Robin Wasserman - Frozen

There was a metal folding chair to the left of his bed. I sat down. His right arm was in a cast. His legs were covered by a thin blue blanket. But his left arm lay exposed and, except for a few small bandages and the IV needle jabbed into his wrist, feeding some clear fluid into his bloodstream, the arm looked normal. Healthy. So, very gently, careful not to jar any of the delicately assembled machinery that surrounded his body, I rested my hand on top of his.

I wondered where his glasses were, in case he needed them. No— when he needed them. Then I remembered they were probably floating downstream somewhere, miles away. Maybe they’d made it to the ocean. I didn’t even know if the river hit the ocean. But everything does eventually, right?

He opened his eyes.

“Hi!” No, that was too loud, too fakely cheery. He’d see through it. “Hey,” I said, softer.

Nothing.

“Auden? Can you hear me?” I leaned over him, so that he could see me, even with his head pinned in place by the metal cage. “It’s me. Lia.”

I wondered if he could understand what I was saying.

Substantial amount of brain function, the doctor had said without ever clarifying what “substantial” meant. Something more than none; something less than all .

“You’re going to be okay,” I said, just like I’d said on the way to the hospital, just as uselessly. I remembered, then, how much I’d hated it when people had said it to me. How ridiculous, how unacceptable it had sounded coming from people who were whole and healthy. Nothing would be okay, I’d thought after the accident. And I’d hated them for lying. “The doctor says you’ll be fine.”

“You must be talking to a different doctor,” he said. Wheezed, more like. His words were slow and raspy, like he hadn’t used his throat in a long time. And like they hurt coming out.

But still, I smiled, and my smile was real. He was back.

“I was so—” I stopped myself. He didn’t need to hear how I’d been torturing myself in the waiting room, worrying. This wasn’t about me, I reminded myself. It was about him. “You look like crap,” I said, trying to laugh. “Does it hurt?”

“No.”

It figured. They had pretty good drugs these days, and he was no doubt getting the best.

“So, I guess we’ve got something in common now,” I said. “We’ve both been technically dead, and come back to life.” Was it inappropriate to joke? Would it make him feel better, or would it make him think I didn’t care? “Better be careful, or the Faithers will start worshipping us or something.”

“Uh-huh.”

Okay. Too soon to joke.

“I saw your father in the waiting room. He was really worried about you. I guess he cares more than you… Well. Anyway. He was worried.”

“Yeah.”

It probably hurt him to talk.

“Not that he has to be worried, because you’re going to be fine. Doctors can do anything these days, right? Just look at me.”

Wrong thing to say.

Everything I said was the wrong thing to say.

I rubbed my palm lightly across his, wishing that he would grasp my hand, squeeze my fingers, do something to indicate that he wanted me there. But he didn’t. I held on anyway. His skin was warm, proof that he was still alive.

“You were amazing, you know that?” I said. “When you jumped in to rescue me? They said the water was so cold you shouldn’t even have been able to—” I stopped. Neither of us needed the reminder. “It was really heroic. To save me.”

“It was stupid.”

“No, Auden….”

He didn’t speak again, just stared at the ceiling.

“You’re tired,” I said. “I should probably go, let you sleep—”

“Don’t you want to know?”

“What?”

“What the doctors said.” His lips turned up at the corners, but it wasn’t a real smile, and not just because the bandages held most of his skin in place. “The prognosis. All the thrilling details.”

“Of course I want to know.” I didn’t.

Especially when he started reciting it in a dry, clinical tone, words out of a medical text that didn’t seem to have any connection to him, his body, his wounds. Punctured lung. Internal bleeding. Bruised kidney. Lacerations. Fractures. The heart muscle weakened by multiple arrests. A cloned liver standing by for transplant, if necessary. They would wait and see. “And the grand finale,” he said, his voice like ice. He sounded like his father. “Severed spinal cord. At C5.”

I didn’t understand how so much damage could have been done so quickly, in thirty seconds… and thirty feet. Don’t forget the eighty thousand gallons of water , I thought. And yet I was just fine.

“Auden, I’m so… I’m so sorry.” I threaded my hand through the metal cage and brushed my fingers against his cheek.

“Don’t touch me,” he said. “Don’t.”

I yanked my hand away. But my left hand still rested on his. Out of his sight line, I realized. I squeezed his fingers, tight, waiting for him to tell me to let go.

He didn’t.

“What?” he asked, sounding irritated.

I stared at his fingers, the fingers that hadn’t moved since I came into the room. The fingers that he was letting me touch, even though he didn’t want me touching him.

“Does it hurt?” I asked again, for a different reason this time.

“Nothing hurts.” He sounded like a robot. He sounded like I sounded before I got control of my voice again, when I had to communicate through an electronic box.

“What does it mean? What’s going to happen?”

“C5. That’s C for cervical, five for the fifth vertebra down,” he said. “They’ve got it all mapped out. C5 means I keep head and neck motion. Shoulders, too. Eventually. It means right now I can’t feel anything beneath my neck. It means I’m fucked for life.”

“Not anymore,” I protested. “They can fix that now. Can’t they?”

“They fuse the cord back together. Yeah. And then nerve regeneration. You get some feeling back. You get some motion. They call it ‘limited mobility.’ It means you can walk, like, a little. A couple hours a day. And apparently if I practice, I might be able to piss for myself again.”

“So that sounds…” It sounded like a life sentence to hell. “Hopeful.”

“Yeah. As in, they hope it won’t hurt so much I spend the rest of my life doped up, but they’re not sure. As in, they hope they can put me back together enough that I don’t die in ten years, but they’re not sure. Fucking high hopes, right?”

There had always been something sweet to Auden, something carefully hidden beneath the cynicism and the conspiracy theories and the family baggage, as if he was afraid to reveal his secret reservoir of hope. But that was gone now. There was nothing beneath the bitter but more bitter. It’s temporary, I told myself.

Things change.

“If it’s that bad, why don’t you… take the other option?” I asked.

“And exactly what might you be referring to?”

I hesitated. “Nothing.” So that was it. He didn’t want to be like me, no matter what he may have said. He’d rather be miserable, debilitated, in pain, than be like me. Maybe I couldn’t blame him.

“Say it.”

“Nothing.”

“Say it!” Something beeped, and he took a deep, gasping breath. “Better listen to me,” he said, panting. “I’m not supposed to get agitated.”

“Why don’t you download?” I said quickly, remembering something else I’d hated when I was the one trapped in a bed. The way everyone suddenly got so scared of nouns, as if vague mentions of “what happened” and “your circumstances” would make me forget what was actually going on. As if by not saying it out loud, they were helping anyone but themselves.