Edison

by Jessica Gadziala

  I never used to hate hospitals.

  How could I, when I spent so much of my youth in them?

  I was forever falling out of trees, breaking things, bloodying things, knocking into things hard enough to need X-rays and overnight observation.

  I knew the exact sensation of the scratchy paper they pull over the exam tables and the faded, squishy, yet firm leather beneath it. I knew the coldness of the X-ray and CAT scan tables as well as the mechanical clicking noises they made while they peered inside you. I knew the antiseptic smell I almost found comforting, and had my mother not convinced, evidenced by how frequently she went over to the hand sanitizer dispensers that were attached to the walls, and scrub on some of the cold liquid that she would later complain dried out her skin.

  I never had anything even resembling a phobia about the place that used to give me grape Advil and bubblegum-flavored Amoxicillin, and let me pick crazy colored casts.

  They were actually memories I liked.

  Which was rare.

  But that all changed that night.

  That horrible, life-changing, soul-crushing night.

  Me, dead inside, cold-as-ice me, had sobbed until I had lost my voice, until all the skin on my cheeks became raw and red and painful.

  That night when words that once meant nothing to me started to mean everything.

  Words like coma.

  And brain waves.

  And cerebral swelling.

  Words that said she became a doll in a bed with machines poking out of her wrists, her nose, her crotch.

  Machines that were doing everything her body had forgotten how to do on its own while she slept.

  Slept.

  That was the term I preferred.

  I wasn't a fanciful person by nature, but my brain rebelled when I tried to refer to her as in a coma. There was something wholly unreachable about that, something seemingly permanent.

  "Hey Lenny," MaryBeth greeted me from the nurse's station where she was standing in cheery yellow scrubs that were meant to try to lighten the mood, but I too-often found their false cheer insulting rather than comforting.

  Don't try to tell me that there is anything cheerful about this place where everyone behind a door was in limbo, alive, but not living.

  "Hey MB," I greeted her because it wasn't her fault I had to be there. And she was someone taking care of the only person in the world my shriveled little heart loved. "Kick him to the curb yet?" I asked, forcing myself to be social when all I wanted to do was throw myself behind the all-too-familiar door and have a good cry again.

  Her boyfriend was six years into his fear of commitment. Which was, somehow, a bullshit line she was still buying into.

  Oh, he's been hurt before.

  Yeah, well, haven't we all.

  Nut-up and put a rock on her finger.

  I might have even said something very similar to that one particularly bad day for me when I caught him alone beside the nurse's station waiting for her.

  MaryBeth's head shake was all the answer I needed.

  "You're a far better woman than me, MB," I told her, and knew it was probably the truth as I moved down the hall toward her door.

  Well, it wasn't just hers.

  But seeing as the other person she shared it with was as equally indisposed, I figured she didn't mind my mild - and major - breakdowns.

  They were getting more frequent.

  After I got over the shock, I had settled into a very unfamiliar optimism. For four and a half months.

  But now, closing in on six, yeah, there wasn't a speck of optimism left. Just angry, bitter, soul-deep hurt.

  I moved between the beds, still going through the ridiculous ritual of pulling the privacy curtain as if it made a difference.

  And there she was.

  Swallowed up by the big, slightly bent upward hospital bed, the rails up though there was really no need for that precaution seeing as she hadn't moved so much as an inch in all the time she had been inside that bed with the too-heavily-bleached blankets that had not a bit of softness, and hardly enough warmth.

  It was always so cold here.

  And my morbid brain wondered if it was some attempt at preservation.

  "Hey babygirl," I greeted her, a hitch already in my voice as I took a deep breath. "You just had a bath, I see," I told her, moving past the bed toward the window side, grabbing the chair that was always there, and pulling it closer to the side of her bed.

  They didn't get bathed often.

  I guess it must have been a huge hassle.

  I had dry shampoo in my purse for when the spans went too long and her perfect, glossy wheat-blonde hair would start darkening with grease at the roots.

  But today her hair was bright and shimmering, still damp in places. I couldn't claim she smelled like she had had a bath seeing as the shit they used in the hospital had little to no scent. But she looked better.

  Well, as good as she could in a bed with tubes keeping her alive.

  Letha.

  The only person who mattered.

  Twenty-four years old.

  She hadn't even gotten to celebrate her last birthday.

  It sounded like she wouldn't get to celebrate the next one either.

  Meanwhile, my sorry ass just got to keep having them.

  That is your survivor's guilt speaking.

  One of the nurse's had told me that, making me launch into a lung-burningly loud rant about how we weren't in a fucking plane crash together. That her traumatic event had nothing to do with my feelings that the world would be a better place if I were in the bed, and she was still off living her life. That was just common sense.

  She was a far better person than I ever was, than I ever would be.

  Yet here we were.

  No amount of ranting and raging would change the situation.

  My little sister was in a bed with machines bleeping out the fact that she was alive, but just barely, not really.

  I hadn't seen her eyes in six months. That cornflower blue that made everyone who crossed her path stop and admire, that were always so easy to read, that never had a hint of the guards that mine did.

  And her smile.

  Christ, I missed that. More than words could say. All white teeth and crinkles beside her eyes because when she did it, she did it big.

  Letha never did anything by halves.

  It was a smile that got me through my less than stellar childhood.

  It was a smile that I saw through my phone when I was still up in Jersey, and she had been away at school in Georgia.

  It was a smile I got to see at the coffeeshop every single Sunday when she finally moved back to the area just a year ago, a smile that somehow made the humdrum drudgery that was my life completely tolerable.

  It was so bright that it was blinding.

  And since it had been gone, my world had been so much darker.

  Pitch, in fact.

  And so fucking cold.

  I had always been me, guarded, distant, jaded, cynical, a bit of a bitch. But, I think, things had taken a turn when I got the call that night, when she was no longer around to balance me, to remind me of the good that there still was in the world.

  I knew if she could, she would tell me to knock it off, to ovary-up, to stop being such a Negative Nelly.

  It might not always be rainbows and sunshine, but the rain is lovely too, Lele.

  I wasn't so convinced.

  I'd been in a constant storm for half a year; I had yet to find any beauty in it.

  Maybe that is because you're not looking for it.

  That was exactly what she would tell me if she could.

  Maybe she was right.

  She usually was.

  But what the fuck was the point of finding any beauty when she was laid up in a bed, not able to share it with me?

  I reached out, sliding my hand under hers and curling it around. It was cold, but her hands always were.

  Cold hands mean a warm heart.

>   Fuck if that wasn't true in her case.

  I sat there for a long moment, nothing but stillness inside and out.

  It was silly.

  Juvenile, really.

  But I was still waiting to see if her finger would twitch.

  That was all I would need.

  To stop the upcoming process.

  To get not to make that decision I was dreading.

  To take my sister off life support.

  SIX

  Lenny

  I tell time in my memories not so much by the years or the grade I was in at school, but by whose house I was staying at any given time.

  Which man's house I was staying in at any given time.

  My mother changed men like most people changed sheets.

  My first memory was of a man named Brian's house. Brian was an electrical engineer, handsome, funny, and, well, too good to put up with my mother's shit. Even at five I could see that. Even at five, I felt embarrassed for her when Brian would say he was going out for the night - without her - and she had dropped to her knees sobbing, holding onto his leg like a small child throwing a fit.

  We came back from the convenience store the next day to find the locks changed and our bags on the front porch.

  Brian was getting free before she wrapped him up tight enough to suffocate him.

  By the time I was eight, she was on her second marriage and, well, umpteenth man.

  And then nine months later, after spending too much time staring at my mother's belly, wondering who the hell was going to take care of a baby when my mother could hardly take care of herself, let alone me.

  But there was no stopping it.

  There was Letha.

  Letha, unlike myself, was lucky enough to be born to a father who gave a shit about her, who provided for her, who put up with my mom's shit for years for Letha's sake.

  And Letha, yeah, she bloomed in the light of her father's clear affection.

  He didn't care for me.

  I was a sullen girl, surly, prone to bursts of obstinate silence, and, well, an extension of my mother who he grew to hate more with each passing day.

  My mother, what could be said about the woman who, before all the marriages made it unrecognizable and confusing, was called Leigh Thomas.

  I guess it would be fair to point out the things that had always mattered most to her - her looks.

  When she was younger, before the plastic surgery stole away the things that had always been a part of her, she had been almost unfairly pretty with her shining blonde hair, blue eyes, delicate feminine face, and perfectly thin frame that was most prized in that time, back before curves became all the rage again.

  On top of that, there was her damsel in distress personality that was catnip to all the men she came in contact with.

  Oh, thank you so much! If you didn't happen by, my little girl and I would have been stranded here all day! You are an absolute lifesaver! I wouldn't have known a tire iron from a baseball bat.

  Meanwhile, she had been varsity in softball in high school, and not only had a tire iron in the trunk, but totally knew how to use it.

  Men like feeling needed and masculine, Lenore.

  Even as a child, that didn't seem like something I wanted to do - pretend not to know something so someone else could 'teach' me something I already knew.

  Even still in grade school, I had been on the receiving end of boys thinking they knew better than me, that because I was just a girl, I didn't know how to play soccer and basketball and how to ride a skateboard.

  I couldn't imagine wanting to purposely let them think that. I had always been more inclined to show them up, to wipe those snide looks off their faces when I scored a goal or rode the curb.

  You're never going to get a boy to like you if you keep scraping up your knees.

  I was nine when she told me that. Boys should have been the furthest thing from my mind.

  And while I didn't know the term 'deflecting' at that age, I somehow understood that she was telling me that because it was clear that Letha's daddy was mad at her almost all the time, no matter how pretty she made herself, or how much she hung on his every word.

  He barely even looked her way anymore actually.

  His whole world was the little girl with the big eyes who had just learned to say 'Daddy' which never ceased to melt him.

  It was then that I first began to suspect my mother resented my sister. She was shorter with her, snapping at her for crying, for not being smart enough to know how to use her fork or walk like I had been doing at her age.

  When her husband came home and made a bee-line for the spot on the floor where Letha was sitting up on her pink and white baby blanket with a bunch of squishy plastic animal bath toys in neon colors, half of them with teeth marks from her incoming front teeth, all of them dripping in spit, my gaze would often go to my mother.

  Without fail, you could see her looking at her baby daughter with a look even my young eyes couldn't mistake. Jealousy.

  And the more Jake celebrated each and every one of Letha's many milestones over the next four years, the more my mother turned cold to her.

  And at twelve, well, I finally had my mother's card. And I had a mouth confident enough to call her on her nastiness, and start to protect Letha from it. I had probably never played with a Barbie or tea set in my life, but there I was during my first year of middle school, spending every afternoon listening to why this Barbie was mad at that Barbie while pretending to sip tea out of an ornate, mini, hand-painted, real China tea set Jake had bought her for her birthday. All in an attempt to keep her out of my mother's sight.

  But I had school.

  And Letha didn't.

  And I couldn't count the amount of afternoons I would come home to find Letha in bed clutching a stuffed pig, telling me that Mommy was mad at her again.

  It wasn't, though, until later that year that I walked into the house one night after taking a rare bit of time to myself to go shoot hoops with the neighborhood kids, to find Jake screaming at my mother in the kitchen. I'd heard men argue with my mother before. In fact, it had happened so much in my life that it was all background noise to me. But this wasn't just an argument. And I had never heard a man yell so loudly that it sounded like he was losing his voice.

  My mother, as was her go-to during any argument, was sobbing.

  I could only catch bits and pieces, but it seemed like my mother had finally crossed the line and struck Letha. There was, apparently, a mark and everything.

  I didn't stay to listen to more, I moved through the house to find Letha on her bed, her piggy in her lap, her hands pressed to her ears.

  And there was a mark.

  Right there across her cheek.

  I sat with her, stroking her hair, telling her that Daddy was just mad at Mommy for hitting her because hitting wasn't nice.

  Until I heard the words that would change everything.

  "I want you out!" Jake screamed. "Pack your shit and get the fuck out of our lives."

  Ours.

  It didn't take a genius to know he meant his and Letha's.

  Of course he didn't want me, not even if I had been every bit a second mother to Letha her entire life.

  He didn't want me.

  They never did.

  None of them.

  And at twelve years old, I had long-since gotten over the shock of being tossed aside like an old shoe that didn't fit anymore.

  That didn't mean, however, that it didn't sting. It always stung. It never mattered how many nights I sat across a table from one of the men, how many movies we had all watched like a family, how many times they bought me birthday presents, in the end, to them, it all meant nothing.

  Jake had never actually warmed up to me, always seeing me as an extension of my mother who he hated so fully, even if we were nothing alike. But his roof was the one I had lived under for the longest. Almost five years. In the same room. In the same school district. Around all the same kids I couldn't exactly
call friends, but did hang out with on occasion. He had given me a stability I had never known in my life, and he was ripping that away from me without a thought.

  Then, to make that even worse, he was going to take Letha away from me. I wouldn't lie and say that there weren't times when her dependence on me hadn't been a burden. I was twelve. I wanted to be a kid. I wanted to hang out with people my own age. But those thoughts paled in comparison to the ones that loved my sister, that wanted to be able to read her bedtime stories like I always did, and push her on a swing, and have her wake me up too early on Saturdays by jumping on my bed and calling me Lazy Bones.

  What was left of my bruised heart got stomped to slush that night as my mother dragged me out of that house, as Letha cried for me not to leave her, that she wouldn't be such a pest, that she would be a good girl if I stayed.

  "Quit your bitching," my mother demanded, using a rare curse word that she wasn't known for because 'men don't like women who talk like truck drivers.'

  "He is taking Letha away from me!" I shrieked in the shabby, dated motel room she had set us up in for the night. It smelled like clothes left in the washer too long and stale cigarettes.

  "He doesn't get to win," she told me, voice fierce, yet calm, like it always was when she was plotting something. Like the time she planned to expose the infidelity of the current leader of the PTA so she could take over the bake sale. Mind you, my mother hated baking, and was totally known for buying store-bought ones then plating them so the men in her life thought she could bake. It wasn't about the baking or the money raised, it was her needing to look like the best housewife in town. She didn't have the adoration of her husband, so she needed to get it somewhere. So when she wasn't flirting with random delivery guys and store clerks and mechanics, she was trying to make all the women in town look up to her.

  "What are you talking about?" I snapped, turning my back on her so I could swipe at the tears that were starting to escape my eyes. I had always hated how she used tears to manipulate people, so I had always felt the need to hide mine when they threatened, not wanting to be anything like the woman who gave me life.

  "He doesn't get to win. I gave that man the best years of my life. He doesn't get to win."