by Hunt, Angela
He rolls up next to me, stopping when he feels the brush of my fingertips. For a long moment we sit in the red rays of sunrise, saying nothing.
“So—are you going to tell me about your trip into the big city?” he finally asks.
“It was interesting,” I answer. “Made a baby cry, freaked out a waitress, tripped and fell in front of dozens of people—Oh, and got hit by a car.”
“Were you hurt?”
“No.”
His face twists in an odd expression, then he shakes his head. “I don’t get it, kiddo. Being deaf isn’t that big a deal, and though you’re a gold-plated genius, I’ve never gotten the feeling you’re too cerebral for public consumption. So what aren’t you telling me?”
How do I tell him? I drop my hand to his arm and squeeze.
“Sarah? What’s wrong?”
I lift my face to the sky. Only when I open my mouth to answer do I taste the salt of tears and realize that I’ve been crying. “Jud…”
“I’m here, kiddo.”
I grasp his hands and slip to my knees. As his brows rush together, I place his warm, gentle palms on the wet planes of my face. For a moment he doesn’t move, then his sensitive fingers rise to my hairline and flutter down, gently probing the areas where my eyes, cheeks, nose, and lips should be.
“Lord have mercy,” he finally says, dropping his hands into his lap. “You poor baby.”
I turn and sink to the ground, resting my shoulder against the solidity of one of his sawed-off stumps. His hand falls on my hair, and we sit without speaking until the tower bell chimes the morning Angelus.
When the last chime drifts away on the breeze, Judson’s broad hand pats the top of my head. “Thank you,” he says, “for being brave enough to show me your scars. But you’re a fool, Sarah Sims, if you think you’ve just shown me your true self.”
I turn and gape at him, as surprised by his words as by his unsympathetic tone. “Did you just call me a fool?”
“Turn up your hearing aid, girl, so I won’t have to repeat myself. Yes, for a genius you can be remarkably dull-witted.”
I scramble to my feet and sputter as I wipe damp gravel from the back of my pants. “Why—And to think I trusted—”
“Calm down, kiddo. So you have facial scars, so what? You’re living in a hospital. The agency would do anything for you. Get yourself fixed up and get out of here.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“I’m not the individual under discussion, you are. I’ve lived in the world—I’ve created a family and left my mark. You haven’t even scratched the surface of life.”
I seethe in silence, desperately searching for some verbal missile to fling at him.
“Things are beginning to make sense,” Jud says. “Your aunt—she’s urging you to get help, isn’t she?
“How do you know that?”
He snorts. “Come on, kid, give me credit for having learned a few things in my lifetime. Well, your aunt’s right. She must have leaped quite a few hurdles to get here, so don’t blow her off. Listen to her, Sarah. Whatever she’s offering, take it.”
I swallow hard and drop to the bench. “She wants me to get surgery. A face transplant.”
Jud’s brows rise. “Wow.”
“But—what if I’m damaged beyond repair? I’m like Brooks Hatlen in The Shawshank Redemption. I can’t imagine living…out there.”
Judson’s hand reaches across the empty space between us and finds mine. “Brooks was the inmate with the bird, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you know that one day that bird’s mama pushed him out of the nest. You can fly, Sarah. You only have to spread your wings.”
I can only squeeze his hand in answer. He’s obviously feeling a lot more confident than I am.
Chapter Thirty-One
Renee
By the time I make it to the dining room for breakfast, Sarah, Judson, and Dr. Mewton are already seated. When I take my place at the table, Sarah puts down her spoon, glances at Judson, and then looks directly at me. “I want to have the face transplant,” she says. “I’ve decided. I’ll do whatever it takes to look like a normal person.”
Dr. Mewton’s face flushes, her mouth pursing into a tight knot. “Sarah, you can’t be serious.”
“I am. Aunt Renee said she’s going to check into the details. I’ll have the transplant and whatever reconstructions are necessary to have a normal face.”
“But you said you didn’t want any more surgeries. You may not remember all the pain you suffered, but I do. When you were in such agony you couldn’t sleep, I was the one who rocked you until you stopped sniffling.”
“Sure, you helped, and so did the morphine,” Sarah quips, and I have to admire her quick wit. “But what did the old mermaid tell the little princess? ‘One must suffer to be beautiful.’”
“Hans Christian Andersen.” I meet her gaze and smile. “I’ve always loved that story.”
“You want to be beautiful?” Mewton snorts. “Sarah, so many things are more important than physical beauty. You are brilliant and talented and skilled. Plus, the company depends on you. I depend on you. You can’t forget that.”
Sarah picks up her spoon. “I’ll work when I can. But if medical coverage is a benefit of my employment, then the company shouldn’t begrudge me the time to finish the job they started years ago.”
Glenda Mewton jerks her head in my direction. “What about Dr. Carey? She’ll be leaving soon. If you’re serious about this, you’re going to need weeks of preparatory therapy, a regimen of immunosuppressive drugs, and at least two teams of sophisticated microsurgeons. I don’t have time to—”
“I have time,” I interrupt, surprising even myself. When every face at the table turns toward me, I know what my next step will be. “This is part of my work for the agency, isn’t it? I’ll give Sarah all the time she needs.”
Ignoring Dr. Mewton’s glower, I reach across the table and pat Sarah’s hand. “I may have missed your childhood, but I’ll be here for you now. I’ll oversee the research, talk to the surgeons, whatever you need me to do. We’ll get you ready, not only for your transplant, but for your new life.”
Sarah elbows Judson, who holds up his hand for her triumphant high-five. And as Dr. Mewton sighs and closes her eyes, I wonder what, exactly, I have promised to do.
But I have no regrets. I’ve come halfway around the world to assure Kevin’s daughter that she is not alone. I will not walk away from her now.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sarah
I’m working in the operations room when I receive an instant message from Dr. M: Need to see you at once. My office.
What could she want? I stand and tell Judson I’ve been summoned, then head down to Dr. M’s office. She’s sitting at her desk, obviously waiting.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Come in, Sarah. And close the door behind you, please.”
I sit in the chair across from her desk and blink when she lifts a trembling hand to smooth her hair away from her forehead. “I’m so upset I don’t know where to begin.”
“Dr. Mewton?”
“Give me a moment, please.” She leans back and squeezes the bridge of her nose. “Sarah, about your announcement at breakfast this morning…”
“Yes?”
“I wouldn’t get my hopes up. The surgery your aunt mentioned is highly risky, still experimental, and fraught with complications. I don’t want to see you pin your hopes on this procedure and then be disappointed.”
I fold my hands and try to remain calm. “I still want to investigate it.”
“But why? Aren’t you happy here? Haven’t we done enough for you? We have given you everything you ever needed—food, shelter, clothing, medical care, affection…”
“What about freedom? Choices? A chance to discover that I might have a life apart from the agency?” I struggle to find words that won’t hurt this woman who has given me so much. “I’m grateful for everything, Dr
. M, but if there’s a chance I could live like other people, I want to take it.”
“Didn’t you learn anything from your experience last night? I heard your trip into the city didn’t go so well.”
I close my eyes. “I learned that living among other people with this face would be…difficult. So I want a transplant.”
“Have you considered what might happen if the transplant fails? You don’t have enough spare skin on your body to replace a skin graft.”
I swallow hard. “If it fails…I’ll cope. I can’t be any worse off than I am now.”
Dr. M chokes out a laugh. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“How do you know?” I lift my chin and meet her hard eyes. “In a way, I’m already dead to the world. Fewer than twenty people even know I exist. Fewer than ten know me personally. What is living, if it’s not knowing and being known?”
She breathes deep and rubs her hands over her arms. “There are worse things than anonymity,” she says. “Far worse things.”
“Oh, yeah?”
She raises her gaze in a swift, sharp look. “I don’t like to speak of the past, but trust me—being used is worse than being ignored. The world is filled with people who will hurt you if you let them get too close.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Renee
Once I reach my room, I launch into preparations for Project Sarah. The restless feeling that has plagued me ever since my arrival has vanished; now that I have a clear goal, a new energy sparks in my blood.
Now…if only I can pursue my goals without upsetting Glenda Mewton’s highly important and highly classified applecart.
I pull my laptop from its case and boot it up. I’m relieved to discover that the convent has a Wi-Fi system in place. I may be breaking some kind of federal law by piggybacking off this signal, but Dr. Mewton can arrest me if she wants to. I’m not here to steal government secrets; I’m here to care for my niece.
Ten minutes later, I’m ready to toss my laptop across the room. The internal antenna or receiver or whatever it is absolutely refuses to log on.
I consider throwing a tempter tantrum, but am restrained by the saving grace of second thought. My niece, a computer savant, is working only a few yards away.
I scoop my laptop into my arms and trot up the stairs, happy to see that various guards no longer find it necessary to stop me at every floor. Apparently Glenda Mewton is beginning to trust me…at least a little.
I find Sarah in the computer-filled operations room on the second floor. She looks up, distracted, when I call her name, and it takes a moment for her to focus on me. “Yes?”
“I’m having trouble accessing the network. The whatchamacallit doesn’t seem to be working. Can you help?”
I hesitate at the threshold like a student awaiting permission to enter the teachers’ lounge, but she waves me in. She opens my laptop, clears the screen of everything but a blinking cursor, and types in a string of numbers and dots. The computer responds with an even longer string of numbers, letters, and dots, then she hands the machine back to me. “You’re in.”
“It’s fixed?”
“Yes.”
“What’d you do? Are you some kind of wizard?”
One corner of her mouth rises in a small smile. “I pinged my computer. See that number?” She taps the string on the screen. “That’s my IP address. I told your computer to look for my computer, and it did. The fact that you were able to find me proves we’re connected.”
“So your computer is found at cyberspace address 172.16.0.0?”
“Something like that.”
“That’s almost the year I was born…followed by my favorite age. Thanks, Sarah.”
“No problem.”
Grateful for the help, I leave the laptop open and powered on, then trot back downstairs. Once at my desk, I access Medline with my office password and look up “face transplant.” I’m reasonably sure Sarah will need a craniofacial surgeon to correct any lingering bone malformations, so Glenda Mewton will either have to find a qualified surgeon on the CIA payroll or convince someone else to operate for the good of God and country. I find an article about a doctor in Cleveland who has been cleared to do the surgery, so I jot her name on my tablet as a possible candidate for Sarah’s operation.
I read about the possible complications—Dr. Mewton has already mentioned the risk of tissue rejection, which means Sarah will have to take immunosuppressive drugs, possibly for many years. These may be expensive and may cause side effects, but won’t a life of freedom be worth it?
Finally, Sarah will need a donor. The French patient’s transplanted tissue came from a woman who expired from suicide, not disease, so we’ll have to wait for a donor from a similar situation. We may be waiting for some time, because not only will the blood and tissue types have to match, but the skin color will also have to coordinate with Sarah’s.
I take off my reading glasses and rub the bridge of my nose. The donor issue will be complicated by families’ natural reluctance to give up a part of the body that has so much to do with identity. We use faces to recognize each other, and to display almost every possible emotion. I’ve had patients who had trouble letting go of a deceased husband’s favorite shirt or sweater—how could they release something as personal as his face?
I click to another online article and read that out of 120 people surveyed at one hospital, the majority answered that they would accept someone else’s face if they needed one. No one, however, indicated that they would donate their own.
That fact dismays me even though I understand it. It’s hard to imagine someone else engaging the world behind the face we have worn throughout our lifetime.
My research assures me that the transplant recipient will not look like the donor. Even if some of the musculature and cartilage are included with the transplant, the elastic skin envelope will drape itself over the bone structure of the recipient. The result will be a hybrid, perhaps, but in Sarah’s case, definitely an improvement.
Furthermore, the age of the donor is not a primary concern. Skin health has less to do with its physical age than it does with the hormones and blood flow available to nourish it.
I put down my pen as the full weight of this responsibility bears down on me. If I am to do this, I’m going to be here longer than a few weeks. I may need to stay on this remote island for a year or more, depending on how things progress with Sarah.
An entire year…without tending my practice, my regular patients, or my oversize puppy.
I open my wallet and slide out the photograph of me and Kevin. I run my finger over the profile of his face and sort through the loose ends of my life.
I once concentrated on my practice so much that I lost a husband through inattention. I nursed a grudge against my sister-in-law and forfeited every opportunity to get to know her. I pouted at my brother’s wedding and missed the chance to share in his happiness.
If I allow my partners or my home or even my darling dog to draw me back before I’ve seen this through, I’ll have missed another opportunity that won’t come around again.
So I’ll ask Becky to keep an eye on my house and continue fostering Elvis. The big dog may miss me, but at Becky’s home he’s surrounded by adoring fans. I can ask her to cancel my magazine subscriptions or, better yet, enjoy them herself.
The room swells with silence as I realize that nothing in Virginia requires my immediate return. My neighbors barely know me; my patients will adapt to new doctors. Though some of them may balk, their reasons for resistance will have more to do with the discomfort of reiterating their problems than with breaking an attachment to me.
For the first time in my life, I realize that I may be like the proverbial hand in a bucket of water—pull it out, and no one even knows it’s missing.
But Sarah needs me. Because while we wait for a donor and a doctor, my niece is going to have to prepare for life beyond these walls. She’s going to have to learn how to use a face…and how to handle th
e emotions she will be expressing. She’ll have to learn that the dioramas of American life she’s glimpsed in movies are only a shadow of what awaits her.
I don’t want Sarah to live her life with a heart full of untapped potential.
I am skimming a summation of body dysmorphic disorder when Dr. Mewton steps into the room, intruding on my space without knocking. “Phone call for you,” she says, nodding toward the phone in the center of the conference table. “Just pick it up—the caller is waiting.”
I smile my thanks, despite the cold knot that has formed in my stomach. All the other doctors in my practice knew I’d be incommunicado for at least three weeks. No one knows where I am, and Becky is the only person who has an emergency number for me. And Becky would only call if she had a severe problem with a patient…or Elvis.
I wait until Dr. Mewton steps into the hall before picking up the phone. “Hello?”
“Renee?” Becky’s voice is breathless. “Listen, I know you didn’t want to be disturbed, but—”
“Patient or Elvis?”
I hear that pregnant pause that always precedes bad news. “Elvis. I’m so sorry, Renee, but I was chopping tomatoes. I turned my back for just a minute, and then the darn thing was gone. The kids and I searched the kitchen from top to bottom and couldn’t find it. I wasn’t too worried because Elvis just sat there grinning at us, but—”
“He ate a tomato?”
“He ate a steak knife. One of a matching set.”
“Is he dead?”
“He’s at the vet’s.”
I sink into a chair as my knees turn to water. “Are you sure he swallowed it? It couldn’t be behind the toaster or in that crack between the cabinet and the fridge?”
“The vet took an X-ray, hon. We saw the knife in his belly, clear as day.”
I lower my head to my hand and close my eyes. “That doofus.”
“I know. But this one’s not going to pass. The doctor says the knife has to come out. Surgically.”
I press my lips together and nod. “Okay. Have the operation, charge my account. Do whatever you have to do, but save that dumb dog.”
