And I’ll float endlessly.
Under water, watching the lake go by above me.
Woke up back in the hospital room but no one knows I’m here. I hear them bustling around, though. I want to alert someone that I’m back, but I can’t speak. My eyes won’t open, either.
Emma sits beside me. I know she’s there but she doesn’t know I know. “Don’t cry,” I want to say as she lays her forehead on my arm and sobs. But I can’t because … I just can’t.
Mom is beside my bed and she softly sings a song that I haven’t heard her sing since I was small. “Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me …” She sings more and hesitates. I know the line she’s trying to recall.
“Jingle jangle,” I whisper.
Silence.
What’s happening? My eyes slide open and Mom is bent over me, staring.
“Doctor!” Mom shouts. “I need a doctor!” She grips my hand. “Stay with me, Mira! Stay awake!”
The pain is too awful. I can’t.
Let me go back to the lake!
“Stay awake,” Mom begs.
“Doctor!” Mom shouts, pounding buttons over my bed.
MAY
The hospital room is where I live now. Morning and night I’m here, drifting in and out of sleep. I can’t remember the way back to the lake.
My room is soft with gray light. It’s either very early or getting dark. I see myself reflected in the TV near the ceiling at the end of my bed.
I’m wrapped in bandages … but something’s very wrong with the shape of me. Where is my arm?! It feels like it’s there but it’s not.
I just can’t see it. That’s all! The glare bouncing off the TV set is covering it. My cell phone is on the nightstand to the right of my bed. I want to text Jason and Emma to tell them I’m awake, so I stretch forward to pick it up.
Why can’t I reach it? It’s too far away. I stretch farther.
My hand isn’t even near the phone. I should be seeing my hand next to the phone, fingers stretching. It doesn’t make sense! I don’t understand.
And then I do understand.
My right arm is gone.
My right arm is gone!
I can feel it but it’s not there.
With my left hand I pound the call button above my bed.
A nurse hurries in with another woman, a doctor wearing a white coat and stethoscope. I don’t realize how truly, mind-meltingly freaked out I am until I start jabbering hysterically, all the while gesturing wildly with my left arm.
“You’ve had a terrible accident,” the doctor says kindly as she takes the needle the nurse hands her. “And this is all very shocking. It’s a lot to absorb. I’m going to give you a shot to help you calm down, help you to rest.”
I can’t rest! I want my arm. I’m enraged and the fury injects a jolt of crazy energy that lets me sit up and grab the doctor by her wrist. “Get me my arm!” I shout. It comes out as an animal growl. I must seem insane. Maybe I am.
Another nurse grips me while the doctor injects something into my vein. Writhing, I struggle to escape my body.
I want out! OUT!
But I relax almost immediately.
Calm.
I drowse.
Of course, I still need to ask where my arm has gone, but my tongue has grown fat and lazy.
I hope I’m going back to the lake, but I don’t see it anywhere anymore, not even in my dreams.
I have no idea what my last name is. I know my first name, because everyone keeps calling me Mira. Otherwise I’m not sure I’d even know that. Sometimes I remember Mom right away and other times I think she’s my aunt Jane. Or maybe Aunt Jane did come to see me. I’m not sure. Confusion has become a way of life.
“You’re very lucky you were wearing your seat belt,” says one of the anonymous doctors who pass in and out of my room all day and night.
That’s debatable, I think. Maybe if I hadn’t been wearing my seat belt I’d be dead right now. The idea of being dead has definite appeal. I know that’s a morbid thought, but depressed and angry and terrified thoughts are all I have these days. Otherwise I sleep and dream about a gigantic oil truck running over me again and again until I’m sawdust in the road.
No one visits me besides Mom and Zack. Now that I’m out of a coma, no one is allowed. There’s no cell service in here, either. That’s all right. I don’t feel much like talking. Most of the time my head hurts.
Zack reads me more books about butterflies than I ever thought existed. In my imagination, they race around the room in a swirl of color. I become one of them. When I’m lost in the world of butterflies I can forget everything.
Mom finishes Stuart Little and goes on to Charlotte’s Web. She must think these books are comforting or that I’m in no shape to deal with anything more adult. Mom’s right on both counts. I love Charlotte’s Web except that nearly every night I dream I’m a fly struggling mightily to escape a web. Each morning I wake up exhausted and sad.
JUNE
This morning, like every morning, I wake up uncertain of where or who I am. I’m a newborn blinking at the fluorescent light, completely baffled by what’s going on.
Slowly, though, it all returns to me …
The anesthesia … count backward from ten … three … two … So many operations. The constant pounding in my head, the continual nausea. The constant beeping of machinery, the buzz of people talking somewhere off in the distance. The television noise that never seems to end. At night a blinding light might suddenly snap on. An aide wants a blood sample, a nurse needs to change my intravenous bag. The electrodes on my chest and stomach must be changed. All this is how I live now.
Here’s what’s happening, as best as I can remember. (Warning: My best is not that hot these days.) My right arm has been amputated from the shoulder down. I have no left leg remaining under the knee. The kneecap on my right leg needs to be replaced. These parts of my body were apparently completely crushed. My nose is broken and my left cheek is shattered. I have skin grafts where I was burned.
My entire head is wrapped in bandages. I see through an opening in the bandages. I breathe through another opening with the help of one of those breathing things you always see on TV.
As the nurse changes the intravenous bag of fluids I’ve been hooked up to all this time, she says, “There’s a little extra something in here to help you sleep. We want you to be good and rested in the next few days.”
Why? What’s happening in the next few days?
That’s the question I thought I’d asked, though maybe I only dreamed I’d asked it. In minutes, I’m in that black hole of nothingness I’ve become so accustomed to. It’s a place where there are no dreams, no bizarre subconscious images, and no groggy struggle to wakefulness. It’s a place where I’ve been erased. But I’m not really gone. Eventually I emerge once more into the world of harsh light and constant pain.
It’s while I’m lying there, still not opening my eyes, that I hear Mom talking to a doctor. “Her state is desperate enough that she qualifies for the procedures,” the doctor says. “As part of this test group, the operations and all the follow-up won’t cost you anything.”
“She’s been through so much already,” Mom says.
“That’s the point. With all she’s gone through, why not go the rest of the way?” the doctor asks. “As she is now, her life will be extremely limited. The damage to her limbs is only part of it. The brain damage alone will severely impact her functioning.”
“In what way?” Mom sounds as alarmed as I feel.
“Continued deteriorating memory loss, emotional instability, loss of control over bodily functions. There’s even a chance that, with the blow she took to the occipital lobe of her brain, her eyesight might begin to diminish.”
“She’ll go blind?!”
“It’s possible.”
“Can you really stabilize all that?” Mom asks hopefully. “Any of it?”
“Science has come a long way.”
“But what are the d
angers?”
“I’m afraid there are no certainties here. We’ve developed these programs in conjunction with the military to aid our soldiers, but we need trial subjects who haven’t been in combat as a first line of experimental controls. She’ll be receiving the cutting edge of what science has to offer.”
“If she does all this will she ever live a normal life?”
“If she doesn’t do it, her normal days are behind her.”
I am rolled down the hall today, still in my hospital bed. We get to another room where a way-too-sprightly nurse gets me out of the bed and into a sitting position. “How are you feeling, Mira?” she asks.
A million snarky replies fly into my head, but it’s too much effort to speak. It’s just as well, since she’s only trying to be pleasant. So I just nod, catching my reflection in the window behind the nurse.
“You’re getting fresh bandages today,” she tells me, as though she’s revealed I’m getting a new convertible. “But first we’re doing a few tests.”
She unwraps the bandages from my head. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen my face. And now I wish I hadn’t looked. Half of my face is purple and green, a tie-dyed–looking swirl of hideousness. My nose is a mushed, pulpy mass and seems to have migrated somewhat to the left side of my face. My right cheekbone has caved in. What hair I have left lies snarled in clumps, plastered against my scalp.
Tears jump to my eyes. This can’t be me. I don’t even look human anymore. I’m a monster!
The doctor who was telling Mom that my normal days might be behind me comes in. He’s heavy and bald, with a calm, friendly voice. “I’m Dr. Hector, Mira. You’re here because we’re putting electrodes on your head today,” he explains in a this-is-no-big-deal way.
“So we’re going to have to get rid of patches of hair. Would you prefer we just take it all off?”
I shrug. What do I care? My hair is the least of my problems right now. And how much more horrendous can it look than it already does?
He slides his hand along his polished baldness and smiles a little too broadly. “I find it very low maintenance. On girls it’s kind of an edgy look.”
Smiling dimly, I nod again.
“We want to look at your brain activity,” He gets down to business as the nurse shaves my scalp. “A lot is going to depend on what we find out today.”
“Like what?” I mumble.
“We need to find out if you’ve suffered brain damage, and if so, where and how much. We need to discover what you’re going to be capable of going forward.”
The nurse finishes her shaving and applies electrodes to my head. When she’s done, I grab another glimpse of myself.
Between the electrodes and my broken cheek, I’m something out of a SyFy channel original movie. Frankenstein’s monster wouldn’t have needed a bride if he’d met me. He’d have been head over heels in love.
For the next hours, I respond to beeps and flash cards and small electric zaps while different sections of my brain light up—or fail to. It’s intensely strange to watch my own brain do its thing on a screen in front of me. Until this day, my brain wasn’t something separate. It was … me. At the very least, it was control central of me.
But seeing this brain imaging changes everything.
Am I my brain? Or is my brain only a part of me?
If I am my brain, am I no more than a unit that reacts when different parts are poked and zapped? What if I don’t want certain brain sections to light up when they show me a photo of Mom or Grandma Lynn or Aunt Jane or Zack? Do I have any choice in the matter?
It’s been a long day of testing and I’m too exhausted to ponder these questions much more. In my room I admire my new crispy white bandages. I look so much better! I mean to be snide, but it’s actually true. The bandages are an improvement. At least they hide the repulsive thing I’ve become on the outside.
I’m forgetting what my friends look like. What do I look like? I forget that, too.
I haven’t looked into a mirror in a long time because I haven’t been out of bed and my face is still covered in bandages, anyway. Since the most recent operation, they’re new, fresh bandages. Every few days another operation. Lots and lots of surgery.
Sometimes I think I’m the Mira Rains of before the accident. In my dreams, I’m that girl.
But who will I see when I’m finally able to look into the mirror?
“You’re going to like this better than your previous leg and old foot,” says the young, cute doctor named Dr. Tim. We’re in a room of the hospital and I’m in a wheelchair. He pulls up his khaki pant leg to reveal a rod that goes down into his sneakers. “I have a match on the other leg, too.”
I saw him walk in the door and I never would have guessed.
“I used to be a championship rock climber,” he says. “Then one night I was stuck up on the ridge of a mountain after dark and frostbite got both my legs at the knee.”
I furrow my brow and frown. “That must have been scary as anything,” I say.
“I still climb. It took a lot of PT, of course.”
“What’s that?”
“Physical therapy,” he explains. “And you know what? I wouldn’t trade my old legs for these. These are better.”
I shoot him a narrow-eyed glance of disbelief.
“I kid you not,” he insists.
Dr. Tim opens a guitar-case-sized container sitting on the floor. In it is a metal leg very similar to the ones he wears. I stare at it in horror.
“We’re going to fit you for one of these today,” he says.
I can’t imagine something this cold and metallic strapped to my body.
“Don’t look so horrified,” Dr. Tim says, smiling. “You’re going to get to love this thing. It’s state of the art. Beyond state of the art! But this isn’t your final leg. It’s just to get you started.”
“How long until I get the final one?”
“We’ll wait until you’re completely healed, so we get an accurate final fit.”
“When will that be?”
“You’re young and you’ll heal more quickly than an adult. I’m guessing six months.”
Six months! That seems ages away. I’ll be a senior in school. I can’t imagine what my life will be like in six months.
Dr. Tim tugs up my sweatpants to where the stump of my knee is covered with gauze bandages, which he carefully unwraps. The sight of the scarred, twisted flesh makes me turn away. “It’s okay,” he says kindly. “I’ve seen worse. They did a good job. The swelling has gone down almost completely, so we can get you set up with the temporary prosthesis for now. That’s the one I showed you.”
Dr. Tim takes measurements. He places a stretchy soft cover over the stump. It looks a lot less upsetting with the cover. “My assistant will take some more photos, we’ll get some digital measurements, and we’ll start a mold,” he tells me.
A woman around Mom’s age dressed in green medical scrubs smiles at me as she enters. “You’re going to have to learn new balance and coordination,” she tells me. “It’ll take a lot of work, but it will be worth it. We’ll give you exercises. It’s important that you do them at home, as well as during PT.”
“Will I ever be able to play sports again?” I dare to ask.
Dr. Tim bounces on his artificial legs. “I’m going rock climbing this weekend.”
“Can you run?” I ask.
“Try to catch me.”
The staff doctor, Dr. Thomas, is in her thirties with long straight black hair. She snips my head bandages gingerly with a scissor. They stick to my skin a bit as she lifts them away. There’s some pain when I flex my facial muscles, they’ve been immobilized for so long.
I yawn and then attempt to smile, as she instructs. It’s somehow painful and good at the same time.
“Ready for a mirror?” Dr. Thomas asks.
That’s a good question. Am I ready for this?
Dr. Thomas smiles as she lifts a hand mirror from a nearby table. “It’s really not
that bad, Mira,” she says. “It will improve every day, so don’t panic.”
Panic!? There’s a reason to panic? I reach out to take the mirror from her. I have to know.
My face is still so black and blue, especially under my eyes! Not to mention I’m still bald. (Well, not quite. A smattering of stubbly hair covers my scalp.) My nose is less mashed and they’ve somehow maneuvered it back into the center of my face. That’s something, anyway.
A nurse comes in to place new gauze over my concave cheekbone. “They’re going to fix that tomorrow,” she says as she works. “You’ll have nice high cheekbones like a model.”
“That will look weird—one high cheekbone.”
“They’ll make sure your cheekbones match.”
When the bandaging is finished, the nurse slides me into a wheelchair. Mom comes into the room and walks me around the hospital. It’s good to be out of my room and to see people who smile sympathetically as I pass. A very old man stoops to pat my hand. “It will be all right, young lady,” he says. “You’ll see.”
He has no idea if it will be all right or not. But I want to believe he knows what he’s talking about. His kindness touches me and a lump forms in my throat.
Today, as I struggle to come awake, I hear something rustle under my hospital bed and I scrunch into a ball. It has to be mice.
But it’s too loud to be a mouse. A squirrel? A rat?
Sucking in a deep breath, I stretch over the side of the bed to see.
And come face-to-face with Niles Bean!
He slides out from underneath. His eyes laugh as he holds his index finger to his lips. “I snuck in,” he whispers, drawing the privacy curtain around my bed. “I had to crawl past the guy at the front desk.”
He digs in the khaki-colored canvas bag he’s got slung over his shoulder. “I made you a present,” he says. He extracts what at first seems to be a doll. “Ta-da!” he sings out, presenting it to me.
I can’t believe what I’m looking at. It makes no sense.
“It’s you!” he says.