I awaken to an argument. The man is simmering, the woman on full boil.
They’re out of my view, behind an ugly green curtain. I try to do what I always do when my parents fight, adjust my earbuds and crank the volume to brain-numb, but something is wrong. My right arm is not obeying me, and when I touch my ear with my left hand, I discover a thick gauze headband. I’ve sprouted long tubes from my arms and my nose.
“She’s my daughter,” the woman says, “and if I say she’s leaving, she’s leaving.”
“Please, listen to me. She’s going to be your one-legged daughter if you take her out of here.”
The man is pleading, and I realize he’s not my dad because (a) my dad was never a pleader—more of a pouter, really; and (b) he’s dead.
“I have superior facilities, the best medical staff money can buy.” The woman punctuates this with a dramatic exhalation. It’s my mother’s trademark sigh.
“She’s in critical condition in the ICU after a fourteen-hour surgery. There’s every chance she’s going to lose that leg, and you want to move her? Because … what? It’s more convenient? Your sheets have a higher thread count? What exactly?”
I feel pretty okay, sort of floaty and disconnected, but this man, who I’ve decided must be a doctor, sounds a little freaked out about my leg, which, as it happens, doesn’t seem to be behaving any better than my arm.
I should probably reassure him, get my mother off his case—when she’s like this it’s best to retreat and regroup—but the tube stuck down my throat makes that impossible.
“I will not release this patient,” the doctor says, “under any circumstances.”
Silence. My mother is the god of painful pauses.
“Do you know,” she finally asks, “what the new hospital wing is called, Doctor?”
More silence. The contraptions I’m tethered to chirp contentedly.
“That would be the Spiker Neurogenetics Pavilion,” the doctor finally says, and suddenly he sounds defeated, or maybe he’s missing his tee time.
“I have an ambulance waiting outside,” my mother says. Check and mate. “I trust you’ll expedite the paperwork.”
“She dies, it’s on you.”
His choice of words must bother me, because my machines start blaring like a cheap car alarm.
“Evening?” My mother rushes to my side. Tiffany earrings, Bulgari perfume, Chanel suit. Mommy, Casual Friday edition.
“Sweetheart, it’s going to be okay,” she says. “I’ve got everything under control.”
The quaver in her voice betrays her. My mother does not quaver.
I try to move my head a millimeter and realize maybe I’m not feeling so okay after all. Also, my car alarm won’t shut up. The doctor is muttering about my leg, or what’s left of my leg, and my mother is burying her head into my pillow, her lacquered nails digging into my shoulder. She may actually be crying.
I am pretty sure we’re all losing it, and then, on my other shoulder, I feel a firm pressure.
It’s a hand.
I follow the path from hand to arm to neck to head, moving just my eyes this time.
The hand is connected to a guy.
“Dr. Spiker,” he says, “I’ll get her into the ambulance.”
My mother sniffles into my gown. She rouses herself, stands erect. She is Back in Control.
“What the hell are you doing here, Solo?” she snaps.
“You left your phone and briefcase behind when you got the call about the”—he jerks his chin toward me—“the accident. I followed in one of the Spiker limos.”
I don’t recognize this guy or, for that matter, his name—because, really, what kind of a name is Solo, anyway?—but he must work for my mother.