The first time I got up to use the bathroom, one of the nurses walked alongside me to make sure I wouldn’t fall. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I shrieked. She jumped back, surprised for moment, and then her face went back to standard nurse’s expression. They’re usually unfazed by anything. If they register any emotion at all, it’s annoyance. I’m not trying to paint a negative picture, I just think that part of their strategy is to treat everything with nonchalance. Perhaps that helps keep the patients calm.
I couldn’t be calm at the sight of myself though. It wasn’t just the missing hand. The color of my skin was completely wrong, and my eyes were horrifying. My eyes looked like they were nearly glowing with green fire. They were supposed to be brown. At least that’s what I remember and that’s what my driver’s license says.
The nurse didn’t care. She had found her way to nonchalance and she wasn’t going to retreat from that stoic position.
Someone has laundered my clothes.
I button my pants with one hand using the plastic device they taught me to use. They taught me how to tie my shoes with only one hand as well, but I don’t bother. I just tuck in the laces. They can’t make me do it if I don’t want to.
I check myself out and get into the cab they called for me. The driver takes me to get a rental car.
(The house looks the same.)
The house looks the same.
I know that the police have been here. The power company has removed the lines and put in a new pole, but they haven’t hooked up the service yet. I’m supposed to just be here to pick up a few things and then go get a hotel room. That’s what I told the officer.
They can’t make me leave though.
I can stay here if I want to.
My wrist throbs as I walk into the kitchen.
There’s bird shit on the floor. I sigh. I have to get cardboard, a utility knife, and some tape. For today, that will have to be good enough.
My uncle would have insisted that we fix the glass immediately. He was big on setting things right before he went to bed. Sometimes we stayed up until after midnight hanging a door or patching the siding. When I was a kid, staying up late felt like a precious treat.
At the moment, I just want to half-ass this repair enough so I can take a nap. Just being out in the daylight has tapped my strength.
In the hospital, when I first recovered the ability to communicate, I kept asking what happened to my hand. I guess I thought that if they couldn’t give me a reasonable answer that they would have to give me my hand back. The different doctors all said the same thing.
“The infection was beyond treatment.”
That’s when I always asked the obvious follow up question, “What infection?”
Usually, the doctor would blink rapidly instead of answering. There was a lot of talk about biopsies and antibiotics. We were going to, “Watch and wait.”
I guess that whatever they were watching for never came because I never heard much more about it.
Another part of me thinks that maybe the staff simply gave up. Maybe they decided that having me out of the hospital, away from the other patients, was a better strategy. At some point, when the fire is out of control, the fire department just stands back and makes sure that the flames don’t spread to the neighbors.
With the windows plugged up with cardboard, I go out and sit on the stairs. The truck is gone—hauled away. There’s still a scorched black section of ditch as a reminder. I don’t last long on the stairs. Even though the sun is on the other side of the house, it’s too bright out.
I go back inside.
Instead of heading through the living room and climbing the stairs to my room, I take a left. My pickled jar of urine is still in the pantry. After I toss that in the dooryard, I close the door to the shed and push shut the door to the kitchen.
The darkness is almost perfect.
PART FIVE:
Rebirth
Growth
(Night is better.)
Night is better.
When I wake up, it’s completely dark. My wrist both aches and itches, so I take off the bandage, intending to change it. It feels so much better when it’s naked, that I just decide to leave it that way. The kitchen remains a disaster. I pull out the fridge as much as I can and I start to clean between it and the wall. In the beginning, I’m using tongs to move the larger items to the trash. By the end, I’m barehanding rotted food to the garbage can.
When I try to wash my hand, I remember that I don’t have running water.
Everything seems hopeless again. I want to go back to the pantry and hide from reality.
This time, I force myself to face my problems.
With my hand on the doorknob, looking out into the night, I realize something that should have struck me earlier—I don’t have power.
I mean, I knew that before. They haven’t strung up the new power lines. I have no power or water until they do, that’s why the cops told me not to stay in the house.
I turn back to the refrigerator. The whole time I was cleaning, it never once occurred to me that the lights weren’t on. I didn’t use a flashlight or anything, and it never bothered me. I suppose I was too distracted by trying to navigate the task with only one hand.
That’s the only explanation I can
