You remember the plane, and the storm. It’s still raining now, the drops plinking against your scalp even as ocean sloshes into your mouth.
The last thing you can remember is aerial potholes.
You realize that something is tangled really tightly around your arms.
If you try to work your arms free, go to section 335.
If your consciousness fades, go
“Now that is a guitar case!”
You open your eyes. A few inches away, blue medical scrubs wrap somebody’s legs.
“The lining’s not even damp.” It’s a woman’s voice. The scrubs turn and she says, “Well, good morning, Sunshine! Joining us at last, are you?”
You blink and roll your head to look up toward her face. On the way you see the metal bed railing. Hospital, you think. The woman—in her early thirties probably, tall but pudgy, her brunette hair pulled into a ponytail, a stethoscope slung around her neck—is grinning at you. Nurse, you think.
She points to a bedside table on which your guitar case lies open. Your head is too low to see inside.
“Coast Guard brought it over this morning,” she says. “Figured you’d like to keep it close, the way it saved your life and all.”
You see the case’s shoulder strap—tooled leather, custom-made, presented to you by a lover three, no, four years ago to replace the case’s broken handle—dangling in two jaggedly truncated scraps from each of their rivets.
Maybe the nurse notices the direction of your gaze. “They had to cut you free when they got you out of the water. That strap was so tight that your hands—”
She stops, as if she’s caught herself saying more than she intended.
You look at your hands, resting atop the bed covers. They’re wrapped in so much gauze that they look like two cantaloupe mummies. Both arms are also thickly wrapped, nearly to the shoulder. You try to bend one, and then the other. They don’t move. Your arms don’t move. What the hell—
“Calm down!” says the nurse. “Just relax. Those splints have to stay on for a week. They spent a whole night working on you in the OR. You don’t want to put all that effort to waste now, do you?”
You let your head settle back into the pillow.
Your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth for a second when you try to talk. “Working on me?”
“Well.” She reaches down to adjust the covers over your chest. “Your hands got really banged up in the crash, and you were hypothermic, of course. And then that strap got tangled around your arms, choking off the circulation.”
“So they had to, what, restore the circulation?”
For a second she doesn’t answer. She reaches up and pulls her ponytail over her shoulder, and then slowly runs her fingers through its end.
“Yes,” she says. “That’s right.” A brunette curl wraps around her finger. “Also—”
She straightens and takes a step away. “I should tell the doctors that you’re awake. They’ll give you a full report.”
If you insist that she stop and tell you everything right now, go to section 341.
If you wait to hear what the doctors have to say, go to section 344.
“Well,” she says, “your right hand is going to be fine. Except that they had to amputate the end of your pinkie finger. Just the last joint.”
It takes you a moment to understand that word. Amputate.
But okay. Just the pinkie. You don’t need that one to hold a pick. Not even finger picks. So that’s okay. You’ll still be able to play, no problem.
If that makes you think of Paul, and you ask how he’s doing, go to section 350.
If you realize that the nurse hasn’t said anything about Paul, nor the other guy, and you guess what her omissions must imply, and you recall that it was you who decided that flying would be the right choice, go to section 356.
“Okay,” you say. Your voice is louder than it needs to be, and you speak quickly, as if you’re drowning out some other voice. “And my left hand?”
Her finger tightens in her ponytail. “You’re right-handed, aren’t you?”
You nod. You’re busy trying to not think, so you don’t wonder why she asks that.
“There was more damage to your left hand. I’m afraid that they couldn’t save all the fingers.”
She has freckles across both cheeks. You hadn’t noticed that before. Her eyes are green, like the eyes of the cat you had as a kid.
“You still have your thumb, though. And your middle finger should be fine. So you’ll—”
If you think about Django Reinhardt, the Gypsy guitarist renowned for his prowess despite half his left hand being crippled by a fire, go to section 362.
If the only thing you can think about is how, just the other night, your biggest priority had been sleeping in until noon, go to section 373.
You stay in the hospital for three weeks. There’s a lot of pain, and two more surgeries. You don’t have insurance, of course, but the hospital’s social worker says that they’ll work out a payment plan for you. You meet her eyes when she says that; after a second she looks away.
This afternoon a therapist is making you squeeze a rubber ball with your left hand, but you keep dropping it. Each time he picks up the ball, without speaking, and puts it back into your hand. The two of you repeat this cycle for five minutes, glaring at each other.
Somebody punches you in the shoulder.
“Ow!” you say.
It’s your nurse, the one with the freckles. You didn’t notice her entrance.
“Get out,” she says to the therapist. Her eyes, though, are locked on your face.
“Look at your hand,” she tells you.
“What?”
“It’s why you can’t hold the ball. You never look at what you’re doing.”
“Fuck you,” you say. And you turn away.
So you aren’t watching when she reaches out and grabs your left wrist.
“Hey!”
She’s stronger than you, despite your panic. She yanks up the hand and holds it before your face. “Look at it.” Her other hand clamps onto your head so you can’t twist away.
So you do it. You look at the hand. At the intact but twisted middle finger. At the half forefinger, wriggling like a decapitated worm. At the puckered stumps at the hand’s outer edge.
“All right!” you shout at her. “I’m looking! Now let go!”
“No,” she replies. “You’re looking at this messed-up thing I’m holding. Now—” and suddenly you realize that her voice, this whole time, has been surprisingly gentle, almost a whisper, “—look at your hand.”
It’s not some immediate, magical thing. But after a few seconds you notice the thumb. And, yes, it’s your thumb, exactly the same as it’s always been. And that’s your palm, with all its familiar lines and creases, including the scar from when you fell onto a rock as a kid. And the fingers—the parts that are still there—those are yours, too.
You lift your other hand, and she releases her hold as you press your two palms together. You turn them back and forth, back and forth, studying what’s there. What’s not.
If, for the first time since the crash, you start crying, go to section 378.
If she’s brought back a memory from your college philosophy class, go to section 125.
The professor is roaming the aisles between desks, as he always does, speaking about determinism and free will. You try to pay attention, but you were up all night at a party, jamming some blues with a hot piano player and a lukewarm fiddler while everybody else drifted home or fell asleep in the corners. Now the only things keeping you awake are the cup of dorm coffee you swallowed on the way to class, and the good-looking redhead two rows down, across the aisle.