Authors: David Marlow
Once certain she would not be allowed to look in on him, Ro-Anne agreed to return home. She cried most of the way.
On Tuesday morning Corky was rushed back into the operating room, leaking essential brain fluid. Doctors feared the possibility of infection or permanent memory damage.
A nurse prepared him for surgery, shaving the hair from his head.
Amy sat in a soft powder-blue chair at the House of Revlon on Fifth Avenue. Tilting her backward, an attendant washed her hair. A hairdresser then applied a sticky white substance over every strand, straightening her wet, kinky curls. Hair done, she was passed on to another salon, where, her foot in an attendant’s hand, she submitted to her first pedicure. “Tip to toe,” Evelyn had described the overhaul.
After another five hours of surgery Corky was wheeled back into his room. A nurse changed the dressing on the bottom of his leg.
He was returned to the operating room on Wednesday. Bone implants were set in his cheeks, giving the unsupported eye something to lean against.
In the office of a Park Avenue dermatologist, Amy winced as the stinging dry ice burned into her cheeks. The doctor dabbed gently at her skin, scaling off an outer layer, removing her acne.
The doctors would have preferred to wait a few more days, but by Thursday Corky’s breathing was so erratic they decided to operate at once.
A neurosurgeon dissolved the blood clots under his skull and then bone surgeons spent five hours restructuring his nose.
“This may hurt a little, Amy,” said Aunt Berniee’s best friend’s son, the plastic surgeon, as he brought a large syringe to the base of her nose.
The two injections Amy had received prior to her arrival in the operating room made her drowsy and relaxed. Still, when the doctor stuck her nostril with the long needle, she moaned.
Men and women in white loomed over her under blinding lights.
Once the local anaesthetic took effect, the plastic surgeon began his work. Amy could feel something on her nose. Hands? Instruments? Though there was no actual pain, she uncomfortably sensed the bone being fractured, broken down before being built up again.
A sculptor working in crushed ice, the surgeon’s highly paid fingers molded and shaped. The sound of bones being rearranged sickened Amy as she drifted in and out of sleep.
Someone said, “Smile, please.”
The lids of Amy’s eyes opened and she smiled. Voices around the operating table approved.
She was wheeled out to the recovery room as the next patient was wheeled in.
The operation had lasted twenty minutes.
After spending four days at Doctors Hospital, Amy went back to Aunt Berniee’s apartment in the Bronx. She spent most of her time staring out onto the Grand Concourse, watching cars drive by, by day and night.
The rims of her eyes were black and blue. Clotted blood clung to stitches in her nostrils. A small plaster cast covered her nose and she was bandaged from cheek to cheek. She had trouble breathing and was instructed
not
to sneeze. It hurt when she laughed.
Fortunately for her, she found little that was humorous.
Two things especially annoyed Dr. Silverstein. One was working inside a mouth that had recently hosted onions; the other was being disturbed while watching prime-time programming.
So when Guy placed his fourth call that week, at the very climax of “77 Sunset Strip,” the good doctor abandoned his chairside manner. “How many times do I have to tell you, young man
? Amy is not at home!”
This time Guy would not be bullied. “I can understand her not wanting to speak with me, Doctor Silverstein. Honest.”
“What are you talking about? Once and for all, she’s not here!”
“But doesn’t she know about Corky’s accident?”
“What accident? She knows nothing. She’s in New York with her mother.”
“New York?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s she doing there?”
“Visiting her aunt.”
“But she said nothing to me about any visit …” Guy stopped when Dr. Silverstein breathed impatiently. “Never mind. I’m sorry. When you speak with her will you tell her I called? It’s important.”
“I will,” said Dr. Silverstein, forgetting the messge as soon as he hungup.
Complications set in. Fluid built up in Corky’s lungs and he contracted pneumonia. The accompanying high fever prevented the doctors from operating again for ten days. Impatiently, they waited.
As Amy sat in one of five rooms of the doctor’s busy office an assistant removed stitches, pulling them from her nostrils like thread from an unwinding button.
The plastic surgeon breezed in for a minute and sat down in front of Amy.
Evelyn stood against the wall.
“Well, Amy …” The doctor slowly peeled off the adhesive. “How do you feel?”
“Lousy.”
“Your eyes are still a bit discolored.”
“You should have seen her a week ago, doctor!” Evelyn said.
The surgeon smiled. “Small price to pay for beauty, don’t you think, Amy?”
Amy didn’t answer.
“Don’t move now.” The doctor tugged at the last bandage before lifting the small cast off her nose.
The surgeon leaned back to get a better look. Evelyn stepped forward.
“Well?” Amy asked nervously. “I feel like Claude Rains in
The Invisible Man,”
The doctor handed her a face mirror. “See for yourself.”
The tender skin was swollen out of proportion. The black and blue around the eyes was distracting.
But the Fanny Brice baked potato was gone.
“Oh … doctor,” Evelyn gasped with reverence, “She’s beautiful!”
ON SUNDAY, THE DAY after she and Evelyn returned home, Amy went with her father to his office. She sat there with her mouth stretched open while he tugged, pliered and removed the braces from her teeth.
Halfway through polishing her enamel, he paused to ask her tonsils, “Isn’t all this better than a trip to Europe?”
Guy sat in the Silverstein living room sipping a glass of milk. Across from him, barely resting against the edge of a velvet chair, was Evelyn. She chatted nervously, careful to mention nothing about the past ten days. Tense, expectant, she was poised to gauge his reaction.
When Amy finally walked through the front door she was sliding her tongue across a row of non-metalized teeth.
Guy jumped up. “About time!” he said, joining her in the foyer. “WhereVe you been?”
Evelyn followed, bursting with anticipation.
Amy didn’t know quite how to react to the sight of Guy. Though still annoyed, she still needed to show off the improvements. “Hi!” She opted for nonchalance as she walked into the living room. “I’ve been to the dentist.”
“I mean all week.” Guy pursued her. “Don’t you believe in returning messages? You have any idea what kind of time it’s been? Didn’t your father tell you I called?”
“Never mentioned it.” Amy sat down on the blue couch.
“I don’t believe it.”
“Believe what you like. “ Amy smiled, affording Guy a view of her pearly-whites.
Guy sat down next to her. “Well, where were you?”
Amy combed her silky straightened hair with her fingers. “I was away.”
Evelyn watched intently from the foyer.
“Well, what about Corky?” Guy banged the coffee table with a fist.
“Well, what about him?” Amy frowned.
In a sudden dawning, Guy realized she actually still knew nothing about what had happened. And then his mouth dropped open, because he first noticed how she’d changed. Studying her, he said at last, “Then you don’t know?”
“ Don’t know what?”
Guy leaned forward. “What have you … done … to … yourself?”
Amy pointed to her nose.
“Omigod.”
Amy pointed to her hair.
Was it for real?
Amy pointed to her teeth.
“Where are your braces?”
“No more hardware.”
Guy was dumbstruck.
“Well… ?” She smiled. “What do you think?”
Guy reached out, took both her hands and said, “Corky’s been in a terrible car accident!”
Monday morning the new Amy went to school.
Three other altered noses returned from Easter recess that day, equally anxious. Subdued and still shaken by the news about Corky, Amy walked through the halls between classes, risking reaction. Two girls asked if that wasn’t a new hair style. One thought she’d found a new makeup. The boy sitting next to her in English noticed a change in her profile. “Didn’t you used to wear glasses?”
Amy nodded.
“Thought so. You look better without ‘em.”
For weeks everything was black. When Corky’s brain began transmitting again, nothing but bile came forth.
Still in a light coma, he dreamed. Unending, horrible dreams. The snakes were back, crawling over every part of him. A vicious water moccasin oozed up into his nose and in his stupor he pulled at it, ripping the intravenous tube from his nostril. Whenever a nurse injected him, Corky felt razor fangs sinking their thick venom into his system.
A penned animal, he went wild, ripping tubes from his nose, from his arms, kicking at reptiles; lost in a traumatized coma, screaming for help.
They strapped him down. Subdued with leather tapes on his wrists and thighs, he was unable to fight back. The snakes devoured Corky.
Though still uncertain about his future, the doctors agreed they’d never seen so strong a patient, so fierce a fighter.
“I gave him that!” Mr. Henderson told them proudly.
Carl went back to work. The people at Sears had told him to stay out, on pay, as long as necessary. But after three weeks he could no longer put up with sitting around all day to hear a thirty-second report of little or no progress. Grateful his company insurance plan would cover most of the medical bills, he lost himself in his work, selling dishwashers, toasters, vacuum cleaners, making only infrequent visits to the hospital, trying to forget he had a son in a coma. Trying to forget he had a son.
Dora didn’t miss a day. She’d read in the waiting room until told she could look in. After staring for three minutes, she’d drive home to Waterfield.
When Corky’s temperature finally dropped low enough, the doctors operated again. This time the teeth in his broken jaw were wired together.
Letters arrived at the Hendersons’ notifying Corky he’d been granted full athletic scholarships to both Michigan State and Syracuse. With each announcement, Carl got blind drunk.
When he finally stirred from the horrors of his long sleep, the first thing Corky perceived was dark blue.
As in that suspended moment when night offers its first hint of another day, so did the blackest of Corky’s nightmares come to an end.
The snakes stopped hissing, stopped biting. Slowly dissolving, they retreated into the recesses of his mind.
During the day he saw oranges, yellows. At night, blues.
When at last he opened his eyes, a frightening, blurred vision of bizarre surroundings forced him to shut them again.
A nurse was washing him at the time. She jumped back at the sight of his eyelids opening. “You’ve been in an accident,” she told the unfocused eyes. “You’re in a hospital.”
As darker shades grew lighter and lighter shades became blurred images and blurred images came into focus, Corky could see. But he could not remember.
The doctors spoke to him and he responded, either through clenched teeth of his wired mouth or by squeezing their hands.
Yes he was uncomfortable. Yes he would like another shot of Demerol to ease the pain. No, he didn’t remember his name. No, he didn’t know who the big man and the short woman crying in front of him were.
The doctors asked the Hendersons to be patient. Since the damage was in the brain’s frontal lobes it was personality that was affected, not motor skills. If Corky had been hit in the back of the head he would now be paralyzed. The medical team hoped his disorientation was temporary.
After another week Corky knew his name. He recognized his parents.
Sketchy elements returned. He remembered football. He remembered a red crew-neck sweater. He remembered breakfast that morning. He remembered nothing about the night of the accident.
A giant oak tag get-well card was constructed in art class and everyone in school put their signature to it. The three-foot greeting with eleven hundred names was hand-delivered by student body president Ken Crawley. Corky did not remember Ken.
The doctors decided it might help if closer friends stopped by for a very brief visit.
The following Saturday, Guy and Ro-Anne took the bus to Rushport. Whatever they had been expecting in no way could have prepared them for what they found.
With only intravenous feedings, Corky had lost close to forty pounds in five weeks. Frail, he lay in bed, eyes closed. His muscles had atrophied and his face belonged to a horror film.
Ro-Anne could not watch. It was too awful, too unreal and repulsive. Biting her lip, she groaned and ran from the room.
Corky opened his eyes. Guy stepped forward and stood next to the bed. Corky looked up and thought the visitor even taller than his five-foot-seven height.
Corky remembered Guy. “Camera,” he uttered softly, through clenched and wired teeth.
“That’s right,” said the visitor, “It’s me. Guy.”
“Guy.
” Corky shook his head.
“I think that’s enough for now,” said the nurse.
Guy leaned over and smiled. “I’ll come back and see you soon.”
Corky closed his eyes.
“What happened?” Ro-Anne grabbed Guy’s arm as he drifted into the waiting room. “ Did he wake up?”
“For a minute.”
“I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t. I don’t know that person in there. That wasn’t him. Not my Corky!” She flung her arms around Guy and cried. “How could that be, Guy? How could that… person in there still be alive?”
Guy held her tight. “Don’t cry.”
“Will he forgive me, Guy?” Ro-Anne raised her head and sniffed. “Will he ever forgive me?”
“Of course,” Guy told her. “Besides, he doesn’t remember a thing.”
They rode the bus home in silence, staring blankly at telephone poles whizzing by. As they turned onto Poste Avenue, back in Water-field, Ro-Anne came out of her daze and turned to Guy.