Pieces of Me (6 page)

“Take all the time you need.” Nurse Scalpel moved away from us, his hands full of signed forms and my chart. I saw a brief glimpse of both of my parents’ signatures.

I sent him a glare that I hoped made his ass pucker and his nose itch forever.

My parents said no. They had to say no.
Of course they said no. They’ll wait for me to wake up
. They were the most selfish people on the planet, they were not going to let anyone cut me up and ship me around the world. Scalpel moved me out of the emergency room because they were going to wait for me to wake up.
That’s it exactly
.

“She looks like she’s sleeping so peacefully.” Mother patted my hand and tapped her eyes with a tissue.
Ever afraid to run her
mascara lest she be caught untended by someone she knows
. I wanted tears, ugly sobs of grief.

“She’s not sleeping, Madeline.”

Mother shot Father a pointed glare that felt eerily familiar.
I guess I know where I got that expression
. “I know that, Richard.”

“I’m sure they need us to move this along,” he said, ignoring her while digging in his pockets.

“Are you sure she’s not in any pain?” Mother turned toward Father as if truly needing his reassurance. For a moment I saw the bonded trust that must have been there when they’d first married.

“They showed me the amount of pain meds in her system. She’s not feeling anything.” Father cleared his throat. He shredded an old gum wrapper into tiny silver confetti. It littered the floor unnoticed. “We should say good-bye and get out of here.”

Where are we going?

“He said take my time. She’s my baby.” Mother turned away, toward me, and studied my face as if she saw me for the first time. “She was such a giving child.”

I was?
When?

Father nodded, but didn’t speak.

“She thought she was going to change the world,” Mother continued, weaving a brand-new story about my life.

“I’m sure she would have.” Father sounded like he believed her, believed in me. But then he spoiled the moment by pulling out his phone and unlocking the screen.

“You can’t have that on in here,” Mother shrieked.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” He spit back the words.

And we’re back to normal
.

“She changed the world. She had plans.” Mother stroked my hair, above the Band-Aid, where the nurse tried to sponge off all the blood until my blond looked orange. I wanted to grab Mother’s hand and force her to stop touching me.

I did? When? Who are these people? Do they know nothing about me? Anything?

“We’re doing the right thing, aren’t we?” Father didn’t glance up from his phone but his voice cracked.

Of course you are. I will wake up
. I tried thrusting myself into my body. Again. I clicked my heels three times. I tried to do acrobatics and scream and sing and get someone’s, anyone’s, attention. I tried to pinch myself. Anything. Everything.

But I had no mass, no body, no nothing.

Nurse Scalpel returned and hovered at the door. “When you’re ready,” he said, before whispering to another nurse, who came in and checked the monitors, made notes, and added something to my IV bag.

Mother stood. “Carlton should say good-bye.”

“He’s too young,” Father argued weakly, as if he knew he’d lose anyway.

“No, he’s not.”

Just until I wake up, right? A “see ya later”?

In a moment, Nurse Scalpel brought my little brother into the room. Carlton looked at once like a baby and an old man. I sensed he understood better than either of my parents what was going on.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” he asked, reaching out to touch my toes but then stopping. His snotty, painted fingers retreated into knots behind his back.

You can touch me, Carlton. Touch me! Maybe I’ll open my eyes and hug you back. Please
.

“Yes,” Father answered. “But she is going to help other people live.”
Father? I’m here. Right here. What happens to me?
When Phinny my goldfish died, you told me there was no heaven. No hell. That it was a bunch of lies people told themselves because they were afraid. That he’d rot in the sewer system. I had nightmares for weeks in first grade.

And now? Now I’m terrified. Will you flush me too?

Carlton nodded, his bottom lip held between his teeth. He was trying not to cry.

Won’t anyone cry?

A nurse plunged another syringe of something into my IV. I felt dizzy and tired.

“I’m not ready. I can’t do this.” Mother leaned across the bed. I lay down next to her. Next to me. Too exhausted to keep floating, too scared to try anything else.

“They need to take her, Madeline.” Father cleared his throat again.

“What’s going on? Where are they taking her?” Carlton asked.

If I’m here, I can’t be dead, can I? Where’s the tunnel? The light? Why, if there is no such thing as souls, am I still here? Explain this to me, Father!

Father answered. “They are going to harvest her organs now for other kids who need them.”

“Like at a farm?” Carlton questioned.

“Yes.” Father nodded.

“No.” Mother sobbed.

“She’s really dead?” my brother repeated as my father wrapped
his hands around my mother’s upper arms and lifted her off the gurney.

They ignored him.
Someone answer my brother!
I didn’t want him to have nightmares about me rotting on some farm somewhere with corn growing from my eye sockets.

When it was clear our parents were too involved to listen, to even hear my brother, Nurse Scalpel knelt and met Carlton’s gaze. “Jessica was driving a car and got in an accident. She hit her head really bad and her brain got hurt.”

“Like a sprained ankle?”

I almost laughed. Thanks to gym class last week, and his lack of coordination, Carlton knew exactly what a sprained ankle was.

“Did you have a bum ankle? After a few days did it start to feel better?” Nurse Scalpel didn’t break eye contact.

“Yeah, it’s green but I’m not limping anymore. Wanna see?”

“Nah, I believe you.” Nurse Scalpel continued, “Well, Jessica’s brain can’t get better. It was so hurt, it stopped working.”

“But she’s breathing like she’s sleepin’.”

“When she arrived at the hospital, we didn’t know how badly her brain was hurt, and so we gave her machines to help her breathe, and keep her heart beating, until we knew if her brain could get better. But it stopped working and can’t heal.”

Carlton scrunched up his face. “Why keep the machines going?”

“There are lots of sick kids who need help to get better. And Jessica is going to be able to help them with transplants of organs and tissue she can’t use anymore.”

“Like bone marrow? My friend Evan’s sister needed one of those and they couldn’t find anyone, so Evan had to do it. He
said it didn’t hurt very much. Is it going to hurt?” His bottom lip trembled and his chin quivered.

“No, I promise it won’t hurt.”

“She really can’t get better?”

“No, Carlton, she’s dead.”

“Okay, then she’d want to help the other kids like Evan’s sister.” Carlton’s relief was profound and complete. He wouldn’t have nightmares now. He understood.

“Good.” Nurse Scalpel nodded in all seriousness, as if Carlton’s questions were the most important ones of the day. In that moment, I loved this stranger for doing what my parents couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do for their son. He did the job I always took on, explaining things and answering Carlton’s queries.
Who will do that now? I’m really dead?

They began to wheel the gurney out of the room and down a long white hallway.
Is this the tunnel?
I felt myself drifting down the hallway, and then I fell asleep.

Or did I finally die?

Samuel glanced up
at the map he’d tacked to his bedroom wall. Twelve states down, thirty-six left, but the farther he researched away from New Mexico, the lower the odds of finding clues. Kidneys had a shelf life. He had to be there in the papers somewhere.

She. I’m a she
.

Along the walls of maps in his current bedroom, pins and colored thread wove a web of intricate patterns I didn’t understand, but Samuel seemed to interpret them as easily as most people recognized the smell of home.

Since day one, Samuel wasn’t willing to let the time pass. And to him, the protocol of letting UNOS coordinate communication between donors and recipients seemed old-school and antiquated. He needed answers. He needed to know how his prayer was answered. Not in two years. Today. He worked his way out in ever larger circles. With Samuel’s PRA count, his donor could have been anywhere within the United States. His kidneys and pancreas were rare, his tissue typing almost impossible to find.

Now he has mine and he’s wasting them
. I wanted to shake him
and make him do something else. Anything else. Rather than spend his days trying to piece together the story of my death.

This kid has read three thousand, eight hundred, and forty-two obituaries and articles about fatal car accidents, drownings, and fires. How is he not killing himself from self-induced depression?

I tried to pick up a pen or type on the keyboard, anything, something, to save me from this agonizing search for the dead donor.
It’s me! It’s me!
Shouting, I jumped up and down, but he didn’t hear me. I obviously didn’t read enough paranormal novels to understand how ghosts got things done. Add that to the list of things I wish I’d done more of.
It’s an impressive list and I’m only six months dead
.

I tried to hit the Return key again.

Bing!

I did it!

Craptastic, no, I didn’t
. That was the dryer downstairs signaling Sam’s tighty whities were clean, and skid-mark free, at least, I hoped. I was forever scarred by that first day doing laundry with Sam.

Sam needed a break. He’d make himself nuts hunting up the Good Samaritan any longer today.

We heard his mother’s footsteps, heavy on the floorboards, approach. I didn’t understand their dynamic yet.

“Honey? Why don’t you go to a movie? Or meet some friends to skateboard?” Sam’s ma called tentatively through his closed bedroom door.

“Because I can watch movies in my room and I don’t have friends or a skateboard. I don’t know anyone here anymore,” Samuel muttered under his breath. Too many months and years
of chasing specialists and miracles from new hospital to new hotel and back. He closed his eyes and whispered, “You thought you’d get a normal boy, a real boy, when I got new organs, didn’t you?” After a deep breath, and loud enough his ma heard, he said, “Maybe in a little while; I just have a couple more lines of code to drop in and then sure, I’ll go outside.”

“Okay, honey.” We felt her waver.

I knew that tone. That was the tone of parents-who-don’t-understand-their-kids-and-are-disappointed-by-the-reality-of-parenthood. I knew it well.

“Who’s online?” Samuel’s fingers flew over the keys and I plunked myself onto his bed. He wasn’t going anywhere. Not soon. Or maybe at all. I knew this. I knew he placated his mom with promises and she let him. It was their thing.

“New message,” he read aloud, but he didn’t have to; if Samuel read it, saw it, thought it, I knew it too. And I have to admit that there are a few things I’d much rather unsee or unthink.

“ ‘Yo, MiracleMan, I’m stuck on level six. Help.’ Typical. Figure it out.” Samuel didn’t have patience for shortcuts. Not that I blamed him. Years plugged into machines had the power to turn even the most positive person into a bitter bossy-pants.

I started counting the glow-in-the-dark stars on his bedroom ceiling. His mother stuck them up while he was recovering from the transplant surgery. As if he were still eight. I’d only ever gotten to three hundred and six before my attention wandered. I had time. No rush.

The next message sat him straighter, tugged closer to the screen, as if that were possible, and frowning.
Not his usual
.

I moved behind him to see for myself.

Samuel chewed his bottom lip and his fingers fluttered above the keys like they did when he was thinking hard. I think my response would be “good question,” and leave it at that. This one struck him hard, and I wasn’t sure why. I knew Misty too. I avoided her. But how did she find Samuel? Another link in the chain. Another thread in the web?
Snap out of it, Jessica
. Sam tapped out his words and sat, hovering above the keyboard.

He sat there staring at the screen for, like, ten minutes before he hit Send.
Boys. That’s not what she was asking. I think
.

When Sam let himself be consumed hunting up other possible donors, I closed my eyes.

Maybe I should check on Misty? She makes me feel icky
. I frowned.
Am I allowed to not understand her? Am I being a bad donor?
Today, I didn’t care.

What’s Vivian up to?

Vivian it is …

Vivian checked the levels of stock in the pencil trays. They were out of dark charcoal again. What was the big draw for charcoal pencils this month? Someone had to be taking them without
paying. She’d mention it to Jackson before she left for the day. Her stomach rumbled. When did she eat last?

“Don’t you have an exam to study for?”

Vivian turned toward Cassidy and shrugged. “I should, I guess.” The thought of wasting time on memorizing geography appalled her.

“That class is a killer.” Cassidy shook her head and moved off to help a customer.

“Yeah, but no one died from failing an exam.” Vivian frowned.

Cassidy was normal. She worried about things like getting a date for Friday night and what college her parents could afford to send her to.