October 23.
My heart is pounding and I'm sweating badly, but it's from exercise, not panic.
"Elliot?"
I'm on a bike in the gym of the hospital's inpatient rehabilitation facility and Elliot is beside me, lounging on a stool. I just asked him a question. And he's frowning at the other kids, some on treadmills, others on bikes, a few spread-eagled on massage benches, framed by the glowing green of the floor-to-ceiling blinds.
"Elliot?"
This time, he catches my eye and nods. "If I were a geek, I would say, I concur."
"You concur?" I breathe.
"Yeah: People are looking."
Elliot's on a two-week-long visit-to me, but also to Aula. Before he returns to London, and to his interrupted degree in English, I want his opinion. (And he owes me, what with his confession over dry croissants in Les Baguettes, the ground-floor cafe, this morning: "I was telling Aula's friends I had to fly back out because my sister's gone into rehab, and I haven't even seen where she's staying. They asked if it was drugs or alcohol…So I had to tell them you'd been communing with jaguar spirits in Guatemala and who knew what you'd been taking. Just remember the jaguars if you meet her.")
"He's looking at me again," I whisper to Elliot between snatched breaths.
"…Yeah."
"You're doing great! Keep it up!" Vinnie, one of the nurse-trainers, pumps a fist at me on his way down the line of bikes. "Great work! Push it, now. Push it!"
"What if I get a seizure?" I ask him.
"The ER is thirty-eight seconds away, Rosa. Move it."
"You utter cock," Elliot says.
A couple of the other patients' relatives look around sharply. Vinnie, who was ecstatic when he discovered that we have a shared fondness for Top Gear and has fruitlessly tried to engage me in car-related chat on several occasions, only grins. The insult's become an in-joke that extends to him, as well.
Les Baguettes…
The rehab gym…
For three weeks now, I've been out among other people.
My progress, Dr. Monzales told me at a meeting in his office the day before I was transferred here-a wing at the other end of the hospital from my pre-op and isolation care rooms-has been "really, truly wonderful."
I do have weakness in my right arm and leg, which is "probably permanent," he says. Despite my daily meds, there remains a chance that my body will reject my brain-but that will always be a concern.
"So why can't I move to the apartment?" I asked, looking at Mum.
"This is still our plan," Dr. Monzales said. "It will be your halfway house, Rosa; nothing has changed. But not quite yet. Remember, you still have about a fifteen percent chance of suffering a dangerous epileptic-type seizure."
"So how low can the risk actually get?"
He said, "Realistically…maybe fifteen percent."
"So…"
"It's been a long time since you were around other people your age," Mum put in. "In the rehab wing, you can interact, but in a safe environment. Just a few more months, Rosa. That's all."
"A few more months?"
"And the ER will be close by, just on the off chance of a seizure," Dr. Monzales said. "But wait, Rosa, until you see the IRF! You will be in the section for patients aged fifteen to eighteen. There is a classroom for studies. But also bowling, music, video games. It is all possible here in the hospital."
So now I have a new room (good-bye, beige fantasy; hello, palette of greens) in this semi-self-contained wing for kids on a residential rehab program.
Jane was sent over with me, to keep a close eye. But none of the other nurses working here know about my surgery. As far as they're concerned, I'm just another traumatic brain injury patient.
None of them know about me.
Not Vinnie; not Dawn, my new educational specialist; not Dmitri, the Greek-American Manhattanite who skate-boarded right into a Rolls-Royce on Fifth Avenue; or Jess, the tiny, big-eyed sixteen-year-old from Philadelphia, who dived into a pool, hit the bottom, and sucked in water for four minutes; or Jared, whose swept-up blond hair makes me think of one of the boys in One Direction-I can't remember his name-and who had a stroke at seventeen, and now spends half his life engaged in medically sanctioned gaming, because it strengthens the muscles in his left hand and arm.
Dmitri, Jess, and Jared all have rooms on my corridor.
My first encounter with Dmitri came as I was limping a little into my new room, and he was limping out of his. "Hey! Welcome. So, I'm off to a meeting on the value of graphic wall design in a pediatric inpatient setting. You have any strong opinions you'd like me to pass on?"
"On the value of graphic wall design?"
"In a pediatric inpatient setting."
"I don't think so."
"Yeah, me neither. If they do the place out in, like, black zigzags, I'll blame you…?" "Rosa."
"Dmitri." Before turning to go, he said, "It's on you, okay?"
He was smiling.
"Rosa?"
Another kid-skinny, in low-slung jeans-was heading along the corridor from the opposite direction, earbuds dangling.
"Hey," he said. "I'm Jared."
I was halfway into my room. He came to stand by me-a little too close-and leaned against the wall. "You just moving in? It's movie night tomorrow night. Blade Runner. You want to come?"
Was he just being inclusive with a new girl on the corridor? Was he asking me on a date? I know my cheeks flushed. I felt them get hot.
"Um, I'm not really into sci-fi," I told him. "But thanks."
He shrugged. "Dmitri was asking you about wall design?"
I nodded. "Yeah."
"There won't actually be a meeting-you should know that. It'll be his way of making you think he's important or something."
"Oh."
"You're new. It's only fair to warn you. At some point, he'll tell you about his cousin who's supposed to be, like, this top fashion designer in Milan. Only she works in a shop."
"So you and Dmitri have been here a while?"
"Both nearly two weeks into an eight-week program. You on that, too?"
"…Yeah," I said.
"Okay, so you want to know anything, just ask me. I'm in room eight. Try me anytime."
"Thanks."
"Sure."
He was still standing there, watching me intently, as I slipped inside my room, thinking, Was that weird just because I'm not used to normal life?
Right now, Jared's on the exercise bike three down from me, his scrawny calves pumping. Dmitri's just clambered down from one of the treadmills. (He hasn't mentioned the cousin yet.) Jess is being helped out of a gait-training harness by her mum. It's Jared who keeps glancing at me. But actually, Dmitri looks at me, too. So do some of the others. There must be ten patients in the gym right now and twenty in total in this section of the rehab wing, and I'm conscious of their eyes often on me.
"So?" I ask Elliot again.
He shrugs slightly. "Yeah. I told you: They're looking at you."
"More than normal?"
"Yeah."
"I've been here three weeks."
"Yeah."
"So you think…?"
"Yeah," he says.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, they're looking at you because-"
We finish the sentence together.
I say: "They know."
He says: "You're cute."
I stare at him.
He shrugs. "It's true. Aula tells me. I've shown her a few pictures."
I'm cute?
I glance back at Jared, then at Dmitri.
I know that after I'm discharged-at which point this "trial," as they call it, of brain transplantation will be deemed complete-the hospital is planning to tell the world what they've done. But my identity as that patient will not be revealed, Dr. Monzales has assured me.
Given all the looks, though, I'd been wondering if somehow the secret got out.
"You don't think they know?"
Elliot jerks his head toward Jared. "That boy down there-he's not looking at you with what I would term medical curiosity."
I'm cute?
A small white towel is draped over the handlebars of my bike. I grab it and throw it over my head so it hangs down either side, blocking out all the faces. I listen to the wheeze of my own breathing. It's stifling in here. Suddenly, my mind feels as overheated as my body. The blinds stop me from properly seeing the midday autumn sunshine, but I can feel it. I'm burning up.
At the back of the room is a glass door. It's not locked. I've seen people come and go. I'm supposed to stay inside. But now I'm gripped by a drive to escape from the rehab wing, to get out.
I pull off the towel and chuck it at Elliot. He fumbles the catch.
"Distract the nurses," I tell him.
He frowns.
"Ten minutes," I say. "That's all I want."
I walk away from the line of bikes, toward the door that leads to the spreading rectangle of parkland that's adjacent to this wing and the broad-branched trees that I've watched other rehab patients practicing their stretching and their Tai Chi and their yoga beneath.
"Rosa," Elliot whispers hard.
I don't look back. Perhaps he's worried. But as I stride on toward that exit, there's a crash of something solid hitting the floor.
I walk faster, faster, my heart palpitating, until I get to the door, and I grip the cold bar handle in my sweating hand, and I'm out.
