This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Jennifer Mann
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mann, J. Albert, author.
Title: Fix / J. Albert Mann.
Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2021. | Audience: Ages 14+. | Summary: In the aftermath of major surgery, sixteen-year-old Eve struggles with pain, grief, and guilt while becoming increasingly dependent on pain medication, revisiting memories of her best friend, and exploring a potential romance.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020048433 | ISBN 9780316493499 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316493406 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316493437 (ebook other)
Subjects: CYAC: Surgery—Fiction. | Scoliosis—Fiction. | Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Drug addiction—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M36614 Fix 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048433
ISBNs: 978-0-316-49349-9 (hardcover), 978-0-316-49340-6 (ebook)
E3-20210409-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Nineteen Degrees
Red Rover, Red Rover
Please, No
God
The Telescope
Collage
Lidia Returns
Something I Don’t Know
Just Like It Always Was
Me and Lidia
Your Decision
Something I Already Knew
Pain
The Burger Hut
“Lidia”
The Hand
The Real One
Eve and the Serpent
Lies, Lies, Lies
Everything I Want
The Real One
Need
The Surgery
The Real One
The Human Form
The Happiest of Huts
Minnesota
Mirrors and Miracles
Something We Both Knew
The Real One
Slow Motion
The Real One
Say Something
Who You Want Me to Be
The Real One
A Shower
The Real One
Forced from the Realm
A Kiss
The Roxy
Possibly. Hopefully. Probably.
Anywhere but Here
The Real One
I’ll Be Waiting
An Exact Replica
The Real One
Take Me Somewhere
Trying
Me and Lidia
Dry
The Real One
Shame
Lidia Banks Never Needed Two Hands
Food Fight
My Decision
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Discover More
About the Author
For Kevin Mann
The only lie I’ve ever told my children is that we make our own lives.
You made my life.
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Nineteen Degrees
I’M COLD.
Cold and confused.
Do I feel the tube between my lips? The staples sunk deep into my torso? The bars and screws bolted to my spine? The pain?
No. All I feel is cold.
A warm shadow lingers over me. I hear her. Maybe. Then… nothing.
I dream of soft blurry voices and distant bright lights. Slowly, so slowly, I realize these aren’t dreams at all, but reality flittering into focus.
Colors.
Sounds.
Everything hazy and high-pitched and filled with beeping and clicking and the whooshing sounds of air.
At some point, they pull the tube from my throat. I think about screaming but then forget.
Nearby, I hear someone calling out over and over. I beg them to please stop—although only in my head—because my voice is off somewhere. Lost.
I see the light of day coming in through a window. And I hear Dr. Sowah, talking, laughing. Where is my mother?
“Eve!”
Someone calls to me from a distance, as if I’m floating far away from them.
“’Ey, lazy, open up those eyes. You can totally ’ear me.” It’s Dr. Sowah. His missing h so familiar. He always joked that he left that letter back in Ghana when he came over at age eighteen.
I think I must have smiled because he chuckles. Dr. Sowah is always chuckling.
“That’s right, I know you’re there.”
Am I? Or am I on a river?
Sliding along in the sunshine.
Safe.
Warm.
Happy.
Until he leans over me, blocking out the sun like a rain cloud. “Eve, I’m delighted to report that you are officially nineteen degrees.”
Nineteen degrees?
It’s easy to hear his pride in that number.
Nineteen.
But I can’t wrap my head around it.… This new Cobb angle measuring the tilty twist of my spine. Large progressive scoliosis meant my forever-collapsing spine was forever producing a new one. Forty-eight degrees… fifty-two… sixty-seven… who could keep track? Although, this one—nineteen—is now fixed to me.
By titanium.
The river spins me. Then stops flowing with a loud snap, sending a searing shudder all along that nineteen-degree angle.
The beginning of the second week in Massachusetts General Hospital is filled with pain, needles, thirst, and screaming—mostly mine.
I am pinned under cold wet skin and bones. I can’t breathe from the terrifying pain, the fear that this bloodied slab is forever on me, in me, is me.
Then… there is the shuffle near my IV. The surge of air deeply entering my lungs. And me, grasping at the nearest scrubs—to let them know they saved me, they have to keep saving me—before I’m floating off again on that river, light as a duck feather.
Sometimes I wake up screaming in the light.
Sometimes I wake up screaming in the dark.
Every time I open my eyes, and even when I don’t, I scramble for the button to my morphine pump and cry out to Martin, the nice nurse, regardless if it’s his shift. And there he is, bending over my arm with an extra dose.
A rush of saliva.
A
sting.
And I hear her again.
“Martin,” I whisper. “She’s here. Lidia.”
“It’s the drugs, baby,” Martin tells me. “No one’s here.”
Red Rover, Red Rover
When I was six years old, I could
not imagine being anything but
strong and fast and tough.
I thought as much about my spine
twisting deep inside me
as I did about the world’s economy
or my mother’s day at work—which meant
I wanted to play.
I always wanted to play.
And couldn’t believe my luck
that sunny afternoon
when a game of red rover
began around me.
Hand slapped into
hand slapped into
hand. Forming
a human chain. A chain
I wasn’t part of.
Turning every which
way, desperate
for entry—there she stood
reaching out with an arm
that did not end
in a hand.
Not knowing what to do
I did nothing.
But she knew.
“Take it,”
she said.
I took it.
Clutching the arm where it ended,
a little way up from where a wrist
would be.
Our line began to chant.
Red rover, red rover,
send Justin over.
Across the field,
a kid in stiff new jeans
and a Red Sox T-shirt
broke from the line
and started running toward us.
Fast.
Toward us.
Me and the girl.
Me and Lidia.
“Hold on,” she screamed.
And I did.
Please, No
“HOLD ON, DARLIN’, I’M ABOUT TO REMOVE YOUR CATHETER,” Martin says. “It’s time to get out of that bed.”
I don’t bother opening my eyes.
“You’re gonna have to move sooner or later, little Evie.”
I feel a dry sting from deep behind my belly button all the way down to my knees.
The sting fades.
I fade with it.
I’m never moving.
But they come.
The physical terrorists.
Talking. Touching. Positioning.
Please. Please, no. It hurts. Please.
Moving my blankets, my gown, my limbs.
No. Please, no. I can’t. Stop.
They don’t stop. They sit my body up. And then they stand it up. While I scream so loud the sound comes out my eye sockets.
It’s like someone has stuck a metal rod straight up my ass, through my torso, and into my shoulder blades. Because they have.
As I choke on a thick mix of sweat and tears and snot, my head rolls about at the end of my neck, giving me a swirling view of ceiling, floor, curtains. The PTs mutter “Shhh” and “It’s okay,” standing on either side of me, holding me upright. Not that it’s a hard job—I haven’t eaten anything for almost two weeks and I’m pretty sure my hospital gown weighs more than I do.
My utter lack of compliance does nothing to convince them to return me to my bed so I try begging—saying the word please so many times it’s really just my lips quivering with fear.
They continue like they can’t hear me. The short woman saying “You can do this,” and the taller repeating “Yes, you can do this,” in an even louder voice over and over. It’s like I’m trapped in some strange torturous pep-talk echo chamber, and I can’t tell if these two are physical therapists or personal trainers.
Together, they drag me across the hospital room while I sob, and the old lady I share the room with shouts, “Jesus H. Christ, take me,” and “Holy Mother of God, shut her up,” in a cigarette-induced Southie rasp.
It isn’t even a ten-foot journey, but every muscle I need to take those steps has been sawed through and then stapled back together.
My mother walks in. Her face drops, and she quickly backs out the door. “I’ll come back when you’re done.”
What? No. Help!
But she’s gone.
The PTs cart me into the bathroom, position my hands on the bars on either side of the toilet, and hike up my gown. Immediately, I remove my hands to clutch at them, pleading through my tears for someone to do something to stop the pain.
Again they reposition my hands and attempt to lower me to the pot, but my gown falls down first. Up I come as they attempt to tie the gown out of my way.
“Just take the goddamn thing off,” I snap.
The tall PT gently removes my gown, and together, they lower my body onto the toilet, resting each of my arms on one of the bars. I beg them not to leave me like this. I can’t do it. I can’t stay here. It hurts too much. Everything hurts too much.
Staying true to their infuriating optimism, they leave me and pull the door closed half an inch—like I need privacy after having just been placed naked onto a toilet.
I cling to the bars, my head dangling from my neck, my rib cage and spine on fire. I’ve stopped crying, and the lingering panting and hiccups send shocks of pain from my knees to my eyes.
And sit.
Nothing happens. It’s like the pee doesn’t know how to come out of me without a tube.
My physical therapy cheerleading squad keeps up their chanting outside the bathroom, which does nothing to help. Finally, the short PT comes back in and turns on the faucet. As she exits, she pulls the door almost completely closed, and I’m left staring at my reflection in a full-length mirror.
There was a time—called my entire fucking life—when I’d have done anything to see myself in a mirror with a Cobb angle of nineteen degrees, but now all I see are staples.
Large staples.
Large, metal staples.
Many, many large, metal staples. A gleaming railroad track sunk deep into my pale white skin and crisscrossing a thick red slice of open wound traveling from under my armpit, down past my belly button, and around my hip.
What did they do to me? What did they do?
Forgetting I can’t, I jump up and then fall back onto the toilet, hitting the seat hard. The pain is so horrible that I can do nothing but cling to the bars while blood pounds in my temples.
One of the PTs calls my name.
I can’t answer. I’m sliding. Sliding from the toilet. Sliding toward the floor, where my staples will catch on the seat and rip me open. I’m going to be ripped open and I’m going to hurt worse than I do right now.
Fear overwhelms me. And just as my sweaty hands slip from the bar, the PTs rush into the room and grab my arms, righting me.
Nineteen degrees? Who the hell cares.
I’m shouting. Or screeching. My voice needing to mimic the pain.
The PTs try to calm me down as they shove my arms back into my gown. I won’t be calmed. That wasn’t me. How could anyone live looking like this?
The old lady howls profanity while the PTs haul me past her toward my bed. I’m sobbing and hyperventilating at the same time. Every breath yanking mercilessly at my staples.
Martin, the nice nurse, is behind me. He has a needle in his hand. My needle.
When they roll me onto my bed, it feels like someone is ripping my spine right out through my neck. Martin sticks me even as I scream into his face.
I keep on screaming until the morphine turns my screams into hoarse moans, and then finally into nothing at all.
“Martin,” I gasp. “I didn’t pee.”
“Yes, you did, sweet baby.” He laughs. “I’m gonna go clean it up off the bathroom floor right now.”
“Martin,” I say, clutching him. My throat burns. Somehow, he knows, and he shovels in a spoonful of ice chips.
Holy Mother of God, that feels good.
God
The first time I
officially heard His name
was in school.
The Pledge of Allegiance.
Although I’d certainly
seen churches—for me
they were curious buildings with doors
I’d never walked through.
In this pledge,
which I was asked
to repeat each morning, we were
under Him.
I didn’t get it, so
I asked my mother.
“God doesn’t like women,”
she said.
In my mother’s defense,
I probably asked while
she was in the middle of grading undergraduate papers
or
composing feminist verse
and I’m sure she didn’t consider
for a second
I’d take her statement
and think about it
for as long as I did.
God didn’t like me much.
The weird thing was,
I felt Him
not liking me.
I was diagnosed with scoliosis at eight.
By twelve, my spine was twisting
into the squirrely shape
of a loopy S.
A band of muscles
was beginning to collect
on my back.
It wasn’t a hump
yet.
My shoulder blade
hadn’t protruded—
awkwardly stretching my skin tight
in one place
while folding it into elephant-like wrinkles