Tracy Clark - Scintillate

I was kindling for the fire raging in my body. Whole one moment, but soon reduced to ash. And the world would forget I had ever existed when the wind scattered me to the stars.

It’s possible that feeling like death made me morbidly poetic.

A hand touched my fevered brow, leaving behind a ghostly imprint, as if I’d been branded with ice. I floated in a haze of voices and images. Sensations pricked at me from the world, but I had one foot out that door, frustrated that no one would let me go through it. My blood flowed searing and thick through my veins, and my mind took to conjuring relief, dreaming I floated on sheets of water beneath an icy moon, though my body burned under its cool gaze.

Every ounce of strength had been wrung out of me. Janelle found me on my hands and knees on the bedroom floor, trying to crawl to the toilet. She had to help me to the bathroom, even pull down my undies for me, which might have mortified me if I’d had the energy. Right then, I decided I could maybe love my stepmom.

“I think we should take her to the ER,” I heard my father say before I threw up again. Another racking spasm of heaving and spitting, my body turning inside out.

“I’ll go start the car,” Janelle said. Her frantic vibe scared me more than my father’s thinking I was sick enough to warrant a hospital visit. I heard the rattling of keys, the slam of the kitchen door to the garage. Disjointed, frantic whisperings faded in and out. Then it was really quiet for a long time. Or a minute.

In the ER, white walls and strange faces rushed by in a blur.

Blood pressure.

Blood tests.

Foreign latex hands on my barbed skin.

“Her temperature is 106.2,” the doctor said. “It’s dangerously high. Because of the vomiting, I’m going to administer a rectal suppository so it will stay in her system long enough to start working on her fever.”

“Great,” I groaned.

My father smoothed my hair. “Sorry. I think it’s necessary, sweetheart.”

I nodded. They could stick that medicine in every orifice I had if it would make me better.

“We’ll give her something for the nausea and an IV. She’s likely very dehydrated.”

I dry-heaved again to punctuate the doctor’s comment, then I drifted off into a strange half sleep with no peace. My flimsy awareness was like a pesky mosquito I couldn’t swat. My body ballooned and shrank, in my mind, to strange and disproportionate sizes. I was sure if I opened my eyes, my hands would be big, helium-filled, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade versions of themselves while my head would be as small as a tennis ball.

Pain pricked the soft inside of my elbow. In my bleary daze, I could swear my father was drawing my blood into smooth little vials that clinked together when he dropped them into his breast pocket.

“Could this have anything to do with her mother?” Janelle whispered.

I fought to stay alert, needing to hear his answer.

He responded with silence. Janelle’s voice lowered. “What if Cora’s got it?”

My already erratic heartbeat stumbled.

Dad didn’t answer her. He did that—left questions lying on the ground like dirty socks.

I fought against the oblivion blanketing me. I wanted to ask him why he was taking my blood. I wanted to ask what Janelle meant about my mother. I wanted to ask him so many things, but sleep dragged me under to where there were no answers.

Sometime later, a few pairs of hands lifted me off one bed and onto another much colder one. Freezing, actually. My back arched with the shock of it against my bare skin. Like lying on one of those gel ice packs Janelle insisted on putting in my lunch bag.

“It’s c-c-cold.”

An unfamiliar voice answered, “I know, sweetie. It’s a refrigerated bed. We need to keep your body temperature down, get the fever under control.”

Every nerve in my body came alive, making my sensitive skin feel like an angry army of sharp new hairs were pushing to break through. My teeth chattered, and I tasted the sharp tang of blood from biting my tongue. “This—this is inhumane. C-can I have a blanket?”

“Sorry, Ms. Sandoval. The point is to cool you down, not warm you up. No blanket. You can have this sheet, though.” She draped scratchy fabric across my legs, too insignificant to count as covering. My shivering started almost immediately, a deep shaking that rumbled from my chest outward.

Eventually, I slept, though fitfully due to a creepy light that appeared whenever I closed my eyes. It began as a far-off point but advanced—bit by bit—toward me. My stomach clenched with fear. The light moved deliberately, as if nothing on earth could stop it. As if it were time itself stalking me. A lucid shred of my mind knew this must be delirium from the fever, but it didn’t make it any less scary.

I wished Dad were with me. He’d hold my hand and talk until I fell asleep to the soothing timbre of his voice in the Chilean accent everyone said he had but I couldn’t hear. When he talked, I only heard…my dad.

I was a child of accents I couldn’t hear: Dad’s Chilean one, inaudible because I was used to it, and my mother’s Irish accent that had faded from my memory because she didn’t bother to stick around.

All I inherited from my mother was my fair Irish complexion. My curvy figure was pure Chileno, as was my hair: deep brown, almost black, and wild as if it had been wound around thick tree branches every night.

My awareness drifted below the waves and bobbed back up to the surface now and then, especially when people came into the room. It was like my body registered their presence before my brain did. I wrestled one eye open and saw the outline of a tall, gangling man standing in the doorway. The glaring lights of the corridor behind him were so bright, the man himself was shadow. He stood absolutely still, watching me. I wondered if there had been a shift change with the nurses and, if so, why wasn’t he, you know, nursing me instead of standing there, staring?

Chills assaulted me again, a rolling tremor that made my skin hurt and my chest ache. “Please…,” I mumbled, though I didn’t know what I was asking for.

The man glided into the room, bringing the bright, white light with him so that the hall behind him darkened as he walked toward me. With every step he took, my heart picked up speed, churning to life like an accelerating train. An icy wind blew through me, taking my breath with it.

He stopped just out of arm’s reach and continued to stare at me with dark eyes. They had a crazy look to them, the kind of eyes you see in pictures of serial killers, deranged and remote. This man didn’t belong here. I knew he didn’t. What do you want? my brain screamed. I opened my mouth but couldn’t form words, could barely keep my eyes open. I struggled for air.

The light reached into me. I was being pulled out of my body. Evaporating. I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to hold me in. The man took a step back. A flicker of frustration passed over his face. He backed out of my room, his light retreating with him. From the doorway, he gave me one final look, a chilling smirk.

“A mighty flame follows a tiny spark.”

“What time is it?” I asked in a scratchy voice when the nurse came in for the umpteenth time to check my temperature.