CHAPTER 8 THE AIR NEAR MY FINGERS
THE AIR NEAR MY FINGERS
Phoenix
An insistent beeping stirred inside Phoenix’s brain.
Its fuzzy edges grew crisper, more solid until he could no longer ignore the sound.
He assessed himself, struggling to move.
His mind waded through semi-consciousness to test out the weariness in his body.
Eyelids resisted until he forced them open, only to close against a flash of bright white.
A pressure on his arm let him know he wasn’t alone. A familiar voice reached him from far away. His head seemed heavier than possible. So tired.
“Phoenix?” asked the voice again, closer now, and finally giving him the strength to pry open his eyes.
Caleb’s face appeared, dark eyes scowling, framed by a blinding whiteness around his head as if the tattooed scoundrel had turned angel.
“Are you okay?”
Phoenix groaned, and shut his eyes, still unaccustomed to the light.
“Are you in pain?” Caleb asked, protectively releasing Phoenix’s arm.
Christ, that’s what was wrong. Everything hurt. His arms, his legs.
His gut clenched, as he tried to roll into a position that would alleviate the fire incinerating his limbs. Moving was difficult, as if he was weighed down by sandbags.
A chair scraped the ground. “You want me to get the doctor? Or Mom?” Caleb asked.
“Wait.” Phoenix’s voice croaked from what seemed like years of disuse.
“Water? You want a drink?” His brother leaned so close that Phoenix could feel his breath.
Phoenix’s mouth felt as dry as Death Valley in August. He nodded.
He heard liquid trickling into the hollow of a cup. He opened his eyes to reach for his brother’s hand, the cup blurry. Shit. Wires restricted his movements.
His brother’s face came into focus, distraught, with his mouth set in a grim line.
“What happened?”
Caleb’s brows furrowed. “You were in an accident. You’re in the hospital.”
“In the hospital? What do you mean?”
This makes no sense. I need to finish a campaign pitch . . . brunch with Mom . . . Orchid.
He twisted against the pillows, eyes shut again, exhausted by their exchange.
His brother kept talking. Phoenix couldn’t concentrate as memories started to unlock.
Orchid at the airport . . . back to my place before meeting Mom. The subway station. The homeless guy with the beard. Oh my God. Losing my balance, flying through the air. . . . His eyes squeezed tighter, shutting out the scenes that clamped around his chest until he couldn’t breathe.
Can’t be.
He struggled to move. Pain pierced through his leg, as if it was on fire.
Caleb put a supporting hand on his brother’s shoulder. Phoenix opened his eyes to find his brother still toting the cup. He reached for the water. Clumsy with grogginess, he knocked it over. The water spilled onto the bedspread. Phoenix instinctively threw out his left hand to steady the cup.
He whiffed air.
Confused, he regarded his arm. Bandages ended inches above where his wrist should’ve been. Bile spiked in his throat.
“What the—” he yelped, heart pounding from images of bloodied limbs, inanimate, lying apart from his body.
Caleb swallowed. “I’m sorry. They couldn’t save your hand or your leg.”
Phoenix barely registered the ache in Caleb’s voice.
“My hand and my leg?” He didn’t recognize his own guttural cry, as his future spun 180 degrees around him.
His mom swept into the room, setting a paper coffee cup beside his bed.
“Oh, Phoenix, it’s going to be okay,” she said, reaching over to press the controls to elevate the head of the bed, helping to calm his flailing as he tried to sit up.
Little by little, the room came in focus, LED bulbs glaring overhead, machines buzzing beside him. He searched wildly around the reflective surfaces of the room. He knew he needed help, but from whom and for what?
“Mom?” he asked, confused. “What are you doing here? How’d you get here so fast?”
“Oh, honey, I’ve been here three days.”
Three days? Looking down, he saw sheets dipping below his left knee. He tried to kick them back to no avail.
“No. God. No. This can’t be.”
His mom stroked his right arm. He could feel her fingertips. “Shh, I know, sweetie. It feels bad but it’s going to be all right.”
“Do you see what’s missing? There’s nothing left of me.”
“All the important parts are there,” Caleb intervened.
“The important parts?” Phoenix practically screamed. As he lifted his shoulders in a shrug of denial, the sight of his bandaged left arm provided a shocking reminder of his tragedy. Spent, disbelieving, he leaned back into the pile of pillows. “No, please no.”
His mother pushed the bed down to a supine position. “Just rest, Phoenix. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Okay?
His life’s dreams, gone, sublimated to nothing. How am I going to do anything? A nurse arrived with a sedative and he fell into a troubled sleep.
An alarm shrills. The green glow of the room’s EXIT sign indicates head this way, if you can.
Are one good hand and one leg enough to escape?
Maybe. Crawl, drag, clutch any leg of furniture, any object along the path.
Inch a broken body through empty hallways.
Follow the fluorescent signs through a darkened labyrinth.
Get to the fire door. Moving like an inchworm whose sightless head seeks the warmth of the sun.
Work the handle with an uninjured right arm.
Flames lick one foot, intact but mateless.
Pushing with newfound alacrity, one shoulder abuts the door.
One hand scrabbles to do the work of two.
The heavy metal door slams shut. The heat of the flames is gone.
In its place are stairs, the simplest of escape routes.
For those with feet. Crawling, tumbling, falling, down the stairs until exhausted; unable to perform a simple feat from last week.
Last week. The final week of living. Now there is only living hell.
“Carry me.” Arms outstretched, beseeching.
“Carry you?” Mother mocks. “First scramble me an egg,” she taunts.
“Carry you?” Caleb mocks. “First cut me a line of coke.”
“Carry you?” Father asks. “Get your lazy ass off the floor!”
Orchid turns her face away, as if disgusted by the flailing legs of a beetle unable to right itself.
She lifts me, navigating the hard-won steps I spent forty minutes tumbling down.
She opens the fire door. The flames are gone.
Everything is sterile. The hallway is empty.
She pushes through the door to my room and, like an offering, places me on the bed.
She wipes clean her clothes as if contaminated.
In the bright white of the light, I see what shocks her. The bandages covering my stumps are gone, discarded in the struggle. My wounds lie bare and ugly. Bloody lines wind around blunt, severed limbs like moss creeping up a tree. I scream. Orchid appears, grimacing.
“What do you need, love?” She turns her back on my disfigurement. At least she called me “love.” But then, what’s wrong?
“Why are you crying, Orchid?”
“I’m about to be sick.”
“Are you ill?”
“Only when I’m here. What do you need?”
“My limbs . . . my leg and hand. Please.”
“Okay, love.” She departs the room.
“No!” he shouts. “Don’t leave, please don’t leave.”
Real hands comfort him. His mom’s voice soothes. “Shh.” She wraps one arm around his chest. “It’s okay,” she says over and over like a mantra. “You’re okay now.”
In the cruel darkness of that first night, ideas form, amorphous but deep-seated, never to allow what’s missing to make him dependent on another. Nor to shackle anyone else to his half-state.