Disintegration

by Nicholson, Scott

  Then the pain lost its thousand sharp edges and became a giant cresting wave of agony, one whose amplitude rose ever higher. The wave turned into a scream that crashed with the echo of his daughter's name.

  Matilda Suzanne Aldridge Wells.

  Matilda after Renee's mother, a woman who had hated her own name. Suzanne because that was Jacob's first choice, and they'd haggled about hyphenating Mattie's last name. Aldridge-Wells. But Renee pointed out that she herself had taken the Wells name and the hyphen wouldn't make sense unless she changed back to her maiden name. Or else Jake would have to take Renee's name. In either case, the paperwork was too daunting: social security forms, credit cards, insurance policies, Jake's business records, trappings of a modern American society where every person had a number and too many parents were making up confusing names for their children.

  And Matilda became Mattie, though Jacob called her "Matilda" in the soft twilight of her room, in the space between bedtime stories and night-night kisses, or on those rare occasions when Mattie's misbehavior ranked as a full-name offense. She was Matilda at both extremes of emotion, in deep anger and gentle, aching appreciation. And that was the name that crossed his lips now, as he plunged up through the surface and the moon exploded around him.

  "What's that?" came a foreign voice, probably the voice of that strange moon pushed by a dry wind.

  "Matilda." His own ears couldn't recognize the sound that passed his lips.

  "Don't speak, Mr. Wells."

  Jacob tried to speak anyway, but felt the tube that lay on his tongue and snaked down his throat. He blinked into the bright lunar face but its haziness remained. Gauze lay across his eyes. He shivered in the white light, afraid of everything, wishing the grotto would suck him back down into its placid waters.

  A gentle hand touched his arm and he yelped at the contact. A machine hissed in a rhythm that both mimicked and mocked life. It was breathing for him, sending oxygen into the tube, through his lungs and heart and bloodstream. Jacob tried to lift his head, but it felt impossibly heavy, a chunk of charred granite.

  "Relax, Mr. Wells."

  The voice was soothing, distant. Jacob licked his lips around the tube. Through the gauze, he could make out the brown face, the white coat, the spotlight he'd mistaken for the moon.

  "Thirsty," Jacob said, having trouble with the sibilant due to the dryness of his mouth.

  "You've got an IV," the distant voice said. The voice was richly accented, West African or something equally exotic. "It may be a day or two before you can drink again."

  Jacob blinked against the gauze, his eyes stinging. After a moment of looking at the vague shapes of machinery and the tubes dangling around him, he closed his eyes. "Where am I?"

  "Littlejohn Memorial."

  Hospital.

  Kingsboro, North Carolina.

  Where he'd once lived and probably still did.

  So this wasn't heaven, or even an antechamber to the land of the dead. Or perhaps it was. Maybe this was his punishment, a purgatory of pain and equipment, a life sentence for his failures.

  "How long...?" Jacob wasn't sure what he wanted to ask. How long he'd been dead? How long before he wasn't dead anymore?

  "You've been here thirty-six hours. You're a very lucky man. Upper airway edema, second-degree burns over fifty percent of your body, a dislocated hip." A hand touched Jacob's arm again. "I'm Dr. Masutu."

  Jacob shivered, his flesh cold but his skin like that of a baked potato, rough and hot and dry. He flexed his fingers and they felt like water balloons. The doctor must have noticed the movement.

  "You're a little swollen at the moment. It's typical for burn victims to gain twenty or thirty pounds due to fluid buildup. Your metabolism is in hyperactive mode right now, trying to heal your injuries."

  A memory sparked in Jacob's head, but it was swept away by a yellow wave of pain. The wave rushed up the beaches of his soul, the foam tickled him, and then the pain receded. The pain reminded him of something, as if it were part of him and he should not be spared. His tongue was thick against the tube and he couldn't feel his teeth.

  "I've adjusted your morphine drip," Dr. Masutu said. "Now that you're awake, you'll probably feel a little discomfort. Unfortunately, we have to go easy on the suppressants because your respiratory system is overtaxed."

  Doctors always used the word "discomfort" in place of "pain."

  "And extra antibiotics," the doctor continued. "The burns will heal, but it's a dangerous time for your body. Because your system is fighting so hard to grow new skin and replace your fluids, you're vulnerable to infections. But we're going to be just fine."

  Jacob felt himself sliding back into the languor of the grotto. Something the doctor had said, one word among that stream of syllables, caused him to open his eyes just before he succumbed to darkness.

  Burns.

  Burns meant heat.

  Heat meant fire.

  Fire meant that the other dream was not a dream, and the memory of flames eating the walls returned. The past built itself on blackened timbers, stacked like logs, nailed itself together into a wobbly house.

  Fire. House.

  And a name.

  Then words meant nothing, because he was in the grotto again, its water soft against his skin. Cool darkness reclaimed him, and he welcomed it.

  ***

  A familiar voice accompanied him on his next journey to the surface.

  "Honey? Can you hear me?"

  Jacob could hear Renee, but couldn't respond. His tongue was like a sock, his mouth a leather shoe. He forced his eyes open and the spotlight stung them. The gauze had been removed. The corners of the room swam on the edges of his vision.

  "Doctor, he opened his eyes."

  He sensed movement, and shadows fell across his face. His hands and feet were numb. His chest was cold, and for a moment he thought he was naked. Jacob rolled his eyes down far enough to see that a loose sheet covered his body. Or maybe it was a shroud.

  "Welcome back, Mr. Wells," came a voice that he dimly recognized. "It's Dr. Masutu."

  Jacob's lips parted, and he pushed his tongue out enough to feel the chapped skin around his mouth. His cheeks were coated with a cold gel. He tried to raise his arm and wipe it away, but the doctor caught his hand.

  "Easy does it. You still have a drip in that arm."

  Jacob looked into the dark, featureless face of the man above him. Then he saw the person to the right of the doctor. The shape of the hair was familiar, the way it curled out at shoulder length. He tried to focus on her but his head throbbed, shattering his vision into tiny shards of meaningless images. He closed his eyes again.

  "Relax, honey. Take it slow," Renee said.

  Take it slow. She'd whispered that the first time they'd made love, when Jacob and Renee were fellow sophomores at North Carolina State. Before Mattie and the other one. Before Joshua came back.

  Jacob had taken it slow many times, but never as slow as he did now. Because gravity still pressed upon him, each machine-assisted breath brought embers of agony, and his limbs felt like alien parasites leeched to his torso. He tried to collect the pieces of himself, to reacquaint flesh with bone, to integrate his organs into a functioning cooperative. He gave up. The only connection between his many parts was a network of pain.

  "Renee," he said in a wheeze.

  "Don't talk."

  He wasn't talking. He was gasping, choking, mouthing nonsense air. He opened his eyes again.

  Renee bent over him, and her face filled the hazy circle where the spotlight had been. She was nothing but eyes and a slash of teeth. The eyes were like lost binary stars against the endless depth of space.

  Those eyes looked familiar.

  Whose eyes? Green like that--

  And it all came back in a scream, the fire, the collapsing roof, Mattie amid her scorched stuffed animals. He fought to sit upright but was far too weak. The movement sent a rocket flare of agony up his left hip.

  "Where's Mattie?"
he said, this time summoning enough air to fill the room with his words. They echoed off the room's sterile surfaces of tile, chrome, and glass.

  He couldn't see Renee well enough to be sure, but her face seemed to collapse in upon itself, like a flower gone putrid in steam.

  "Shhh, honey," she whispered. "We can talk about that later."

  Later? How could she possibly think he would make it to later unless he knew? Giant claws scratched at his intestines, a monster inside him wanting to tear itself free. He fought it down as if it were a rush of nausea. "Where is she?"

  Renee turned her head toward the doctor, and they must have shared a look. Dr. Masutu gave a stiff nod. Renee's hand took his, and her small fingers were slick in the ointment that coated his skin. He squeezed weakly, begging with all the meager strength he could summon.

  "Where?" he whispered, already knowing, never wanting to know.

  "The fire--when the second floor collapsed and threw you out of the fire, she was still there and--she got burned bad--"

  Her voice cracked in synch with the breaking of Jacob's heart.

  Not Mattie.

  Not. Not. Not.

  She was the Happy Sunshine Girl, who played doctor to make her dolls better and held tea parties for her stuffed animals. She was the favorite in her class among all the teachers at Middlewood Elementary. She loved soccer and jump rope and Sunday morning cartoons, the ones that came on just before the scary preacher shows. She was beautiful, the thing that spiritually bound him to Renee, the creature that connected him to the future rather than a past he loathed.

  A strange sound poured out of his lungs, the internal monster turning into a vomit of voice. If not for the raw pain of its passing through his throat, he wouldn't have recognized the voice as his own.

  Renee squeezed more tightly, two hands now, as he twisted in the sheets. Dr. Masutu moved around the bed, trying to calm him with incomprehensible medical terminology. Jacob thrashed his head from side to side, the ceiling a blur of silver and white streaks.

  "It's all going to be okay," Renee said, choking, her face close to his, her breath cool on his cheek.

  The monster ripped his insides, claw and tooth and sharp bone. The monster laughed, rattling the truth against his rib cage like a scythe strumming a xylophone. The monster chewed his aortic chambers, spitting pieces of flesh in its triumph. The pain inside met the pain outside and rose into an unbearable crescendo.

  Jacob wailed, a plea to God, a damning of God.

  He sobbed and coughed, pushed at the tube in his mouth with his tongue.

  He had promised himself that he would be stronger this time, that he'd protect her from Joshua. He would protect all of them. But he had failed again. And that knowledge slashed him with its acid talons.

  Renee dabbed a tissue against his eyes. Her whisper was as soft as the steady wheezing of the respirator: "Jake."

  "Where is she?" he repeated, his teeth clenched around the tube. He looked in the mirror above the sink as if Mattie were in the room.

  Dr. Masutu moved closer, a model of crisp efficiency. "You'd best leave, Mrs. Wells. We can't risk an additional sedative with his respiratory system so stressed."

  Jacob clutched her hand, muscles tight with desperation. Sweat broke loose on his face. "Where is she?"

  Renee stepped away and the ointment caused Jacob to lose his grip. He stared at the back of his hand, at the white blisters, at the pink skin peeling away. His wedding ring was gone. Everything was gone. Joshua had taken it.

  "She's here," Renee said.

  He sat up and dizziness swarmed in. The room tilted, Dr. Masutu's face grew alternately larger and smaller, Renee bobbed like a ship moving away toward the horizon.

  Jacob tried to move his legs, but they were mutinous. He lunged for the edge of the bed and collapsed on the railing. His IV bag fell over and spattered open against the cold tiles. Dr. Masutu gripped him by the shoulders and tried to ease him back onto the bed.

  "Easy, Mr. Wells," the doctor said. His breath smelled of disinfectant, the first odor Jacob had noticed since awakening.

  "I want to see her. Where is she?" he screamed at Renee. He didn't care if she lied. He just needed an answer, any answer, or the hard concrete in his chest would let no more air pass.

  Renee stopped at the door, hunched and shivering. She cupped her hands and leaned against the wall, slowly sliding down its surface like the victim of a firing squad.

  "Mr. Wells," the doctor said, pulling him against the pillow. "Don't make me have to call for assistance."

  "Fuck you," Jacob said, yanking free and pulling himself onto the rail. He caught a fleeting glimpse of himself in the mirror, a wild-eyed lab animal breaking free of a cruel experiment, its flesh mottled red. Then he went over. The respirator tube must have become disconnected, because oxygen escaped with a snakelike hiss. The loose tube protruded from Jacob's mouth as his torso struck the floor, one leg tangled in the bed rails, the other twisted in the sheets. He kicked free, ignoring the pain that chopped him with its hundred dull axes.

  He scrabbled across the floor like a paraplegic crab, Dr. Masutu in a hurry somewhere across the room, Renee shaking. The tiles were cool against his skin, and the thin hospital gown had come undone. The strings dangled down the backs of his legs, lit firecracker fuses. His whole body was heating up, swollen dynamite, a bilious volcano about to erupt.

  He reached Renee and pulled her hands from her face. Her green eyes were drowned with red, her face twenty years older than he remembered it. She was a stranger, he was a stranger, and neither belonged to this world. Not where things like this happened.

  Jacob grabbed the respirator tube with one hand and pulled it from his throat. A piece of skin broke free from his lip and clung to the clear plastic. If only he could tear himself away a piece at a time, like a jigsaw puzzle in reverse, and undo his own existence. But even if he vanished, Joshua would still be there, and then Joshua would have everything.

  "Tell... me...," he said. "Where?"

  She turned away and sobbed some words against the white surface of the wall.

  He touched her hair, fought an urge to clamp his fingers around the strands and slam the truth out of her.

  Her words were invisible bullets: "You said it wouldn't happen again."

  Dr. Masutu moved somewhere above them, and someone else had entered the room. They may as well have been shadows on the wall, for all Jacob noticed or cared. Dr. Masutu shouted some sort of command, but Jacob obeyed only one master now and that was his naked need to know.

  "Where is she?" He grabbed Renee's chin, forced her to face him. Hands grabbed at him, plowing new furrows of agony on his shoulders.

  "Where do you think?" Renee's lips trembled, bitten through in spots, cheeks shiny with tears. She appeared to have escaped the fire without injury. At least any visible, physical hurt.

  "She's in the hospital, isn't she?"

  "You said nothing would ever happen to her."

  "Please, Mr. Wells," came Dr. Masutu's voice as if from another land, one where reason prevailed and patients were expected to will themselves back to health.

  Jacob elbowed the doctor away and climbed onto Renee, his left leg skewed limp and useless. Half of him wanted to crawl inside her and hide, to seek those soft places that had always offered him sanctuary. The other half wanted her to bleed, to suffer, to choke on her words. And that half was taking over.

  He drew back his hand to slap her. Dr. Masutu tried to grab his wrist, but he squirmed free, losing another piece of skin in the process. He swept his hand toward her face and her eyes locked on his, not blinking against the blow. Inviting him. Daring him.

  And he stopped.

  She couldn't win. Not like this.

  He collapsed into a fetal position, the ointment sticky against the tiles. The floor smelled of pine cleanser and bleach. Dr. Masutu gave directions to the nurse, and someone was mopping up fluid. Dr. Masutu knelt and took Jacob's arm. This time, Jacob didn't resist as
the needle entered the inner crook of his elbow.

  "Mattie is in the hospital, Jakie," Renee said.

  Numbness crept up his arm, rushed into his head, and the drug massaged his brain with its icy fingers.

  "On the bottom floor," Renee said, as Jacob slipped back into the grotto, surrendered once more to the black soothing liquid of unconsciousness.

  He drowned at Renee's last words: "In the morgue."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Renee didn't know what was more terrible, burying an older child or burying an infant.

  Mothers should not outlast their children. Mothers should go first, by any rule of the universe, under any decree of a caring God.

  She wiped her eyes and the dishwater stung. She only had three plates, and they were all clean, but she washed them again anyway. Same with the coffee cup. She had scrubbed it until no hint of brown remained. If she rubbed the cup any harder, she would wear through its ceramic skin.

  The apartment was devoid of any personality. Beige couch, matching armchair, solid oak table in the kitchenette with matching benches. Bare walls of antique white, a drab sea of gray carpet. Perfectly lifeless.

  She was afraid she would never feel alive again. Sure, her lungs inflated and her heart pumped blood, her fingers and toes moved, her eyes blinked. But life was more than the sum of working parts.

  Once, while making love to Jacob in their first year of marriage, she had the sensation of floating outside her body. She saw the two of them below, Jacob on his back, her with blonde hair dangling as they moved in a smooth and careless rhythm of hips.

  "How happy and alive they look," the disembodied part of herself had thought. Even without her glasses, she could see with great clarity from her ethereal vantage point. A voyeuristic guilt tugged her back into her flesh and the sensation had passed, but not the notion that she was totally and absurdly right where God had wanted her to be.

  She experienced that same discorporate sensation last year when the tractor was lowering Christine's coffin into the rectangular, red hollow of the Earth. There had been no pleasure in the sensation that time, only an aloof split, and then she rose like a polluted balloon. She swept over the scene on a September wind, cold, brittle, bound for the dead of winter. The cemetery stones jutted like broken icebergs, the greater part of their mystery unseen beneath the surface. The ancient maple by the steel gate had already lost its leaves and stood as helpless as the priest while the tractor's engine whined. Jacob stood in a dark wool coat, holding Mattie against him. Mattie wore black mittens, and their ends were damp because she had wiped her nose with them.