The Monkeyface Chronicles (31 page)

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Part Three

Not everything that is faced can be changed,
but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
— James A. Baldwin

Morphine

T
he sound of waves crashing.

   Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh my God oh my God oh my God!

Jesus Christ. I think his chest is moving! My God, how . . . he's
still alive!

Airborne again. Not falling. Soaring upward. The fall in reverse.

  Cliff wall a brown-grey blur.

  Water and rocks beneath me.

  White, cottony clouds. Sky blue. Vivid blue.

Throat like a scab. Like parchment. Can't swallow.

  Tongue flaccid. Probes dry, airy space.

  No teeth. No jaw.

  An endless dry heave. The wail of a mournful ghost.

  
“Patient's conscious! Put him under. Quick! Quick! Now!”

Those are the only memories I have of the accident. They're not even memories, really, just quick, blurry flashes with a distorted, unsynchronized soundtrack; flickers in the darkness.

I fade in, and fade back out again. Each time I return, I'm able to stay for a few more seconds, then for minutes at a time, but then I'm gone for exponentially longer. Or at least that's how it feels. It's really not easy to gauge. Time has become slippery, and the line between consciousness and unconsciousness is crooked and broken. What I hope are nightmares are vivid and realistic, while what I suspect is real appears blurry and distorted, like I'm observing the world from inside a warped space helmet full of translucent gel.

I'm in a hospital bed right now. I am bandaged and splinted together. Parts of me are strung up while other parts are wired shut. Tubes run fluids into my body, other tubes take fluids away. There are cables and monitors, plastic bags on metal poles. There are lights, very white, very bright. They hurt my eyes. My eyes are the only parts of me that I know for sure are working.

Before this, I was in an ambulance. I remember now; the clank of the door closing at my feet, and the sound of the siren. I remember the paramedic looking down at me, his face white, sweat speckling his forehead like he was about to be sick. I tried to ask him what had happened to me, but my tongue just lolled around in the dry air, my throat gurgling.

“I know, buddy, I know,” the paramedic said. “This will make it feel better. This will make it feel better.”

A cool, tingling sensation spread through my veins, like he'd injected cold soda into my scorched-desert body, then my veins froze like a creek in December, and I sank into nothing.

The walls are gradually changing colour, from light green to pink to bright blue, and back to light green again. There's a face hovering over mine.

“Are you with me, Philip?” the face says. “Can you hear me?”

My ears are ringing, but I can hear him. My vision is blurred, but I can see him. The rest of my senses are absent. I can't feel anything. I can't smell anything. I taste nothing. I can't speak. My head is wrapped in bandages, and there is some sort of apparatus connected to the bottom half of my face. I can't nod; my neck is immobile. I can't gesture with my hands or arms, as they are encased in casts. I feel like a hunk of waterlogged wood, heavy, decaying, sinking into the damp earth.

The hovering face says, “Wink your right eye if you can understand me, Philip.”

Both my eyes blink.

“Good enough,” says the face. “I'm Doctor Chin. If you were able to move right now, you would laugh at that. Why? Because I specialize in facial reconstructions. Kind of like that guy Doctor Cox who does penis enlargement surgery. Anyway, Philip, I am going to put your face back together for you. You understand that you've been in a pretty serious accident, yes?”

I blink again.

“You're on a lot of morphine right now, Philip,” he says, “a
lot
of morphine. Without it, you would be feeling more pain than any human being could remain conscious through. The morphine will likely cause you to hallucinate and experience feelings of panic and paranoia. You may be feeling that way right now, and, if so, let me assure you that it is completely normal.”

Hallucinations. Panic and paranoia. No wonder the walls are changing colour. No wonder his eyebrows are twisting around like deranged caterpillars.

Doctor Psycho Brow says, “I want to explain to you exactly what I am going to do to reconstruct your face, so it's important that I know you can understand me. I know it may be difficult to do, but please blink once with your right eye, then once with your left, to show me that you understand what I'm saying to you.”

I try to ignore the changing-colour walls and the caterpillar eyebrows and the fact that his hair is squirming over his head like Medusa's nest of snakes. I focus on the bits that are probably real. Summoning all my powers of concentration, I close my right eyelid. Then I open it again. Then I close the left one. Open. Good.
I'm with you, Doctor. See?

“Well, Philip,” Dr. Chin says, “to use an old bedside cliché, there is both good news and bad news. The good news is, you're alive, which in itself is a major miracle. I've never seen anyone survive the kind of fall you took. Other than a lot of cuts, some serious tissue bruising, and a few minor fractures here and there, your body is generally in pretty good shape. None of your vital organs were damaged in any critical way. So, in that respect, you were very lucky.”

I hear the rumbling voice of Captain Quote in my head: “
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and
effect
.” Ralph Waldo Emerson. One of his favourites.

Doctor Chin takes a deep breath, and for a moment it seems as if his head is expanding like a birthday party balloon.
Morphine hallucination, Philip, morphine hallucination. Just
concentrate on what he's saying. Concentrate.

“The bad news,” Doctor Balloon Head says, “is that your face is a hell of a mess. A hell of a mess. Your jawbone has been more or less cleaved right off. And even if it were still properly attached, it's smashed into too many pieces to mend. You've lost nearly all of your teeth, and we couldn't even
find
the cartilage that's supposed to be in your nose.”

If I could speak, I would tell him that, because of my genetic defects, I never had any cartilage in my nose in the first place. I hope they didn't spend too much time looking for it.

“Essentially,” the doctor says, “the bottom half of your face has been destroyed. And in that respect, I suppose, you were rather
unlucky
.”

A memory.
Flying over handlebars. Hands wrenched back
behind my body. Arcing headfirst through the air, turning heels-over-
head as I fell. Cliff wall a speeding grey-brown blur before
my face. Chin striking razorback rock.

“The good news,” the doctor says, “is that I can build you a new jawbone and nose out of plastic. We'll bring in an orthodontic team to get some new teeth in there for you, also. Your tongue and palate are still connected and are receiving adequate blood flow, and your musculature is intact enough to repair. We're keeping everything moist with saline solution until things have healed up enough for us to start rebuilding. It's possible that your sense of taste may return, and you may eventually be able to learn to speak again. That's the goal, anyway. The bad news is, installing your new jawbone and nose and teeth will require many operations, which will hurt like hell. And we'll have to graft a lot of skin over it when we're finished, and that's going to hurt like hell also. And you'll need physical, occupational, and speech therapy to get everything working again, which . . . well, you get the picture.”

The room has turned glistening bloody red.
Not happening,
not happening, not really happening. Concentrate on the words.
The words.

“The good news is that the doctors at your local hospital had the wherewithal to have you flown to Toronto right away. At the risk of sounding immodest, you couldn't be in better hands here. Anything I can't fix myself, there's someone in this hospital who can. And if we run into something we can't handle, there are hundreds of other specialists just a few steps up or down University Avenue.”

Another memory
. University Avenue. Walking with Adeline.
A tall, strange monument. “Per Ardua Ad Astra,” she says.
“Gumby Goes to Heaven.”

Adeline. Does she know what has happened? Does she know I'm here?
Mount Sinai, The Hospital for Sick Children,
Princess Margaret
. . . I wonder which one I'm in. She could walk here in ten minutes from her father's condo.
Save me,
Adeline. Come save me.

Doctor Chin licks his lips, and his tongue splits in two and the ends snake up into his nostrils and lick at the insides of his eyeballs.
Not real not real not real.

“You're going to be a hell of a challenge, kid,” Doctor Split-Tongued Balloon Head says, “maybe the toughest reconstruction I've ever done. But I like a challenge.”

He pauses in the doorway and says, “All of this is going to take some time, by the way. I hope you haven't got anything better to do for the next little while.”

The walls turn from blood red to a grape-juice purple, and then everything goes black again.