Critical Injuries (25 page)

A Great Deal of Coming and Going

Everybody says her care here is the best there can be, but Isla's in the strange position of having no particular way to know that. She understands that among Northern's medical luxuries is the very mattress she lies on, the latest thing in somehow keeping her skin almost aloft, minimizing abrasions and sores. She gets scanned by brilliant machines, which continue to show the bullet fragment still wedged into its crevice of spine. She has seen pictures. It's the tiniest of tiny dark darts.

Dr. Grant drops by often, sometimes to supervise or assess one unfelt test or another, other times just to ask her own view of how she is doing. Her own view is plain and strictly vertical; and scared, of course, that, too.

He is only a few years older than Jamie, and not dissimilar in appearance, and could be her son, Jamie's wiser, sensible brother. He is confident, not unpleasantly, of his skills and also believes there will be great leaps, “as it were,” in spine-injury treatments in the foreseeable future. She likes that “as it were,” its deliberate comic alertness. She also likes that he seems to share her awe, showing her the scans, at the damage that can be caused by something that's barely visible.

As far as she can tell all the people on staff, day and night, not just Charlie, Charles, Dr. Grant, are careful and gentle and competent, but of course she can't really know that; can't even feel what they're doing, never mind how their hands touch her. She sees them only from the hips up, and then only if they're bending at an accessible angle. It's strange, only seeing people from a single perspective. Strange how much, in normal life, must be judgeable from motion: tilt of shoulders and hips, length of stride, state of speed, or of grace. She depends on lines beside mouths, depths of eyes, brightness of smiles, and whether smiles travel between lips and eyes.

She likes the young day nurse, Janet, who's mainly assigned to her, who is unfailingly lipsticked and highlighted and eyeshadowed even after eight or ten hours on duty, which surely implies an equivalent attentiveness to her patients, most relevantly to Isla herself.

As well, nothing that happens with Isla's body, whatever mysterious processes have to go on, cause Janet to blink or flinch. Olga, Isla's main nurse on most night shifts, is older and therefore should be more experienced, and therefore more hardened, but she does sometimes sigh, leaning over one or another of Isla's extremities. Which seems truthful, and more reliable in its way. Isla imagines Olga has stumpy legs and thick hips. Her husband has stomach cancer and her two children live far away. Olga's voice brightens when she shows pictures of them and her grandchildren, holding them up to Isla's narrow line of vision. Isla admires how Olga must work beyond her own tiredness. Maybe out the other side of exhaustion, even.

Perhaps everyone does, all the specialists in this and that, and nurses, and interns and orderlies and aides of one sort and another, the cleaners who come around with their large floor-cleaning machines, and who empty wastebaskets and wipe sinks — an entire ward-sized beehive, a thriving anthill of care.

She has to suppose they know what they're doing; even if it seemed slipshod, wrong, even amateur that when she asked, “Help me,” Lyle went to get a nurse and returned with plump-faced, trim-bearded, soft-handed Ben, who said, “I know it's not easy but you have to try not to get agitated,” and with his handy syringe, sent her off.

They do this now and then. Sedatives may on occasion drip into her veins, but for fast action they use the needle. Which doesn't matter, it's not as if any number of needles can hurt. Even Jamie, who knows a few things about bodies and has some skills with veins and syringes, could do it easily, if he were allowed. Only, that one time — being put under was not what she meant by “help me.” Did they all misunderstand? Did Lyle, for one, decide the demand was too great, did he believe everybody was already giving her more help than anyone could reasonably hope for?

True enough. She is very lucky that way.

Still, there is a good aspect of going under, something lovely about it, and that is the gentle process of coming to again, rising up. This is when everything's misty and mainly grey, muzzy with tinges of rosiness softening horizons and edges: like being in a rowboat tied to a dock, a gentle rising and lapsing sensation, a stirring and falling back, restful and sweet.

Each rising up becomes brighter and higher, every lapse slighter. All of it is rhythmic and comforting; like being rocked, or like being held. That's the part where everything's still safe, and unknown.

Time begins to resume. Formlessness takes on shape and boundary. Clarity creeps in. Rhythm missteps.

Then comes the unbearably lonely moment: when she remembers no one can help, no one can reach her.

Oh, come soon, please, Madeleine.

At the moment she's alone in the room. The air is different when nobody's here, not even a hidden presence sitting off to one side where she can't see. It's less clogged not only with breathing, but by emotion. That's how she can tell.

Everyone has their lives. Lyle has to sustain his career and Jamie his job; who knows about Alix? But in a way, it's a relief for Isla, too, from the hovering, the concern. The love. Gratitude is far easier when it's owed to people paid to take care, who have actual functions, who don't just stand over her, bravely or mournfully. Those are strenuous connections, wife, mother; daughter too, when Madeleine gets here. Lyle, Jamie, Alix — they intend to show strength and support, but may not realize they ask the same great things from her, and that this isn't easy, or even possible.

They may love her, but how they must resent her, as well. That's how she expects she'd feel in their place: love and dislike both. Some combination either ambiguous or radically ambivalent.

She thinks she can feel her face contorting with grief. That happens sometimes, when there's no one to hide from.

Later, when this is over, she will be profligate with her courage, beneficent with her empathy. Just, not at the moment. At the moment, family can be just one more bloody thing.

This is more or less the nerve ward here, the bone yard, and the woman in the next room, who has a new hip and a new knee and possibly no loving family, loyal or otherwise, presses (lucky her) the bedside buzzer again and again, demanding small attentions. A dangerous practice, Isla imagines. Assuming the woman only wants a fresh magazine, or her pillows adjusted again, nurses complain among themselves and no longer respond fast, if at all. Sometime that woman may really need them, and then where will they be?

Perhaps attending to Isla who, however complicated her care, causes them no extra trouble. Although she might, if she could.

Naturally she can't summon help with a buzzer. The equipment she's attached to, however, the unseen monitors and regulators and providers of air and nourishment and alertness, or unconsciousness, so much machinery humming and whoofing and ticking — its vital information about the state of her body is also transmitted, as she understands it, to the nursing station just outside her door, a continuous data flow.

Sometimes she listens to them talking out there. Deliberately eavesdrops. Now she can match faces and voices and stories, by sight or sound, unless someone's called in from another ward to cover an absence, a day off, a vacation. There's one doctor, a man she's never seen, who sounds curt and presumptuous, a serious fellow who discusses only the care of his patients and doesn't join in the personal: kids, engagements, jokes, parties, who said what to whom yesterday. Isla is glad she isn't one of his patients. She imagines his manner might have an effect, small, unintended, but an effect nonetheless, on how his patients are treated by other staff. Nothing may be personal, but she knows herself that also, everything is personal when people are together so much. He ought to know better. She'd like to tell him to change his tone, lighten up, talk to them about just one thing from his own life, or theirs.

Isla can hear Rachel's voice out there this morning. She's an aide, some title like that, a skinny dyed-straw-blonde a decade younger than Isla, whom Olga describes as “peppy.” And peppy she is, despite two difficult teenagers and an ex-husband who “just buggered off, vanished, poof,” a few years ago. Difficult offspring are familiar to Isla, an ex-husband of mysterious destiny sounds positively appealing, but she has never, herself, had to scrape a living the way Rachel does: among other things, sponge-bathing Isla's body; washing her face; other unspeakable chores. Now Rachel covers the space between doorway and Isla's bedside with, “Hello there, I heard you were on your own, want to get pretty?”

A diverting idea, although what are the odds? Even the most optimistic aide can accomplish only so much. “I hear Dr. Grant will be coming through in a while. Thought you might like to get spruced up a bit beforehand, if you want. As long as you're on your own anyway.”

Isla wonders if her visitors get on the staff's nerves; how Rachel knows Dr. Grant is planning a visit, when Isla did not, and if that means anything; what even an aide may know about her, and her prospects, that she never hears. She only knows what she can overhear, or what's brought to her deliberately, or what's delivered randomly, like dogs dropping bones at her feet.

Rachel says, “We'll start with a depilatory, shall we? I've told you, haven't I, that your legs are totally excellent?” So they are. Or were; limbs that go unused wither quickly. She may already be shrivelling. Dr. Grant, so young he could be her son, might well look at her and wonder what possible reason she could have to desire sensation, what possible point there could be in his efforts.

“Shall I do your hair, too?”

“Please. That would be great. And makeup? Do you have time?” How swiftly meek the disabled become; how acutely thoughtful of others.

Also, there being no choice, how willingly dependent, how deliberately, entirely, immodest.

“No problem. Say, was your hair as bright as your daughter's when you were her age? Hers is really something.”

“Not quite, but yes, my mother had it too, more or less, although it dulls down with age. Alix just has a livelier version. Do your kids look like you?”

“Sean does, my son. He's got my eyes and my nose. Janie takes more after her dad. It's all the wrong way round in our family. In,” Rachel grins, “more ways than one.”

“I know. They're tough years.”

“Aren't they, though? Some days I'm glad for the long shifts. Often enough it's easier to be here than at home.”

Isla, if she could nod, would nod pretty vigorously. “You know, though, they'll be fine in the end.”

“I hope so.” Rachel doesn't sound very sure. Then again, for a number of years Isla wouldn't have sounded sure, either. And there's still Alix. With any luck, her future remains up in the air. Which is to say, there is hope.

“Your skin is so soft.” Rachel, applying foundation, gently massages skin upwards, not downwards, kindly implying there is still some point to uplift. “Honestly, you'd never know you're anywhere near fifty.” She even knows Isla's age? What else? “You want greeny-blue eyeshadow, or the browny-grey?”

“Browny-grey, please. Do you mind doing this sort of thing?”

“Gosh, no, I enjoy it. I used to think I'd like to go to cosmetic school or whatever they call it. Even when I was little, the best part of having dolls was making them look different from how they were when I got them. Some weird results, so you'll be glad to know I've gotten a lot better at it.” She's just chattering, she means well, she would never intend to compare Isla to a doll: stiff, lifeless, and vulnerable to any playful desire. “There.” Rachel stands back. “Want to see?”

No. Yes. Oh dear.

Well, there it is: startlingly large eyes now, due to flesh falling back from the bones, cheeks highlighted but nicely, not garishly. And Rachel's right, she does have soft-looking skin; although is it verging on crepey? Still, an enormous improvement over her first view of herself in this hospital light.

There's something wrong with the eyes, though. Or different. They belong to someone frightened and unfamiliar and wild. She sees them widen with this further wild fear of being observed, found out, examined. Are these the eyes Lyle and Jamie and Alix have been looking into day after day? “That's enough,” and she hears her voice come out rough. “That's great. Thanks.” It's possible James was right: there are some things it's better not to look at, inquire into, too closely.

This is a shocking way to live. It is shocking to be able to see Rachel's arms, although not her hands, shifting briskly back and forth, presumably moving skin cream up and down Isla's arms, and feel nothing. The gap between knowing and not feeling is electric. All this must be monstrous. And perhaps makes her a monster.

Nearly suitable for late-night TV.

But often enough people do grow accustomed to the most monstrous knowledge, she knows that. She listens to the rhythmic swish-rasp of Rachel's clothes as she massages whatever limb she is touching, the slight damp sputters of skin cream rolling from tube into palms. The tiny clicking sound of Rachel's spine straightening, the tiny whirl of cap being replaced onto tube, tiny shuffling of supplies into the case Rachel carries. Rachel's smile above her again. “You look terrific. I'm good at this, aren't I?”