twenty-eight
When you’re dying, people say you see a tunnel and a column of blinding light. Sometimes you can hear the voices of people around you, even though they don’t know that you can. I remember a feeling of warmth and love, a kind I never experienced before. I gave myself over to a powerful entity, some great spiritual force in the universe as I floated without a body anymore, thinking about all of my life and my childhood. I saw my parents and grandparents and Aunt Ellie. I didn’t have to talk to any of them, I couldn’t, but it didn’t matter because they were there with me in that wide expanse of white, enchanted space in a new sphere of existence somewhere outside the earth.
But then I approached an ending, or a border. I sensed an indistinct line in the sand between the worlds of life and death and I fought back hard, drawn by a strong lifeline. I crossed over to that other, more vivid, pulsating reality that I could see so clearly in my mind’s eye, like a traveler crossing from one continent far away to another that was home. And then I floated, and slept, a deep calming sleep of renewal, rebirth, and completion.
The voices are behind me somewhere. I can’t see anyone. There’s a blinding light only this one is cold and white making everything ghostly and unnatural, hurting my eyes.
Where am I?
White sheets. A blanket. I’m in bed, only beeping sounds are everywhere.
A tape around my arm holds a needle attached to a tube. I hate needles; why is it there? Tiny droplets of blood, one after the other, trickle through the tube that goes inside me.
Why?
What happened?
What’s wrong with me?
Why am I here?
I shift and a spasm of pain courses through my body. I can’t move my left leg. It’s dead, useless. Is it still attached? Am I paralyzed? I manage to move my arm. I push down the sheet. The leg is totally bandaged; only the dressing is spotted with blotches of red and yellow. That’s not right.
It’s hard to focus, to think straight.
Am I drugged?
I can’t remember anything. What happened to my mind? Who’s talking behind me? I can’t see anyone.
I force my eyes to open. The light burns. I make out the outline of someone in white. A nurse? She comes toward me and pours something from a small envelope, like a sugar pack, into a bag of watery liquid that’s hanging on the pole with the blood.
“What is that?”
“A sedative…to help you sleep.”
“Sleep?” It comes out muffled like there’s cotton in my mouth—or my head. Have they fogged up my brain? “I don’t want to sleep. I want to get up. I want to go home.”
She shakes her head. “You need to rest, Sirena.”
“Why, what happened?”
She doesn’t hear me or pretends not to.
“What happened?” I repeat. Is she deaf? Why doesn’t she answer?
She studies the monitor that’s bleeping and writes something on paper on a clipboard. I want to ask her something else, but what? I can’t focus. I can’t think. Then I look up. Aunt Ellie comes toward me. She doesn’t look like the Aunt Ellie I remember. Her face is gray and sad and pinched. She’s older now. She looks scared. For the first time I see lines between her eyes. She reaches out for my hand and squeezes it. She pretends to smile, but it’s hard for her. She’s like that, she’s honest. I feel pity for her, but I’m not sure why. A doctor walks in and studies a chart. His face is pale, lined, and emotionless. A nurse stands next to him with the same lifeless expression.
“What happened to me?” I ask everyone and no one.
“You were in the water and got swept out,” Aunt Ellie says.
“How…how did I get here?”
“Pilot,” she says.
It scares me to look at them. I break into a sweat, only I can’t tell whether it’s fear or fever. All I can focus on is the fire inside my leg. It’s hot and throbbing. Then I hear voices from outside, in the corridor.
My eyes start to close, but I fight sleep. I try to make out the voices, I have to; I have to know what they’re saying because all I know is it’s about me. They’re whispering about me, like ghosts from someplace else. Where was that? I try to remember. I hear sounds and words outside, behind me, but nothing is clear.
“Sirena,” I hear. A voice cracks. There’s crying. Something terrible has happened, my mind tells me. They’re hiding it from me. They don’t want me to know. Goose bumps spread up and down my arms. I’m cold, then hot. I can’t tell which. Something terrible, something terrible has happened, only what?
Terror spread through me, only I don’t know why. It’s what’s not being said and how they’re treating me. I’m not a sixteen-year-old girl anymore; I’m a number, a sad case that everyone is looking at with pity or not at all, averting their eyes because they don’t want to show emotion. They don’t want me to know what’s happening.
Two people are arguing. One voice is higher, a woman’s. I make out the words, “wait,” then “heal.” Then a man’s voice, deeper and calmer, but insistent. There’s only one word I can make out as my brain starts to succumb to the drugs and I sink back into nothingness, overpowered.
One word that plunges me into terror, like a knife through my heart.
Amputation.
I wake up in semidarkness in a total sweat. Every inch of me is dripping, my gown soaked through. I shove off the blankets and then I’m shivering as if my body is trying helplessly to fix me, but doesn’t know anymore what to do. It shifts gears from high to low and back again futilely as I break down. Sweat pours off me. My brain pounds. I have a fever, I know—like when my throat was red and I had the virus, only twenty times worse now.
I close my eyes and have fantasies of some horrible sci-fi movie with a nurse holding a thermometer that says one hundred and ten. I put my hand against my forehead the way my mother used to when I told her I didn’t feel well. It’s burning, it’s wet. My head pounds as if the brain tissues are on fire. I can’t move. I’m paralyzed with pain. There’s a curtain around my bed and machines with blinking monitors at my feet. Electronic bleeps and blips everywhere. What do they mean? Is someone watching what they show? Does anyone care? I’m not a person anymore, I’m a lab rat hooked up to give read outs that spell life or death.
WHAT’S GOING ON? I want to scream, as a deep, throbbing pain shoots through my leg.
In my delirium, some of what happened begins to come back to me…
The water, the pulling, fighting helplessly against the riptides. Something sliced away at me, a killing flood of pain. Did I die and come back? I start to cry and I can’t stop. I want my mommy, my daddy, I don’t have anyone here. Where are they? Where is everybody? Is there anyone in the entire world who cares about me? Why did they leave me all alone here—to die?
“Aunt Ellie,” I call out for no reason.
No answer.
“Aunt Ellie,” I call again to hear the sound of my own voice, just to let myself know I’m alive and I can still speak.
Still no one answers.
I have to get out of here. I have to go home. I want everything to stop because this is all wrong. I don’t belong here, this isn’t me. But my parents…I remember then. They’re so far away, back in Texas. Do they even know I’m here? All they know is that they’re getting divorced; they’re separating and splitting up the family. And now they’ll have one less thing to worry about because I’ll never make it home again to see them, if they care at all.
I lie back on the pillow and try to clear my mind, to focus on what happened, to get it straight in my head. Pilot took me out of the water, Aunt Ellie said that, but how, when? I didn’t see him, he walked the other way. He walked away from me.
How could he have known? How did he find me?
I look up and a face appears out of darkness, like a ghost, like one of the ghosts from Aunt Ellie’s house. Only it’s not.
Pilot.
“Help me,” I beg. He looks at me pityingly and doesn’t answer. “Please, p
lease.”
He stands there silently. Is he real? He stares out at all the tubes and monitors around me, the quivering lines and bleeps that send out a electronic song of life or death. Blood drips slowly into my arm.
He walks toward the bed and I look at his face. This isn’t the Pilot I know anymore. I see something in his eyes that I’ve never seen before.
“What? What is it?”
“I should have known,” he says. “I should have been there to stop you.”
I look back at him bewildered. “How could you have known?”
He doesn’t answer. He sits in the chair next to me and leans toward me, studying my face. My eyelids flutter. It’s such an effort to stay awake, but I fight it. If I close my eyes I may never open them again. I reach my hand toward him.
“Stay.”
It’s dark when I wake up. I feel along the side of the bed for the button to push. Where is it? Why isn’t it here? Don’t they want to help me? I need a nurse. Someone has to give me something to take away the pain. I search for it, crazed, and then the curtains part suddenly. The nurse doesn’t look at me, she doesn’t smile.
She’s in ghostly white like a vision. Like…the angel of death.
“My leg…It hurts so much, I can’t stand it.”
“It’s the infection,” she says. She shakes her head. “There was no controlling it, it spread so quickly. But we’ll put you to sleep, you won’t feel anything. Nothing at all.”
“Put me to sleep? What are you talking about? I don’t want to go to sleep. I want to go home.”
“Lie still,” she says. “It will be over quickly—you won’t feel anything. You’ll heal. You’ll be fine.” She writes something in the chart and turns to go. She turns back to me for an instant. “I’ll be back with the gurney.”
Sweat pours down my forehead now and my heart slams insides my chest as though it’s rearing up and attacking me like my own body is the enemy. My temperature must be a hundred and six. All I know is I have to get out of this place, whatever it takes, no matter how much I hurt. I have to get away from this woman, this monster—otherwise they’ll cut me apart and kill me.
I rip the monitors off my chest and yank the tape from my arm and tug the needle out. Blood starts to spurt out of the opening, dripping onto the floor of the room like there’s a purple geyser spurting from inside me. I lean up in bed and an excruciating wave of pain spreads over my entire body.
“I’M DYING,” I scream out. “HELP ME, OH MY GOD, SOMEONE HELP ME.” But if a God is in this room, he’s silent, not showing his face. “HELP ME,” I shriek again.
The curtains are pulled open sharply and the nurse is back with two others now.
“Oh God,” one of them says, looking at me. My hospital gown is soaked with blood. It looks like I was shot. I remember Cody’s father and the way he looked.
“She’s got to be sedated,” someone hisses. I hear the word “psychotic.” They lift me up and put me on a steel gurney, tying my hands to the railings so I can’t move.
“WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?” I scream.
“It’s okay,” someone says.
I’m wheeled into the corridor, the blood still dripping from my arm. “NO,” I yell out, “PLEASE.”
We get to a pair of double doors with small glass windows and a sign over them:
Operating Room. No Outside Visitors Permitted.
The doors spring open and the gurney is pushed through. The doors close behind us. There’s an enormous light in the room over a table. Everything’s white like a blinding nightmare. On a table next to me there’s a tray covered with a starched blue cloth. On top of it are dozens of pointed instruments, and razor sharp scalpels. What could they possibly do with so many knives?
“I didn’t give my permission,” I scream. They can’t operate on you without your permission, I know that. “I DIDN’T SAY IT WAS OKAY,” I scream at these stupid, horrible, deaf people who hear me but are intentionally ignoring me.
But before anyone can answer, there’s a muffled B-O-O-M.
The lights are out everywhere.
From blinding operating room light, we’re in total darkness.
“Blackout!” a voice from outside somewhere yells out.
“Why the hell didn’t the backup generator kick in?” someone else screams.
“Get up to the control room,” a voice commands. “This is an emergency.” From somewhere behind me the gurney suddenly gets bumped and then pushed. I’m being rolled somewhere, but I don’t know where. I hear the double doors of the OR flip open.
“Where are you taking me?” I call out.
But no one answsers.
“Where are you taking me?” I scream as loud as I can.
There’s still no answer and I close my eyes, hoping my pounding heart won’t burst through my chest as I get ready for my descent into hell.
twenty-nine
The rubber wheels beneath me continue to move quickly and silently down the corridor, bumping up and down as if we’re going over thresholds on our way into rooms then out of them, going faster and faster, as if there’s a definite destination where I’ll end up.
Who’s pushing me?
It’s still pitch black out. As I pass doorways, slivers of moonlight shine through the windows. Is everyone sleeping? Am I the only patient aware of what’s going on? In the distance I hear the scurrying of feet. Someone calls out something about a generator, the control room, but it’s like background sound and I can’t make it out. If my head didn’t hurt so much I would turn back and look behind me, but I’m burning up and ready to pass out.
My leg is throbbing, only I don’t think of that now. I’m out of there, away from the bright lights, the blue tray with the steel instruments, the sharp knives, the hardware meant to slice people open and take out their insides and cut off their legs. Knives that can cut into your soul. And ruin your life.
Forever.
Something has changed, but what. Am I sleeping? Dreaming? Or dead? It feels like the atmospheric pressure is different and we’re cruising over the clouds. I’m a balloon being filled with helium so I can rise and float over the universe. It’s not as scary now. Nothing bad can happen to me. Has someone given me anesthesia? Am I going to sleep? What is it? What has changed?
Antonio? The figa?
Immediately I reach inside my hospital gown and buried inside it, around my neck, is the chain. I follow it until I reach the charm. Still there. They haven’t taken it from me. They probably missed it.
I close my hand around it, and then I realize that my arms are free. When did that happen?
It feels like Antonio’s near me. I knew he would keep me safe. It was him, or at least his power. He gave it to me, he helped me. Somehow he knew. Nothing bad can happen to me when I’m wearing it, when Antonio’s watching out.
Do you hear my thoughts? Do you know what’s happening? A silent voice inside my head asks him.
I feel myself smiling just before I slip back into unconsciousness.
I stare out a window.
Night.
The moon. The hospital room, I’m back there again. My heart starts to quicken. Did I have the surgery? Machines are attached to me again and I jerk my head up. Oh God please, please, please, I don’t want to spend my life in a wheelchair. I don’t want to have one leg and have people pity me. I feel beneath the sheet and then I stare down and see my toes. All of them. I lie back again and exhale. Was it all a nightmare?
The soft blips of the machines are everywhere. Does that must there’s power again? Then I remember the blackout. People yelling out orders.
“Why didn’t the generator kick in?” I heard someone say. “What if we were in the middle of the operation?”
I would have been dead.
I would have bled to death.
I rest my head back on the pillow. From behind me in the darkness something stirs.
“Who’s there?”
Nothing.
Seconds go by and no one
answers. I think of Aunt Ellie’s house, the ghosts. It couldn’t be, please.
“Who’s there,” I say, louder. “Please.” My voice cracks. Not the ghosts. I can’t stand the idea of their moans, the damp fingers that reach out to touch me. I startle when a figure steps from the dark. A hand touches my shoulder.
“Me,” he whispers. “Pilot.”
He steps around to the side of the bed and looks down at me. He has a light beard and shadows under his eyes. The air around me seems filled with his sweet perfume.
“I’m glad you’re here.” I reach my arm out and he takes my hand in his. It’s solid as the earth. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He smiles. “You already said that.”
It must be the medicine. Or him. I can’t think straight. He eclipses my sanity.
There’s a chair next to the bed and I lift my chin toward it. “Sit, please.” I study the way his dark, blue T-shirt outlines his lean, hard chest. He sinks down and leans back, closing his eyes, his hand tightly wrapped around mine. I watch his face. Is he asleep? As if in answer he opens his eyes. He looks at me and then turns and studies all the machines. Does he understand them? Can he read the patterns? He shakes his head slightly in disbelief.
“The day before yesterday you were sitting on the beach sketching…” he says, almost to himself, in a hoarse whisper.
“Do you know what happened to me?”
He looks at me and looks away.
“What?”
“You nearly drowned.”
“Tell me what happened. Please. My mind’s all muddled. I can’t remember anything clearly.”
He bites the side of his lip momentarily, but doesn’t say anything.
“You saved me. It was you, right?”
He doesn’t say no.
“I know it was. How did you find me? How did you know?” All I can remember is being angry at him. I wanted to swim and get cool. I’m overwhelmed with guilt for all the horrible, awful things I thought about him. All the blame. If he knew, he wouldn’t look at me.
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