Bionic

by Suzanne Weyn

  It is me. I’m performing with the band, doing the dance they were teasing me about at rehearsal, my arms stretched, bent at the waist, my head thrown back.

  “How?”

  Niles chuckles, delighted. He sits closer to me on the bed. “Three-dimensional printing,” he says quietly. “Pauling has 3-D printers now.” Linus Pauling High School is the high-priced, very progressive school Niles attends. They always have the latest and the greatest everything. “Mira, you won’t believe it. They’re, like, the coolest things you’ve ever seen.”

  “But how do you make something like this?”

  He pulls a crumpled photo from his bag. It’s of the band performing, the one with me dancing. “I scanned this into the printer and did some calculations about the dimensions. They’re teaching us how to do it. The printer can figure out what the 3-D form will look like. Our particular machines are printing with resin, but some use plastic. There are others that even use sugar. They can print with almost anything.”

  I turn the image in my left hand, marveling at it. “Thanks, Niles! It’s awesome.”

  Niles grins happily. “Isn’t it cool?!”

  “Beyond cool.”

  A nurse peeks through the curtain, and unfortunately she’s one of the crankier ones. “I thought I heard talking,” she says when she sees Niles. “Out you go, young man.”

  “Do I have to?” Niles wheedles.

  “Yes, you do. Don’t make me call security.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t. Could you hand me my cane?” I see the piece of wood that’s resting on the floor.

  The nurse scoops it up, handing it to Niles. The top of the cane has been carved into a man’s head. The handle is formed by the red stocking cap he wears above his grouchy, scowling face. “It was my grandfather’s,” Niles explains with a smile. “Cool, huh?”

  “Very,” I reply truthfully. “Will you always need it now?”

  “Nah,” he dismisses my question with a wave, “just until I’m out of this cast.”

  “How long will that be?”

  Shrugging, he pulls himself to standing, leaning on the cane. “Who knows?”

  “Young man,” the nurse prompts him to get going.

  “Bye, Mira. Feel better,” he says.

  The space between us grows thick with emotion. I think he’s about to bend in to kiss me. He doesn’t, though.

  I wave as he hobbles out. For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, I smile.

  My phone buzzes and it’s Jason. I’m awash in guilt for having wanted Niles to kiss me just now. What kind of awful girlfriend am I?

  JULY

  “Think of this as training wheels on a bike,” Dr. Tim says. We’re in his examining room in the hospital. I’m in my wheelchair wearing my fake leg under my sweat suit. He’s peppy and upbeat, as always.

  “Training wheels for my wheelchair?” I ask lightly. What’s he talking about? “I don’t need them. This thing doesn’t tip.”

  He smiles at me. “No, training wheels for you!” He takes a cloth off a stand to reveal a series of rods and wires attached to a robotic hand. It’s attached to a cast of my upper body that was made five days earlier by a combination of digitized measurements and plain old-fashioned plaster mold-making. “It’s a pretty basic prosthetic.” He picks up what looks like a TV remote. “You can control it remotely with this, and we’re also going to get you a harness that will help your strong shoulder control the movements.”

  Dr. Tim aims the remote at the arm and the delicate jointed fingers open. He pushes some different buttons and the fingers curl into a fist.

  “Cool,” I say.

  “This is nothing,” he tells me. “Right now we want you to get used to using it. We need to make sure the fit is perfect, that it’s not too heavy for you. It’s a start.”

  “What comes after this arm?” I ask.

  “We’re working on way cooler stuff than this. You’ll see.”

  Dr. Tim leaves as Carol, his assistant, comes in to help me put on the arm. I catch sight of myself in the full-length mirror hanging over the door. I look like a robot with all the rods and wires. Why did this happen to me?

  A tear slides down my cheek.

  Carol rubs my shoulders. “I know, honey,” she says in a sympathetic tone. “It’s a lot to handle.”

  For some reason, the kindness in her voice sets me off. Fat tears flood down my face. It’s so embarrassing and yet such a relief to cry. I can’t stop it, anyway.

  “Let it come, Mira,” Carol says, handing me a box of tissues. “Just cry it out, sweetheart.”

  A lot of tissues land in the wastebasket before I’m done.

  There’s a knock and Dr. Tim waits for Carol to say it’s all right to come in. He stops short when he sees my face. “What’s this about?” he asks.

  “Just an emotional moment,” Carol tells him gently.

  “Aw, come on,” Dr. Tim says. “This is exciting! No reason for tears. When we’re finished fixing you up, everyone will be jealous of you.”

  “I doubt that,” I say with a thick, shaky laugh.

  “You wait,” Dr. Tim says confidently. “You just wait.”

  “Keep coming toward me, Mira. Don’t depend on the railings so much. Try to find your center of gravity.” Raelene is the physical therapist assigned to my case. She’s a muscular woman with a soothing voice.

  I struggle at the center of two parallel bars, limping along, a titanium lower leg and fake foot on one side and an artificial knee on the other. I grip one bar with my real hand and leave my fake hand open and brush it along the railing. “Without the railings, I’ll fall,” I reply, sounding whinier than I intended. This is our fourth session and I’ve become an expert at falling.

  “Keep your hands on the rails, but try to hold yourself upright with your abdominal muscles.”

  “What abdominal muscles?” My once-hard stomach has turned to mush after so many weeks of being in bed.

  Raelene laughs. “Don’t worry, you’ll get them back. We’re going to work you real hard, but in the end it will be worth it.”

  I nod, hoping she’s right. “You sound like my lacrosse coach, Coach Sanders.”

  “It’s good you’re an athlete. You know about training for a goal. That’s what we’re doing here.”

  Shutting my eyes, I envision the lacrosse field. I have to get across, so I constrict my abdominals and squeeze my glutes as best I can. Just go, I command myself. My fingertips only skim the rails as I step out. Right foot … left … right … left.

  My artificial knee crumbles and down I go at Raelene’s feet. “Way to go!” she cheers, squatting beside me. “That’s it. You got it!”

  “But I fell,” I say, disappointed.

  “It’s all baby steps,” she says. “You’re learning to balance all over again, like a toddler does.”

  I have a new respect for toddlers. This is work! Frustrating, exhausting work. It’s demoralizing and humiliating not to be able to do the most basic of activities. I can’t stand, walk, or even control my new arm. By the end of the day, I’m once more in tears.

  I thought the day would never come, but today Carol pushes me to the front door in my wheelchair. Mom is right behind me, loaded down with medications and paperwork and bags.

  When Carol stops inside the front door, I lean heavily on my crutch and pull myself to standing. The weeks of exercises I’ve done with Raelene have built up my back and abdominal muscles to the point where I can hold steady and not tumble forward.

  Suddenly I feel unsteady and I clutch at Mom’s arm to keep from going over.

  “Don’t worry,” says Carol. “We’ll be seeing you in just a few days for some more PT and tests.”

  I grab a look at myself in the hospital’s glass door. Mom bought me some cute overalls that I wear over a flowered peasant shirt. The cheekbone that’s been replaced with a surgical implant is noticeably larger than the other, though they tell me that the swelling will go down. My nose bends where i
t was broken. The bruising is almost gone, but faded patches of bluish purple still run under my eyes and across the bridge of my nose. The skin grafts on my arm and chest still look raw.

  When the electronic door slides open I breathe in fresh air for the first time in over three months. There’s a warm breeze tossing the trees. It smells like maybe rain is coming. Until this moment it never really hit me how much I’ve missed living in the outside world. The hospital has been my home for so long that this morning I was strangely nervous about leaving. But all those anxieties vanish in a moment, as this real world comes rushing in at me.

  Mom leaves me on a bench while she gets the car. My phone buzzes and I use my left hand to fish it from the pocket of my overalls. Jason has sent a text: I’ll come over as soon as I’m done caddying. Is that OK? I can’t wait to see you.

  Hurry over! I write. But I suddenly panic. What will he think when he does see me? It never crossed my mind when Niles sneaked into my room. Does it mean that I really do think of Niles as a friend, while to me Jason is still my boyfriend? It might. It’s confusing but strangely comforting. At least it clears things up. Jason is my boyfriend and Niles is a friend on whom, admittedly, I had a little crush.

  At the moment I’m very concerned about what my boyfriend will think when he sees the new Bride-of-Frankenstein me.

  Emma waits outside my house, waving, when Mom and I pull into the driveway. Arms flung wide, she runs to embrace me but does a quick dance of awkwardness when she reaches me.

  “She won’t break, but be gentle,” Mom says.

  Emma kisses my left shoulder. “I’m so happy you’re home.” She helps Mom carry my suitcases into the house, then returns for me. “Are you in pain, Mira?”

  “I’m used to it,” I say. This is part not wanting to complain but mostly true. Everything hurts, all the time. Right now my cheekbone is the most painful part. It’s radiating a throbbing ache that runs across my face and travels up to the top of my skull. The other worst pain is that my leg prosthesis is causing my hip to ache.

  Inside, Emma hands me a gift wrapped in purple tissue paper. It’s a pastel drawing of the lake. “I made it for you because I know it’s your happy place,” she explains. “I wanted to give it to you so you could look at it while you were in the hospital, but I didn’t finish on time.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “It’s beautiful. You’re so talented!”

  Emma beams and impulsively wraps me in a hug that throws me off balance. She catches me as I stagger backward and then hugs me again. “I’m so glad you’re home, Mira!”

  “Me, too.”

  “I went back to see Madame Suza again,” Emma tells me, dropping her voice so my mother, who’s in the kitchen, won’t hear.

  “Why would you do that?” I ask. Our first visit with the psychic, Madame Suza, hadn’t exactly been a dazzling success—she’d made some huge, dramatic deal of not telling me what she saw in my palm, probably to scare us into paying more, and we’d left pretty annoyed. I was surprised Emma would spend any more money on a fake psychic.

  “After everything that happened to you, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to know what she saw in your palm that day.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She saw the accident.”

  “In my palm? How?”

  She turns over my palm and traces her finger along a crease. “This is your lifeline—and see, it has this sharp line across it. Then look how it starts wandering all over your hand. She says that’s not normal. It means your life will be disrupted in a major way and never be the same again.”

  “Why couldn’t she just tell me that?” I ask.

  “She—that wasn’t the upsetting part.” Emma seems uncertain whether or not to continue. “She saw a big number fifty-six over your head and says it means change.”

  “That’s not a big deal,” I say. “Obviously things have changed.”

  “She had a vision that you changed into a creature with a giant head.”

  “Ew,” I say. We stare at each other for a minute. This is too weird. “Well, Madame Suza is a kook. I wouldn’t take it too seriously.”

  “No! Of course not. No!” Emma says. “I shouldn’t even have told you.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “It’s just stupid.”

  “Totally stupid,” I agree. I embrace Emma using my left arm. “I’ve missed you,” I say.

  “Me, too.”

  “I brought you something else,” she says, handing me a large wrapped package.

  “Thanks, Emma!” I say excitedly pulling off the paper with my left hand. It’s a gorgeously illustrated copy of The Tempest by Shakespeare. Different artists have illustrated different chapters. I’d been admiring it back in April when we’d been in the mall bookstore together. The story about a wizard shipwrecked on a desert island with his daughter is pretty cool, but I’m especially interested in The Tempest because my name, Miranda, was created by Shakespeare just for the play.

  We sit side by side on the couch, paging through it. Emma sighs. “I wonder if I’ll ever be as good as these artists.”

  “You’re already awesome,” I say sincerely. “Imagine how great you’ll be if you go to college to major in art. I mean, I’ve thought about what you said, and I don’t agree that college isn’t for artists. Think of all the art classes you’d be taking. You’d love it.”

  “You might be right,” Emma agrees thoughtfully. “There would be a chance to study different techniques. I don’t think I’d ever get as good as these guys on my own. I wonder if they went to college.”

  “We could Google it.”

  “I wonder if they have classes in songwriting in college. You could definitely study poetry.”

  “You could illustrate your own poems,” I say.

  “No! I’m thinking about you and your songs for the band.”

  Will I ever perform with the band again? My days with the band seem like another lifetime. Who was the girl who could jump around, dancing wildly? It doesn’t seem possible it could have been me.

  I yawn, suddenly exhausted, and Emma rises from the couch.

  “You’re probably tired,” she says. “When’s the last time you made it this far from a hospital bed?”

  Before leaving, she kisses my fake cheek, and I yelp in pain. “Sorry! Sorry!” she says, her voice an anxiety-filled squeal. “I’ll be more careful.”

  After an hour-long nap, I sit on the living room couch waiting for Jason. I’ve put concealer over the bruising from my broken nose. It’s only partially successful.

  When the doorbell rings, Zack answers it.

  “Hey, big guy!” Jason’s voice carries from the entryway.

  “Hey,” Zack replies listlessly.

  When Jason turns into the living room and sees me, he stops, shocked.

  He’s speechless.

  I stand up abruptly, thinking my crutch will hold me, but it falls to the side and I drop to the floor. Not exactly the most graceful move.

  Jason flies to my side, flustered and panicked. “Mira! Are you all right? Should I call someone? An ambulance?”

  “I’m all right,” I say, sprawled on the floor. “I just feel like an idiot.”

  “No! No! Don’t feel that way. Are any of your … uh … fake parts … broken?”

  Suddenly I’m concerned. I hadn’t considered that possibility. “Help me up and I’ll check,” I say. He helps me get reseated and—as he watches, wide-eyed with amazement—I stretch out my fake arm and raise my prosthetic leg, swiveling my jointed ankle. “It all seems to work,” I tell him.

  Jason is mesmerized by my prosthetics. “Can you wiggle your toes?” he asks eagerly.

  Pulling the sneaker off my good foot, I wiggle my good toes. Jason stares at my foot, then up at me, and then back at my foot. “That’s incredible,” he murmurs, awestruck.

  “That’s my real foot!” I shout. “I’m just messing with you!”

  Jason is instantly red-faced. “
Don’t do stuff like that, Mira! How am I supposed to know?!”

  “I’m sorry!” I can see that he’s nervous and doesn’t know how to act. “Really, that was mean. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” Jason says, gathering his composure. He bends to examine the fake leg. “That’s amazing! How do you like it?”

  I shrug. “Okay,” I say. It’s better than having no leg. The window air-conditioning kicks on with a thunk, which is welcome, since I’m starting to sweat. We sit on the couch, both unable to think of anything to say.

  After a while Jason reaches for my left hand, but it’s a stretch and it’s awkward, so he lets go.

  “How’s your summer been?” I ask.

  “Okay. Fine. Caddying.”

  I nod.

  “I would have come to see you if they’d let me,” he says. “You know that, right?”

  I nod again.

  “And your phone never worked, so …”

  “I know, it’s fine.”

  He notices The Tempest on the coffee table. “This is next month’s assignment for AP lit this year,” he says. “You can get a start on it.”

  I’m not taking AP literature anymore, I don’t think. I’ll be lucky if they even pass me on to senior year after all the school I’ve missed. “I’ve read it,” I remind him.

  “You have?” He raises a surprised eyebrow.

  “I watched a movie version with Mom and it has my name in it, so I got interested to read it.”

  “Your name?”

  “Yeah. Miranda, remember?” There’s a sharp snarkiness in my voice that I didn’t intend.

  “I just think of you as Mira.”

  “That’s short for Miranda,” I say. “I’ve told you that.”

  “I just forgot.”

  “That’s okay,” I say, though my cold tone says otherwise. Why am I picking on him? Maybe I’m still tired.

  Jason picks up the book and thumbs through it. “Emma brought me the book. She was here just before,” I tell him.

  “I should have brought you something,” Jason says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think of it.”

  “That’s all right,” I say, trying to be more pleasant. “The important thing is that you’re here. I’m glad to see you. Sorry if I was crabby with that thing about my name. It was stupid.”