Finding Keys
Cloates awakens on rough linen with sparking duets from the fragmentation lingering on his retinas.
He moves to sit, but stays stuck, his limbs inert. His eyes will not shift from phosphorescent shrapnel tracks scoring long lines through rods and cones in multiple parallel and scorched trajectories.
He feels alert.
Arnold Cloates tries again to move his legs, to clench a fist, to even open his eyes, the actions akin to gaps, like phantom limbs. Is that it? Has he become an amputee here against the desert wastes? Have they removed the ribboned remains of his shins and thighs, of his arms and hands, all skinned and torn by jagged shards from the hidden bomb’s aluminum and carbon casing?
Even his eyes?
Whispers drift. At least he can hear. Through the phone he’ll listen to Amy singing new songs she learns at kindergarten hear her brag about how smart she’ll be when she starts at Paige Elementary come spring. And listen to Christel complain about shoveling snow, since Arnie is still posted on his second tour.
He wonders if the explosive left stumps. He’d happily shovel with awkward prosthetics.
“This is twenty days,” someone says. A woman? One of the doctors, he thinks, remembering the frank and brutal check-up he was given when he flew from McPherson.
Cloates strives to speak, but his lips remain shut. In trying for his mouth, he feels something pushing air into him, then letting it out. He tries holding his breath, but his lungs continue to inhale, exhale, the space filling and unfilling by some robotic bellow.
“Twenty days?” he says, but his mouth stays still, no sound escapes.
“He’s showing brain activity,” a male voice says.
“Coming out of the coma?”
Cloates senses the woman nearer. Feels a hand on his, squeezing.
“Perhaps,” the man says. “But there are no other changes. He’s still breathing with the machine.”
Cloates tries to squeeze back. If he can feel her hand on his, then he still has a hand, doesn’t he? No amputation? He attempts squeezing again. Nothing.
“Locked in,” the woman murmurs.
“Mrs. Cloates?”
Arnold’s body tries to gasp, but only inhales pumped air. How can she be in the desert?
“He’s in perfect health,” Christel says.
“Except for the head injury.”
Twenty days, Cloates thinks. Not in the desert at all but back home in Baltimore.
“Locked in,” she says again. “We talked about that. A disconnect between his brain and his body.”
“I mentioned the possibility.”
“So he’s conscious, in there?”
“If so, he can’t move. Can’t tell us.”
Cloates imagines the doctor shrugging.
“We can start therapy,” Christel says, squeezing his fingers again.
Arnie imagines holding Amy’s tiny hand.
The doctor sighs. “Each case of that syndrome is unique. There are no therapies.”
“We’ll think of something,” she says.
We will, Cloates thinks, straining to clutch Christel’s hand.
“There’s nothing more we can–” the doctor breaks off as Christel yelps. “What?”
“He squeezed back,” Christel says.
