A New Face

Everyone’s smiling at me, but they all have tears in their eyes. They’re trying not to let on that they’re scared shitless. Why? Is it supposed to make me feel better? It’s not working. I feel sick. Maybe that’s just the motion of the trolley, the ceiling whooshing past above me.

I should probably say “bed”, but it doesn’t feel like a bed. A bed is where you relax, right? Where you sleep. I’ve never felt wound so tight. And whatever I’m going to be doing for the next God knows how many hours, it won’t be sleeping.

People pretend it is. They explain it to little kids like that, but I’m not a little kid. It’s okay, sweetie, it won’t hurt (while they’re slicing into you with knives), because you’ll be in a really really deep sleep…

I’m wheeled through a set of heavy double doors. They thud behind us, and on we go. The wheels should be rattling to match my mood, but the journey is as smooth as if this were a spaceship, and the trolley was a high-tech stretcher hovering at waist height, guided by the lightest touch.

It helps, to imagine stuff like that. It distracts me from what’s happening. What’s going to happen. Every time I think of it, I feel sick with dread.

Mum is saying something. I don’t know what. I should listen. What if it all goes wrong and these are the last words she says to me? What if they’re the last words I ever hear? Apart from “count backwards from ten”, which doesn’t count.

I really do feel sick. I’m going to throw up, I know it. Can they still do it if I’m sick? I bet they can’t. I should tell them, so they can stop this. So they can at least pass me a bowl or something. The trouble is, I can’t force the words past the desert that calls itself my throat. Oh, well. Any minute now, I’ll be covered in vomit, and then at least this nightmare will end.

The vomit doesn’t come. My guts churn, and the ceiling whooshes, but nothing comes out. Mum squeezes my hand. She crinkles her eyes at me so I can pretend the smile is real, and to cover the tears trying to escape. I can’t smile back. I couldn’t anyway, not with what I have left of a face. But people don’t just smile with muscles and things, there’s something in there that does it, that pulls the string. Something snipped mine.

She’s gone. Mum I mean. Was Dad here? I didn’t notice. I should have. I should have paid attention. I should have realised what was important, before it was too late.

They’re gone, and now it’s just all these people, who don’t look like people. Not in their masks and scrubs, heads covered with those little caps. Today, they all seem like strangers to me. Some of them probably came in my room and checked my chart and talked to me. One of them might have been the senior doctor, for once not in his expensive suit. I wonder which will hold the knife, which will see to the anaesthetic, which will monitor my breathing and pulse so that I don’t die…

Maybe it doesn’t matter because honestly, they all look the same, like bees in a hive. All swarming around me, hard to count. All scurrying. Busy busy busy.

I’m transported again, in my mind, to the alien craft. The lights glare, just like on a spaceship. There are machines all around, huge and mysterious. If I un-focus my eyes, the doctors and nurses in their scrubs really do look like little green men…

It’s no good. I’m not in a spaceship. I’m on Earth. In a hospital. It’s the smell of it that keeps me here, the smell that is supposed to smell of clean but that we all associate with disease.

And I’m not a kid that can afford to waste time on daydreams. I should have spoken up sooner. I should have said I wasn’t sure about this. That I needed time to think. To process. That’s what grown ups do, right? And I practically am one. You can’t just rush someone into something like this, you can’t – wait! Is that her? I stiffen, but nobody notices. I can’t take my eyes off her.

I didn’t know it was going to be like this. I thought I would be asleep before they wheeled her in! I have an urge to jerk away, to leap off the bed-that’s-not-a-real-bed and run. Mum will be out there somewhere, in one of the many, many corridors, or in a little room, or in the café, sitting with a cup of coffee because it feels more normal than just waiting. I can find her, and maybe I’ll cry, and she’ll pat my arm and take me home.

I can’t even see her. Not really. Not properly. All I can see is another bed, another trolley like this one. With a person on it. But I know that’s her. The dead girl. My donor.

She’s not even dead, not really. But she is. She’s in some weird in-between state where her heart is still going, but a machine is breathing for her and her brain isn’t doing anything at all. She’s gone, whoever she was, and she’s left her shell behind, carelessly, for me to pick at, vulture-like, for the bits I need.

I feel incredibly selfish all of a sudden. Surely her mother wants to bury her with her face, doesn’t she?

An evil little voice in my brain hisses, No use to anyone underground, is it? You might as well have it.

What is the point of this? I’ll just be a different kind of hideous. I’ll be a character out of Frankenstein, a real-life Halloween character. But there are no brakes on this train, and the choice is long gone.

I feel sicker than ever. This awful, awful feeling that something bad is going to happen… is already happening… It just won’t go away. I try to count my breaths, the way Lucy taught me. It’s just one moment, Susie, she says. She’s wrong, of course. It’s lots of horrible moments, or one really long nightmarish one. Anyway, the stupid breathing technique doesn’t work. My breath is raspy. The antiseptic stink stings my nose. I try to tear my eyes away from the dead girl.

They’re wheeling me into position. Next to her. The mask is hovering over my face. Now it’s plunging down…

Someone says something. It sounds muffled and murky, like they’re speaking underwater. It’s just the masks, I tell myself. “Count backwards from ten,” they say, so I do. I start counting, and my last thought, my last hope, is that those aren’t the last words I ever hear.

*

Thank you for reading!