Blood forms on the ice around Michael’s head. Blood drips from my knuckles, taste of blood in my mouth.
The battering ram smashes against the door. Flames in the windows, smoke in the air.
Toppled walls, the shattered 747 model, the painting of the centurion.
Candace Brown kicking at the police cruiser window.
Dropping the jackknife and watch into my grandfather’s upturned hands.
The coloured light of St. Thaddeus on the praying faces of Caitlin and my mother. The sound of them crying beside Michael’s body.
The crackling blue arcs of the Jacob’s Ladder. Yellow flames rising, flickering then roaring behind the windows.
A blinking yellow light. Straight ahead.
Suicide Curve.
I clench front brake lever, stand on the rear brake pedal.
Rubber screams against pavement. A metallic cymbal-crash gunshot explosion as the motorcycle hits the safety railing, and my body snaps forward, hovers for a moment in space, then falls down,
down
down
down
down.
Part Three
Not everything that is faced can be changed,
but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
— James A. Baldwin
Morphine
The sound of waves crashing.
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh my God oh my God oh my God!
Jesus Christ. I think his chest is moving! My God, how . . . he’s still alive!
Airborne again. Not falling. Soaring upward. The fall in reverse.
Cliff wall a brown-grey blur.
Water and rocks beneath me.
White, cottony clouds. Sky blue. Vivid blue.
Throat like a scab. Like parchment. Can’t swallow.
Tongue flaccid. Probes dry, airy space.
No teeth. No jaw.
An endless dry heave. The wail of a mournful ghost.
“Patient’s conscious! Put him under. Quick! Quick! Now!”
Those are the only memories I have of the accident. They’re not even memories, really, just quick, blurry flashes with a distorted, unsynchronized soundtrack; flickers in the darkness.
I fade in, and fade back out again. Each time I return, I’m able to stay for a few more seconds, then for minutes at a time, but then I’m gone for exponentially longer. Or at least that’s how it feels. It’s really not easy to gauge. Time has become slippery, and the line between consciousness and unconsciousness is crooked and broken. What I hope are nightmares are vivid and realistic, while what I suspect is real appears blurry and distorted, like I’m observing the world from inside a warped space helmet full of translucent gel.
I’m in a hospital bed right now. I am bandaged and splinted together. Parts of me are strung up while other parts are wired shut. Tubes run fluids into my body, other tubes take fluids away. There are cables and monitors, plastic bags on metal poles. There are lights, very white, very bright. They hurt my eyes. My eyes are the only parts of me that I know for sure are working.
Before this, I was in an ambulance. I remember now; the clank of the door closing at my feet, and the sound of the siren. I remember the paramedic looking down at me, his face white, sweat speckling his forehead like he was about to be sick. I tried to ask him what had happened to me, but my tongue just lolled around in the dry air, my throat gurgling.
“I know, buddy, I know,” the paramedic said. “This will make it feel better. This will make it feel better.”
A cool, tingling sensation spread through my veins, like he’d injected cold soda into my scorched-desert body, then my veins froze like a creek in December, and I sank into nothing.
The walls are gradually changing colour, from light green to pink to bright blue, and back to light green again. There’s a face hovering over mine.
“Are you with me, Philip?” the face says. “Can you hear me?”
My ears are ringing, but I can hear him. My vision is blurred, but I can see him. The rest of my senses are absent. I can’t feel anything. I can’t smell anything. I taste nothing. I can’t speak. My head is wrapped in bandages, and there is some sort of apparatus connected to the bottom half of my face. I can’t nod; my neck is immobile. I can’t gesture with my hands or arms, as they are encased in casts. I feel like a hunk of waterlogged wood, heavy, decaying, sinking into the damp earth.
The hovering face says, “Wink your right eye if you can understand me, Philip.”
Both my eyes blink.
“Good enough,” says the face. “I’m Doctor Chin. If you were able to move right now, you would laugh at that. Why? Because I specialize in facial reconstructions. Kind of like that guy Doctor Cox who does penis enlargement surgery. Anyway, Philip, I am going to put your face back together for you. You understand that you’ve been in a pretty serious accident, yes?”
I blink again.
“You’re on a lot of morphine right now, Philip,” he says, “a lot of morphine. Without it, you would be feeling more pain than any human being could remain conscious through. The morphine will likely cause you to hallucinate and experience feelings of panic and paranoia. You may be feeling that way right now, and, if so, let me assure you that it is completely normal.”
Hallucinations. Panic and paranoia. No wonder the walls are changing colour. No wonder his eyebrows are twisting around like deranged caterpillars.
Doctor Psycho Brow says, “I want to explain to you exactly what I am going to do to reconstruct your face, so it’s important that I know you can understand me. I know it may be difficult to do, but please blink once with your right eye, then once with your left, to show me that you understand what I’m saying to you.”
I try to ignore the changing-colour walls and the caterpillar eyebrows and the fact that his hair is squirming over his head like Medusa’s nest of snakes. I focus on the bits that are probably real. Summoning all my powers of concentration, I close my right eyelid. Then I open it again. Then I close the left one. Open. Good. I’m with you, Doctor. See?
“Well, Philip,” Dr. Chin says, “to use an old bedside cliché, there is both good news and bad news. The good news is, you’re alive, which in itself is a major miracle. I’ve never seen anyone survive the kind of fall you took. Other than a lot of cuts, some serious tissue bruising, and a few minor fractures here and there, your body is generally in pretty good shape. None of your vital organs were damaged in any critical way. So, in that respect, you were very lucky.”
I hear the rumbling voice of Captain Quote in my head: “Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.” Ralph Waldo Emerson. One of his favourites.
Doctor Chin takes a deep breath, and for a moment it seems as if his head is expanding like a birthday party balloon. Morphine hallucination, Philip, morphine hallucination. Just concentrate on what he’s saying. Concentrate.
“The bad news,” Doctor Balloon Head says, “is that your face is a hell of a mess. A hell of a mess. Your jawbone has been more or less cleaved right off. And even if it were still properly attached, it’s smashed into too many pieces to mend. You’ve lost nearly all of your teeth, and we couldn’t even find the cartilage that’s supposed to be in your nose.”
If I could speak, I would tell him that, because of my genetic defects, I never had any cartilage in my nose in the first place. I hope they didn’t spend too much time looking for it.
“Essentially,” the doctor says, “the bottom half of your face has been destroyed. And in that respect, I suppose, you were rather unlucky.”
A memory. Flying over handlebars. Hands wrenched back behind my body. Arcing headfirst through the air, turning heels-over-head as I fell. Cliff wall a speeding grey-brown blur before my face. Chin striking razorback rock.
“The good news,” the doctor says, “is that I can build you a new jawbone and nose out of plastic. We’ll bring in an orthodontic team to get some new teeth in there for you, also. Your tongue and palate are still connected and are receiving adequa
te blood flow, and your musculature is intact enough to repair. We’re keeping everything moist with saline solution until things have healed up enough for us to start rebuilding. It’s possible that your sense of taste may return, and you may eventually be able to learn to speak again. That’s the goal, anyway. The bad news is, installing your new jawbone and nose and teeth will require many operations, which will hurt like hell. And we’ll have to graft a lot of skin over it when we’re finished, and that’s going to hurt like hell also. And you’ll need physical, occupational, and speech therapy to get everything working again, which . . . well, you get the picture.”
The room has turned glistening bloody red. Not happening, not happening, not really happening. Concentrate on the words. The words.
“The good news is that the doctors at your local hospital had the wherewithal to have you flown to Toronto right away. At the risk of sounding immodest, you couldn’t be in better hands here. Anything I can’t fix myself, there’s someone in this hospital who can. And if we run into something we can’t handle, there are hundreds of other specialists just a few steps up or down University Avenue.”
Another memory. University Avenue. Walking with Adeline. A tall, strange monument. “Per Ardua Ad Astra,” she says. “Gumby Goes to Heaven.”
Adeline. Does she know what has happened? Does she know I’m here? Mount Sinai, The Hospital for Sick Children, Princess Margaret . . . I wonder which one I’m in. She could walk here in ten minutes from her father’s condo. Save me, Adeline. Come save me.
Doctor Chin licks his lips, and his tongue splits in two and the ends snake up into his nostrils and lick at the insides of his eyeballs. Not real not real not real.
“You’re going to be a hell of a challenge, kid,” Doctor Split-Tongued Balloon Head says, “maybe the toughest reconstruction I’ve ever done. But I like a challenge.”
He pauses in the doorway and says, “All of this is going to take some time, by the way. I hope you haven’t got anything better to do for the next little while.”
The walls turn from blood red to a grape-juice purple, and then everything goes black again.
Adeline licks her lips as she pulls away the cool white sheet that covers me. Her hair is longer than it’s ever been. She sweeps it back to reveal her naked body. “Hello, Gumby!” she says seductively to my rising erection.“In Heaven yet?”
The sheets are gathered up around my chest, and a burly man in blue medical scrubs, with a military-style brush-cut and a thick salt-and-pepper moustache, is washing my private parts with a soapy sponge. “Good morning, Sport,” he says jovially.
I feel my erection deflate, flopping over to one side. My body’s hot and prickly all over. All I can do is close my eyes.
“Oh, don’t be embarrassed,” he says, “it happens all the time. It’s a good sign, actually — means your circulatory system is still working okay.”
It’s Bob, the PCA, which stands for Personal Care Assistant. They used to call them Male Nurses. Bob confided to me yesterday (or I think it was yesterday — my perception of time is still rather unreliable) that he likes the term PCA better than Nurse because it’s more gender-neutral, if not more “outright masculine.”
Bob shows up every day to wash me, and change the bags that collect the waste from my body. That he does these things so cheerfully is both puzzling and inspiring.
“Just let me finish up your bath,” he says, “and then Amiya is going to come in to begin your Physio.”
As he pats me dry, I feel tingling sensations in my legs, a slight chill on the skin.
Have they removed the casts from my legs? When did that happen?
As Bob pulls the sheets up over me again, I feel the material slip over my arms, and I realize that my arms are free as well. I don’t think I can move them, though.
Am I paralyzed? Am I going to be like this for the rest of my life?
“All done, Sport,” says Bob, “And just in time, too. Here’s Amiya. See ya later, then. When she’s finished with you, I’ll be back to turn you onto your side, so you don’t start developing bed sores.”
Panic.
When Amiya’s finished with me? What is Amiya going to do to me? And what in God’s Name are bed sores?
My heart throbs in my chest. I can’t protect myself. Anyone could do anything to me. It feels like the bed is trembling. I wish I could get up. God, I wish I could move.
Like the answer to a prayer, a gentle voice whispers in my ear, a voice that sounds like it’s about to break into song. My heartbeat decelerates.
“Hello, handsome. I’m Amiya, your Physiotherapist. I’m going to help you get moving again. Can you lift your right arm for me?”
I try, but my arm doesn’t budge.
“Let me help,” she says in that singsong voice.
I vaguely feel her warm fingers under the tender, tingling flesh of my right arm. The muscles I’d built with weight lifting and hockey training are all gone now, and all that’s left is a limp, pale-blue twig.
“Now you help me,” she says.
I strain as she lifts my arm upward again.
“Good!” she says. “Very good! You must have been in pretty good shape before your accident. Your muscles are not completely atrophied. Your progress will be faster than most.”
Amiya lifts my arm again ten more times, coaxing me to help as much as I can. I will do anything this woman asks. She moves to the opposite side of the bed, runs through the same procedure with my left arm. Then with each of my legs.
I’m exhausted. My eyes twinkle with tiny stars.
“We made good progress today, Mr. Philip. Very good progress. You rest now. I’ll be back again tomorrow, and every day after that. Will you do something for me when you wake up?”
Of course I will. I will do anything for you, Amiya.
“Whenever you think about it, I want you to curl your toes, and to close and open your fingers as many times as you can. This will help your muscles and your circulation. We need to get your hands strong enough to hold a pencil, so you will have a way to communicate with us.”
My body sizzles with pain, but it’s not the same pain as being wounded, broken, shattered. It isn’t that helpless kind of pain. It’s that burning feeling I got in my legs after skating a long, hard shift and scoring at the end. It’s the little razorblade stings in my lungs after I ran all the way from Plympwright High to Faireville. It’s the acid that boiled in my stomach when the time came to fight.
My eyelids drop, and I can’t stop myself from sinking back into the tingling pool of darkness, but when I emerge, I’ll be ready to fight again.
Confessional
I am dreaming of a tall man made of shadows. He stands beside my hospital bed, with his narrow-brimmed hat clasped in his hands like he’s standing before a casket. His long grey overcoat is speckled with melting snowflakes.
Has so much time passed? Is it winter already?
I’m pretty sure I am hallucinating. Maybe there are no snowflakes at all, maybe it’s just the morphine. What I thought were snowflakes now just seem to be just flecks in the fabric of the old coat.
There is a shadowy aura around his body, the opposite of a glow.
“Hello, Philip.” His rumbling voice resonates against the walls.
I’m not hallucinating. He is here. It is my grandfather. Or, the man I thought was my grandfather.
“May I sit down?” he asks, in a diplomatic way.
It’s not as if I can answer him. Despite what some of his political opponents may have believed, he does not have the ability to read minds; if he did, he would hear mine screaming No! No! You may NOT sit down! Go away! No!
He settles into the plastic chair beside the bed, and places his hat atop the blue-green hospital blanket that is draped over my legs. He leans forward so I can see his face. He’s wearing a pair of new glasses, with slender gold rims and conservative oval lenses; the eyewear of an elder statesman. I notice he also has four round, dark purple bruises in a horizont
al line across one cheek.
“What do you think of my new spectacles, Philip?” he asks, knowing that I cannot answer. “They’re a compromise, of course. You remember the day they took my licence away. Well, I needed the glasses to get my licence back.”
Why didn’t you just take the train?
“It’s not that I particularly need to be able to drive again,” he says. “There are other ways to get around.”
Maybe he can read minds.
“I have a plan, Philip,” he says, as quietly as is possible with his thunderous voice. “A plan that will require the use of my car. A plan to make everything right again.”
Since I can’t move my head or neck, I can only see his face. His fingers are locked together, his chin resting on his thumbs.
“Philip,” he says, “I imagine that you’ve had a lot of time to think about things.”
Actually, I’ve spent most of my time unconscious, or watching the walls change colour, or having strangely disturbing dreams about a big, aggressive red ball chasing a frightened little yellow ball to the Peter Gunn theme.
“I imagine that you’ve been able to put together everything that was said and done before your accident. It was an accident, wasn’t it, Philip?”
Of course it was an accident. I got on the motorcycle to escape you, not to escape life! If I was the give-up-and-end-it-all type, do you think I would have waited this long?
“Regardless, I’m glad you survived. It’s a miracle, really, one for which I am very grateful. And I want to prove it.”
He clears his throat.
“The English clergyman Roland Allen once said, ‘redemption is inconceivable without truth.’ Well, Philip, before I do what I must do to redeem myself for the mistakes I’ve made, I want to tell you the truth. About everything.”
If this were a confessional booth, the priest would say something neutral like, “Go on, my child.” I suppose a psychoanalyst would do the same thing. But I cannot. Not only am I unable to speak, but my bloodstream is so saturated with painkillers and sedatives, I can hardly blink or move my eyes.
The Monkeyface Chronicles Page 21
