Free Still Life by Joy Fielding

understand. Who are you? What are you talking about?
    And then suddenly she did understand. There was no one in the room. She was alone, just like the man being questioned on her TV, the night his wife had been cruelly gunned down.
    She’d imagined everything.
    The entire episode had been nothing but a combination of dreams and television reruns, a little something her mind had cooked up to pass the time and keep her from going crazy with boredom. No one had tried to kill her. There was no one named Detective Spinetti. Her brain had been rocked! That’s what the doctors had said. Hadn’t they? Maybe that was something else her imagination had invented. How could she tell?
    How could she be sure of anything?
    Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. This dream is no longer even vaguely amusing. It stopped making sense a long time ago.
    A car didn’t run me down. I’m not lying, broken and comatose, in some narrow hospital bed. My breathing isn’t dependent on a machine; there is no tube in my trachea. I did not hear a nurse’s aide confide she intended to seduce my husband. I most assuredly did not hear a police detective speculate that my condition is the result of a deliberate act, and that everyone I hold dear, my friends and associates, my sister, even the husband I adore, are suspects.
    I did not. I did not. I did not.
    Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
    Casey lay in her bed, unseeing eyes open toward the ceiling. The sky is falling, she thought, recalling the classic children’s story of Chicken Little, and struggling to remember its outcome. Had the sky really come crashing down, or had it just been a case of some stupid chicken running around, flapping his wings, stirring things up for no reason other than his own growing hysteria? Whatever happened to that crazy chicken? Casey was still wondering when she finally succumbed to sleep.

SIX
    “O kay, so you missed the film festival this year,” Janine was saying, jolting Casey back into consciousness.
    How long had she been asleep? When had Janine arrived? What was she talking about?
    “But not to worry. You picked a good time to be brain-dead. The movies were shit. I saw one last night, and you would not believe how bad it was. I think if it didn’t have subtitles, it would have been laughed right out of the theater. But people always assume that just because it’s French …” Janine took a deep breath.
    Casey tried to focus. The city’s modest attempt at a film festival had just ended, which meant it was still April. How much time had she lost since Janine’s last visit?
    “Anyway, I brought a newspaper. The doctors said it would be a good idea for us to read to you, that it might help stimulate your brain, or something. But there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot going on that’s very stimulating.”
    Don’t worry about that. My brain seems to be working overtime as it is. I’ve been having the most extraordinary hallucinations.
    “Let’s see. Did you know that since the 1960s, Philadelphia has lost approximately six hundred thousand residents, due to something called urban blight, which sounds suspiciously like an STD, if you ask me, and that there are about sixty thousand derelict or abandoned buildings throughout the city, despite all the new development? Is this stimulating enough? Blink twice if the answer is yes.”
    I’m blinking. Once. Twice. Did you see that?
    “Okay, not seeing any blinks, so not very stimulating.”
    Dammit, I’m blinking. Look again, I’m blinking. I’m blinking. Why can’t I make you see?
    “Let’s see what else is here. What amazing things are you going to miss during the upcoming month of May if you don’t snap out of this ridiculous coma?”
    Casey heard the rustling of papers. Or was her imagination just providing the appropriate sound effects? Was Janine even there?
    “Okay, so there’s the Dad Vail Regatta, which, as you know, is the largest collegiate regatta in the United States, one that draws thousands of rowers and