THEY SAY I’M LUCKY. OVER 60 percent of my body was burned. The tendons in my right knee were torn at such an angle that I’ll never walk straight again, and I’ve lost all memory of who I used to be. But I’m alive. That’s something, right?
The woman who says she’s my mother (and who am I to dispute her?) comes back with a beatific smile on her face.
“Did it work, Mamá?” I ask as I turn the rosary beads over in my fingers. It’s something I like to do when I’m nervous, which seems to be all the time.
“Yes, baby, it did. And I’ve told you, you usually just call me Ma.”
“Yes, uh… ma’am.”
All the women like to be called ma’am. I think I will just keep to that from now on. My doctor, a squat man with an impressive build for his age, gives her a reassuring smile.
“Don’t take too much offense, Ms. Daniels. The brain takes time to heal. Some memories will take longer than others,” Dr. Swafford says. He doesn’t say how or when this feeling like I’ve been cut and pasted into someone else’s life will leave.
“Well, he seems to be fleecing you just fine,” she quips. It’s meant to be a joke, but there is a little sour with the honey. Dr. Swafford winces along with John and Mack, the two orderlies sitting at the makeshift poker table I’ve cobbled together from three abandoned lunch trays.
“How much are you down?” Ma asks.
“I’m embarrassed to say,” Doc says, and laughs. “We started with five-card stud, but it only took him one round to come out ahead. Then we switched to Texas hold ’em, and I felt like the sage for all of twenty minutes. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, and I’m a neurosurgeon.”
I surreptitiously close the drawer holding my winnings. It began with packs of snack foods—cream-filled cookies and colorful chips—and eventually I traded the snacks for cash. I know without being told that my mother doesn’t completely approve. She shakes her head as she sets her purse down in the lounge chair she’s made her bed for the last two weeks.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was hustling you. He’s a card shark. I told you not to bet anything of value, but look at ya. All of you have that glassy-eyed look of straight-up gambling addicts. I thought you were professionals.”
“I’m on break,” Mack, a pug-nosed man with an affinity for cartoon-covered scrubs, counters in mock offense. “I’m doing double shifts, trying to get overtime before the renovations start.”
“And losing all your overtime pay right here in my baby’s room,” Ma chastises.
“All right, guys, Ms. Daniels is absolutely right. Fayard needs to recuperate,” Dr. Swafford says.
They all make a big show of getting ready to leave, but when John knocks an unopened pack of cards onto the floor he whispers, “Gin rummy. Tomorrow, right after lunch.” The lunch trays disappear, and I roll my wheelchair behind Dr. Swafford as he makes his way out.
“I want you to write down as much as you can remember about your stay here,” he asks.
“I’m not doing anything but sitting, maybe rolling down to the game room.”
“Yes, but you’re meeting people, eating foods you can and can’t remember. Write it all down: the smells, tastes, sounds, all of it. It’s very important. Describe your mother to yourself as if you’re writing to someone who has never seen her.”
“I picked up a blank journal in the gift shop downstairs,” Ma replies.
“Good,” Doc says to her, and turns back to me. “Just a few more days and we’ll get those bandages off. And as soon as you feel ready, try using those crutches. I’ll talk to the nurse about getting you extra sessions with the physical therapist. Don’t worry. We’ll have you up and about in no time.”
I nod my head, but I can smell the fear and uncertainty wafting off my mother as keenly as if she’d stepped in it. I would smile to reassure her, but she wouldn’t see it. They have my face wrapped up pretty good and I’m drugged up even better.
“Do you want to watch some television?” she asks.
The question sounds muffled, like she’s standing behind a curtain. I shake my head. I’m thinking about the girl. I’m nervous and I feel stupid for being nervous about meeting someone I used to know, who used to know me. We are essentially strangers, but realizing she’s on the same floor fills me with… curiosity? Longing? How can you miss something you don’t even remember having?
I can’t look at her. Not that I’m physically incapable—there’s just something else holding me back. We decided to meet in the teen area of the children’s wing instead of in her room so my stilted conversation wouldn’t be the only entertainment. The game room at the hospital is pretty large, made to fit a whole horde of sick children, but there are just a few of us here. Bright colors swirl along the walls and meld into a yellow ceiling cut at an angle so there are more corners than there should be. I assume the design is supposed to keep our minds off the pain coursing through our bodies. There are large televisions affixed to two walls, one for watching and one for gaming. Since the younger kids keep an endless stream of fairy tales in queue, gaming is where the action is.
I get there first, and when she arrives, I’m able to ask her mundane questions over my shoulder instead of trying and failing to keep her from staring at the bandages on my face. There’s a couch, yoga balls, and a love seat, all facing the gaming console with space for wheelchairs between. I’ve taken up residence in one of the love seats nearest to the window, but with a view of the hallway and exits. I get nervous when I can’t see the exits. Her nurse, a slim guy named Hassan, rolled her in and parked her almost directly behind me. I keep my voice light, using all the effort I have to keep it from shaking or breaking like a tween’s, but that’s how I feel: an awareness waking up inside my bones, vibrating and lighting my skin on fire… again.
Her voice is like music.
“My cousin Letitia said you came to say goodbye to me at the airport. I’m sorry. I know I don’t remember asking you to come, but you might not have gotten hurt if you didn’t, so I, uh… wanted to say that.”
“It was my decision. Nobody knew what was going to happen. I’m sorry about your sister,” I say.
“Thanks. I… don’t remember her.”
“I don’t remember my mother. It’s awkward,” I add, and when she replies, I can sense the smile in her voice. At least we’ve got camaraderie born from a similar situation.
“I know. I’ll say something and people think I’m being rude, or they’ll touch me in a familiar way and I’ll jump ’cause it’s a stranger stroking my arm. Then they’ll look at me like I’ve just spit in their coffee,” she says.
“I stopped talking as much. My mother keeps staring at me like there is some stranger underneath the bandages who is impersonating her son,” I say sadly.
There’s a pause. My heart skips a beat from the tension. “Have you seen what you looked like without them?” she asks.
“I’ve seen pictures, but I don’t recognize that person,” I reply. He feels like a stranger whose life I inherited.
One of my hands is completely untouched by burns, so I was able to use my thumbprint to log into my social accounts and get on my phone. I try to spend at least an hour a day scrolling through pictures of myself with friends, family, trying to jump-start something in my head. Some pictures are more private than the others. I saw her naked this morning. Not completely, but in parts, like a wicked puzzle in my photos folder. A thigh here, a belly shot there. More.
I won’t mention the pictures. Maybe that other guy won’t ever come back, and I want her to like me for who I am now, not some memory, or out of obligation. Plus, who knows what I will look like once I’m unwrapped. I don’t want to get her hopes up. I don’t want to get my hopes up.
“I don’t like dresses,” she says firmly, as if she’s just made a very important decision that needed to be announced.
I’m not ready to turn around completely, but I can see her leg, a lean brown velvety limb, jutting out from her cast and covered in a gauzy purple flowered fabric. I like dresses, this dress, even if she doesn’t, so I don’t respond.
“I think the girl I used to be liked them, but I don’t. There’s too much air breezing against my legs, not that it can be helped in this wheelchair.”
I want to be that air. Wow! I have got to get myself together. I clear my throat and adjust myself in my seat, staring at the little dinosaur on the screen as it burps flames.
“Is there another game on here?” I ask.
Corey, a bald boy with cracked lips and a filthy sense of humor, switches to another screen. He can’t be more than fifteen, but acts like he’s thirty. “I know your bag, Torch. You want a first-person shooter. I can tell.”
I am so desperate to do something with my hands, distract myself in some small way, I forget to tell him not to call me Torch. “Uh, sure. I would like a first-person… shooter. Um, what exactly is it?”
“It’s really self-explanatory. Apocalypse Moon. You see something, you shoot it.”
A minute later the entire room is filled with the sound of gunshots; animated gore splashes against the screen, and it does the trick. I can’t say that I like what I’m doing, but it is immersive, and then I remember that this is supposed to be a light chat, a chance to meet an old friend and make a new one. I grit my teeth and turn to face her.
“I’m sorry. This probably isn’t the kind of thing you want to see right now, after what happened.”
Her head tilts a bit as she considers me, and her mouth lifts into a slight smile. She looks exactly like the girl in the photos, but she’s got this unexpected strength, a sharpness like the key lime pie they served for dessert last night. The girl in the pictures seemed softer, sweeter. Neither one better than the other, just different.
“I got next.”