Clean, with Bright Lights
It was by the afternoon when I knew what this all meant. It meant another half-summer of tubes into my nose and wires set on my hands, with the next half talking through a half-broken jaw and not being able to run around much. Or get my hands dirty at all. Or being able to climb something higher off the ground than the downstairs couch. But that was how it was, no use in complaining about it.
Besides, who listens to you anyways when you’re twelve, even the kind of twelve that would described as “bright” or “exceptionally precocious” by sympathetic adults? Or “weird” and “loser” by less sympathetic peers? Not that all of my peers are unsympathetic of course, it’s not like I have no friends. Having no friends, at least ones that exist in a physical space close to me, might actually be easier in a way. Nothing to get taken out of so consistently, not so many in-jokes you need to be caught up on after lying in a hospital bed for three weeks. Even if my friends are the fellow bright, exceptionally weird precocious losers, at least we are each other’s. Taking that patina of protection away for months at a time was the worst thing about having so much wrong with you. So many decisions made before you even could have decided, or have decided for you, that you were the kind of kid who would be in need of the company of weird friends to feel safe.
Dr. Clark was sympathetic to my silently felt plight, as he always was in that way that someone can be sympathetic when they know they don’t actually have to modify their plans to accommodate you in any way. The smooth crop of his blonde hair cut a sharp contrast against the bland light blue of his hospital-issued smock, the chain which held his slightly worn, outdated ID carp rubbing up against his neck. He’d described what was going to happen, the total remaking of some essential parts of my face to allow for better breathing and lessen the risks of catastrophic underbite later on, and I looked past him to the public health notice he’d posted behind him. It was some standard agency thing about taking a cautious attitude towards drugs, alcohol, smoking, random teenage sex. I couldn’t decide if he’d been ordered to post that up as he was the designated doctor for troubled youth (not that I was particularly troubled, or even quite yet to the point where I could be described that way), or he just liked the message. He did have a certain clean-living WASP vibe to him. The type of guy you could have imagined endorsing filtered cigarettes with a stethoscope wrapped over his shoulders if this were 1957. But of course, it wasn’t, so, he’d have to tell you that smoking kills and you should take a run every day and drink lots of water. But not in a judgy way, which was helpful considering the way parts of me were starting to slouch and droop inside my clothes in ways that couldn’t be attributed to baby fat or considered in any way cute.
My mother wrestled out the green notepad she kept in her purse and jotted down a few of the things Dr. Clark was saying. Much of it was technical, big medical words for different types of small bones, so I wasn’t sure what she got out of writing them down. Maybe it helped her to feel that she had control of the situation by writing it down, making it concrete in that way. Sort of like how people driving in cars feel they are masters of the situation and never going to get into an accident, even though really whether they make it home or not is up to hundreds of thousands of factors that they have absolutely no control over. Mom didn’t like it when I said things like that, thought it was too grim for a child. She was probably right, but it was still undeniably true.
Personally, even though I thought maybe I could be like Dr. Clark one day after a lot more starring into schoolbooks, I was inclined to take it all on faith. Putting yourself under a knife like that was one big gamble. You just lie down and trust that the degree hanging on the wall behind the person in the lab coat isn’t from a degree mill. Or that if it is, they at least picked up a couple of things by looking over a colleague’s shoulder while playing doctor. Whenever he wasn’t talking about how long I would need to recover for, or how I’d have to restrict what I could eat after it was all done, I just sort of spaced out. Not entirely, I was still in the room, hadn’t decided to float out the window and down to visit the sausage guy out front, but just sort of floating in that in between.
“That make sense to both of you?”, Dr. Clark cut through the haze I was creating for myself. He flashed that slightly nervous, very beaming white smile of his. “It’s a fairly standard procedure. Not cosmetic, so, no cost, government covers it. But you’ll probably have to get a hotel for the night before, so, you know, just budget for that.”
I did like a stay at the Delta, made me feel a bit like someone more important. Though I fully realized that the really important families could actually afford to live in Toronto so that they didn’t have to book an overnight hotel room if their son’s surgery was booked at an early enough time. Mom winced a little at the price involved but let that out in a sigh quickly after. She asked another couple of questions about timing, what she could do while I was under the drugs and bright lights.
“Well, it’s hard to say but a little while, so, you’d have time for lunch, maybe some walking around. We would want you to stay close, though. Don’t, you know, go galvanting around the city, looking up at the tall buildings.” Dr. Clark chuckled, like it was a joke more shared between the three of us than it actually was. He then swiveled his head slightly to face me directly, “What about you? Guess I shouldn’t call you little man anymore, huh, you’d probably find that annoying?”
I took a theatrically large breath in and puffed out my cheeks, feeling the dusty office air fill my mouth. I couldn’t actually think of very much I wanted to know that I didn’t already. This was going to happen, and I wouldn’t have much of a summer, again, and I’d have to catch up on everything was school was back open, again. Those “again”s started to dig at the corner of my thoughts, though, like an unpleasant shard of metal plunging through a soft-soled shoe. I decided I would just ask and see if I would get a straight answer this time. Maybe I was old enough for straight answers now.
“Will this be the last one? Like, when am I gonna be normal enough already?”, I said, adding a flippant edge to the second question like I wasn’t actually interested in the answer. “Not that I don’t like the tall buildings and all, just was wondering when we’re not gonna have to see each other again.”
Dr. Clark gave a little smile, the kind meant to convey an experience dealing well with teenage sarcasm. “Well, it depends on how fast you grow. Hopefully, this is the last major thing for your mouth issues. Other things, well . . . I can’t really say, it’s not my area. But you’re a good trooper to take all this, and I know it’s not fun to not see your friends for a summer.”
It was a bit selfish to even think like that, I knew. After all, as my mother never tired of reminding me, these surgeries would have cost us a fortune if we lived across Lake Ontario in that land of George Bush and medical bankruptcies. Let alone if I’d been born in one of those places that my grandparents had sponsored a family’s small-scale chicken farm in. Who knows just what would have become of me then? Be grateful, something deeper down was saying.
It was quickly overtaken, as Mom and I stood up and walked out, past the bored admin assistant at the half-round desk, by the sort of rural-exurb resentment of having to come into these big places so often and yet never really see them bred. I hit the elevator call button harder than I should have, with a half-closed fist.
“You’re getting sulky for no reason again. You do know, that, right?”, Mom said, playing with the loop on her car keys. “Just be lucky you get to have this done. Can’t imagine the actual costs . . .”. Her voice trailed off as the metal doors opened. “Besides, it’s a fast one, just two weeks from now. Can’t believe how quick they were able to get you in.”
She said it liked I had won some kind of prize, like they fished one lucky kid’s name out of a hat and made their surgery happen faster. She was right, in a sense, at least I wouldn’t have long to dwell on this pre-made, mandated decision. I looked across to her like I could have said something mean about how maybe she wishes her kid didn’t come out so wrong and she wouldn’t have to burn money she didn’t have on Toronto hotel rooms. But I thought better of it: a ninety-minute car ride after that would have made having your jaw broken and reset in several places pleasant by comparison.
******
The scuffing sound of my running shoes filled the front hall of Adam’s house with a grinding echo that made his older sister visibly wince in the living room.
“Tell your friends not to ruin the floor! Christ, Adam!”, she shouted, attempting to project the adult authority she had been briefly entrusted with.
I walked a bit sheepishly to the basement door, avoiding what I imagined was a silent judgement she was making of me. It turned out she was well-enraptured in something on the upstairs TV with a MuchMusic watermark in the corner. I didn’t have much to worry about on that front.
“Stop ruining stuff with your being a weird snitch!”, Adam yelled up the stairs as I opened the doors. I could tell he was struggling to hear himself over the sound of digital gunfire. “Who’s there? Alyssa, that you?”
I walked slowly down the newly carpeted stairs to what adults would call a rec room. It was really a mostly unfinished basement with a couple of throw carpets, a couch, some slightly bent folding chairs and, the most important thing, a rear-screen projection TV with various consoles hooked in. Some home gym equipment which must have been newly purchased caught my eye as my feet landed on the concrete floor after the last step . Maybe Adam’s dad was finally going ahead with his plan to actually do something with the space. A thought shot briefly through me that maybe this was the end of the basement as fundamentally ours, Adam and the crew of misfits. But Adam didn’t seem worried enough to have even clean up the sprawl of DVD cases and soda cans from taking up their usual space. I figured I wouldn’t get too ahead of myself.
Adam craned his head back at the sound of my sock feet sliding towards him. “Oh, hey, man, sorry”, he paused the game and made his whole body do the same half-turn as his neck. “Just was finishing. What’s up? You know anything more about this hospital thing? That must suck, having to be cut open so much.”
Adam had a certain lack of tact that he fully embraced as a form of mild suburban rebellion. He was the sort of kid who would ask a teacher about their divorce proceedings in the middle of class if he had learned about it through the grapevine of town gossip. If he hadn’t been so smart, he’d probably have gotten in trouble more, but most adults who were the direct target of it tended to write it off as a quirk of genius. I wondered a lot what the flaws of mine that would have earned me more trips to the principal’s office if I didn’t consistently rank in the top five percent of test takers. Probably the same sort of smart mouth, or maybe my heavy breathing on account of my weight. Certain things can’t help but come off as a bit better when you believe the person doing them is actually very intelligent underneath the annoyance they make.
I came around the edge of the couch, noticing that one arm of the imitation-leather coating had been scratched at quite severely. The jury was out on weather that has first-person shooter induced rage on Adam’s part or the family cat, Ernest, clinging for life as Adam tried to move him. I spun one of the folding chairs around to face Adam on the couch, his face taking on a pallid glow in the reflected light of the projector beam. He rubbed his right leg nervously, looking across to the stairs again, betraying that I wasn’t the person he exactly wanted to see right now. The chair creaked slightly as I sat down, reminding that I probably spent too much time sitting.
“You waiting for someone else here? You’re looking over at the stairs like you are”, I said shifting to find a better position on the cold metal of the chair. Adam shrugged and I decided not to go further with it. “But, yeah, man, it fucking sucks. At least a week in the hospital, same fucking thing as last time. I mean, I get it, you have to do this stuff, but, like, I could do my schoolwork and shit from the hospital. That idea that they don’t want to take you out of school is for, like, the dumb kids if you ask me. Like, we know half the time we’re just bored there anyways.”
Adam nodded along, following me while listening to the pause screen guitar chugs from the speaker stacks to the left and right of the screen. “Yeah, I dunno, man. Guess they always have to assume all kids are the same like that. Which, you know, isn’t true.” He paused and took a sip of soda out of a plastic glass with a pale flower pattern. “We’ll miss you down at the hall, that’s for sure. Always need more hands there. Goes faster.”
I wouldn’t necessarily miss the sweaty, quasi-legal work of setting up chairs and particle wood stages for the town concert hall. But I would miss the $50 of pocket money it made for us. Enough for four movies if you stretched it right. Maybe I would work once or twice late summer. If they didn’t mind working with a guy who didn’t talk right and drooled out of the side of his mouth a bit.
I heard a rumbling of running shoes coming across the upstairs hallway and towards the open mouth of the basement door. The steps, fast and sure-footed, could only have come from one set of legs striking against the ground. Adam and I both glanced, eager but trying to be nonchalant, and saw a flash of blue jeans and a sharp swing of newly dyed, newly trimmed hair. We each swallowed deep enough that the other could see it.
Alyssa bounded into the room with an energy I could never grasp and Adam consistently denied himself. She flopped down on the couch beside Adam loud enough that it startled him upright and sent the controller he’d left precariously on the scratched-up couch arm falling to the floor with a clatter. He dove down to inspect the precious object, pressing buttons to make sure they still functioned.
“Hey, watch it!”, Adam said, dusting the controller off and placing it delicately on the table in front of him. “I just bought that thing, you’re making me break it now.”
Alyssa rolled her eyes, “I don’t think I made you do anything, you’re just a klutz. How are you two, though, enjoying living like sewer people on a nice day like this?”
Alyssa was paradoxically pale for someone who tried to drag us, our whole little crew, outside as much as she did. I studied the face I’d known since before I could remember faces or work out the male from the female ones. It looked roughly the same as it always had, give or take a more prominent cheekbone. The hair which framed it, though, was always changing, almost with the seasons, and was today close-cut into coquettish punk style, with dancing strands of red and pink. Alyssa smoothed it with her hand blithely, waiting for a reply from either of us.
Adam responded with only a mocking shrug, so, I decided to take on the responsibility. “I mean, we’ll do something else later. I just got here, ya know?” I studied her more as she shifted around, my eyes squinting slightly in mock judgement. “What’s with the new hair?”
Alyssa stretched her arms across the top of the couch, slapping Adam’s shoulder as he continued fiddling with the controller. She ran her other hand through her hair, studying it in front of her before she spoke. Lately the feeling between the three of us, the closest-knitted of the weird little too-smart crew, had taken on a hesitant quality. Comments about appearances, clothing seemed to be increasingly vetted for any hint of hormonal feeling, which would of course have to be batted away as a matter of course. Still, I could admit to myself a bit of twisting in the stomach when it came to imagining doing . . . I wasn’t sure what, but something more than sitting on the couch playing video games with her. Mostly, it played out in a faux-macho competition between Adam and myself, like we were knights competing for favors. Who could run farther without stopping for breath, who could get a longer Halo kill streak, who could finish their test faster. Of course, I was considerably floppier than he was, made chairs creek considerably more when I sat in them, and had considerably more scars running in criss-cross patterns across my legs. Alyssa could see that as well as anyone else. Perhaps more than anyone else, I worried.
“I dunno, just wanted to change”, she said, sounding vaguely offended at having to justify herself. “You’re like my mom, sometimes, ya know? Like, why this, why that? I dunno, because I want to.”
I wanted to say something about how it must be nice to have everything that can change about you be chosen by you, and impermanent to boot. I knew that wasn’t true, though, at least not for her, but it might have felt good to say in that moment as I tried to picture what I would look like with my lower jaw pushed back several centimeters. I didn’t come up with much besides I wouldn’t be able to do that stupid scary monster face that made people laugh as easily anymore. That would be a loss.
“I mean, it looks cool, sorry, jeez”, I apologized without knowing exactly for what. “It’s like, Green Day concert hair or something. Like a girl who would go to that. It’s pretty cool.”
Adam shot me a glance and then cut the tense seconds. “Yeah, yeah, it’s cool. Come on, here, we’re wasting valuable summer talking about this,” he threw a controller to each of us. “You’re luckily all of these things still work. Deathmatch. You know the rules. I want to try a new thing here.”
Alyssa bit her lip quizzically and scrolled through the options on the screen. “Adam, you know, you could be nicer sometimes. Especially since, you know?”, she said, like I had a terminal diagnosis and could keel over at curt words.
“What? Oh, like, I know, it sucks, man, this is the last time you can come over for, what, a month?”. Adam wasn’t particularly paying attention to me but did at least feel obligated to face my gaze a bit. “Just hope they don’t fuck you up too bad. Don’t, like, die or anything.” He turned back to Alyssa. “There, that good enough?
I shifted uncomfortably, half because of the cold metal of the chair digging into me and half because I felt I had been made the object of charity. Perhaps I was acutely sensitive to this because I had been the sort of young child whose presence at play dates and birthdays was made obligatory by parents out of a sense of broader social propriety. Being tolerated, rather than wanted, was in a certain way worse than being rejected outright. At least with the latter you didn’t have to see the look on the person’s face which told you everything about how they thought about you. I knew Alyssa didn’t mean it all like that, and I flashed a quick smile across Adam’s shoulder to let her known. She moved closer to Adam on the couch, each inch of fabric space seeming to take an eternity of heartbeats to managed. I peeled my smile away and focused my eyes back on the screen, scrolling through laser gun options.
“Well, I’ll miss you for sure. It won’t be nearly as fun without you”, she said, crossing her right leg with Adam’s left in a mocking gesture of distraction. “Let’s play this thing, I’m gonna beat you losers, and then go outside.”
Adam smirked and hit the start button on the controller, tightening the intertwine between his leg and Alyssa’s. I felt something slipping down inside of me. Sliding all the way from the top of my stomach and out my feet onto the unfished concrete. The kind of thing that might have stained the old throw carpet even more than it already was had it been visible to the naked eye. It felt like having to miss out on a lot of moments like this one, for no decisions that you had actually made. But it felt more like by missing out on those moments you would be missing out on the moments that built on top of those, in an intricately linked pile of missing.
I tried to stop that feeling of spinning by focusing deeper on the hyperactive battle we were waging against each other on the projection screen.
*****
They’d botched it, hadn’t they? Dr. Clark and that whole team of people with the degrees under glass we’d all just assumed, just taken on faith were legitimate. That’s what I thought as I laid in the bed in the back corner of the shared room, seeing the pale light from the overhead lamps illuminate the dust particles in the air. Too many for what was supposed to be a sterile space, at least to my mind.
The distinct iron tang of blood in the back of my throat upon waking up was the first sign that something was amiss. If that was making itself known through the sweaty, anesthetic haze that always followed going under the knife, then it had to have been more serious than usual. A first sign that whatever fleeting chance I had at concert hall odd jobs and running around in the moonlight this year was going to be put on hold. I felt the usual drooping weight of the finger pulse monitor on my right hand and let it drop to the small space between my side and the hospital bed railing.
I saw some flashes of movement in the small space I had to see the world between the tips of my feet at the ceiling lights. There were pale blue shapes fast walking in crisscross patterns. Whatever conscious thought I was capable of mustering could identify them as nurses, or something close to that in the elaborate hospital pecking order, but something stopped on the processing chain and they were just movements for then. I had a tiredness too heavy for even the sense-making effort required of watching the shapes move and drifted back to the comfort of dreamless sleep.
The next awakening was somehow ruder, though it came with Mom in the corner of my eye and a greater degree of privacy. I could see actual walls, not curtain rods, separately our space from the rest of the ward, and a cheery mural of cartoon animals decorated the one wall I see by turning my head slightly. There was even a window, which some light was getting through even though it seemed to be facing into an alleyway.
Mom looked up from her magazine at the sound of my stirring back to life, breathing out a combination of relief and exhaustion. She offered some words of comfort that I couldn’t make out above the foggy din of my spinning thoughts and squeezed tight on the hand without a pulse monitor. I made out something about “going to get the doctor”, but mainly just watched her dart hesitantly, looking left and right, out into the hallway. I groaned, my throat still slick with the blood taste, and shut eyes to a light that seemed too bright, too artificial.
Dr. Clark must have bounded in silently, either not reading my mood or trying to improve it. He shook hands with Mom and leaned down a bit to get closer to me. I obliged the gesture by propping up on my shoulder to whatever degree I could. I felt the tubes and wires stuck into me rustle about against the hospital sheets.
“Well, this is going to be more complicated than we thought, little man”, Dr. Clark, not catching himself this time. “You’ve been in and out for a couple of days, so, we’ve got you stable now, that’s good. The problem is, well, this is gonna take a bit to explain.” He turned back to Mom, still occasionally glancing my way with one eye’s corner.
I saw the scales of time falling out of his mouth as he spoke. There was a jumble of technical terms and hand motions to represent them, something about unexpected tissue damage and all that. What I got of it was “more weeks” and “if that’s the case, then . . .”. I had been prepared for a lot of waiting, this time as the others, but if there was one wish I had in that moment it would have been to run down the hallway, past the beeping machines and fragile parents, past the trapeze pig sculpture in the main entrance and out onto the busy city traffic. There I’d hail any taxi, red-and-yellow, orange-and-green, that would pass and not ask too many questions about picking up a pre-teen in a hospital gown. Then I’d ask to go . . . somewhere, my mind stopped at that point. It was all too much. I fell back to the bed.
I went back to counting the specks of dust I could see in the window light and settled my head on the pillow. I heard the whine of trolly cart wheels in the hallway, the kind that hadn’t been greased properly. My thoughts gradually drifted to how legs aligned and intertwined with each other, and how pale and numb mine would seem when school started again.
