I sit up, dizzy and disoriented. The room around me materializes, practically
all white. White walls, white floors, white sheets. The furniture is brown, and the
chair next to my bed has blue cushions, but other than that, it’s all white. I look to
my left and I see sunlight pouring in from a window that looks out over a very busy
road. I look to my right and I see a door, also white, it’s silver handle seemingly
floating in an endless, white void. I look behind me and I see a silver pole with
transparent tubes connected to little packets at the top of the pole and stuck into my
arm with a needle. The fluid in one of them is red, the other is clear. But I can’t
remember exactly,
“Where am I?” I ask, to no one in particular. No one answers. I guess I didn’t
really need to ask since no one is in the room. I look down towards the end of my
bed, and that’s when I see it, and I laugh. “I have no right hand.” I say, and then I drift
back off to sleep.
I open my eyes, but this time there are two odd figures standing at the end of
my bed.
“You’re awake.” One said. The other just stood their smiling I look down,
admiring my right stump, when I realize that, it isn’t my right hand that’s gone at all.
I look back over to the right, and it’s still not there.
“Would you look at that?” I say. The both just stand there, looking confused,
“The left one’s gone too!” They remain there, like rocks with nothing motivating
them to move. Their faces like masks, those awkward grins painted on, never to
change. That’s when it hits me.
“OH. MY. GOD!” They look at me, even more confused than before. “I. HAVE.
NO. HANDS!” There is a long pause. “I HAVE NO HANDS!” That’s also the precise
moment I remember it. There was a crowd. Running. Screaming. I tripped. I fell. I hit
my head on the concrete. I got back up, but everything was hazy. I was dizzy, confused.
What were they running from? Why were they screaming? Then I heard a loud boom, a
searing, hot pain. Then a curtain closed over my vision. I felt something land on my
hands, then something on my back. I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t see. I tried to yell, but
all that I could get out was a hoarse croak. I felt myself drifting further and further
away. It started to rain, then pour, quenching and smothering the flames around me.
As time passed, I no longer knew whether it was blood or rain pooled all around me. I
couldn’t move. I didn’t want to. I closed my eyes and I continued to drift until I was no
longer aware of my surroundings. Everything was black. Nothing changed. It was kind
of nice until I felt myself being carried, away from that dark, warm place. I don’t
remember anything more. I don’t know where I am, how I got here, or why I have no
hands, but I want out and I want my hands back!
“Hi.” Says the figure on the left, still grinning awkwardly at me. The other
elbows them. I’m not sure why. Maybe they’re trying to be polite, or maybe just
wrestling in a very odd fashion. However, I don’t have time to make these
speculations. I have more important issues to resolve like,
“What have you done with my hands?” They look at each other, then at me,
concerned.
“We don’t have your hands.” One of them says.
“They were amputated.” Says the other. I shake my head.
“No.” There’s a long pause. “No, no, no, no, no!” Another pause. “No, no, no,
no, no.” One final pause, “N-n-no!” They both look at each other, scared and sad at
the same time.
“Yeah. You’re also paralyzed from the waist down.” I raise my eyebrows. “You
can’t move your legs.” I look down at my bed, and I see two little peaks that are my
feet sticking up. I try to move my legs, but the sheets show no movement. I touch my
legs, and I can’t feel them. I look up at the people, and their faces come in and out of
focus. I know these people, and without thinking, I say.
“George? Carly?” They nod. “I’m scared.”
The room was quiet for what felt like an eternity. The only sound in the room
was the sound of our breathing. After a while George looked me in the eye.
“Hey Bro, I know that this might sound stupid. But you’ll make it through this.
You make it through everything. You’re stronger than me and you’re stronger than
Marco. No offense to him.” I look down at my lap. “Max. Look at me. You’re going to
do this.” I just shake my head.
“I’m going to have to use a wheelchair. It’s not going to be the same.” I look
down at the stumps that used to be my hands. “I can’t even wheel myself because I
have no hands.” George nodded. But he grabbed my arm.
“Don’t worry, Max. I’ll push you wherever you want to go.” I look around.
“Hey! Where’s Melody?” They look at each other for a long time. I can see it in
their eyes. She’s here. She’s in the ICU with me, somewhere. She has her own room. I
can’t take the silence anymore. I shake my head. “Where?” After a while longer,
Carly tells me.
“She’s here. Room next door.” I feel myself start to cry. My arms tense up. If I
could move my leg, it would be shaking like crazy. If I had hands, they would be
clenched in fists so tight that they would bleed from my fingernails digging into the
flesh of my palm.
“How bad is she?” Carly looks away for a second, then gives me a fleeting look
of reassurance, but a pained one. A look that passes over my eyes, catching for one
second, letting me know that Melody is still alive, and most likely stable, just not yet
conscious.
“She broke her leg in two places, sustained a horrible concussion, sprained
her wrist, may have spells of temporary amnesia, and there are other brain injuries
possible. None of them are serious though.” I smile.
“She’s going to be okay.” I say quietly. “Melody is going to be okay.” They both
nod.
“Yeah she will. When she wakes up and heals, maybe takes some medication
to keep her brain happy, she’ll be as good as new.” I laugh. Then completely out of
the blue, we hear a voice.
“Look sharp, Max!” All of our eyes turn to the door. There he stands.
“Marco!” I say. He laughs.
“C’mon buddy!” He says, holding his fist out, waiting for me to bump it with
mine. I hold up my stump to his fist
“It hurts a lot probably best no fist bumps until it heals.” He nods. There’s a
long awkward pause.
“Other hand?” He asks, shyly, as if afraid of the answer. I lift it up, out from
under the sheets of my hospital bed. Marco’s shoulders seem to slouch, and he looks
at his lap when he realizes that where my hand should be, there is a clumsy mass of
bandages and gauze, just like on the on the other hand. “Oh man, I’m sorry.” He says.
I can tell that Marco is afraid, maybe even sobered. Even Marco, who, when I first
met him, I thought God! This dude is a Jackass! Even Marco, the roommate I
sometimes wish I never had, the dude who writes rules just to break them. He’s the
kind of guy who people hate, but also love because he’s such a truly shallow,
immoral human being that you can’t help but feel sorry for him. I finally found
something that gets to him: I got my hands chopped off. “Wow.” He says.
“I know, right?” I say. “I think it’s a great look for me.” He smiles. “I can be the
weird dude with no hands.” He laughs.
“Dude! That’s gonna make sex difficult!” I grin.
“Oh! You have no idea what they can do with prosthetics these days!” He
raises one eyebrow, a rather dubious expression on his face.
“Really, now?” He grins, but a second later he looks down at his lap, and it
almost sounds like he’s crying.
“What’s up, Marco?” Carly asks him, truly concerned, and somewhat terrified.
None of us had ever seen Marco cry before. It’s just not something Marco did. People
only cry when they are sad unless they’re tears of joy, but that’s not was these were.
Marco was never sad. Despite being a total jackass, he always had a way of putting a
positive spin on things. That’s probably why we liked him. He was just such an easy
friend to have. He never expressed any feelings and always acted like he was high.
He claims to have never smoked, or been drunk in his life, but I don’t know. He sure
acts like it sometimes. But Marco was never sad. He never cried. Not really even
tears of joy. “Leave it to me to act like a total jackass and make fun of my best
friend’s loss.” There’s a long pause. “Of his hands nonetheless!” He says. He cries
quietly, I can barely hear him, and the room completely silent. “I am an ass.” He says,
and he repeats it, even louder. So loud, in fact that it may have been the thing that
woke Melody up. “I AM AN ASS!” We all look at him funny. George has a sort of
surprised look on his face that was kind of an oh-I-thought-you-already-knew-anddidn’t-care-one-way-or-another look. It came as a shock to all of us, Marco’s
revelation. I think even, to some extent, it was a shock to him as well. “My friend is in
a horrible, nearly fatal, accident, where he lost both his hands meaning that he can
no longer bump my fist or high-five me until he get’s a prosthetic which probably
won’t even be remotely like the real thing, and I rush over here, and all I can do is
make fun of him for never being able to have the ability to write, or hold things
again. I’m such an ass.” I shake my head.
“Asses don’t know they’re asses. Therefore, since you think you know that
you are an ass, you cannot be an ass because asses never even consider the
possibility that they might be asses. Or when they figure it out, they don’t care. So,
heretofore, you cannot be an ass. You are not an ass.” There is a long pause, and
after a while. He smiles and says,
“You just said ass. A LOT!” I smile.
“Ass, ass, ass! Ass, ass, ass, ass, ass! Ass ASS!” I say. “Marco, you are the ass of
an ass. No, no! That is an insult to all asses belonging to asses! You are the crap the
ass of the other ass, of the other ass, of the other ass craps!” He laughs.
“Alright! Cool!” Carly looks at Marco and smiles.
“Hey, if you were really an ass, then you wouldn’t have come.” He smiles.
“Yeah I guess you’re right.”
“Now, if you were the crap the ass of the other ass, of the other ass, craps, I
don’t know what you would have done.” Carly says. “But it wouldn’t have been this.”
And then we just kept talking. No one in the room cares that I have no hands. No one
really even paid any mind to it. It never came up again, at least not for a while.
Melody wakes up a while later. They put me in a wheelchair so I can go see
her. George keeps his word too. He pushes me all the way there. We all loom over
her, looking down at her. We are giants, and she a mere human. Our silhouettes are
hard to make out and appear rather dark against the bright white room. She stares
at us. She can’t see clearly, and she seems confused. She looks as if she is asking
herself. Who are these people? What are they? Do I know them? She looks around her.
Where am I? Her eyes go up to the ceiling. What is my name? Her glance returns to
us. She meets my gaze.
“Melody.” She murmurs quietly. We all smile.
“Melody.” I say. She smiles, sees our friends standing with us, and she laughs.
“Oh! Hey guys!” She says, sheepishly. Her eyes seem to be able to focus. Her
hands stop shaking.
“Hey, sweetie.” Says Carly. “How you holding up?” Melody laughs.
“Oh! I am better than ever!” Her leg is in one of those elevated casts. Her arm
is wrapped in what looks like could be enough bandages and gauze to make beds for
the entire world, and she’s really scratched and dinged up in a lot of places. Her
head also has a bandage wrapped around it. Then it appears that a rush of pain hits
her, she stiffens and begins to blink in rapid succession. “Oh god. Bitch, get over
here.” She says. We all assume she’s addressing Carly, but there’s no way to be sure.
“Bitch, I love you.” Carly says, hugging Melody close to her. Melody relaxes
against her, barely holding it together.
“It hurts.” She says. “It hurts a lot.” Carly nods. Still holding Melody close to
her.
“I know, it does. It looks like it. I’m sorry, bitch.” She says. We all just look at
them. Best friends, both so happy. They stay like that for a while, until it begins to
look uncomfortable. Then Melody looks at Carly and says,
“I think you can let go.” She does and that’s when she really takes a good long
look at me.
“Oh my god!” She says. “Is that my boyfriend?” I laugh.
“I’m afraid so.” She smiles.
“What happened to YOU?” Then she thinks about what I said for a second
ands replies with a much delayed, “And HEEEEEEEEY!” I look at her carefully and
hold up both of my arms, with no hands attached.
“Omigod!” She says, truly surprised. I’ve dreaded her reaction for so long. But
she surprises me by saying. “I don’t know why, but that really turns me on! I guess in
my book dudes without hands are sexy.” I laugh.
“How about dudes with no feeling below the waist?” She smiles.
“That’s even better. You won’t be able to tell what I do down there.” I laugh.
“I really wanna kiss you right now.” She smiles.
“Me too. But that’s going to be difficult.” We pause for a while. She’s right,
there’s too much to deal with between my wheelchair, her IVs and her bed. There’s
just too much in the way. She ponders this for a while, but then she smiles and says,
“How about, we don’t kiss now, but when we get out of the hospital, we’ll have
thank-god-we’re-alive sex. It will be super romantic and we can figure out how it
works with our new…” She trails off. “Challenges.” We both laugh and lean as close
as we can manage.
“I love you Melody.” She laughs.
“I love you too, Max.” We turn to look around, George and Carly look slightly
disgusted, and Marco is in the corner, covering his ears, but we all know, secretly
he’s listening to everything we say. We just sit there, awkwardly, having nothing to
say. Melody grabs the stump that would be hand and holds it. It’s not all that tight,
but it’s a grip I can’t pull away from. It doesn’t hurt. It actually feels nice, soothing
because now I know that Melody and I are bigger than our injuries, for real. Marco
turns around,
“Are you guys done yet? Seriously, get a room!” We laugh.
“We’re in it.” I say. Melody nods.
“Plus, Max looks super hot in his hospital gown.” I shake my head.
“I, look hot in my hospital gown? Seriously, Melody, you are bringing hotness
to a whole new level.” A brief pause, quick, skipping through my ears, “You’re
beautiful.” Marcus groans.
“They’re not done yet!” We all look towards him. He takes out his phone, hits
a button. “Go on.” We look at each other and laugh.
“Do you think he’s recording us?” Melody asks. I laugh.
“Probably. Who knows, really?” I answer.
“Who cares?” She says, and at that moment, I feel myself wheeling closer, her
body, slipping it’s way up the bed towards me somehow, and in some odd position,
with Melody’s leg still elevated, and me still in the wheelchair, we kiss.
“I still love you.” I say.
“You said that less than five minutes ago.” She says, but she’s not annoyed,
her smile is wide enough to stretch from New York to Seattle.
“It’s worth repeating.” I say. I want so badly to tuck her hair behind her ear. I
want badly to pull her face to mine and kiss her until it hurts, but I can’t. I have no
hands. She’s beautiful, even without make up and crusty, brownish dried blood near
her nose uncombed and untamed dirty hair, and lying in a hospital bed. I love this
girl.
“You’re the nicest guy I’ve been with, and also, you’re super hot. You rarely
get both at the same time.” A long pause, sweet melodious silence, “You’re
awesome.”
“Thank you. You’re awesome too.” Her green eyes crackle, the darker rim of
green around them making the inner layer of lighter green even more prominent, a
smaller circle of brown surrounds her pupil, and her hair, shiny, dark brown. I want
to run my fingers through it, feel how soft it is, how good it smells. I can’t because I
have no hands.
Searing pain cuts through my arm, and just for a second, I wish I could
scream, but I don’t want to, I’m too tired to scream. I feel a tear roll out of my eye
and down my cheek, but I don’t want to cry in front of my girlfriend, or anyone.
“Babe?” Melody says, her eyebrows in a knot of genuine concern. “Are you
okay?” I shake my head, choking on my tears.
“They cut my hands off!” There’s a long pause. “IT HURTS!” Her eyes go really
wide, like she does when she’s about to cry.
“I know it does, Max. But it WILL stop hurting.” I look up at her and I shake
my head.
“It just hurts so much.” There’s a long silence, and then Melody laughs.
“You are so flippin’ adorable when you cry.” I laugh through my tears.
“Love you.” She smiles, the skin under her eyes dimpling in a totally adorable
way.
“Right back at you.” I look into her eyes, and I become lost in them, the circle
of brown, the green, and then the dark green. The colors of a forest when it rains,
beautiful. Her gaze locks mine. We are lost, wandering through each other’s eyes.
Pondering the many possibilities. For a minute, it’s as if we are the only people in
the room. But, Marco shatter’s the moment, making a fart noise and saying,
“You guys are so cheesy. You’re like all the deep-dish pizzas in Chicago
without the crusts. CHEESY! Cheesiest couple ever, right here.” I laugh.
“Yeah, because George and Carly are so down to Earth, they profess their love
for each other all the time! And their PDAs? CONSTANT!” George and Carly laugh
almost simultaneously.
“Yeah, we do.” George says, “But when we say that we love each other, it goes
more like this:
‘I love you, bitch.’
‘Love you to, idiot.’
‘Wanna do it?’
‘Sure.’” He says.
“And then we do it.” Carly adds. They look at each other, smiling. “Love you
bitch.” He elbows her, laughing.
“Spare us the details, please.” Marcus says, closing his eyes tight and
pretending to vomit. Melody raises her eyebrows watching him.
“Max and I may be the cheesiest couple you’ve ever seen, but I’m sure there
are cheesier ones out there!” There’s a beat of silence. “Plus, guys, it’s Max.”
“HEY!” I say, quite loudly. She looks over at me, dubiously. “Okay, I guess it’s
true, I’m super cheesy with whoever I’m dating. Sue me.” She laughs.
“It’s alright, it’s kind of awesome. I mean, I like it. It allows me to unleash my
inner cheese-fest that I ‘ve held in way too long. Every girl wants a guy who’s
cheesier than she is. It’s way to often the girl who says ‘I love you’ first.” Marco
scratches his head.
“Speaking of which, when was your first ‘I love you’?” Even though he knows
very well the answer to that question.
“A long time ago.” I say, not really wanting to talk about it. It was a slightly
humiliating story. Marco laughs.
“Oh! C’mon, I want the whole story!” I grimace.
“You know it! Why don’t you tell it?” He smiles.
“I thought you’d never ask!” Melody looks at him with a sort of death glare.
“Don’t flatter yourself. He never asked you. He told you that if you wanted to
hear the story, you had to tell it.” He shrugs.
“Same thing in my book.” Carly laughs.
“You have a book? It must be full of complete stupidity!” He shakes his head.
“Have I taught you nothing?” Carly pauses for a second then nods.
“Yes, that’s exactly what you’ve taught me, great job summing it all up!” He
opens his mouth, closes it again, and repeats this process a few times, then, unable
to think of a comeback, he just lets it go, and then he tells the story.
“Melody is hot.” He begins. I nod.
“Truth.” He turns to me sharply.
“No interruptions! Where was I? Oh right! She is so hot that Max noticed her
from all the way across the classroom that they were seated in. It took weeks, but he
finally summoned enough courage to ask for her number. She of course, gave it to
him, because despite his weirdly blue eyes that contrast oddly with his black hair,
he’s pretty attractive.” Melody shakes her head.
“Stop right there! The blue eyes and black hair thing is part of what MAKES
him attractive! Blue eyes and black hair is like… it works for me!” Marcus shakes his
head.
“No interruptions, this is a good story!” Carly and George nod.
“Yeah, guys, seriously!” Carly says, rolling her eyes.
“HEY!” Marco says, but continues with the story. “So Max, after having her
number for only one day, texts her. He sends her a text saying.
Hey Melody!
She responds with,
Who is this?
He says,
I know something you don’t know!
Who I am.
What?
Oh.
So, Melody, shall I give you a hint?
I know what school you go to and
who your friends are, but I’m not
a stalker.
Correct.
That would be nice.
OK… So u probably go to my
school.
Oh! Are you that awkward,
yet super sweet hot dude in
my homeroom. If u asked
me out I would totally say yes!
So Max did ask her out, and they dated for a while and later he accidently texted her
Marco, I’m in love with this girl!
I have no idea what to do!
He meant to text me. So Melody texted back:
OMG! U love me? It’s
A little soon! Don’t u
think?
Sorry, I mean, yeah. I guess in
my mind ur the right person,
and we should go fast? Idk,
if it’s a deal-breaker, I get it.
But I need this, to feel this way.
If you don’t, if you’re not ready
I get it.
IK. Ttyl?
I love you
Sorry…
What’s wrong with me?
Aw, thanks.
I need to think about this.
I mean, you’re awesome,
I like you a lot, but Idk if
It’s love. That’s kind of
a big deal.
L8r G8r
UGH!
Screw it, ur adorable.
I love you too.