36
AMANDA
The man hovered over Amanda in a white lab coat over a crisp, pale blue shirt and a red tie. A stethoscope dangled from his neck. When he bent over, his glasses slid slightly down his pudgy nose, and he pushed them back up with the tip of his finger. The badge on his lapel read, “Dr. Gendal.”
“I’m glad to see you’re finally with us again, Amanda. You gave us all a good scare.”
Amanda tried to move her head, but she couldn’t.
It felt like she was strapped down, immobilized somehow.
Maybe a band over her forehead? She couldn’t be sure, but that’s what it felt like.
Her arms and legs were secured too, and from what little Amanda could see, she was in some kind of hospital bed.
The air was cold and crisp, filled with soft whirs and beeps.
There was a window on the opposite side of the room, but the heavy drapes were drawn.
Sunlight lined the edges. A table against the wall to her right had several bouquets of flowers. There were some get well cards, too.
When Amanda tried to talk, she realized there was something in her throat. She could see a faint outline of something white protruding from her mouth, but it was hard to get a good look at it. There was a moment when she thought she was choking, but the doctor quickly explained.
“You have a breathing tube in,” he told her. “It was necessary after the surgery. I can remove it now if you feel up for it. It will be slightly uncomfortable, but fast. Would you like me to do that?”
Amanda muffled an unintelligible response, and the doctor smiled sympathetically.
“If you’d like me to remove the tube now, blink twice. If you’d rather I wait and do it later, blink once.”
Amanda pinched her eyes shut, opened them, and blinked again. Two deliberate blinks. She didn’t want him to misunderstand. If the tube could come out, she wanted it gone.
“Okay, then,” he said with another smile.
From a box mounted to the wall, he retrieved a pair of latex gloves and slipped them on, then he leaned back over her and gripped the tube with one hand while placing his other hand on her forehead.
“Okay, I’m going to count to three, then I’m going to pull it out.
I have to warn you, it’s longer than it may seem.
I promise, I’ll go as quickly as possible. Ready?”
Amanda blinked twice again.
“Good girl,” Dr. Gendal said. “Here we go—one, two, three!”
He pulled hard on the tube, and Amanda felt a rough scrape against the inside of her throat.
She thought she could feel it in her stomach, but it couldn’t possibly be that long, right?
He pulled some, then he pulled some more.
He adjusted his grip and pulled again. As promised, he did it quickly, but it felt like it took a lifetime.
When the last of the tube left her throat and her mouth, Amanda felt like she’d continuously thrown up—one long, never-ending pukefest, like that time Rory Sniggle got her drinking vanilla-flavored vodka and the two of them finished off most of the bottle before her body promptly ejected it.
The tube came out.
Amanda’s body vomited it out.
Amanda choked.
She coughed.
She sucked in a breath and coughed some more. Her eyes glazed over with tears, but not before she managed to glimpse the doctor bringing a cup of water with a straw to her lips. “Drink,” he told her. “Drink. You’ll feel better.”
Amanda drank, and she did feel better.
It was all over in under a minute.
“Thank you,” Amanda managed. Her throat felt like raw sandpaper.
“Let me get this off of you, too.” He reached around the side of her head, unfastened the band from her forehead, and dropped it to the side. “With breathing tubes, we always find it best to immobilize the patient’s head.”
That made sense. Amanda could only imagine what would happen if she had twisted her head in her sleep with that tube in her. She might have choked for real. She remembered her arms then, her legs, and gave those bindings a gentle tug. “Can these come off, too?”
“Soon,” he told her. “You were thrashing around quite a bit in your sleep, and I can’t risk you hurting yourself. Your stitches are still fresh. I’d hate for you to tear them and open a fresh wound.”
Stitches?
Why had she needed stitches?
Amanda tried to remember where she’d been, but her mind was a fuzzy mess.
She remembered leaving Midbo. She remembered the stolen truck and Jerry.
Remembered getting to Charleston, but things after that were missing.
Like someone had erased the tape. She’d seen a movie once where that happened.
This woman was in a car accident and couldn’t remember what happened. Is that—
“Was I in an accident?”
This seemed to puzzle the doctor. His head tilted slightly to the side. “An accident? Oh, heavens no. I removed your kidney. That’s why you’re here.”
“My . . .”
Amanda felt the blood leave her face, and she felt something else too, something she hadn’t felt only a moment earlier. A deep pain in her lower left flank.
The doctor’s face melted into a wash of concern.
He carefully pulled back the sheets covering Amanda, then tugged up the thin gown draped over her body.
She was naked under the gown and felt embarrassed and exposed, but the doctor didn’t so much as glance at her private parts.
Instead, he gently ran his finger over a raised incision that started near her belly button and ran toward her back, following the lines of her thigh.
“I’m not sure how well you can see this, but the procedure went splendidly. The incision should heal nicely.”
Amanda struggled to find the words. “What happened? Why did you have to remove my kidney?”
The doctor only smiled.