Heroine

by Mindy McGinnis

  I pop one of those twenty minutes before I need to get up, relying on the warm fuzziness it provides to push me through the pain and get me on my feet. I couldn’t even get a shower if it wasn’t for the Oxy, and my teammates tossing the bottle around like a scuffed-up softball sets me a little on edge.

  “You could get some serious cash for these,” Bella Left says, eyeing my dresser. “Like, maybe even a new car.”

  “I have a new car,” I tell her.

  “Shit, I don’t,” Bella Center says, swiping the bottle out of Left’s hand. A scuffle ensues, ending when Center gives Left a titty twister that makes even me cringe, and I’ve still got some Oxy in my veins.

  “Ouch!” Left yells, kicking Bella Center off her from where they landed on the floor. “I definitely need an Oxy after that.”

  “You don’t need shit,” Carolina says, grabbing the bottle. “Except maybe a better bra.”

  “With two different cup sizes, after the swelling.” Bella Left winces, adjusting herself.

  “Whatever,” Center says, giving Bella Left an arm up from the floor. “I didn’t even have a good grip on it.”

  “All I’m saying is, at a dollar a milligram—”

  “Dollar a milligram?” Carolina interrupts. “Somebody’s been watching NCIS again.”

  “I have not,” Left says, but she goes bright red, glancing between the four of us. “I do not watch NCIS.”

  “Sure, you’re just in the room when your grandma does,” Center teases.

  “Can’t leave.” Right shakes her head, in mock sympathy.

  “Stuck catching up on season fourteen,” Carolina says.

  “Fifteen,” Left corrects, then catches herself. “Dammit, you guys.”

  Right shrieks with laughter, ducking when Left chucks a pillow at her. Insults and bad words are being tossed back and forth, everyone forgetting that I’m injured. I could almost forget too, except Carolina put my Oxy back on the nightstand, where anyone could get it. I grab it when nobody’s looking, and push it under my pillow.

  I don’t need a new car.

  I don’t need a dollar per milligram.

  I need the Oxy.

  Chapter Six

  pain: an uneasy sensation in the body, from slight discomfort to extreme distress, proceeding from a derangement of functions, disease, or injury by violence

  When I was six Mom put me in dance lessons. It didn’t go well.

  She dressed me in a leotard and tutu, walked me into a room full of mirrors, warm-up bars, and other little girls. Our teacher came in, a sharp-faced woman whose body was perpetually tense, the gray hairs on her head scraped into a bun so tight her eyebrows were always in a state of surprise. She sat us down and told us how dance would teach us self-control, endurance, and character. She told us we only get one life.

  “Pick one thing,” she said, a bony finger up in the air. “Pick one thing, and do it well.”

  I picked softball.

  Physical therapy reminds me of that dance studio, mirrors everywhere, parallel bars, and watercoolers with paper cups that can’t even begin to hold the drink I need by the time I’m done. What’s different is the view, and the smell. This room is not full of little girls with shiny barrettes in their hair, and it doesn’t smell like baby powder. I’m the youngest person here by at least two decades, and there’s more than sweat coming out of some of the other patients.

  “Okay, Mickey. Let’s swing that foot around,” Kyleigh says, using the word let’s as if there’s more than one person in charge of moving my leg.

  There’s not. It’s just me.

  I’m white-knuckling the parallel bars, sweat already trickling down the staircase of my spine and a touch of snot dribbling out of my nose to rest in the divot above my lip. My brain tells my right leg it’s time to move now, but the signal hasn’t quite made the journey when my brain recants, half panicked at the pain it knows will come. The result is a lot of sweating and anticipation, with very little forward movement.

  “You just going to hang there?”

  That’s Jolene, my therapist. She’s the bad cop. Kyleigh—her student in training—is the good cop: all positive reinforcement, sips of water, and pats on the back. Jolene tells me to use the bars or get out of the way, asks me if that’s all I’ve got, or says she’s seen more effort out of octogenarians.

  It’s an effective mix.

  They remind me of Coach Mattix, who can make every girl feel like she’s the reason why we won the game, but also has no problem specifically saying whose fault it is that we lost. I want Kyleigh to be proud of me and I want to get to the end of these bars so that I can kick Jolene in the teeth, I don’t care which leg I have to use.

  I make it.

  I pitch forward at the end, nearly landing on my face if not for Jolene. She catches me, a mix of snot and tears left behind on her shirt as she eases me into a wheelchair. Normally I would refuse it, but my good leg is shaky and weak, and my bad one feels like the night sky on the Fourth of July.

  I sink into the chair and Mom comes over, hands balled into fists at her side. I know she wants to wipe my face, push my hair out of my eyes, hold my head up for me because right now all it wants to do is loll to the side. But I told her at the beginning of this that there will be no fussing, or I’ll make her stay in the waiting room. She can watch women push other human beings out of their vaginas and stay calm; she’s got it in her to watch me walk ten feet without getting emotional about it.

  “Good work, Mickey,” she says instead. “You look strong.”

  I don’t. There are enough mirrors in here for me to know that. I look like a toddler, off-balance and awkward, complete with runny nose.

  “How do you feel?”

  I can feel the screws, three points of hot agony drilled right into my bones.

  Grandpa taught me how to manage pain, with logic first and a good dose of storytelling later. He was a farmer, years of sun and wind making his skin as tough as the baseball glove I found in the barn, my first one. His scars were numerous, a story for each one: fire, chainsaw, a tear along his jawbone where a tree branch touched his molars.

  I was helping him stack a wood cord when I was eight, anxious to make him proud, working against the sun that would set soon, taking with it the burning heat of summer, and our light as well. I was stacking like he taught me, making cradles with one layer for the next one, when my hand skidded along the surface of a piece of dry hickory.

  There was pain, bright and hot, but more than anything I felt confusion, not knowing what had happened. I wish I hadn’t looked, hadn’t seen the thick splinter that ran underneath my fingernail, all the way to the white half moon at the bottom. I couldn’t speak, it hurt so badly, only held up my hand to show Grandpa, who stacked two more pieces before reacting.

  “Well,” he finally said, pushing back his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “You gonna pull that out or am I?”

  It was a logical question, the next step that took the focus away from the pain. I remember biting down on that splinter, pulling it out with my teeth and spitting it onto the ground, leaving behind a tiny, bleeding valley under my fingernail. Grandpa drove into town and bought me ice cream, a Band-Aid he’d found in the glove box of the truck not quite making everything better, but coming damn close.

  Sometimes I wonder what he thought as he lay in the ditch last year, that same truck a wreck of metal beside him. I bet anything he thought about the next steps, what needed to happen, rather than what had just occurred.

  Sometimes I think of the screws in my hip as massive splinters, digging in as the bone grows around them. And I grit my teeth, and I take the next step.

  Carolina is waiting for me when we get home, Mom’s face lighting up at the sight of her car in the driveway. I’m glad she’s there too, but I brace myself against the inspection I know is coming as I push Helen W. in front of me through the front door.

  “Damn,” Carolina says. “You’re pale.”

  I’m al
ways a washed-up mess after physical therapy, hair grimy with sweat, bright-red exertion spots on my cheeks. I lower myself onto the couch next to my friend, trying to keep a straight face as I do. Carolina lets out a low whistle.

  “Seriously, girl. You’re so white right now I bet you can’t even remember a word of Spanish.”

  “¡Mámame el bicho!” I say.

  “Sólo los insultos, veo,” she says, shaking her head. “Basic.”

  “Whatever.”

  I get my leg up onto the coffee table, edging aside a pile of my schoolwork Carolina brought with her. I used the holiday break to catch up on everything I missed while I was flat on my back, with IVs in my arms. But January brought a flurry of assignments, along with the snow. There are a few hours of work in front of me, at least. From the kitchen, I hear the click of Mom turning on the stove, the rattle of pans as she pulls together something for dinner.

  “You should stay,” I tell Carolina. “Eat with us. We can do homework and Netflix.”

  Usually, I wouldn’t even ask. It would just be assumed that she’s going to stay with me, dirty plates on the floor and background noise from the TV as we work. Now though, she checks her phone before agreeing.

  Aaron, really?

  “Yeah, I can do that,” she says, and I relax, the tension that radiates from my leg letting loose a little in my jaw.

  “So are you guys a thing now, or what?”

  “Define thing.”

  Normally I’d kick her for the uncalled-for smart-ass move, but I don’t have the energy left after therapy. Plus, they took her cast off and she’s graduated to a simple brace, pulled tight against the thinness of her once powerful forearm. Kicking her feels like a bad idea.

  “Thing,” I say, “mutual adoration between two people, exclusive to one another, typically annoying to those around them.”

  It was supposed to come out light, like when I told her to suck my dick in Spanish. Instead the words sound hard, all my pain going into them.

  “Sorry,” I say immediately. “I didn’t mean that.”

  But I’m not the kind of person who just says things, and Carolina knows it. She shrugs off the dig, but the corner of her mouth is turned down, and I wish I would’ve kicked her instead.

  “Then yeah, I guess we are a thing,” she says, eyes on her phone and not me.

  “Mickey, you need anything?” Mom yells from the kitchen.

  “No,” I tell her, struggling to my feet and leaning heavily on Helen W. “Gonna go to the bathroom.”

  Truth is, I don’t have to pee. But if I ask Mom to bring me my Oxy she’s going to get the little line in between her eyebrows that shows up when she doesn’t like something. I saw it the other day when I took one a few hours ahead of when I was supposed to.

  We eat in front of the TV, Mom hovering to take our plates and move our books, until I finally tell her that between the two of us we can manage. Even once she’s gone there’s stale air between me and Carolina, and I’m not one to fill silence with empty talk. Carolina and I have always been able to be quiet together, still highly aware of one another and close in our silence. That’s missing tonight, and when she says she’s got to get home, I don’t argue, even though I know there are still a few hours left before her curfew.

  Back in my room, I shake the bottle the way Bella Left did, but the noise is way different than it was then. There are only a few pills left, and more than a week before I’m technically supposed to run out.

  I’ve been telling myself that there’s a difference between want and need. That I need the Oxy in order to get through physical therapy. I can tell my muscles to move forward, order bones to be arranged in a certain way, but if my brain balks at the pain, nothing happens. The Oxy does its job, wrapping my mind in a warm cocoon, reassuring me that everything is going to be okay.

  But lately I’ve noticed a deeper thought, one that slumbers below the warmth, so buried that it took me a while to find it, unwrap it, and realize what it was telling me. With the Oxy working I can push myself during therapy, but always there’s a comfortable fallback, the acceptance that even if everything isn’t going to be okay . . . I’ll be fine. The Oxy doesn’t just take the pain away, it wraps up all my nervous what ifs and I can’ts and says—screw it.

  And I do need that, right now, after seeing Carolina’s arm out of the cast. She didn’t mention it, and I didn’t ask, but she’s healing well. She surreptitiously flexed while we worked, putting her pencil down to do a few exercises. She’ll be ready for conditioning in two months, and I can’t leave my bed without Helen W. leading the way.

  I shake the bottle again and count what’s left inside. If the one thing that defines me is about to be taken away, I need to not care, to be able to say screw it. I’ve been biting my second pill in half, telling myself I don’t need two, but one isn’t doing the trick anymore when it’s time to get some sleep.

  Tonight I take two.

  Chapter Seven

  static: resting; acting without motion or progression—or—producing charges of electricity

  Today someone else decides whether I’m allowed to move on. The words I say in a little room with teddy-bear wallpaper determine if I can go back to school, drive a car, and use crutches instead of a walker. This ten-minute appointment is all that stands between me and a semblance of a normal life.

  Mom wanted to be here, but there’s a baby on the way in the hospital next door, one that she’s watched grow over the past nine months, carefully monitoring someone else’s life, charting the course that will lead to a moment she’ll never experience herself. She’ll be there to catch the baby, the first person to touch this new human being, her own type of maternal claim that will follow hundreds of people for the rest of their lives.

  It never gets old for her, the way Christmas or birthdays start to get stale once you hit a certain age. The miracle of new life always lights Mom up from the inside out, and even her concern for me couldn’t eclipse that when her cell phone vibrated on the kitchen table moments before we were supposed to leave for my appointment.

  “I’ll get Dad to drive me,” I told her, as I watched her weigh the sight of me leaning on Helen W. against the need of her patient, a battered, brittle-edged life against an unmarked one about to begin.

  “You sure?” she asked, but she was already zipping her coat.

  Turned out Dad was in a meeting, but he was more than happy to pass the request along to Devra, who seems to take it as a sign that we’re bonding. Apparently one of her New Year’s resolutions was to improve her relationship with me, something Dad let me know as if it were a great compliment. She’s in the waiting room right now, searching for Kohl’s coupons on her phone so we can go shopping for new school clothes if the doctor green-lights me to go back.

  There’s a tap on the door, as if I live in this tiny space rather than being a visitor. Dr. Ferriman comes in, a guy I’ve talked to about concussions and infected pimples, muscle pulls and my poor abused coccyx. My doctor has seen more of my skin than any male, ever, and always in a detached, clinical approach that made everything normal, his eyes assessing me the same way I determine the arc of my throw to second to pick off a runner.

  So why is my smile tight when I greet him? Why is the heel of my foot nervously tapping against the edge of the metal table? Why is my paper gown fluttering along with the beat of my anxious heart?

  It’s not because I lie right away—replying with the standard “fine” when he asks how I’m feeling. It’s not because of the flare of pain that pulls all language away from me when he rotates my leg. And it’s not because of the small pause before he agrees that I can return to school on crutches as long as I promise to practice good self-care. It’s because this appointment is almost over and I haven’t done what I need to do yet.

  I need to ask for more Oxy, and I don’t know how.

  There are many reasons for this. The first is that I’m not good at asking for help. When I was nine my chest of drawers toppled ov
er onto me and instead of yelling for Mom or Dad I wiggled around until I could get a decent leg press on it and got it up off me. I was partly worried about getting in trouble for climbing it in the first place—which I was doing in order to swat a fly that had landed on the ceiling and had taunted me from there. But I was also embarrassed at being conquered by an inanimate object, something that today feels more insulting than that lazy fly had years ago, a dark blot against the white ceiling.

  Dr. Ferriman is already up and off his stool, writing a pass for me to return to classes and a prescription for crutches. I’m looking at that pad and willing him to flip to a new page and write OxyContin, when I realize he’s not going to do that unless I ask.

  So, screw it.

  I have to say this right though, have to use the correct words and have the perfect expression in order to be what I am: a girl who needs a boost to get through the day. Not someone who likes the way the mattress sinks underneath her at night, the coolness of the sheets contrasting with the emanating warmth from the rush. Not someone who took another pill even though the pain was gone, but she hadn’t quite fallen asleep yet and wanted to recapture weightlessness just a little while longer. Not someone who felt a jolt of panic when she popped the top off her last bottle yesterday, only to find it empty.

  I can’t be that girl. I have to be Mickey Catalan, who is beating the shit out of herself so that she can get back into the game, and just needs Oxy for a stepping-stone.

  “So can I get something for the pain?”

  It’s out before I think too hard about the words like I usually do. A blurt that is so against who I am as a human being that even my doctor is surprised, hand still on the half-open door as I lean against Helen W., all my weight on my arms.

  “Let me see.” He taps away at the tablet he carries with him, pulling the door shut against the curious glance of an older woman in the hallway who overheard my question, her attention drawn away from her phone.