The Unseen

by Bryan, JL

  “Yeah, how bad is it?” Cassidy asked.

  “Most patients ask about their injuries before they ask for painkillers,” Dr. Spiegelman said. “You have a transverse fracture of the femoral shaft. You’re lucky.”

  “Really?”

  “It was one clean break, away from the joints, no extra fragmentation. It can be repaired with standard intramedullary nailing.”

  “Nailing?” Cassidy’s stomach felt a little more ill, and the blood drained from her face.

  “As there’s no infection or other complications, I wanted to wait until you were a little more stable before we took you into surgery. We can start prepping you now that you’re awake. But the leg break is not—”

  “I don’t have any insurance,” Cassidy said.

  “Then you came to the right hospital,” Dr. Spiegelman told her. “The leg break is not what concerns me, Cassidy. I’m concerned about what we found in your blood work.”

  Cassidy felt a sinking, frightened feeling, immediately thinking of sexual transmitted diseases and every questionable encounter she might have had.

  “Your blood...” Dr. Spiegelman shook her head. “It looks like something scraped off the floor of the DEA crime lab.”

  “Oh.” Cassidy’s eyes dropped to her hands, which rested on her stomach.

  “Opioids, MDMA, cocaine, THC...I don’t even have time to read the list.” She closed the folder and looked up at Cassidy. “You need drug rehabilitation therapy, too.”

  “Are you calling the police?”

  “Not my job. ”

  “How is Peyton?”

  “Who’s that?” Dr. Spiegelman riffled through her folders.

  “My boyfriend? He came in with me. Right?”

  “Oh. I can’t divulge specific medical information if you’re not family, but he’s going to be fine. Do you have any other questions?”

  Cassidy had tons, but couldn’t pick which one to ask. The pocket of Dr. Spiegelman’s white coat buzzed gently, and the doctor glanced inside.

  “I’m sorry to rush, but we’re over capacity. Friday night, lots of other people getting high and crashing their cars, too.” Dr. Spiegelman hurried out.

  Cassidy wondered how long she’d been unconscious and dreaming. It sounded like they’d already done X-rays. She looked at her right leg, suspended and useless, and wondered how long it would be before she could walk again. There, that would have been a good question for the doctor, she thought.

  “You ready to see your family?” the nurse asked her.

  “Yeah.” Cassidy remembered seeing her mother and Kieran in her dream, out in the waiting room. Though she’d been knocked out, some part of her mind must have picked up on where she was. She remembered the strange experience of floating bodiless through the hospital, drifting from floor to floor like a ghost. Naturally, there had been monsters everywhere.

  She shivered when she remembered the three thin, tall shadows leaning over her bed, though she couldn’t see them now, thankfully. The worst days were when bits of nightmare followed her back to the waking world, as if some part of her brain believed she was still asleep and dreaming.

  Her mom and brother entered the room, and she was startled to see that they looked just as they had in her dream. That was no surprise with her mom, who wore the same haircut she’d had for years and the usual powder-blue Pleasant Evening Inn blazer. Her brother, though, had shaved the side of his head and hung a thin steel chain from his ear to his nose, a look she’d never seen on him before. Even his clothes were identical to those in her dream.

  “Cassidy!” her mother said, the Irish accent nearly breaking through on the vowels. She approached the bed and hugged her gingerly around the shoulders. The familiar rosy scent of her perfume calmed Cassidy. “Are you all right?”

  “All right?” Kieran snorted. “Her leg’s all jacked up.”

  “It could have been much worse.” Tears glimmered for a moment in her mother’s dark green eyes, then she wiped them away and gave her a stern look. “Why were you out driving with that boy so late? He was drinking, wasn’t he? You both were.”

  “A little,” Cassidy said.

  “And God only knows what else.”

  “Yeah, what were you guys on?” Kieran asked, half-distracted by the phone in his hand.

  “I’ve said he was no good,” Cassidy’s mother went on.

  “Can you ask about his injuries?” Cassidy asked. “They wouldn’t tell me a thing.”

  “I don’t give one hair of a pig’s ass about the boy, honestly,” her mother said.

  “I know, but—”

  “The doctor told us you’ll be months in recovery,” she interrupted. “I want you to come home where we can care for you.”

  “I can’t do that,” Cassidy said. “I have to work. If I don’t work, I don’t eat.”

  “I’ll feed you plenty.”

  “That’s not what I mean. My job—”

  “It will have to wait until you’re better. Let your brother and me take care of you. You want to help Cassidy, don’t you, Kieran?”

  Kieran shrugged, not looking up from his phone.

  “You chained up your face,” Cassidy said.

  “Yeah. Cool, huh?” Kieran beamed at her, his steel chain glinting in the fluorescent hospital lights.

  Cassidy’s mother, who stood slightly behind Kieran, shook her head vigorously and looked at Cassidy with pleading eyes.

  “Um...at one point, maybe,” Cassidy said. “It’s kind of dated now, though.”

  “Oh.” Kieran frowned and looked at his feet. Her mother gave a little smile.

  “I like the hair, though,” Cassidy added, which caused their expressions to instantly switch—Kieran smiled again, looking up at her, while her mother shook her head and looked away. Cassidy wanted to laugh, but she was afraid it might hurt.

  “It’s just some stupid thing Devin did,” Kieran said, but he was grinning as he touched his half-shaved green hair. Devin had been Kieran’s best friend for years.

  “Kieran, can you go find me some coffee?” their mother asked. She gave him two rumpled dollar bills.

  “No problem.” He walked to the curtain and glanced back. “It would be kinda cool if you stayed with us, Cassidy. I’ll help you out and shit.” He shrugged and left.

  “Watch your language!” their mother called after him, then she turned to Cassidy and spoke in a lower voice. “It’s important you come, at least for a while.”

  “I’ll be okay, Mom, but thanks—”

  “It’s not just for you. Your brother needs you. He’s running wild, Cassidy. He’s failed five courses at school, and they’ve put him in summer school, but he’s still skipping class. He doesn’t listen to me anymore. I’ve become a ghost to him.”

  “What can I do about it?”

  “You talk to him. He’ll listen to you. He looks up to you.”

  “He does not. You don’t remember how we used to fight every day?”

  “It’s been years, Cassidy.”

  “What do you want me to say? ‘Do your homework, stay in school?’”

  “At the very least.”

  “What else?”

  Her mother sighed. “He’s out with these friends all the time. I just worry he’s going to turn out...badly. That things will go badly for him.”

  “You mean you’re worried he’ll turn out like me, r`ight? You might as well say it.”

  Anger flashed in her mother’s eyes, and Cassidy shivered.

  “Your father and I came to America to give you a better life,” she said. “Much better than what you would have had back in that miserable little village. And you’ve thrown it away. You’ve both thrown away the life we tried to give you, the life your father wanted for you—”

  “Stop bringing Dad into this.” Cassidy felt her eyes stinging and steeled herself against the urge to cry. “You know that’s not fair.”

  “It’s the truth. The truth is often unfair, you’ll learn,” her mother replied.
>
  “I’ve already learned that one, but thanks for the cup of ye olde Irish wisdom, anyway. Does it come with potatoes and porridge?”

  “Get smart with me and I’ll break your other leg,” her mother said. “See if I don’t.”

  A nurse returned with a clipboard of paperwork for Cassidy to sign, consent forms for her leg surgery. For a minute, the pen scratching the paper was the only sound.

  When she left, Cassidy looked at her mother. She wanted to resist the idea of going back home for all the obvious reasons—she’d have trouble getting privacy with Peyton, she’d have trouble getting high and relaxing with her mom around, she’d be a long way from work, her mother would harass her at every opportunity about changing her lifestyle...

  On the other hand, she had to admit that going home and letting her mom take care of her had its own very deep appeal, in spite of all the inconvenience and drama. It might be comforting. Maybe she really did need to spend time with her brother, too.

  “Okay,” Cassidy said. “I’ll think about it. But if I do, it’s just for a few days until I can work again. Then I have to go make money.”

  “Good.” Her mother nodded and allowed a small smile to break through the tension on her face. “That’s good, Cassidy.”

  “Have you seen my phone? I need to text Barb.”

  “Your purse is over here. One of the EMT’s grabbed it for you.”

  Cassidy dug into her purse, relieved to see all her simple but critical little possessions in place—phone, cash, keys, credit card.

  She barely had time to thumb a message to Barb before the nurses arrived to transfer her to the operating room.

  Chapter Eight

  Cassidy received a local anesthetic rather than a general, owing to both her head trauma and the outrageous pharmaceutical cocktail already present in her bloodstream.

  Dr. Spiegelman and staff worked behind a sheet so Cassidy didn’t have to watch them cut open her leg and nail together her cracked thigh bone.

  Cassidy lay back and looked up at the institutional ceiling tiles above, wishing she had some news about Peyton. According to her dream, he’d cracked his ribs but he was stable. According to her dreams, though, little monsters were everywhere, nibbling on people like invisible fish, neither seen nor felt.

  As the surgery went on, her eyelids drooped. Then she saw them, transparent little worms uncoiling in the air, their bodies thick with bristles and little gray lumps that she first thought were tumors. Then, as the worms continued to uncoil, she realized the tumors were actually small eyes peering out among the bristles, loosely rooted in the worms’ sides by a gory red mesh of arteries and nerves.

  The worms’ mouths flared open into wide circles as they drifted down toward her in a slow spiral. She could faintly see the overhead lights and the ceiling tiles through their bodies.

  Cassidy wanted to wave at them, but her body felt frozen on the table. She could turn her head or twitch her fingertips, but not much else.

  She closed her eyes and willed the things to go away, a trick that sometimes worked for a little while. When she opened them, the worms were still there, drifting down toward her face, but they had faded and grown more transparent, like two-dimensional creatures cut out of clear plastic film.

  Just a dream, she reminded herself.

  She told herself the same thing again when the spider emerged from a corner and crawled upside down across the ceiling toward the operating table. It was about three feet wide, from one leg-tip to another, its skin a clear membrane with the purple and red hulks of its organs visible within, floating in an inky black fluid. The organs sloshed and squished as the creature walked.

  Not real, she told herself again, but she could feel herself trembling inside, trying not to scream. The rational side of her brain knew the creatures were imaginary, but the rest of her body didn’t seem to get the message. The spider in particular was larger and much clearer than the little things she usually saw. It was detailed, not fuzzy and vague around the edges.

  The uncoiling worms moved in on her head, their mouths stretched open and extending tendrils toward her eyes and nose. The worms were just colorless, transparent lines now, like quick sketches drawn by some mad artist.

  Her heart beat faster, and she strained again to lift her arms, then to turn her head away from the approaching creatures. She couldn’t move much.

  She forced herself to close her eyes.

  Go away, she thought at them as hard as she could. Go the fuck AWAY.

  She opened her eyes again, trying to steel herself for the sight of the ugly little hallucinations attaching themselves to her face, but the worms were gone. The big spider-thing on the ceiling had faded to a pale gray shadow.

  But something else had appeared.

  She felt it before she saw it, the feeling of icy cold and heavy darkness that was beginning to grow familiar. It was in the corner of the operating room, a deep shadow on the very edge of her line of sight.

  With an effort, she forced her head to turn an inch. It was one of the tall, narrow figures she’d seen before. It stood in the corner like a column of black ice. It did not move at all. If its upper part was a head, as she thought, then it was looking directly at her. If it was draped in midnight-black cloth, not a single fiber of that cloth moved.

  Her heart accelerated and the monitor picked up on it. The medical staff murmured, trying to stabilize her, but she paid them no attention. She didn’t dare look away from the tall, faceless shadow for fear it might move closer to her when she wasn’t watching.

  She could only think of terrified nights when she was a child, when some jacket or sweater carelessly thrown over a chair became a hooded monster squatting by her bed, waiting to eat her feet or fingers if they happened to poke out from beneath the blanket. Cassidy would fix her eyes on the monster as if her gaze could stop it from moving closer while she worked up the courage to scoot to the edge of the bed and flip on the lamp.

  Sudden, bright light always chased away the monsters.

  The light didn’t seem to bother this one, though. It stood and it seemed to watch, and it did not move at all. As the surgery went on and on, the dark form began to feel like a permanent, implacable presence, a sinister shadow that had been in exactly the same spot for years, and would continue to haunt the surgery room forever, even when the hospital had become a forgotten ruin and its last patient had long since died.

  She was too afraid to try her trick of closing her eyes and ordering it away. If she thought at it too hard, she might only succeed in drawing its attention, causing it to act rather than stand as motionless as a black marble statue. If she closed her eyes, it might attack. She imagined it reaching out a long, thin, shadowy hand, insubstantial but fatally cold, and wrapping that around her throat, freezing the muscles until she choked to death.

  She could see that scene very clearly, playing again and again on a loop inside her mind, while she watched the motionless shadow.

  She kept watching it while she heard the tiny clinks of steel being driven into her exposed leg bone. She never worked up the nerve to order the shadow to leave.

  When they finally wheeled her out of the operating room, the shadow finally moved, turning very slightly to watch Cassidy depart.

  Chapter Nine

  Cassidy lay in the recovery room, listening through the curtain to the old woman in the next bed, who had a severe nose whistle even when awake. When she dozed off, her snore sounded like a teakettle announcing it was ready, over and over again.

  Her family had left, because her mother hadn’t been home since leaving for work the previous night and needed the rest. Cassidy had spent the morning browsing the Creative Loafing her brother had mercifully brought her, reading book and movie reviews and an investigative report into city corruption. She craved a cigarette and a much more generous dosage of painkillers, and a tall shot of whiskey to chase it all down. She read the alternative newsweekly a second time, including all the advertisements, desperate t
o keep her brain busy.

  In the late morning, she heard a squeaky wheel approach outside her curtain. Peyton rode in a wheelchair pushed by a middle-aged African-American nurse. He sat stiff and perfectly upright, his entire torso locked inside a brace. Scattered purple bruises marred his face, swelling one eyelid and the corner of his mouth.

  “Thanks, this is real sweet of you,” Peyton said to the nurse, dropping her a wink.

  “Hurry up. I’ve got my rounds,” she replied, not at all charmed by the boy with his thorny black-rose neck tattoo.

  “Peyton!” Cassidy said. “Wow, you look shitty.”

  “So do you. Can you roll me close enough for a kiss?” he asked the nurse. She sighed and wheeled him alongside the bed, reminding him again to hurry.

  Peyton gave her a quick kiss, just brushing his lips against hers—Cassidy could have used a little more at the moment, but it was awkward with the impatient nurse hovering over them.

  “How are you?” Cassidy asked.

  “Cracked ribs, no big deal. What about you?”

  “Busted leg.” She pointed to her bedsheet. “They fixed it up. I just can’t walk or do anything. They say I have to go to rehab to help me walk again.”

  “I have to go for my arms and shoulders.”

  “I always knew we’d end up in rehab together.” Cassidy smiled, and he laughed.

  “Actually, though, my parents are moving me to some new hospital by their house, up in Alpharetta. They say it’s really nice. It’s got this huge indoor aquatic center.” He didn’t add it’ll be a hell of a lot nicer than this overcrowded public hospital swarming with street people, but the thought was clearly there.

  “Then we won’t be together.” Her smile faltered. Lacking insurance and money, Cassidy would have to take whatever care the public system offered her, and she was lucky to get that.

  “It’ll be fine. Things will be back to normal soon.”

  “Were things ever normal?” she asked.

  The nurse cleared her throat and took hold of his wheelchair.

  “My ride’s waiting,” Peyton told her. He looked at her a moment longer, and his lips moved silently. She wondered whether he would say I love you. It would be a first, and not a bad time to mention it, either.