Blink Once

by Cylin Busby

  “I don’t think so,” she said, glancing over the doctor’s shoulder. “He hasn’t signed it, so I guess not.”

  “When he comes on shift tonight, can you have him take a look? I don’t know what he was looking for, but I’m not seeing anything out of the ordinary here.”

  I loved hearing that. My blood was normal. At least one thing was working with this body.

  “And who’s next?” the doctor said, pulling a small pad out of her pocket. “Olivia Kemple, shunt infection … room 203?”

  “That’s right next door, I’ll show you,” the nurse said, leading her out. Shunt infection—right. That’s what happens when you constantly pull your own IV out. Olivia Kemple, you are in trouble.

  I tried to listen closely to hear what was going on in the next room, but I just heard the doctor speaking very softly, I caught only a few words. Was that Olivia talking? Or the other nurse? It was useless, I couldn’t hear enough to figure out how Olivia was going to work her way out of this one. I drifted off, feeling a little woozy, and when I woke up, it was daylight and I was lying on my side, looking out the window and someone was sort of pounding on the side of my rib cage—not hard, like a rhythmic massage. They went up one way and down the other way, hitting me with the side of a hand, in a chop-chop motion. “Okay, now we’ll go to the other side, same thing.” As she rolled me back over, I recognized the physical therapist from before, with the supershort blond hair. Kim. She moved around the other side of the bed and rolled me up on my left side, pulling my right arm in front of my body, then she started doing the same chop-chop motion up my side and down it again. After a little bit, it started to feel pretty good, like I could really get a deep breath every time the respiration pulled in. I tried to clear my throat; it felt like there was some stuff in there.

  “Good job. Let’s get that stuff out, you’ve just got a little cold,” the therapist said. She rolled me onto my back again, so I was staring at the ceiling. She walked out of the room without even saying good-bye, but she was back in a minute or two with Nurse Norris. “His temp is still elevated today, but I think he’s going to kick this without antibiotics. He’s a strong young man—aren’t you, Mr. West?” she said, leaning over me. “I’m going to pull all that stuff that Kim just loosened up out of there for you.” She pulled on something by my throat, where the breathing tube went in, and I felt a pull of air, like when you take the hose out of the vacuum cleaner.

  “Almost done,” Norris said. “I’m going to suction your nose as well.” She put the tube back into my throat and secured the big plastic halo around my neck and shoulders. With a small plastic nozzle, she put a tube up my nose and pulled out some gunk. I had to remember this next time I had a cold, it worked great. “Quick look in those ears,” she said, reaching into her pocket for a small penlight. “Everything looks nice and clear in there, no infection. You just rest.” She put her hand on my forehead again and held it there for a moment. When she stepped away, I realized the physical therapist had been in the room the whole time, watching, and she had this horrified look on her face. “Can he feel that?” she asked Norris.

  “Of course!” She laughed. “He can feel everything, and I bet he feels a lot better now that we’ve loosened up those lungs a little. Time for him to rest, so let’s go.” Norris put her hand on Kim’s back and guided her out of the room. I didn’t get how Kim could have any sort of medical training and still think I was a vegetable or something.

  Even though Norris had cleaned out what she could, I still had that fuzzy head feeling you get with a bad cold. I wanted to cough, but when I tried to, the tube in my throat just got in the way so it was useless. I closed my eyes and waited for Olivia or my mom to come visit me. I wondered what the doctor said to Olivia, and how she explained the “problem” with her feeding tube. But mostly I just wanted Mom to come, to sit with me and go over my MRI and talk to me really plainly about what was next for me, and when I was going to get out of here. I closed my eyes. I would rest, get better, and we would move on to the next step. I was ready.

  Chapter 11

  The room is dark again; the curtains are open. I’ve been here before. I know there will be water on the floor, and there is. But those aren’t Olivia’s feet. They are sandals, small. It’s a girl, standing at the foot of my bed, in a puddle of water. She’s tiny and thin, her clothes dark and dripping wet, her hands down by her side.

  “Who are you?” She doesn’t move, doesn’t answer. “Can I help you?”

  She moves closer to the side of the bed, to the drawer there. She reaches out her hand to open it and I can hear her sniffling; she’s crying. I see a drop of water fall from her hand onto the floor. But it’s not water; it’s too dark, black. I trace it back up to her fingers.

  It’s blood. A cloud moves slowly away from the moon, and more light pours into the room. I can see now that she’s dripping blood, a puddle of it, streaked across the floor where she walked to the bed. She looks into the drawer, searching for something, but then suddenly her head turns and she sees that I’m there, that I’m awake—her hand shoots out from the drawer to my wrist, fast—she grips tight, tighter. It feels like she’s trying to break my arm, her hand is ice, so cold it feels like it’s burning my skin. “Let go, stop,” I tell her, but I can’t pull away. I can’t move. Her eyes are black circles. “Nurse!” I yell. “NURSE!”

  “Nurse!” It wasn’t my voice, it was my mom’s.

  “I heard you,” the mean nurse said, rounding the corner of the doorway into the room.

  “He’s burning up—something is not right!” Mom yelled. “Look at his heart rate! What kind of hospital is this!”

  “Mrs. Spencer, please calm down,” the nurse said. “He has an elevated temperature, but we’re doing everything we can to keep him comfortable.”

  “It’s not enough—he’s sick, something’s wrong.” Mom’s hands gripped the rail at the side of my bed. “He’s unresponsive.”

  The nurse took her penlight from her pocket and flashed it into my right eye quickly, back and forth. “He’s not unresponsive; he’s okay. Please have a seat and I’ll send the doctor in to talk to you.” She walked out of the room shaking her head.

  Mom took my hand. “Hold on baby, hold on. I’m going to get you some help.” I wasn’t feeling that bad; in fact, I was feeling a little bit better than I had before I’d fallen asleep.

  “Mrs. Spencer?” A tall, dark-haired doctor I’d seen once or twice came into the room. “I’m Dr. Yung. You have some concerns about your son’s condition?”

  “He’s got this fever; I can see it on the monitor. It’s at one hundred and one right now, and he’s been like this for three days. When I was talking to him just now, his eyes rolled back in his head. He looked like he was having a seizure.”

  The doctor nodded. “That’s not uncommon in his state—he might twitch, jerk uncontrollably. Rolling his eyes is just another one of those ticks that he’s not in full control of yet.”

  “I’ve never seen him do that before; are you sure he’s okay? He’s never run a fever for this long.”

  “His body has been through a lot of trauma, and he’s trying to heal. If you add a virus on top of that, you can see how his immune system is not what it was before the accident. It’s harder for him to evacuate mucus from his lungs and to fight a fever. Unfortunately, what would be a cold for someone else is more like a lung infection for him, pneumonia. It is serious, but I can assure you, he’s not in any discomfort, and we’re keeping a close eye on him.”

  Mom sat down in the chair next to the bed. “I just don’t know how much more of this I can take.” She started crying. “I just don’t know what to do.”

  The doctor pulled up the other chair and sat next to her. “Some of this you have to leave to us and know that we are taking the very best care of your son. If you’re talking about his options for the future, those are decisions that you and West’s father will have to make, and I understand it can be difficult.”

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sp; Mom grabbed a tissue and wiped her nose. “We’ve been doing a lot of research, and I think we’ve made a decision, but the odds are so hard to face. I hope we’re doing the right thing.”

  The doctor reached over and held Mom’s hand. “Remember, he is very young, so the potential risks that you have been reading about are much lower for him. Once he kicks this virus, you can schedule the procedure at any time. He’s stable and ready for the next step.”

  Mom nodded silently.

  The doctor stood up. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Spencer. Remember that we all want what’s best for West, we really do.”

  Mom nodded again, taking another tissue. She blew her nose once he was out the door. She took my hand and held it for a few minutes quietly.

  “West, honey, I need to talk to you.” She stood up and leaned over me. “The procedure that Dr. Louis says you need is risky; there’s a ten percent chance you won’t make it. That means out of one hundred patients who have this, ten will die. Ten. I don’t know if I can face those odds. But I also feel like you deserve the chance to have a normal life again. Tell me what you want to do.” She stared into my eyes. I blinked once for yes, without a moment of hesitation.

  Mom kept looking at me. Maybe she needed to be sure, so I blinked again. A smile crossed her face and she pushed my bangs back. “Do you remember Henry’s birthday party at the pool—you all were six or seven. You took one look at that high dive and went right over to the ladder. You climbed without looking back and stood way out on the board. You looked at me for a second, then jumped off. I was so afraid, the other moms too. But you weren’t. You never were.” She kissed my forehead. “I know what you want to do; I know how strong you are,” she whispered.

  She sat back down and held my hand again. I was glad she had finally told me everything. And I could tell her how I felt. I squeezed her hand back and we sat like that, in silence, just listening to the whooshing sounds of the respirator, until I fell asleep.

  Chapter 12

  I woke up hearing music. Loud, hip-hop. My favorite CD from last fall, a band called Water Gun. The room was bright, sunny, and sitting next to me, an iPod speaker system blasting. The speakers were covered in stickers from a burger joint, the kind they usually give to little kids. I had seen those speakers before … Mike. That was Mike’s system. I looked around the room. Mike’s back was to me, but it was him, there was no mistaking his crazy curly red hair in knots, almost like dreadlocks. He was jamming out at the foot of my bed. He spun around on one foot. “Dude, do you remember when they did this song at the Music Box, and that girl totally jumped up on stage. I think she got kicked out.” He was trying to do some moves like the guys do in the video, but failing so badly it made me want to close my eyes again. Mike was awesome on the bike, but as a dancer, his moves were laughable. “She was hot, though. I wouldn’t have kicked her out.”

  Nurse Norris poked her head into the room. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to turn that down.”

  “Wha, I can’t hear you,” Mike joked, cupping his hand to his ear.

  She walked in and turned the volume down herself. “I told you last time you were here. Music is okay, but it’s not a dance party. This is a hospital.” She gave him a stern look and turned to walk out.

  “Really, did one of the other patients complain? I mean, I’m just wondering.” This attitude was exactly why Mike had been getting detention on a regular basis since ninth grade.

  Norris let out a sigh. “Even if the patients didn’t complain, their families and other visitors might. You can play music, just keep it down. Clear?”

  “Crystal,” Mike said, trying to pop-lock but instead looking like a total idiot. I was surprised he didn’t fall down.

  Norris scowled and left the room. I know she had a smile on her face the second she turned the corner; how could she not laugh at Mike’s so-called dancing?

  “Man, the nurses here suck. They aren’t even hot.” Mike plopped into the chair next to the bed and leaned in to turn up the volume one or two clicks. “Whatever.”

  Mike always told you exactly how he felt; sometimes that was great, sometimes it sucked. The first day I met him, I was at the bike park. I’d seen him there before, but we went to different schools, so we didn’t talk. Then, right before ninth grade started, he walked over to me. “You got hella tall, man,” he said, looking me up and down.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess I did,” I said back. I didn’t know if it was okay to say that I’d noticed his crazy red hair and incredible skills on the track, so I just kept my mouth shut.

  “Yeah, you were, like, a shrimp before. What happened?”

  “I dunno. My dad is tall,” I offered. Mike stood there staring at me; he wanted more of an explanation. He wasn’t put together badly; he had broad shoulders and weighed at least ten pounds more than me, but he was also about half a foot shorter, sort of a stocky build.

  “Actually, it kind of hurt,” I confessed. “I woke up during the night all winter. My bones, like, hurt.”

  “Seriously?” He was loving it. “Hurt how?”

  “It’s hard to explain, but my muscles would hurt in the morning. And at night I would get these pains, like cramps in my legs and stuff. That happened for months. It really sucked.”

  “But now you’re supertall. Are you going to keep growing?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “No idea. My dad is six-two, so maybe.”

  “Damn.” Mike scraped some mud off his bike shoe.

  He told me that there had been some girls from my school looking for me at the track, the day before. “Not ugly,” he pointed out. I had no idea who they could be, but I knew what was probably going on. Eighth grade was a big one for me: I grew half a foot, got my braces off, and started wearing contacts more—mostly because my glasses got in the way with my helmet. I looked different, and it seemed like the girls at school had noticed and decided I was cute, or something. A group of them started acting weird around me, giggling all the time, saying stupid stuff to me.

  The next day at the track, Mike was there again and pointed out the girls sitting on a bench. They were from my English class and obviously there to see me; they waved enthusiastically the second I looked their way. “Hook me up,” Mike said, parking his bike next to mine. “The blonde is awesome.” So we walked with the girls to Mel’s Pizza and grabbed some slices, Mike doing his best to make conversation with the blond girl while I was stuck talking to the other one. She wasn’t ugly, but she had on too much makeup and lip stuff and was wearing high heels, which seemed weird to me. She could barely walk. All she wanted to talk about were other girls from our school: who was cool, who wasn’t. “Do you know Candace? She’s so pretty. Oh, do you know Ariel? She’s okay. Do you know Amy? I hate her.” It went on like this the whole time. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. But Mike had a great time and was into the blond girl. I got the impression he didn’t get to hang out with girls very much; he acted like a spaz the entire time. The girl seemed a little into it; she laughed at some of his jokes, but in the end, she didn’t give him her number. As we biked back, Mike flipped up his visor at a stop sign and turned to me. “My man, I can’t thank you enough. From here on out, I’m your wingman whenever you need one.” He reached out to shake my hand and gripped hard.

  It turned out that we were both starting at Marshall High that fall, and Mike made sure my transition to ninth grade was smooth. He knew a lot of the upperclassmen, so instead of getting harassed and hazed like some of the other ninth-grade scrubs, we were in with the populars from day one: had a cool lunch table to sit at, knew which teachers to avoid, where to hang out, whose classes you could skip, everything. Mike thought I brought girls around, that he was my wingman, but really, he was the one who took me from nerd to popular overnight. I owed him everything—including Allie. But I’d never told him.

  I glanced over at him sitting next to the hospital bed and felt a wave of emotion. When I got out of here, I was going to t
ell him how much I appreciated his friendship, even if he thought that was cheesy. I wanted him to know. He took a swig from his soda and nodded his head to the music. “This is riding-around-in-Malcolm’s-car music, right? Remember when we all went on that beer run that night, when it was snowing? I could feel the bass line through my sneakers.” He took another drink and sat staring out the window for a moment. “You did that hilarious impression of Mr. Perkins. ‘Stu-DENTS, now, stu-DENTS!’ Damn, I thought I was going to pee my pants.” He laughed at the memory. My impression of our principal always made Mike laugh. But his face didn’t look too happy right now. “I miss that stuff. Just the stupid stuff, ya know? That was a fun night,” he added quietly. He looked a little uncomfortable with the silence that fell over the room when the song ended. He pushed a button on the iPod and started another song by a different band. “Anyways, ancient history, right?” He stood and walked around the bed, his restless energy making me nervous. “You have to fill me in on when the hot nurses are working because every time I’m here it’s Ugly and Uglier.”

  I didn’t remember Mike ever being here before; it must have been before I woke up. And I didn’t like him calling Norris ugly. She wasn’t a sexy porno nurse, but she was an awesome lady. I liked her.