The Phantom Limb

by William Sleator

  Why hadn’t they offered to give him something to knock him out? It felt exactly the same as when they hadn’t given him a sedative for the endoscopy.

  Then there were noises all around him, weird, unearthly noises unlike anything he had ever heard before. Deep rumbling, like thunder, turning into a high-pitched screeching that penetrated painfully through the plugs in his ears. He held his body as tightly as possible, feeling the sweat oozing down his sides now. Soon his hospital gown was soaking wet and his eyes were stinging more than ever. It felt as if he’d been in here for hours.

  “Only fifteen minutes left,” a voice said through a loudspeaker inside the machine.

  Fifteen more minutes? How could he stand this? He squeezed his eyes shut, so he wouldn’t see how close the top of the cylinder was. He desperately needed to stifle the painful stinging. He did everything he could to imagine he was somewhere else. But all that came into his mind was the Menger sponge, the strange fractal object in which every chamber was smaller than the one before. And that only made it worse.

  He tried to think of riding his bike, of trees and the sky. But the Menger sponge kept swimming back into his mind. His muscles were aching now from holding them so rigidly. It felt like hours were going by in this hell. How could he take this? How could he? How—

  The noises stopped. And finally, finally, the gurney began sliding out of the cylinder.

  Isaac was a wreck. He was so limp, the nurse had to help him climb down off the gurney. The man in the white lab coat told the orderly to get a wheelchair and then took Isaac into the locker room, where, with shaky hands, Isaac slowly got into his clothes.

  As the orderly wheeled him to the elevator, Isaac gradually began to recover. He knew that the more he hung around the hospital, trying to figure out what was really going on, the more they would find ways to torture him.

  He and Vera had to escape tomorrow.

  SAAC GOT TO THE HOSPITAL EARLIER THAN ever the next day, at six. He felt shaky about going there at all, afraid of what they might do to him this time, but he knew he had to force himself to go. He was getting more and more worried about Vera.

  He brought the spiral aftereffect with him, carefully wrapped and taped in its box, the box itself wrapped in a towel. He fitted it snugly into his bicycle basket. His schoolbooks and unfinished homework weighed down his backpack as he rode.

  Nurse Vicky was at the station. “Is the doctor here yet?” Isaac asked her.

  Vicky checked a chart on the wall behind her. “The doctor doesn’t get here this early.”

  “Is Candi here?” Isaac asked.

  “Candi changed shifts today. She’s in the ER and won’t be up on this floor at all,” she said, smiling pleasantly.

  Did Vicky know what was happening to Vera? Could Isaac trust her? He wasn’t sure, so he continued on to room 638 without saying anything more.

  Isaac found Vera awake, staring at the ceiling. She was looking worried and vulnerable. She seemed more alert than she had been in the last few days. Was it because Dr. Ciano wasn’t there to dope her into submission? When she saw Isaac in the doorway, her pale, shrunken face broke into a big smile. “Ize! Where’ve you been?”

  “I’ve been here. But you’ve just been asleep—drugged out,” he said as he washed his hands.

  “I want to go home, Ize.”

  “I’m working on it, Mom. We’ll get you home. Grandpa’s even been helping me around the house, can you believe it?”

  He walked over to the bed. He felt a chill when he saw that there was a bigger, thicker bandage on her arm where the bruise was. Was the bruise larger and deeper now? His mind flashed back to the little girl and her doll. Was someone purposefully enlarging the bruise while Vera was knocked out?

  Isaac sat down in a chair next to the bed. He tried to sound as calm as possible. “I got the password for the hospital computer, and I went on to look up your records. I saw … something bad. Do you think you can handle it?”

  Vera sat up straight. “Yes, I have to know.” She took a deep breath. “What did you see?”

  “Somebody’s written a bogus report. It says that you have bone cancer. They want to amputate your arm—the one with the bandage on it.”

  Vera’s face froze. “But that’s … that’s … How can they do that?” Her voice rose almost to a wail.

  “It’s what happened to the kid who had the mirror box, and now they’ve got you. Have you seen the doctor at all since that day when I was here?”

  “Candi said that Dr. Ciano’s been in to check on me, but I’ve always been asleep.”

  “Don’t trust anyone, Mom,” Isaac said. “I’m going to stop them, and you’ll be safe.”

  “I think they took something out of my arm, where the bruise is,” Vera went on shakily. “I must have been asleep when they did it. I noticed because blood was seeping out from under the bandage when I woke up. All Candi said, when she fixed the bandage, was that it was for a biopsy—a biopsy for bone cancer?” She sounded really scared now.

  Isaac reached out and gently touched her hand. “Mom, I’m sure you don’t have bone cancer. Somebody here is demented. They’re lying. They must have switched your biopsy results with another person who really does have bone cancer. Grandpa and I are going to stop them. And we have a plan—a good plan.” He wasn’t going to tell her what the plan was. She wouldn’t understand the spiral aftereffect.

  “Oh, Ize,” Vera said. But luckily she didn’t ask him about the plan. She looked down and bit her lip, as if trying to hold back tears. “Do you remember my former roommate here, the doctor named Esther?” she asked Isaac, her voice breaking.

  “Yes,” Isaac said.

  “Before she left, she was telling me that she remembered a girl from somewhere, and it was a bad memory. Before they knocked her out and took her away, the memory came back to her,” Vera said. “And she told me.” She took a deep breath. “Years ago, Esther took a job as the doctor at a summer camp. There was a girl at the camp, about thirteen years old, who had a lot of problems and no friends. She wet the bed, and the other girls made fun of her for it. Then some of the other girls’ things started to go missing. They told one of the camp counselors, who sent her to Esther. Esther tried to tell the girl not to pay attention to the taunts of the other girls, but she could tell the girl’s problems were deep. She wrote a letter to the girl’s parents suggesting that the girl see a therapist after she got home from camp.”

  Isaac remembered the vision the phantom limb had shown him of the girl in a rustic bathroom, planning to start a fire, and muttering about the other girls. “What else did Esther say?” he asked her urgently.

  Sounding almost like her old self, Vera continued, “A little while later, the cabin where that girl was staying burned down. The other girls were in there when it happened. One of them got pretty badly burned. Esther had to call for an ambulance and get her to the nearest hospital. The troubled girl wasn’t in the cabin when it happened. She disappeared for hours. When they found her, she was hysterical. She swore that she was only making candles to give to the other girls as presents, so they would like her. But Esther didn’t believe her. The girl’s demeanor quickly changed to blankness. Esther knew there was something really wrong with the girl.”

  “What else?” he said to Vera.

  “The girl was safely outside the cabin when the fire happened.”

  It all fit together, horribly. The girl had been damaged and dangerous since childhood. Isaac had a sudden flash of insight. “She … must really hate people. And I have a feeling she really doesn’t like people who play the piano. She used to torment her dolls and pull their limbs off.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” Vera asked him, her voice despairing.

  “It’s a long story. It has to do with what I learned from Joey Haynes, the boy who had the mirror box.”

  “But he’s dead! How could you—”

  “I mean, from his grandmother. I went to see her. She lived in our house befo
re we did. She told me a lot.” That was a lie, but it was something that Vera might believe more easily than what he had seen in the mirror box. “Joey Haynes played the piano, like you.”

  Vera looked scared. “I just want to get out of here, now,” she said.

  Isaac glanced at the open door of her room. He turned and said, “I know you can’t walk, so we’ll have to use a wheelchair. The other nurses seem nice, but I don’t know. We should play it safe and come up with a story. We could say we’re just taking a little ride around the hospital to get you some air—and then escape.”

  Vera held up her hands, showing him the IV lines, which were inserted with a needle and secured by bandages. As before, the IV lines were attached to a tall metal pole that had bags hanging from it. “If we were going to leave the hospital, we’d have to remove all of this. Nobody would let out a patient on an IV.”

  “Maybe we could find a bathroom and take it out ourselves. You can ride in a wheelchair while you’re attached to the bags. I’ll ask Vicky if we can get one,” Isaac said, his heart beginning to beat faster.

  “Ask her now, please!”

  Isaac went out to the nurses’ station and found Vicky. “My mother feels so much better today,” he told her. “But she’s getting achy from lying in bed all the time. Would it be possible for us to take a little ride around inside the hospital? Just for a change of scenery?”

  Vicky looked both worried and apologetic. “My instructions are to keep her on complete bed rest,” she said with a sigh. Isaac sensed she was questioning her instructions.

  “Oh, come on,” Isaac pleaded. “Please? She really needs to get out of that room.”

  “If I let her out of her room, I’ll lose my job,” Vicky said.

  “Says who?”

  Vicky hesitated. “Dr. Ciano and Candi,” she said softly. “They’re my superiors. If I don’t follow their instructions to the letter, I’m out of here—with no recommendations and no possibility of getting another job. I just can’t risk it. Your mother’s condition is too unstable because of her arm.”

  Isaac’s shoulders slumped. He turned and went back to Vera’s room. “There’s no way they’ll even let you out of the room. All the nurses will stop us.”

  Vera bit her lip, trying to hold back tears.

  So they couldn’t get out now. There would have to be another plan. Isaac looked at his watch. It was six forty-five already. He needed to get to school early—with the spiral aftereffect. “I promise we’ll get you out of here before anyone can do anything else bad to you,” he said. “Grandpa’s helping me.” He brightened a little. “He’s almost the way he used to be. He remembers things. He might be in here to see you today—I got up before he did, but maybe he’ll come.”

  “Please get me out of this place, Ize, but please be careful.”

  “Mom, I have a plan. I think you’ll be safe today,” Isaac said. He put on his backpack and picked up the spiral aftereffect. “Bye. I’ll be back later.”

  Now the really hard part was about to begin.

  S ISAAC RODE TO SCHOOL, HE TRIED TO imagine the day ahead. He had decided, after waking up so early, that he should test the spiral aftereffect on somebody else before using it on someone at the hospital. Doing it to himself alone was not enough of a test. But who could he use it on? He would have loved to try it on Destiny, but she would definitely tell someone and ruin the whole plan. The only other person he could think of was Matt Kravetz—he was the closest thing Isaac had to a friend here. Kravetz had seemed fascinated when Isaac told him about the mirror box, which meant he was likely to find the spiral aftereffect amazing too.

  Isaac got to school at seven fifteen, fifteen minutes before the first bell. As he locked up his bike, he spotted some boys fooling around with a football, throwing it back and forth. Real football practice was after school. These were the dedicated athletes, the ones who got to school early to hone their skills even more. One of them was Kravetz. Isaac didn’t want to waste any time. Now would be a great time to start his plan.

  He walked as close to the group as he could without being in the way and took the spiral aftereffect out of its box. He pointed it in the direction of the boys and began running it on level four.

  For a while—it seemed like forever to Isaac—none of them noticed it, they were so involved in their game. Then one guy, who had stopped for a moment to tie his shoe, looked up and saw it. He stood up and stared at it, so transfixed that he couldn’t return to the game. The disk was big enough to create the effect at a distance. Someone threw the ball at him to get his attention, but he didn’t notice the ball was coming until the last second and he missed it.

  “Hey, what’s the matter with you, Lupton?” somebody shouted at him.

  Lupton didn’t respond. He was still watching the spiral aftereffect. Other guys turned to look too, including Kravetz.

  “I’m out for a minute,” Kravetz called, and he strolled over to Isaac, his eyes on the spinning disk. When he got close, he shook his head and chuckled. “What is it with you?” he said, still staring at the spiral aftereffect. Isaac speeded it up to seven. “First you tell me about that weird mirror box thing, and now you show up at school with this … whatever it is—which seems to hypnotize people. Are you into magic tricks or something?”

  “Science,” Isaac said. “Look at it again, then look away from it and see what happens.”

  Kravetz looked at the spiral aftereffect for a few moments more, then at the school building. He stumbled but didn’t quite fall. Isaac could imagine what he was seeing: the school building coming toward him. If he had set it at level ten, it would have been zooming.

  Kravetz turned and looked directly at Isaac, ignoring the other boys, who were waiting around for him. “Wow! That was amazing,” he said breathlessly. “What the hell happened? Why did the school start moving toward me?”

  “Motion aftereffect,” Isaac said. “If you stare at something moving steadily in one direction for a while and then turn away and look at something stationary, what you’re looking at seems to move in the opposite direction.”

  He explained about the waterfall effect and ended by saying, “Cool, isn’t it?”

  Some of the other guys had come over out of curiosity and were standing next to Kravetz now.

  “What is that thing?”

  “What’s it for?”

  “Why did you bring it to school?”

  “Show-and-tell,” Isaac answered sarcastically.

  The boys laughed at his joke, and Isaac felt a sense of relief—he had actually made them laugh.

  “OK, back to practice,” Kravetz announced. “Or I’ll tell coach on you. There are still a few minutes left.”

  The other boys dispersed. And when they started running and passing the ball around again, they seemed to forget about Isaac and his peculiar device.

  “Why did you bring it to school?” Kravetz asked him.

  “Well … I wanted to show … I thought you might be … Listen, man,” Isaac blurted out, “I really need your help.”

  “With what?”

  “The twins,” Isaac told him. “They could help me and my mother at the hospital. Aren’t you friends with them?”

  “I want them to think I’m their friend,” Kravetz said, looking embarrassed. “I sure don’t want them to be my enemies. I’ve seen what they can do.” He looked down, averting his eyes. Then he looked up at Isaac again. “Why do you want me to help you with them?”

  Isaac looked at his watch. “It’s a long story. No time to tell you now.”

  The bell rang.

  “Maybe I’ll see you at lunch,” Kravetz said, and Isaac felt better. He could tell him the whole story then.

  He returned the spiral aftereffect to its box, and once he was inside the school he carefully put it in his locker.

  He waited impatiently through his morning classes. Several teachers spoke to him privately after class, telling him he was falling behind in his homework and warning him that if he di
dn’t get it together he’d be in danger of failing. Isaac tried to explain that his mother was in the hospital and that he’d get back on track when she was better. Some of the teachers seemed sympathetic, but others were more demanding.

  The fact of the matter was, Isaac couldn’t care less. Right now school was the least of his worries.

  At lunch, he sat by himself, as usual. The difference was that today he genuinely hoped Kravetz would join him. He needed Kravetz to help him with his plan. Time was running out. It seemed possible that he might help, now that Isaac knew how Kravetz really felt about the twins.

  But he also wanted Kravetz to eat with him because he wanted to be his friend. Joking around with him earlier had reminded Isaac of how nice it was to be around someone his own age.

  And then Kravetz was standing at his table with his tray. He sat down across from Isaac. “I don’t know why you want me to help you with those two,” Kravetz said. “Especially Destiny.”

  Isaac’s heart lifted. “It’s a long story,” he said. “I’ll try to be quick about it.”

  “All right, but hurry. You know how short lunch period is,” Kravetz said.

  “You’ll be surprised,” Isaac said, and plunged in. He quickly described Vera’s original symptoms and how Dr. Ciano, Candi, and possibly others were keeping his mother sedated most of the time, giving her lots of drugs. Instead of getting better, his mother’s condition was worsening. He recounted what Esther, Vera’s roommate, had said about a girl at camp, and how quickly Esther had been moved away. He told him what he had learned from Joey Haynes’s grandmother—that they hadn’t liked his doctor, and how the boy had ended up first one-armed and then dead. Whoever was doing this seemed to be fixated on piano players—Joey and his mother and also the girl’s brother. This person had dismembered her dolls when she was a child.

  Kravetz seemed fascinated, but he was clearly also confused. “How do you know all this?” he asked.