I could drop the class. No one was forcing me to audit it. But when you’re stuck in one room for eleven years, you get bored enough to learn just about anything.
It had been a long time since memory carried me back to those earlier years. Years when I became aware that I’d never have a normal childhood. Years when the medical terms began to make sense. Years when I began to lose interest in things that defined carefree days, like coloring, dolls, and cartoons.
But now scenes came rushing back to me, each of them played in vivid technically, achingly clear as if they’d just happened yesterday.
Only, the way I viewed the moments wasn’t from the perspective of a child.
No, I was the Lucy now watching things happen to the Lucy of the past. It was strange to witness my sickly, suffering childhood as an adult. How had I felt back then?
As limp as my stuffed rabbit.
As tattered as his fur.
So tired that I felt like I wasn’t a real girl anymore.
14
LUCY
{Over fifteen years ago}
Young Lucy.
I’d tossedHoppy to the floor earlier, angry at the fact I couldn’t go outside. The bunny was still slumped in the corner of the hospital room.
The balloon from my eighth birthday floated lazily; it was sinking lower as the waning helium lost the battle with gravity. I was resting in bed, body cushioned by a stack of pillows. The old television mounted to a spindly articulating arm played a gameshow, but the sound was muted. A forgotten coloring page rested on my hospital table, primary hued crayons fanning out from the picture. I couldn’t remember if I’d completed the page later, but what I had drawn was precise. I nearly always kept the color perfectly inside the lines. I wasn’t a messy kid. I tried to be easy. I tried to not make things harder on my parents than they already were. No matter how ill I felt, I’d smile and nod and try to make mom and dad happy.
I don’t remember when I became aware of how sick I was, but by eight years old, it wasn’t something I could ignore anymore.
The steady drip of my IV had been my lullaby for weeks, but it seemed to be growing fainter now. My head felt foggy; I shook it gently. God, I remember this—the first time I wondered if I was about to die, and the first time I thought maybe it would be better for my parents if I did.
I knew something was wrong long before the monitors started their frantic beeping. My eyelids felt heavy as I forced them open, the game show on the television was just a blur of movement, and there was this faint whimpering sound… that was my mother, keening like her world was ending. I guess it was.
Through the fog of fading away, I watched nurses rush into my room with faces that tried to hide their worry. They moved with the practiced dance of people who'd done this too many times before, adjusting dials and checking readings while speaking in the hushed tones adults use when they think children can't understand. But I understood plenty. Or, the future me watching all of this happen knew with stark clarity that this was the sound of yet another treatment failing.
"It's alright, sweetheart." Dad's voice came from my right side, his hand engulfing mine. He was lying, but I didn't tell him I knew. His eyes kept darting to the monitor screens, counting the numbers that measured whether I'd live or die.
Mom sat on my other side, her fingers gently stroking my hair, so pale and thin it felt like spider silk against the scratchy hospital pillowcase. Her touch was steady, but her breathing wasn't. I heard the little catch in her throat every time the monitor beeped irregularly. Though she tried to bite back the sobs, sharp notes slipped from between her clamped lips.
"Should we call the doctor?” she whispered over my head to Dad, as if I couldn't hear her when she was literally touching my ear.
"Already on his way," he answered, squeezing my hand a little tighter. "Let's keep reading, shall we? Where were we, Lucy-Lou?"
I pointed weakly at the worn copy of The Velveteen Rabbit splayed open on the bed beside me. "The part about becoming Real," I said, my voice barely audible above the mechanical symphony of my life support.
Slowly, the room began to clear. The beeping calmed. My mother’s muffled wails quieted. Not dead yet. But tired. So… very… tired.
Dad nodded, lifting the book and finding his place. His voice took on the gentle cadence he reserved for story time, the one that made me feel like everything might be okay even when we all knew it wasn't. Had it ever been okay? Maybe when I was very little. A newborn. Perfect and pink and new to living.
"'What is REAL?' asked the Rabbit one day..." Dad read, his finger tracing the lines. I mouthed the words along with him, having memorized them months ago. "'Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?'”
I clutched Hoppy tighter against my chest. My own rabbit wasn't velveteen but a matted mess of once-blue fur, now faded to the color of a rainy sky. One ear hung by threads, and his embroidered eyes had been re-sewn three times. He smelled faintly of antiseptic, just like everything else in my life.
Hoppy had been with me through every blood draw, every scan, every experimental treatment. He'd absorbed my tears when needles hurt too much and caught my whispers when I was too scared to tell my parents what I was really thinking. The night nurses would find him tucked under my arm each morning, no matter how much I'd thrashed in my sleep.
"'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse," Dad continued, his voice softening. "'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.'"
I watched Mom's face over the top of my rabbit's head. Her smile was fixed in place, but her eyes were leaking at the corners. She'd cried in the bathroom this morning too. I’d pretended not to notice how red her eyes were when she came back, just like I pretended not to notice when she and Dad whispered in the hallway, their voices urgent and broken.
