PART 20

Vertigo:
Aside from being the name of a classic 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film (with Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak), vertigo is a feeling that you are dizzily turning around or that things are dizzily turning about you. Vertigo is usually due to a problem with the inner ear. Vertigo can also be caused by vision problems.
The word "vertigo" comes from the Latin "vertere", to turn + the suffix "-igo", a condition = a condition of turning about). Vertigo is medically distinct from dizziness, lightheadedness, and unsteadiness. See: Dizziness, Lightheadedness, and Unsteadiness.

Dichotomy:
Division into two parts, kinds, etc.; subdivision into halves or pairs.
Division into two mutually exclusive, opposed, or contradictory groups: a dichotomy between thought and action.
Botany. A mode of branching by constant forking, as in some stems, in veins of leaves, etc.
Astronomy. The phase of the moon or of an inferior planet when half of its disk is visible.
Origin: 1600–10; < Gk dichotomía. See dicho-, -tomy.

Day 62 after the accident – Cedars Sinai Hospital – h. 6.00 p.m.

I am here with my back resting on the naked wall, I am here with my arms crossed.
I’ve switched my cell phone off, I don’t want to be bothered. If Phyllis needs me, she’ll have to wait.
There’s a most important place where I have to be. There’s a most important business I need to take care of.
Everything else is just set aside.
My eyes are busy, wandering on the people in this noiseless room.
Alice.
Sitting on an uncomfortable chair, reading an old magazine with an understandable indifference, acting nonchalant as her furrowed eyebrows show me she’s not.
Only God knows how hard all this is for her. After Dana, Alice has never been the same.
Never again.
And the fear she must be feeling now, the anxiety, the waiting. It has to be almost unbearable.
Tina.
Keeping herself busy with Carmen’s few personal belongings. She’s rummaging in the nightstand beside the bed. She puts everything in order. Carmen’s ID, modules, paper tissues, socks and panties. She needs to have control of something, anything.
She needs to be the mother.
Tasha.
Staring outside the window, her hands resting on the sill. Her face is tough-looking, as if she’s trying hard to hang in there without loosing her self-control.
Jenny.
Sitting on another chair, beside the bed, and holding Carmen’s hand. If I didn’t know Jenny, I’d think she’s praying. She looks devastated.
Carmen.
Motionless in that bed, her face pale, pale as I’ve never seen it.
No sounds. No movements. No nothing.
Just this perpetual beep, beep, beep. A nerve-racking sound to remind us that she’s alive, that her heart is still beating.
And finally Shane.
Pacing up and down silently, restlessly, hands in her pockets. She’s plodding, actually, because she is exhausted, dead beat.
But Shane doesn’t sleep. Shane doesn’t eat. Shane doesn’t do anything: she’s just waiting for Carmen to wake up.
And me, I’m waiting for Shane to lose her mind because this – all of this – is frankly too much to bear.