Everything That Makes You(22)

What the hell am I doing?

Numbly, Fiona nodded that she understood, and the anesthesiologist  calmly clicked another bag onto the IV stand over her head. "This should  make you feel a little spacey," she said, injecting something directly  into the IV line.                       
       
           



       

"It's so smooth," Fiona said. The world swirled around itself, and  reality went two-dimensional-the last moment she'd recall of her scarred  life.

Blinking her one free eye against the-really, did it have to be that  bright?-overhead glare, Fiona thought her parents' faces might split  apart from the grins.

From somewhere out of her line of vision, Ryan said, "Jesus, she looks terrible."

"Ryan, shush," snapped their mom. "She just got out of surgery. What did you think she'd look like?"

"Not like a freaking mummy," he muttered back.

Fiona tried to lift a hand to feel the bandages, but her father's hand gently pressed it back down. "Don't touch, sweetie."

Fiona wanted to snap back that she wasn't five, but the drugs wouldn't let her voice out of her throat.

The next twenty-four hours passed in an unpredictable in-and-out, with  the in not much more than thwarted attempts to scratch at bandages and  grunts for more pain medication. It wasn't until solidly into day two  that a reasonably clearheaded Fiona opened her single available eye to a  bright new day streaming through the window. Ryan sat in front of it,  doing a bored flip through their mother's Southern Living.

"Hey," Fiona muttered.

"Hey, stoner." Ryan smiled back.

"Was I bad?"

"Nah. Lots of babbling. And whining. Oh, the pain, the pain. You're such  a wimp." His smirk faded to a look of concern. "Does it really hurt?"

Fiona pushed herself up slightly, wincing. "It's not too bad."

Ryan didn't look like he believed her.

"How's it look?" Fiona asked.

He frowned and shrugged. "Couldn't say. You're still covered with  bandages. The doctors have come in and changed them, but I, uh-"

"I'm the wimp? You left, didn't you?"

"Well, they say it'll take a few weeks for the graft to take anyway. It doesn't look good right now."

"It doesn't?" she asked, a little panicked.

"No, that's not what I meant. The doctor says it went great. He says you'll be better than new."

"Oh." Better than new. What the heck did that mean?

"Yeah. Great, right? Worth a few months of bandages."

Fiona didn't bother to bring up the excruciating pain, the itch of  stitches, or the freakiness of wearing someone else's skin. "You're  awfully confident for someone who hasn't actually seen it."

"It's just, well, I mean, it doesn't look like regular skin, yet. It's too, uh, fresh."

A rolling table rested at the end of her bed, suspended just over her  feet. Fiona wondered if she should offer Ryan the pea-green vomit bucket  sitting on top of it. "Are there lesions?" she goaded. "Any discharge?"

"Please, stop." Ryan looked like he might faint.

Fiona pointed to the mirror on the table. Ryan handed it to her, watching as she studied herself.

Bandages covered the right side of her face, neck to hairline, including  her right eye and entire nose. Her hair sat in a greasy mat on her  head, and what little skin did show looked slightly jaundiced. "I look  terrible."

"Oh, please, nobody cares," Ryan said, rolling his eyes. "Stop being such a prima donna."

Fiona glared at him with one eye. "Pus. Ooze."

Ryan smacked his hands over his ears as the surgeon came through the door. Her parents followed right behind.

When the surgeon started peeling back the bandage, Ryan asked, "Anybody  want anything?" and walked out of the room before Fiona or her parents  had a chance to answer. The hospital room door didn't make a sound as it  slowly closed.

Everything hurt-peeling off the tape, lifting the bandage, gently  testing the sutures, and inspecting the graft. The surgeon asked her a  few questions along the lines of Can you feel this? What about this?  Fiona was used to a dull, awkward throb in her cheek, but this was  pain-white-hot and searing along the border of what was hers and what  was borrowed.

Putting on a new dressing, the doctor said he was pleased with it so  far. Everything looked great; the match couldn't have been better; she  was healing nicely. He wanted her to stay a few days more, but after  that she could recover at home.

"She's due at Northwestern in mid-September," her mother said. "Should we defer it a semester?"

The doctor shook his head. "Shouldn't be a problem. That's a solid  sixteen weeks. The stitches will be long gone. She'll have a scar around  the edge, which should fade with time but might never fully go away.  She'll still be experiencing numbness in the area." He looked at Fiona.  "We talked about that, how you might not ever get total feeling in the  graft. Do you remember?"                       
       
           



       

Fiona nodded-then winced. Her hand automatically went to her face, but the doctor caught it and brought it back down.

"Don't touch it." He looked back to her mother. "She's handling it  great, though. I won't give the all clear for a few more weeks, but I  don't see any reason to keep Fiona from her life any longer than we need  to."





FI


It had been five days.

The world had been Marcusless for five days.

Fi hesitated at the back of the church. Standing on her right side, her mother leaned and whispered, "Where do you want to sit?"

Nowhere. I want to go home. "I don't care," she answered.

Her mother pointed the lot of them to a pew in the back. Just as they  began to shuffle in, a boy Fi had never met before tugged on her arm.  "Are you Fi Doyle?"

She nodded.

He smiled. "I'm Will, his cousin. Aunt Ellen told me to find you. They want you up front."

"Oh." Fi gestured to her family-and to Gwen and Trent, who she guessed counted as family, too. "My parents? And-"

"Yeah. Y'all come on."

They followed Will the Cousin up front. So many people were crammed into  this small, sacred space. Hundreds of people she didn't know were  saying good-bye to the boy she knew best.

Fi sat between her mother and Trent. Her mom pulled her close, until  Fi's chin rested on her shoulder. Tucking into her mother reminded her  of Marcus. But then, everything reminded her of Marcus.

Trent sat on the other side of her, solid and breathing. She hated him just a little for it.

The organ started playing, and what was left of the King family-mother,  father, Jackson-processed up. The people she didn't know came to the  pulpit, one after another, telling wonderful stories about Marcus. She  thought about her own stories: Marcus telling her jokes over the phone;  Marcus beating her at Scrabble-and then throwing the game; Marcus  protecting her from Cujo, as she hid her face against his chest during  the first, and only, horror movie they watched; Marcus kissing her;  Marcus lying beside her, dragging his hands through her hair.

She wished her final memory of him was different-something funny or kind  or adorable-not of a bony, nearly colorless boy, mumbling under a haze  of drugs and unable to get out of bed.

She stared at the metal urn on the altar. Now he was only memories and the contents of a jar.

Back when Fi naively believed Marcus's bucket list conversations were  purely philosophical-not because he really needed to think this thing  out-he'd said he wanted to be "picked clean and burned up." At the time,  she was horrified. Now she understood what he meant. He wanted to give  whatever useful bits he had left to someone else. He'd spent the last  part of his life waiting for the same favor.

She didn't realize she'd been crying until the service ended. Her mother  gently nudged her upright, and Fi saw the dark wet of her mother's silk  shoulder. "Sorry."

Her mom waved her off. "Come on. We have to go to the reception."

"We do?" Fi eyed the church of strangers, not sure if anyone here knew who she was.

"We do."

They piled into the Doyles' minivan, and her dad followed a line of cars to the Kings' house.

In all the hours Fi had spent in this house, she'd never seen anyone  here besides Mr. and Mrs. King, Jackson, and Marcus. Marcus had  mentioned he had cousins, aunts, and uncles in town, but she'd only seen  them in pictures.

His family's antisocial tendencies always felt strange to her. Her own  parents knew everybody. The Doyles couldn't go to dinner, the grocery  store, the gym without running into someone they knew from work or  growing up here or just because he was somebody else's sister's  husband's cousin or something.

The Kings, however, were a little insulated family island, and as far as  she knew, she was the only visitor. So when her family trailed her into  the Kings' house for the reception, everything felt wrong. There was no  odd smell from Mrs. King's homemade herbal remedies. All the lights  were on. The place was packed with people.