When I awaken, it is to the gnawing sensation of withdrawal in my gut. I don’t know how long I’ve been out, or where I am. My only clues are bright, white fluorescent lights, the smells of antiseptic solution and blood, and the occasional blurred figures in lab coats. The need for heroin is strong, and as I thrash about on what I assume is a hospital bed, nurses have to strap me down to keep me from hurting myself. The morphine they give me is nowhere near high enough a dose; my body is used to much, much more and it’s not happy to be deprived.
I cycle from states of anger and rage, to those so pitiful a newborn baby could probably have kicked my ass. When I do sleep my dreams are a hellish mixture between past and present. I see my mother, who was a waitress at a diner around the corner from the apartment she raised me in. Her mocha skin glistens in the sun and her short, neat afro is the perfect complement to a heart-shaped face. Her plump lips are painted red, because no matter where my mother went, she liked to dress like it was a special occasion, and despite having been on her feet all day, her pumps are three inches high with a metallic sparkle.
In the dreams, she spots me walking toward her and smiles, her perfect, white teeth flashing from between those red lips like a beacon that draws me to her. As I run to her, arms outstretched, I am stopped every time by a speeding Mack truck. It crushes me from the waist down and I am lying beneath it for days, unable to die because somehow, miraculously, the thousands of pounds of crushed steel trapping my body is preventing me from bleeding out completely.
I get flashes, things I think are memories, like the cries and moans of people around me, the wailing of babies and helpless children, as well as the resulting violence that ensued due to looting and riots after the blasts. I have seen all of the news reports about the chaos that engulfed the country after the explosions, and even though I was there for it all, I remember very little. Though, there is the face of a girl in my mind constantly—a brunette with a dirt-streaked face who was trapped beneath the same truck. I can remember holding her hand when I was conscious on that first day, watching as blood poured from her nose and ears.
Even as I watched her bleed to death right in front of me, I looked her in her hazel eyes and lied to her. “Everything’s going to be all right,” I said. “Someone will come. They will save us.”
By the time they show up with cranes to sift through the wreckage, it is too late for her and by then I know I’m going to die too. More than that, I want to die as I know that nothing can possibly exist from my hips down. I am mangled beyond repair and I’d rather die than live the rest of my life as half a man.
When the withdrawal finally begins to fade, I am able to pick up on the conversations happening around me as doctors and people wearing government badges come and go. I realize that I’ve undergone several surgeries and that these people are actually attempting to put me back together. Seeing as how I am too weak to lift my head, I have no way of inspecting their handiwork. I honestly have no idea if I’d even want to.
Eventually, a man I’ve never met before comes to visit. He sits beside my hospital bed wearing a worried expression, despite the many cuts and contusions across his face and the sling holding his arm against his body. As he gazes down at me and cries, I know without having to ask that this man is the father I never knew.
I ask him why he is here now, when he didn’t think twice about abandoning my mother twenty years ago. He tells me that the blasts caused him to realize that he’d lost everyone he ever loved in the world. His parents, his siblings … all dead. In a mad search for anyone he could call his own, he found me bleeding to death in a city hospital. That’s when he gives me the news that changes my life forever.
To save me, he signed me up for the Healing Hands Initiative, a branch of the new government project created by then Senator Christopher Drummond called The Restoration. This man would soon become the president that terrorizes people like me.
He tells me about the titanium bones they’ve created to replace my ribs, part of my spine, pelvis, legs and feet, as well as the never-before-used machinery that will enhance me in ways previously never thought possible. He says that it was the only way to save me from being a cripple for the rest of my life. I ask him how he could dare to make decisions about my life without consulting me, as if he knows anything about me other than the fact that we share DNA.
What the fuck does he want me to do, give him a hug and call him daddy?
He says that he just wanted to know that he hadn’t lost everyone. I tell him to get the hell out of my room and not to come back.