That was the night that undoubtedly everything changed. The night where I became less than what I was.
And all of what I currently am.
I still remember it, as vividly as if only a few seconds had passed since. The cold, unfeeling steel sliding smoothly across my flesh, the instantaneous lack of pain. The sound of soft tissue and organ disassembling, the squelching whimper of blood leaving my body. The crimson trail of evidence left in the heavy snows of a frigid night.
I looked down at what was left of myself then. All I could see was a waterwall, a crimson cascade. My body weaped tears, mourned fountains, flooding the street. A lone, flickering streetlight showed my other half, sitting to the side, displaced. My whole body was warm, my head spinning. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't muster it.
I was beyond things like real, effectual tears. My lower torso did all of my crying for me. The steady loss of blood continued to offer itself out into the street, my petite rib cage painlessly sliding across the snow as I dragged myself in horror.
"It's over." the voice said, male, stern.
I couldn't identify him. I couldn't identify much of anything but the loss of half of my body, and the waning seconds of my life. His voice simply echoed and bounced, clearly moving off of the snow with a hollow intonation that matched the temperature and conditions. I only could hear a fleeting flutter of cloth, his blue scarf wavering in the night.
He was gone. My killer, and in a later time, my creator.
For whatever reason, I still had life in me. My weak upper body wriggled and writhed. I wondered to myself if the beautiful 'purple' in my eyes had faded, if the whites had begun to take over. If the warmth spreading throughout my upper torso was due to over take me.
I had my answer soon enough.
Without a word, I collapsed into the pool of my own blood. Vacant, purposeless. At peace.
Snow covered my fading remains dispassionately, creating an arctic mosaic of blood and organ.
How macabre.
I thought that was the end of my nightmare, but truthfully this event was the beginning of a new, and much more insufferable horror.
Beep. Beep.
I opened up my eyes. Heaven sure smelled like plastics and saline. It was expectedly white, but unexpectedly bleak. Those are the thoughts of a drowsy woman though, and upon awakening I quickly realized I'd found myself in my least favorite place. The hospital.
Ever since I was a little girl, I'd avoided the hospital with a passion. I accumulated bumps and bruises, nicks and cuts - a bit more than that when I served for the Air Corp. Every single time, from child to teen, military brat to academy graduate, my father had told me:
"CC." (Which is short for Cecilia by the way.) "You have to take care of yourself. It's more important to detect what's wrong ahead of time. These situations build up, and you don't want to find yourself with something chronic."
If I hadn't been so hard headed...
If only the old man had been here now, I'd sarcastically ask him if being severed in two was the result of my karmic decision to avoid this very institution. I'd worn myself thin over the years, hardly eating, monitoring my calories and vitals. I maintained a rigorous fitness regimen, and the result was a thin, enviable frame. I was lithe, gracile, lynx-like. All the requirements of a modern military woman.
Despite my rigor, I dealt with chronic aches and pains. Popped knees, torn tendons, broken bones. All par for the course however. Or so I had told myself when I was a bit younger. Military service did that, and despite my father's soft disposition on the matter, I simply believed fighting through pain was the best way to handle myself.
I disliked admitting weakness. Which, begrudgingly, was my biggest and most obvious weakness.
What was more vulnerable than being literally half the woman I used to be? I couldn't think of a thing. That, combined with the memories of my father, brought me to tears. His tender smile, his gray, handsomely styled hair; his wistful,wise anecdotes. When I lost him, I lost more than just half of myself.
It made this separation feel as if it was nothing. My eyes welled up and a lump stuck in my throat. I shook off the tears, letting them roll down my cheeks onto the pure white linen of the hospital bed.
To my side lay a bevy of cords, wires and connectors. A massive machine with a tube pumping something somewhere. Another wire or two strewn across my chest, a few dug into my arms. Something akin to ventilator, though my mouth was free.
"Cecilia Juventus." A voice said, causing my head to turn on a dime, looking towards the front of the room.
I think part of me wanted to believe it was the ghost of my father, or some sort of comforting vision. The ghost of Christmas present, my guardian angel, a spiritual guide. My mind was no doubt overly imaginative and drug induced. The reality was, much like my surroundings, bleak.
It was simply the doctor, reading off my medical chart, with a neutral gaze. He was short, tan in color, and a bit rotund. He wore round, thin glasses, with his hair parted to the left and with seemingly just the perfect amount of gel. It seemed as if he was always a doctor, 24/7, year round. As if he'd been tasked with being on Earth to do this very thing, and his serious glance and a closet of lab coats came with the assignment.
"How?" I said, lacking any poise or grace. That would have to be forgiven, as perhaps that had left me when I was traumatically separated from the other half of my body.
He placed the clipboard at his side and gave me a look that essentially told me everything. I could almost guess his words. He would say something about how it was a miracle that I was alive, how the state had done everything that it could do, and warn me not to get hysterical over the results.
Except there was no hysteria left in me. I'd seen the horror with my own eyes, watching my body separate from itself. My legs squirm and writhe on the damnable snow as my upper body tried to drag itself to safety. The image of my lower half acting on its own caused me to cringe, turning away from him before he even opened his mouth.
"You are alive due to nothing short of a small miracle." He said, right on cue. "Based on your service and track record to the State, you have been maintained by our best efforts."
His voice lacked anything. My ears searched and pleaded for a thread of emotion, but found his tone reminiscent of an empty mall or condemned building. Threadbare. It was as sterile and cacophonous as the hospital room, as clear and acute as the intravenous device above. I rolled my eyes out of his immediate sight and let him go on.
"I have to warn you not to get upset."
Oh, really?
"We were unable to preserve the other half of your body, as it was lost to infection. Our efforts were spent desperately trying to save what we could."
Right. Nothing about his intonation sounded desperate, but then again, he wasn't an EMT on the scene. He didn't see it. Feel it. Know it.
He was little more than a hands-on spectator, if that. Even fixing what was left of me was undoubtedly less gruesome and crude than the actual event.
"We are looking for a suitable replacement, but whole lower bodies are difficult to find." He paused, and I turned back to him, my eyes apparently full of disdain and hatred. His eyebrow beat a somewhat fearful twitch, but it quickly faded.
I had peace when I was dead, at the least. Almost dead. You could call it half-dead. This was the inverse.
Now I was half-alive.
Whatever it was, it was horrific already. Not only was I merely a half a woman, a torso, a drug addled semi corpse. I was now on the waiting list for a new body. Amazing.
"State budget can only go so far for a veteran, hm?" I mumbled, possessing snark that moments ago I'd consider unsummonable.
He couldn't, or didn't hear me, and he tapped his pen against the clipboard, choosing to speak over, through and past me. It was a stiff reminder that just because you had to tend to someone, it didn't mean you had to care.
"A leg, perhaps. A knee, definitely. A woman's entire lower half is hard to reproduce, even with the technology we have today. You have a choice."
Oh, do I? I didn't choose to be saved - not like this.
"We can grow a new half organically, but that will take a few years. You will have to remain here, under constant supervision."
Or?
"Or…" he looked away, and for the first time I could detect some real hesitation.
"We could find you a replacement on the military market. As you know, the State can only find a suitable physical match, you'll be guaranteed little else. If your body accepts the surgery and corresponding symbiote…."
A sharp inhalation of breath. Perhaps he did have feelings after all.
"Your rehab, Ms. Juventus, will be grueling at the least."
I watched him look back at me, tapping the clipboard. If I had my choice, I'd opt to rip out this jungle of cords attached to my body and roll around to my death on the floor. What else could I possible feel?
The option of an organically grown body was a disgusting proposition - I'd be beyond 60 years of age before the half was even partially grown. The military replacement market was equally, if not more horrific. These were human parts that were in terrible condition. War throwaways. You weren't guaranteed anything, that was indeed correct.
I hated feeling as if I was being done a favor.
I sighed, deeply wounded. The machines around me disgusted and terrified me. I still feared looking beneath the blanket, it's light blue covering and thick nature giving the insinuation that i had legs.
I had to ponder if it was being done intentionally, some kind of psychological game to make me feel at ease.
The Doctor could see me staring, lost in thought, analyzing and outlining where my legs used to be.
"Birdie." I said, absently.
"Excuse me, Ms. Juventus?"
"They used to call me Birdie. Because of how thin my legs were."
No answer.
"It was all muscle though, trust me."
I laughed. Not that sort of laugh that a person gives when something is indeed funny, but that kind of laugh you give when you lose a job. Or you get evicted. Or you see a beautiful woman and summon up the courage to speak, only to realize she's taken. Or crazy. Or both.
It was a laugh of concession. Mr. Emotionless had been laughing that way his whole life. At least, most likely.
Ignoring me, once again, the short man sucked his teeth and tapped the clipboard.
"So which will it be, Ms. Juventus?"
"Market."
My voice offered nothing. I sounded so ineffectual and nonchalant that he had to look back at me to make sure I hadn't really regressed into psychosis.
"I said….market."
I gritted my teeth as he wrote on his clipboard and looked me over. He gave me the look of having seen this one million times. Perhaps he would have reacted better had I gotten down on my kn-
Well, you know. Proverbially gotten down on my knees and thanked him for saving me. Both of us knew this was merely transactional. I didn't have any family, not any more, and my lack of regard for what was left of my life was quite clear.
He felt he'd be wasting his time with me, and he'd undoubtedly do his search in a sloth like fashion.
Serving the State and being in service to the State were two different things. When you served, you might as well be a God. When you were in their care, you found yourself searching for that very God you thought you were.
"Very well then." He said, likely thinking of the organic body I could have spent years asking for. This hospital could have hung enormous debt over me in that time. Owning me more than they already did.
I had picked the most rational option. His disappointment wasn't tough to see, buried under his glass-thin bedside manner. He probably wished I didn't know the system as well as I did. Or that my Lotazimol dosage was just a tad higher.
I was fine with a throwaway body - after all, my beauty never lay in my most apparent features. Tender, fuchsia locks. Toned, fit physique.
I was told I had eyes like coral puddles. The kind that spring small forms of infinitesimal life in a low tide. The type that reflections auburn memories back into the sky, conversing with the sun. Like the mother that I never knew.
To others, they were purple.
To me, I could only see a deep, wanting blue.
It was what was in those eyes that made me a woman, broken spirit and all.
It was a grit, a determination. A fascination with being the best of that last, and the last of the best.
It was what brought me to the Air Corp six years ago.
The only thing that gave me hope was that. That invisible, indescribable part of myself that no one could take away, not even those I loved, or those I lost.
It beat on, and it is perhaps how I "sat" here today with some remaining fragment of my pride.
"Doc-"
He was gone.
No time table. No answer.
No compassion.
That sounded like the State.