“Incredible,” she breathes.
Her breath rushes hot through the Hole and trickles up my back, rustling the paper gathered there. I take a step back, bumping the examination table. Morse steps with me, oblivious, and gestures for the research team to look.
“Look at the collapse of the intercostal space between ribs nine and ten,” she says. She lays her hand flat on my midriff as the group crowds in, her spread fingers pulling at the lip of the Hole. I force myself to breathe steadily, avoiding looking at anyone in the face. She’s a professional, I tell myself. She’s just trying to help. She’s going to make me better. But I flinch as she casually places a hand on my lower breast, pushing it out of the way as she examines my torso. I turn my head and see Howie staring.
There’s a sharp pinch inside the Hole, and I slap Dr. Morse’s latexed wrist away.
“Don’t,” I snap. My stomach skitters beneath the skin, all my nerves jangling.
Dr. Morse looks up at me, gaze slowly focusing, as though she’d forgotten I was there. She flexes her wrist experimentally.
“I’m just trying to get a measurement,” she says.
“No one touches me there,” I say.
“Surely your physician touches you—”
“I’ve known Taka since I was ten.”
Dr. Morse turns to Dr. Takahashi.
“Hiro,” she says. “Please deal with your patient.”
Taka rises and regards the two of us for a long moment. Then he crosses to Dr. Morse, speaking quietly in her ear. She goes still, listening, her gloved fingers loosening on my hips. At last, her body folds in a sigh. Taka stands.
“You have full access to her records and information,” he reminds her.
Amanda, my favorite nurse and god among women, comes to hover nearby.
“We’ll be happy to get you anything you need,” she tells Dr. Morse. Her voice is all sweet tea, but her smile is a hard wedge of lemon. Dr. Morse looks up at her and exhales long through her nose.
“Fine,” she says at last. But when she takes her hands away from my hip, the imprints of her fingers remain: stark red ellipses promising future.
As the team of doctors pokes and prods at me, I peek over at the other table, where Dr. Takahashi and another small group of the researchers are studying Howie. He looks ganglier than ever beneath his poof of crumpled paper, but his awkwardness has melted away. He has none of my discomfort with intense medical scrutiny—he seems as relaxed in Dr. Takahashi’s gloved hands as an infant in a bath.
Despite his qualms about Dr. Morse, my doctor is clearly as intrigued by Howie’s body as Howie’s doctor is by mine. He moves carefully, asking permission, but a fascination glints behind his glasses. “Does this hurt?” he asks. “How does it feel?”
Howie: “No, nothing, like a touch, like cold, like hot.” The Lump sticks stiffly out from his side, downed with the same fine blond hair that shimmers on his stomach. Takahashi runs a finger along its tip, and Howie laughs, a bright, happy sound that shatters the tense concentration of the group shining a blue light through my Hole. “It tickles,” he sheepishly tells the room. A blush creeps up to his ears.
Dr. Morse, barred from prodding my insides, contents herself with drawing gallons of my blood for testing. She readies the butterfly stick herself, waving Amanda away. “Not that I doubt this clinic’s methods,” she says, in a tone that implies otherwise. “We just prefer a clean data set.”
Behind her back, Amanda shoots Taka a look. I don’t know if I’m supposed to see it, but I laugh aloud. The needle jumps in my arm. “Ow,” I say.
“This will be easier if you keep still,” Dr. Morse raps out.
“I’m sorry,” I say, straight-faced. “I didn’t mean to disrupt your method.”
She sighs, patient and long-suffering. I sneak a peek at Taka. From behind his glasses, he winks.
The clock reads almost noon when my stomach rumbles audibly, and the researchers share a low ripple of laughter. Dr. Morse stands, looking exhausted but happy. A glow suffuses her face, and despite her best efforts, one tendril of hair has escaped her silver clip, falling down into her face.
“All right,” she says. “Almost done.”
Someone groans, and everybody laughs again. The atmosphere has grown convivial in the last hours. The serious business of our bodies has been sampled and charted and captured in photos and scans. The mystery seems more manageable now that it’s down on paper.
Dr. Takahashi talks us through the next few weeks: Their teams have prepped samples of modified genetic material to treat us with. Dr. Morse would like to get us started on them as early as next week.
“We’re looking at a promising new method from Switzerland that performs gene transfer on a sample of patient cells under controlled conditions in a lab setting and returns the modified cells to the patient,” he tells us. “We’ll be doing so through a series of localized injections over the next several months.” He pauses. “Do you have questions?” We do not. Taka talks. Everyone nods and nods and nods. Even I feel a strange surge of optimism. The air is like summer camp, and our bodies are sites of camp-wide color war battles: Lump vs. Hole; the team captains smeared in war paint and calamine lotion. Even when Taka explains the drawbacks, the side effects, it is hard to shake the feeling that at the end of the day, our parents will come to pick us up, and there will be ice cream sandwiches for all.
“This is a highly experimental procedure,” Taka warns us. “The altered genetic material could be rejected by your bodies out of hand. That’s a best-case scenario. Worst case, cells start proliferating where they aren’t supposed to. Or the inverse: if your immune response targets cells in the body other than the desired ones, it could result in any number of side effects.”
“Like . . . my ears could close up? Or . . . ?”
“Cancer,” Taka says flatly. “Cancer or extreme immunodeficiency. Things we can’t begin to predict.”
People are gathering things, ready to go. I close my eyes, letting the words wash over me. I know I should be more scared. But I feel like I’m on board a boat that’s already left the harbor. A boat I boarded because, more than anything, I want to take back control of my life. Even if it means great risk.
“I think we’ve done enough for the day,” Dr. Morse announces. “Morgan, Howie, thank you. We’ll meet again next Saturday, after the results come back from the lab. You can get changed.”
I expect people to ask me questions, but they turn to one another, chatting, stretching, asking about spouses and children. Howie and I stand alone, the air around us empty of hands and eyes for the first time in hours.
“Hey, we survived,” Howie says to me. I blink, clearing my head of the strange dream of the last few hours, and am surprised to find myself smiling. The Lump is still weird and revolting, and Howie’s doctor is a maniac, but his eyes are kind. Maybe he’s right. Maybe this isn’t so bad.
We follow Amanda down the hall to the dressing rooms where our empty clothes sit huddled in cool, dark cubicles, waiting for us to return and restore them to life. I’m tugging at my bra when there’s a knock on the door. It swings open before I can answer. “Someone’s in here,” I blurt as Dr. Morse slips into the small room. She leans against the door, arms crossed, and I hastily tug my shirt over my head. “I’m getting dressed,” I say.
She waves a hand dismissively. “I’m a doctor,” she says. “I’ve seen it all.” Like her modesty is the thing I’m worried about. She fixes me with an intense gaze as I awkwardly pull on my jeans.
“I thought we might have a little chat,” she says. “You know we’re going to have to do an internal physical examination eventually. I know it’s uncomfortable,” she continues, as I extend my hand for the sneaker she’s standing in front of, “but it’s for the best.”
When she does nothing, I reach past her and pick up my shoe. I try not to brush against h
er body. Every touch feels like something she’s stealing from me.
“Why?” I ask.
“We have to know exactly what we’re working with,” she says.
“Taka already knows,” I say. I step into my other sneaker, mashing the heel. “You have all of his files.”
Dr. Morse blinks several times, a thin and rapid flutter of lashes, as if she is trying to wipe the lack of cooperation from my face.
“You know this will be easier if we trust each other,” she says.
Her voice is cool and condescending, a tone I’ve heard hundreds of times before from teachers and adults. Be reasonable. This hurts me more than it hurts you. A tone that isn’t used to being questioned. It probably works great on sweet kids like Howie. But the fire burning in my core? That’s a lifetime of being my mother’s daughter.
“It’d be easier for me to trust you if you quit treating me like a child,” I say.
“It’d be easier for me to treat you that way if you quit acting like one,” she says tightly.
I reach down and free the heel of my sneaker. “Look. You prepped a minor for a major medical decision by ambushing her with a camera crew. So as far as solid adulting goes, you don’t have much of a leg to stand on here.”
Her jaw tightens. But I’m not done. I’ve had a lot of time to think over the past week while I’ve been sitting home from school and trying to resist the urge to google myself. I say, “Not to mention you’ve convinced the press I’m a flaky party girl—the same press that you fed that tacky soulmate story to—so now everyone’s obsessed with me and no matter what I say or do about this crazy experiment, no one will take me seriously.”
She won’t look at me. That last part had been an educated guess, but it seems like it landed close to home.
“I’m not a child,” I say. “Seriously. You didn’t even try to get to know me. You just assumed I was a complacent, spoiled brat and tried to shame me into working with you right out of the gate. I don’t hate the idea of getting cured. I don’t even know if I hate you. But there’s just something about being strong-armed by someone who seems to have a weirdly personal interest in seeing my insides that makes me go a little Genghis Khan.”
I pick up my bag. “I’m done being your media monkey. Call off the circus. No more Puzzle Pieces. If we do this, we do it quietly.”
“The more attention we get, the better the fundin—”
“I’d bet cash money that if my mom’s lawyers looked into how the press got wind of my medical history, your funding would suddenly find itself at risk.” I fold my arms. “Care to take that bet?”
The air thrums between us, hot. Dr. Morse takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, rubbing the eyelids with her thumbs. It is a long count of five.
“I’m trying to help you,” she says.
“Really?” I say. “Because it seems to me like you’re trying to help you.”
I step toward her and she moves aside, letting me pass. Her hand closes over my wrist as I turn the doorknob.
“Morgan, even if I wanted to, it’s too late. Your story is out there in the world now.” She gives me a pained smile. “You may as well smile for the cameras.”
I yank my arm from her grip and leave her alone in the tiny room.
Howie is waiting in the lobby downstairs, a gangly silhouette against the bright glow of the frosted windows. Outside, the black shapes of bodies loom, writhing like sharks. Anxiety climbs the back of my throat.
“I’ll admit,” Howie says, “that wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be.”
His words hang awkwardly in the air, fading into silence as I look at him. He’s back in his baggy clothes, the pale yellow shirt and flop of his hair reminding me of a yellow Labrador puppy. Everything about him seems harmless.
But I can’t stop feeling the clasp of Dr. Morse’s cold fingers around my wrist.
“How’d it go?” he asks.
“Howie,” I begin tentatively, “I saw your quote in the paper. This whole ‘Puzzle Piece’ thing . . .”
He drops his head, a blush climbing to his ears. “Oh God, I’m sorry. It’s so embarrassing, isn’t it?”
“So you don’t really think that?” I ask, relieved. “I mean, that I was put on earth to meet you or whatever?”
He hesitates.
“Oh my God, you do?” I ask, recoiling.
Which is when I trip backward over the doormat.
Which triggers the sliding doors.
Which is when all the mics swing down and the shiny eyes of the cameras blink open, just in time to capture in high definition the look of disgust on my face.
23
The press descends, thick as black flies.
“Morgan, over here!”
“What did your doctors say about the cure?”
“Puzzle pieces, closer together and smile!”
Howie stands frozen, lone and slump-shouldered in the surging sea of shouts. The cameras eat it all up: the Lump, the Hole. They eat up the clear line of light between our separate bodies.
“Can we talk about this later?” Howie asks in a low voice.
My voice grows louder. “Why wait? This is what you and your doctor want, right, for me to talk to the press? Pump up the media circus, let them know the freaks are in town? The broken puzzle pieces? The Geek Love world tour?”
Howie ducks his head, as though that will lower the volume of my voice. “I don’t like the press, either,” he says softly.
“Tell it to your boss.”
“She’s not . . .” he says, then stops, frustrated.
“She’s not what?” I ask. “No, wait. Say it loud enough for the mics. Unlike me, they’re super excited to buy your star-crossed lover bullshit.”
Howie’s face crumples inward. I know that look. I felt that way when I wore a high-necked dress to Stacia Torres’s pool party in fifth grade and she started telling everyone I was a vampire. And when I was always picked last for gym. And when everyone else at every school paired off happily, two by normal two, and I was left in the cold with my paints, and with a faraway and slowly disappearing best friend, and a Hole sitting boring and empty and useless in my stomach as an ashtray in an airplane lavatory.
I’m sorry sits on the tip of my tongue, an egg waiting to hatch. But with the cameras closing in like that, how can you say anything real?
And they’re cameras that he helped bring here.
So really, this is his fault after all.
I feel confused and tired and angry, and the cameras are eating it all up, every piece, and soon there will be nothing of me left.
“I don’t want any of this,” I say to him, at last. “I’m just here to get cured.”
Then I ford the crowd, head down, muscles clenching and knotting secretly beneath my shirt, a sailor’s delight: a tie that would never loosen at sea. Half the cameras follow me, watch me fumble for my car keys with half-camera hearts. But the real story is behind us, standing small and lumpy and stoop-shouldered on the sidewalk: Hole Girl Plays with Matches. Howie Garrison Takes His Lumps.
I paint in a frenzy for the rest of the day, trying to chase all thoughts of Howie from my mind, but everything comes out an angry scrawl: yellow shot through with red, shot through furiously with black. I’m furious with Howie for being so stupidly vulnerable, and myself for being the One True Asshole who crushed his dreams, and with Dr. Morse for planting those barbed-wire dreams in the first place.
The crowd of reporters outside our apartment building waxes and wanes, finally thinning when night falls. I turn on the TV to ward off the dark outside and am sketching in charcoal when the story airs on the local news.
I have been half-expecting it, but my heart still drops when I see my own face on the television, screwed up and silently shouting. I set down my sketch and turn up the volume just in time to hear my voice shout, fal
se and too tinny:
“The freaks are in town!”
The image of my twisted face freezes over a graphic of two puzzle pieces breaking apart and bursting into flames. The caption reads: Match Made in Hell.
“So-called Hole Girl Morgan Stone shocked fans today by turning on the boy doctors agree may be the cure for her curious ailment,” a blond anchorwoman calmly announces before the dripping flames.
I switch networks. And find myself again. And again. “The freaks!” I shout on ABC, NBC, WRAL. “The freaks are in town!”
“The young ‘puzzle pair’ at the center of a controversial genetics study are turning out not to be such a matched pair after all,” states a parsnip-nosed anchorman.
“I’m just here to be cured,” I announce on-screen. Cut to Howie’s delicate face, collapsing like wet paper in the long-gone sunlight.
“That’s not fair,” I say, sitting up on the couch. “That’s not how it happened.” But the cameras stay with Howie’s broken eyes as I flip the channels, jumping to a powdered Asian newscaster, then black, then red-headed, weighing in on my life in immaculate Midwestern accents. They seem relaxed, even faintly amused. This is a fluff piece, a break from North Korea and discretionary budget cuts. They are almost smiling as they smear my life across the nation.
“Morgan Stone and Howie Garrison captured the nation’s imaginations—and hearts—earlier this week,” a voice-over reports. “But now, America’s breaking up—with the Hole Girl.”
“She’s just really hateful,” an old Southern woman says, squinting into the camera.
“I don’t know if they had, like, a fight or something,” a smoky-eyed girl chirps. “He looked pretty messed up. I mean, they’re supposed to be, like, this perfect match, right? But that don’t look really perfect.”
“It seems the biggest Hole here today—is in this young man’s heart,” the coiffed anchor concludes, cutting back to a still of Howie’s frozen eyes. “I’m Maya Lang with—”
Hole in the Middle Page 13