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COHEN

T he numbness was supposed to take the pain away, right? That’s what we were told. As medical students, interns, doctors. That the opposite of pain was numbness. Hypoesthesia. The absence of feeling. Except it wasn’t.

I was cold. I felt everything and nothing all at once. My nerve endings hyperalert. My right eye shifting under my lid, seeking out the source of the light that penetrated through the thin layer of skin. Saccadic eye movements my textbooks would tell me. A sign of growing awareness for a patient and his surroundings. Though I’d yet to figure out why the extraocular muscles on my right side were so eerily still…

There was a natural shift in the air, a breeze created by rushing bodies in a temperature controlled room. But it was the hint of iodine that clung to my nostrils, both comforting and not, that offered the first real hint that this wasn’t my bedroom.

I recognized the buzz of the magnetostriction in the cheap light fixtures, would hum along to the off-key tune each time I shifted the curtain over and got an eyeful of whatever atrocity was waiting for me on the other side. But I wasn’t used to hearing them above me. Nonstop. Like a fly in my ear I couldn’t reach, let alone try to swat with deadened limbs.

Because I couldn’t move. I tried. My arms, my legs, nothing. The receptors that should light up my brain and tell the rest of my body to comply appeared to be severed, or maybe just dulled. Either way, no part of me was acting as it should. As it was meant to do.

And I was too fucking broken to fix myself. The irony wasn’t lost on me. But the magnitude sure as fuck was…

Another forty-eight hours would pass before I learned what the asphalt had done to my hands. The fingers on my right side mangled and pieced back together by someone who clearly never learned how to remove a funny bone with a pair of tweezers—let alone how to properly work a scalpel.

What was a surgical student without his hands? He was dead. Or at least he wished he was. It was a helluva lot better than this…

Several more weeks would pass before I saw myself in the mirror for the first time. By then, the only thing that was numb was my ability to empathize. The rest of me was in agony. Nonstop agony. All the time.

What matters most is not what others see but how you see yourself.

My guess is the fucker who said that didn’t see the same shit I saw in the mirror every day.

I ran a finger across the fogged over glass, clearing the condensation while the squeaking sound of rough flesh on a smooth surface echoed off the bathroom tiles like nails on a chalkboard. It didn’t matter how much the noise grated on my eardrums. I couldn’t stop myself. Too engrossed by the monster reflected back at me in the mirror. I was half a man really. Half a chiseled jawline, half a prominent nose, one blue eye… attractive enough until I turned a cheek and you realized I was half something else entirely.Because I was also half freak in a sideshow.

That was the cruelest part, I suppose. The duality of seeing who I was now compared to who I used to be. Unable to escape either. All I had to do was turn to the side and I was reminded of everything I lost. The perfect half of an imperfect whole.

The shattering of glass broke the silence of my bathroom, my fist embedded in the mirror in front of me and blood trickling down to my wrist. I didn’t even remember lifting my arm, barely registered the sting of my broken knuckles. Pain was another constant. I didn’t know what it was like to live without it anymore. At the same time, nothing compared to the agony of living without her.

A few more days, I’d tell myself. Until those days turned to weeks, those weeks months. And nothing about me had gotten better. The nightmares were the worst part, imagining the look of horror on her face when she saw what was left of mine.

Truth was, I didn’t care. I wasn’t about to give her up either way.Because no matter what I looked like, Emily belonged to me.