We Are All That's Left

by Carrie Arcos

“Zara?”

  I open my eyes. Benny. He looks so scared. I scoot over, carefully, trying not to twist in a way that will aggravate the stitches in my back, and make room for him in my bed. He lies down next to me.

  “Zara,” he says, “are you okay?”

  “I’m just really tired.” I don’t tell him that I haven’t slept for more than minutes at a time since the attack. That every time I try, the images are there, underneath my eyelids. I’m afraid to dream, afraid of nightmares.

  “Does your face hurt?” he asks.

  Yes.

  “Not really,” I say. “How about you? You feel okay?”

  He holds up his leg that has a bandage on it. “I’m okay. Just this. And this. And this.” He shows me all the marks on his skin that aren’t covered up.

  I examine all of them. “Not too bad.”

  “Can I see under your bandage?” he asks.

  “Um, maybe later.”

  Benny looks disappointed, but he doesn’t press it.

  “Is Mom going to die?”

  “No,” I say. “No, she’s going to be fine.” I have no choice but to lie to Benny. He wouldn’t be able to process the uncertainty of her condition. I can barely process it myself.

  “Do you think that man who lost his leg died?” he asks.

  I picture myself stepping on it, feel the oddness of it under my foot, and the bile rises. “I don’t know.”

  “There was a lot of blood,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  We’re both quiet for a moment. Then Benny says something so softly, I almost miss it. “I’m glad you didn’t die.”

  I pull him in and squeeze him tight. “Me too, Benny,” I say. I run my fingers through his curls. “Want to watch a show?”

  In answer, he sits up, grabs the remote and turns on the TV. I glance at the clock. It’s nine thirty in the morning. At this time yesterday, we were flying through the air. My back was being pummeled by shrapnel. Mom was being buried by a produce stand.

  Memories of the bombing come at me in a rush—the screaming, the dust, the smell of flesh burning, the severed hand in a closed fist, the blood a deep river in my ears. I hold Benny close, afraid I’ll sink under it all.

  * * *

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  We lie there for a while, each of us dozing in and out of restless sleep, until the doorbell rings. It’s a little after eleven.

  I open the door, and Audrey and her mom stand there with bags and bags of food. Dad is back at the hospital, so Aunt Evelyn helps Rebecca put things away in the kitchen.

  It’s a nice gesture, but all I can think about is how Mom wouldn’t like people to be doing this—opening cupboards, drawers, moving things around, taking stock of our possessions as if it were the most natural thing in the world and not at all invasive.

  But Mom isn’t here. She’s in the hospital. In a coma.

  Instead, Audrey, Sibyl and Natasha are here. We’re sitting in the backyard because Audrey’s mom thought it would be a good idea if I got some vitamin D. The look on my friends’ faces is one of concern. I pretend not to notice as their eyes keep darting to my wounds. Good thing my cheek is still covered. They’re all dressed in cute shorts and tops, while I’m in a baggy shirt and leggings, even though it feels like a hundred degrees outside. I haven’t brushed my hair since yesterday.

  “What else do you need, Zara?” Audrey asks.

  On the outdoor table are all kinds of things that I love—chocolate, Dr Pepper and Pirate’s Booty. But I haven’t touched a thing since they got here.

  I shrug. “I don’t know.” Suddenly the light is too harsh. I want to go back to bed. “I can’t believe your mom canceled the party.”

  Audrey looks at me. “Are you serious? Of course she did. This has rocked our whole town. The whole country. It seems weird to celebrate now.”

  “Everyone’s scared,” Sibyl says. “Like it was just the first wave of attack or something.” She takes a sip of her water.

  “I know. My mom didn’t even want me to come over here,” Natasha says. “She’s barely let me out of the house since it happened.”

  “It’s crazy,” Sibyl says. “I can’t believe you were there, Zara. That you were hurt.” Her eyes water. “And your mom. Like, how long do they think she’ll be in a coma?”

  Audrey shoots Sibyl a look.

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” Natasha says.

  But the three of them look at me and almost lean forward, like I’ve got the best piece of gossip for them.

  “Um, it was bad. Just bad. After the explosion, there were bodies . . .” My heart races, and I feel a pain behind my eyes. I squeeze them shut to try and get rid of it. “Actually, I don’t totally remember.” This is not true. I see the haze. Smell the burning. Suddenly, my fingers hurt. I notice they’re a little scratched up. An image flashes in my brain—I’m tearing at a broken structure, at wood and metal. Some of it so hot, my fingers get burned. I frantically dig, trying to lift the pieces off the body that lies underneath. My mother’s body.

  I stare at my hands.

  “It’s all right,” Audrey says. “We’re just glad you’re okay, Zara.”

  I don’t know if I’m okay. All I know is I’m alive.

  “Do you think I’ve gotten enough vitamin D?” I ask.

  Audrey laughs. “Probably.”

  I get up slowly. My whole body aches. I can feel the skin around my stitches pull when I move. My back is swollen and itches terribly. It takes every ounce of restraint to keep from reaching behind to scratch. My cheek itches too.

  “Here, let me help you,” Audrey says, and I let her lead me inside.

  We pass Benny on the couch playing on his iPad.

  “Hey, Benny,” Sibyl says.

  “Hey,” he says, not even looking up from his game. Mom wouldn’t allow him to be on a device like that, especially on a sunny day. She’d tell him to get off and go play outside.

  “Benny,” I say. “Benny.”

  He looks up.

  “Just fifteen more minutes, okay?” I say, and then cringe. I sound just like her.

  “Okay,” he says, and refocuses on the screen.

  We get to my room, and Audrey helps me onto my bed. When I’m settled, the three of them stand there, looking at me. I’m not sure what to do. We’ve never been in this position before. With me being almost maimed from a terrorist bombing. Usually we’re out taking photos, or at the mall or movies, or hanging at Natasha’s house because she has a pool.

  Sibyl picks up my camera. “Did you have this with you?” She turns it around in her hand and notices the place where it’s dented now. “Oh no, is it broken?”

  Is it? It’s weird that I don’t know.

  “You have pictures?” Natasha asks.

  “Um, I don’t remember,” I say. I really don’t want to talk about this.

  Audrey and Natasha crowd Sibyl on each side and look at the LCD display together. I curl up on my side. I close my eyes. They’re quiet for what feels like forever.

  “Zara, you should see these,” Audrey says.

  “Hey, guys, I’m actually pretty tired,” I say.

  “Oh. We should go, then.” Audrey gets up first.

  “Love you, Z,” says Sibyl. She begins to get emotional again, which is so Sibyl, but I can’t deal with it now.

  One by one, they touch my arm as if they’re at some funeral procession.

  They leave my room and close the door. I stare at my camera, still in the spot where they left it, on my bed, near my feet. I make no move to pick it up.

  * * *

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  After I hear the front door close, I get up and go to the bathroom. I stand in front of the mirror. No wonder they looked so concerned. Even with the bandage on, I can see the surrounding b
ruising is beginning to turn colors, and the scrapes don’t look good. It’s time to assess the full extent of the damage.

  The bandage hurts to remove because I go too slow. Once it’s off, I see—the pus from the major cut has dried and is now all yellow and orange crust. There’s fresh blood from where the wound stuck to the bandage, too; I must have injured it all over again by ripping it off, even going as slowly as I did.

  Gross.

  I take a warm washcloth and press it to the side, gradually cleaning away all the gunk. When I’m finished, I can see it looks like I skidded across asphalt on my upper cheek. I don’t even remember falling on it. My arms are scraped up, too; what hit the ground first? There must have been a lot of gravel and debris flying around during and after the explosion. Maybe some rocks flew at my face? It’s hard for me to get a clear picture of what actually happened.

  There’s a knock at the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “Zara, you okay in there?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I say. I know Aunt Evelyn is concerned about me, but I wish she would ask a different question.

  I apply a thick coat of A and E ointment. On the side it says use to prevent scarring.

  I gently rub the gel across my face and up to my temple, where smaller scratches make it look like I was just the victim of a kitten or maybe a hamster attack.

  I step back to examine my face again, and it’s now a shiny, angry red. My eyes well a little. I’m pretty sure I’ll have some kind of scar, no matter what the tube says. That time I fell off my bike and scraped up the side of my leg wasn’t even this bad, and I still have a patch of skin on my upper thigh that is darker than the rest of my leg. The evidence of my fall noticeable even to the untrained eye.

  I grimace again, and my face morphs into something worse. The mirror wobbles like in a carnival funhouse. The damaged side of my face droops. Blood runs down.

  I close my eyes. Open.

  My regular jacked-up face stares back at me. Barely an improvement.

  I take off my shirt, but it’s very difficult because of the stitches. They pull and tug on my skin every time I move. I try to get a good look at my back in the mirror, but it’s hard to twist far enough around. I’m supposed to apply the ointment to my back as well, but I can’t get the whole area. I’ll have to ask Aunt Evelyn to help me with it later.

  I open the door, looking up and down the hallway to make sure Aunt Evelyn isn’t standing out there, waiting. She isn’t. I go to my room and grab my camera. It feels bulky and awkward in my hands, like I’ve forgotten how to use it. I run my fingers across the dent, notice the scratches. The lens is dirty, but undamaged.

  I return to the bathroom and place the camera on the edge of the sink, set the timer and stand with my back in front of it. I have to adjust the angle a bit before I get a full image. When I examine the photo, I can see that the sutures cross the whole of my back in three uneven lines, as if I am being patchworked back together. Like some experiment, something brought back from the dead like Frankenstein’s monster. Wound repair is what the nurse had called it.

  It doesn’t look repaired.

  It looks like the largest wound I’ve ever seen.

  It’s disgusting.

  I’m disgusting.

  There’s another knock at the door.

  “I’m fine!” I call out before she can ask.

  I stare at my face in the mirror. Tears streak and burn the cuts on one side.

  I’m fine.

  July 5

  DAD REMAINS POSITIVE for me, but I don’t have to be a doctor to know that it’s never a good thing when someone doesn’t wake up from a coma in over forty-eight hours. So he jumps into action with a plan. Aunt Evelyn is going to stay with us until Gramma and Vovo get here from Florida—another indication that Mom’s condition is more serious than he’s letting on.

  For now, Aunt Evelyn remains at the house with Benny while I head to the hospital with Dad.

  * * *

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  I sit forward in the small wooden chair in Mom’s room.

  Nothing has changed, except her face is now bruised on the same side as mine. Her eyes still look swollen. If she could open them, she’d look like a raccoon. Dad said that’s to be expected because of the blow to the head. I notice she has metal staples toward the back of her head on the right side where they shaved her hair and operated. They’re covered with a type of jelly. To prevent scarring? To keep them from falling out? Whatever the reason, it’s not pretty.

  If I had stayed with Mom instead of taking Benny over to the candy stand, that could be me lying in the bed. I get a chill thinking about it.

  “You cold?” Dad asks. He’s holding Mom’s hand, but he must know that it’s pointless. Can she even feel anything? Besides, Mom isn’t much of a hand holder to begin with. Except for maybe Benny, but that doesn’t count. He’s still little.

  Mom’s eyes move underneath their lids like she can hear my thoughts.

  I lean back, but wince when my back hits the chair.

  “Any idea when I can get my stitches removed?”

  “Well, your back will need to heal a bit more first. But don’t worry. They won’t be in forever. Make sure you apply the ointment when you can. Anytime you remember. I can help you. Aunt Evelyn too. The first five days, especially. And now that it’s been a couple days, you’ll want to let your cheek breathe a bit. Keep the bandage off for a while.”

  “Oh, yeah, and walk around like a freak? No thank you.”

  “You are not a freak, Z. Anyone will know you’ve been in . . . an accident.”

  Dad kisses me on the top of my head. Then he leaves to check in on some of his patients.

  Mom and I are alone.

  Now that it’s just the two of us, maybe I can try to talk to her. “Mom, I found your secret stash. It’s okay, I won’t tell Dad or anyone about the money.” I feel awkward talking to her in this state, but I press through. “I was thinking, though, if . . . when you wake up . . . maybe you could tell me about some of the other stuff. Like who the people are in the photos. Maybe we could start there.”

  Mom lies there listening, or not listening, I don’t know.

  The machine breathes with her.

  “If you can hear me, maybe you could give me a sign. Like, move a finger or something.”

  I watch her intently. Nothing moves but her eyes underneath the lids. Her hands don’t twitch. Her mouth doesn’t open or curve upward.

  Our usual silence fills the room. Even now, it’s like she’s punishing me. It’s too much. Suddenly, I can’t hold in what I’ve been wondering ever since I saw the photo of her and my dad.

  “I’ve done the math, you know. You were pregnant with me, and that’s why you married Dad.” The bite in my voice cuts through the quiet. It’s kind of freeing to speak so directly to her. “So you must have thought about it. Getting rid of me. Right?”

  Silence. Eye movement.

  I feel awful. How is it possible to be so mad and sad and mixed up all at the same time? I don’t know what else to do, so I close my eyes and take deep breaths. If I were someone who prayed, now would be a good time to do so. Even though I never have before, I wonder if God would hear me if I tried talking to Him now. I don’t know. But it’s worth a shot.

  “God, I know you’re really busy, but please, help my mom. Please don’t let her die.” I hope He’s listening.

  I leave my mom’s room and wander the hall. There’s nothing more depressing than hanging out at a hospital. The aesthetic of the place is the worst—sterile, white and sanitized. Almost everyone is sick. There’s a stifling amount of inertia because most people are just sitting and waiting.

  No one wants to be here.

  Especially me.

  I feel guilty leaving Mom’s room, like there’s this unspoken expectation that I should be si
tting with her 24/7, but I just can’t. I can’t take the sound of her machine. I can’t take the way Dad checks in on me and smiles and tries to act like everything is going to be okay. Everything isn’t okay already, and if she dies . . . well, then I don’t even want to think about that.

  But mostly I can’t stand to look at my mother, because I can’t look at her without feeling like I’m looking at a stranger. Why does she feel the need to keep so much of her life—and herself—hidden away? Hidden as though it were her history, and hers alone. And now she’s just lying there.

  I look up the latest news on my phone to find out if there’s any new information about the bombings. Nothing yet on who the individual suspects are, but there are new details about ISIS claiming responsibility.

  I feel sick.

  I don’t know where to go, but I can’t stay here.

  I take the elevator to the ground floor. When the doors open, it’s loud. There’s a group of people clustered near the entrance to the hospital. Some look like reporters, others like people visiting. I don’t want to have to deal with people, so I turn and walk down the hall instead.

  I keep walking the halls of the hospital, anything to get away from the crowd, until I realize I’m completely turned around. When I come to the nearest set of signs, I see I’m in another wing. On the right, I notice a sign that says CHAPEL. At least I know that will be safe and quiet.

  Once I’m in the doorway, I’m taken with all the bright colors of the stained glass surrounding me on the walls and the ceiling.

  I step inside, but hesitate when I see there is another person here, sitting in the front row. He doesn’t turn around when I enter. I sit down in the back row on the opposite side of the guy and try to be as quiet as possible.

  The artistry on the ceiling is really intricate. I don’t have much to compare it to, but it’s better than I would have expected to find in a hospital chapel, anyway. I don’t know if it’s all the color or what, but just sitting here is nice. I feel a bit calmer.

  When my neck starts to ache because I’ve been looking up at the ceiling for too long, I lower my gaze and try not to stare at the back of the guy in front of me. He’s hunched over and hasn’t moved since I entered the room. I assume he’s praying? I wish he’d finish soon, because I’d really like to be alone.