After I Wake (5 page)

She just looked at me. “I'm sorry, Carter, but you did ask,” she replied with the driest of tones. I think doctors have their senses of humor drained from them while they're still in medical school.

My next question was an inquiry as to whether or not I would be okay. I was told that other than my hand, I would recover completely. That was the moment that my world really clarified, and I looked to my left hand. It was swathed in bandages and a giant splint-thing. As I began to hyperventilate, Dr. Mae rushed to assure me that it was protecting my hand and helping it heal, after it was submerged in ice and then trapped there for seven hours.

On top of hypothermia, I had severe frostbite. The way Dr. Mae explained it was that the joints and muscles in the affected area, in this case, my hand, would stop working. I could also lose sensation to the area. Then, between one and two days after they rewarmed my hand, blisters appear. They wanted to take an MRI of my hand in a day, to see how deeply it was affected.

Dr. Mae told me I needed to stay for a few days so that they could watch my hand. Dr. Mae also broke my heart. She only had to say that it didn't look too good. In all likelihood, I would lose part, if not all, of my hand.

“But she's left-handed!” Mom interjected from the side of my bed. I hadn't noticed at all, but she had slowly migrated to me and was holding my right hand.

“We're watching it very carefully, and if we need to operate, Carter can meet with an occupational therapist to learn to write with her other hand. Long-term, the prognosis is excellent. Carter can adapt to this and live a normal and well-adjusted life.” Dr. Mae rattled off the facts without any emotion.

She acted like I wasn't there. She acted like it wasn't my entire way of life on the line. She acted like I was just some stupid, irresponsible teenager who was used to hangovers. She acted like I wasn't good enough to keep my hand. She acted like I was just another patient whose time was up, and she had other people to attend to.

What a time to be alive.

 

 

I'
VE
TAKEN
to acquiring copious amounts of root beer, simply because it is the drink of the gods. I go out to the store and purchase the boxes that advertise a containment of twelve cans. I get my favorite brand and take forever to drink them because I savor the taste like there will never be another one, even though there always is. I'll empty out the box on my desk, stop the rolling cans, and line them up with military precision across my desk. And then when my ranks deteriorate, I venture out into the real world, to bring more of the carbonated gold into my possession. Yet somehow, there are always two that remain untouched.

Those two cans of root beer have lived on my desk since I first started buying them, slowly gathering dust in the wake of the other cans being consumed. I imagine they feel a sense of neglect, wanting to serve their purpose and be consumed and converted by whatever lives within my stomach into some weak form of energy that'll ultimately end up on my thighs or whatever, but I find myself taking a small sense of pride in leaving them, making them feel unloved. It's like a transfer of psyche. I take the hate I've felt and give it to inanimate liquid, which I may or may not consume. I assume that Jordan, my therapist, whom I still see twice a week, would probably be amused by it. Then he'd call it therapeutic. Or something like that. And then he'd make me write all about it in the therapy journal.

When I notice that I am left again with those solitary two, I decide it is time for an adventure to the friendly neighborhood supermarket. My mom takes a break from whatever it is she is doing in her Internet chamber, and we go, discussing dinner options the whole way there. I don't know why my mom is so happy to fund my root beer consumption, but I won't complain about it because I'm the one who is benefitting in this situation. After we agree on pasta done up in my favorite way, we split up to get the supplies. For some reason, the supermarket is the one public place where my mom trusts me to get supplies that I need. I think it's hard to be really alone in a constantly bustling supermarket.

I feel overly conspicuous as I quickly hurry through the aisles, my destination being the soda. Not many people leave the house with long sleeves once Connecticut breezes into July. It's too damn hot out for long sleeves. But I tend to be cold when it is warm anyways. When I find the aisle I'm seeking, I am unsurprised to see someone else. The shock is the identity of the girl standing on her toes to reach for her sports drink.

As she lowers her heels back to the floor to put her drinks into her carriage, I notice that the liquid is bloodred, like the evil color of her soul. I start to back away slowly while she remains facing away from me, as I have zero desire to talk to her, or even have her notice me.

I'm too slow. She turns, and I swallow the uncomfortable lump in my throat. She sees me, and her expression turns cruel in seconds. Her eyebrows lift, and her mouth curls up in an evil sneer because she is happy to see me. I'm halfway convinced she's going to unhinge her jaw and swallow me whole. This is a very bad thing.

I look down and take a few steps forward, having finally located the root beer, and reach out to grab it with my right hand while using my left arm to cradle the bottom, so as not to drop it. I am stopped by Brittany. Within seconds, there is hot breath on the left side of my face as Brittany breathes my name into my ear. I visibly cringe, and she smiles as she pulls away.

“Look at you,” she coos. Her voice is dripping with honeyed venom. “Look at Carter, out of the hospital, out of the house, rejoining society.” She curls her lip on the word society. I am paralyzed by her hissing voice as she starts the process of tearing me apart, and she puts her arm around my shoulders in an insincere hug. I want my mom, but she's picking out tomatoes on the other side of the store. There is no one here to protect me. I feel like the three-year-old on the playground that the big kids always dump sand on when the mother's back is turned.

“What, you're too weak for school? Or should I say too cool for school? Where'd you go, Car? We missed you in April and May and June.” She stretches out the last word, savoring it. “I had another party. You would have been invited, but after your stunt at my last one, well, we couldn't have that again, could we? I got grounded because of you. I lost privileges I didn't even know I had. Your little midnight walk into the forest got me caught by my parents. They found out that I got a keg. They found my fake ID. You ruined my life, Carter.

“Oh, but enough about me, let's look at you. It looks like your fingers haven't grown back yet. Where did your hand go, Carter? Did they throw it out?” My right hand had been resting on top of the box of root beer cans, but at that moment, it slowly began curling into a fist. My other arm starts to drop from the side of the box, but as it returns to my side, Brittany grabs my left arm.

She holds it in front of her, and I close my eyes and look away, still frozen, now fighting tears. She looks at the scars that indicate the end of my arm and then pulls the sleeve up in a fluid motion, past my elbow until it bunches against itself. She runs her fingers over the thickest scars that were meant to end my life.

“What's this? We got tired? Wanted to sleep forever? Did little Carter get a boo-boo? You're so weak, Car. What the hell is this? You honestly thought you could do it? Here's my little theory. I think you wanted the attention. Life stops going your way, you stop writing your nasty little poems, you don't want out, you just wanted the spotlight back on you.” She moves her hands to the smaller scars that crisscross the rest of my arm.

“Oh, Carter, I think it's time to let you in on a little secret, no? Here's the deal. Everybody hates you. We always have. You're so uppity. You're self-obsessed, and nobody likes a bitch. All you ever talked about were those poems you wrote, and they weren't that good. You entered conversations and diverted everything back to you. You used words nobody understood and then laughed when we didn't understand them. You were cruel to us. You thought you were on a whole separate level, above all the students and the teachers. You were your own fucking god, and oh, did you love it.

“But you see, that's not very cool. And then you got drunk—you're
so
welcome by the way—and then reality knocked on the door. You got knocked down a few pegs. I don't think you liked that at all because you wanted people to notice you. So you made a few cuts. Then you got addicted. Poo. Oh, poor, poor baby. Nobody would have missed you if you died. And your father would spend eternity pissed off to all hell from wherever he is, probably hell too, where you'd be burning, at you for leaving your mother. But none of us would have missed you, oh no, not at all.

“I hope you're happy, Carter, because all of us are just sitting there laughing at you. You and your mistakes. They are so amusing. But do all of us a favor in the future, okay? If you try something like that again, don't fuck it up. You were all everyone was talking about during finals and frankly, it pissed me off. So, I say this with the utmost sincerity, Carter: fuck you and everything you've done. You're disgusting.” With that, she drops my arm. I rush to pull the sleeve back down and look up to see Brittany flouncing back to her cart, ponytail bobbing in a sickeningly perfect arc. She checks the time on her phone and hurries off.

I grab the root beer and run to my mom, trying to not cry. I don't cry. It's not what I do. I keep telling myself this as I hold back the angry tears while we finish our shopping and leave. I chant it over and over to myself, a mantra of determination. The tears build anyway, ignoring my stubborn attempts to keep subdued. I keep silent the whole ride home, and when we get back, I change into a tank top, exposing all of the puckered skin on my arms, the left more scarred than the right, and then curl up on the bed and give up, letting the tears go. I cry for forty-three straight minutes while cuddling with Sarah and stroking the scars that run up and down my arm and onto my pathetic stump of an arm, thinking about the day when I lost it.

My mom hears, and I tell her that something bothered me at the store. She turns pale for a moment when she sees my arms. It's quite a sight for those who aren't used to seeing the full extent of them, but she gets into bed and hugs me while I cry into her shoulder. It's one of the few times this has happened, but it's still nice to feel safe in my mom's embrace. I wipe my tears and sit numbly on the living room couch for the rest of the night because my mom won't let me stay in my room alone. It's for the best, and it's because she cares and doesn't want me hurting myself, but the idea of cutting again flits across my mind more than once. Thankfully, my mother makes me help her with dinner, and then we watch a movie together, and I fall into an exhausted slumber fairly early.

 

 

“I'
M
AFRAID
it doesn't look very good.”

Well thanks, Dr. Mae, for being so frank about it,
I think from behind my eye roll. I knew my hand was messed up. I could see the dead skin and withered fingers when all the bandaging stuff was removed. I had officially been labeled as a “severe case.” Before they had only speculated, but my dead hand sealed the deal.

Four days after waking up in the hospital, I felt better. Recovered, one could say. Unfortunately, my hand was not. Large blisters formed on my fingers, hiding the skin beneath. By that fateful fourth day, the blister situation had been resolved, but my fingers and most of my hand were blackened, hard, and full of dead nerves. I couldn't bend my fingers, let alone feel them or do anything with that hand. It was like my hand had gone to sleep, and I couldn't wake it up no matter how hard I smacked it. But they weren't letting me smack my hand on anything because that's dangerous. I mean, I hadn't tried to, common sense had prevailed on that one.

My hand was scheduled to be amputated that night. Afterward, I'd never be left-handed again. I wouldn't be able to write poetry. I felt empty. My mom hugged me while I sobbed. There was nothing to be said.

When the time came to anesthetize me, I made the anesthesiologist wait for a moment. Slowly, I raised my unfeeling digits to my face. In turn, I kissed each of my fingers good-bye. Then I closed my eyes, refusing to look at my hand as my consciousness was taken from me by whatever substance was floating into my veins.

When I awoke later, the first thing I did was puke. Apparently, anesthesia does that to a person. I refused to look at my arm. Dr. Mae called it a stump, and told me the surgery was successful.

I think there were painkillers in me. Strong liquids that ran cold in comparison with the warm blood and made my thoughts whirl and set small bouts of giggles loose. The world slowly blurred, and I ceased to feel, for the most part. It was nice to escape from my misery, at least for as long as I could. It made life easier, it made acceptance easier.

When she looked at my glowering face the next morning, Dr. Mae rushed to inform me of all sorts of things, how I was running a high risk for gangrene, that there was no saving my hand, all sorts of things like that. She showed me exactly where my hand ended, which was where most hands usually started. Mine was now… a wrist. But not even that, it was a smooth, rounded thing, crisscrossed with neat stitches as I discovered by pulling aside the gauze wrapped around my arm. It hurt, in more ways than one. It was painful, but there was a deep sorrow lodged in me, and nothing I did could make it go away.

I stopped paying attention to time. I don't know when I was released. I stopped caring about school. I didn't go for weeks. I was busy recovering, but the doctor said no more than a month of recovery, so I was back in class fairly quickly. I was a bitch to everyone, including my mom. I stopped talking to people.