Head Spinners, page 3
I was right.
Two weeks after the lump started to grow, I found that I could make it move. I had to use a mirror at first, looking over my shoulder and back-to-front. If I stared at the lump and concentrated hard, I was able to make it wiggle – up and down, side to side, round and round and round. It was a bit like trying to make my ears wiggle, but so much better . . .
Each time it worked I laughed in amazement. It looked like a short fat finger waving hello from the back of my arm. The lump had to be connected to my brain somehow. Whatever it was, it was part of me.
That’s a pretty big thing to find out. It was like the time when Squeak, our guinea pig, had babies and we didn’t even know she was pregnant. Something alive had come from . . . nowhere.
I thought about showing my mum. Hey, Mum, look what I can do! But then I imagined what she would say next. I’ll book you in to see the doctor, Brooke.
Somehow I didn’t want a doctor peering and poking at my lump. I didn’t want to think about the way a doctor would look at me.
So I spent more and more time alone in my room. Moving the lump became a bit of an obsession. I especially loved making it move inside my red windcheater, rubbing it soothingly against the soft fabric fuzz.
Soon the lump had grown so big it was difficult to hide. My right arm bulged underneath my baggy school shirt. It was fat now, and long. It looked like two sausages stuck side by side on the back of my arm. I could feel the hard bone beneath the skin of one sausage, then thin flesh connecting them, before the bone in the other sausage.
Then, four weeks after it first appeared, it stopped growing.
Over a few days, the fleshy strip between the two sausages became thinner and thinner until it was paper-thin and dry.
Then, four or five weeks after I first felt the tingle, I woke up in the middle of the night.
Groggily, I rubbed my sausage lumps. As I opened my eyes a raw kind of desperation came over me. I’d never felt anything like it. Absolutely nothing was going to stop me from scratching my lumps. This was the mother of all itches.
I switched on my lamp, grabbed a ruler, and started to rub like there was no tomorrow. Flakes of skin fell away like huge bits of puff pastry. Monster-sized dandruff.
For a while I kept rubbing, soothing, scratching . . .
Then something amazing happened
The two sausage parts split apart, everywhere except the very end. Slowly I was able to stretch it out – an arm with a hinge of an elbow. The movement felt new and natural at the same time.
I lifted it and rubbed the last flakes of dry skin. They fell away to show stubby lumps on the end.
Five of them.
It was the most amazing thing.
Slowly in the lamplight I came to understand what I was seeing. I reached out and touched, felt it respond, realised that I was being touched. I ran my hand along my new right arm, then my old right arm, comparing them, looking for difference. Other than size they were the same. Even the fingers of my new hand were complete with knuckles and tiny fingernails.
At first, I couldn’t move the new arm very well. If I tried to do something, my normal right arm moved instead. To get the new arm working, I found I had to move both in tandem – big-arm and baby-arm dancing together. But slowly as the night hours passed, I learnt how to make my new arm move to my command – straightening it out and twirling the hand, playing air-piano with stubby fingers. For those first few hours it was just me and my new arm, hidden by the cloak of night.
The next morning I bandaged my two right arms together, mostly to hide the new one, but also as a reminder not to move it. I was surprised when no one noticed that anything was different; the whole world had changed as far as I was concerned. I’d gone to sleep the old me then woken to find I was different . . . a different version of me.
Of course, I knew what people would say if they saw my new arm. Ugly, awful, freaky, weird . . . But I didn’t feel the same. This arm had grown from my body. It was part of me.
As the days slipped past, I became used to keeping it still during the day then coming home and enjoying the relief of being able to stretch and be free. I said no to a couple of things on the weekend and some days I pretended to be sick so that I could stay home from school, but most of the time everything was surprisingly normal. I saw my friends at school and kept up with them online from home, same as always.
Even though my new arm was still a bit weak, I began using it whenever I was alone. It was in exactly the right spot for moving the mouse, keeping my other two hands free for typing.
I wasn’t coordinated enough to do things like write with it, but I was good enough to move the arrow where I wanted. Double-click here. Right-click there. Sometimes I just held an apple in my new hand, munching while I typed. After a while, working on the computer with my new arm became so natural that I found it hard to remember what it had been like working with just two hands.
I was chatting online when I received an event invitation. Cool. I clicked straight through.
Zoe Whelan has invited you to her Birthday Party.
Event: Zoe’s birthday party
Where: Harrington Leisure Centre
Start time: 2.30pm, Saturday 26 October
Bring: your swimmers!
A pool party? I sighed and looked at my baby hand, resting on the mouse. Could I go? Maybe I could tell everyone that I had a sore arm . . . I can come, but I can’t swim.
But that would be a disaster. People would ask questions. What if they wanted to look at my sore arm . . .
I sighed again, and clicked decline.
Seconds later a message from Zoe appeared: ‘What the ???’
‘Soz,’ I replied. ‘I’m busy.’
‘BUSY???’ sent back Zoe. ‘How can you be busy?’
I turned away from the screen, wondering what I could say. Then I turned back just long enough to log off.
The next day I stayed home from school, even though Mum raised her eyebrows and said, ‘Really…’ when I said I was sick.
To be honest, I did feel sick. Sick with fear. The weather was getting warmer; it was only a matter of time before someone asked why I never wore short sleeves.
When Mum came home from work, I was sitting on the couch.
She pulled off her coat and hung it up. ‘Hey Brooke. How’re you feeling?’
‘There’s something’s you need to see.’ Slowly, I slipped my jacket off my shoulders and let it fall behind me on the couch. Time seemed to slow down as Mum’s lips parted. The only sound was an intake of breath. Everything else about her was frozen in shock.
‘Oh, Brooke . . .’ Mum whispered. She lifted my jacket from the couch and draped it over my new arm, covering it up again. She hugged me, hand at the top of my back, chest close, not touching me below the shoulders.
After a while she pulled back, holding my face in her hands. ‘Brooke . . . you poor thing . . . How long have you been hiding this?’
I shook my head, tears welling now that I could see myself through her eyes. I’ll never forget the way she was looking at me – so tender, so ready to fix everything. But there was something else in there too.
It made me wonder what it must be like to find out your daughter is a freak.
The next few days were a blur. So many waiting rooms. So many X-rays and tests. Mum spent half her time filling out forms and the other half on the phone. At one point we drove an hour and a half across the city, only to be told by a doctor that his specialty was conjoined twins, not my ‘situation’. And there was no mention of me going back to school.
Some things weren’t so bad, though. Now that I’d shown Mum my new arm, I didn’t have to hide it anymore. It felt so good leaving it free to move naturally – to grow strong and, I don’t know, integrate . . . become a part of who I was.
I was deliberately avoiding the internet and the phone. So there wasn’t much to do when we were at home.
One afternoon, for something to do, I made a cake. Mum watched with her ear to the phone, on hold with another doctor, as I poured the thick batter into a cake pan. I held the bowl in two hands and used my third to scrape with a spoon. As I worked I glanced up, anxious to see if she had realised how useful my new arm could be. But she had turned away.
For a few nights I shook salt onto my dinner while still holding my knife and fork. Not because the food needed it really, but just because I could. Each time, Mum kept talking or eating as if she hadn’t noticed – as if my third arm wasn’t even there.
I knew her better than that, though.
Once when I poked my head into the study, her shoulders jerked and she rushed to close the file she was working on.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Oh . . . just writing my diary,’ she said, her voice pitched slightly higher than normal.
The next time she was out shopping I snuck into the study and booted up her computer. It was password protected but that didn’t stop me for long. The password was her birthday then mine. I mean, honestly – she was so predictable.
Most of Mum’s diary was a log of all the specialists we’d seen and all the stuff they’d said. But underneath all that was paragraph after paragraph of typing, an outpouring of Mum’s thoughts.
How could this happen? it began. Did I do something wrong when I was pregnant?
What if someone discovers what’s happened? A kid at school? A parent? What if they went to the media? They’d have a field day with something like this. I can’t stand to think how they’d treat her. The awful things they’d say. I’m scared we’re on the edge of disaster. Something like this could affect the rest of her life.
If this gets out, I’m scared I won’t be able to protect her anymore.
I shut down the computer after that. Reading Mum’s diary made me feel like a freak all over again. No wonder she couldn’t stand to look at my new arm. All she saw were the ways it might make my life worse.
My new arm was something amazing for me, but something entirely different for Mum.
Later that week, Mum was over the moon because we were referred to see a doctor whose name had been mentioned a couple of times already. He was a specialist at the children’s hospital – Dr Alexander Drew.
Dr Drew was different right from the start – efficient and confident, jolly even. He acted as if he dealt with this kind of thing all the time.
‘Don’t worry, Ms Miskin,’ he said, smiling at us from across a huge desk. ‘We’ll have your daughter fixed up in a jiffy.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s quite fascinating, really. Just the human body throwing up a random mutation. Nothing to worry about at all.’
Mum seemed to grow in her chair like a flower. She smiled as she listened, nodding here and there rather than asking questions as she usually did.
Soon the discussion moved to things like admittance forms and operation procedures.
‘I’m expecting a fast recovery time,’ said Dr Drew. ‘This is a straightforward procedure.’
That’s when it hit me. This man was going to cut off my new arm. Of course he was. What else had I been expecting?
As Dr Drew’s voice faded into the background, a cold space settled in me. My new arm was a mutation . . . but it was also part of me. I tried to imagine how I’d feel once it was gone. Not the same as before, I knew that already. It would be as if something was missing.
But I had to get used to the idea of not having it around. Without my new arm, everything would go back to normal.
Mum would look at me again.
The next day, Mum and I were back at the hospital. But this time I was clutching a bag of clothes and my favourite electronic game. I had three days of tests booked in and no date yet for
the operation.
When we stepped out of the lift on the top floor there didn’t seem to be any signs for
Ward 5G. Eventually a nurse noticed us looking lost. She stared at me curiously when Mum told her which ward we were looking for, but she didn’t say anything. She led the way to a door with no sign on it, punched a code into a small keypad and ushered us through.
Inside, it was still and quiet. The walls were sky blue.
As we walked up to the nurses’ station, movement on a computer monitor behind the desk caught my eye. A strange feeling came over me as I recognised myself standing next to Mum. The ward obviously had a whole closed circuit TV network hooked up through its computers.
I checked for the camera, and found it high up in the corner above the door. Mum handed over a few more forms, and another nurse showed me to my room.
‘Well, isn’t this lovely?’ said Mum once the nurse had gone. She pushed down on the bed a couple of times, as if we’d just checked into a hotel.
But I wasn’t looking at my bed; I was looking at the three other beds in the room. One was clearly empty, but the two others had bedding, get-well cards on the bedside table and clipboards at the end . . .
I wasn’t the only one.
Mum wanted to stay and help me unpack, but I told her not to hang around.
There wasn’t anything scheduled for the rest of the day and I knew she’d be back in
the morning for the next round of tests.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.’
For a moment Mum frowned at me. Then she nodded. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘But call me whenever
you want. I don’t mind what time.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ A quick hug, then she was gone.
I looked around. One of the beds had a soft floppy elephant on the pillow and fairy cards everywhere. The other bed was more of mystery. Someone was definitely using it, but there was nothing to show how old they were.
For something to do, I checked out the bathroom. No surprises there. Then, feeling self-conscious, I poked my head into the hall. No one was at the nurses’ station. I could hear faint canned laughter.
I followed the sound past a door with another keypad and to a room signed common room. It was painted bright yellow and had shelves stacked with books and board games. An episode of Get Smart was on the TV.
‘Hello. What’s your name?’ said a little girl, standing up from the rug. She was only about as tall as a toddler, but her face made her look six or seven.
‘Hi, I’m Brooke,’ I said, and stepped forward so I could see what she was doing. Puzzle pieces were strewn around her feet. It was obvious straight away why she was here – she had a huge lump at the top of her back.
She was a hunchback. Poor thing . . .
‘I’m Erin, and that’s Jack,’ she said, pointing at the back of an armchair that was facing the TV.
Feeling nervous, I stepped around the armchair. What was I going to find?
A boy about my age turned and looked me up and down. For a moment his eyes stopped on the bulge of my sleeve. ‘Hi,’ he mumbled before turning back to the TV.
‘Hi,’ I said, trying to look him over without being too obvious. He was wearing a baseball cap and seemed completely normal.
Erin tugged at my sleeve. ‘Do you believe in fairies?’ she whispered.
‘Ah . . .’ I wasn’t sure how to answer that.
‘Because I can show you for real,’ she cried. ‘Look!’
The next thing I knew, Erin was pulling off her windcheater. Underneath she was wearing a tank top . . .
I gasped and stepped back.
Between Erin’s shoulderblades was a folded pair of wings. They weren’t sparkly and colourful like fairy wings. I could see thin fingers of bone inside a fleshy membrane.
‘See? It’s me! I’m a real live fairy!’ she chanted, jumping up and down.
I swallowed. Other than their flesh-pink colour, they looked like the wings of a bat.
A wave of nausea washed through me. I was repulsed, but at the same time I couldn’t look away. Was this how Mum had felt when she first saw my arm?
‘Can you fly?’ I managed.
Erin stopped jumping, and pouted. ‘No,’ she said. For a moment I thought she was going to cry, then I realised she was concentrating, holding her breath.
Slowly the wings unfolded. They were wider than I’d realised. Networks of blue veins stretched beneath the skin.
I opened my mouth, searching for something to say.
Erin breathed out in a rush. ‘I can’t even flap them. Dr Drew says he needs to cut them off because I’m not growing like other kids. But I don’t mind being small. Really. Fairies are meant to be small. Are you going to get something cut off your arm?’
Now I was speechless for another reason. I hadn’t even noticed her looking at my arm. ‘Yes,’ I said, pulling off my jacket so that Erin could see. ‘I am.’
For the first time I started to feel glad to have found Dr Drew. I didn’t want to live my life with people thinking the things about me that I’d just thought about Erin.
After a close inspection, Erin looked up at me. ‘Dr Drew’s a good doctor, isn’t he?’ she said.
‘Yeah, we’re lucky to be here, I reckon.’ As I spoke, something made me look at Jack’s armchair. He was scowling around the backrest at me.
When he saw me glance over, he disappeared from view.
So I sat down on the floor next to Erin and settled in to watch Get Smart.
A bit later, Erin’s mum turned up and stayed while we settled in for the night. It was nice to have someone’s mum around, not that I was homesick exactly. The nurses were friendly enough.
I didn’t think I was going to sleep very well in the ward, but I must have because later that night, something woke me up. It was Jack, shaking my shoulder.
I opened my eyes and yawned.
‘Want to see something?’ he asked.
