by Schow, Ryan
I feel Netty’s body stiffen against mine. “Holy cow,” she whispers, in my ear. “He’s so hot I think I just came.” That’s my cue to let go of her and introduce the two of them.
“Damien, this is my best friend, Netty,” I say. He flashes his GQ smile and Netty makes her best “innocent girl meeting the bad-boy” look. “Netty, this is my friend Damien.”
From then on, Netty appears star struck. Like Jesus just arrived in a UFO looking like some kind of rock star with GQ hair and pin-up girl tattoos.
Damien says, “Can I borrow your phone? I have to call my father. Let him know I’ve arrived okay.”
When Damien steps out of the room, Netty looks at me and says, “How is someone like that even possible?”
I shrug my shoulders and say, “Good breeding, I guess. Though you wouldn’t know it by looking at his parents.”
Damien returns to the room, holding the phone close to him with the microphone covered, and says, “My dad wants to know if I’m staying the night, since it’s late.”
Without thinking, I say, “Tell him you’ll be staying over. In the guest bedroom, of course.” The way I say it with such confidence and conviction, like maybe I’m desperate to get back at him for hanging up on me all those times, I’m the Savannah version 2.0 of days ago. The flawless, half-Hispanic beauty. The super-hot hotty. For one blissful moment, I forget I’ve become the slip-sliding, half-grandmafied version of my former self and more than anything I should be in hibernation. Alone. At least I have the prudence to eventually be embarrassed by myself.
When I was ugly, I had no such conviction.
It’s practically impossible not to hear what Damien’s saying in the hallway, and I find myself eavesdropping, along with Netty.
“So I guess I’ll be staying the night.” Pause. “No, I’ll be staying in the guest room.” Pause. “No, it’s not like that. She’s having problems.” Pause. “She’s having a serious physical reaction to the treatment. Half her body seems to have gone slack. The best way to describe it is that she looks like a stroke victim.”
Hearing Damien make the comparison, my eyes prickle with tears, and Netty makes a sad face. My own pain has me reaching out to touch her. She pulls me into her arms as I start to cry. In my ear, she’s saying everything will be alright, but the truth is, I can’t see how. What if Gerhard can’t fix me? The optimistic parts of me say at least the damage can’t get any worse, but the realist in me says it’s already bad enough, and getting worse by the day.
I open the door, breeze out into the hallway past Damien, who is saying good-bye to his father, then head to the guest room to prepare the bed. The door is closed, but worse, I hear snoring. The kind of snoring sounds made by fat guys who just used a pitcher of beer to wash down a full rack of ribs and too much coleslaw.
I open the door, flip on the light, and there’s Margaret. Passed out, still dressed. I want to scream at her right now. Instead, I find myself standing over her wishing I had a knife, or a gun.
Her hair is in tangles, like she just got done being plowed by the entire varsity football team, and her makeup is smeared—an unfortunate side-effect of the post rehab bender. She shifts, stops snoring and settles into a quiet but labored breathing. I flick the side of her head; she doesn’t move.
“Great,” I say, not at all quiet.
The thing about Margaret is she usually mixes sleeping pills with her alcohol. She calls it the sleep of the dead. Once I asked her when she was going to stop breathing, like the real dead, and she just frowned at me. I stare at her a minute longer then leave the room to break the news to Damien.
He’s talking with Netty when I come in. I guess something in my already disfigured face leads them to believe something more than the obvious is wrong.
“The monster’s in the guest room and she’s passed out hard.”
“Yeah,” Netty says, fully aware of what this means. “Sleep of the dead, right?”
I nod, then I look at Damien. I know I should tell him about the pool house, how there’s a spare room in there, but the truth is I don’t want to be alone tonight.
“If you can stomach the idea of being next to me,” I say, “and if you promise not to touch me while I sleep, we can share the bed.”
“I don’t mind,” he says.
I about fall over, and not from the continued throbbing in my hip, which feels tight and angry. I look at Netty and say, “Do you want to stay over, too?”
“I do, but my father is surrendering himself to the authorities in the morning, and to be honest, I’m kind of losing my mind about it all.”
“If he’s going in the morning, why are you here right now?” I ask, knowing she’s been trying to spend every waking minute with him.
“He needs time with my mother,” she says. “They practically kicked me out.”
“Are you and your father close?” Damien says.
“Sort of, I mean, yes. But it’s not just him leaving, it’s worse. In the morning the media is going to plaster his ‘going to jail’ pictures and his mug shot all over the TV like he’s Satan himself. And then reporters will start digging into our lives justifying their disregard for our privacy by saying they’re writing a ‘human interest piece.’ The next thing you know our lives are ruined and our privacy is gone, all in time to be last week’s news. He stashed some money for me and my mom, but we have to live like we’re practically broke just to pacify the IRS or the feds or whatever. Plus my dad will be gone. I didn’t really know him until this mess, but now that I do, I’m going to miss him.”
She fights back the tears, and her being Russian, she wins. Still, her eyes are glistening bright, and for some reason, I feel her pain and it feels exactly like mine. It’s the pain of knowing your world is crumbling and you can’t do a damn thing about it.
Damien looks like he isn’t sure how to act, but I tell him he’s getting a voyeuristic view into the world of teenage girls, minus the gossip, the pillow fights and the chick flicks. Netty blinks twice and says, “I’m really worried about you.”
“I’ll be okay,” I lie. I try to hold it together, and somehow I manage. “But I’m worried about you, too.”
“I want to stay, but—” she says.
“I know. It’s okay.”
“When are you going to Gerhard’s office?”
“In the morning, at ten. I’ll call you when I’m done.”
I see her off with a long hug, then head back to the bedroom where Damien is waiting. The pit in my stomach just might be a giant masticating tumor. For one moment in time, though, I let myself enjoy the fact that I will be sleeping with Damien Rhodes.
5
Laying in the dark in my queen-sized bed, my long nightshirt pulled low, him in his boxer shorts, I listen to him breathe and wonder if this is unbelievable that he’s lying in bed next to me. Or perhaps this is terrible because the only reason he’s here is because I’m a righteous mess. I almost groan out loud thinking he’ll never imagine me in bed as a sex goddess, only as Shrek’s younger, nastier more disfigured sister.
The way he’s breathing, I know he’s still awake. I have to say something because the silence is killing me. “Are you and Maggie dating?” I ask.
Okay, it’s a pretty pointed question. I should have used a more cautious approach, but with so much going wrong in my life, my inner hostility seems to be spilling into everything else, putting an edge on everything.
He says, “No. We talked about it, and we like each other, but she said she might not be coming back to Astor Academy, so in the end we decided we shouldn’t.”
“How do you feel about her now?” I say. “I mean, have you talked with her since school let out?”
“Yeah. I still like her, and I spoke with her yesterday, but something strange is going on with her. It’s her music career I think. And maybe her step-sister, Blake. Maggie says she’s a real bitch.”
“That’s too bad,” I hear myself say.
“I want to be there for her, you kn
ow? Even if it’s just as a friend. But more and more I feel her closing down, shutting me out. She doesn’t have your strength, Savannah.”
I feel bad for Maggie, and I take Damien’s comment about me being strong as a compliment. Thinking about loss, about sadness and shutting down, I feel the many hands of sleep pulling me under. I want to keep talking with him, but my body is insistent. The last thing I hear him say is, “Actually I think you’re the strongest most principled girl I know.” I reach out and take his hand in mine and he doesn’t pull away. The cocoon of sleep I fall into moments later is deep and dark at first, but eventually I’m overcome with a throbbing, burning pain that has me sleeping through the night in fits.
6
When I wake the next morning, the stitches in my hip are all but swallowed by red, swollen flesh. The incision site is obviously infected. I press a finger to the inflamed skin, screaming involuntarily. Damien jolts awake, his hair mussed, his eyes bloodshot. To my horror, a glob of yellowish pus leaks out.
Damien says, “That’s a problem.”
“I know.”
Having heard my yelp, Margaret rushes into the room, her hair runway-model crazy, a holy wreck if ever there was one. Her makeup is smeared on the right side of her face, the colors dragged low and splotchy.
“With half your makeup smeared down your face,” I say, “I feel like this is the first time we actually look like mother and daughter.”
Sloughing off the comment, she says, “Are you okay?”
“My leg is infected. I can’t really move it.”
Damien pulls himself under the covers, scoots away from me and tries finger-combing his hair. Margaret looks at him, and smiles a hello, but she seems genuinely concerned for me and it’s confusing. I was really rude to her last night.
“Do you feel sick?”
“My leg’s been hurting all night.”
She looks back and forth from me to Damien, then back. “Did you two—”
“God, no!” I say.
Damien fires an offended look at me and says, “Jeez, don’t try to sell it so hard.”
Does he think I don’t want him anymore? If anything, it’s the exact opposite. “What I meant to say,” I try explaining to them both, “is that I meant, ‘God no’ for him.”
“We need to get you to that doctor of yours,” Margaret says, trying to fix her hair with her hands.
“I’ll take her,” Damien says, knowing how much I despise Margaret.
She stands there a minute too long and I realize she wants to say something. My stomach starts to boil, to churn.
“Whatever’s on your mind, Margaret, say it because your face is creeping me out.”
“Well if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black,” she says. Then a second later, when she realizes how hurtful her comment was, she says, “Oh, Jesus. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’m worried about you. I think you’re getting worse.”
“More of your obviousities?”
“I’m concerned is all,” she says, embarrassed.
“You said that already. Now can you just leave so me and my little friend can try to pretend this all isn’t so embarrassing?”
With that, she leaves and I’m like, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
Damien says, “I don’t think she’s as bad as you make her out to be.”
“That’s because this version of her is actually trying to be a mother.”
“So why don’t you let her?”
Scooting over in the bed to face him with my good side while taking on an adversarial pose, I say, “Whose side are you on anyway?”
The look on his face says he’s about to indulge me, but then, what seems like all my insides make a long, labored roll that has me taking a moment’s pause.
“Savannah, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” I’m holding my belly now, fearing the worst.
“Are you okay?”
It hits me all at once. I’m out of bed, hobbling too fast for the bathroom when the vomit explodes out of my body. The nasty mixture of stomach bile and mucus and last night’s meal splash all over the bathroom floor, which—for some reason—makes me sad. My heel catches in the mess, causing me to slip and wrench my back. Reaching out, my hand finds the towel rack, and thank God. The last thing I need to do is crack my skull on the floor while lying like a Slopasaurus Rex in a puddle of my own puke. Kneeling before the toilet, I start to cry, then to sob, and before long I’m hurling up round two. This is supposed to be a new start for me and my father, but here I am, different problem, same symptoms.
Damien is by my side seconds later. He’s in his boxers, holding my hair back, and one cursory look back to thank him puts my eyes at almost the same level as his stomach. I can’t help noticing the stack of muscles, but my shame keeps me from falling immediately into lust. I will myself not to notice him because I don’t want to associate my sickness with his beauty.
I fill the bowl with more chunky swill, then sit back, my hurt leg pushed out straight. It hurts to bend it. It hurts to breathe. Suddenly my head is splitting in two, peeling back from my brain, aching with ferocity where the back of my neck meets my skull.
“I need to see Gerhard,” I tell Damien. There’s snot on my face; I don’t care. “Like right now.” Margaret is standing in the doorway. I yell at her to get out. She leaves, clearly upset.
Damien grabs my phone and calls Gerhard to tell him we’re coming in early, then throws a blanket over my shoulders and helps me to his car. Margaret follows us outside, apologizing the whole way. There’s no sign of my father. After the way he behaved last night, how he seemed more immature than ever, and how he reeked of pot smoke, part of me is thankful I don’t see him.
In my flopped over brain, I envision him passed out in his room. Wiped out from the booze. Still half-baked.
As Damien is backing out of the driveway, I have the urge to flip Margaret the bird, but she looks concerned now. Less angry. Instead, I give her a cursory wave, regretting my niceness the moment I give it. She doesn’t deserve that from me.
After Damien gets the temperature right, I turn sideways, close my eyes. I don’t even remember falling asleep. The next thing I know, we’re double parked inside the city and both Gerhard and Nurse Arabelle are waiting on the side of the street to meet me. My body is on fire. I’m all sweaty. Gerhard has a gurney waiting, which I think might be a bit of overkill, but maybe not. My leg is screaming in agony, the infection set in with a tightness that keeps me from bending it any further.
Gerhard opens the passenger door; a lot of hands help me on the gurney. Nurse Arabelle stands nearby, looking concerned, which is new for her. Usually the human robot is either cruel or blank faced. Part of my brain registers people looking at me, the failed lab experiment, the incredible melting girl.
“I’m a horror show,” I say to Gerhard who says, “Indeed you are.”
My gurney is rolled to the steps. Gerhard and Damien lift, carry me up the steps. Once inside, I’m rolled into their office and down the hallway, all the while Gerhard is giving Nurse Arabelle instructions on how to prep me.
Arabelle looks down at me and says, “I am in pain for you.”
“I’m in pain for me, too.”
Me being this vulnerable in front of her, it might actually help her forgive me for stealing her eyes, and for being so snotty all the time.
Gerhard rolls me into a different room than the one I was in when he removed the RFID chip. I feel myself blinking in and out of consciousness. When I open my eyes, I’m in another, larger room where the air is cold and the hum of electronic equipment is constant and loud.
I blink out.
I blink awake.
Still on the gurney, or perhaps a table, Gerhard is taking down my pants. I’m trying to remember what underwear I’m wearing. I can’t recall. Damien is looking on, but I can’t feel one way or another about it because everything hurts too much.
I blink out.
I blink awake.
Gerhard clears the air bubbles from a long, silver needle. He sticks it in my leg and the harsh tingle is nearly instantaneous. Thankfully my leg begins to numb, taking the searing heat of infection with it.
Nurse Arabelle puts a mask over my face, the hiss of oxygen barely eclipsing the sounds of heavy machinery. She says, “Now count to backwards from one hundred, and world will be right again when you wake up.”
I look at Gerhard. “What are you going to do to me?” The edges of my vision are fuzzing over, closing in on me in a damp, foggy haze. My chest feels too heavy, my lungs exhausted. Gerhard’s eyes look past me, then down at me. It takes every last ounce of strength to turn my neck, to fight the dark edges crowding my vision.
What I see practically scares the urine out of me.
The hum of machinery is coming from four large canisters along the back wall. The bubbling pink fluid stands in direct contrast to the flat grey concrete walls. Only three of the canisters contain the pink liquid, and in these canisters are three floating bodies, all girls, all nearly naked. The fourth is laid out horizontal, and it’s empty.
“Who are those girls?” I say.
From what feels like miles away, I hear Gerhard say, “Your friends. The empty one is yours.”
Fading quick, my body slipping from consciousness, I hear Damien saying “No way, Gerhard. You can’t do this to her!” Within fractions of a second I am in deep space, the silence a blessing, the chill not too cold, the escape something I will forever cherish.
The Call
1
Wolfgang Gerhard stared at her in the pink fluid, thinking whatever Savannah thought she would gain in coming to him for help, it was going to be so very much different than what she expected. He gave her the shot he gave to himself and to very few people over the decades. Never to a child. Until now. The implications, they could be startling. It was the only way, though.
Nurse Arabelle stepped into the lab and said, “The phone is calling for you.”
