Adrenaline Crush (3 page)

A hand is cradling mine.

“Dyna?”

I want to tell whoever is controlling the rockslide to knock it the hell off and let me sleep already.

“Come on, Dyna.”

Memory and reality collide and I know I'm riding in the back of an ambulance.

Pain gnaws at the edges of my consciousness and my right leg feels like it may have been chopped off with a dull ax.

Everything is different.

I want to curl into a cocoon. Get away from the rockslide that is still happening. To be held still and safe. I'm so tired.
Pull it together, Dyna,
I command, gathering feeble wisps of determination.

“Dyna. Please.”

I open my eyes to a close-up view of Jay. His wet hair is slicked back and he is staring at my face as if the two of us have known each other all our lives. Like I mean something to him.

We're suspended in each other's gaze for a wide-open moment but then

the thing

that thing

that happened

to me

that landed us together

is here.

I blink against the images rushing through my mind—

sky-and-water-and-the-black.

I shut my eyes.

Despite the jostling, Jay is gentle when he strokes the side of my face. He squeezes my hand and I wince. “Sorry,” he says. “You must have burned your palm on the rail.” But neither one of us lets go.

I fight heavy eyelids, forcing myself to look at him. I see he has a tiny scar on his cheek, right where the skin dimples in when he purses his lips.

Ignoring the pain rising from my leg, I say, “Thought you said you wouldn't rescue me.” My voice sounds strange. Weak.

Jay snorts and shakes his head back and forth slowly. “I thought you said I wouldn't need to.”

I close my eyes again and concede, “I guess you've got me there.”

“That's right.” Jay's voice soothes against my ear. “I've got you.”

I slip back to the black.

*   *   *

When I claw my way out again, I'm used up and the world has turned minty white.

Thankfully, I'm out of the rockslide, but Jay is gone. My right leg now feels as if it's been run through a wood chipper, and I'm lying on a bed being rolled down a wide corridor. Crinkled white ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights alternate endlessly above me.

I try to sit up, but my head is too massive to raise more than a few inches. I sink back down to a pillow that crunches as if it's filled with wadded paper. “Jay…?” I say, but my voice trails off and my fight to remain conscious drains away. A hovering masked chin dips down saying … something. The muffled voice is kind, but I'm too far away now to make sense of what it's telling me.

*   *   *

Quiet and stillness have finally descended and my leg feels like it's being dragged toward the ceiling. The whole right side of my body throbs. When I open my eyes my mother's there. She's holding my hand and looking at me as if she hasn't seen me in weeks. Dad stands behind her, hands on her shoulders. When I blink at him his face crumbles in on itself for a flash.

“Welcome back, Dyna Glider,” he says.

I haven't been so happy to see my parents since I was a little kid.

Despite the fact that I'm lying down, my head feels spinny. I breathe in disinfectant, and it's oddly comforting. My right ankle hurts bad, but I'm able to separate from most of the pain and push it away.

A petite nurse gives me a lipsticked grimace as she works her way around my bed. She reminds me of a nervous field mouse as she checks the plastic bags of fluid going into and coming out of me. When Dad moves his arm so she can get by him, she practically leaps out of her pink crocs.

Typical.

When I look at my folks, I see Mom, who can sew anything imaginable without following a pattern and who makes detailed charcoal sketches of plants and insects in order to relax. And I see Dad, whose big bushy eyebrows bump together when he's being serious, which is most of the time, but who has the loudest booming laugh that reverberates for miles and makes it totally worth the effort to coax it out of him. I see my parents and I'm overwhelmed with love for them, but I know that's not what this nurse sees.

This nurse sees Mom's chunks of purple highlights and her sundress with no bra. She sees Dad's hair snaking down his back in a long row of elastic hair ties.

And especially—I guarantee this—she sees the tattoos.

Both of my parents are completely covered in ink. Dad's tattoos include many styles from various artists over the years, but he's the best tattooist north of Manhattan and he's done all of Mom's inkwork. He calls her body his masterpiece. She's gorgeous and gets stopped on the street all the time by folks who want to snap her picture.

I look over at the kaleidoscope design that starts at her shoulder and wraps down around a baby's handprint on her elbow. My handprint. Growing up with the mosaic of familiar images and knowing the meaning behind the art, I absolutely love the way my parents look. But I've learned that lots of people have trouble seeing past a person's skin.

The nurse busies herself making scribbles on a clipboard before scampering away around the empty bed beside me and out the door.

“How're you feeling, honey?” Mom asks. She strokes my hair as if I'm an angel that only she can see. My accident seems to have brought out some supernurturing mother alter ego she's been repressing.

It's kind of creeping me out.

“Hard to believe.” Dad rubs his hands together. “Made it all the way to seventeen without needing a hospital. That's a good run, sweetheart.”

Everything's too heavy; even the air weighs on me. Twinges of pain run along my shin and—I'm hit with a horrible thought. I whisper, “Will I be able to climb again?”

“Well,” Mom says. “I mean…” She smooths my blanket. “You'll need … physical therapy…” Bile fills the back of my throat as my mother falters for words. She never falters for words.

“What your mom is trying to say,” Dad cuts in, “is that your leg got pretty beat up in your fall.”

Mom's voice is soft. “The way you landed on the … rocks splintered your … ankle. But hey—” She rubs my arm. “It could've been much worse.” Her voice catches.

I look at Dad. “You were knocked unconscious by the trauma of your fall. If you'd been alone you might have drowned.”

“It was a good thing that boy was there.” Mom gives me a weak smile. “He saved you.” I picture Jay carrying me out of the water all broken and bleeding.

“The doc had to go a little medieval on that ankle, Glider,” Dad jokes, but his eyebrows stay fused together. “Pins and screws and clamps. But they got you pieced back together all right.”

“The operation went well.” Mom nods. “The doctor said he was pleased.”

“Now they just have to watch you for infection. It was an open break and the way your bones were exposed … there's a chance…” Dad doesn't go on.

“A chance of what?” I clutch the sides of the bed. “A chance I could lose my foot?”

I feel helplessly trapped in a way I hadn't a moment ago.

“Easy there,” he says. “They think they got everything cleaned out and they're pumping you full of antibiotics right now, but it's too early to tell.”

“Visualize healing,” Mom says soulfully. “Believe for zero infection.”

Dad looks me in the eye. “Depending on how much mobility you get back, there's also a chance you might need a cane … permanently.” His face crumbles again for a flash and I look away.

Please-no-please-no-please-no.

Out loud I say, “This isn't happening.”

“You're okay,” Mom says, as if she's the one who needs to hear it. “Everything is okay.”

I take a deep breath and try to believe the words of this calm, meditative woman who is posing as my mother.

Everything is okay.

“That there is some fucked-up shit!” My big brother walks in the door and raises his pierced eyebrow at me.

“Har-ley,” Mom chides. “Language, please.” Which isn't really fair since she swears plenty when she thinks we can't hear her. And sometimes when she knows we can.

“Nice work, sis,” Harley says, as he hands Dad a sweating bottle of water. “I've broken my ankle but never had my tib rip through the skin before. You'll have a gnarly shin scar and serious bragging rights.” He looks proud of me. “Classic Dynamite.”

I wince as a throbbing pain shoots up my leg.

Mom reads my expression. “The doctor mentioned your meds would be wearing off soon.” Dad starts tapping at the call button.

“Let's try to get you some of the good stuff,” he says, and winks at me as Nurse Nervous pokes her head into my room.

“She's in terrible pain,” my mother says.

The nurse lifts my chart off the foot of the bed. Dad smiles and tells her, “You're going to want to give her something extra-strong. There's a high tolerance in our genes.”

She looks at the tattoo sleeves covering Dad's arms and squeaks, “She can have more Percocet in another half hour.”

Harley whispers under his breath, “Mmmm, I got Percocet for my busted clavicle.”

Dad says, “Thank you, ma'am,” as the nurse heads toward the door. He always treats the folks who don't see past his tattoos just as nice as can be. He calls it “pardoning the ignorant.”

My mother, on the other hand, is not so forgiving. “Thirty minutes,” she says sharply, and the nurse scurries her final steps away from us.

“You're lucky,” says Harley, and we all look at him. Gesturing to the empty bed he clarifies, “No roommate. Last time I was here overnight I had a guy with night terrors.”

I look at Dad. “Take me home?”

“'Fraid not, Dyna Glider.”

Mom offers, “I'll stay with you. I can sing you to sleep like I did when you were little.” With that, she launches into a falsetto chorus of “Blackbird.”

“Seriously?” I look at Dad. “Please get her out of here, she's starting to freak me out.”

“Let's go, Beth.” He moves to pull Mom up by her shoulders. “Once they give her more pain meds she's just going to pass out anyway.” He lifts her hand-stitched satchel over her kaleidoscope shoulder. It's one of the bags she sews for the Groovy Blueberry clothing store in town. She gives my face an embarrassing number of wispy kisses before Dad is able to guide her away from my bed.

“You get some rest,” he says. “We'll see you tomorrow.”

Harley gives me a wink and leans in. “Enjoy the high, sis.”

“Thanks, freak.” I smile as he lopes after our parents. I've been looking forward to the kick-ass birthday gift he promised when I finally turn eighteen in September. Skydiving. When he isn't working one of the registers at the Park-n-Shop, he spends his time at a nearby parachuting mecca called the Ranch, and now that he's hit five hundred dives he's qualified to do tandem jumps. Apparently the only thing more awesome than jumping out of a plane is strapping another human being to your chest and
then
jumping out of a plane. I'll finally be old enough to jump with him. I imagine stepping into the sky. Falling.

My lingering smile turns stale.

The hospital room is quiet without my loud family, and I realize I forgot to ask them if they got to meet Jay. I glance at the raised appendage that is my damaged leg and try to ignore the chains of regret pulling at me. But my mind wants to dig through the rubbish of the day and figure out how I ended up here. What did—? And I realize:

I chose this.

The thought hits me so hard I rub my forehead.

Everything—the fall, nearly dying, the possibility of being permanently crippled. These must be the experiences I've been searching for. The logical extreme conclusion to all my risk taking. I simply reached the end of the road I've been traveling down full-speed for years. Did I really chase after this with everything I have?

Maybe I
am
one of those psycho chicks with a death wish after all.

 

4

“Stop torturing yourself.” Mom snatches
Rock with a View
from my hands.

“Hey,” I say, even though I know she's right. Scanning through my well-worn trail guide, picturing each path, is only making things harder.

The orange living room couch has effectively become my prison for the past week since my accident. I'm shackled in place by my elevated ankle, and my summer activities have been reduced to lying flat on my back doing nothing.

Even sleep has become a rare escape as I spend nights here endlessly repositioning. The stairs might as well be blocked by a barbed wire fence. I glance over at them now, mocking me with their even, gentle rise, and I marvel at how far I've fallen. It seems I've dodged the bullet of infection, so at least I get to keep my mangled ankle and foot, but it's still way too soon to tell just how useful they will be.

If there's too much tissue damage I could still be a candidate for fusion, which means they'd lock my ankle at a ninety-degree angle so I could lead a normal life free from excruciating pain.
And free from rock climbing. And free from
— I cut myself off and stare at the plaster ceiling as some TV nature show about insects drones on in the background.

“Is Jay coming by today?” Mom asks.

I nod and pull out my smile. Jay's daily visits are the only bright spot in this festering cesspool of suckage that my life has become. A wave of pain inches up my shin, and I breathe through my teeth until it fades to a bearable level. I stopped taking my pain pills after a few days because at least the sharp pangs give me something to focus on.

The sun tauntingly soaks the outdoors as the narrator on television describes the intricate communal structure of an ant colony.
The ceiling is definitely lower than it was yesterday.