Beast (7 page)

“Strip down and climb up onto the bed,” the nurse says. “We have to measure you.”

This is what all kids want to do at 8:30 on a Tuesday morning. Get half-naked in a hospital and wheeled into surgery. Yesterday I had an emergency appointment with Dr. Jensen and he looked at the X-rays and was like, yeah, that cast needs to come off ASAP.

“You should've told me as soon as your leg started hurting,” Mom says.

“Your mom's right,” the nurse says. He logs into the computer and types some stuff. “Growth plates could get messed up, if they haven't already.”

Mom inhales sharply, like she's the one in pain.

“You need to strip,” he says to me, and then gives my mom a look.

“I'll step out.” She slips out of the exam room and shuts the door behind her so the metal knob clicks.

The nurse's head turns toward me. “Anything you want to ask while your mom's gone?”

I shake my head.

“Now's the chance,” he coaxes.

What does he think I need to ask him, where's the nearest whorehouse? I tilt my baseball hat and look up at him from my wheelchair. “I'm good.”

“All right. Skivvies and a gown.” He tosses a threadbare green number in my lap.

He's joking, right? That thing is as small as a Kleenex. “Thanks.”

“No problem. I'll be in the hall with your mom,” he says, taking the clipboard with him.

A full-length mirror beckons on the back of the closed door, and I pivot my wheels away from it. Being anywhere near naked is one of my least favorite hobbies. Especially when I always hope to see someone else looking back at me.

But not today. I have to go into surgery, get these stupid pins removed and replaced, and get a new cast. Hooray. This is why I'm here when I'd rather be in trig.

Everyone's in a tizzy about my leg healing in a confined space. The bone will bunch up and I'll be all lopsided. To which I say, I don't care. It'll give me an excuse to slouch.

A knock at the door and the nurse is inside before I'm finished. “I'm not done yet,” I say as I struggle with my jeans. They're stuck.

“Here, let me help,” he says, reaching for my jeans before I get a chance to say whether or not I am cool with that. But I sit there like a mute as he wrestles off my pants over the cast. When he's done, he re-hands me the gown and the obvious dawns on him. “Whoa, dude, this isn't gonna fit.” Nurse Ryan, as per his name tag, digs under the counter and pulls out one that's more my size.

He stands above me. “You sure you're only fifteen?” He makes something that could be confused for a laugh.

I push off the wheelchair and now I'm the one to stand over him. He's a good half foot shorter than me. I put on the gown, but why I don't know. Modesty? Pride? I doubt there's much left. “Yeah, I'm fifteen.”

“All right, show-off.” He points to the scale. “We should weigh you first. Hop up.”

Easy for him to say.

He fiddles with the sliders. His eyes bug. “Two hundred and seventy-two pounds.”

“Is that bad?”

“No. It's solid muscle,” he says, squeezing my bicep as a prop. The nurse steers me toward the clean white sheet of paper covering the flat hospital bed. “Get on there and lie down.”

Two knocks on the door and Mom pops her head through the crack. “Can I come in now?”

Hail, hail, the gang's all here. The nurse motions for her to take the empty chair next to my clothes. I swing my bad leg up and it hits the paper with a crunch.

“You're wincing.” Mom wrings her hands. “Be careful—go slow.”

“He's fine.” Ryan slaps his hand on my back so hard it feels like a million hornets. “He can take it; don't worry about him.”

You're right, I only notice pain when a mastodon's goring me.

“Let's get the tape measure. Lie flat and still.” He takes a yellow roll from his pocket and hands the end to my mother. “Pin this down by his heel.” The nurse walks toward my head, the tape unwinding. He presses it by the side of my head. “Six foot five and a half. No wonder your leg hurts: you've grown almost two inches,” the nurse says. He takes the measuring tape and wraps it around my upper arm. “Flex.”

“Huh?”

“Make a muscle.”

I squeeze it tight.

“What does this have to do with his leg?” Mom asks.

“Nothing. I was just curious.” He takes the tape back and clamps it between two fingers, running the length with a stupid grin on his face. “Jesus…twenty and three-quarter inches! What do you bench?”

I put my hat back on. “Nothing.”

“Not buying it. Schwarzenegger's arms were twenty-two and a half inches when he was competing. There's no way you're at twenty and three-quarter inches by doing nothing.”

“We're here for my leg,” I say, dropping the bass in my throat as low as it goes. So low, my chest rumbles as I speak. “Get to it.”

Ryan backs away. “Hey, man, no problem.” He raises his hands up, soft palms facing me.

Mom and I lock eyes and she turns to him. “We'd appreciate it if this could be wrapped up as quickly as possible,” she says. “Dylan wants to get back to school. He loves school—he's very smart.”

The nurse smiles but I can almost smell the drops of piss I alphaed out of him trickling down his leg. “It's just guy talk,” he mumbles. He clicks the mouse and snaps the computer to life, bringing up my X-rays, and whips his little pointer all around the screen. “All right, so here we are. It's the pins that are causing the problem because they're screwed into your bones, and as you've grown, they're pulling against the body of the cast. Hence, the pain. So Dr. Jensen wants to move up the schedule, install some new plates, and redo a cast so it's smooth. No pins.”

Fine. We already went over this yesterday during the freak-out. When we found out my bone might be permanently effed.

“You should feel proud of yourself,” the nurse says. “They usually pull the pins out while you're awake, but your break was so bad and you grew so much, you need surgery.”

“Defenestrate” is one of my favorite words. Not the version where you shitcan someone, although I'd really like to fire this nurse-guy, but the original meaning where you throw them out the window. King James II of Scotland defenestrated a dude, and if it worked for him, I imagine it'd work for me. Why not? I would like to pick up Nurse Ryan with my mighty twenty-and-three-quarter-inch arms and defenestrate him.

Splat.

I bet Mom would hold the window open.

She sits there, her leg jimmying up and down like a piston and her mouth mashed into a razor-thin line, so pissed she can barely speak. “How much longer?”

“He's prepped for 9:15 AM,” the nurse says. He slams a hand on my back one more time, and my eyelid twitches. “All right, man, I'm off to talk to the doc. No food. No liquids. See you soon.”

Mom grunts as soon as the door closes.

“This is supposed to be the best orthopedic practice in Portland,” I attempt to justify.

“I almost don't care anymore.” Mom rises and comes over to where I'm plopped on the bed. She lays her hand on top of mine. “You must be sick of it,” she says.

“Happens every day,” I say.

She nods.

“When will I stop growing?”

“I don't know.”

“How are you so small and I'm so big?” I ask.

“Genetics are funny.” She squeezes my hand and I squeeze back. “You take after Dad. He was a big guy. You're just like him, in every way,” she says.

Then I have only eleven years left until I die too.

Mom brushes off invisible pieces of lint from my stylin' gown. “I just wanted you to know you're not alone.” She touches her nose to my shoulder. A little nudge. “If you ever feel too big, it's just because the world can be a little small sometimes.”

My stupid head lands on her shoulder. Her cheek presses on top of my scruffy buzz cut, and her arm wraps up as much of my shoulder as it can reach.

A new knock at the door and we both tense. It's time. “Yeah?” I ask.

An orderly comes in with a standard-sized wheelchair. “I'm here to take you to surgery,” she says, sucking her lip when she sees me. “Oh…I don't think…Hold on, let me get another chair.”

I hop down and get into my old one. Super deluxe and supersized. “No problem, use mine,” I say. The orderly pushes me and I wave goodbye to my mom. “See you in a couple hours when I'm back in the big, wide world.”

Waking up from this surgery isn't as much fun as the last time. No pain pump with a super-cool button to push. No doubt Mom put the kibosh on that. Ah well.

She sits in the far corner of my dark hospital room, reading a book. On the cover a woman in a torn red dress with crazy hair and bare shoulders is getting mauled in the neck by some pirate dude. The spine's cracked. Must be one of her favorites. Another of the hundred and ninety thigh-slapper novels that she hides under her bed and I accidentally find when I'm looking for ski poles, I bet. “What time is it?” I cough out.

“You're awake,” she says, ramming the book into her bag. By my side in no time, she scoots a stool close and sits down near my head. “How do you feel?”

“Fine. Groggy.” I rub my eyes and flatten a palm against my head, the hair starting to stubbornly grow back. Feels like I'm rubbing a hedgehog.

“That's normal,” she says. “Dr. Jensen said it went well and you can go home tomorrow. New cast, want to see?”

I roll over and check. All the names are gone. No more Fern Chapman. I smile. Good. She's not allowed to sign this one. “Cool.”

“You had a visitor.”

“I did?”

A sneaky little smile takes over. She points. I follow the line and on my bedside table, there's two daisies in an old iced-tea bottle by my bedside. “Where did these come from?”

“A girl dropped them off. I'm guessing she's the same girl from that day when I caught you at Pioneer Courthouse Square,” she says. “Jamie? Is that her name?”

I almost explode off the bed. “Jamie was here?”

How did she know I had surgery? And she came into my room? With daisies? Do I smell them for clues or something? I pick up the bottle. The two daisies droop against the side of the open mouth. These aren't store-bought daisies. Their petals are all gamey and chomped on by bugs. The two ragged stems swim in cloudy tap water.

“So what happened?” I ask, as nonchalantly as I can. “She came in?”

“It was the strangest thing. I'm sitting here, reading my book, when she barges in, all bags and boots and then I could see the girl underneath it all. She's pretty.”

She says that like it's a surprise—maybe it is because she was here for me. “Did she say anything?”

“Not at first, no. I was like, can I help you? And she almost ran for the door, but I talked her into staying.”

I bet. Patron Saint of Small Talk right here. “What did you say?”

“What do you mean?”

“What embarrassing story did you tell her?”

“Give me some credit.” She sniffs. “I found out you two met in group. Jamie was here for a doctor's appointment of her own, and I learned her favorite food is crab cakes. So there.”

Crab cakes. I will remember that.

Mom sidles over. “So that's the girl from the square.”

“Mystery solved.”

“I wish she hadn't run away that day; she's a sweetheart. And poor thing too. She's got such a hard road ahead.” Her head tilts to the side, heavy with sympathy.

Now I'm confused. It's not like diabetes is an instant death sentence. The discovery of insulin put an end to that. “She didn't choose to be that way; it's how she was born. I don't think there's anything wrong with her.”

Mom nods. “You know what? Good for you, Dylan. That's the right attitude. As long as you know.”

Mom the drama queen. I turn my attention to the flowers. “But she brought these?”

“Yeah, about that,” Mom says in a way that makes me go uh-oh. “Jamie told me to tell you in big bold letters that those are daisies, and daisies are for friends.”

“Seriously? She seriously said that? You're not making that up?”

“She seriously did.”

“Hokey.”

“Hey, you got flowers from a girl, didn't you?” she retorts. Touché. “I have to say I agree with her. I think you two will make great friends. It's good to have friends.”

“I agree.”

“So that's where your relationship stands?”

“Mom, there is no relationship.” Yet. I'm hoping. Although these daisies are sending that hope straight up into the sky like a balloon.

“For the best,” Mom says, and smiles. “Jamie did take some pictures before she left.”

I grab on to the metal triangle dangling above and yank myself upright. “She took pictures of what?”

Mom bites her lip. “You.”

“What!”

“I asked her to.”

“How could you do that to me?”

“Dylan…”

“I was unconscious!”

She sits and pins her hands in her lap.

“I want to go home,” I say.

“No way! You need rest.”

“You know I hate when people take pictures of me.”

“Hear me out,” she interrupts. “Jamie said it was the first time she's seen you without a big puss on.”

“A big puss on.” I fold my arms. “Again…Seriously?”

Mom's eyes shoot to the ceiling. “Okay, that was my way of putting it, but fine.
Jamie
said it was the first time you didn't look like a sulking axe murderer. Then she asked if she could take some pictures. Said she forgot her camera but her phone would do in a pinch.”

So she Instagrammed me. I've been filtered.

“She showed me, and I asked her to send some to me because I am your mother and you are my son and I have no pictures of you. None. You haven't let me take your picture since you were in the fifth grade.” Mom turns her head away, dabbing the corner of her eye with her knuckle.

“You don't have the right.”

“Well, maybe you don't have the right to pretend you don't exist. Did you ever think of that? Because for your information, you do exist. And you have people who love you.” She stares down at the phone resting in her clasped hands. Sticking it in my face, she clicks open a picture with her thunb. “Look.”

It's a shot of me. A close-up. Very still, very quiet. My eyes are closed, and the shadows hovering around the rambling bedrock of bones that make up my face are soft.

“Look how handsome you are,” Mom says.

“It looks like I'm waiting for a plaster death mask to be poured.”

Mom pulls her phone away and tucks it inside her palm. “Oh, for crying out loud, it does not.” She runs her finger down the side of her phone. “I think she captured you.”

“Delete it.”

“No.”

“How did you get that picture anyway?”

“Jamie texted it to me.”

I wedge myself up onto my elbow. “You have her number?”

Mom looks up at me with a glint in her eyes. “I have her number.”

“Give me her number.”

She grins. “Well, look how it's suddenly not so
annoying
for your dear old mom to be friendly with your friends, huh?”

“Mom…”

“Suddenly that picture I have on
my
phone is looking pretty good, isn't it?”

“Don't make me beg.”

“All right.” She twirls the phone in a loop. “I have a proposition for you.”

“What?”

“If I give you her number, I get to keep this picture.”

“Fine.” Gimme, gimme, gimme. I have daisies to discuss.

“And,” she adds, “any other future pictures she takes of you.”

“There won't be any.”

She smirks.

Commence eye rolling. “Deal. Text it to me.”

Her little firefly fingers go to work, and my phone buzzes. I snatch it off my bedside table. Mom gets her coat on. “You must be hungry. I'm off to get a pizza,” she says.

I wave goodbye. At least, I think I do. I'm busy working on what I hope is the perfect first message.
Hey, Jamie. It's Dylan….