by Erin Stewart
“You know what I mean,” he says. “You say words now before I make an even bigger fool of myself.”
I try to think of something to say as we walk to the car, past the shining chandeliers and back into real life.
“I’m getting surgery on Monday.”
“So Piper tells me. Which hospital? I’ll come see you.”
“No, don’t!” I say quickly. The last thing I want is for him to see me wrapped in gauze like a half human.
Asad opens the car door for me, taking my hand again as he helps me in.
“I was different before, you know,” I say before he closes it. “A normal girl who had both her ears and all her fingers and toes in the right places. You would have liked her.”
Standing in the open door, he smiles, the glow of the streetlights shining from his eyes.
“I do.”
36
Two days later, on the morning of surgery, I get up early, too ramped up to sleep. Glenn is already outside, his cowboy boots deep in dirt as he mulches a row of tulips. The earthy smell triggers a memory of Mom and me planting bulbs in front of our house, our fingers and knees caked with earth.
“Your mom sure loved the spring.” Glenn reaches down to dust off a sunset-orange tulip. “As a kid, she thought it was magic how the flowers would shoot up as soon as the snow was gone. She’d forget they’d been under there working like the dickens all winter, growing toward the light.”
He shades his eyes with his hand as he looks east toward the mountains, where green spreads beneath the shrinking snowcap like the mountain is waging a civil war with itself over what season it is. “Although as long as there’s snow on those peaks, winter still has a few tricks up her sleeve.”
He clips the bright tulip at the base, handing it to me.
“Check on your aunt Cora for me?” he says. “Make sure she doesn’t pack the whole house in that bag of hers.”
I find Cora in her room trying to jam a pair of slippers into a too-full suitcase.
I sit on the bed next to her, eyeing a pile of shoeboxes wrapped in brown shipping paper just inside her open closet door. Each one has an address penned in Cora’s curly handwriting, and even though she’s tried to hide them from me, I know exactly what’s in each box. I imagine the hours she spent carefully wrapping and addressing each doll. I picture her dropping them into a package bin at the post office, shipping off little pieces of Sara. She probably sneaks them out while I’m at school so I won’t feel guilty.
“You don’t have to stay the whole time,” I say after she exhales in frustration at her overstuffed suitcase and takes everything back out to start again.
She pauses, her toiletry bag in one hand. “Where else would I be? It’s only a week. I’ll be with you every minute.”
I don’t doubt it. Cora rarely left my bedside in the months after the fire. She slept on couches and chairs, eating cafeteria food and peppering the nurses with questions every time they checked on me. No matter what, Cora stayed. Like both our lives depended on it.
And now we’re headed back in. Back to hoping. Back to crossing fingers that the graft “takes” so Dr. Sharp doesn’t have to rip it off and try again. Back to living in fear of the almighty infection we talk about in the same hushed tones as pubescent wizards at Hogwarts speak of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
She crams her slippers into the suitcase, which pops open as Cora throws her hands up like she’s just remembered something.
“Oh, I got you something!” She removes a square, wrapped present from her bedside drawer, and smiles as she hands it to me.
A DVD of The Wizard of Oz.
“And I downloaded all the songs for you to listen to in recovery. Help you get ready for the play,” she says.
I turn the case over in my hand, pretending to read the back, but actually thinking through all the things Cora has done for me. Taking me in. Selling the dolls. Working to pay off my bills. What have I ever given her?
I jump off the bed and run into my room to grab the piece of butterfly wallpaper.
“It’s not a big deal or anything.” I hand her the small square of Sara’s childhood. “And I need to get a frame so we can hang it on the wall. And I guess technically it was already yours and I’m just giving it back—”
Cora cuts off my rambling.
“Thank you, Ava.” She wipes her eyes, trying to laugh off her crying. “You’d think I’d be all out of tears by now, huh? But I just can’t get used to her being gone.”
She lays the butterfly paper on the bed.
“Like in the middle of the night, Sara used to squish between us, and we’d wake up with her feet up our noses. I always told Glenn we needed a bigger bed. We needed more space.” She runs her fingers across the top of the mattress. “Now all I have is space,” she says. “And it will never feel normal.”
I lean on the suitcase so Cora can zip it up.
“Dr. Layne says we have to find a new normal.”
“A new normal.” Cora says each word individually, as if she’s chewing them over, digesting them. “I like that.”
* * *
When the three of us walk into the burn unit, Nurse Linda’s ample bosom practically bowls me over as she hug-attacks me. You tend to bond with someone after they change your diaper and crusty bandages. Nothin’ says lovin’ like a little skin sloughin’.
The smell of her perfume—lilacs—whisks me immediately back to my bedbound days, fantasizing about when I could go home.
Now I’m heading back in.
I glance behind me at the exit. One week.
In the pre-op room, Dr. Sharp runs through the procedure with me while Linda inserts an IV into my arm.
“Now, this one’s going to be a little different,” Dr. Sharp says. “When you wake up, your eyes will be sewn shut. This will allow the skin to heal, but it will feel very strange.”
Different. Strange. Got it.
Nineteen surgeries. I’ve been down this path nineteen times, but Dr. Sharp is right: This one is different. He’s not just patching up the empty places.
He’s giving me back a piece of what the fire stole.
Cora smiles at me, gripping my hand before they wheel me away. I grip her back.
Linda switches out the saline for the good stuff, the clear elixir that transports me out of this bed while doctors work on my body. I count backward from ten until the numbers blur like the ceiling tiles above my head.
And everything fades to black.
37
A boy screams.
Loud, terrified, gut-punch hollers that echo through my dreams.
I jolt awake.
Darkness grips me. I, too, scream into the nothingness.
A touch on my arm.
“Ava, it’s Cora. You’re in the hospital. Your eyes are sewn shut. Do you remember?”
My memory slowly coalesces. My breathing slows. The screaming boy continues.
“Who is that?” I croak.
“A boy down the hall, that’s all.”
I’m in the burn unit, where pain is background noise.
I hear Cora’s feet on the linoleum, followed by the click of the door, which muffles the boy only slightly.
“I’m just here for a week, right?”
“One week. And then you’ve got the play in a few weeks. Your drama crew sent over some balloons for you. Oh, and your friends from back home sent flowers. Your favorite—orange and pink gerbera daisies.”
I think of all the unanswered messages they’ve sent since I left.
“How did they know?”
“Oh, they check in with me now and again. They love you, Ava.”
I feel sleep pulling me under.
“I think I’ll rest now.”
Cora is so quiet I’m not even sure she’s still there until I ask and she says,
“I’m right here, honey.”
It used to make me anxious, Cora always by my bed, checking my stats, asking if I was okay. But now, each time I wake up, I’m glad she’s there, like an anchor in the darkness.
The hours melt into each other without light or dark to define them. When a nurse brings pain pills every four hours, I try in vain to keep track of the time.
Cora casually mentions what time of day it is often. She did the same thing when I first came out of the coma, too. Huge sheets of paper on the wall so the first thing I’d see each time I woke up was the date and a list of surgeries I had while I slept.
It almost feels like I never left. Cora by my bed, the same antiseptic hospital smell in the air, a nauseating blend of antibacterial soap, latex, and optimism. The same muffled screams from the tank. And always, the beeping of the machines in time with my body.
Soon, the days start to melt, too. Cora tries to distract me by reading my earth science homework out loud and talking about how it’s time to start thinking about college applications. She plays The Wizard of Oz when I get restless, and even holds up my phone to my ear so I can hear my mom’s cheerful “Call me ba-ack.” Her voice helps, but not enough.
My mind spins. I jump at every noise. I panic when I think I’m alone.
The claustrophobic darkness pins me in.
“Are you okay?” Linda asks when she pauses from what sounds and feels like she’s changing my catheter bag.
“Yeah. Why?”
I feel her dab at my face with a tissue.
“You’re crying.”
“Oh.”
“You’ve got an hour till your next pill.”
“It’s not that,” I say. “It’s just I hate it here. No offense.”
Linda laughs. “None taken, sweetheart. You’ll be home in a few days.”
I nod. That’s what they told me last time.
Home.
Click your heels three times.
It’s been a year.
Am I there yet?
The darkness shrouds my vision and my mind. I think about the night of the fire, when Sara said she smelled something and went downstairs to check. I think about Dad’s face, all contorted through the flames as he ran to shove me out my window. I feel the heat pushing me down, filling my lungs, closing me in.
Cora pats a wet washcloth on my head and tells me I’m screaming in my sleep.
She reads me a card from Asad after assuring me five times that he did not see me.
“ ‘Hope your surgery went WICKED awesome. See what I did there? I’m so punny. Love, Asad.’ ”
Cora puts the card in my hand and I hold it, letting the good thoughts flood in through the dark. I have people now. Asad. My drama friends. I guess even cantankerous Mr. Lynch.
And Piper.
In the blackness, I allow myself to admit how much I’ve missed her since our stupid argument.
Then, one morning (at least I think it’s morning, judging by the sound of the food cart and the smell of eggs), Piper’s there.
“Ava?”
I don’t know why, but I revert to one of my postfire avoidance tactics. I pretend to be asleep, making my breathing extra heavy and long as Piper parks her wheelchair next to me, banging into my bed rail.
“Well, I wanted to tell you some things, and maybe you being asleep will make it easier,” she says.
I stay quiet as Piper draws in a big breath.
“Before you got here, my life sucked. I mean, it kind of still sucks, but it like colossally blew the big one.” She pauses, breathing heavily. “You were right: I pushed everyone away after the crash. I was the one who cut out Kenzie. But I knew she blamed me because I should have been driving. I blame me, too.”
Her voice quavers. I know I should say something, but I’m not sure what.
“I’ve messed up everyone’s lives. My parents treat me like I’m a broken piece of their perfect puzzle. My friends all hate me. So I’m a pariah at school, and a parasite at home, always needing to be carried and helped. Do you know what they call handicapped people? Invalids. In. Valids. Which sometimes doesn’t feel entirely In. Accurate. But then you came, and for the first time since the crash, I didn’t feel like just a leech. For once, I felt good instead of guilty.” Her voice shakes more, and she pauses. “So I’m not trying to run your life, Ava. But don’t forget that I need you in mine.”
Her breath gets closer, and I imagine her leaning over the bed rail.
“I have one last thing to tell you, and this may be the hardest to hear,” she says. “You are truly the most terrible fake sleeper I’ve ever met. Seriously the worst. How you even got into that play with this level of acting skills is beyond me.”
I smile despite my best efforts to stay stone-faced.
She squeezes my hand. I squeeze hers back.
But I don’t say anything—not because I can’t, but because I don’t have to.
Best friends never do.
* * *
At the end of the week, Dr. Sharp removes my stitches.
“Let there be light,” he says.
I blink rapidly, a thick gel still blurring my vision.
The light floods my retinas, washing away the darkness.
Dr. Sharp comes into focus first, then Glenn and Cora, who leans into my range of vision with a big smile.
Dr. Sharp pokes around with his cold fingertips, talking about how my vision will improve, and how the pink around the edges will fade but I have to be extra vigilant with the tube of thick gel he gives me.
“These are your eyes we’re talking about,” he says. “Can’t grow a new pair of those.”
He hands me a small mirror.
A twinge of memory grips me, remembering the first time I saw my face, thinking it would be like that time Sara double-bounced me off the trampoline and the doctors gave me a row of stitches on my chin. A little scar. But still me.
This time, I’m not so naive. I expect the girl in the glass.
My scars are still there. My mouth still seeps beyond its bounds, and the skin grafts still chop my cheeks into light and dark meat.
But instead of the droopy, half-brain-dead sag of my eyelids, my eyes look like normal eyes.
My eyes.
I find myself in the blue and let the rest of my face wash away.
The girl in the mirror sees me for the first time, too.
Hello in there.
I’ve been looking for you.
May 7
Four months
after the fire,
I walked out
on my own two feet.
I said goodbye
to nurses morphine beeping screaming infection transfusions terry tweezers surgery gauze catheters balloons visitors linda torture bedsores bedpans cafeterias jell-o crying code-blue gowns vaseline mood-music stitches post-op IVs sepsis bacitracin amputations debridement hydrotherapy g-tubes rounds lab-coats pain
sayonara
auf Wiedersehen
adios
I was going
home.
38
Cora drops me off at school a few days later, after most of the swelling subsides. By the curb, like always, Piper waits. But this time, she’s standing, not exactly on her own, but with the help of a walker-style contraption in front of her. A long plastic-looking brace runs down both legs and into her shoes.
Her chopped hair blows wildly in the wind. In the distance, a cloud thick with snow compresses against the mountains.
“Been working on my standing ovation,” she says as I run to hug her, which I accomplish awkwardly over her walker.
“This is incredible,” I say. “No more wheelchair?”
“I’ve got old wheelie in the office on standby, but it’s a start.” She leans heavily on the walker l
ike she’s already tired. “Plus, I couldn’t let you take all the recovery glory.”
She motions for me to come closer.
“Speaking of, let’s see this new and improved you.” She taps her chin with her fingertips, deliberating, as I lean forward. “Good job, Dr. Cold Fingers.”
“Really? Do you think people will notice?”
“And by people do you mean Asad?” she says, cocking her eyebrow.
“I mean people.”
“I think ‘people’ ”—Piper holds up her finger in air quotes—“don’t matter. I thought this surgery was for you.”
“It is.” I hold the door open for Piper. “And I like it.”
“Then I pronounce it a success!”
In science, I pretend to read my textbook when Asad walks in. I’m being ridiculous—I know this—like there’s going to be a classic meet-cute moment when the girl looks up from reading and the boy sees her eyes for the first time, or when the studious librarian takes down her hair and the boy realizes she’s been a stone-cold fox the whole time.
It’s not like I think Asad is going to take me right here next to the mealworm habitats, but today feels like it could be the start of something. New eyes. New me.
“She’s back,” he says, bouncing his closed fist on my desk.
I look up. He feigns surprise with that contagious, dimpled grin.
“Hey! It’s still you!”
I laugh.
“I was a little pissed because I clearly said ‘Make me look like Beyoncé’ as I was going under the anesthesia. But when I woke up, I was not even mildly bootylicious.”
Asad shakes his head and clicks his tongue.
“Doctors these days. No skills.”
“Thanks for your card, by the way.”
“Least I could do. I don’t know how you did it. I would go crazy having my eyes sewn shut.”
“It was pretty much horrific. But you do what you got to do, right?”
Asad nods. “Ah yes, the price of beauty.”
The word hangs in the air as Asad lifts the lid off our mealworms.