Faceless

by Alyssa Sheinmel

  “Why don’t I feel anything?”

  “The tissue is dead, baby. You can’t feel anything.”

  I guess that explains why my face hurts less than my side. But I still don’t understand. How can I not have a nose, two cheeks, a chin? That’s not possible. There must be something left. There can’t just be a big black hole where my nose used to be, can there?

  Pink light begins streaming through the windows. Outside, the sun must be rising up through the fog.

  It’s not a lot of light, but it’s enough. There won’t be much to see, not with my face covered up the way it is, but I need to look. I don’t think I’ll believe it until I see it for myself. Not because I think Dad is lying—but because I literally can’t conceive of it, can’t wrap my mind around it.

  “I need to see it,” I beg softly. “Please.”

  My father nods, then disappears. For a second, I think he’s leaving to get a doctor, a nurse, to insist they increase my morphine drip so that I’ll fall back to sleep. Maybe he hopes that when I wake up, I won’t remember any of this, or that I’ll think it was just a dream. It seems like something out of a dream. A nightmare, really. Because in the real world, there’s no such thing as a girl without a face.

  Much to my surprise, Dad comes back with a mirror in his hand, the kind they put in the bathroom to help you put makeup on. I wait for him to put the mirror above my face so that I can see my reflection.

  My head is wrapped in bandages, but I can see that where my nose should be protruding, it’s flat as a pancake. My face kind of collapses just below my bottom lip—the gauze sinks inward where my chin used to be, like someone took an ax and sliced the bone right off, leaving nothing but empty space between my mouth and my neck.

  The string of panic around my rib cage is tight, tighter than it’s ever been before. I’ve never seen anything so ugly. I’m a freak, an alien, an extra from a sci-fi movie. I’m a monster who makes children cry, the cautionary tale parents tell.

  A choked sort of gasp sticks in my throat as my eyes—the only features I can still recognize—fill with tears. What happens to a girl after she’s been destroyed? Does she stay in the hospital forever, like an ogre from a folktale, locked away in a tower? Does she go back to school and get pointed at, gawked at, gossiped about? Does her boyfriend … oh my god, my boyfriend. Chirag can’t see me like this. Chirag can’t see me ever again. I can’t believe I actually found it comforting to imagine he was sitting in a chair beside my bed, holding my hand all this time. Does Chirag even know about this? What have my parents told him? I wish I’d never made Mom promise to call him. My heart is pounding so hard and so loud that I want to cover my ears.

  Before my dad leaves, I ask him to put the mirror on the right side of my bed. I want it to be within arm’s reach so that I can grab it anytime I need to remind myself that I was wrong:

  There is such a thing as a girl without a face.

  I wake to the sound of footsteps, and a voice I don’t recognize shouting, “Good morning!”

  “The burn unit is no place to be chipper,” I mumble, opening my eyes. I don’t think whoever it is hears me. Or cares.

  They’ve lowered my morphine. Everything is becoming a bit sharper around the edges.

  “My name is Marnie,” the voice continues, as though I greeted her with enthusiasm and have been awake for hours, just like she has. I can’t believe I used to be a morning person. “I’m your physical therapist.”

  “I have a dozen physical therapists,” I answer, thinking of the folks who come in and out of my room every day, standing at my bedside to move my limbs around, making sure that the muscles don’t atrophy, that my skin doesn’t freeze in place as it heals.

  “Of course, Maisie, but I’m going to be working with you—Oh!” she says suddenly, cutting herself off.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask frantically.

  “I just realized how similar our names are. Maisie. Marnie. Just one letter different.”

  “Two letters,” I correct. Who the heck does this woman think she is? She has no right to come in here and talk to me with her bright voice and her upbeat tone.

  Don’t you know what happened to me? Can’t you see what I look like?

  I close my eyes. My mirror is within arm’s reach, but I don’t have to look. What I saw last night is imprinted on my brain. I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but I think it’s taken up permanent residence.

  I haven’t seen Marnie’s face yet, but I have a feeling I know exactly what she looks like. She probably has shiny blond hair in a high ponytail and tan skin and cheeks covered in blush and bubblegum gloss on her lips. I bet she was a cheerleader in high school. Maybe she uses her old pom-poms to cheer her patients now. I wonder if I can ask to be assigned to someone less perky.

  Then a stunningly beautiful African-American woman floats into my field of vision. Instead of flowing blond hair, she has an enormous Afro, and when she smiles, her teeth are bright white but just a little crooked, like she decided not to get braces because then she would’ve been too perfect.

  “Let’s get you sitting up, all right?”

  “I don’t think I can,” I answer timidly. I haven’t actually sat up since before my accident.

  “You can,” Marnie says firmly. “You’ll just need a little help the first time.”

  As always, I wish I could shake my head. What’s the point of all this? Who cares if I can sit up or not? A girl without a face doesn’t need to be able to move around. I’ll probably stay in bed for the rest of my life: the blinds drawn, the door locked. Hidden away from the whole wide world, like Rapunzel in her tower.

  But Marnie doesn’t seem to care that there’s no point, because she steps closer and presses a button on the side of the bed, which begins to move. She leans down and circles me in her long arms, holding me steady as the bed folds beneath me, until I’m angled at about forty-five degrees instead of flat on my back. I can just see the wall in front of me. Instead of the sticky blue of the ceiling, it’s white, and someone has taped pictures of me all over it. Me with my parents, me with Serena, me with Chirag. Who put them there, and why?

  With one arm, Marnie pulls the covers back, exposing my bare legs. She keeps her other arm steady around me. “Now swing your legs over the side of the bed.”

  The string of panic circles its way around my chest. The gauze wrapped around my head feels like it’s made of glass, like if I move too fast it will break, taking what’s left of my face along with it.

  “I’m not supposed to move,” I say stubbornly. I don’t want to move.

  “If you weren’t supposed to move, honey, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Maybe we should wait until my dad gets back.”

  “Your dad went home a few hours ago.”

  I can’t believe it. He didn’t want to be here when I woke up, after what he told me last night? But maybe he needed some time to recover from the conversation, too.

  “Maybe we should talk to the doctors first.”

  “The doctors are the ones who told me to come work with you, silly,” she counters.

  “But my face—” I stop myself. Does she know exactly what’s wrong with my face? There are so many people coming in and out of my room at all hours. It’s hard to believe that every one of them knows all the details. I’ve only known for eight hours.

  Then again, no one but me needed to be told. Everyone else can see it the instant they lay eyes on me. For the rest of my life, every single person who sees me will know. Strangers. Teachers. Serena. Chirag.

  The lump in my throat rises again. I don’t want to cry, not in front of this perky, beautiful woman who’s probably never felt ugly a day in her life. What were they doing, assigning her to me? Did someone think it would be an interesting social experiment: Let’s see how the freak reacts when she has to work with the most beautiful woman in the world.

  “I know what I’m doing, Maisie,” Marnie says, sounding for just an instant more solemn than chipper.
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  I can tell that Marnie is the kind of woman who doesn’t take no for an answer. Who will stay here until I do everything she asks. I recognize it in her voice because I’ve always been that stubborn, too. So I say, “Okay.” Maybe the sooner I give in, the sooner she’ll leave.

  “Come on, now, honey,” Marnie orders. “Swing.”

  I know I can move my legs. The day I woke up from the coma, I was practically trying to sprint.

  Marnie guides my torso, twisting it so that it follows my legs as I turn. I think about my stomach muscles, the way they worked when I ran. Even though it’s been a long time, they should still be able to hold me up, right? The tight skin on my left side screams in protest.

  “There!” Marnie says triumphantly. She drops her arms so that she’s only holding my hands. My legs dangle over the side of the bed and I swing them back and forth like a little kid. “Good job, sweetheart.”

  “I don’t think you know me well enough to call me sweetheart.”

  Marnie laughs. “Maybe not. But I will.”

  “You will?”

  Marnie nods. “We’ll be spending a lot of time together soon enough.”

  She drops my hands and bends down, disappearing briefly. I sway from side to side, light-headed. Perhaps literally light-headed. Who knows the weight of the pieces they removed? God, bad joke. But seriously, is there such a thing as a good joke at a time like this?

  “Use your abdominals,” Marnie commands. “I know you have them. Your parents told me you were an athlete.” I can hear that she’s moved off to the left, toward the door.

  “You’re not going to leave, are you?” I press my hands into the mattress, trying to steady myself. Seconds ago, I never wanted to see this woman again, and now I’m terrified of being left alone. When did I turn into such a wimp?

  “No such luck,” Marnie says, reappearing. She’s holding a ball in her hand, the rubber kind my father keeps on his desk at the office, for squeezing when he’s stressed-out.

  “Are you a lefty or a righty?”

  “Righty,” I say.

  “Well, that’s lucky.”

  Stop calling me lucky, I think. I am so sick of being told I’m lucky. I’m pretty sure I’m the least lucky person I’ve ever met. After all, everyone else I’ve ever seen in my entire life hasn’t been faceless.

  Marnie takes my left hand from the bed and unwinds the bandages, exposing my skin. I try to gaze down at it but then I remember I can’t tilt my neck, so I lift my hand into my field of vision. I used to have a dark brown freckle on the knuckle of my left pointer finger, but now there is just pink skin surrounded by jagged scars. The skin looks unfinished, like it belongs to a baby who should still be in utero, who isn’t ready to be exposed to the light of the world.

  It certainly doesn’t look sexy, like Chirag used to say my freckles were.

  Would it have been better or worse if it had been my hand that was lost, and my face that only suffered second-degree burns? The question reminds me of those miserable math problems in the SATs, the ones that look like they don’t actually have an answer.

  Marnie turns my hand so that my palm is facing upward in front of me and places the ball in the center of it. Immediately, the ball rolls off my skin and down to the floor.

  Marnie laughs, bends down, retrieves the ball, and puts it back. It rolls off again.

  “You have to squeeze it,” she says, still laughing. I hate her for laughing, but I guess I should get used to the sound. The way I am now, she certainly won’t be the last person to laugh at me.

  This time, when she replaces the ball on my hand, I bend my fingers. I gasp, shocked by how much it hurts. It feels like I’m wearing a glove that’s about ten sizes too small. It feels like if I keep bending my fingers, the glove will rip right down the middle. Like my skin will just crack open.

  The ball falls to the ground. Marnie laughs and replaces it. She holds it in place. I grit my teeth the same way I do at the beginning of a race.

  “Don’t laugh at me.” She lets go of the ball and I bend my fingers, holding my breath to steel myself for the pain. She wouldn’t be telling me to do this if my skin were really going to rip apart, right? I bend some more, trying to concentrate not on the pain but on the rubber of the ball in the palm of my hand. My fingertips just barely graze the top of it before I can’t hold it anymore. I relax my fingers, and the ball falls again.

  Next, Marnie says I’m going to stand up. The mere thought sets my heart pounding once more. She reaches for my IV bag and hangs it onto a pole with wheels on it so that I’m no longer attached to the bed. She puts her arms around me, fitting her elbows beneath my armpits. I can feel the warmth of her skin and the bumps of her muscles through my flimsy hospital gown.

  That’s one of the many indignities I didn’t know about before I was in here: the hospital gown. When you see people wearing them on television shows about hospitals, you don’t know that the gowns are made of material just slightly thicker than paper, that they tie up the back, and that in real life they keep gowns untied for easy access. And the people on TV are surely wearing bras and underwear under their gowns; I haven’t worn a bra or underwear since I’ve been here. I never imagined I would long for underwire. On TV, they never mention a word about catheters and—once they take the catheter away—bedpans, adult diapers, and the mats they place under the sheets on the bed in case you leak.

  They certainly never mention just how many fluids a person can leak.

  Now the tips of my toes hit the floor first. The linoleum is surprisingly warm beneath my bare feet. Marnie guides me off the bed, and slowly, gingerly, I lower my heels to the floor. The thick calluses on my heels from years of running are still there. Marnie backs away from me until her hands are on my elbows.

  “Don’t put all your weight on your right side,” she warns, and I shift, feeling the pressure of my weight engage the muscles beneath the ruined skin on my left side, which feel so much weaker than they used to.

  “Take a step, Maisie,” Marnie says, like I’m a toddler who’s learning to walk for the first time. I slide my right foot out in front of me and Marnie shakes her head, her curls bouncing back and forth. “Don’t shuffle,” she instructs. “Lift your foot off the ground.”

  I hesitate and press my toes into the floor. What difference does it make if I never walk again? It’s not like a girl without a face has places she needs to go.

  “I won’t let you fall,” Marnie says. “I promise.”

  I should have stepped with my left foot first. Then all the weight of my body would be my right side’s responsibility.

  “Good!” Marnie shouts as I lift my right foot, grinning so that I can see her crooked teeth.

  I always thought that when people said they saw their life flashing before their eyes, it was just some kind of expression. I certainly never thought it was literal. But as Marnie slides her grip down my arms from my elbows to my hands, I close my eyes, and I swear, I can see my life flashing before me like a series of pictures.

  My first race, which I finished dead last, the only freshman to make the team.

  My next track meet, where I came in third.

  The time I nearly dropped the baton on a relay. Now I can practically feel the hot metal of it in my hands.

  The first time I won a race. My arms overhead, my ridiculous little victory dance.

  Sophomore year, when Coach said she thought I might be able to get a scholarship.

  Then I flash back further, even younger: eighth grade, when I raced Dad around the local reservoir and won. Third grade, running down the street to catch the neighbors’ dog when she dug her way out from under their fence. Kindergarten, running around during recess, faster than all the boys, volunteering to be “it” when we played tag.

  And then a sudden flash forward: running alongside Chirag through the fog and the mist on the track behind the school. Running barefoot with him in the woods. Running out of his reach when he tried to grab me, and laughing all the
while.

  My whole life, always, always running, as fast as my legs could carry me. Sweat dripping down my face, getting into my eyes and mouth. The taste of salt on my tongue.

  I open my eyes. Shaking, holding on to Marnie’s hands so tight my fingers ache, I take another step. Marnie cheers.

  At two in the morning, I wake to the sound of alarms wailing somewhere down the hall from my bed. I open my eyes: It’s never really dark in here, but it doesn’t matter how light it is because I can’t crane my head to look at what’s going on. I think it’s a patient they brought in early yesterday morning. I heard the nurses talking about him: victim of a house fire. Third-degree burns. Fourteen years old. Even younger than I am.

  But still, not quite as tragic. Because technically, third-degree burns aren’t as bad as what I have.

  But technicalities don’t seem to matter now. Soon, the wail of the alarms from the machines by his bed are accompanied by shouts, things I’ve only ever heard in the movies: Code blue and Stat; Don’t let go and Breathe!

  I can hear it when the doctors stop yelling and the machine’s wail turns into a beep, then fades into silence. I can hear it when they give up on him. I can hear it when he dies.

  I wonder if all the other patients in the burn unit are listening the way I am. Do their nurses tell them they’re lucky, too? In a few hours, will my morning nurse be standing above my bed murmuring about my good fortune, a sad look on her face because when she reported for duty at eight a.m., the nurse whose shift she was relieving told her that they’d lost a patient overnight?

  But not the girl with the irreparable damage, the one whose burns are so bad there’s nothing but empty space where her flesh and blood used to be. No, it was the teenage boy who maybe set fire to his house by sneaking a cigarette in his room, or burning a candle to make it romantic when his girlfriend came over. Maybe his house had shoddy wiring. Or maybe, just maybe, it was hit by lightning.