Fix

by J. Albert Mann

  “You all right?” Mary Fay asks, not really looking at me.

  “Mm-hmm,” I answer, although I don’t move off the shelf or right the vitamins.

  By the time we get to the baked goods aisle I’m ready to crawl on top of the loaves of whole wheat bread and sleep for a week.

  “All I need is the deli and a few things from the dairy section,” Mary Fay announces.

  “Can I go sit in the car?” I ask. “I’m so tired.”

  “Sure. I’ll walk you out. Not bad for a first trip back out into the world. You did well, Eve.”

  Some of my old love of Mary Fay returns in that moment, and when I smile at her it’s actually genuine.

  “No, I can do it,” I tell her, reaching for my second crutch and her keys sitting on top of her purse. “You finish up, Meef.”

  Where thirty minutes ago I had been petrified of being alone in this place, the Roxy really has me feeling fine. Very fine. As if all I need to do is blink my eyes and I’ll be in the car. First, though, I have to hobble out of the bread aisle. Slowly. Deliberately. Because she’s watching. Yet as soon as I’m out of her sight, I sloppily clank toward the front doors. Which seem to be moving away from me.

  I’m shuffling past a huge display of toilet paper two aisles later when the floor seesaws beneath my feet and my eyesight darkens. Sucking in a sharp breath, I stare out across the long row of checkout counters lined up like lanes at a bowling alley. The world is too 3D… people, carts, kids, and it’s all happening between me and the exit.

  Stopping to catch my breath, I reach out and grab the metal shelf loaded with toilet paper. The car’s too far. Way too far. A tsunami of fear breaks over me, making me think I might pee right here on the floor of the grocery store. I need Meef. I need her.

  I turn without thinking, without care, and my foot catches on something. I kick it, losing what little balance I had, causing me to swing back into the toilet paper, my crutch clanging against metal. My heart pounds against my brace. A horrible coldness blows through me, gripping my throat.

  My lungs are collapsing. I’m going to fall! And my lungs are collapsing. It’s the atelectasis thing.

  I’m going to die in the middle of the Stop & Shop.

  Hanging by one hand to the shelf, I’m sweating and panting and freaking out. Somehow I’m also trying hard not to let anyone in the grocery store know that I’m sweating and panting and freaking out. It’s embarrassing to be dying like this, in front of all these shoppers. But I can’t hide the ugly secret of my impending death because it’s happening. It’s totally happening.

  Frantic, I call out for help.

  And he’s there.

  He grabs my arms and stands me back up. I clutch at the apron strings around his neck, my nose inches from his skin. Again, that fresh T-shirt smell. Why is he wearing a red apron? I look up at him. The lights of the store shine out of the lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses.

  “Hang on,” he says.

  I wrap my arms around him. The human form feels so good.

  “Not to me, Eve,” he says, “to the shelf.”

  I don’t understand.

  He takes my hands from him and puts them onto the shelf. Then he gets down on his knees at my feet. He ties my shoe. When he stands back up, his face is so close to mine. Just like the long line of coffee on the shelf, everything is a blur—the bandanna pulling back his hair, his eyes behind his glasses, his lips. His lips. I lean into them, closing my heavy eyelids. They are warm… and still.

  I kiss him again.

  His lips are so soft in their hesitation, but he does not move away and this just makes me kiss him longer, harder.

  He breaks down, kissing me back. Although only for a second before he stops and pulls away.

  He’s all warm haziness as he leans me back onto the toilet paper and picks up the keys from somewhere on the floor.

  “Mary Fay’s car?” he mumbles.

  I nod yes.

  He hands me one of my crutches, keeping the second. Carefully, he shores me up from behind with his arm, gently guiding me through the mess of color and movement to the exit. When the automatic doors open, I don’t even flinch. We’re hit by a blast of chilly air, and I feel him gently tighten his grip around me.

  It must be snowing because tiny freezing specks hit my cheeks, but his body is so very warm next to mine that the icy wetness feels refreshing.

  He opens the door and lowers me in. He places the keys on my lap and when the door shuts, it’s like all sound has been erased from the world. My head rests against the cold window and I shiver because of the cold. Because of that kiss.

  Mary Fay climbs heavily into the car next to me.

  “Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”

  I’m smiling. I can feel it.

  She plucks the keys from my lap and within a second, the engine hums to life beneath me. Heat hits my knees. I slip off into darkness as the car pulls out onto the road.

  “Saw your friend in there,” she says.

  “Friend?” I don’t need to hear her say his name; I already know it.

  Oh, shit.

  The Roxy

  IT’S LIKE EIGHT IN THE FREAKING MORNING AND MARY FAY is crawling us through traffic to Mass General. I haven’t recovered from last night’s grocery trip and that damn toilet paper kiss. Yet here I am, back in the car.

  This woman is killing me.

  I woke to the snap of my shade, music blaring from the kitchen, and a stack of clean clothes in her arms, including socks and the sock aid. Although the real cherry on Mary Fay’s good-morning cake was a baggie of rye toast for me to eat in the car. “No table service,” she’d announced.

  By the time we pull into MGH’s circular drop-off area, my spine is literally hanging from its rods. I did not allow myself to take any Roxy this morning. At the crack of dawn, it had seemed like a good idea to show up in real and true pain. Not so much anymore, since now I am in real and true pain.

  Over the past few weeks, I’ve been playing the halfsy game. The hiding-it-away game. The this-isn’t-happening game. But the prescription is done. And although I have a supply squirreled away in my bedside table, there are no more refills in my future. I have to ask Dr. Sowah for more. Which does not feel at all like a game.

  Mary Fay puts the car in park directly in front of the giant mechanized revolving door. The shred of rye toast crust I nibbled churns in my stomach.

  More Roxy. I’ll figure out everything else later.

  Everything.

  My god, I need a Roxy.

  “Eve? You okay?”

  “Yeah, sorry, Meef. I’m good. You ready?”

  She doesn’t move.

  “You know I’m here for you, honey. Don’t you?”

  This is not what I need right now. Nodding, I fumble to unbuckle myself. Not that I could get away from her anyway. I’m stuck in this car until she decides to get me out.

  “Thanks, yes. I know.” I flash a smile, anything to make her move.

  It works. Mary Fay returns my smile and exits the car. And I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. She grabs my crutches from the hatchback, and together—like we’ve been doing this all our lives—we haul me up and out of the car.

  She hands over my crutches.

  “I only need the one,” I tell her. Unlike in the grocery store, I feel safe at MGH. Even with a ton of people around.

  She tosses the crutch into the back seat and shuts the door. “I’ll park and hang in the waiting room. Text if you need me in with you and the doctor.”

  “Do you want anything from Starbucks?” I offer, trying to return us to our normal easy conversation.

  “Starbucks?” she says. “You need to powershop, Eve. You’re already late.”

  “I’ll take that as a no.” I’m definitely doing Starbucks.

  Turning toward the door, I have a flashback of swaying darkness and pain from the night they stuffed me in an ambulance to take me home. It seems like years ago, not weeks.

&nb
sp; My phone vibrates with a text. Mary Fay must want coffee after all.

  Wish I could be there with you. My mother. Who has not disappeared. Who is at a conference in a state that is not disappearing.

  Wish I could be there with you? She could be here. She could totally be here. Right now.

  My thumbs pump out Your decision while my chest heaves. I click the send arrow so fast and with such enthusiasm, it’s shocking how helpless I feel doing it.

  I stick my phone deep in my coat pocket, hobble across the lobby through the side door into Starbucks, and get in line.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  My heart slides farther into my stomach as the barista happily asks what they can get me.

  I order Dr. Sowah and me Mocha Frapps, and then wait for them while my phone lies still in my pocket. Her decision. It was her decision. It’s why she isn’t answering my text. She knows it. But I know something, too. I know I wanted it to be her decision for the same reason she’s always made everything mine. You’d think understanding your mother for the first time ever might actually feel good, but it doesn’t. It sucks. I snatch out a Roxy and take it. Fuck being in pain.

  The nice Starbucks server secures the Frapps into a to-go holder so I can carry them easily with one hand. Dr. Sowah loves Mocha Frapps. I’m not bringing him one because I need him to write me another prescription, I’m bringing him one and I need him to write me another prescription. Either way, I always bring him one because I like him, and he likes his Frapp.

  As I’m heading toward the bank of elevators, my phone begins to vibrate.

  I fumble between my forearm crutch and my pocket in my hurry to answer it, to speak to her, to tell her I’m sorry.

  “Eve?”

  Shit, it’s Thomas Aquinas.

  I hang up.

  And then press for the elevator, hard, like twenty times, as if its arrival can somehow take me away from what just happened. Before it comes, my phone starts vibrating again. I don’t even look. I know it’s him. Of course it’s him. Only Thomas Aquinas would call again. I can’t stand it. Maybe it’s her. I look. It’s him.

  My hand moves to my lips as I think about his lips.

  Where is the damn elevator?

  My phone keeps vibrating.

  Oh, my fucking god, I hate Thomas Aquinas. Why didn’t he text? I could be trying to rest right now. I could be asleep. I’ve just had goddamn surgery.

  My phone stops. Finally. And I breathe a sigh of relief as the elevator opens in front of Dr. Sowah’s reception desk.

  Leslie, his receptionist, looks up and hoots, “Eve!”

  “Hey, Leslie.” I’d fall into her arms, if only I were able to.

  Coming out from behind the desk, Leslie looks my body up and down, and reports, “You look great straight, girl! You’re superlate, by the way.” She then gives me an air hug, takes the holder with the Frapps, and leads me straight through the waiting room and down the hall, grabbing my chart off the desk as she walks past it.

  We bump into Vardan, one of Dr. Sowah’s nurses, halfway down the hall.

  “Look at this one,” he muses, giving me two air-kisses, one on each cheek. They’re obviously used to spinal surgery patients—we live in fear of contact. “I’ll take her,” he says to Leslie. They exchange the Frapp holder and chart, and Vardan leads me into Radiology. “Put this on, honey,” he says, throwing a gown onto the large steel-framed X-ray bed. “Will you need help?”

  “I got it,” I tell him.

  “Give me your coat.”

  I gladly hand it over to him, relieved to be rid of my phone still in its pocket. He flips my coat over his arm and motions with the Frapps. “These will be waiting in the exam room,” he says, and leaves.

  I kick my sweats under the chair next to my shoes and hang my hoodie on the back of the door. I hate taking off my body sock. So I don’t. They can X-ray through it.

  With my brace still on, I put on the gown and lean against the X-ray bed, not fully committing to sitting down. The stillness and quiet remind me how exhausted I am, and I wish myself back in my bed, between my four green walls, surrounded by the familiar spray of collages.

  He was calling about the kiss. That goddamn kiss. Anyway, I need to focus on why I’m here. The Roxy. What doctor would say no? He knows I need it.

  Sighing, I commit to sitting by sliding back onto the table—it’s more uncomfortable, not less. I want this to be over and I want more Roxy.

  Someone knocks, and I answer, “Come in,” like it’s my home.

  A tech swooshes into the room. She’s got frizzy blond hair and large-framed black glasses. I never know the techs. She’s nice but all business. She helps me out of my brace, and for the next twenty minutes, I follow her instructions to slide up, or down, or over. Clutch sandbags in front of my groin. Lift my arms over my head. Don’t breathe. Breathe. Turn more to the right. Now, the left. And hold back an embarrassed laugh when she tries to mold a part of me to fit better in her machine. She is physically squishing me—a human, a person—like my body is a thing.

  How many twisted young women has she seen today? Skinny. Tall. Ponytailed, braided, bobbed, buzzed, or ’froed females holding their breath while the machine’s throaty buzz captures the glowing white of our bones. I’ve spent way too much time in front of an X-ray camera. Forget a crooked spine, I should be growing a third eye by now with all this exposure.

  Vardan knocks. It’s time. My heart rate picks up.

  The tech disappears while Vardan helps me back into my sweatpants and brace—like Mary Fay, the man’s an expert. We head down the hall to the exam room together.

  I sip my Frapp, listening to Vardan chatter away while he takes my vitals. When it’s time to step up onto the giant scale, his chitchat stops, and he frowns at the very low red number glaring at us from atop the machine. “Hm” is all he says. His frown deepens.

  “Measure me,” I say, changing the subject.

  “Okay, okay, let’s get to the fun part,” he teases. When he takes the measurement, he yelps with joy. “You are five foot eight inches. That’s over a two-inch post-surgery gain!”

  I wince at his loud voice.

  “In pain, sweetie?” he asks. I don’t deny it. “Let’s get that doctor in here to see you so you can jet.” He sticks my chart in the chart box on the exam room’s door and is gone. I wish he had closed the door. I need a moment to myself, to compose myself, to—

  “Well, well, well,” Dr. Sowah says, walking in. “If it isn’t Eve Abbott. The smoker.”

  “Ha ha,” I say, handing him his Frapp. My mouth twitching just a bit.

  “So,” he says, slurping his coffee, “let’s talk about quitting, shall we?”

  “Funny.”

  He gives me an affectionate tap on the top of my head with my chart and then opens it.

  “Feeling okay?” he asks, reading the notes.

  “Tired,” I tell him.

  “You should be getting some of your stamina back. But your weight is down. Are you eating?”

  “Yes,” I lie.

  “And the pain?”

  I shrug. Not trusting myself to do or say anything else.

  There’s a knock at the door. Dr. Sowah grunts, and it opens to Vardan carrying my films. Dr. Sowah takes them and shuts the door, and then sticks them up one at a time onto the light board with a thunk, thunk, thunk.

  Then he switches on the light and…

  Holy shit.

  I instinctively scooch away from the screen, hugging my brace. Of course I knew about the bars running up alongside my spine, and the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight—eight!—giant screws attaching the bars to my spine. And about the plate to which the whole thing was attached, screwed in down by my hips.

  I knew.

  But seeing? Seeing is something else.

  “Look at me,” I whisper. Not really believing what I’m seeing.

  “I do good work, right?” He smiles.

  “You sure do a lot of it,” I sa
y, responding to all the instrumentation crammed into me. “There’s basically a bunch of scaffolding inside me.”

  Dr. Sowah chuckles. Then he points to different areas, highlighting the process of my fusion and where I am with it. I nod and make some sounds of agreement while I drink my Frapp, yet I can’t take my eyes off the tilting mess now holding me upright. Weirdly, it looks haphazard. Not the neat job I was expecting.

  “The good news is, you’re fusing.” He flips off the light. “Now let’s see those incisions.”

  I unbrace and lie down. Dr. Sowah takes one last long suck from the Frapp before he puts it on the counter and peels back my body sock.

  “Incisions look good for seven weeks post-op,” he says. He gets up and rummages in a nearby cabinet. “I’ll get these out.”

  “Now?” I ask.

  “It’ll be faster than you think, Eve. And it’s time.”

  He gloves up and brings over a scissors-looking instrument and a giant sterile pad. “It’s not painful,” he adds.

  I stare at him.

  He chuckles. “At least, that’s what I’ve been told.”

  I lie back and fix my eyes on the lights in the ceiling. He gets to work, beginning on the lower right side of my stomach. I can feel pinching, but that’s about all. He’s right. It doesn’t hurt, although I don’t tell him. I’m usually pretty talkative with Sowah. Not today.

  “So, your mom get off okay? She e-mailed me that she was traveling.”

  She let him know she was going away?

  “Yeah,” I say, a tinge of love mixed with guilt fizzing in my stomach.

  “You should be showering now.”

  “I took one yesterday. Can’t you tell?”

  He sniffs in big. “Like a rose.”

  I smile.

  “When are you starting back to school? I can’t quite remember the date we set. This week or next?”

  My smile fades instantly. It was this week, but I don’t feel the need to tell him about my bargain with Mary Fay. “Monday,” I say, trying pretty unsuccessfully to keep my tone from sounding utterly depressed.