Turtles All the Way Down

  "Her name is Elena," I said quietly.

  "You think it's hard for you and I'm sure it is from inside your head, but . . . you can't get it, because your privileges are just oxygen to you. I thought the money, I thought it would make us the same. I've always been trying to keep up with you, trying to type as fast on my phone as you can on your laptop, and I thought it would make us closer, but it just made me feel . . . like you're spoiled, kinda. Like, you've had this all along, and you can't even know how much easier it makes everything, because you don't ever think about anybody else's life."

  I felt like I might throw up. We merged onto the highway. My head was careening--I hated myself, hated her, thought she was right and wrong, thought I deserved it and didn't.

  "You think it's easy for me?"

  "I don't mean--"

  I turned to her. "STOP TALKING. Jesus Christ, you haven't shut up in ten years. I'm sorry it's not fun hanging out with me because I'm stuck in my head so much, but imagine being actually stuck inside my head with no way out, with no way to ever take a break from it, because that's my life. To use Mychal's clever little analogy, imagine eating NOTHING BUT mustard, being stuck with mustard ALL THE TIME and if you hate me so much then stop asking me to--"

  "HOLMESY!" she shouted, but too late. I looked up only in time to see that I'd kept accelerating while the traffic had slowed. I couldn't even get my foot to the brake before we slammed into the SUV in front of us. A moment later, something slammed into us from behind. Tires screeching. Honking. Another crash, this one smaller. Then silence.

  I was trying to catch my breath, but I couldn't, because every breath hurt.

  I swore, but it just came out as ahhhhggg. I reached for the door only to realize my seat belt was still on. I looked over at Daisy, who was looking back at me. "Are you okay!" she shouted. I realized I was groaning with each exhalation. My ears were ringing. "Yeah," I said. "You?" The pain made me feel dizzy. Darkness encroached at the edge of my vision. "I think so," she said. The world narrowed into a tunnel as I struggled for breath. "Stay in the car, Holmesy. You're hurt. Do you have your phone? We gotta call 911."

  The phone. I unbuckled my seat belt and pushed my door open. I tried to stand, but the pain brought me back into Harold's seat. Fuck. Harold. A woman wearing a business suit knelt down to my eye level. She told me not to move, but I had to. I lifted myself up, and the pain blinded me for a minute, but then the black dots scattered so I could see the damage.

  Harold's trunk was as crumpled as his hood--he looked like a seismograph reading, except for the passenger compartment, which was perfectly intact. He never failed me, not even when I failed him.

  I leaned on Harold's side as I staggered back to the trunk. I tried to lift the trunk gate, but it was crushed. I started pounding on the trunk with my hands, screaming with every breath, "Fuck oh God, oh God, oh God. He's totaled. He's totaled."

  "You're kidding me," Daisy said as she walked to the back of Harold. "You're upset about the goddamned car? It's a car, Holmesy. We almost died, and you're worried about your car?"

  I pounded on the trunk again, until Harold's license plate slid off, but I couldn't get it open.

  "Are you crying about the car?"

  I could see the latch; I just couldn't get it pried open, and whenever I tried to lift, the pain in my ribs made my vision cloud up, but I finally wrested the trunk open enough to reach my arm inside. I fumbled around until I found my dad's phone. The screen was shattered.

  I held the power button to turn it on, but beneath the branches of broken glass, the screen only glowed a cloudy gray. I pulled myself back to the driver's-side door and slumped into Harold's seat, my forehead on the steering wheel.

  I knew the pictures were backed up, that nothing had really been lost. But it was his phone, you know? He'd held it, talked into it. Taken my picture with it.

  I ran my thumb across the shattered glass and cried until I felt a hand on my shoulder. "My name's Franklin. You've been in a car accident. I'm a firefighter. Try not to move. An ambulance is on its way. What's your name?"

  "Aza. I'm not hurt."

  "Just hang tight for me, Aza. Do you know what day it is?"

  "It's my dad's phone," I said. "This is his phone, and . . ."

  "Is this his car? Are you worried he'll be upset? Aza, I've been doing this for a long time, and I can promise, your dad's not mad at you. He's relieved you're okay."

  I felt like I was getting ripped apart from the inside, the supernova of my selves simultaneously exploding and collapsing. It hurt to cry, but I hadn't cried in so long, and I didn't really want to stop. "Where are you having pain?" he asked.

  I pointed toward the right side of my rib cage. A woman approached, and they began a conversation about whether I'd need a backboard. I tried to say that I felt dizzy and then felt myself falling, even though there was really nowhere to fall.

  --

  I woke up staring at the ceiling of an ambulance, strapped to a backboard, a man holding an oxygen mask over my face, the sirens distant, my ears still ringing. Then falling again, down and down, and then on a hospital bed in a hallway, Mom over me, makeup dripping from her red eyes. "My baby, oh Lord. Baby, are you all right?"

  "I'm fine," I said. "I think I just cracked a rib or something. Dad's phone is broken."

  "It's okay. We have everything backed up. They called me and told me you were hurt but they didn't tell me if you were . . ." she said, and then started crying. She sort of collapsed into Daisy, which is when I noticed Daisy was there, a red welt on her collarbone.

  I turned away from them and looked up at the bright fluorescent light above my bed, feeling the hot tears on my face, and finally my mom said, "I can't lose you, too."

  A woman came in and took me away to get a CT scan, and I was sort of relieved to be away from both my mom and Daisy for a while, not to feel the swirl of fear and guilt over being such a failure as a daughter and a friend.

  "Car accident?" the woman asked as she pushed me past the word kindness painted in calligraphy on the wall.

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Those seat belts will hurt ya while saving your life," she said.

  "Yeah. Am I gonna need antibiotics?"

  "I'm not your doctor. She'll be in after we get the test."

  They put something in my IV that made me feel like I was pissing my pants, then ran me through the cylinder of the CT machine, and eventually returned me to the shivering nerves of my mother. I couldn't shake the crack in her voice when she said she couldn't lose me, too. I felt her nerves as she paced around the room, texting with my aunt and uncle in Texas, pressing long breaths through pursed lips, dabbing at her eye makeup with a tissue.

  Daisy didn't say much, for once. "It's okay if you want to go home," I said to her at one point.

  "Do you want me to go home?" she asked.

  "Up to you," I said. "Seriously."

  "I'll stay," she answered, and sat quietly, her eyes glancing from me to my mom and back again.

  NINETEEN

  "GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS," announced a woman in navy-blue scrubs upon entering the room. "Bad news, you have a lacerated liver. Good news, it's a mild laceration. We'll watch you closely for a couple days, so we can make sure your bleeding doesn't increase, and you'll be sore for several weeks, but I'm ordering you pain medication now so you'll be comfortable. Questions."

  "She's going to be okay?" my mom asked.

  "Yes. If the bleeding worsens, surgery will be necessary, but based on the radiologist's report, I think that's very unlikely. As liver lacerations go, this is about as good as they get. Your daughter is really quite lucky, in the scheme of things."

  "She's going to be okay," my mom said again.

  "As I said, we'll keep a close eye on her for a couple days, and then she'll have about a week of bed rest. Within six or so weeks, she should be her old self."

  My mother dissolved into tears of gratitude as I turned over that phrase, her old self. "Do I need antibiotic
s?" I asked.

  "You shouldn't. If we had to do surgery, you would, but as of now, no." A shiver of relief rolled through me. No antibiotics. No increased risk of C. diff. Just needed to get the hell out of here, then.

  The doctor asked me about my medications, and I told her. She made some notes in the chart and then said, "Someone will be by shortly to take you upstairs, and we'll get you something for the pain before that."

  "Wait," I said. "What do you mean upstairs?"

  "As I said, you'll need to spend a couple nights here so that you can--"

  "Wait, no no no no. I can't stay in the hospital."

  "Baby," my mom said. "You have to."

  "No, I really can't. I really, this is, like, the one place I absolutely cannot stay tonight. Please. Just let us go home."

  "That would be inadvisable."

  Oh no. Listen, it's okay. Most people admitted to the hospital go home healthier than they left it. Almost everyone, really. C. diff infections are only common in postsurgical patients. You won't even be on antibiotics. Oh no no no no no no no.

  --

  Of all the places to end up in the tightening gyre, here we were, on the fourth floor of a hospital in Carmel, Indiana.

  Daisy left once I'd gotten upstairs but Mom stayed, lying on her side in the reclining chair next to my hospital bed, facing me.

  I could feel her breath on me that night as she slept, her lips parted, smudged eyes closed, the microbes from her lungs floating across my cheek. I couldn't roll over onto my side because even with the medication the pain was paralyzing, and when I turned my head, her breath just blew my hair across my face, so I lived with it.

  She stirred, her eyes locked to mine. "You okay?"

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Does it hurt?" I nodded. "You know Sekou Sundiata, in a poem, he said the most important part of the body 'ain't the heart or the lungs or the brain. The biggest, most important part of the body is the part that hurts.'" Mom put her hand on my wrist and fell back asleep.

  Even though I was pretty high on morphine or whatever, I couldn't sleep. I could hear beeping in the rooms next to mine, and it wasn't particularly dark, and well-meaning strangers kept showing up to pull blood out of my body and/or check my blood pressure, and most of all, I knew: I knew that C. diff was invading my body, that it was floating in the air. On my phone, I paged through patients' stories of how they went into the hospital for a gallbladder surgery or a kidney stone, and they'd come out destroyed.

  The thing about C. diff is that it's inside of everyone. We all have it, lurking there; it's just that sometimes it grows out of control and takes over and begins attacking your insides. Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes it happens because you ingest someone else's C. diff, which is slightly different from your own, and it starts mixing with yours, and boom.

  I felt these little jolts through my arms and legs as my brain whirred through thoughts, trying to figure out how to make this okay. My IV line beeping. Couldn't even say when I last changed the Band-Aid on my finger. The C. diff both inside me and around me. It could survive months outside a body, waiting for a new host. The combined weight of all large animals in the world--human, cow, penguin, shark--is around 1.1 billion tons. The combined weight of the earth's bacteria is 400 billion tons. They overwhelm us.

  For some reason, I started hearing that song "Can't Stop Thinking About You" in my head. The more I thought about that song, the weirder it got. Like, the chorus--can't stop can't stop can't stop thinking about you--imagines that it is somehow sweet or romantic to be unable to turn your thoughts away from someone, but there's nothing romantic or pretty about a boy thinking about you the way you think about C. diff. Can't stop thinking. Trying to find something solid to hold on to in this rolling sea of thought. The spiral painting. Daisy hates you and she should. Davis's microbe-soaked tongue on your neck. Your mom's warm breaths. Hospital gown clinging to your back soaked with sweat. And in the way-down deep, some me screaming, get me out of here get me out of here get me out please I'll do anything, but the thoughts just keep spinning, the tightening gyre, the jogger's mouth, the stupidity of Ayala, Aza, and Holmesy and all my irreconcilable selves, my self-absorption, the filth in my gut, think about anything other than yourself you disgusting narcissist.

  I took my phone and texted Daisy: I'm so sorry I haven't been a good friend. I can't stop thinking about it.

  She wrote back immediately: It's fine. How are you?

  Me: I do care about your life and I'm sorry I haven't shown it.

  Daisy: Holmesy calm down everything is fine I'm sorry we fought we'll make up it will be fine.

  Me: I'm just really sorry. I can't think straight.

  Daisy: Stop apologizing. Are you on sweet pain meds?

  I didn't reply, but I couldn't stop thinking about Daisy, about Ayala, and most of all about the bugs inside and outside of me, and I knew I was being selfish by even making a big deal out of it, making other people's real C. diff infections about my hypothetical one. Reprehensible. Pinched my finger with my thumbnail to attest to this moment's reality, but can't escape myself. Can't kiss anyone, can't drive a car, can't function in the actual sensate populated world. How could I even fantasize about going to some school far away where you pay a fortune to live in dorms full of strangers, with communal bathrooms and cafeterias and no private spaces to be crazy in? I'd be stuck here for college, if I could ever get my thinking straightened enough to attend. I'd live in my house with Mom, and then afterward, too. I could never become a functioning grown-up like this; it was inconceivable that I'd ever have a career. In job interviews they'd ask me, What's your greatest weakness? and I'd explain that I'll probably spend a good portion of the workday terrorized by thoughts I'm forced to think, possessed by a nameless and formless demon, so if that's going to be an issue, you might not want to hire me.

  Thoughts are just a different kind of bacteria, colonizing you. I thought about the gut-brain information axis. Maybe you're already gone. The prisoners run the jail now. Not a person so much as a swarm. Not a bee, but the hive.

  I couldn't stand my mother's breath on my face. My palms were sweating. I felt my self slipping away. You know how to deal with this. "Can you turn over?" I whispered, but she responded only with breath. You just need to stand up.

  I picked up my phone to text Daisy, but now the letters blurred out on the screen, and the full panic gripped me. See the hand sanitizer mounted on the wall near the door. It's the only way that's stupid if it worked alcoholics would be the healthiest people in the world you're just going to sanitize your hands and your mouth please fucking think about something else stand up I HATE BEING STUCK INSIDE YOU you are me I am not you are we I am not you want to feel better you know how to feel better it'll just make me barf you'll be clean you can be sure I can never be sure stand up not even a person just a deeply flawed line of reasoning you want to stand up the doctor said stay in bed and the last thing needed is a surgery you will get up and wheel your IV cart let me up out of this wheel your IV cart to the front of the room please and you will pump the hand sanitizer foam into your hands, clean them carefully, and then you will pump more foam into your hands and you will put that foam in your mouth, swish it around your filthy teeth and gums. But that stuff has alcohol in it that my damaged liver will have to process DO YOU WANT TO DIE OF C. DIFF no but this is not rational THEN GET UP AND WHEEL YOUR IV CART TO THE CONTAINER OF HAND SANITIZER MOUNTED ON THE GODDAMNED WALL YOU IDIOT. Please let me go. I'll do anything. I'll stand down. You can have this body. I don't want it anymore. You will stand up. I will not. I am my way not my will. You will stand up. Please. You will go to the hand sanitizer. Cogito, ergo non sum. Sweating you already have it nothing hurts like this you've already got it stop please God stop you'll never be free of this you'll never be free of this you'll never get your self back you'll never get your self back do you want to die of this do you want to die of this because you will you will you will you will you will you will.

  I p
ulled myself to standing. For a moment, I thought I might faint as the pain blazed through me. I grabbed hold of the IV pole and took a few shuffling steps. I heard my mom stirring. I didn't care. Pressed the dispenser, rubbed the foam all through my hands. Pressed it again, and shoved a scoop of it into my mouth.

  "Aza, what are you doing?" my mom asked. I was so fucking embarrassed, but I did it again, because I had to. "Aza, stop it!"

  I heard my mom getting up, and knew my window was closing, so I took a third shot of the foam and stuffed it into my mouth, gagging. A spasm of nausea lurched through me, and I vomited, the pain in my ribs blinding, as Mom grabbed me by the arm. There was yellow bile all over my pale blue hospital gown.

  A voice came from inside a speaker somewhere behind me. "This is Nurse Wallace."

  "My daughter is vomiting. I think she drank hand sanitizer."

  I knew how disgusting I was. I knew. I knew now for sure. I wasn't possessed by a demon. I was the demon.

  TWENTY

  THE NEXT MORNING, you wake up in a hospital bed, staring up at ceiling tiles. Gingerly, carefully, you assess your own consciousness for a moment. You wonder, Is it over?

  "The hospital food didn't look so good, so I made you some breakfast," your mother says. "Cheerios." You look down at your body, rendered mostly formless by a bleached white blanket.

  You say, "Cheerios aren't something you make," and your mom laughs. At the end of your bed you see a huge bouquet of flowers resting on a table, ostentatiously huge, complete with a crystal vase. "From Davis," your mother says. Nearer to you, hovering above your formless body, a tray of food. You swallow. You look at the Cheerios, bobbing in milk. Your body hurts. A thought crosses your mind: God only knows what you inhaled while you were asleep.