From Isaac
U ok?
Answr me.
There’s no “I” in T-E-A-M but there’s a “win” in T-W-I-N
U – ME =
There is a small gathering of people in the hall outside my room. I hear Mom and Dad, their voices low and muted. Amanda is out there too, her voice slightly higher in pitch so that it carries. I can pick out a few of her words, little accents to follow the low rumble of Dad’s voice. She’s saying things like anxiety and panic attack, and I imagine the other girls in their rooms, ears pressed against their doors, sucking up the drama along with my diagnosis.
Nurse Karen is with me, recording my pulse, monitoring my heart rate, taking my temperature. “How you doing, honey?”
“You tell me,” I say, watching her face as she types my data into the laptop she carries with her.
“Your temp is a little elevated,” she says. “The doctor will probably order some blood work, see if we can find out why.”
“Like an infection?”
I think of Shanna, curled inside of me, surrounded by metal, pockets of pus forming around her.
“Could be,” she sets the laptop aside, reaches out to pat my hand. “Could be just a bug in your system.”
“I need to get it out,” I tell her. “I’ve got to be healthy if a negative Rh heart becomes available.”
“One will, Sasha. I just know it,” Karen insists, her optimism contrary to countless bar graphs and data tables. Karen’s pie chart would be a happy face, a bright shining zero on the pain scale, defying reality on a daily basis.
There’s a hesitant knock on my door and Mom pokes her head in. I get a glimpse of Dad in the hall, the knot on his tie pulled loose. Amanda stands beside him, spinning her car keys on her index finger. Everyone has dropped what they were doing and come here to support me, a girl full of metal and pus and infection and another girl.
“Hey, honey,” Mom whispers, as if my eardrums were the problem and not my heart. “How are you feeling?”
The truth is that I feel empty, all the fullness of the altercation at lunch having overflowed and left me with nothing. I think the only thing inside me right now is an LVAD, pumping nothing into a void.
“I’m fine,” I say. And I absolutely have to be. If I’ve been exposed to any pathogens or show signs of an illness when a heart with my blood type becomes available it’ll go to the next person on the list. Nurse Karen pats Mom on her way out, and all the muscles in my face slide downward.
“It’s all right,” Mom says, which is a dumb thing to say because it’s definitely not. My face screws up into a convulsion I hate, as uncontrollable as Shanna when she’s made a decision. I’m crying against my will, dashing tears from my face and trying to avoid Mom’s hug as delicately as possible because if I’m sick I could get her sick too. Never mind if it’s a flu bug or the void inside me. If it makes the jump to her, Dad will never look at me again.
“I’ve got a fever; you probably shouldn’t touch me,” I say, so she settles for wetting a washcloth in the bathroom and wiping my face.
“Want to talk about what happened?”
“Some of the other girls got into it,” I say. “Stupid stuff. I tried to stay out of it, but Nadine said that I’m crazy and Shanna didn’t like that.”
Mom’s face stays neutral, but I feel the tiniest tremor through the washcloth as she pulls it away from my face. “Uh-huh,” she says in a tight, controlled tone.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” I ask, my voice cracking on believe. It’s like practice sessions from when I was a sixth grader, but now it’s my vocal cords, not my clarinet, that squeak because I don’t know how to handle them.
Mom folds the washcloth into a square, as if having some form of geometric shape in this room can alleviate the situation.
“Honey, I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist, and Dr. Zhang thinks—”
But she doesn’t get to tell me what Dr. Zhang thinks because there’s an all-encompassing sound in the room, the moan of the low end of the B flat scale and it’s spiraling upward, not missing a note. It’s coming from deep inside of me, my own body the instrument and despair the musician. My own mother does not believe me anymore.
Our mother.
The door opens and Dad pulls Mom away from the bed as I grab for her hands, her fingers still cool and wet from the washcloth.
“Stop it, stop,” Dad is yelling, and I think it’s at me. “This was not a good idea. You shouldn’t be alone with her.”
I’ve got a good grip on Mom’s wrist, and I’m not giving her up so easily. I yank her back toward me, and she knocks into my IV tree. It crashes to the ground, tearing the needle out of the soft inner flesh of my elbow and sending a spray of cold fluid and warm blood across all of us.
“You’ll get sick, you’ll get sick, you’ll get sick,” I’m screaming now, up on my knees on the bed, swiping at Mom’s face with the washcloth, trying to get her clean so that she’s not infected by me, by Shanna.
“Goddamn it, nurse! Nurse!” Dad is yelling as he pulls Mom, who has become a bag of flesh and bones that drags at his feet, out into the hallway.
Amanda pins my wrists above me on the bed as Karen rushes in, slamming the door behind her. I glimpse faces in the hallway, Brandy and Layla have their arms around each other, Jo’s mouth is hanging open, and Nadine is standing on her tiptoes to get a better view.
“What the fuck?” Karen says, which goes so far against everything I know about her that I start laughing.
“Sasha,” Amanda puts her face down to mine, her voice calm and steady. “You need to listen to me. If you want me to let go of you, you’ll have to calm down. I cannot let go of you until you’re safe and everyone around you is safe.”
She readjusts her grip on my wrists and leans in closer. I can tell she had a cheeseburger with onions for lunch, and I can’t even be disgusted by her breath because I’m so jealous of the fact that she got to eat it in the first place.
“Got her?” Karen asks, and Amanda nods, not looking away from me.
There’s a brush of coolness against my bicep as Karen swipes me with an antiseptic pad, and I get a glimpse of her frown as she stabs a needle in. I close my eyes as the sedative takes hold, not wanting to see how she’s gone from a zero to a five on the pain scale, and I’m the cause. Usually I get a warning before the poke, but I must have really messed up this time because she didn’t say a word, just jabbed me.
“It’s not my fault,” I tell Amanda, but her grip on me doesn’t let up.
“She’s causing a scene and—” Karen begins, and I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter.
“Stop,” Amanda cuts her off, and the bones in my wrist are ground together a little bit but I don’t complain. She’s the only person on my side now.
“She’s upsetting my other patients—”
“Stop,” Amanda says again, leaving no room for argument. Karen makes a noise in her throat, and I wish I could close my ears too. I hear the door open, the sound of Mom’s muted crying from down the hallway, and then it clicks closed again.
“Sasha, can I let go of you now?”
I lick my lips and nod. The pressure is gone, and the feeling of warmth emanating from her over me disappears.
“You can open your eyes,” she says, and I do, peeling them open to see her sitting in the chair at the foot of my bed, her head in her hands.
“Oops,” I say.
She looks up at me, spreading her fingers apart so that I can see her eyes. “Jesus, Sasha. What am I supposed to do with you?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, and her head goes back down.
“Seriously,” I tell her. “The other girls got in a fight and I . . . I . . .”
“You held your breath until you passed out because you didn’t want to hear what was being said to you,” Amanda says into her hands.
“No,” I correct her. “That is not what happened.”
She sighs and her arms flop into her lap, like they’re too heavy for her to hold up anymore. “Look, I don’t know if I can make a convincing argument to keep you here, not after what just happened.”
“And what just happened, exactly?” I ask.
“You created a disturbance that upset other patients.”
“Technically my dad created the disturbance. All I was trying to do was talk to my mom after having a medical issue.”
Amanda nods slightly, and I feel myself nodding along with her to encourage the movement. “Okay,” she says. “I might be able to work with that. But you’re going to have to do something for me.”
I’m still nodding so she thinks I’m agreeable.
“Remember the mirror therapy they used with Brandy’s foot, the one you told me about?”
“Yeah,” I say, ignoring the feeling of my phone vibrating under my pillow.
“Do you remember what you said you thought you’d see if you looked into one?”
“Yeah.” The phone gives a last, insistent pulse and falls silent. “I said I’d see Shanna.”
Amanda picks her keys up from the floor, where apparently she’d dropped them at some point in the tussle. “I made a mirror box for you,” she says. “It’s out in my car.”
My throat goes hollow, my neck muscles stiff. I cannot agree or dissent.
“I want you to look into it, okay? If I’m going to put myself out on the line to keep you here I need you to do this for me.”
“Okay,” I say, the word coming from nowhere, an automatic muscle response of agreement.
Amanda stands up slowly, eyes on me. “I’m going to check on your parents and send Karen in here to sit with you.”
“I’m fine,” I say, another gut reaction. There is nothing wrong with me.
“I don’t know if that’s—”
“I said I’m fine, and I said I’ll do it,” I snap.
“I’ll be right back,” she says, and the utter silence of the hallway as she slips away reminds me of kindergarten after the teacher bawled somebody out and everyone else is trying to be really, really good to make up for it.
It’s shock and I know it. Other people’s shock gathers together and quiets them, a comfort of sorts, making it easier for everyone to process what happened, what I did, the cause and effect that probably sent the Civil War reenactors home early and canceled the woolies entirely.
There’s a jingle of keys and Amanda is back, a cardboard box in her arms with a picture of a cheap microwave on it.
“Seriously?” I say.
“I’m working with available materials around my apartment,” she says, and places it on my side table.
“You need to ask for a raise then,” I tell her. “That’s a crap microwave.”
Amanda shakes her head. “Sasha Stone, you have no idea.”
She smiles at me and I take a deep breath, my chest shaky. “Are my parents still here?”
“They’re not far,” she says. “Are you ready?”
I’m not, but it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t ready to fall for Isaac Harver or have my face smashed open or a tree branch in my lung or have my friends tell me I’m a bitch or Heath say he doesn’t care if I die. I’m not ready, but I know what I’m supposed to do. I know what Amanda wants Sasha Stone to do. And Sasha Stone is a good girl, and I am going to be exactly that, again. I run my bed controls so that I’m sitting up as Amanda pulls the side table over next to me, swinging the tabletop so that the box is across my lap.
“Okay,” Amanda says. “You look in that hole there.”
There’s a jagged circle she’s made in the cardboard, a helpful duct tape arrow pointing at it. “It’s just like Brandy’s box with the inverted mirrors. So when you look in—”
“I’ll see my sister,” I finish for her.
“Do you want more lights on?”
I shake my head, the heart monitor beside me sending spiky waves across the screen as I lean forward.
And there she is, staring at me.
I wish there were more holes so that Amanda could see her too and know I’ve been right all along, so that my parents could look in and see their dead daughter, so that Isaac could see her face light up at the thought of him. I wish Nadine could stick her head in this box, see this face and deny her existence. I wish that Brooke could meet her and be her only friend. I wish Layla could meet her and convince her there is such a thing as love and that she was in it.
Shanna is gaunt, eyes sunk into deep hollows, her cheekbones starkly prominent. Her teeth have shredded her lips, her hair limp and lax around her face. I’m looking at a life unlived, one passed entirely in darkness, her skin hanging from bones like loose clothes.
“Sasha?” Amanda asks.
“I see her,” I say. “She’s dying.”
“Okay, I want you to stop now,” Amanda says, but I can’t. Shanna has locked eyes with me and won’t be moved. She’s angry about messages left unread, unanswered, a cord kicked loose by my foot, no matter what everyone else tries to say. I see it in her eyes. Eyes just like mine.
“That’s enough.” Amanda moves the box, and I scrape my chin on the edge of the cardboard. “Sorry,” she says, but she’s moving too quickly for it be a real apology, shoving the table out of the way and taking me by the hands.
“What are you doing?”
“I need you to get up now,” Amanda says, as if it’s perfectly reasonable. “I need you to come into the bathroom.”
“I don’t think—”
“Sasha, listen to me,” she interrupts. “You said you don’t want to leave this place and you said you would do this for me. Now it’s time to get up and come into the bathroom.”
I didn’t say that; I told her I would look into the box and that was all I promised. But she wants more from me now, and Sasha Stone would do the right thing, would do what she was being asked, would be a good girl.
And I am Sasha Stone, so I get up, the floor cold on my bare feet. Amanda grabs the IV tree and follows me, one wheel squeaking as I pull the bathroom door open. She reaches past me and flicks on the lights, my eyes closing automatically in response.
“Open your eyes, Sasha,” she says.
I don’t want to. I don’t want to, but she’s asking me to so it must be what I’m supposed to do. It must be the right thing, so I do it.
I do it and I see.
Shanna is here too, in the bathroom. She looks like death in this lighting, the hollow at the base of her throat deep like a gouge. Her eyebrows are even thinning, tiny hairs gone entirely where the scar passes through her face, a red, heavy scar with pinprick dots still healing on each side of it where she’s been sewn together again like a quilt.
My scar.
My face.
“Oh my God,” I say, hand reaching up to brush against cheekbones close to the surface of my skin. “It’s . . . that’s me.”
“Yes,” Amanda says, her eyes holding mine in the mirror, our reflections honest and true with each other. “It’s always been you.”