Dimly, I recognized the sound that hammered in my ear drums. My uncle had been in the hospital. We'd gone to see him. He'd had a heart monitor.
Who was in the hospital now? I must have dozed off in the waiting room. Embarrassed, I opened my eyes, hoping whoever I was visiting hadn't noticed me sleeping when I should have been talking to them.
I was blind in one eye.
But not so blind that I couldn't see the stump of my left arm, and the way the sheets sank where my right leg should have been. Not so blind that I couldn't see that half of my left leg was gone, that I'd lost it from the knee down. Not so blind that I didn't notice my right hand was missing...
"Oh, God!"
But the sound didn't come out like that. It came out strange, mangled. I felt my lips form sounds and I could tell that they were not whole. They didn't fit together -- they were twisted and ruined and scabbed over, and they didn't close entirely, didn't form a line. They formed a wavy S with gaps in the middle that showed my broken teeth.
Isn't that swearing? Why did I swear? Mother doesn't like swearing...
Insanity, I'd lost my limbs and I'd gained a shaking, insane voice in the back of my mind. Insane. I felt the insanity. I'd seen the insanity before, where had I seen it?
Delusional.
"Oh, my baby..." The voice of an older woman was suddenly sharp and hysterical in my ears. I heard an explosive cry from the right. "My Taylor, my Taylor..."
"The fire did extensive damage," a male voice said, also on my right. It was quiet and subdued. "Obviously."
"My husband... must have been..." The woman was sobbing. "He should have come with me, he should have come to the party... this wouldn't have happened... he was so upset, he stayed and he didn't tell me why and I thought he was there and Taylor... Taylor..."
The grief was heartbreaking. Who was the woman, who was the woman who kept calling for me? Why did she care? Why would anyone care about the mangled monster lying in the too-white bed?
"Mommy?" I whimpered, and the guttural word was nothing close to what I'd wanted to say, but the woman entered my field of vision for a moment, moving to hug me.
The doctor stopped her. "The pain will kill her," he muttered.
"My baby..." A long moan. She sank back, and then I couldn't see her, because my right eye saw nothing.
I screamed. My voice was hellish. The doctor flinched and the woman wailed.
I felt a needle enter what was left of my right arm, and I screamed louder, and then quite suddenly everything was black.
I moaned softly as I rose from my unconscious state.
My mother was next to me, and she hugged me, gently, and I cried out in pain. She released me slowly, careful not to pull out the IV stuck deep in my right arm. "Oh, Taylor."
"Khar... hark kakk... enn..." The animal sounds, strained with sobs and with only a shadow of my ruined voice, sounded nothing like the desperate "Mom, what happened?" I'd been trying so hard to get out. With a shock, I realized I couldn't pronounce any sound that needed my lips to press together. She still understood.
"I... went to that party, at my friend's..." She swallowed. "Your father went, but he came back home... he... must have been drinking and smoking again... blew up the study, burned down the house. His liquor and his lighters -- he's dead, Taylor."
I nodded as well as I could. I wouldn't have even known he was home if I hadn't checked the study. What had I checked the study? Because of the events at the construction site a town over? Because I needed to see something normal, something real? I would have just assumed he'd stayed at the party otherwise, and I never would have known how the fire happened... What would have been better, knowing or not knowing? Knowing my own father had done this to me or... just... never understanding?
But I'd known he was dead. How had I known that?
Your father is dead. Your mother isn't here.
I remembered her, then. I remembered the fire and the heat and the pain and the girl with the coarse brown fur and the long blond hair. I remembered seeing myself in the mirror, except that there was no mirror, just a girl with my eyes and my hair and my skin and my smile, except she hadn't smiled, she'd said she wanted to kill me. Why, why, why didn't you kill me...?
That had been the insanity, her insanity, and now it was mine.
I was sobbing, sobbing in rough gasps and sounding for all the world like a dying animal. My mother wrapped her arms around me, and I shrank against her, burying my face in her shoulder, ignoring the pain until my muscles gave out and I fell back onto the bed. Then I whimpered, but it was indiscernable from the sounds I was already making.
"Your friends have been here," she whispered. "Jessie and Keith. They..."
They won't be back, I wanted to say, but I didn't want to face what my voice had become. I know they won't be back, Mom, you don't have to pretend. I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm a little monster.
"K... ren...?"
"Yes. Keith was here," my mother repeated.
But I wasn't asking for Keith. I was asking for Brent. I wanted to see him, and I wanted to ask him if Patrick was okay, if Patrick was back, because Patrick was the only person in the world who would have understood the completeness, the joy I'd felt last night when my world exploded and that voice rang in my head. No joy now. No illusions. No completeness. But I wanted to tell him...
But it wasn't last night, was it? How long had I been unconscious? How could I ask?
How could I have told Patrick anyway?
What joy? What completeness? You don't even have your limbs, Taylor, not anymore. You'll never be complete. You're not beautiful anymore.
"You'll be okay," Mom said (No, not Mom, Mommy, can I call you Mommy? Can I call you Mommy again...?), and she gently touched my head. I felt her touch on my scalp -- no hair in the way except a few rough, singed strands. (This isn't happening to me.) "You'll be okay." (No, I won't, I won't ever be okay again, Mommy... Mommy, hold me?) "I promise. They'll make it better." (Stop saying "okay," I'll never be okay.) "Taylor, can you hear me?" (Don't cry, Mommy... Am I insane? Of course I'm insane... fire makes people insane, Patrick's fire made him insane and her fire made her insane, too, but is that different? No, it wasn't, their fire was in their eyes and my fire was in my eye too...)
I was sinking into my sleep, my numbing, glorious sleep again, but I heard her last words anyway. "The Sharing is coming, they'll help you. You'll be okay again."
I clutched at those words for one moment, and then I fell asleep.