Pieces of Me

by Amber Kizer

  Won’t anyone cry?

  A nurse plunged another syringe of something into my IV. I felt dizzy and tired.

  “I’m not ready. I can’t do this.” Mother leaned across the bed. I lay down next to her. Next to me. Too exhausted to keep floating, too scared to try anything else.

  “They need to take her, Madeline.” Father cleared his throat again.

  “What’s going on? Where are they taking her?” Carlton asked.

  If I’m here, I can’t be dead, can I? Where’s the tunnel? The light? Why, if there is no such thing as souls, am I still here? Explain this to me, Father!

  Father answered. “They are going to harvest her organs now for other kids who need them.”

  “Like at a farm?” Carlton questioned.

  “Yes.” Father nodded.

  “No.” Mother sobbed.

  “She’s really dead?” my brother repeated as my father wrapped his hands around my mother’s upper arms and lifted her off the gurney.

  They ignored him. Someone answer my brother! I didn’t want him to have nightmares about me rotting on some farm somewhere with corn growing from my eye sockets.

  When it was clear our parents were too involved to listen, to even hear my brother, Nurse Scalpel knelt and met Carlton’s gaze. “Jessica was driving a car and got in an accident. She hit her head really bad and her brain got hurt.”

  “Like a sprained ankle?”

  I almost laughed. Thanks to gym class last week, and his lack of coordination, Carlton knew exactly what a sprained ankle was.

  “Did you have a bum ankle? After a few days did it start to feel better?” Nurse Scalpel didn’t break eye contact.

  “Yeah, it’s green but I’m not limping anymore. Wanna see?”

  “Nah, I believe you.” Nurse Scalpel continued, “Well, Jessica’s brain can’t get better. It was so hurt, it stopped working.”

  “But she’s breathing like she’s sleepin’.”

  “When she arrived at the hospital, we didn’t know how badly her brain was hurt, and so we gave her machines to help her breathe, and keep her heart beating, until we knew if her brain could get better. But it stopped working and can’t heal.”

  Carlton scrunched up his face. “Why keep the machines going?”

  “There are lots of sick kids who need help to get better. And Jessica is going to be able to help them with transplants of organs and tissue she can’t use anymore.”

  “Like bone marrow? My friend Evan’s sister needed one of those and they couldn’t find anyone, so Evan had to do it. He said it didn’t hurt very much. Is it going to hurt?” His bottom lip trembled and his chin quivered.

  “No, I promise it won’t hurt.”

  “She really can’t get better?”

  “No, Carlton, she’s dead.”

  “Okay, then she’d want to help the other kids like Evan’s sister.” Carlton’s relief was profound and complete. He wouldn’t have nightmares now. He understood.

  “Good.” Nurse Scalpel nodded in all seriousness, as if Carlton’s questions were the most important ones of the day. In that moment, I loved this stranger for doing what my parents couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do for their son. He did the job I always took on, explaining things and answering Carlton’s queries. Who will do that now? I’m really dead?

  They began to wheel the gurney out of the room and down a long white hallway. Is this the tunnel? I felt myself drifting down the hallway, and then I fell asleep.

  Or did I finally die?

  SIX MONTHS LATER …

  CHAPTER SIX

  Samuel glanced up at the map he’d tacked to his bedroom wall. Twelve states down, thirty-six left, but the farther he researched away from New Mexico, the lower the odds of finding clues. Kidneys had a shelf life. He had to be there in the papers somewhere.

  She. I’m a she.

  Along the walls of maps in his current bedroom, pins and colored thread wove a web of intricate patterns I didn’t understand, but Samuel seemed to interpret them as easily as most people recognized the smell of home.

  Since day one, Samuel wasn’t willing to let the time pass. And to him, the protocol of letting UNOS coordinate communication between donors and recipients seemed old-school and antiquated. He needed answers. He needed to know how his prayer was answered. Not in two years. Today. He worked his way out in ever larger circles. With Samuel’s PRA count, his donor could have been anywhere within the United States. His kidneys and pancreas were rare, his tissue typing almost impossible to find.

  Now he has mine and he’s wasting them. I wanted to shake him and make him do something else. Anything else. Rather than spend his days trying to piece together the story of my death.

  This kid has read three thousand, eight hundred, and forty-two obituaries and articles about fatal car accidents, drownings, and fires. How is he not killing himself from self-induced depression?

  I tried to pick up a pen or type on the keyboard, anything, something, to save me from this agonizing search for the dead donor. It’s me! It’s me! Shouting, I jumped up and down, but he didn’t hear me. I obviously didn’t read enough paranormal novels to understand how ghosts got things done. Add that to the list of things I wish I’d done more of. It’s an impressive list and I’m only six months dead.

  I tried to hit the Return key again.

  Bing!

  I did it!

  Craptastic, no, I didn’t. That was the dryer downstairs signaling Sam’s tighty whities were clean, and skid-mark free, at least, I hoped. I was forever scarred by that first day doing laundry with Sam.

  Sam needed a break. He’d make himself nuts hunting up the Good Samaritan any longer today.

  We heard his mother’s footsteps, heavy on the floorboards, approach. I didn’t understand their dynamic yet.

  “Honey? Why don’t you go to a movie? Or meet some friends to skateboard?” Sam’s ma called tentatively through his closed bedroom door.

  “Because I can watch movies in my room and I don’t have friends or a skateboard. I don’t know anyone here anymore,” Samuel muttered under his breath. Too many months and years of chasing specialists and miracles from new hospital to new hotel and back. He closed his eyes and whispered, “You thought you’d get a normal boy, a real boy, when I got new organs, didn’t you?” After a deep breath, and loud enough his ma heard, he said, “Maybe in a little while; I just have a couple more lines of code to drop in and then sure, I’ll go outside.”

  “Okay, honey.” We felt her waver.

  I knew that tone. That was the tone of parents-who-don’t-understand-their-kids-and-are-disappointed-by-the-reality-of-parenthood. I knew it well.

  “Who’s online?” Samuel’s fingers flew over the keys and I plunked myself onto his bed. He wasn’t going anywhere. Not soon. Or maybe at all. I knew this. I knew he placated his mom with promises and she let him. It was their thing.

  “New message,” he read aloud, but he didn’t have to; if Samuel read it, saw it, thought it, I knew it too. And I have to admit that there are a few things I’d much rather unsee or unthink.

  “ ‘Yo, MiracleMan, I’m stuck on level six. Help.’ Typical. Figure it out.” Samuel didn’t have patience for shortcuts. Not that I blamed him. Years plugged into machines had the power to turn even the most positive person into a bitter bossy-pants.

  I started counting the glow-in-the-dark stars on his bedroom ceiling. His mother stuck them up while he was recovering from the transplant surgery. As if he were still eight. I’d only ever gotten to three hundred and six before my attention wandered. I had time. No rush.

  The next message sat him straighter, tugged closer to the screen, as if that were possible, and frowning. Not his usual.

  I moved behind him to see for myself.

  MM—

  Do you ever think miracles are just someone else’s tragedy? Can they really be miraculous?

  —Misty

  Samuel chewed his bottom lip and his fingers fluttered above the keys like they did w
hen he was thinking hard. I think my response would be “good question,” and leave it at that. This one struck him hard, and I wasn’t sure why. I knew Misty too. I avoided her. But how did she find Samuel? Another link in the chain. Another thread in the web? Snap out of it, Jessica. Sam tapped out his words and sat, hovering above the keyboard.

  Misty—

  Every tragedy is someone’s miracle. Why focus on the negative?

  —Samuel

  He sat there staring at the screen for, like, ten minutes before he hit Send. Boys. That’s not what she was asking. I think.

  When Sam let himself be consumed hunting up other possible donors, I closed my eyes.

  Maybe I should check on Misty? She makes me feel icky. I frowned. Am I allowed to not understand her? Am I being a bad donor? Today, I didn’t care.

  What’s Vivian up to?

  Vivian it is …

  Vivian checked the levels of stock in the pencil trays. They were out of dark charcoal again. What was the big draw for charcoal pencils this month? Someone had to be taking them without paying. She’d mention it to Jackson before she left for the day. Her stomach rumbled. When did she eat last?

  “Don’t you have an exam to study for?”

  Vivian turned toward Cassidy and shrugged. “I should, I guess.” The thought of wasting time on memorizing geography appalled her.

  “That class is a killer.” Cassidy shook her head and moved off to help a customer.

  “Yeah, but no one died from failing an exam.” Vivian frowned.

  Cassidy was normal. She worried about things like getting a date for Friday night and what college her parents could afford to send her to.

  Life was slightly different for Vivian. I sighed. She worried about living to college age or if she was getting enough nutrition in her food or starving to death slowly because of the CF. Cystic fibrosis. Yeah, just slightly different.

  “Excuse me?”

  I should have known. He’d been thinking about art an awful lot lately.

  Leif Leolin in an art supply store. Will wonders never cease? He’s gutsier than I gave him credit for.

  Vivian looked up into eyes the color of lime zest (Pantone 7737) or maybe they were pure grass green (Pantone 15-6437). She knew those eyes, she studied him every time they passed in the halls. Senior star with tragic story—Vivian knew exactly who he was.

  Figure out the color later! Stop staring at him and say something. I wanted to blush in embarrassment for her. Speak, darn it!

  “Uh, hello?” he repeated.

  Vivian blanched before turning a brilliant shade of red. I wonder what Pantone color you are now, Viv? I felt a grin spread across my heart. I wondered if she felt it in a flutter. “Oh, can I help you?”

  Leif slouched, his hands deep into his pockets, and rolled back on his heels. I knew he was nervous and completely shocked by the nerve it took to walk into the store. Once inside, he even forgot what he thought he wanted.

  “Are you looking for a gift?” Vivian set her box down and started toward the gift-set section assuming, wrongly, that Leif was there at someone else’s request.

  “Uh, no.” Leif pointed toward the watercolor crayons. “What are those?”

  Vivian paused and changed direction, recalculating. She recognized the curiosity and spark of delight in Leif’s eyes. “Let me show you.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Misty slid the mailbox key into the slot and pulled out the usual daily stack of bills. More doctors she didn’t know were present in her crisis. More surgeons who were there at the hospital during those dark days. More medications she had to take or else. Everyone needed, no … wanted, a piece of her. Their share of dollars she didn’t have. Her parents didn’t have. Despair choked her.

  The hall light was out again. Smoke from apartment 3B’s daily burned meal coated the back of Misty’s throat. The stairs reeked of dog poop and old garbage. Unfortunately, the tiny apartment her family shared didn’t smell better, or appear much brighter, on the inside. There was nothing homey about her home.

  Misty paused outside the apartment door. Was Papa laid off? Did he keep his job, his measly insurance? Or were the rumors true? Foreign-born workers, even legal ones, were always the first to go.

  I hated it here. The smells of humanity living on top of each other. The desperation that seeped from everything. I wanted to shower and forget Misty lived like this. I knew she wanted to forget too. The start of voices arguing forced me back a step. I didn’t want to hear this. Misty stepped forward.

  If there was better insulation in the walls, maybe any in the door, Misty might have been forced to press her ear against the metal to hear bits of the conversation going on inside. As it was, all she had to do was stand outside; the yelling was easily decipherable, even in highly accented English. Misty didn’t understand much of her parents’ native language; she refused to acknowledge it on the grounds that her grandmother refused to learn English. So some of the words were impossible to understand for either of us, but the tone was crystal clear.

  I cringed. No one needed to speak the language to know they were at it again. Ear-splitting curses, table-pounding fists, and shouted demands. Every time I was here, I left depleted.

  Misty wilted further inside herself with each screech. Their neighbors came and went, stepping around her, paying no attention to the commotion behind the walls. Scenes like it seemed to populate every floor of this building. No wonder she lives at the library on Aston and Edison.

  “… she’s your daughter too …”

  An overused and obviously useless argument by Misty’s mother.

  “How are we supposed to feed the family …”

  “They never should have talked us into allowing the surgery.…”

  She would have died without the transplant, you idiots.

  “How am I going to find work that pays enough?”

  “… insurance will lapse …”

  Misty listened to every word with her eyes closed and her face blank.

  Her crazy grandmother shouted encouragement and frankly egged on the fighting. I felt as if this family was spiraling down the drain with Misty caught in the undertow. With a choked sob, Misty stuffed the mail into her backpack and turned away from the apartment. She headed for sanctuary, and even I relaxed when her feet hit the pavement and left the screaming behind.

  Once on Aston Boulevard, Misty used the little-known side entrance and returned the security guard’s wave. They knew her here. No one knew her name, but book people recognized themselves in others and accepted her presence among them. It was as if everyone here understood that covers told them nothing about what happened inside.

  Misty kept her head down and wove through the white marble pillars in the grand lobby of the Carnegie Library. Used by several independent colleges in the area, and as a public facility, it cradled the love of words with majestic stained glass and rich, gleaming wood. No chrome, or plastic, or beveled glass. It smelled of yesterday’s lessons and tomorrow’s promises.

  The more time we spent here, the more I felt the humble and special appeal it held for Misty. There was peace here. Answers.

  Between college kids with their gadgets and tomes of research, and the white-haired before-tech-ers who read printed newspapers and played games of chess, Misty glided silently back toward the historical biography section. Up a short, almost hidden, flight of stairs until she found a landing and the bank of computers she considered her own special place.

  Dropping her backpack on the ground, she slid into a massive leather armchair that was surprisingly comfortable. She kept her hood up and her face buried in its folds. She had three more massive volcano zits along her jawline. She sighed, shifting in her seat as wispy fingers of ache filtered up her ribs and under her abdominal scar.

  Logging in, she opened up her email inbox to see if MiracleMan had responded. There were two messages. I felt her surprise. As if she thought her email would be as unwanted by him as her presence was at home. Hope was
all she had left and it fluttered faintly. She read his first message and she flipped off the screen in frustration. Think positive? Why was that everyone’s stupid advice?

  But then she opened his second message:

  Hi, M—

  I sounded like a dumb fortune cookie before. Sorry. Jackass.

  What’s your story?

  —Samuel

  Misty’s lips twitched with the tiniest smile as she reread his message ten times. “Total dumb fortune cookie.” Did he understand? Could he?

  Better than you think he might. Write him back! I wondered if I was the only one of us to recognize the much needed lifeline he’d tossed her.

  But what was her story? What would she say to him? Would she be honest? I waited, holding my metaphorical breath.

  Her screen blinked and there was a messaging request. She clicked for info. “Who is it?”

  Samuel aka MiracleMan. Ah, good job, Sammy!

  “Wanna chat?” Misty read out loud. Did she? What did he want? What was his angle? Without overthinking it, Misty clicked on the blinking icon.

  M: hi

  S: sorry

  again

  M: it’s ok

  S: whyd u ask?

  Why had she asked a stranger? The Internet’s Daily Miracle newsman. Misty pictured an old guy, like a loony professor in a suit and never-combed hair. The cursor blinked at her. Waiting.

  M: thought u might no

  S: the mystery is inherent in the miracle otherwise theyd just be normal stuff or maybe the normal stuff is the miracle

  A wave of intense dizziness squeezed the breath out of Misty’s lungs. Her vision grayed. She breathed through it. Forcing her feet to feel the insides of her shoes, the carpet beneath. Insisting her brain register that she still sat in the armchair. But her fingers curled off the keys and her ears rang with internal screams. The cursor mocked her.

  S: misty?

  S: misty?

  S: come in MISTY?

  Come on, Misty, talk to him. He cares.