone from his gaze. “You were never raised to throw tantrums, Hawkins. We aren’t even the ones who are supposed to tell you this and that’s why you have an appointment with the doctor today. Do you really want to know the truth?” He took a deep breath as though battling to reign in his emotions and the remnants of patience. “You were in a crash and your initial coma lasted two months and a few days. The day after we brought you home, you relapsed.”

“For how long?” came the tense whisper.

“Ten months.”

The color drained from the pretty face and her eyes began to roll back. Reese caught her as she fainted.

“Great.” Reese lifted her up effortlessly and carried her towards the living room. “Carrie get some ice water.”

He took cushions from the recliners and propped her up with them.

“Here’s the ice,” Carrie placed the glass of water on the coffee table.

“We have a lot of explaining to do,” Reese said gravely.

Carrie didn’t even question that statement at all. She just wondered where they were even supposed to start.

Soon after that incident, Kristina flew to France to spend three weeks with her parents. Her doctors cleared her, then, to return to school. At first she and her parents were hesitant, but they suggested she return to normalcy as soon as she possibly could. So when Kris thought she was truly ready- a moment that came and went often in those weeks in Europe- she travelled to join her friends on campus.

The days flew by and Kristina regained the majority of her memories and that meant that her brain was functioning just fine. Before the accident she had been an extremely clever girl. In her early teens she had qualified for varsity level classes and had experienced the privilege of learning with people much older than her at Ivy League establishments. She had done her standard grade work until the age of sixteen, when she had decided to pursue her varsity studies full time. Her parents, she recalled, had been very pleased by her abilities, but were careful to monitor her social life, in order to make sure she grew up as close to ‘normal’ as she could.

Ironically, tests after the accident showed that her intelligence had not been impaired by the accident and now she was in the same stream as her friends and age mates by choice. Her lecturers believed she still could have continued with her originally chosen program schedule but her doctor had recommended that she take it easy in the near future and that was the advice she decided to follow.

To that effect, she and Carrie were in her room, lounging.

“I don’t see how you did it! Out of school for a whole year and yet you have no trouble catching up.”

Kris shrugged. “Well it’s not really catching up when I was ahead in the first place,” she chuckled. “Besides that, I have enough problems without being mentally stunted getting added to the list. I would die if I couldn’t think properly.”

Carrie laughed.

The phone rang and she went to answer it. “Bodley-Hawkins residence.”

“Hey sis, it’s me.”

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Not much. Where’s Kristina?”

“Kris is here.”

“Put me on speaker phone, don’t be selfish,” he teased.

“Hm,” was all she said as she did as she was told. She mouthed ‘It’s Reese’ to a quizzical Kristina.

“Hey Reese,” Kristina said, “how’s work?”

He worked as a part-time lecturer when he spent time in Europe. “Work is fine. How about you girls, how’s college this year?”

Carrie groaned, “Please! The books we have to carry are torturous, let alone the fact that real studies have resumed in the second week alone.”

“And Kris, how about you?” he asked.

She put on a very bored voice, “Oh, the usual. Expect a sterling GPO, pass after pass…” she left her voice drift off.

The other two laughed. Carrie rolled her eyes and let out an exaggerated, “Puh-lease!”

In more sober tones, Kris said, “I’m fine, coping with the load.”

“I’m glad. I called to tell you some good news,” Reese told the two girls. “Guess who’s going to be the new dean of the Behavioural Science Institute at your school?”

“No,” they gasped excitedly.

“Oh that’s super!” Carrie said excitedly.

“Congratulations Reese!”

“And guess where I’ll be staying?”

When he got no immediate response, he imagined them exchanging clueless looks. He laughed yet again. “Oh come on. Not even a single guess?”

“We seriously have no idea,” Carrie told him.

“Oh wow, that is definitely a first. I’ll be at home! You two are hopeless.”

“Well, gee, that wouldn’t have been a secret if you hadn’t made it sound like one… Of course you’d stay at home.” Kristina chuckled. “That was a no-brainer until you shrouded it in suspense and mystery dude.”

Reese laughed outright. “Now I know you are back, Kris. That tongue could slice me clean in half.”

When they finally hung up, the two college students chose to eat Thai take-out and were discussing which establishment to order from. The phone rang again during that discussion and this time Kristina answered it.

“Bodley- Hawkins residence.”

“Hi, can I speak to Carnerie please?”

“Okay. Whom should I say is calling?”

A short, low laugh met her ears. “Her… friend.”

“Right, hold on a second.” She winked at her friend as she handed over the phone. “Sounds like a keeper.”

Carrie said a very puzzled ‘hello’ into the receiver. Seconds later her expression cleared and she said with more enthusiasm, “Oh, it’s you! Hi.”

“Long time, baby girl.”

“You’re telling me.” Carrie looked up to see Kristina head downstairs. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. How’re things there?”

“All right.” Knowing what he was asking in particular, she added, “Kris is doing well, catching up in classes and she’s pretty fit right now.”

“Good.” The caller nodded to himself. “Hey, there’s a party at Colby’s tonight.”

“Really?” she frowned. “I didn’t know.”

“That’s why I called. You gonna be there?”

“Of course! I wouldn’t turn you down for the world and you know it.”

Kristina walked back into the room as Carrie said this and felt her mood fall as she considered the possibility of spending the night at home alone. She started picking up the clothes they had laid out on her bed. She had been looking forward to her first excursion since the beginning of her recovery.

Carrie hung up and watched her friend put things back in the closet and drawers. Eventually she spoke, “What are you doing?”

“Preparing myself for a night at home.”

“How come, I thought we were going out tonight?”

Kris frowned. “Aren’t you going out with the guy with the sexy voice?”

First of all Carrie didn’t consider the person she had been talking to sexy, so she laughed. Secondly she said, “I made a date with you and we will honor that arrangement. His thing is later on so we can still do Thai and the movie.”

“Okay. Thanks, Carrie.”

Carnerie hugged Kris and told her, “I have spent the last year without my best friend. Everyone else can wait.”