need the dresser full of
extra-wide pants and skirts,
not to mention the supersized panties
we’ve worn since we were potty trained.
So although we still ache a bit
from the skin expanders,
we spend some time
clearing our closets
of anything we won’t be able to wear
once we are two,
holding up bright orange sweatpants
and wondering why we ever bought
them in the first place.
‘We should go shopping,’ I say.
Tippi turns
the sterling silver ring on her
right index finger
around and around.
‘No,’ she says. ‘We should wait.
We should wait
and see what happens.’
Many
I rearrange the Russian nesting dolls,
sitting them
side by side
but
all out of order,
taking them apart
and putting them back together again,
hiding one inside the other.
And it doesn’t matter what Dragon says,
that they aren’t about Tippi and me;
every time I hold the tenth one,
the tiniest that lives at the centre of them all,
as small and forgettable as a grain of rice,
I find myself wanting to
throw her out with the garbage
to see how
the rest of the dolls
get along
without her.
How do you like that for symbolism?
The World Has Heard
Eventually
we are admitted to the hospital
so they can monitor our health
and
somehow the world quickly learns
we are here
and what
we plan to do.
The media
camps out
opposite Accident and Emergency
through snow and sleet
like frenzied teenage boy-band fans waiting for concert tickets
or a glimpse of their idols.
Tippi and I watch the crowd swell
from five floors up,
but the only person we talk to is Caroline,
not that she follows us much any more,
preferring to interview the doctors
or our parents
and leaving us pretty much alone
to watch daytime TV and order low-fat yoghurt
from the hospital cafeteria.
At Dr Derrick's Request
Dr Murphy comes to see me in Rhode Island.
She is wearing a navy trouser suit
and thick-rimmed glasses,
looking so serious and severe
I know that Dr Derrick must have
told her
we haven’t much hope
of surviving.
‘So …’ she says,
crossing her legs
and folding her hands in her lap.
We watch each other.
The big hand on the clock moves quickly.
‘She’ll be OK without me,’ I lie.
Dr Murphy nods.
‘And how would you be without her?’
‘I’d be nothing,’ I say.
‘I’d disappear.
But that’s not how this is going to happen.’
‘Probably not.
But let’s try to prepare you for whatever happens.’
I want to use my nails to score deep
red lines down Dr Murphy’s face.
I want to ram my fist into her gut
and make her scream.
I want to tell her Fuck the hell off
and Leave me alone,
and Stop making me imagine the future.
I don’t.
I lower my head.
Speak into my lap.
‘I’m terrified.’
For the first time ever,
Dr Murphy leans forward
and takes one of my hands.
Even Tippi looks up.
‘I’m terrified, too,’
Dr Murphy says.
The Power of Perception
Dr Forrester checks our skin where his
tissue expanders
have swollen up our sides.
‘Looking beautiful, girls,’ he says,
fingering the bulges.
What others have shuddered to see
makes Dr Forrester grin,
which says
quite a lot
about the
power of perception.
Mechanics
Dr Derrick explains the procedure a dozen times
with dolls and diagrams.
The separation alone will take over eighteen hours
and then I’ll have Heartware fitted
and drugs injected to keep
me alive.
They’ll induce comas in both of us for at least a
week
to save us from the
pain of recovery.
If I wake up …
If I survive …
I’ll go on a list.
I’ll go on a transplant list for a heart and wait
like a bloodthirsty vulture for
tragedy to befall another family.
The more he explains,
the more it sounds like magic.
I mean,
how can they reconstruct our lower halves
so that we end up with two whole bodies?
We share most of our
intestines
but Dr Derrick says this is not a problem.
We share our privates
but Dr Derrick says he’ll give those pieces
to Tippi and
fix me up
so I’ll be like any other girl when he’s finished.
But this is a lie.
In any case, I don’t question him
and I never
ask why he’s decided to give the originals to Tippi
because it’s a cold
hard
fact
that out of the two of us,
my chances of making it
out of the operating room alive
are
very,
very
slim.
Death
What does death feel like?
Sleeping?
Being in a dark and silent dream?
Maybe that would be OK—
if nothingness
is all it is.
But I’m kidding myself.
It must be worse than that or people
wouldn’t so
furiously
avoid it.
Maybe death is white and
glaring.
Maybe it is a lack of sleep,
a pure awakening—
a deafening reality
that is truly
unbearable.
But no one will ever know
how it feels
until he arrives there.
All I know now is that it
looks like
a brass-handled coffin being
lowered
into the ground,
and
I’ve absolutely no interest
in
getting into one
of those things.
Experimental
Jon visits us in the hospital
without Yasmeen.
He puts a bunch of withering white roses
next to the bed
then gets busy finding a vase
and water and dribbles of soda
to bring the flowers back to life.
‘Did you and Yasmeen argue?’ Tippi asks.
‘Me and Yasmeen? No. She’s at a wedding,’ he explains.
‘And I didn’t
want to wait.
I wanted to see you.’
He stays several hours and as he leaves
he hugs us both
then kisses me quickly
—not with his whole
watermelon mouth—
just the lips,
pressed almost chastely
against mine.
When he is gone Tippi asks,
‘What does it mean? Are you guys an item?’
I shrug.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Maybe you’re an experiment,’ she says.
‘But then again, what relationship isn’t.’
‘Was that a nice thing you just tried to say?’ I ask,
nudging her.
She grins. ‘Go to hell!’
Dreaming
Of him.
Dreaming of us,
bound together chest to chest,
hearts one.
But where has Tippi gone?
I cannot see her
when I search
nor hear her when I
call out.
He says,
‘You’ve got me,’
but when I wake up
screaming
sweating
crying
I know that
he
is not
enough.
Climbing
Our family throws us a ‘good luck’ party
and we all pretend it’s not a party to say
goodbye.
Everyone comes.
Cousins we haven’t seen since their voices broke,
doctors we’ve known our whole lives,
and even Mrs James from Hornbeacon High, who
warns us we won’t be given
special treatment when we return to school.
‘You’ll be expected to pass your finals
like everyone else,’ she says.
She’s trying to be kind but it’s
a stupid thing to say;
if we live
we won’t be able to walk
and special treatment will
be exactly what we need.
Yasmeen and Jon turn up the music so loud
a nurse holding a thermometer comes in to tell
us to keep it quiet because we are disturbing the other patients.
As everyone leaves,
Yasmeen pats our sides
like she’s checking our pockets for change.
‘See you soon, assholes,’ she says,
and is gone,
unable to say any more.
Jon puts his arms around us both and
rests his head on my shoulder.
‘It’s always been complicated, you know.’
I allow my faltering heart some last thumps for him
before
I pull away.
‘Not today,’ I say.
Caroline makes Paul take a picture
of us,
her face wedged between ours,
chocolate cake on her chin.
She says ‘cheese’ for about three seconds then
uses the photograph as her phone’s home screen.
‘I’ll be in soon for follow-up interviews, OK?’
she says.
She squeezes our knees.
‘You’re both lovely.’
The music is switched off.
The food is cleared away.
Grammie turns on the TV
and Mom and Dad go to a room to sign more papers.
‘I didn’t complete my bucket list,’ I say aloud
and Dragon pulls her chair closer.
‘A bucket list?’ she asks.
I gulp. ‘A list of things to do before you die,’ I explain.
Dragon flinches and her eyes grow wide
as she tries to hold in the tears.
‘Grace never climbed a tree,’ Tippi tells her.
‘Well, let’s go and do it,’ Dragon says.
She hands us our crutches.
A nurse stops us by the elevator.
‘Is there a problem?’ she asks,
taking me by the elbow.
‘We need some air,’ I say.
The nurse shakes her head.
‘No. No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘But she’s going to be sick,’ Tippi says.
‘At least get her a wheelchair.’
The nurse looks up and down the empty hallway.
‘Fine.
Stay there.
Let me get one
and I’ll come with you.’
‘OK,’ Tippi says,
and once the nurse is out of sight
we slip into the waiting elevator
and go
down
to the ground floor
and into the parking lot
to
scout for trees.
‘There!’ Dragon says,
pointing across the parkway at an oak,
its limbs aslant like an enormous octopus at yoga.
We wait for a big
and cross.
At the tree Dragon provides the foothold,
pushes us up
with all her strength
into the lowest branch, where we sit for a second
to get our breath,
then pull ourselves up higher
into the second storey of branches.
The traffic drowns out the sounds
of night creatures.
The lights from the city suppress the stars.
‘Doesn’t matter what happens tomorrow.
We’ve gone further
than anyone ever expected,’
Tippi says,
letting her leg dangle over the grassy knoll below.
And I know she is not talking about climbing
this tree.
‘I’m almost happy.
Aren’t you?’
A tractor trundles by on the access road.
The air is cold.
‘I’m happy,’ I say.
‘But I’m so scared.
What if I wake up and you’ve gone?
I don’t want to wake up without you.’
A team of fire trucks whirr and their
red lights flicker.
As they speed by
the traffic slows and
parts to let them go—
this desperate cavalry.
‘Are you coming down?’ Dragon shouts.
‘Are we?’ I ask Tippi.
‘Of course we’re going down,’ she says.
‘We’re going down together.’
Nil by Mouth
Tippi asks a nurse for water but is refused—
‘It might interfere with what the anaesthetists have planned,’
the nurse explains.
‘But let me go and get you some ice chips.’
Tippi throws up her hands.
‘I cannot believe we haven’t been offered a last meal,’
she says,
even though we stuffed ourselves
silly on cake and cookies
all afternoon.
Grammie pinches Tippi’s ear.
‘Last meals are for suckers on death row.
And you are going to be fine.’
Tippi doesn’t quote statistics
but pinches her back and says,
‘If I were your age, I’d be having my last meal every night.’
Dad guffaws and prods Grammie playfully.
She sticks out her tongue.
‘I’ll outlive you all,’ she says.
At once the room goes quiet.
It is the last thing Grammie says before
she leaves in tears.
Humankind Cannot Bear Very Much Reality
‘I’m not going to come to the hospital in the morning,’
Dragon says before she leaves.
She leans back into her heels,
suck
s at her bottom lip.
‘I think I’ll spend the day at the studio.
I’ve a show in a week and my turns are sloppy.
I hope you don’t mind.
I hope you don’t think—’
‘Of course not, Dragon,’ we say together.
We understand she wants to be distracted.
And we don’t need her spending twenty-four hours
gazing into a vending machine
and waiting for the operating room doors to open,
for Dr Derrick to appear with the report
written in his eyes.
‘But I’ll be thinking about you.
I want you to know—’
She pauses, hugs herself, and looks at each of us.
Tippi then me.
Tippi then me.
‘I want you to know—’
she tries again,
but she cannot finish.
Her voice splinters
and the tears come.
‘I know what you want to say,’ I manage.
‘It’s OK not to say it.’
She kisses us each on the cheek
then gasping for breath
turns quickly
and runs from the room.
Code Red
The night nurse,
a barrelling woman in her fifties with
tight grey curls
and a faint moustache,
comes into our room
with a tiny bottle of what looks like
red nail polish.
‘I’ve been told to paint Grace’s fingernails,’
she says.
‘The doctors want to know
which heart has the problem.’
She attempts to smile
but it gets lost before her lips
can curl all the way