The Phantom Limb

by William Sleator

  “Damn it, Grandpa! Now you’ve really made a mess!” Isaac said angrily, as though speaking to an errant child. He sighed. Dinner was ruined.

  He took Grandpa up to his room to change and then headed back to the kitchen.

  When he had finished cleaning up the mess, he brought the mirror box down to the living room and put it on the coffee table. Grandpa had come down again in his clean clothes and was sitting on the couch. Isaac, feeling guilty for the way he had yelled at him, knelt on the floor next to the box and placed it so that Grandpa could reach it from the couch. He thought about how he had put one hand in and kept the other one out and about how weird it had felt. But putting both hands in was supposed to be even weirder. He hadn’t tried it yet.

  Grandpa was watching him.

  Now Isaac slowly put both of his forearms into the box. He looked at the right side of the mirror and moved his right hand back and forth but kept his left hand still. He felt a jolt of surprise and couldn’t keep from laughing nervously. “This feels so strange!” he said. “To see my left hand move—and to feel it not moving.”

  Then Isaac had to leave the room briefly to go to the bathroom. When he came back, Grandpa was doing the same thing Isaac had done with the mirror box. Isaac’s sense of guilt disappeared. He didn’t want anybody else to touch the box, especially Grandpa. “Get away from that!” he ordered.

  Grandpa quickly put his hands in his lap.

  When Isaac calmed down, he talked to himself, as though Grandpa were invisible. “Now I can try it the other way around.” Again he put both arms into the box. Looking into the right side of the mirror, he moved his left hand but not his right. He felt an even more powerful jolt. “This is even weirder,” he said. “To feel my left hand move and see that it’s not moving. It’s like I have a third hand—an invisible hand.”

  Grandpa didn’t say anything, but he kept watching.

  “The article said it’s because the brain hates contradictions,” Isaac said. “It can’t make sense of seeing its body in different places.” He paused. “OK—now this is supposed to be the weirdest of all.” Isaac put his hands back into the box, once again looking into the right side of the mirror. He needed someone to help him, so he said, “Grandpa, could you take your finger and run it across my right hand?”

  Acting as if they were playing Simon Says, Grandpa followed Isaac’s instructions exactly. Isaac watched his left hand being touched, but the hand itself felt nothing. He shivered. “Jeez, it’s like my left hand has no feeling in it at all—like it’s a dead hand. This isn’t just weird, it’s creepy!”

  Grandpa shook his head and left the room, but Isaac barely noticed. He was too preoccupied with his new find.

  TOP THAT RACKET!”

  In another house, at a different time, an eight-year-old girl was struggling at the piano.

  “I said stop!” the voice screamed. “Your hands are banging like hams on that keyboard and you’re giving me a headache. Make yourself useful and help me with dinner. Let your brother play.”

  The girl calmly went upstairs, got her doll, and locked herself in the bathroom. “I’ll help you, baby,” she said, holding her doll in front of the mirror. “We don’t need anybody else.” She pulled at the doll’s arm.

  HE NEXT DAY, SATURDAY, ISAAC WENT TO the hospital to visit Vera for the first time since she had been admitted. He hated the hospital, but he had run out of excuses not to go. It was close enough to their house that he could bike there easily.

  The night his mother was admitted had been a nightmare. After she was settled in her room, he had made the mistake of taking the elevator instead of going down the stairs. He hated small spaces and usually avoided elevators, but he wanted to get out as fast as possible. He also hated how sterile and cold the hospital was, how washed out everything looked under the fluorescent lights. The hallways all looked the same. And even though many people were there, it was eerily quiet.

  In his rush to leave, he pushed the wrong button, and he ended up in the basement without realizing it. When the doors opened and he stepped out, he found himself among a long series of connected cavelike corridors, shadowy and confusing. It was a dark, underground maze. He was confronted with signs that said things like MORGUE, ENDOSCOPY, RADIATION THERAPY, and ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES, but there was no exit sign. He started to panic. He was sweating. He sat down for a few minutes, taking slow, deep breaths to regain his composure.

  When he felt a little better, he got up and looked around again. At last he found a door that said EMERGENCY EXIT. He ignored the warning about an alarm going off and pushed his way out the door. He could hear the noise behind him as he ran to get a taxi in the blissful open space of outside.

  Today when he got to the hospital, he made sure to walk up the stairs. When he reached the sixth floor, he reluctantly pushed through the door that said INTENSIVE CARE—LIMITED ACCESS.

  The nurse who had been there when his mother was admitted was sitting behind a computer at the nurses’ station. Her name tag said CANDI: CHARGE NURSE. She wore bright pink lipstick, and she greeted Isaac with a smile. He showed her his ID, which was required to get into the intensive care unit.

  “How are you today?” she asked him.

  “I’m OK, I guess. How’s my mother?”

  Candi looked worried. “Well, she’s pretty heavily sedated right now, I’m afraid. Dr. Ciano keeps …” She stopped herself. It was probably against hospital ethics for a nurse to criticize a doctor. “When she’s not so sedated, though, she’s a delight,” Candi said. “She likes to talk about music.”

  “She’s a pianist,” Isaac said. “I forget what room she’s in.”

  “Six thirty-eight,” Candi said. “Be sure to wash your hands.” She smiled.

  Isaac was shocked. On his way to his mother’s room he passed the Fitzpatrick twins wearing matching pink-and-white uniforms. What were they doing volunteering in a hospital anyway? Helping people wasn’t their style. It seemed he was never going to escape them. Thankfully, they ignored him.

  Vera was in a room with two beds, but one was empty. Her room was small, with one window looking out at a brick building just a few feet away. She was lying in the bed near the door. Her eyes were closed, and her right hand was attached to an IV—a needle that was connected to a tube that went to a bag of liquid hanging on a metal pole. The liquid, whatever it was, was slowly entering her bloodstream. It occurred to Isaac that she must hate being bound to the IV and not able to move around without help.

  He went over to the sink and washed his hands.

  A female doctor came in and repositioned his mother’s arm. There must be something wrong with the IV line, Isaac thought. Now he was concerned about her. Vera’s eyes fluttered open, and she winced. Isaac could see that the doctor was awkward.

  “Sorry,” the doctor said to Vera.

  Vera looked down at her arm, then at Isaac. “Dr. Ciano, this is my son, Isaac.”

  The doctor had a mass of unruly dark hair. She turned toward Isaac with a forced half smile. Then she looked at her watch. “I’ve got rounds now,” she said, and left the room quickly.

  Vera had long black hair and was very good-looking, especially now that she wasn’t wearing all the heavy makeup she usually had on. “Hey, Ize,” she said sleepily. She smiled at him, then yawned. “It’s so good to see you. How’s it going?”

  “OK, I guess. I found this really cool thing in that storage room in the house.” He began telling her about the mirror box, but her eyes started to close again. “It’s not important, though. How are you doing?” he asked her.

  She opened her eyes. “It’s hard to tell with this horrible IV. I don’t know what they put in it, but it either keeps me asleep or puts me into a stupor so I hardly feel anything.” She shrugged. “But the nurses have been so wonderful, especially Candi—not like that odd Dr. Ciano. She has the personality of a crow.”

  They both laughed. At that moment, Vera sounded like her old self. “She has no bedside manner,�
� she went on, “and I’m not sure she knows what she’s doing. She just has me in bed on an IV, drugged.” She sighed. “But this is the hospital that everyone recommended.” Her eyes fluttered shut again.

  She had fallen asleep. Even though Isaac was worried about her, he was relieved to be able to leave the hospital and go back home.

  As he was leaving, he asked Candi if there was a men’s room nearby.

  “Why don’t you use the bathroom in your mother’s room?” Candi said. “As long as you’re scrupulously clean about it.”

  “No, that’s OK,” Isaac said, feeling embarrassed. “It’s so small.”

  “A little claustrophobic?” Candi said. “Don’t worry. Lots of perfectly normal people feel exactly the same way.”

  After going to the men’s room near the ward, Isaac took the stairs to get out, continuing to avoid the elevator.

  The next morning, Isaac woke up with his usual Sunday dread. He hated Sundays. Tomorrow was Monday. Tomorrow was school. Tomorrow the ridicule would start all over again.

  He spent most of the day doing homework. He really did like some of it, especially the book they were studying in honors English class, The Time Machine. But he found it hard to concentrate, because all he could think about was how out of place he felt at school. As the day went on, he got more and more depressed.

  He remembered the first time the Fitzpatrick twins had spotted him as the new kid. “Where’d you come from, Munchkinland?” they asked him. They nudged the girl they were with and all three of them laughed. “If the wind was any stronger, it would blow him away.” They all laughed again. Isaac didn’t know what to do except turn and walk away in shame.

  Isaac needed to get his mind off school, so he went to get the mirror box, hoping it would distract him. There was something that attracted him to it intensely, more than any of his other optical illusions. It was a little scary to be so obsessed with something a dead amputee boy may have used. He kept thinking about the way the boy seemed to be staring at him from his picture.

  But it was still only the beginning.

  SAAC GOT UNDRESSED AND CLIMBED INTO BED. But he couldn’t sleep. The mirror box was on his desk, next to his computer. He got up, turned on the overhead light, sat down at his desk, and slid both his hands into the mirror box. While he looked in the mirror, he clenched and unclenched his right hand.

  This time, the reflection of his hand in the mirror didn’t move.

  He cried aloud and jerked out his hands as fast as lightning.

  The hand in the mirror remained where it was.

  Now Isaac was terrified. “What is this?” he shouted, forgetting about not waking up Grandpa. It was impossible! How could there still be a hand in there when he had already removed his? He must be dreaming it.

  Something made him slide his arms back into the box; they felt prickly, as if they’d fallen asleep. He let them rest on the bottom of the box without moving.

  Suddenly, the hand in the mirror waved at him, as if in greeting.

  He cried out again, but this time he left his hands in the box, watching for the hand in the mirror to make its next move. The moves did not match Isaac’s hand. More and more it began to seem—even while being impossible—that the hand in the mirror was not a reflection.

  Isaac couldn’t fall asleep that night. He was too excited about the mirror box. He sat up in bed, leaned close to his desk, and peered back into the right side of the mirror. The impossible hand wasn’t there.

  Maybe he had imagined the whole thing. He hoped his mind was just playing tricks on him.

  Did he dare put his hands inside it again and see what happened? He got out of bed and paced around the room, trying to decide what to do, walking softly so as not to wake Grandpa.

  He was scared. But he was also very curious. He approached the mirror box slowly. His entire emotional reaction to it had changed. Before, it had almost glowed with fascination. Now its appearance was morbid, sinister. He put his fingertips into the holes, closed his eyes, and moved his hands into the box. He stood there for a long moment with his eyes squeezed shut, afraid to open them. But he couldn’t resist. He opened them and looked at the right mirror.

  He wasn’t prepared for what he saw. He managed not to scream, but just barely. The hand in the mirror was holding something. Isaac focused his eyes to study what the hand held.

  It was a smiley face button.

  He had had one like it when he was younger, but this one was different. This one was woven. And this smile wasn’t happy. No, it was cynical. Mocking. Isaac couldn’t believe it. Was he going crazy? Was he hallucinating? He couldn’t stand it a second longer. He pulled out his hands.

  The hand in the mirror box waved the cloth face at him and pulled out too.

  Isaac sank down onto his bed feeling exhausted. But he was too nervous—too scared—to sleep. What was going on here? How could the mirror box be doing this insane thing? Showing him a creepy, weird smiley face. Who was behind it? How could they be doing it? And why?

  And that was when the thought first occurred to him: Maybe the phantom limb in the mirror box was trying to tell him something.

  SAAC WAS STILL AWAKE WHEN HIS ALARM clock went off. He was very drowsy, and it took him a moment to get his bearings. Then it came back to him: the mirror box.

  During the night he had put the haunted box in his closet so that the awful specter would be out of sight. But he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. As a result, he hadn’t gotten any sleep at all.

  He toyed with the idea of skipping school. After all, he could use the excuse that his mother was in the hospital.

  It was seven A.M. Isaac dressed and went downstairs. Unbelievably, Grandpa was already in the kitchen, sitting at the table. His hair was still unkempt, but at least his shirt was buttoned the right way.

  Isaac sighed as he fried a couple of eggs and then put them on plates for the two of them. It was hard enough dealing with his own problems; being responsible for Grandpa was an added burden.

  “How … is she doing?” Grandpa asked suddenly, startling Isaac.

  So Grandpa wasn’t lost in his own world, as he usually was.

  “Well, it’s hard to tell how she—” Isaac’s cell phone rang, interrupting the conversation. Who could be calling?

  “Hi, Ize,” said his mother, sounding a little hoarse.

  “Mom?” He hadn’t expected that she would be alert enough to call him.

  “I’m not as sedated today,” Vera said. “Can you bring me some stuff before you go to school?”

  His heart sank. Go back to the awful hospital again? But Vera was coherent; how could he refuse?

  She wanted any bills that had collected and also her checkbook, the piano technique book she was reading, her music magazines, some cosmetics, and her glasses. It would all fit in his bicycle basket. Isaac sighed and said, “OK.”

  When he reached the hospital, he again walked up the six flights of stairs.

  When he got to Vera’s floor, he was relieved to see a friendly face. Candi greeted him pleasantly at the nurses’ station. “No school today?” she asked.

  “Mom called and said she needed some stuff from home. She doesn’t seem so out of it today. I figured I could help her and then go to school a little late.”

  “Yes, fortunately Dr. Ciano decided your mother didn’t need to be so sedated anymore.” Candi smiled, and her voice softened. “Is that a book about piano playing?” she asked, looking at the pile of things he held in his arms.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Don’t forget to—”

  “I know. Wash my hands,” Isaac interrupted her, and they both laughed.

  Today Vera sat propped up in her narrow hospital bed, not dozing the way she was the last time. But now she had tubes in both of her hands. Dr. Ciano was there, standing on the other side of the bed. She was adjusting the new IV.

  “Ize!” Vera said with a big smile. She was like a whole different person. “It’s great to see you
. Thanks so much for bringing my things.”

  “Wait a minute. I have to wash my hands.” He put her stuff down on the bedside table.

  Dr. Ciano looked up from the new IV line for a moment. “Oh, a book about piano playing,” she said. “I studied piano for a little while, but I wasn’t any good at it. My brother was, though.” She sighed. “OK, all done.” She left the room without another word, but with her forced half smile.

  Isaac took off his jacket and sat in the chair next to the bed. “What’s happening?” he asked, looking around the room.

  “Oh, you know. Always lots of fun around here.” Vera rolled her eyes. She wasn’t as sedated, but she still seemed a little loopy. “What about your breakfast? Did you eat?” she asked him. “There’s a café down in the lobby.”

  “I made eggs. And guess what? When I got up, Grandpa was down there waiting, and he actually asked about you.”

  “Really?” Vera said.

  There was a knock on the door. It was Dr. Ciano again. She walked toward the bed.

  “Oh. Hello again, Dr. Ciano,” Vera said nervously.

  Isaac noticed that the doctor didn’t wash her hands when she came in, which he found strange. He stood up so she could sit in the chair next to the bed. But instead she remained standing, leafing through a sheaf of papers. “You may not remember,” she said to Vera, “but when you were admitted, we did an EEG. The EEG had some abnormalities, so I’d like to do some more extensive tests, like an MRI—just in case.”

  “Abnormalities? What kind of abnormalities?” Isaac asked.

  “They could be anything, really, but I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Oh,” Isaac said, glancing quickly at his mother.

  Dr. Ciano looked at him. “What day is it? Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “My mother asked me to bring her some stuff,” Isaac said, snapping at the doctor.