Feeling grateful that she wasn’t blind, Carley said, “But you may still get your eyesight back. Don’t give up.”
Kyle took a deep, shuddering breath. “Yeah. Sure.”
“So,” she asked, “should I get lost now and let you try to get some sleep?”
His hand tightened on her wrist. “Don’t leave. Please. I—It helps to talk.”
“No problem.” His hair looked soft and she wanted to touch it.
“Why are you in the hospital?” he asked.
“I got Rollerblades for Christmas and managed to fall and break my leg really bad. The doctor set it, but it wasn’t healing just right, so they decided to operate and put the bones back together with pins and screws. That was two days ago, but when they got in there, I had an infection, so I have to stay in the hospital awhile. They dump antibiotics into me through an IV four times a day, but whenever I’m unhooked, I grab my crutches and wander around.”
“Will your leg be all right?”
“Eventually, but I have to begin physical therapy soon, then come back for more once I check out and go home. I’ll be glad to lose these crutches. I mean, I can’t sneak up on anybody.”
For the first time she saw him smile. “I think that’s what I heard. The tips of your crutches squeaking. I guess it’s true what they say about a person’s other senses getting sharper when one of them is missing.”
“Don’t tell me that. I have a teacher who’s deaf as a post and I sure don’t want his eyesight any sharper. He may catch me reading the novel I prop behind the text for his class.”
Kyle smiled again. “You’re funny.”
She wanted to tell him that her sense of humor was a by-product of living with her facial deformity, but then realized that there was no reason to divulge what he couldn’t see. “A sense of humor helps,” she said. “Laughing makes hurting less painful.”
“So when I start hurting, I should find something to laugh about?”
“Well, there are degrees of pain. The very worst requires pain pills—a topic we’ve already covered. But the not-too-bad pain can be helped with a good laugh.” She didn’t add that emotional pain was a whole separate matter from the physical kind. Or that laughing and making jokes about her face over the years was her way of putting others at ease, no matter how much it hurt her.
She continued. “Think about it. Before your accident, you knew nothing about making rocket fuel. Now I’ll bet you could write a term paper on how not to make the stuff.”
She saw his expression work through the tragedy to the black comedy of his situation and was rewarded by his wry smile. “I see your point.”
“And that’s another thing. Do you know how many times we use the words see and look when we’re trying to tell somebody something? Now you have the perfect excuse to say, ‘No, dumbo, I don’t see, and I can’t look.’ ” She held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t take offense, and was rewarded by another smile.
“What are you, a philosopher?”
“No way. I prefer art to philosophy.”
“I used to prefer chemistry,” he said.
She applauded. “Great, you’re catching on already. ‘Used to prefer chemistry’—get it? That’s black comedy if ever I heard it.”
“I won’t let one feeble joke go to my head.” He shifted in the bed, but hung on to her arm. “You like art. Do you draw?”
“Some. Mostly I like to design. You know, like clothes and fashion stuff. And I’d like to start with these stupid hospital gowns.”
“So where do you go to school?”
She hesitated, not wanting to tell him. If they did attend the same school, it meant that he’d expect he might run into her in the halls if he ever got his sight back. And she knew she didn’t want him to see her as she really looked.
Just then his room door opened and a nurse entered. She stopped stock-still and blinked at the two of them. “Good grief, Carley, what are you doing in this room at three o’clock in the morning?”
Three
Carley scrambled off the bed and grabbed her crutches. “I couldn’t sleep and came looking for company.”
“Maybe other patients would like to sleep,” the nurse chided.
“It’s okay,” Kyle interjected. “I asked her to stay and talk to me. I couldn’t sleep either.”
The nurse pursed her lips. “I don’t think your doctors would approve of your late hours. It’s time for vitals. Go back to your room, Carley, before we all get into trouble.”
Vitals meant the process of taking blood pressures and temperatures, which the nursing staff did routinely round the clock. “I figured I’d save you the trouble of waking me up,” Carley said, starting toward the door.
“Carley?” Kyle called out to her.
She turned. “Yes?”
“You were right about pain being easier to take if you laugh some. You’ve helped me feel better. Thanks for that. Will you come back and visit me in the morning?”
She felt her heart do a flip. No boy had ever expressed an interest in her. But then Kyle couldn’t see how ugly she was. “If you want me to.”
“Anytime,” he said.
“Shoo,” hissed the nurse at Carley good-naturedly.
Carley angled her way out the door, looking back to see Kyle raised up on his elbow. His white bandaged eyes were turned in her direction, as if she were the center of the universe and her return the most anticipated event in recorded time.
“You met Kyle in the middle of the night? That’s just so cool! Tell me, what’s he like?”
Carley wasn’t prepared for Reba’s visit. After she’d left Kyle’s room, she had returned to her own and promptly fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep, which had ended at eight A.M. with the clanking arrival of breakfast trays. She was eating when Reba rolled into the room, but Carley was groggy and in no mood to play Twenty Questions. “He’s had a chemistry accident and burned his eyes and he’s not sure he’ll get his sight back again. So he’s not having a very good time,” she mumbled between bites of soggy cereal.
“That’s awful.” Reba’s eyes grew wide with sympathy. “Is he nice? Do you like him? Was I right—is he cute?”
“Slow down. My brain’s only half awake.”
Impatiently Reba nudged her wheelchair closer to where Carley sat on her bed with her tray table positioned over her lap. “Well, hurry and wake it up. They’re taking me down for X rays soon.”
Carley smiled at Reba’s zealousness. “And I’ve got to go to PT at ten. Yes, he’s nice. Yes, I like him. Yes, he’s cute.”
“Do you realize that this could be the start of a major relationship? And to think you met right here in the hospital.”
“He was scared and alone last night. We talked. But I don’t think he’s ready to make me his girlfriend.”
“Well, I want you to introduce me to him. Will you do that?”
“Of course I will. But he’s probably sound asleep, and besides, I’m sure he’ll be here for days.”
“Yes, but by this time tomorrow I’ll be down in surgery, then in Recovery and ICU. It may be days before I’m up and rolling again.”
Carley shook her head in defeat. “All right, let’s go next door and pester Kyle.”
She poked open his door cautiously, not wanting to wake him if he were sleeping. He was sitting up in bed patiently pressing the TV remote from channel to channel, pausing to listen for a moment before moving on.
“We’re here to rescue you,” she said, moving into his room and holding the door for Reba.
“Carley!” He sounded so pleased, it made her heart skip a beat. “Who’s ‘we’?”
“This is my friend Reba.”
Reba rolled up alongside Kyle’s bed and touched his arm. He groped with his free hand until he caught her hand. “I’m in a wheelchair,” Reba said. “It’s electric, so if you hear a whirring sound, you’ll know it’s me.”
“I’m hearing sounds I never noticed when I could see.”
Carley didn’t
want him to get depressed about his eyesight again, so she changed the subject. “Reba here is sort of the social coordinator of the floor, but she’s got a date with her surgeon tomorrow and she didn’t want you to get checked out before she recovered enough to be back on the job.”
Reba giggled.
“I’m here for probably a week,” Kyle said. “An ophthalmologist is keeping tabs on my eyes and another doctor keeps a check on my burns. As soon as they heal enough, I can go home.”
“I hope it works out for you,” Reba said.
“What about you? Will your operation get you out of your wheelchair?”
“No. They can’t fix what’s wrong with me. But the operation will make me more comfortable.”
Kyle’s expression was one of shock that Reba couldn’t be “fixed.” Carley wondered how he would have reacted to Reba if he’d been able to see her. Or to Carley. She felt insulated and safe so long as he couldn’t see either of them.
“I—I’m sorry.” Kyle’s fist balled up among the covers. “It’s so frustrating not being able to see anything. I feel like a nonparticipant. I can’t even get out of bed without someone to help me. I hate asking for help all the time.”
“I can help out a little,” Carley said. “If you want something—even company—call my room.”
“I can’t dial the phone.”
“Sure you can.” Carley came closer, picked up the phone, and placed it in his lap. “Take the receiver and feel the numbers pad.” She watched his fingers trace over the raised buttons. “I’m in Room eight-twenty-eight, so you dial a seven plus eight, two, eight. Get a mental picture of how the pad looks and let your fingers locate the numbers. Now push them.” She pressed his fingertips from number to number and dialed her room. “Each key has a different tone, you know. Pay attention and pretty soon you’ll be able to dial area codes, seven-digit numbers, even foreign cities.”
Gingerly he experimented, listening attentively to each electronic tone. He was rewarded by the sound of a phone ringing from next door. His face broke into a grin. “All right. I did it.”
“A piece of cake,” Carley said. “If I’m in my room, we’ll talk. And if you want something, I’ll come hopping over.”
Kyle asked, “How do you know so much about dialing the phone ‘blind’ if you can see?”
“I can tell your parents have never put you on phone restriction.” Carley patted his shoulder as if she were indulging a small child. “Why I’ve learned to slip this sucker under the covers at night, dial in the pitch-dark, and not misdial a single digit.”
Reba clapped.
From the edge of Kyle’s bed Carley performed a mock bow. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Kyle laughed. “I can tell I’m in the presence of a true genius in devious maneuvers. I’m impressed.”
Carley felt a twinge of guilt. Would he consider her failure to tell him about her scarred face devious? She gave Reba a sidelong glance, but Reba was looking raptly at Kyle, so it didn’t seem as if she thought anything was amiss in Carley’s purposeful omission.
“Did you know that you and Carley both live in Oak Ridge?” Reba blurted out.
“No. Why didn’t you tell me, Carley?”
She felt her cheeks flush, then realized he couldn’t see her embarrassment. She shot Reba a look that said, Blabbermouth! Reba shrugged innocently. “I was going to, but we got interrupted last night,” Carley explained.
“Where do you go to school?”
Her heart began to pound. More than anything, she didn’t want them to be students at the same high school. She took a deep breath and named her large public high school. “I started in September as a sophomore,” she said. “But I don’t do any after-school stuff—you know, clubs and things.”
“I go to Webb.” It was a prestigious private school. “I’m a junior. And I used to belong to the chemistry club.”
Carley breathed a sigh of relief. At least that hurdle was crossed. “I’m sure your membership won’t be revoked due to your mishap.”
“And I go to middle school, but not in Oak Ridge,” Reba offered, as if the only important information was their schools. For Carley the most valuable information was that she’d never have to meet Kyle in the halls and have him stare or, worse, turn his head away in distaste.
Two white-coated doctors and a nurse’s aide swept into Kyle’s room. “Good morning,” one of them said, glancing at the three of them. Carley automatically dipped her head to allow her long brown hair to sheild the left side of her face. “Kyle, it’s Dr. Goldston and Dr. Richmond. Are we interrupting anything? We’ve come to take you down to Ophthalmology and change your bandages.”
“It has to be done in the dark,” Kyle explained to Carley and Reba. “My eyes are real sensitive to light.”
“We’ve got places to go.” Carley assured him, hustling to pick up her crutches.
In the hallway Reba stopped her chair and said, “Kyle sure is nice. And good-looking too. It must be terrible to be blind. I feel sorry for him, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’m betting he gets his eyesight back,” Reba said firmly. “Don’t you think he will?”
“No way of knowing.” Carley was aware that a small, perverse part of her was glad that Kyle couldn’t see. She felt bad about it, but also knew that his blindness was her safety net. So long as he couldn’t see her, he would think she was normal.
And for Kyle Westin, normal was what she wanted to be.
Four
Carley returned to her room, where she was hooked to an IV for her dose of antibiotics. By the time she was unhooked, it was time to go down to PT to begin rehabilitation on her leg. An aide took her down in an elevator in a wheelchair, along a covered walkway, to a separate building. Inside, a large and spacious physical therapy room was filled with equipment and tables. Therapists were working with patients of all ages.
“My name’s Linda Gallagher and I’ll be your PT.” The woman who stood in front of Carley was slim and youthful, with long hair that hung down her back in a French braid. “I’ll be working with you twice a day thirty minutes per session in a series of exercises to get your leg functioning perfectly again. You’ll be off those crutches in no time.”
“What? Give up my crutches? How will I fight off my admirers?” Carley didn’t bother to hide her face from the physical therapist. She figured the woman was used to seeing deformity.
Linda grinned. “So, I have a comedienne for a patient. Believe me, you’re a welcome departure from the kind who grumbles all the time.” She helped Carley out of the wheelchair, boosted her up onto a low table, and started examining her leg, which was held rigid by a cast. “What happened?”
Carley told her about the accident.
“And this was the day after Christmas?”
“Yes, but after I’d spent almost two weeks in the cast, X rays showed that it wasn’t going back together just right, so Dr. Olson told us he’d have to operate and reset it.”
“And, according to your chart, that’s when they discovered the osteomyelitis.”
“The what?”
Linda smiled. “The infection.”
“Whatever. Anyway, I have to stay in the hospital until it goes away.”
“It’ll give us time to establish your therapy.”
Carley kept waiting for Linda to ask about her misshapen face. Linda didn’t. Instead she started right in explaining about the therapy. “We’ll start with simple stretching exercises. Your chart states that you sustained tendon damage around your knee and ankle too.”
“My doctor said he may have to operate on the tendons again.” She understood the severity of her break and how concerned her parents had been about it. But considering her medical history, she refused to get too agitated about a broken leg. It would be fixed. However, she regretted losing her Rollerblades over it.
After the leg had been set the first time, her mother had said, “Those Rollerblades are going in the garbage.”
“I don’t care. Don’t you realize that because of them you could walk with a limp for the rest of your life?”
To which Carley had replied, “I’d look like Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, wouldn’t I?” She leaned over, curled her lip, and dragged her leg which was now encased in plaster.
“That isn’t funny, Carley,” her mother said.
“Why not? Bum leg and weird face. I think it’s funny.”
Linda, the PT, interrupted Carley’s thoughts. “You’ll also start riding the stationary bike and in about ten days you’ll begin partial weight-bearing exercises. I’ll start you out with two-pound weights, take you to four, and eventually get you to where you’ll once again have full ROM—that’s range of motion.”
“Will I be able to drive?” Carley had taken her road test in October, on her sixteenth birthday.
“Not right away,” Linda said. “But it is your left leg, so if you’ve got an automatic shift, it shouldn’t be too long before you can drive. Just be careful. You don’t want to rack up the other leg.”
“That’s for sure. I hate being stuck in the hospital.”
“We’ll get you out as soon as we can,” Linda said cheerfully.
Carley thought about Kyle, lying upstairs, a prisoner of his darkness. “Do you work with blind people?”
“No, I don’t. But we have people on our staff who do. Why?”
“There’s this guy on my floor who’s blind, and I was wondering what you all did to help somebody like him.”
“First his doctor has to authorize it, but basically, in the beginning, he’ll have to be trained to move around safely. Plus he’ll need to be counseled from a psychological perspective. Blindness is a big emotional adjustment.”
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