“How does that work?” Layla asks.
“It’s a mirror image,” I tell her. “It tricks your brain into seeing the reflected image of your right hand, which it believes is the missing left. Then you scratch the hand you’re missing and your brain gets the visual signal that the itch has been scratched.”
“Thanks, nerd, I got that part,” Layla says. “I’m saying how do you scratch any hand at all if you’re missing the other one?”
“Oh, um . . .” I look to Brandy, who shrugs.
“I don’t know. I always just stuck my foot in it.”
“Wait, so if my left tit is bigger than my right and I stick it in there will my brain think I have two big tits?” Layla asks.
“Neither one of your tits is bigger than anything,” Brandy says.
“Plus you wouldn’t be able to look into the top window anyway,” I tell her.
Layla puts both her hands in the air and sighs. “You two are killing my dreams.”
“Once I got the prosthetic it kinda worked the same way,” Brandy goes on. “My eyes see me scratching my right foot and thinks it’s taken care of.”
“So your brain was still getting signals from your missing limb? That’s why it would itch?” I ask Brandy, trying to get back on topic.
“Yeah.” She nods, her hand subconsciously dropping to her foot to give it a scratch. “It’s called phantom limb syndrome.”
Medicine can’t explain why a phantom limb itches in the night, fingers scratching for skin that isn’t there. They don’t know how to silence the burn in a foot that doesn’t exist, the tingle in a hand rotting elsewhere. There is no answer for how a muscle not attached to the body can cramp, causing familiar pain in a limb long estranged from its owner.
They’ve tried. Severed nerve endings have been cauterized, stumps shortened, entire areas of the brain deadened to stop signals from nowhere. It doesn’t work. Instead of relief, the afflicted receive fresh pain to compound the suffering, scar tissue piled over trauma.
I don’t know how my heart left me, only that it did. Slipping from my fetal body as Shanna’s pushed it aside, the cells broken down and absorbed into Mom to be shed with her skin, contributing to a layer of dust somewhere in our home before I even arrived.
It has tried to reach me since then, sending signals like phantoms through my veins, pulsing toward my brain to tell me what I care for and who I love. It has succeeded, mostly, even what small strength it retained overpowering Shanna’s inadequate organ. She might be pumping our blood, but my wants and needs prevailed, until she knew there was only so much time left for her.
This is why Heath never felt vibrant to me, my feelings for him dulled by space and time, the signals from my rightful heart barely reaching me. This is why Isaac has fallen into me like a meteor, hot and fast, unavoidable, Shanna’s heart making demands as it winks out of existence. And while I can’t deny that my body enjoyed participating in her choices, it will come to an end.
I know I am the stronger of us, have already proven it by simply existing while she is merely clinging to life by my permission and only with the assistance of a machine that penetrated both of us, leaving metal entwined with our soft tissues. I will shed it, rid myself of the cords, the metal, the machines, the needles, the endless cheery faces asking what I need but not able to give me anything.
I will restore Sasha Stone.
I will be me.
twenty-nine
“The nurses tell me you’ve been assisting with the meditation classes?”
I try to look away from Amanda’s double-knotted shoes, wondering if her mother tied them for her before she went out the door to work this morning.
“Assisting is one word,” I say.
“How would you describe your involvement?” Amanda asks.
“I run it. Before I showed up a boom box ran it.”
“So you’ve improved the class?”
I let that one go unanswered. Amanda’s pen fills the silence, scratching across the paper.
“I understand you have a new friend?”
Amanda’s voice is an endless lilt, as if her vocal cords are tipped in a way that makes it impossible for her to make a statement instead of asking a question.
“Yes. Brandy,” I say. “She’s an amputee.”
“And what’s she like?”
“She’s like a regular person with just one foot.”
Amanda’s pen is still moving, but I can’t imagine she’s trying to capture the amazing insight I just imparted.
“And I understand your ex-boyfriend came to visit?”
“That was unexpected,” I say, and she finally stops writing.
“Because?”
“He found out about Isaac.”
“And how did he process that?”
I think about Heath’s finger pointed at me, his face red and hot behind it. “Not well,” I admit. “I tried to explain about Isaac being for Shanna, and her attraction to him not having anything to do with us.”
“He didn’t accept your explanation?”
I remember the muscle ticking in his jaw, anger I didn’t think him capable of filling the space between us.
“No, he didn’t.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
I know how I felt in that moment, as my door shut behind him. I stayed on the floor for some time, curled over my LVAD as if it were my actual heart and needed protection. There was pain, but dull and far off, my broken heart keening elsewhere, the feeling barely reaching me.
“I can’t really feel anything,” I tell Amanda. “Not my feelings, anyway. It’s like Brandy’s phantom pain from her foot. My brain picks up signals from it still, but they’re very weak. She told me about this mirror therapy thing they did to show her the inverted—”
“Yes, I know about mirror boxes,” Amanda interrupts, putting her pen down. “And you came to this conclusion concerning signals from your heart after talking to Brandy about her foot?”
“Yes. I’d never considered it before, but it makes sense. Shanna’s feelings take precedence because her heart is here, inside me. And my own is gone, a phantom heart.”
“So what would you see if you looked into a mirror box?” Amanda asks.
It’s a good question, and I give it time to circulate. “Well, it’s not quite the same thing,” I say. “I can’t put Shanna’s heart in there and see my own reflected back.”
“No, you can’t,” Amanda agrees, but in a way that makes it sound like her question still stands.
“Do you know the difference between the mind and the brain?” I ask.
Amanda blinks quickly a couple of times, and I can’t tell if she’s surprised that I know to ask in the first place or insulted that I am putting the question to someone with a degree. An associate’s degree, anyway.
“Yes, I know the difference,” she says. “Do you?”
“Your brain is an organ. Your mind is your consciousness, your thoughts, the definition of who you are.” I close my eyes, hoping that the words are right, the logic inside of me finding a channel out that others will comprehend. “The brain is a physical thing, but a mind is separate and indistinct. Like a soul. An identity.”