Dear Sam,
You must have been so scared. Unbelievable, they even had it on CNN. It’s beyond imagination. The hospital staff here is walking around with the dazed expression that anyone present in the scene of a major disaster would have. Aside from that, this place is like the eye of the hurricane. It’s all passing me by. The only information I have I get from my iPad or the TV above the bed. There’s a marathon broadcast on all the networks and I keep rereading the headline on the blue strip at the bottom: “32 Dead in AMC, Possible Bioterrorism.”
At one point I looked out the window and I saw Gerri Eickhof and the NOS news crew down in the parking lot outside the cordon. I saw my window on TV. Thought maybe I should wave. With my head, ha ha.
There are crowds in front of the hospital. Gawkers. Family members of the victims seeking information. Family members of other patients, wanting to get in. I think my parents are among them, but I texted them that they’d better go home. There already have been scuffles.
Anyway, I was completely oblivious as it happened. I slept through all of it. But the aftermath was no picnic.
They’ve been monitoring me all day in the ICU, Sam, because they say I showed “suspicious symptoms.” Don’t worry. If I had any, they’re gone now, because I’m back in my room and have been left to my own devices. There are rumors that they’re going to relocate everyone to other hospitals, but again—no info.
What’s there to say? Nothin’, because no one knows jack shit, as you would say. So let me just focus on what I actually wanted to write.
I have to admit your Facebook post from yesterday made me laugh. I knew right away that it was okay to message you. A selfie in the middle of the crosswalk on 5th Avenue . . . at the exact same spot where we made the selfie last year that’s framed in the kitchen, only now you’re not next to me but next to Julia! Same pose, leaning back a bit; same smirk, same shades; you even thought of the Starbucks cup in your right hand (because you did it on purpose, of course). The yellow cabs and the sea of crossing New Yorkers complete the resemblance. And then the tag: #livingthelife. An inimitable Sam Avery joke, way out of line when things are already fucked up, but I’ve known you long enough to know it must have been your only way of attempting reconciliation. There has to be an edge to everything you do, doesn’t there?
That’s one of the things I like best about you.
Man, does it seem like a long time ago, the two of us in New York. In love and inseparable, Julia always following our footsteps to your favorite clubs—your sister had missed you so much! That all came back to me when I saw your post. Life seemed so nice and simple back then. Weird how one photo can unlock a whole torrent of memories and emotions.
That’s why I still haven’t uploaded the photos from my GoPro to my iPad. The photos of that last ascent with Augustin . . . the pictures of that place, where things went wrong. I know I still can’t remember part of what happened. Not as large a part as I’d like, to be honest, but enough for some relief. Sometimes life is inadvertently merciful by concealing the most terrible things from us, like a sheet spread over a body after a terrorist attack or a plane crash.
But the mind’s curse is that it wants to remember . . . and I’m really afraid of what will happen to me when the sheet settles and the lines underneath become visible.
Or if it’s pulled away.
Everything before August 8 seems so far away. It’s like the memories are someone else’s. And it was only ten days ago. Ten days! Can you believe it? It feels like an eternity, in which everything has been reduced to a sort of mental confusion, drugged and disoriented and not sure of anything except for that awful pressure behind my face. Not pain, there’s too much shit in my body for that, but a pressure, constantly building, like there’s a balloon expanding in there that’s about to burst. It overpowers everything else, even the disgusting smell of the cream they smear under the bandages, or the drip-feed tube in my nose. (Of this I hallucinated—I kid you not—that it had fused into me, like a plastic umbilical cord to a fetus. Ahhh, the morphine!) Anyway, I sleep most of the time and that wears me out. My sleep is fitful and full of bad dreams. Slowly but surely, it’s dawning on me that I’ve woken up in a nightmare in which not only does my life before August 8 seem to be that of a stranger, but in which I have become a stranger.
All I have to do is bring my fingers to my face: I can’t recognize the shapes I feel anymore. The shapes behind the mask. Can you imagine how terrifying that is?
The doctor says that the bandages can come off in a couple of days. Like it’s a treat. I’m so dreading it, Sam. Just thinking about it scares the hell out of me. That face. I haven’t seen any of it yet, and I don’t want to. I’ve been talking with a psychotherapist (well, she talks, I type) to psych up to it, but I don’t think it’s possible to psych yourself up for something like that.
It doesn’t even feel like my face anymore, because of the pressure. I imagine it getting heavier and heavier and that before long it will fall off. And that it will reveal something awful. Something that lies beneath. That’s the real sheet that will soon be pulled away, Sam, and I’m not sure I can handle it.
I wanted to tell you I don’t blame you for leaving. You asked on FB if I could remember anything from what we said to each other those first days in Lausanne—nothing in fact, sorry. (You didn’t break up with me without me remembering it, did you? Ha ha.) I remember you were there and that you left on the day they flew me to the AMC.
Now that I think about it . . . I wrote you notes, didn’t I? Of course, on that notepad. So Agatha Christie. I can tell you that with my iPad my world has become a whole lot bigger. Frankly, I was bored to death, before everyone around me started dropping dead and we became international news. All of us here in the facial freaks ward wanted to go out tomorrow night to Club AIR, but I guess that’s out of the question now . . .
OK, I’ll stop. I’m just talking shit now. You know I always do when things get too serious.
Truth is, the muscles in my cheeks were slashed and I can’t talk anymore. Looks like even with speech therapy I’ll probably sound messed-up for years. I’ll look like a monster.
No, if I were you I don’t know if I would have had the courage to stay.