by Hunter Shea
“So, what do you think of the attic?” my father asked, quick to steer away from an awkward moment. “Your mother thought I was crazy, spending the money to have it finished.”
Growing up, the attic had always been nothing more than a storage room, crammed so full of junk that it had become a fire hazard and a death trap for anyone brave enough to enter. It seemed like it had always been filled from floor to ceiling with boxes, rusting sleighs, bicycles and furniture left over from deceased relatives. Now it was junk free with nice wood finishing and smelling lightly of orange cleaner.
“I guess it’s a good thing you did,” I rasped. My head was woozy and my voice, tired as I was, sounded like I had just chain-smoked a pack of cigs.
“I’m just sorry we couldn’t get your old room ready in time. Your mother really packed her crafting and painting stuff in there.” His knuckles blanched as he gripped the end of my new hospital bed. “Besides, I think this one is nicer anyway. You’ll have the best view in the house.”
“Just me, the bats, and the horizon.”
“Bats? What bats? Hank, there aren’t any bats up here.” My mother looked furtively around the room.
I grinned and my father gave me a wink. “He knows that dear. Why don’t we let him get some sleep.”
My mother smoothed my hair, gave me a heavy dose of the pity eyes, wanted or not, and followed my father down the stairs.
I looked around and spied a dozen cardboard boxes stacked atop one another in the far corner of the room; remnants from the death trap gone by. Two of the boxes on top were marked HANK’S TOYS. I wondered if they saved my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures, minus Donatello. I’d watched him melt amidst the coals after a family barbecue when I felt I was too old to play with plastic turtles.
It was getting late and I realized I was running out of time for the morphine to take me away to Numb Land. I closed my eyes and immediately plummeted into perfect, painless, soundless, dreamless sleep.
DAY TWO
The sun came up and seemed to direct every searing ray onto my face. I squinted as I pushed myself up as far as I could on the bed, shielding my eyes with the back of my raised hand.
I made a mental note to ask for room darkening blinds.
My mouth was so dry that my lips had stuck to my front teeth. I grabbed the bottle of water on the night table and eased my lips free. Next came the throbbing at the end of my left thigh that loved to greet me every morning like a Adam Shenk, our elementary school bully, hanging out by my locker before first period. It was the kind of dull pain that calls for soft rubbing to ease its woes, but I still hadn’t gotten the nerve to touch or see what was left of my leg.
My fucking leg. My fucking diseased, amputated leg. Was it tossed in the garbage and currently rotting in some landfill in Staten Island? Did my mother ask the surgeon to save it, like a pair of tonsils, and store it in a jar of formaldehyde? Would she bring it out during holidays like she did family photo albums?
I liked to think that once freed from my body, it simply hopped out of the operating room and was sunning itself on a beach in Cabo or maybe even Aruba. My tanned, itinerant leg.
The smell of bacon wafted up the stairs and for the first time in as long as I could remember, I was hungry. Home cooked bacon, the remedy for all ills. Well, almost all ills.
Waiting for breakfast, I took time to really admire the work that had been done to the attic. I wondered where the old man had put everything. All that was left was that pile of boxes. And now there was me, a hospital bed, two night tables and a TV stand. I smiled when I pictured him digging a mass grave in the back yard to give our precious junk a proper burial.
The flap on one of HANK’S TOYS boxes hung open. I tried to remember if it had been closed when I was staring at it before passing out.
“Breakfast!” my mother sang as she came up the stairs. She carried a tray filled with bacon, toast, eggs, juice, coffee and a fruit cup. I smiled to hide my pain and tucked into my food like a prisoner. It had been a long time since I’d moved out on my own and in the interim, I had forgotten how good home cooking could be.
DAY THREE
The sky outside purpled like an infected bruise when my new home nurse, Leah, had finished rewrapping my leg with fresh gauze and an Ace bandage.
“Jesus, that hurt,” I said through gritted teeth. Somehow, I had endured her ministrations to the sawed off area where the rest of me should have been, but I was definitely worse for wear. Sweat trickled down my temples, armpits and lower back. If pain was a motherfucker, this was the mother of all fuckers.
“I’ll give you a shot of painkiller before I leave,” she said with a soft, Indian accent.
I did my best to keep from whimpering like a little kid. Leah was young and pretty with two rows of perfect, gleaming white teeth that contrasted brilliantly against her bronze-colored skin. It was hard to keep up the appearance of a virile, single man when you were only three quarters of your former self and trembling with white hot agony. Why couldn’t she have been old, fat and ugly?
“You’re an angel,” I said, adding, “How much longer do you think until the pain, you know, slacks off? The doctor said once I’m feeling better, I can get fitted for a prosthesis.”
Leah plunged a needle into a small vial of clear liquid. “It’s different for everyone. You have to remember, you had MRSA, so it’s taken a toll on your entire body. You need all your strength back. That’s my job and I promise you, I’ll have you up and out before you know it.” She smiled, patted my upper arm and gave me a shot of Dilaudid.
Instantly, I felt the painkiller speed up my arm in an icy rush. It would only be a matter of fleeting minutes before I slipped into the comforting haze of narcotic nothingness.
“You rest up and I’ll see you the day after tomorrow.”
“It’s not like I have much of a choice,” I replied with a weak chuckle.
She was about to walk down the stairs when I said, “You know, I always thought stories about amputees and phantom limbs were made up. Funny thing is, I could swear that I can feel my leg, right down to my toes, right now, and it feels sore as can be.”
“You will feel that from time to time. The memory of every part of you is hardwired into your brain and our minds don’t always accept what’s in front of them. Good night, Hank. Sleep well.”
“Can you please hit the light? I like sleeping in the dark.”
“Sure.”
I heard Leah’s muffled voice as she talked to my parents in the living room and closed my eyes, waiting for the Dilaudid to take full effect. The wind shushed through the window frames and I felt the tension in my body bleed away into the ether.
As I drifted off into the void, I thought I heard the click-clack sound of plastic pieces being jostled together. With great effort, I opened my eyes to see if my mother or father was in the room. There was only me, the darkness and the wind. I listened for as long as I could for the sound to return, but the pull of sleep was stronger than my curiosity.
DAY SEVEN
I knew I was far from well because I was one week into living back home and hadn’t felt the least bit bored or agitated, like the way I got as a kid when I’d been home with the chicken pox and had to spend a week inside, even though I was climbing the walls by day four. The routine of meals, visits by Leah, talks with my mom and dad, reading books and watching television was somehow comforting. I needed it. The past year, watching an infection eat away at me, had been hell on wheels.
My father had bought one of those moving desk trays that you see in hospital rooms so I could prop up books, the paper, drinks and my iPod in front of me. It even came with a compartment with a pop-up mirror so I could comb my hair and see just how far I had fallen physically.
I was in the middle of admiring the four-day-old beard I had decided to grow until I was well enough to leave the attic on my own volition when one of the boxes crashed to the floor. I jerked upright, the tension forcing a jolt of fire into my leg tha
t ricocheted up my spine.
“Wow dad, way to scare the heck out of the sick guy,” I said, grimacing as I folded the mirror back down.
My father wasn’t in the room. One of the top boxes had taken a tumble and lay open on the floor. A small, green, plastic army man had spilled out.
How the hell had the box fallen?
The window by that corner of the room was shut tight, so a draft couldn’t have knocked it off its steady perch. Besides, it would have taken one hell of a breeze to do it anyway; like a nor’easter funneled into the small room atop my parents’ home.
I couldn’t even cross the six or seven feet to check it out myself. I was trapped in my hospital bed as securely as a madman in a straightjacket. A shiver ran down my spine, which promptly brought a fresh wave of misery.
Sweaty and in need of distraction, I turned on the TV and lost myself in my twentieth lifetime viewing of Planet of the Apes. I wondered what Nova looked like now.
DAY EIGHT
Click-clack.
Click-clack.
I dreamt I was on plastic roller skates, winding my way down a life-sized plastic racecar track that had been laid out on the turf of Citi Field in a series of figure eights. I was alone in the stadium, content to skate in tighter and tighter circles. My legs, my two powerful, graceful legs, stepped one in front of the other, stopping to glide on the turns, accelerating their syncopation so I could pick up speed on the straightaway. The air smelled like fresh popcorn and the clouds were all shaped like buxom women, the type you find on big rig mud flaps.
I awoke slowly, the sound of my skates on that black, flexible track still echoing in my brain. I used the palms of my hands to rub my eyes, stretching my neck from side to side to work out the kinks. I always hated sleeping on my back, but present circumstances prevented me from doing otherwise.
A yawn caught in my throat as I cleared my eyes and saw a stack of neat, multicolored Lando blocks on the tray that I had kept across the middle of my bed. My father, aside from being a hoarder, was also a world champion at the art of frugality. So while other kids received loads and loads of Legos, I was stuck with the knock-off, less colorful and far more fragile Lando building blocks.
They had been locked into place, forming five letters, each about three inches high.
They spelled out, HELLO.
I stared, transfixed by the plastic message. My heart tripped in my chest.
I was about to reach out and touch the Lando blocks when my mother came up with breakfast and the paper.
“Morning Hank. Did you sleep well?”
Before I could answer, her cell phone rang. She placed a hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “It’s your grandmother. I’ll be back in a little while to take your dishes away and maybe we can watch Rachael Ray together.”
She left to talk to grandma, oblivious to the tiny plastic greeting on my tray. Slowly, I reached a shaking hand to the letter H. Gingerly pulling it into my palm with uncertain fingers, it felt cold, far colder than it had any right to be. That same chill emanated from E, L, L and O.
For reasons beyond my own comprehension, I dismantled the letters and secreted them into the small drawer in my desk tray. It was a message directed at me, but from whom? Or what?
DAY TEN
I kept the Lando incident from my parents. The next couple of days passed without the clatter of plastic blocks moving of their own accord. There were no rainbow colored messages to greet me in the morning and I began to suspect that in my drug induced haze, I may have somehow managed to hop over to the opened box of my old toys and arranged the letters myself. If I confessed my suspicion to my mother, I was sure she would have ordered my father to strap me to the bed so I didn’t accidentally hurt myself. I might even get a set of bed rails installed.
It was the only logical explanation, and the only way I could rationalize it enough to sleep at night.
My father came up to play a few rounds of checkers, and I could hear the Lando pieces clack together oh-so-softly when he rolled my desk tray aside to place the board on my lap. I hoped he didn’t notice my wide eyed expression as my own irrationality conjured an image of the blocks pushing the drawer open and descending on the checker board like an invading army, vanquishing the red and black checkers to the ends of Plastic Toy Earth.
“I’m losing it,” I muttered.
“What’s that?” my father said.
“You’re losing today, old man,” I recovered quickly, offering up a 99 cent store version of a grin.
We played three rounds and he came out on top, two games to one.
“You look like you’re feeling it,” he said.
I could actually sense my skin pale from the building pain. I looked over at the digital clock. “Right on time. Funny how agony works on a better timetable than the damn trains.”
My father put a pill in my palm and poured a cup of warm ginger ale. “This should do the trick. I’m going to the bookstore. How about I pick you up that new Anderson Prunty book? It’ll be waiting for you when you wake up.”
I swallowed hard and gave him a thumbs-up. I turned on the TV for background noise and forced myself to fall asleep to escape the escalating burning sensation in my leg.
When I woke up three hours later, as promised, the Anderson Prunty book was on my desk tray, along with the new issues of Sports Illustrated and Archaeology.
And atop them both were the Lando pieces.
This time, they had stacked together to read I AM LONELY.
Shuddering, despite the heat of the room, I opened the drawer where I had stashed the Landos two days before.
The original pieces were still there.
I looked toward the boxes and noticed one faded yellow Lando square on the floor. A straggler. Maybe it couldn’t make the long trip up my bed sheet and onto the table.
“Who…who are you,” I said softly, my voice trembling.
I AM LONELY.
Again, I dismantled the letters and swept them into the drawer. There were so many pieces inside now, it was hard to shut.
DAY THIRTEEN
“You have a temperature,” Leah said, popping the plastic cap off her electric thermometer into the red medical waste bin.
“I feel like I’m dragging today, but I couldn’t tell if it was just me or the meds.”
A lock of her hair fell across my eyes as she looked into my throat. “We’re going to have to keep an eye on that. Let me draw some blood and send it to the lab. We can’t be too careful. Don’t want that infection to come back.”
“You got that right,” I said, and sputtered into a dry cough. “Maybe it’s just a cold.”
While she prepared my arm and her needle and vials, I stared at the open toy box in the corner. My father had long since put it back up where it belonged, but the top flaps kept opening, no matter what he did. Deep down, I knew that the toy blocks would not allow themselves to be trapped again. I waited for them day and night, my ears straining to detect the sound of their plastic march to my bed. Along with getting a cold, I thought I may be losing my mind. Months cooped up in a hospital, one amputation and now weeks in an attic could easily be warping my brain.
“Do the drugs I’m on make people hallucinate?” I asked.
Leah was in the middle of drawing the last vial of blood and frowned with mild concern. “You are on some heavy duty painkillers, so yes, that’s always a possibility. Why do you ask?”
I thought about telling her about the two messages I had received and showing her my drawer full of Landos. As I gathered up my courage, an arctic chill permeated the room, freezing my body as well as the words in my mouth. It got so bad, so fast, that my body shivered as if I had just stepped into a frozen field in Nome, Alaska. My teeth chattered with such force, I could hear the enamel flake away.
Leah felt my pulse while placing her warm hand on my forehead. “Hank, are you all right?”
“It’s f-freezing. Don’t y-you f-f-feel it?”
She covered me with a
nother blanket and stayed by my side until the cold wave had passed. I knew then that the icy cocoon I had been wrapped within was meant only for me. It was a message, as clear as the brightly colored Landos.
Keep your fucking mouth shut.
DAY FOURTEEN
YOU STAY.
The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the open drawer in my desk tray. A quarter of the Landos had made their escape in the night.
I chuckled.
What choice did I have? I was not only crippled, but weak as the acting in a Spanish soap opera.
“I will, for now,” I said to the empty room. “But not for long. This old boy is going to get better and I’m going to hop down those stairs if I have to, all the way to the life I left behind. No toys allowed.”
My father popped up and looked around the attic.
“Someone up here I don’t know about?”
“Just me, dad. Just me.”
DAY SIXTEEN
I heard Leah talking to my parents outside the attic stairway.
“The blood work came back negative, so the doctors are pretty sure it’s just a cold. His system is week and he’s prone to get anything.”
“But we’ve kept it to just the two of us and neither of us are sick,” my mother said, her tone worried and tired.
“You could be carrying a cold and not even know it. Just keep taking his temperature and tell me if it gets any worse.”
I had sneaked a peek at Leah’s thermometer earlier and saw I was now at 101. When I had said “Fuck,” under my breath, she had assumed it was because I was worried that the MRSA was back.
But she hadn’t seen the Landos that morning.
It was only one word, but it had turned my stomach sour and tightened my chest with foreboding.
SICKER.
Either the bastards were psychic, or they were making me sick. Was something controlling the Landos, or did they have a mind all their own? Was my mind so far gone, devoured by the MRSA and drugs, that it was me all along? Worst of all, there was nothing I could do about it. Now with the fever, I was almost too weak to pull myself up in the bed.
