The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) (70 page)

She makes a noise at the sink. “We’re ready for our bath.”

Kenneth’s hand retreats. His voice is breathy. “Back in fifteen minutes.”

As Greta washes my arms, I swear I feel something. She is washing me too quickly.

“Please, Greta. Take your time.”

“I’m afraid now, too.”

I wanted to quiet her fears, but instead I let her hurry my bath. There are no words that could take away her feelings. I share her concern too strongly. When she is done, she hems and haws, then apologizes. I ask her not to, though I am not satisfied by the lack of her touch. She sighs, and leaves.

Kenneth returns, adjusts my drip. “Sweet dreams, my love.” And I disappear.

The fog lifts with molasses’ speed. I hear the doctor speaking to a strange woman. A nurse. I smell the operating room, hear the hollowness of it.

“They’re lovely legs. I imagine the dancer who lost them will miss them, if she survived.”

“They didn’t tell her they were amputating them?”

“Her abdomen was nearly crushed in the accident and she’s been unconscious since they brought her in. How is she to know her legs came out of it unscathed?”

“You’re a devil, Dr Chernofsky. If I ever need this kind of work, I’ll know who to come to.”

“Debbie, you’ll never need this kind of work.”

She giggles, nervously, but the flirtation is over. I try to turn my head. There are bandages on my throat. I can’t swallow. Or breath through my nose, mouth. I hear machines squealing.

“Herb! She’s coming out of it. Bring her down. Now!”

I disappear again.

Greta is bathing me as I wake. She is sniffling. I wonder if she has a cold. I try to speak, but my throat is closed. I think I will suffocate, but there is a tube in my throat sucking air into my lungs. I buck.

“Miss Allison. Please. Be still. He’s done something to your larynx. You’ll be breathing through a tube until the swelling goes down. There’s been a lot of trauma to your body the past few weeks. Don’t let yourself be stressed. I’m taking care of you.
Really
.” Her voice told me someone was near, listening. I relaxed under her touch. “That’s my girl. You’ve got a lot of healing to do.”

I can’t even moan in pain. Kenneth comes in, distracted.

“I have two emergency surgeries this afternoon. I can’t sit with you. Damn. Greta will be here. I’m turning up the drip.”

Again, I am no longer in the world.

My hips and shoulders are on fire when I wake and my supply of painkiller is depleted. My throat feels as though I am a cat with a hairball stuck there. I feel tingling in my hands, like the time I almost lost a few fingers to frostbite. How they felt as they came back to life. I wait for Greta to notice. She’s become so close to me, it’s as if she is me, acutely aware of any pain or pleasure I experience. No one comes.

For the first time, I try to cry. Try because I feel no tears, just the aching in my eye sockets and in my heart.

Then she comes.

“Here.” I hear her changing my bag of chemical bliss. She adjusts it, and I gently begin the feather-light drift into painlessness. “I’m so sorry I took so long. I had the opportunity to sneak into his office. I thought I’d get a look at your records, but there’s nothing unusual. I found other women’s files in yours, but Simon has others in his file, too. Let me think . . . one’s name is Lydia, another Chantal, and the last, her name is Carol.” She clucks her tongue. “How I wish you could respond. I’m not sure what you’d want me to make of it.”

I lazily rock my head. I may not be moving at all. It could be the rolling motion of the medication. I feel constantly at sea.

“I’ll be off on Saturday. I’m going to my nephew’s second birthday party. I don’t want anything to happen to you. If anyone thought we
were suspicious . . .” Her hands smooth my hair. “I’ll save you a piece of cake.”

I would not be eating it soon.

I begin to get feeling in my right arm, first. I manage to put my thumb and forefinger together. Kenneth is overjoyed, as usual. I keep waiting for him to remove the tube in my throat and let me speak. I know the swelling there has gone down. Yet, he continues the monologues, reassuring me that eyes are coming soon. I take to reverie when he does this now, not wanting to believe the words, and unable not to if I hear them.

I recall a visit of Simon’s, about six months after I arrived in the doctor’s clinic. He came in with Kenneth, but stayed on after Kenneth hurried off to do an emergency surgery.

“Kenneth has told me about your progress. I can see how wonderful you look.”

I gestured clumsily with my new hands. Greta had taught me sign language. And I had a large pad of paper and kindergarten pencil to write out blindly what I wished to say.

“I don’t understand.”

I was sitting up by then, and grabbed the pencil and paper Greta had left on my nightstand. I wrote, “I wish I could see how wonderful
you
look. Eyes forthcoming.”

“Oh, I hope so. Kenneth’s told me he reconstructed your vocal chords. When’s he going to take the tube out of you?”

I wrote, “Ask him. It’s long overdue. Seems like months.”

“That couldn’t be right. I will ask. I see you have Greta. She was my nurse, too. The best. I couldn’t have made it without her. She seems especially fond of you.”

Scribbling quickly, “I agree. My angel of mercy.”

“I can’t quite read that. Oh, well, I know she’s great.”

He went on about his new book, but there was no more talk of my surgeries or Kenneth. Greta came in an hour later from lunch and they talked beside me. His affection for her touched me.

And Kenneth continues to reassure me.

It’s now nine months since I arrived. Kenneth took the tube out last month. I will speak in days, he tells me. And eyes are on their way! I already speak, but I keep it from him, selfishly.

I listen to him tell me he loves me, but I don’t believe him. A small part of me longs to, still. He exercises my legs with me when he visits, sometimes touching me, exciting me. He says we will make love soon. When I have eyes. I want no one to touch me that way but Greta, now. I don’t understand it, but it is so.

There is a hunger in me that has been walled off all these months, too, and as I get feeling in my arms and legs, the hunger returns. I crave to write again. To read.

The eyes arrive. Green, Greta tells me. Kenneth warns me the nerves have been kept in optimal condition, but it is the trickiest of surgeries. If he can reattach my brain, he can do anything, I think.

This time when I wake, the darkness is wrapped in true gauze. I feel the bandages and, though I’ve been told not to move a muscle in my eyes, I can’t resist turning them toward the sound of Greta when she comes in. The pain is bearable. I tell her I want the first thing I see to be her face.

She holds me. I can smell her breath, sweet with cloves and honey from her tea.

“I want that. But I’m afraid. I know what you look like. You’ve never seen me.”

“How could I love you less when I’ve seen you? Why would I? If Kenneth could fall in love with me at seventy-eight, and I with you, sight unseen, anything is possible.”

“That’s what I fear. Oh, never mind me. I’ve grown too close, feel everything too much, for both of us. You know, as a nurse, we’re taught not to get too close.
This
is the danger.”

“Why didn’t you stop it earlier? You could have.”

“I’ve thought of that. Considered how different we are. I knew about your past – that you loved men. Made myself take time off, fought the feelings. But there is something that happens when our skins meet. It’s like our electricity runs at the same wattage and we create a current that runs all through us. As if we make something bigger together, than we do on our own. It’s definitely not something in my mind. I’ve always had a stubbornness there that could put an end to something, if I chose to. Not this. No way.”

I chuckle. “I understand completely. Whatever this is, it’s at a level I can’t impose my control over. So, you see? You have no reason to fear.”

Her voice is not as strong as her words. “You’re right.”

That night, I am lying awake, still bandaged, as Sonia reads in her whisper. I hear her get up and go into the hall. There she meets with someone whose voice is not familiar to me. They speak softly to avoid being heard, but my hearing is still acute. I listen hard.

“Well, he’s almost done it.” Sonia speaks conspiratorially.

“Talk about a total cure. It took a dying heterosexual scholar’s brain to do it, but there’s nothing left of Carol. All he has to do is train that voice.”

“She’ll need months of physical therapy for her legs. God, Reed,
what if he’s actually remade her? Her body, anyway. He got rid of the arms that pushed him away, the legs that were going to walk her distant from him, and replaced them. To his taste, I might add. He’s always admired dancers. Something about the musculature. But he wanted Carol’s head and torso. Where was he ever going to find anything better? That kind of beauty is too rare. She did have beautiful breasts. And that’s the irony. This Craig person was dying of breast cancer. Had them both lopped off before Kenny saved her.”

“Ironic, but divine providence. If Carol hadn’t died like that . . . shit, he’s been so much calmer, saner, since then. He just couldn’t handle finding out she was just using him to get pregnant. And then she was going to leave him for her female lover? I thought he’d lose it
permanently
.”

“Oh, come on Reed. How would you handle it if your wife left you for another woman?”

“It would never happen.”

“Kenneth thought the same thing. Male vanity.” She snorts. “It wasn’t him, though. He doesn’t understand that. And now he has to let it go.”

“If he’s ever going to make it with the new Carol.”

“Allison. Her name is Allison. You’d better remember.”

The rest of the conversation blurs. Every suspicion is confirmed. When Sonia returns, I roll over, as if asleep.

The bandages come off today. Each time the doctor removes the bandages to change them, I see a little. Only light really. I am happy for that. I’ve managed to keep my new voice to myself, except from Greta. I want to speak to Kenneth when I can see. There’s so much I need to tell him, and I want to see his reaction.

Kenneth comes to unveil my eyes. I hear other nurses and the voice of Reed. Greta squeezes my hand quickly, then lets go, as Kenneth speaks to the assembled group.

“My Allison sits, she eats and writes and soon she will dance. Today, she sees. I wanted you all here to witness my first complete woman. Some of you know my brother, Reed, the neuro-surgeon. He’s in town especially for the occasion.” Then he turns to me. “Allison, my brother, Reed. Reed, Allison.”

“I’m happy to finally meet you.” His hand touches mine.

I nod. Kenneth removes the bandages without drama. I look about. There are jellyfish in vaseline with pale haloes around them. I blink until I think I see the doorway beyond the shapes.

“What do you see?” Kenneth plucks adhesive residue from my
forehead. I know he expects me to reach for my pad and scrawl my blind scrawl.

I speak. “Shapes. Blurred shapes.” My voice is uncannily like my own. It’s not Carol’s any longer.

A giddy laugh escapes from Kenneth. “You can talk. Ah. This is more than I’d hoped. Everyone, Allison can talk!” There is uncomfortable applause. They can see the look of shock on his face.

Reed takes an eye examination tool and shines a light in my eyes. “Retinal response is fine. Pupils dilate. You did a great job little brother. I applaud you once again. Allison, you are a miracle.” He lifts my hand limply, then drops it.

“I’m tired. I’m sorry I don’t have the energy for a party.”

Kenneth shoos everyone out, including Greta. I see her vaguely, small, dark.

“Can you see me?” Kenneth waves his hand before my face.

“You are the great Dr Chernofsky, I presume?”

“Oh, Allison.” His mouth falls on mine. Our kiss is nothing compared to mine with Greta. I wonder, as his tongue finds mine, if my attraction to Greta is a product of Carol’s cells, the matter of her being, or if I’ve never acknowledged my feelings for my own sex. It doesn’t make any difference. I can’t be Kenneth’s fantasy any longer. Mine, for him, is gone.

“I want to take you on a cruise. The Greek Isles. That would be perfect. What do you think?”

“Kenneth, I want to get back to my writing. One step at a time.”

He looks mildly disappointed. “Listen to you. So impatient when you first arrived, and now you’re the picture of calm.” He pats my hand. “Whenever, Allison. We have a long life ahead.”

I try to smile, but it comes off feigned. He frowns slightly, though I can’t really see, yet. “Am I being too pushy?”

“It’s that, and I need to find myself. My new self. You’ve given me this new body. And a new life. I want to learn what that means.”

Desperation creeps into his voice. “I have a feeling I’m losing you. I can’t lose you.” He turns away, then back. “I won’t.” That tone again. The one he’d used with Sonia. “I’ll kill you if . . .”

I try to sound steady, but I am frightened. “Kenneth. You’re moving too fast, again.”

He nods, mollified slightly. “I’ll let you rest.”

“Thank you.” I squeeze his hand. He seems grateful for that. As he leaves, I close my eyes. I feel deeply sad.

Greta shuts the door behind her and rushes to me. I still can’t see her clearly, but her lips are real on mine and her arms around me are sanctuary.

“I love you.” I say the words that have been lying in wait all these months.

She holds me at arm’s length, studying my face, waiting. Slowly, my eyes clear, but only for a moment. She’s familiar in a way. A face I’ve known. Older, lined. Like my own a year ago. I’ve fallen in love with someone old. When I learn to use my hands as she uses hers, and have the delicate sense of touch I’ve yet to develop, I won’t be feeling youthful skin beneath them. And I won’t have a lifetime with her. Not
my
lifetime.

I pray my disappointment doesn’t show. I think myself shallow and the sadness returns. If I had known, I don’t know if I would have loved differently. If I could have. How little control we have over nature, even if, like Kenneth, we play God.