by Rena Rocford
Sara walked into the bathroom.
My eyes went wide at the sight of her, but she ducked her head before I could figure out if she knew anything more. Why had I used the bathroom? Anyone could have been on the other side of the door.
But she didn’t say anything. Sara would definitely make a fuss about something like that. I fled, looking for Rochan.
lipping in just before the bell, I made my grand entrance into senior art. Mr. Connor scowled at me, but Rochan looked up from his corner and smiled. He had out his camera equipment, and he was messing with one of his lenses.
A smile. Good. Sara the destroyer hadn’t gotten to him yet. Circling the classroom, I went to my locker as quietly as possible. Mr. Connor only took roll in this part of the school year, no daily assignments. We had our projects, and if we got into too much trouble, he’d assign something else. We were all seniors here. We knew not to cause trouble.
“Hey,” I said to Rochan.
“Hey, Cyra.” He went back to cleaning his lenses or whatever it was that they did with the cameras when they got them all opened up.
I pulled my cast and my wax block out. I’d already roughed out the actual shape of a hand with a clever device designed to turn things from right handed to left handed: a string and a protractor.
At least it looked like a hand. I pulled out my carving tools and tried not to think about how gruesome it must look to someone who didn’t know any better. Wax was soft enough to work with dull dentist tools, and they had some of the best curves. Unfortunately, carving always looked like the mad scientists workshop with all the wire and twisted tools. Add to it the hand emerging from the block of wax bit by bit, and, well, with a liberal application of ketchup, this was a scene out of Dental Students Gone Mad.
Not that I hadn’t thought about cutting Sara every five seconds all day long.
Still, I could go for the calm of just marking the distance and angle to reproduce something. I fell into the routine, and before I knew it, the period was over. Rochan stayed behind, working on his camera. I guess he was hiding out in the art room.
I tucked my project back into my locker. It wouldn’t be long before I could make a cast of the wax hand and then produce as many right hands as I wanted—all my very own. Too bad it took so long. This must be why most prosthetic hands were off the rack.
Already, I liked my hand, a shadow reflection of what used to be, better than all the others. Well, except that one from the British company that covered their prosthetics in gems and jewelry. It might almost be worth having people stare if I at least got to have some bling.
My last class went by in a blur, and since I saw Sara heading through the parking lot, I decided it was safe to stop at the front office and pick up the rest of Christine’s independent study packet.
The fog of the morning had burned off, revealing a brilliant blue day. The sun burned down, but its heat didn’t touch the ground, and I was glad to have the hard top on my MGB. When I came over the last hill to San Francisco, the fog bank curled over the bridge in heaping piles of dewy cotton.
Beyond here, there be dragons.
When the cars hit the leading edge of the fog, the cloud curled in their wakes. Drops of water coiled out of the fog, like the cars hitting it could wring the rain right out of the air. A tire chirped against the pavement, and then a thwump rang through the air.
On pure instinct, I slowed down before I got to the fender bender. Already, two cars were pulled to the far right, but tires squealed in an attempt to not hit the cars. The thick fog made it impossible to know if I was going to be hit, but I took a leap of faith and dodged into another lane of traffic. I slipped past the car wreck and kept going.
The fog cloaked everything, and the turn signals leapt out of the clouds, giving me just enough time to stop or find the lane I needed. Like a beacon, the drugstore across the street from the Academy loomed with its LED billboard, blaring into the miasma of clouds and traffic. Not just a beacon through the mists, it was the drugstore that supplied the dancers with everything—tape, bandages, braces, nail polish, and a little café when they needed a break from the rest of the school. Privacy was apparently in short supply with the students sharing rooms more appropriate for closets.
My knuckles hurt from clenching the steering wheel, and my stump would probably be bruised. Still, I made it, and stepping out of the car, I slipped on the water covered paint. Dew clung to my hair and collected on the lint on my sweatshirt. I grabbed the manila envelope of work and grabbed the letter.
“Cyra!” Christine yelled from a window above me. “Wait there!”
Small favors. I didn’t want to have to find her in the crush of all those dancers. I stood in the swirling fog, watching it collect on my car until Christine came out. It smelled like the sea when the fog filled all the streets like this. There was a scent to wet cement, and it overflowed in the air around me.
“Oh, great, you come bearing gifts,” she said when she saw the manila envelope.
With a flourish, I produced an envelope. Her eyes went wide as she focused on the letter. She took it from my hand and shook her head. “This has to be the last one.” She opened it. I never sealed them so she could at least read what I had written on her behalf. She read through it with hungry eyes. I looked away and shivered. This letter was something more than the others. I’d written good ones before, but this one was more. There were enough parallels between us that my letter was just that, mine.
“Cyra, we can’t do this.” Her words cut through the parking lot.
“I’d already written that one.”
She carefully folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. She held it close to protect it from the dew, like it was something sacred. “This is too much.” Her words were soft, and on any normal day, they would have been too quiet to hear with the traffic noise, but the thick fog cloaked the whole world in a dampening blanket. “I can’t use this.”
“What do you mean? I wrote this for you.”
She shook her head. “No, you didn’t. That’s the problem. You wrote this for him, and this”—she held up the letter—“is what he’s in love with. We have to end it.”
“No, I wrote that for you. What good is it to destroy everyone’s chances?”
“I can’t live like this, Cyra! This is a lie. I’m not the person he’s in love with. And you love him back! What are you so scared of?” She flapped the letter at me.
Jumping in my chest like a wounded animal, my heart thumped, swallowing all the air in my body. My limbs went to dead branches, aching and wooden as the adrenaline already pulsing through my body turned to lead. I forced myself to breath. Why was I afraid?
Then it all came back to me, and I shook my head.
“Have you ever seen a rom-com with a girl with big thighs? Have you ever seen a movie where the hero with the sword who saves the day is also a woman? Men get to be any shape, but women, we have to be perfect—like you!—and anything less than that is to flirt with crazy cat lady for the rest of our days. You want to know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid that all he’ll see is a fat cow with thighs bigger than my waist! I’m afraid that no one will ever see me because I have these”—I pointed at my thighs—“and this”—I pointed at my missing hand. “I’m afraid that for all the talk, I’ll always be just a mercy date. The girl people take out because they feel sorry for me and my missing hand. They can choke down the fear of my enormous thighs long enough to take me out once. They can hold back their revulsion long enough to feel good about themselves for taking me on that one date. ‘I’m so egalitarian. I took the girl with one hand on a date. She got to be normal for two hours, and thank God I can get back to my regular life now!’ That’s what I’m afraid of.”
My words echoed back at us, ringing through the parking lot.
Christine shook her head. “But people aren’t like that.”
“You only say that because you’ve never been the girl without a hand. People fall over themselves to help r
ight up to the point when you prove that you’re a real person. As soon as they see that you’re a real person, with real dreams and hopes and feelings, the charity dries up. It’s like they want you to be a missing hand, not a girl who made one bad choice. It’s like my being a person is uncomfortable and tiring. If I could just go back to the poor little girl—”
“No, you don’t know that’s how Rochan will feel! Maybe he didn’t give you the chance he gave me because of how you look, but he has said it wouldn’t matter to him. He keeps saying how it doesn’t matter. You have no idea how he would react.” She pointed at me.
The air changed, and the fog turned to a solid drizzle.
“Fine, yes, I’m afraid he’ll be completely repulsed by me. I’ve sat next to him for years, and he has never noticed me. Why would this be different?”
“It’s different because he is in love with the poet, not the ballerina!”
A car pulled into the parking lot. My heart jumped when I saw it was Rochan. Christine shot a triumphant look at me. “Tell him.”
I shook. My feet started moving on their own, as if they were looking for an escape I was too stupid to hunt down myself. “I can’t!”
She shook her head. “If you do nothing, you’ll lose him. The only way you have a chance to keep him is to tell him.”
Rochan parked his car and climbed out, waving. “Wild drive!” he called.
“You have to tell him,” Christine hissed under her breath as Rochan walked up.
Drops of rain clung to his hair, lacing it with gray. It was like a preview of what he’d look like in his old age. He beamed at us, one hand in the air and a jaunt to his steps.
“My two favorite people!” he said. “You would not believe how crazy people are on the roads today! It’s like everyone made sure to take their stupid pills.”
Christine arched her brow at me. I couldn’t tell if I’d have the courage. How could I stare down opponents on the strip, but here in the real world, I was unable to face down a friend I’d known for years? My pulse beat like the bass at a party, driving through me. Mouth dry, palms sweaty—at least the foggy weather gave me a reason to have clammy hands.
“Cyra has something she needs to tell you,” Christine said, holding her hand gracefully open from me to Rochan.
I wasn’t going to get another chance, so I took a breath and clamped down on my nerves.
“I’ll be getting some ice cream over there”—she pointed at the drugstore—“when you guys are done.”
Before I could stop her, she trotted off, floating away like all ballerinas do.
I turned back to Rochan. His golden eyes took me in like he was only just now seeing me. “Cyra, is something wrong?”
“I, uh, well, now that the moment is here, I find that I am completely without words.” I laughed at the irony, and Rochan smiled back. His dark cheeks had an almost purple tinge in this cold weather. “I just hope that—”
Tires squealing cut me off, and my head snapped in the direction of the noise. The world slowed around me. In the perfect stillness, everything unfolded. Drizzle came down in thick mists, covering the ground. Water slapped on the road as wet tires drove here and there. The smell of oil and exhaust rose off the pavement.
Christine’s baggy sweats bounced out of time with her stride, and her shoes, bright red Mary Janes, reflected off the crosswalk paint. Wisps of hair that had fallen out of the bun curled away in the gathering damp. She always called them insubordinate soldiers. They framed her face in golden light.
The golden light of old headlights.
The car hit her, and her whole body whipped around, flying into the air and smashing into the ground. It sounded like potatoes falling into the sink.
“NO!” My whole body expelled the word. My feet started running before I knew I had made a decision. I ran into the street, my feet skidding on the wet crosswalk as I tried to stop. I dropped to my knee before I’d stopped, tearing my jeans and skinning my leg. “Christine! Christine? Can you hear me?”
She lay on the ground, her face serene, like she was just taking in the beauty of the misting sky. A streak of greasy water had spattered her front, but other than that, there were no obvious injuries. Blood filled the puddle beneath her. I put my fingers to her throat, but her warm skin, smooth beneath my finger, didn’t yield a pulse. My hand shook so badly I couldn’t even keep it on her throat.
“Christine!” Rochan yelled as he caught up. He bumped into me, knocking my hand away from her. I hadn’t had enough time. She might still be alive. My hand was shaking too much to tell.
“Christine! Can you hear me, Christine? Squeeze my fingers if you hear me!” Rochan took her hand.
Someone in a uniform pushed me aside. I stood, but my legs didn’t work right. They were sacks of grain. Instead of moving, they oozed. I stumbled into the second person in a uniform, a woman. She caught me but roughly set me to the side before pulling bright blue gloves out of her pocket. A caduceus wrapped in a red circle sat on her shoulder.
A paramedic.
That was fast, the strangely calm part of my mind realized. A numbness washed through me as I watched them work. The man started compressions on Christine’s chest. Rochan screamed and cried.
One of the medics checked a watch and started examining Christine’s head. They traded a few words in shorthand, but their words were cold and professional. The paramedics moved quickly, but there was a mechanical nature to their movement. They knew what my fingers had already told me. Christine was gone.
There, in her hand, waited the letter. Still in its envelope, a corner of it touched the blood filled puddle. Rochan saw it and grabbed it like a man compelled.
My heart skipped a beat.
I’d never told him. He still didn’t know. He thought the letter was hers. Her last letter to him.
I can’t tell him.
One of the medics brought around the ambulance. It had been parked at the drugstore. She pulled the gurney out of the back as the other kept compressing her chest and pumping air with a bag. They looked like students going through a drill, not people trying to work miracles. Rochan held her hand, sitting on the wet concrete, but when they wanted to put her on the gurney, he just stared up at them blankly.
I took his shoulders as a fire truck showed up. Firefighters swarmed the scene and helped the medics load Christine into the back of the ambulance. The doors closed, and the siren blared to life.
“Ma’am? Sir? Could you?” the firefighter asked.
We were standing in the street, and the firefighter was pointing us to the parking lot.
I let myself be directed away, but Rochan didn’t want to leave. “I’ll drive you to the hospital,” I heard myself say.
Rochan focused on my words, and suddenly we were in motion. We had a purpose.
nly through the intervention of the patron saint of luck and fools did we find the hospital and make it there safely. We went in through the ER entrance, painted red, just in case we couldn’t tell the difference from the other hospital entrances.
The smell hit first, one part bleach, and one part bodily fluid. Every memory of a hospital came rushing back. The hours lying in the bed, waiting. The doctors explaining one thing to my mother, and using kiddie language to describe the same thing to me. The lawyers, the law enforcement, the lies about how this wouldn’t hurt a bit.
It hurt every time they said that.
The intake nurse and receptionist both looked up from the front desk. Rochan’s face had turned gray, and tears cracked on the skin of my face. The receptionist gave us a solemn nod. “Who are you here for?” she asked quietly.
My voice quivered on my words. “They just brought in a girl hit by a car…”
“Oh… you’re here for that one.” She sat down and started going through a stack of papers. She pulled out a sheet and kept it on her side of the desk. “I’m afraid we don’t know much about her. Would you mind answering some questions? We need to find her next of kin.”
&nb
sp; “Oh God, you haven’t told her father yet?”
“Do you know if she’s allergic to anything? They’re taking her to surgery as we speak.”
Rochan shook his head. “She never mentioned anything.”
I pulled out my phone and dialed her father.
The phone rang twice before Mr. Neuve answered, his voice clipped. “I know I told you to call the minute Christine finished her work, but I didn’t dream you’d take me seriously, Cyra.”
My throat closed, and a sob choked out. “I’m sorry, Mr. Neuve. I’m at the General Hospital. They’re taking Christine into surgery, and they want to know if she’s allergic to anything.” I stuttered and choked. My throat burned, and my eyes started leaking again.
“What happened?”
“Is she allergic to anything? They’re going to surgery now,” the intake nurse asked over the counter. Her commanding voice cut across the tenuous line. She held her hand out for my phone, and I relinquished it gratefully. A sob tore through me, and my lungs stopped working the way they were supposed to. It was all I could do to pull air into my lungs, and the receptionist suddenly had an arm around my shoulder, guiding me to a seat.
“Shall I bring the chaplain?” she asked. I started to shake my head but stopped when Rochan heard her words. His face had turned to ash, and his eyes just kept growing bigger, unblinking. He knew it, too. She was already gone, and this surgery was just some last ditch effort, one last chance at a miracle. But the paramedics hadn’t been hopeful for a miracle. They hadn’t moved like they were saving a life.
They’d moved like they were taking care of a body.
When the chaplain came, my body went numb. He asked if we wanted to pray, but I wanted to be as close to Christine’s surgery as they would let us. He took us to a special waiting room. Chairs lined the edges of the room, and rumpled magazines littered the tables. This room had a couch, but someone was already sitting in it. The chaplain left with a promise to return.