Skinned -1 (32 page)

He didn’t.

“What?” he asked, sounding irritated.

I stared at his fingers, the fingers that hadn’t moved since I came into the room. The fingers that he was letting me touch, even though he didn’t want me touching him.

“Does it hurt?” I asked again, for a different reason this time.

“Nothing hurts.” He sounded like a robot. He sounded like I sounded before I got control of my voice again, when I had to communicate through an electronic box.

“What does it mean? What’s going to happen?”

“C5. That’s
C
for cervical, five for the fifth vertebra down,” he said. “They’ve got it al mapped out. C5 means I keep head and neck motion. Shoulders, too. Eventual y. It means right now I can’t feel anything beneath my neck. It means I’m fucked for life.”

“Not anymore,” I protested. “They can fix that now. Can’t they?”

“They fuse the cord back together. Yeah. And then nerve regeneration. You get some feeling back. You get some motion. They cal it ‘limited mobility.’ It means you can walk, like, a little. A couple hours a day. And apparently if I practice, I might be able to piss for myself again.”

“So that sounds…” It sounded like a life sentence to hel . “Hopeful.”

“Yeah. As in, they hope it won’t hurt so much I spend the rest of my life doped up, but they’re not sure. As in, they hope they can put me back together enough that I don’t die in ten years, but they’re not sure. Fucking high hopes, right?”

There had always been something sweet to Auden, something careful y hidden beneath the cynicism and the conspiracy theories and the family baggage, as if he was afraid to reveal his secret reservoir of hope. But that was gone now. There was nothing beneath the bitter but more bitter.
It’s temporary,
I told myself.

Things change.

“If it’s that bad, why don’t you…take the other option?” I asked.

“And exactly what might you be referring to?”

I hesitated. “Nothing.” So that was it. He didn’t want to be like me, no matter what he may have said. He’d rather be miserable, debilitated, in pain, than be like me. Maybe I couldn’t blame him.

“Say it.”

“Nothing.”

“Say it!”
Something beeped, and he took a deep, gasping breath. “Better listen to me,” he said, panting. “I’m not supposed to get agitated.”

“Why don’t you download?” I said quickly, remembering something else I’d hated when I was the one trapped in a bed. The way everyone suddenly got so scared of nouns, as if vague mentions of “what happened” and “your circumstances” would make me forget what was actual y going on. As if by not saying it out loud, they were helping anyone but themselves.

“Brain scans.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t—What?”

“They took brains scans,” he said, haltingly. “And there was an anomaly.”

I stil didn’t understand.

“I’m disqualified,” he said. “Structural abnormalities. Predisposition for mental disorder and/or decay. Unlikely but possible. So just in case—automatic disqualification. They don’t want me living forever if I’m going to go crazy, right?” He laughed. “It’s funny, isn’t it?”

I pressed my lips together.

“Yeah, no one else seems to think so either,” he said. “Maybe I’m crazy already.”

“They can’t fix it?” I asked softly. “Whatever it is?”

“They could have. Before I was born. If they’d known about it, if my mother had let them screen for that kind of thing. But she thought it was superfluous. She only wanted the basics.” He laughed again. It was a weirdly tinny, mechanical sound, since his body was immobilized and his lungs were barely pumping any air. “Thanks, Mom.”

“There’s got to be something you can do, if you paid enough, some way to change their minds?”

“Nothing. No brand-new body for me. I’m stuck with this one. For life.” He paused. “As long as that lasts.” I squeezed his hand again. Not that he felt it.

“Funny, isn’t it?” he said. “They can make a fake body from scratch, but they can’t fix a real one. Guess there’s only so much you can do when you’re stuck with damaged goods.” He didn’t laugh. “No, I guess that’s not very funny either.”

“I can help,” I told him. “I know how it feels, lying there, thinking your life is over. I understand.”

“You understand
nothing
,” he spat out. “That’s what you always used to tel me, right? ‘You can’t understand, not unless you’ve been there.’ You’ve never been here.”

“You’re alive,” I said, aware that I was sounding like cal -me-Ben, like Sascha, like every medical cheerleader I’d ever wanted to strangle. And now I final y got why they’d said al that. They needed to believe it. You couldn’t look at someone so broken and
not
believe they could, somehow, be fixed. “That’s something.”

“Something I don’t want. Not like this.”

So I said what al those cheerleaders never had. The truth. “Neither would I. And…it’s never going to be like it was before.
Never
. That wil never be okay. But
you
wil .” He snorted.

“I know you don’t believe it,” I said desperately. “I know it al sounds like greeting-card bul shit that doesn’t apply to you, but it does. Maybe I can’t understand everything, but I understand that. The way you feel? I honestly don’t know if that goes away. But people—
you
—can get used to things, even if it seems impossible now. You can make it work.”

“Oh real y?” he said, bitterness chewing the edges of the false cheer. “Thanks
so
much for the insight. So I can get used to a machine tel ing me when it’s time to pee, and when it’s time to shit, and then helping me do it—and that’s
after
al the regeneration surgery’s done. Until then, I just get a diaper. You think you could get used to changing it for me? I can get used to internal electrodes that spark my muscles into action and let me walk around and pretend I’m normal until it hurts so much that I fal down and have to get someone to cart me away? They tel me that part’s the medical miracle. Twenty years ago I might have been a lump in this fucking bed for the rest of my life, with people feeding me and turning me and wiping my ass. So you think I can get used to people tel ing me how fucking grateful I should be? And I can get used to my lungs working at half capacity, if I’m
lucky
, and feeling like I’ve got an elephant stomping on my chest—at least until the fluid builds up, and while I wait around for them to come suck it out, it just feels like I’m drowning? Not that you would know anything about that.”

“It sucks,” I said. “I know that. But you’re not alone. You don’t have to do this alone. I’m here, just like you were there for me.” I remembered the day I froze in the quad, the way he knew exactly what to say and what to do, even though he didn’t know me at al . And now no one knew me except for him. “We’l do this together.”

“Together.” He snorted. “Right. And maybe you’l final y fal deeply in love with me and make al my dreams come true. We’l live happily ever after. As long as they can rig me up with some kind of hydraulic system. Not like I ever got to do it the normal way, so I guess I won’t even notice the difference.”

“Auden, don’t—”

“Don’t what? Tel you al about how my penis may get ‘moderate sensation’ back, and if I respond wel to the electrical-impulse therapy—which, let me tel you, my penis and I are real y looking forward to—I might,
might
be able to get the fucking thing up, up for some fucking, I mean, but—”

“Please don’t.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, am I grossing you out with al the medical details? Or is it the thought of having
sex
with me that disgusts you?” He wanted me to fight with him. I wasn’t going to do it. Not now. Not here. “I thought my life was over when I woke up like this,” I said. “But you’re the one who told me that I could handle it. That I could start fresh.”

“This is different.”

“I know, but—”

“No!” The beeping started again. “You
don’t
know. This isn’t what you went through. This isn’t what you understand. This is
me
, my life. This is the way it’s going to be forever: shit.” He closed his eyes, sucking in heavy gulps of air.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, silently pleading with him to stay calm. “Just tel me what you want from me. What can I do?”

“You can get out.”

I stood up. “You’re right. You should try to sleep. I’l come back later.”

“No. You should get out and not come back. Ever.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This is your fault,” he said in a low voice. “What happened…It’s your fault.”

“It was an accident. You were just trying to…save me.” When I didn’t need saving.

“Seems like I’ve been doing that a lot,” he said. “You do something stupid, you do something reckless, and I fix it. You treat me like crap, and I save you again. Because I’m stupid. Was stupid.”

I closed my eyes. “You’re my best friend.”

He went on like he hadn’t heard. Or didn’t want to. “You’re probably happy, aren’t you? Why should anyone else get to be healthy and normal if you’ve got to walk around like some kind of mechanical freak, right?”

He’s just trying to hurt me,
I told myself. And I had to let him do it if that’s what he needed. I had to do whatever he needed.

This is not my fault.

“Maybe this was the plan al along. Is that it? Is that why you kept dragging me along with you, making me take al those stupid risks? You were trying to get me kil ed—Excuse me, I mean, get me
broken
?”

“Of course not! This was an
accident
.”

“This was inevitable. And if you didn’t see that, you’re as stupid as I was.”

“Auden, come on. I…I love you.”

“But not in
that
way, right?”

I would have happily lied if I’d thought there was even a chance he would believe me. “No. But—”

“But I’m supposed to grovel at your feet, thankful for whatever I can get from you, right? Sorry, not in the mood today. I’m not feeling too wel .”

“Tel me how to make this better. Please.”

“I already did: Get out. The only reason I’m talking to you now is that I wanted you to hear it from me. What you did. Now you know. So we’re done.” I didn’t move.

“Obviously I can’t force you,” he said. “I’m just going to close my eyes and pretend you’re not here. And hopeful y when I open them, you won’t be. You want to do something for me? Do that. Help me pretend I stil have some fucking control over
something
.”

He closed his eyes.

I left.

But I didn’t leave the hospital. Because he was right: He didn’t have control over anything anymore. Including me.

I went back to the waiting room. I watched his father return. I watched the doctors and nurses pass through on the way from one crisis to another.

I waited.

I waited until late that night, after his father had fal en asleep and the few remaining doctors and nurses were too busy watching the clock to watch me. And once outside his doorway, I waited again, watching, making sure Auden was asleep.

Then I crept inside. I lifted the chair and placed it at the foot of his bed where, even if he woke up, he wouldn’t be able to see me. He obviously wouldn’t hear me breathing. And he wouldn’t feel my hands resting on the lumpy blanket, cradling his useless feet.

“None
of us are volunteers.”

H
e’s not dead,
I told myself, standing outside the hospital, wondering what to do next. That’s what counts. He won’t die, not for a long time—and not because of this.

It should have felt like good news.

He doesn’t want to die,
I told myself. He may have said it. But only because he didn’t yet understand that some things are bearable, even when you’re sure that they’re not.

I understand,
I told myself.
I can help him.

But the second part of that was a lie. And maybe he was right, and the first part was too.

I told myself:
This is not your fault.

I told myself the anger would pass, and he would forgive.

Denial bleeds into anger,
I told myself. Then would come bargaining and depression, and then, final y, always, acceptance. He would grieve the loss of the life he had wanted.

He would accept my help.

I told myself I would find a way to get by without his.

I lied.

It was a cold day. It was always a cold day. And, as always, it didn’t matter to me.

Who was I supposed to go to with this?
Auden
was the person I went to. Auden was the one who understood. He was supposed to be the solution, not the problem. So who was I supposed to talk to about losing the only person I could talk to? Who was supposed to cure my loneliness if I was alone?

I was alone.

And maybe it was my fault.

Or maybe not,
I thought suddenly. Auden would never have been hurt if I hadn’t gone to the waterfal , but I would never have gone to the waterfal if Jude hadn’t shown me the way. If he hadn’t practical y
dared
me to jump, turned it into some huge symbolic statement of my identity instead of what it was: a dumb stunt. Crazy, like Auden had said. Not that I had bothered to listen.

I need to see you
,
now
, I texted Jude, and he sent me an address without asking why. Maybe he just assumed I’d always needed him and was only now realizing it. He was just enough of an ass to think that way.

This is not my fault,
I told myself again, and there was more force behind it this time.
It’s his.

It was a different house than before. More of an estate, real y; almost a feudal vil age, complete with outlying buildings dotting the grounds and, atop the highest hil , a turreted Gothic monstrosity that looked like a fairy-tale castle if the fairy tale was
Sleeping Beauty
, where the princess’s home was decrepit, covered with thorns and forgotten. Jude met me outside.

“You live
here
?”

“It’s Quinn’s,” Jude said. “She’s invited some of us to stay…for a while.”

“She barely knows you.”

His lips curled up. “I guess she knows enough.” He guided us down an overgrown path, headed toward a giant greenhouse. There was nothing inside but a thicket of dead plants. Most of the windowpanes were empty; the ground crunched with shattered glass. “So, you come here to chat about real estate?”