by Scott Savino
She looked at her slender legs. Her legs for her music. Was that even a choice?
Lifting her head, she stared at the letters on the window. Was she going mad? How could her “ability to hear” contact her through a fogged up window? And why did it want her legs?
Entropy. For you, nothing else is equal sacrifice, appeared on the glass.
She slapped her palm over her lips. Had she asked the question aloud? She hadn’t spoken since the accident. The doctors said there was no damage preventing her from doing so. She just couldn’t cope with the thought of making a sound she herself couldn’t hear. For the past six months, all her communication had been via a tablet she carried with her.
At one point, school staff took it away, attempting to force her to communicate with fingers, voice, eyes. She’d just crawled into a corner, paralyzed by the absence of words in her silent prison. For a week, staff schlepped her to the cafeteria, the bathroom, classes. That’s what it would be like to have no legs. If she needed to enter a building without a ramp or climb stairs onto a stage her father would have to carry her.
Janine crawled back to the window and pulled herself up to the glass to write her next question: Why?
Pain is my pleasure.
She closed her eyes. Whatever wrote those words wasn’t her ability to hear.
But I can give it back to you.
Sweat trickled down the back of her neck.
When?
Choose by Saturday.
Two days to decide whether to trust an apparition that could be a ghost, or a demon, or something worse. Two days to take what could be her final steps, to run for the last time.
The colder air from the hallway made her shiver. The words disappeared from the glass and she turned to watch her roommate’s hands fly through shapes of words and letters. Janine handed her the tablet.
You missed a great party.
Janine shrugged. I’d rather be alone, she typed.
Amanda shook her head and grimaced, grabbed her toiletry kit, and left the room again.
Janine longed for a place where her toothbrush could stay on her sink and she didn’t have to remove her shampoo after a shower. She was too old for dormitory life.
oOo
In the morning, Janine laced on her running shoes, left the tablet on her desk, and darted out the front door. Class started in ten minutes, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t a minor like most of the students. At her father’s urging she’d signed an immersion program form, but the school had promised what it couldn’t deliver.
After running across campus, she climbed over the chain link fence and continued alongside the street. Rain stung her face and plastered her hair to her head. Passing cars threw plumes of water onto the sidewalk, so she stayed close to the grass along the other side.
Front lawns became smaller as she neared downtown.
She ran until a stitch in her side forced her to stop and catch her breath. The ache was nothing compared to the pain of practicing ten hours a day to build up the required calluses on her fingers.
She leaned over, chest heaving, to brace her hands on her knees to catch her breath. The exhilaration of wind on her face could never compare to the thrill of fingers dancing over the fingerboards, or the bow acting as an extension of her right arm as it sang across the strings.
Janine looked up and watched a woman chugging toward her on a motorized scooter. Wrapped in a down coat, she looked as if she weighed almost three hundred pounds, her rear end flowing over the wheelchair’s seat. Janine stepped aside. She could walk faster than the woman was moving.
If I have no way to exercise, how fast will I gain weight? Would it matter? It’s not like I have a girlfriend to care whether or not I’m attractive.
Leaning over, Janine grasped her ankles to stretch out her calves before they froze up. How would she stay limber enough to play if she had to give up running and yoga? Those gave her the stamina needed to spend hours standing in front of her music stand, bow warbling, her fingers seeking the notes until she could play them perfectly.
Straightening, she kept her head down and plodded back to campus, ignoring the movement of cars, people, and dogs passing her.
When she slunk in through the staff entrance, a security guard grabbed her arm and marched her to the superintendent’s office. Sitting in the all-too-familiar chair across from the woman’s desk, Janine stared at her hands in her lap, ignoring Mrs. Silva. Finally, the woman stuck a tablet under Janine’s eyes.
What exactly did you think you were doing this morning? Missing class again, leaving without permission, without letting anyone know where you were going?
Janine refused to respond to that or the additional admonitions typed onto the tablet.
Eventually, she was escorted back to her room and left alone.
Janine just stared at the window.
A crippled musician, or a useless runner? Not much of a choice.
oOo
The following morning, Janine had to work harder to escape the building—pretending to go to breakfast and dashing out the cafeteria side door. This time she headed east—past the prison and the shopping mall, out to where the houses were spread further apart.
A cop car pulled into a driveway, blocking the sidewalk in front of her, and two officers in dark blue uniforms stepped out into her path. She tried to ignore them, catching her breath, stretching. They gestured wildly. One of them knew sign language, but of course Janine didn’t.
When the woman tried to take Janine’s arm, she ducked, turned, and jogged back toward the school. The squad car followed; she could feel the heat of its engine at her heels.
She couldn’t believe the school had called the police. What did they tell the cops, that she was unstable? A danger to herself? If she’d been in a wheelchair they’d have had no trouble taking her back by force. On the other hand, if she could play her violin she wouldn’t be trapped in a school with curricula designed to teach people who’d never heard a note of music. She’d have had no reason to run away.
Slowing, she trudged along the sidewalk until she had to step aside to let a man coming in the opposite direction wheel by in his chair. He wore padded gloves and his wheels were tilted in toward a narrow seat. In smooth motions, his hands reached back, pulled the wheels forward, and reached back again, moving him along at a fair clip. Like her, he wore only a windbreaker and track suit against the rain. She wondered if wheeling the chair at that pace gave him a cardio workout.
Janine watched until he disappeared over the hill.
The security guard waited for her in front of the main entrance. She climbed the wide steps, resisting an urge to turn back and wave to her police escort. He held the door open for her, then followed her to her room. He left her there, so she figured she was expected to stay, not that she had a desire to go anywhere else.
Janine stared at the window. Since the rare snowfall Wednesday night, it hadn’t been cold enough outside for the room’s heat to steam up the glass. Tomorrow she’d have to decide, and she still couldn’t make up her mind. Legs or Liszt? Walking or Wagner? Running or Ravel?
At least if she was confined to a wheelchair she could count on her father’s assistance. His disastrous idea to send her to this school had been a desperate attempt at find a way to overcome her hearing loss, something he could never do. But, he was tall and strong, while she’d inherited the petite figure of the woman who’d died when she was born. Always there to help her tackle life’s obstacles, he could carry her up stairs when necessary, encourage her efforts to navigate the world without legs, support her until she could earn her way back into an orchestra.
The light outside grew dim, clouds turned orange, and the sky faded to black. Her roommate never returned. Probably asked for reassignment. Janine couldn’t blame her.
She crawled into her bunk without removing her clothing.
oOo
A hand on her shoulder woke Janine and she opened her eyes to her father’s worried frown. Home? B
ut, she could still see the upper bunk above her. She grabbed her father and clung to him, sobbing against his shoulder, tears soaking his shirt. Her dad rocked her back and forth for a while, then pulled away and reached for the tablet on Janine’s desk. It wouldn’t turn on. She hadn’t charged it since Wednesday. She got out of bed, the cold air from the hall making her shiver. Digging the charger out of the bottom desk drawer, she handed him the cord.
You need to pack. You’ve been kicked out. The staff’s given up on you, her father typed.
Because of the furrows between her father’s brows, and his downturned lips, Janine suppressed her grin. She just dragged her suitcase out from under the bed and emptied her drawers into it.
Don’t you care that you’ve been thrown out? What will you do? How will you survive in a hearing world with no training? The superintendent said you refused to learn sign language or even try to lipread.
Janine sat on the suitcase to lock it, staring at the window fogged over from the cold outside. She reached for the tablet. How did you get here?
I rented a car at the airport and drove down.
I’ll meet you in the parking lot.
How long?
Five minutes. It wasn’t like Janine had made any friends she wanted to say goodbye to. She only had one thing to take care of and she didn’t want anyone to see that.
Watching her dad carry the suitcase out of the room, Janine hesitated for a moment. Did she really want to be completely dependent on her father again? She pressed her lips together. Even if she couldn’t be independent, she’d do whatever was necessary to get back into an orchestra—including practicing fifteen hours a day to make up for the last six months. Once she was employed again, at least she wouldn’t be a financial burden to him.
Turning to the window, she hesitated, one finger hovering over the glass. Could she trust whatever was making the offer? Did she dare accept what had to be a deal with the devil, or a pact with a poltergeist?
She took a deep breath. As long as she had her father’s support, she could endure whatever pain was required, do however much work was needed to get her hearing and her life back.
Yes. You can take only my legs if I can have my hearing back exactly the way it was, she scrawled.
She waited. The letters didn’t fade. No others took their place.
With a sigh, she breathed on the window until the letters disappeared and made her way out to the parking lot. She’d probably dreamed the entire “conversation” Wednesday night.
Her father stood next to a green sedan, stomping in the cold. As soon as he saw Janine, he climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Janine slid into the passenger side and fastened her seatbelt. Backing out of the parking space, her father negotiated the left turn out of the lot and headed toward the freeway.
Janine adjusted the heat.
What if it wasn’t a dream? Had she made the right choice? Would she regret believing words that appeared on a fogged up window? She still had no clue what fiend or angel, imp or goblin, had contacted her and how it might make the exchange. If she were transported back in time to the accident and the hit-and-run driver stole her legs then instead of her hearing, she wouldn’t have lost the last six months to not practicing. Maybe she’d wake up in the morning in rehab, learning how to handle a wheelchair.
The light turned green and her father guided the sedan onto the street leading up the hill to the freeway entrance. With a sudden jolt, the car lurched sideways, slamming Janine against the passenger door. She jerked her head to see her father bleeding, covered in glass, his head at an odd angle.
They smashed into a pole and everything went black.
oOo
Pain and sirens penetrated her senses at the same time. Her legs were on fire—her feet, shins, and calves screaming in excruciating agony. Voices shouted and lights flashed blue and red. It hurt to breathe. Blackness enveloped her again.
oOo
Janine woke to the murmurs of people in scrubs, the ticking of a respirator counting her breaths, and the beeping of a cardiac monitor. The tube down her throat prevented her from speaking, so she tried to determine what the people around her were saying. At first, she couldn’t make out any words and worried her hearing was defective. Then one of the nurses noticed she was awake and made hand gestures that looked like bad sign language. Janine just pointed to the tube.
They poked and prodded her, muttering about oxygen levels and respirations. Finally, they removed the tube and she tried to form words. Her throat hurt and her voice was raspy, but she spoke for the first time in six months.
“I can hear.”
The faces she could see looked startled. A man wearing a white jacket over his scrubs approached her. “Can you understand me?” He spoke slowly, but didn’t mouth his words in the annoyingly exaggerated way so many people had done when she was deaf.
She nodded.
“Are you in pain? We’ve given you a small amount of morphine, but we didn’t want to administer too much until you woke up.”
Her legs didn’t hurt as much as her right side. “It’s bearable. My legs?”
Every muscle in his face fell. “I’m so sorry, Janine. Your legs were crushed in the accident. I’m afraid we had to amputate them both above the knee.”
She nodded. That was the deal. “Dad?”
His head dropped. “We did everything we could, but the semi hit the driver’s side and he took the brunt of the collision. Is there any other family we can contact?”
Janine just stared at him, trying to parse his words.
My hearing for just my legs, my hearing for just my legs. That was the deal. Not my father. Oh gods, what have I done? How will I survive alone?
“No—no—noooo!” She screamed the word again and again, her already-raw throat burning.
She’d bargained with Beelzebub and it had cost her everything. Her father had paid the price of her selfishness and now she was alone in the world. What did it matter that she could hear if she had no one to take her to lessons, rehearsals, concerts? Where would she live without her father’s income to pay the mortgage? How would she purchase a new violin without his help?
She’d thought losing her hearing was the worst possible thing that could happen to her.
Across the room, letters formed words in gray pixels on the black screen of the television.
Sweet, sweet, succulent suffering.
Consumed
SARAH FANNON
I THOUGHT OF MY HOUSE as an empty nest, but not in the sense that it had once been full of my own birds. It was more like I had stumbled onto someone else’s discarded nest. Children’s names and heights were written on the bedroom doorframe. I liked to check where I lined up with them. It was always just below Jonah, age twelve.
Jonah had sprouted a foot taller by fifteen while Winnie, his sister, maintained a steady height, crawling quarter inch by quarter inch through the years. I imagined when they were young, height was a competition, and they’d puff out their chests and sneakily stand on their toes while they got their parents to measure them.
Nights when the quiet of every room was too much, I stood under the names and checked that I was still Jonah, age twelve. I never took a pencil to the line of my head because I didn’t belong there, but I liked to imagine what it’d be like to have a sibling, someone built into my life to stay.