Skinned

by Robin Wasserman

  I don’t know how much time passed before I realized what I had to do. Seconds, maybe. Minutes, at the most. No time at all if you didn’t have breath to hold. And if you did? Too much.

  Lungs filled with oxygen floated. Empty lungs sank to the bottom.

  So that’s where I searched next, my bare stomach scraping against the muddy riverbed. I forced myself to keep my kicks slow and steady, covering the ground methodically, hoping I would find him, hoping I wouldn’t, because if he was there, a still body in the mud, if he was…

  I didn’t let myself think about it.

  I swam.

  And then I touched something that wasn’t rock, wasn’t mud, was firm and long and foot-shaped, and I wrapped my hand around it, around him. I scooped up his body and kicked toward the surface, burst out of the water. And only then did I force myself to look at what I was holding. His eyes were open, rolled back in his head. I had to turn away from the unbroken white stare. He wasn’t breathing.

  CPR, I thought, towing him to shore. I voiced for help, gave our coordinates, and someone would come for us, to save us—but maybe not in time.

  Make him breathe. Breathe for him.

  But I didn’t breathe at all.

  Still, there was air flowing through my throat, I thought. Hissing past my voice box, when I needed it, the stream of unfiltered air that made the artificial larynx vibrate so I could talk. I didn’t know if that would work. I had to try.

  The network told me what to do. I tipped his head back. I placed my lips on his. They were so cold. Blood oozed from the cuts on his face, on his arms, blood everywhere.

  Breathe, I thought, forcing the air through my mouth, into his. Pumping his chest, maybe in the wrong place, maybe too light, maybe too hard, I didn’t know, but pumping, once, twice, three times, thirty times, just like I was supposed to. I paused, I waited, I listened. No change.

  I breathed for him again.

  And again.

  He coughed.

  Water spurted out of his mouth, spraying me in the face.

  “Auden.” I cradled his face. “Auden!”

  He didn’t say anything. But he was breathing. I could hear him. I could see his chest rise and fall. He was breathing.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. I laid my head against his chest, listening to his heart. Night had almost ended; the sky was turning pink.

  He was still breathing when help arrived. They shifted him onto a backboard, immobilized his neck and spine, gave him an oxygen feed, loaded him into an ambulance. I got in after him, because no one stopped me.

  It was only when someone wrapped a blanket around me that I realized I was still naked.

  No one would tell me if he was going to be okay. But I promised him he would, over and over again.

  His eyes opened.

  “You’re okay,” I told him, holding his hand. His fingers sat limply in mine. “You’re going to be okay.”

  “I hope not,” he croaked, his voice crackly.

  For a second I was so happy to hear him speak that I didn’t register what he said.

  “They’ll make me like you,” he whispered. “We can be the same.”

  “No,” I whispered back, fiercely. “You’re going to be fine.”

  That’s what I said.

  That’s what I wanted to believe, about him, about myself.

  I didn’t want to be a person who hoped he was right, that he would not be fine. I didn’t want to hope that he was hurt so badly that there’d be no other option, that he would die, only to be reborn as a machine, just so that I wouldn’t have to be alone.

  I reminded myself what it would mean. I pictured him, even though it hurt—because it hurt—lying still on a metal slab, pale and cold, the white sheet draped over his skull, where his brain had been scooped out, carved up, replicated. I pictured him trapped in the dark, stuck in a frozen body, thinking he might be dead, then wishing he was.

  I didn’t want that for him.

  Or at least, I didn’t want to want that for him.

  But truth? Sordid, pathetic truth? I think I did.

  If Auden were a mech, if we could go through it together, everything would be different. I would no longer be alone.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I said again, uselessly. It was better and less complicated than the truth, and maybe if I said it enough, it would come true.

  “Liar.” His eyes rolled back in his head.

  Somewhere, an alarm sounded, and one of the men pushed me out of the way.

  “Flatline,” the man said, pushing on Auden’s chest, fiddling with a machine, as the alarm droned on.

  “What’s happening?”

  No one answered me.

  The ambulance sped toward the hospital, and the men pounded on his chest, and the alarm beeped, and Auden’s chest lay flat, his lungs empty.

  Flatline.

  No heartbeat.

  No life.

  They’ll fix you, I thought, squeezing his hand, holding on, like I hadn’t in the water. They have to.

  NUMB

  “Nothing hurts.”

  At the hospital someone gave me something to wear.

  Someone else brought bandages, patched up the gashes the rocks had torn in my skin. Even though there was no need. Nothing was gushing or dripping. Nothing hurt. Nothing had penetrated the hard shell around the neural cortex and—or so it seemed from the fact that I could still walk and talk—none of the complicated wiring beneath the surface had been shaken loose. I was fine. But I let them patch the skin. I nodded when they told me I needed to get myself checked out—somewhere else, of course, where they knew what to do with things like me. I would have agreed to anything as long as they let me stay.

  Auden was gone, swept away behind a set of white double doors, and I sat on a blue padded chair, staring at nothing, waiting.

  This isn’t happening, I thought, then cut myself off. No denial.

  No rage, no bargaining, no acceptance. I wasn’t getting sucked into any of that five stages of grieving shit, because he was still alive. Ergo, no grief. No denial.

  This is happening.

  I had wanted to feel. Now I wanted to stop. I wanted to be all those things people were afraid of. I wanted to be cold and heartless, like a computer, like a refrigerator, like a toaster. I wanted to turn myself off.

  That, at least, I could do.

  I didn’t.

  The white doors swung open, and a doctor pushed through. He sat down next to me.

  Not good, I thought. If it was good news, he would stay on his feet, he would spit it out quickly, so we could all sigh and laugh and go home. But bad news, he’d want to deliver that face-to-face. He’d want to be close enough that he could pat me on the shoulder. Or catch me if I passed out. Even though, as a doctor, he would know that was an impossibility.

  “Has someone contacted his parents?” the doctor asked.

  I nodded. “There’s just his father.” It was hard to get words out. Every time I spoke—every time I sent a blast of air through my throat, past my larynx, into and then out of my mouth, I remembered doing it for him, breathing for him, and I wondered if my air had been good enough, if I had been good enough or—

  No. I am a machine, I thought. I could control myself. I could control my emotions. They weren’t real anyway, right? Whatever happened, I could handle it. I would handle it.

  “He’s on his way,” I said in my pathetic little voice. I didn’t know that for sure, because I’d had to leave the message for him, bad enough, since how do you leave that kind of message? Hi, your son might be dead and if he is, it’s probably my fault. Have a nice day!

  The doctor sighed. He had two thin scars in front of his ears and another set framing his nose, telltale signs that he’d just finished his latest lift-tuck. It looked good. I hated myself for noticing. “I should really wait for his guardian to arrive before I go into the specifics of his situation, but—”

  “You have to tell me something,” I pleaded. “Please.
”

  “But, as I was about to say, I don’t think it would hurt to give you a general update.” He paused, and gave me a searching look like he was trying to figure out if I was prone to noisy and embarrassing breakdowns. I wondered if there was a private little room somewhere that they used for conversations like this, a walled-in space where you could shriek and throw things without inconveniencing all those people whose lives hadn’t just fallen apart.

  But the waiting room was empty. We stayed where we were.

  “Your boyfriend’s heart stopped.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said automatically.

  I have never hated myself more than I did in that silent moment after the words were out. There was nothing I could do to take them back.

  “Okay, well…” In that pause, I could tell. The doctor hated me too. “Your friend’s heart stopped. He was technically dead for about two hours.”

  Was. I held tight to the verb tense.

  “But we were lucky that the body temperature was already so low….” The doctor shook his head. “I don’t know how he managed to last as long as he did in water that cold, but it’s made our job a bit easier.”

  The water was too cold, I thought.

  My fault, I thought.

  No one forced him to jump in after me, I told myself. No one forced him to stay.

  But I knew better.

  “We’ll keep his temp down to slow his metabolism, and keep reperfusion as gradual as possible—resume oxygen supply too quickly and brain cells start dying, but if we do it slowly, we should be able to preserve a substantial amount of brain function.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “Substantial.”

  “It means we’ll know more when he wakes up.”

  “But he will wake up? When?”

  “That’s still to be determined,” the doctor said slowly. “But, yes, in cases like this, we’re optimistic for a cognitive recovery.”

  “You mean he’ll be okay,” I said eagerly.

  The doctor looked uncomfortable.

  “You said recovery,” I reminded him. “You said optimistic.”

  “I said cognitive recovery. We have every reason to hope that his brain might emerge from this intact. But his body…I’m told you were there, so you must know. The weight of the water crashing down on him, at the speed it was falling, and the rocks…There are impact injuries, crush injuries. He took quite a beating.” The doctor shook his head. “The extent of the damage…”

  “You can fix it,” I said. “He has plenty of credit, enough for anything. You have to fix it.”

  “There are a lot of things we can fix,” he agreed. “And in cases like this, there are of course”—he paused, then looked pointedly at me. No, not at me. At the body—“other options.”

  “Oh.” I looked at the floor. “It’s that bad?”

  “It’s bad,” he said. “But I’m afraid I can’t go into more detail until his father arrives. You’re not family, so…”

  “Of course. I understand.”

  I understood. I wasn’t his family. I wasn’t his girlfriend. I was nothing.

  M. Heller arrived an hour or so later, sans wife number two. He blew past me, pushed aside the nurse who tried to stop him from going through the white double doors, and disappeared behind them. When he emerged, a few minutes later, he looked different. He looked old. He slumped down on the closest chair and let himself fall forward, his head toppled over his knees. He was shaking.

  But when he looked up to see me standing over him, his eyes were dry.

  “M. Heller, I just wanted to say, I don’t know if they told you that I was with Auden when—Well, anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry, and I hope—”

  “Get out,” he said flatly.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want you here. Get out.”

  “M. Heller, look, I’m not trying to upset you, but your son and I—”

  “What?” he said fiercely, like he was daring me to keep going. “My son and you what?”

  “Nothing,” I said quietly. I didn’t have any words.

  “He’s my son,” M. Heller’s voice trembled on the word. “And they’re telling me he might—” His face went very still for a moment. “I can’t look at you right now. Please go.”

  He didn’t have to explain. I got it. They were telling him his son might die—or worse. Might become like me.

  And didn’t I know? That kind of thing could ruin a father’s life.

  I backed away. But I didn’t leave. I just sat down on the other side of the waiting room. M. Heller didn’t object. He acted like he didn’t notice. So he sat on one side of the room, staring at the floor. I sat on the other side, staring at the wall. And we did what the room was meant for.

  We waited.

  A couple hours later they let M. Heller see him. No one said anything to me.

  The day passed. I left my parents a message, the obligatory assurance I was still alive. They didn’t need to know any more than that. M. Heller disappeared behind the white doors for hours. Still no one told me anything. No one on the staff would speak to me. Until finally the doctor I recognized appeared again. I grabbed him as he passed. “What’s happening? Is he awake? Can I see him?”

  The doctor rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, but the patient’s father has insisted that he not have any visitors.”

  At least I knew he was still alive.

  “Can you at least tell me how he’s doing?”

  “M. Heller has also…” The doctor sighed and shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m not allowed to give out any more information about the patient’s status.”

  “Not to anyone?” I asked, already suspecting the answer. “Or…?”

  “Not to you.”

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to break something. Like M. Heller’s neck. Or even the doctor’s, since he was closer at hand. But instead I just sat down again, like a good little girl, following the rules.

  I waited.

  I waited for M. Heller to change his mind. It didn’t happen. So then I changed my strategy. I waited for him to leave or fall asleep or eat. Because he would have to do one of them eventually. He had needs.

  I didn’t.

  A day passed, and a night, and it was nearly dawn again when a nurse escorted M. Heller back into the waiting room. She stayed close, as if expecting him to stumble or to lose the ability to hold himself up. Lean on me, she projected, shoulders sturdy and ready to carry the burden. But he stayed upright. Separate and unruffled, like nothing could touch him. His eyes skimmed over me as if I wasn’t there.

  “I’ll be back with his things,” I heard him say, hesitating in the doorway. “You’re sure it’s—”

  “It’s okay,” she assured him. “Go home and get a little sleep. Save your strength. He’s going to need it.”

  M. Heller nodded. It took him a moment too long to raise his head again. “And you’ll let me know if anything…changes.”

  “Immediately,” she said. “Go.”

  He left. Which meant I just had to choose my moment. Wait until no one was watching. Then slip through the white doors. Find Auden’s room. Find Auden. See for myself, whatever it was. Even if it was something I didn’t want to see.

  I waited.

  He was asleep.

  At least, he looked like he was asleep. His eyes were closed. That was almost all I could see of his face: his eyes. The rest was covered with bandages. It didn’t look like Auden. It barely looked like a human being, not with all the tubes feeding in and out of every orifice and the regenerative shielding stretching across his torso and definitely not with the metal scaffolding encasing his head like a birdcage. Four rigid metal rods sprouted from a padded leather halter that stretched around his shoulders and collarbone. They connected to a thin metal band that circled his skull. Slim silver bits dug into his forehead at evenly spaced points, pinching the skin and holding the contraption in place. A bloody smear spread over his left eyebrow, and
I tried not to imagine someone drilling the metal bit into his skull. I wondered if he’d been awake, if it had hurt; if it still hurt. I didn’t want to know what it was for.

  There was a metal folding chair to the left of his bed. I sat down. His right arm was in a cast. His legs were covered by a thin blue blanket. But his left arm lay exposed and, except for a few small bandages and the IV needle jabbed into his wrist, feeding some clear fluid into his bloodstream, the arm looked normal. Healthy. So, very gently, careful not to jar any of the delicately assembled machinery that surrounded his body, I rested my hand on top of his.

  I wondered where his glasses were, in case he needed them. No—when he needed them. Then I remembered they were probably floating downstream somewhere, miles away. Maybe they’d made it to the ocean. I didn’t even know if the river hit the ocean. But everything does eventually, right?

  He opened his eyes.

  “Hi!” No, that was too loud, too fakely cheery. He’d see through it. “Hey,” I said, softer.

  Nothing.

  “Auden? Can you hear me?” I leaned over him, so that he could see me, even with his head pinned in place by the metal cage. “It’s me. Lia.”

  I wondered if he could understand what I was saying.

  Substantial amount of brain function, the doctor had said without ever clarifying what “substantial” meant. Something more than none; something less than all.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I said, just like I’d said on the way to the hospital, just as uselessly. I remembered, then, how much I’d hated it when people had said it to me. How ridiculous, how unacceptable it had sounded coming from people who were whole and healthy. Nothing would be okay, I’d thought after the accident. And I’d hated them for lying. “The doctor says you’ll be fine.”

  “You must be talking to a different doctor,” he said. Wheezed, more like. His words were slow and raspy, like he hadn’t used his throat in a long time. And like they hurt coming out.