The Phantom Limb

by William Sleator

  “Jeez! Lemme see that thing,” Kravetz said, walking quickly over to the box. He looked it over tentatively, as if he didn’t know what to expect.

  Sensing his anxiety, Isaac calmly said, “Put both your hands in the holes. Then move your right hand but not your left, and look in the right side of the mirror.”

  Kravetz followed Isaac’s instructions. Vera was watching too. Like everybody else, Kravetz flinched when he first felt the sensation. “Whoa!” he exclaimed. “It feels like I have an invisible third hand … like my real left hand is paralyzed or something. This thing is just as weird as that spiral effect thing you had. But … how can it tell you and show you things? I wouldn’t believe it, except you found out about the loading ramp, and you didn’t seem to know about it when we talked in the café.”

  Isaac told him the whole story—what the box had shown him about Candi and Joey. Vera listened raptly too; this was the first time he had told her everything in so much detail.

  Kravetz lowered his voice. “Well, now I can really see why you have to escape.”

  “I just hope that we can trust DCynthia, and that Destiny won’t blow it for us,” Isaac said. “I want to believe that DCynthia will help, but I don’t know for sure.”

  Kravetz stood up. “You need more than DCynthia’s help. You need Destiny’s help too. I’ll go and talk to her now, and try to convince her. This is going to take a lot of planning—if we can carry it off at all.” He left the room.

  Vera looked at Isaac. “Gee, Ize, now I’m almost starting to believe you about the mirror—”

  Vicky came in at that moment to check on Vera.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” Vera said.

  “I’ll bring a bedpan,” Vicky said, smiling.

  “No. I want to use the bathroom,” Vera said.

  Isaac was glad to see Vera wanting to do something on her own.

  “OK. I think we can try that. I’ll go get an aid,” Vicky said.

  Isaac left the room and walked quickly around the intensive care unit.

  The escape was beginning to seem possible. He hadn’t counted on Vera being able to walk more than a few feet, but now maybe she could. He knew she would be weak, though. This was the first time she was trying to stand up since she’d become bedridden.

  Then he noticed two orderlies. Carefully, he followed them. They didn’t go far, just a short way down the hall to a door with no number on it. They opened the door without unlocking it. It had to be some kind of storage room. Isaac waited until they emerged, then approached them.

  “Excuse me,” he said to them. “Is there a wheelchair in there?”

  “Yes, this is where they’re stored,” one of them said.

  Isaac made his way back to Vera’s room, which was open a little. He went in.

  Vera was wiping her eyes. “That was so embarrassing!” she said faintly. “I couldn’t get to the bathroom. I had to use the bedpan with the nurse and the aid. I never want to have to go through that again. I just don’t understand what happened to my legs.” She sounded as if she was going to start crying again.

  Had Candi been giving her drugs that did more than just knock her out? Isaac had never been so angry at anyone in his life. And that increased his determination.

  “Candi must have done it. She wasn’t just knocking you out, she was progressively making you weaker. Now do you understand why we have to get you out of here tonight? Any way we can.”

  Vera nodded.

  “If they try to give you sleeping pills, don’t take them,” Isaac said. “Hold them in your mouth and then spit them out later. Whatever you do, don’t swallow them.”

  “It’s always been Candi, but it’s always in the IV, as far as I can tell,” Vera said. “If she doesn’t come back tonight, maybe nobody will give me anything.”

  “Well, Vicky knows you’ve been knocked out all the time. I’ll go and tell her to lay off. That might give us a chance to get out of here. Be right back.”

  He went to the nurses’ station and found Vicky. “Excuse me,” he said, “but you saw that something’s wrong with my mother’s legs. She’s still not doing well, even though she’s more coherent. Remember how the doctor didn’t like it that she’s unconscious so much?”

  “Yes, I do,” Vicky said.

  “Don’t you think it might be better if you stopped giving her any medications while we have the chance?”

  Vicky was in total agreement. He didn’t have to say, “Until Candi comes back and starts them all over again.”

  “They’re not giving you anything,” Isaac told Vera back in the room. “We’re safe until Candi returns. And now I’ve found out where the wheelchairs are. We can use one to help you escape.”

  “Thank you, Ize. That’s a relief. What would I do without you and Grandpa? I’ve never felt so helpless in my life, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all! Even when your father was around I was independent, and I want to keep it that way. I’ll do anything to get away from here. And as soon as I’m out, we’ll call the police.”

  Kravetz came back around eight thirty, smiling. “It’s all taken care of. I asked Destiny out. I think DCynthia knew it was an act, and she played along. They told their father they had to stay late tonight. I was right there when they called him. They promised they’d create a diversion to help us. Destiny seemed to be really into it.”

  Isaac remembered what Kravetz had said: “If we can carry it off.” Did that mean he was going to stay, along with the twins, and help with the escape? That would make a huge difference.

  “I didn’t show you the maps yet,” Kravetz said. He took some folded-up sheets of paper from his pocket. “Here’s the basement. It’s one floor below the lobby level. There are loading docks with ramps on the side and along the back—if you use the side one, it’s not too far from the elevators.”

  “What if it’s locked?” Isaac asked him.

  “Don’t worry—I unlocked it,” Kravetz said. “Besides, even a little while ago, there was hardly anybody around. Late at night it ought to be pretty deserted.”

  “Thanks. This is great,” Isaac said. He folded up the map of the basement and put it in the pocket of his jeans.

  Although Isaac‘s main priority was still Vera, he couldn’t help but see this whole thing as an adventure, especially now that they had a plan. And best of all, Isaac wasn’t doing it alone anymore. He had friends who were going to help him, and that made all the difference in the world.

  UT KRAVETZ WASN’T ABLE TO HELP HIM, after all.

  His father had called, reminding him that it was a school night and telling him it was too late to be staying at the hospital. Kravetz had argued and pleaded, but there was no way he could convince his father without telling him exactly what was going on. And there was no way his father would’ve believed him.

  It was eleven thirty, and he had to leave. He reluctantly went home.

  Before he left, he brought Isaac and Vera more coffee. Then—after they closed the door so that the nurses couldn’t see—Kravetz, working extremely carefully, removed the needles from the veins on the backs of Vera’s hands. She winced as he did it, and looked scared, but there was almost no blood. He cleaned the cuts with antiseptic from the medicine cabinet next to the sink and bandaged her hands, and then he taped the needles back in place on top of the veins, so it would look as if she was still attached to the IV lines. He also figured out how to turn the machine off so that the fluid was no longer dripping into the lines. All Isaac had to do before he and his mother made their break was to remove the tape and Vera would be free of the IVs.

  Isaac had hoped Kravetz would be there to run interference for them, the way he did when he was playing football, just in case the orderlies should come along. Still, he was very grateful to Kravetz for all he had done. Despite everything, it gave him a warm feeling knowing how much Kravetz had risked to help them.

  But now Isaac would have to engineer the escape alone with an unstable Vera. Would the spiral aft
ereffect do its job? It was a good thing the twins were going to make a diversion—he hoped—to capture the attention of the staff on this unit.

  The floor was quiet now. The other patients seemed to be asleep. No bells were ringing, and there were no PA announcements. When Isaac looked down the hall, the two nurses at the station appeared to be drowsy. Then one of them got up and left. Now there was only one nurse there.

  He looked back at Vera and saw that her eyes had slipped shut. After all that coffee? He was going to have to wake her up. It was quarter to twelve now. Maybe he should let her rest for five minutes. He was feeling pretty sleepy himself. What harm would it do if he shut his eyes too for just five minutes?

  No! If he gave in, he would fall asleep. They had to start now. There was no more putting it off. He went and got a wheelchair.

  And then he heard a commotion unlike anything that had ever happened on the floor before—two loud bratty voices hurling insults at each other.

  “You rotten, two-timing bitch! How could you tell her? He trusted us. And everything he said about her is true and you know it.”

  “Oh, shut up! You must have a crush on that twig, you sap.” A cackle of witchlike laughter followed. “You’re falling for that jerk, DCynthia? You’re pathetic!”

  There was a rattling crack, and then a shriek. “DCynthia! You broke my new phone! I’ll kill you for that!”

  The twins. Fighting about something. Disturbing every patient on the unit in the middle of the night … and attracting the attention of the staff!

  It was time to leave.

  “Mom. Wake up. We gotta go.”

  Vera didn’t stir.

  Isaac shook her shoulder. Her eyes blinked open. “Huh?”

  He carefully untaped the needles from the backs of her hands. He let them hang from the lines attached to the plastic bags on the IV poles. She was still blinking, confused, not yet fully awake.

  A crashing of glass, the sound of bodies tumbling to the floor. Another cracking thud. “Now you’ve wrecked my phone, Destiny!”

  “Loser! You deserved it.”

  He heard running footsteps—the hospital staff was arriving to break up the fight. The twins’ distraction was actually working.

  “Mom. Come on! We’ve got to get you into this wheelchair.” He gently lifted her up into a sitting position, then pulled down the railing on the side of the bed. He maneuvered her legs, in pink hospital pajama pants, over the side of the bed, and positioned her feet on the floor. She seemed to be waking up, and the more awake she became, the more tense she appeared. Her eyes were furtive, her mouth a hard line.

  He pushed the wheelchair as close to the bed as he could get it. He had to hurry. He knew the staff would subdue the twins quickly. “OK, now you’ve got to stand up so we can get you into this chair. We don’t have much time!” He tried to lift her by her elbows, but she was deadweight. She slid back down onto the bed.

  Isaac panicked. He couldn’t do it by himself.

  Just then the door opened and Kravetz walked in.

  “Hey, I’m back. I didn’t go home. I’ll deal with my father later.” He saw what Isaac was trying to do and told him to get on the other side of his mother.

  With Matt’s help, Isaac was easily able to lift Vera into the chair. Vera trusted both of them and went along with what they were doing.

  Isaac looked out the door. The nurses’ station was deserted. Everybody must be dealing with the twins, whom he could still hear screaming at each other down the hall.

  “You moron, DCynthia! I’m going to scratch your face with this broken phone so deep that no plastic surgeon will ever be able to fix it! You’ll be a freak for the rest of your life!”

  At the last second, Isaac remembered the mirror box. He had to have it with them when they left. He wasn’t sure why, he just knew he wanted the phantom limb along, and something seemed wrong about leaving Joey behind. He set the mirror box carefully in Vera’s lap. “Hold on tight to this. It’s more important than you know,” he told her. He took out the spiral aftereffect.

  They pushed the wheelchair as fast as they could past the nurses’ station and down the hall toward the exit.

  Near the doors to the intensive care unit the twins were wrestling on the floor, pulling each other’s hair. The night staff was kneeling around them, trying to drag them apart. Isaac had to give both of the twins credit: they had picked a spot that gave the three of them access to the exit.

  But just as they reached the doors, the orderly who had taken Isaac down to the MRI looked up and saw them. “Hey!” he shouted. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Isaac pushed through the doors. He could hear the sounds of people running after them, voices that were not the twins’ calling out, “Stop! Stop!” Despite the twins’ display, they hadn’t avoided being noticed. Their pursuers were close behind.

  Matt kept pushing the chair. Isaac knew he wouldn’t have been able to do this himself.

  He turned around and brandished the spiral aftereffect, holding it at eye level, spinning it all the way to number ten. He aimed it at their pursuers, all the while continuing to hurry backward, staying as close as he could to the wheelchair.

  Two male orderlies and three female nurses were following. Behind them were the twins, disheveled and limping. Vicky wasn’t there, but the others were coming fast. It took a few moments, but then their eyes were caught by the spiral aftereffect. Would they look at it long enough for it to work?

  Isaac took a chance and stopped. If he stood still, they might focus on the spiral aftereffect and slow down.

  The spiral aftereffect whizzed around.

  Their pursuers did indeed slow down. Their eyes were riveted on the spiral aftereffect. One of the nurses crumpled to her knees, and then the tall orderly tripped as well. Isaac started moving backward again, taking a quick glance around to see where Vera and Matt were. They had reached the elevators. He hurried to join them.

  Matt was pressing the up and the down buttons furiously, just wanting to get away. Isaac started to panic. He grabbed the mirror box out of Vera’s lap and held it tightly.

  He knew he had to concentrate on the people following them. Luckily, those who were still standing were moving much slower now. There was, he figured, a slight chance that he, his mother, and Matt could actually escape … if the elevator came in time.

  A chime sounded, and an elevator going up arrived. Isaac rushed in, stifling his claustrophobia. There were more important things now. Unexpectedly, the doors quickly slammed shut, closing before Matt and Vera could get on. There had to be somebody else on the elevator for the doors to close so fast. Isaac turned around to see who it was.

  Candi.

  ANDI WAS WEARING THE SAME TURQUOISE dress she had on when the mirror box showed her in her bathroom. She was carrying the large fake leather turquoise bag as well.

  She smiled when she saw Isaac. “Looks like your friends aren’t so trustworthy,” she said. “I knew I could count on Destiny. She called me and told me you were going to try to get your mother out. I rushed here immediately. My strict orders forbade your mother from leaving her room, and that she be kept on her medications. I’m the professional, and I know what she needs in order to get well.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my mother, and you know that. You hate her for some weird reason … for playing the piano.”

  “You!” she said. She was furious, even though she still spoke in her habitually soft voice. “It’s all your doing, you little pest! I never should have allowed you on the floor. Well, I’ll take care of that now. You’ll never go anywhere again.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a long scalpel, so sharp that it glittered in the light. She advanced on Isaac.

  Candi was inches away from him when the elevator stopped and the door behind her opened. Dr. Ciano stepped on. She jerked and looked suddenly alert when she saw Candi with the scalpel.

  “Nurse Sharpe!” she shouted, grabbing Candi by the arm. “Have you comp
letely lost your mind? I suspected it before, but now I know it. I’m calling security!” With her other hand she reached for the alarm button.

  “No!” Candi wailed. “This is my whole life! This is everything I have!”

  At that moment, the elevator reached the basement. The door in front of Isaac opened. Candi suddenly twisted away from Dr. Ciano and lunged for him, but he was a step ahead of her. He jumped through the door before it had fully opened and ran as fast as he could, holding the mirror box in front of him, with the spiral aftereffect on top of it.

  Candi swung the scalpel wildly at Dr. Ciano, grazing her arm, then took off after Isaac.

  Dr. Ciano stood there frozen, paralyzed from shock. The door slammed shut with her still inside the elevator.

  The basement. This was the dark hallway where Isaac had been sent for the hellish endoscopy and MRI. And now Candi was chasing after him with a deadly sharp scalpel. She was moving fast.

  The map Kravetz had given him, the one that showed where the exit ramps were, was in his back pocket. But he had no time to stop, pull it out, and study it, especially while holding the mirror box and the spiral aftereffect. All he could do was hope to outrun Candi. He pictured the scalpel and knew that she was pointing it directly at his neck.

  “You’ll never get away from me, you little troublemaker. I know this place like the back of my hand, and you don’t know it at all!”

  He passed the torture chamber of the endoscopy room. Then the floor ahead of him sloped down, into a darker, smaller hallway, like a tunnel. Another uncomfortably confined space. He had no choice but to follow its path. He kept running until he could barely see.

  Thick pipes hung from the ceiling. The floor was uneven, making him stumble. He could hear Candi’s heavy breathing getting closer.

  In the dimness to his left he could barely make out a metal door. Did he have time to stop and try to open it? He glanced around for a second. Candi was ten feet behind him. As he watched, she dropped the scalpel, reached into her bag, and pulled out an amputation drill saw, just like the one Joey had showed him in the mirror.