“What do you mean?”
“She’s not one to be able to handle me like this.”
“You don’t mean—” His expression stopped her. She’d understood enough from the anguish plain on his face. This woman had hurt her boss.
“I’m sorry,” Liv said.
Her emotions splintered across the spectrum. She wanted to comfort him, though anything she could do seemed inconsequential compared to a betrayal of that magnitude. Anger pulsed.That bitch. She took the most amazing guy Liv had ever met and flung him aside? When he’d just vaulted from darling of the agency world to having so much taken away?
Liv was a small, pale pacifist, but her rage was physical. What she wouldn’t do to hit Orchid square between the eyes.
CHAPTER 24
WANT AND ABLE
Phoenix
“Ican transfer myself.”
“I know,” said Veronica hovering inches from Phoenix.
He stood from the bed and pivoted into the chair. “Nadine wants me to do as much for myself as I can.”
“Sure, honey,” she said, leaning to tuck a loose pocket into his shorts.
He gritted his teeth against the humiliation of having become a dependent adult-child. “You know I’ve built a hundred-million-dollar business, and have been on my own since college.”
“You’ve done a great job,” she said, licking a finger to slick a stray tuft of hair.
He wheeled towards the bathroom. Mom walked one step ahead, opening the door just as he arrived. He pictured Orchid helping him transfer, handling his chair. The gut-punch of her revulsion, obvious in his recurring nightmares, formed a lump in his throat. He’d made the right call.
“I’m going to shower. By myself,” he said.
“Of course, dear.”
Nadine said the more he accepted his new state, the faster he’d recover. But phantom sensations remained ruthless. Narcotics sepia-toned his thinking until the difference between life and death didn’t seem to matter.
A one-handed yank of his T-shirt over his head was the easy part. Shrugging out of his shorts required balancing on a single foot, shoving the fabric towards the floor and then sitting back down to be finally free.I should be figuring out communications strategies, not how to undress.
Naked, he hopped into the shower. The bumpy surface of the institutional plastic seat sneereddisabled.
Here, there was no ignoring the blunt ends of his missing pieces, no ignoring the one-handed shower aided by a long-handled brush. Scars wound like pale red tentacles over misshapen flesh. The sutures were gone but the raised, ropy skin stretched taut in the shape of each menacing stitch.Living death.Every nurse, therapist, doctor and family member had colluded in the grandiose lie that he was going to be able to do what he wanted.What the hell are they talking about?
This week, he couldn’t unlock the foil fortress of a yogurt. Yesterday, his one-handed wheeling was felled by a door that swung out instead of in.
His mind hissed, staring at his malformed stumps.You’re the punchline to a distasteful joke. You’re an attraction in an old-fashioned freak show. Little girls will gape at your deformities. Adults will avert their gaze from your gruesome form, then emasculate you with degrading pity.
There was nothing left of him.Half a man . . .His ears filled with howling. The door rattled with increasing alarm. The howling keened. He realized he was the one making the horrible sound. His one whole arm swept the shampoo, brushes and soap to the ground. The violence of the sudden strike stole his balance and he tumbled, landing on one shoulder. Battling upright, he dragged himself to his wheelchair, heaving the metal junk towards the sink, rattling bottles against porcelain.
“Phoenix, open this door! Let me in!” shrieked the crazy woman who birthed him. Who cared?This whole place is crazy.He was the craziest of them all. Beside the faucet above his floor-bound body stood toiletries, sentinels waiting. Reaching from pained knees that felt as if both feet were still attached, he fisted the glass and hurled it against the dispassionate tile.
Its splintering amped the volume from the crazy, then all fell silent. His lungs huffed air he didn’t want.
The jagged shapes of broken glass glinted in the light. He wrapped his only hand around the largest shard, curved like a scythe. He caught sight of himself in the full-length mirror, a half-finished horror. His expression crazed, eyes darting wild like a trapped animal, gaunt cheeks wet with streaked tears, body naked, hideous. In the countryside, they put wounded deer out of their misery with a shot to the head.
The edge of the glass soothed with cold detachment. Just a little more pressure and relief would wash over him. It beckoned, promising pastures beyond his prison, a place with no struggle. He could smell the flora, sense the sun and relax into the illusion of peace.
He held no more responsibilities. His agency ran without him. His family could resurrect lives that had paused mid-action for him. Now, with Orchid set free, he was truly unanchored, unneeded. Nothing made sense more than to end the pain. He pressed the razor-sharp point against the flesh of his useless arm. He raised it to slice. He craved relief.
