A day later the phone rings. It’s Nick. He wants to know if I’d like to go out. At night.
A real date.
When Nick pulls up, I find myself terrified that Mallory will be in the front seat.
After dinner we go to a bar, the kind with dartboards and scrawl on the walls. I almost get turned away because the bouncer thinks I’m drunk. A friend yells at the bouncer, “She had brain surgery, you idiot.” Inside, I sink into a conversation with some friends and watch Nick laugh with his brother. Later, we head to the back patio to smoke, and Nick takes my hand to guide me down the steps. Someone says, “Whoa there, had too much to drink?” Another guy asks why my glasses are taped. He’s drunk and loud. Nick squeezes my hand. “Want to go?” he asks. I say no. It’s the truth. I want to be here. With him.
Nick didn’t want to leave his camera in the car, so he’s wearing it around his neck. A group of people ask him to take a picture. They all have their arms around each other. I know a few of them. “Do you want to get in?” Nick whispers. “No,” I say. “Okay,” he says, “I’ll make this quick.”
•
Pretty soon, the laundry, the grocery store, and weeknights have all turned into opportunities for Nick and me. He empties his pockets on top of my dresser at the end of the day. Mallory calls and invites me out for a smoothie. I sit across from her and we each suck our drinks and she talks about the new cupcake café and where to get a cheap pedicure. Then she says, “I’m really happy for you and Nick, you know?” I never hear from her again.
•
I need another surgery. Nerves from the tip of my tongue will be spliced and fused with ones in my left cheek. That way, when I push my tongue against the roof of my mouth, the paralyzed side will smile. That’s the idea, anyway.
The surgery means two nights in a large hospital in Kansas City. I thought the surgery would be minor, so I told my father and Elizabeth not to come. The operation takes nine hours.
When I wake up in the hospital room my neck feels like a giant pillow. I look in a mirror and find a long gash of stitches that goes up one side of my neck and into my ear. It is crusted with blood and puffy like a snake is stuck inside. The left side of my face is yellow and beginning to bruise, and my bad eye is completely red.
I go to my mother’s house in Iola to recover. I listen to chick-lit books on CD. My stepfather puts on rubber gloves from his doctor’s bag and cleans the wound gently but firmly, wringing out the bloody sponge in the sink.
Nick wants to make a trip down, but I don’t want him to see me like this.
A few hours later he is here, hugging me, kissing my cheeks, smearing my antibiotic ointment on his shirt. We go out for slushies. I’m having trouble finding things to talk about. He keeps asking me questions, and I keep trying not to cry.
“How can you even look at me?” I say. “I’m disgusting.”
A bandage falls off my neck and lies face up on the console, looking like a piece of steak.
Nick says, “Hey hey, don’t cry! You’ll hurt your face.” I laugh at myself, gross, sniffing with a giant cup of red slushie in my hand.
“Things are going to get better for you,” Nick says. “Whether it happens the way you want it to, or another way, I just want to be with you.”
And the look on his face—I believe him.
•
The surgery doesn’t work.
My surgeon is out of ideas. He says he’s sorry. And honestly? I’m relieved.
•
Years later I go to an audiologist for a constant ringing in my ears. The results show moderate hearing loss in my left ear, which I already knew from teaching—when a student asks a question I must look at each face in the classroom until I can find whose mouth is moving.
The audiologist recommends a hearing aid, and as I hold the tiny machine in my palm, she points out its features. She says she doesn’t understand why I hadn’t come in until now. Didn’t I want my quality of life to be all it could be?
To me, it already was.