Skinned. - Skinned. Part 32
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Skinned. Part 32

"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.

"Brain scans."

"I'm sorry, I don't-What?"

"They took brains scans," he said, haltingly. "And there was an anomaly."

I still didn't understand.

"I'm disqualified," he said. "Structural abnormalities. Predisposition for mental disorder and/or decay. Unlikely but possible. So just in case-automatic disqualification. They don't want me living forever if I'm going to go crazy, right?" He laughed. "It's funny, isn't it?"

I pressed my lips together.

"Yeah, no one else seems to think so either," he said. "Maybe I'm crazy already."

"They can't fix it?" I asked softly. "Whatever it is?"

"They could have. Before I was born. If they'd known about it, if my mother had let them screen for that kind of thing. But she thought it was superfluous. She only wanted the basics." He laughed again. It was a weirdly tinny, mechanical sound, since his body was immobilized and his lungs were barely pumping any air. "Thanks, Mom."

"There's got to be something you can do, if you paid enough, some way to change their minds?"

"Nothing. No brand-new body for me. I'm stuck with this one. For life." He paused. "As long as that lasts."

I squeezed his hand again. Not that he felt it.

"Funny, isn't it?" he said. "They can make a fake body from scratch, but they can't fix a real one. Guess there's only so much you can do when you're stuck with damaged goods." He didn't laugh. "No, I guess that's not very funny either."

"I can help," I told him. "I know how it feels, lying there, thinking your life is over. I understand."

"You understand nothing," he spat out. "That's what you always used to tell me, right? *You can't understand, not unless you've been there.' You've never been here."

"You're alive," I said, aware that I was sounding like call-me-Ben, like Sascha, like every medical cheerleader I'd ever wanted to strangle. And now I finally got why they'd said all that. They needed to believe it. You couldn't look at someone so broken and not believe they could, somehow, be fixed. "That's something."

"Something I don't want. Not like this."

So I said what all those cheerleaders never had. The truth. "Neither would I. And...it's never going to be like it was before. Never. That will never be okay. But you will."

He snorted.

"I know you don't believe it," I said desperately. "I know it all sounds like greeting-card bullshit that doesn't apply to you, but it does. Maybe I can't understand everything, but I understand that. The way you feel? I honestly don't know if that goes away. But people-you-can get used to things, even if it seems impossible now. You can make it work."

"Oh really?" he said, bitterness chewing the edges of the false cheer. "Thanks so much for the insight. So I can get used to a machine telling me when it's time to pee, and when it's time to shit, and then helping me do it-and that's after all the regeneration surgery's done. Until then, I just get a diaper. You think you could get used to changing it for me? I can get used to internal electrodes that spark my muscles into action and let me walk around and pretend I'm normal until it hurts so much that I fall down and have to get someone to cart me away? They tell me that part's the medical miracle. Twenty years ago I might have been a lump in this fucking bed for the rest of my life, with people feeding me and turning me and wiping my ass. So you think I can get used to people telling me how fucking grateful I should be? And I can get used to my lungs working at half capacity, if I'm lucky, and feeling like I've got an elephant stomping on my chest-at least until the fluid builds up, and while I wait around for them to come suck it out, it just feels like I'm drowning? Not that you would know anything about that."

"It sucks," I said. "I know that. But you're not alone. You don't have to do this alone. I'm here, just like you were there for me." I remembered the day I froze in the quad, the way he knew exactly what to say and what to do, even though he didn't know me at all. And now no one knew me except for him. "We'll do this together."

"Together." He snorted. "Right. And maybe you'll finally fall deeply in love with me and make all my dreams come true. We'll live happily ever after. As long as they can rig me up with some kind of hydraulic system. Not like I ever got to do it the normal way, so I guess I won't even notice the difference."

"Auden, don't-"

"Don't what? Tell you all about how my penis may get *moderate sensation' back, and if I respond well to the electrical-impulse therapy-which, let me tell you, my penis and I are really looking forward to-I might, might be able to get the fucking thing up, up for some fucking, I mean, but-"

"Please don't."

"Oh, I'm sorry, am I grossing you out with all the medical details? Or is it the thought of having sex with me that disgusts you?"

He wanted me to fight with him. I wasn't going to do it. Not now. Not here. "I thought my life was over when I woke up like this," I said. "But you're the one who told me that I could handle it. That I could start fresh."

"This is different."

"I know, but-"

"No!" The beeping started again. "You don't know. This isn't what you went through. This isn't what you understand. This is me, my life. This is the way it's going to be forever: shit." He closed his eyes, sucking in heavy gulps of air.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, silently pleading with him to stay calm. "Just tell me what you want from me. What can I do?"

"You can get out."

I stood up. "You're right. You should try to sleep. I'll come back later."

"No. You should get out and not come back. Ever."

"What are you talking about?"

"This is your fault," he said in a low voice. "What happened...It's your fault."

"It was an accident. You were just trying to...save me." When I didn't need saving.

"Seems like I've been doing that a lot," he said. "You do something stupid, you do something reckless, and I fix it. You treat me like crap, and I save you again. Because I'm stupid. Was stupid."

I closed my eyes. "You're my best friend."

He went on like he hadn't heard. Or didn't want to. "You're probably happy, aren't you? Why should anyone else get to be healthy and normal if you've got to walk around like some kind of mechanical freak, right?"

He's just trying to hurt me, I told myself. And I had to let him do it if that's what he needed. I had to do whatever he needed.

This is not my fault.

"Maybe this was the plan all along. Is that it? Is that why you kept dragging me along with you, making me take all those stupid risks? You were trying to get me killed-Excuse me, I mean, get me broken?"

"Of course not! This was an accident."

"This was inevitable. And if you didn't see that, you're as stupid as I was."

"Auden, come on. I...I love you."