She turned toward the window, as if she’d forgotten it. “Of course. Yes.” She clicked right over, her heels making the same noise they’d made my entire life, and yanked the curtain back.

I don’t know what either of us had expected to see, but the window overlooked the airshaft of the parking garage.

My mother turned to me. “It’s worse open.”

Indeed it was.

Just then, the heavy door to the room swung in, and a doctor I’d never seen before walked in, straight toward my bed, grabbing the computer cart on the way and pulling it behind him. He said, “How’s everything feeling?” as he leaned in to check the dressings over my neck.

I didn’t know how to answer. “Weird. Surreal. Bleak.”

“Pain?” he specified.

Oh. “I’m not sure.”

“That’s the drugs. They’re disorienting. But we’re weaning you off them, so you should get a better read on the pain tomorrow.”

“I’m not sure I want a better read on the pain.”

It was a weak, embryonic joke. But he gave me a shrug. “Point taken.”

He stepped back to the computer, swiped his ID badge, and started checking my charts. “The good news is,” he said, “everything we grafted is working. No rejection of tissue.”

Oh! He had operated on me. I guess we had met before.

“We took two full skin grafts from just under your collarbones,” he pointed at the large dressing that was taped there, and I noticed it, really, for the first time. “You’ll keep that dressing on about five more days, and then we’ll just let it air dry. It’ll scab up and heal. It’ll leave a scar, of course, but once the skin has grown back, there are ointments to help it fade. In ten years, you won’t even see it.”

Ten years! If I’d been drinking a beverage, I would have spit it right out.

He went on, unperturbed. “We used full skin on the front of the neck, and partial over the back trapezius area, so there will be more scarring there. Partial leaves a more mottled appearance. But you can cover some of that with hair.” He smiled. “No more ponytails.”

“Why is there no bandage on the graft?” I asked.

“Once it ‘takes’ we like to let it air, and just keep Silvadene ointment on it. It doesn’t need to be covered. But you will have to go sleeveless on that side for a good while. Just buy some cheap T-shirts and cut the neck and left sleeve off.” He chuckled. “Kind of Tarzan and Jane.”

My mother was not amused. “What about the face?”

My eyes widened. The face? I didn’t remember anything about ‘the face.’

The doctor looked over at my mom like he hadn’t noticed she was there. Then, to me: “Bet it’s nice to have your mom here.”

“Sort of,” I said.

She went on, in a stage whisper, “I can’t even look at her,” and now that she mentioned it, I noticed that was true.

“The face is all second-degree,” the doc said. “It’s going to blister and scab and itch like hell—but if she doesn’t scratch, there should be minimal scarring. Should heal up in about three weeks.”

My mom was a stickler for details. “Does ‘minimal scarring’ mean no scarring?”

But she was being too greedy. “I never make promises,” the doctor said, finishing up on the computer and rolling the cart away. “We’ll do our best, and we’ll hope that’s enough.”

After he left, it was dead quiet. This room had nothing of the mind-vibrating cacophony of the ICU. Just the white noise of the A/C vent, and the uncomfortable echoes of everything my mom had just said. Then, suddenly, the shuddery breaths of her crying.

I looked over. She had turned toward the window, arms clutched tight at her waist.

“Mom, stop it,” I said.

“You’re going to be just fine,” she told me, like the opposite.

“Pull it together, please, Mom.” I closed my eyes again. So tired.

“You were perfect,” she said then. “No wonder Chip is too sick to come.”

My mom had a remarkable talent for making things worse. She could always find the downside. And she had no filter, so once she found it, everybody else had to find it, too.

“You know what?” I said then. “I’m pretty exhausted.”

But she wasn’t done. “You had your whole life ahead of you.”

So. The opposite of comforting, really.

“I’ve read the statistics,” she went on, “about what something like this does to a relationship.”

“Mom—”

“Guess what? Women don’t leave men, but men do leave women.”

“Chip is not going to leave me, Mom.” Ridiculous wasn’t even a big enough word for how ridiculous that was.

“No,” she said, turning to face me. “No, he’s not. Because we are going to fix you.”

I knew that look on her face far too well.

“God did not give me all this strength for nothing,” she went on. “You’ll recover, darling girl. We will put you back as good as new. I’ve already got a file folder as fat as a brick with articles on miraculous recoveries and people who’ve defied all their grim diagnoses.”

Was my diagnosis “grim”? Something told me not to ask.

My mom turned around and fixed her gaze on the blanket at my feet. “You’re going to bounce back from this and show them all,” she said, going just the tiniest bit Scarlett O’Hara. “We’ll find the best cosmetic surgeons in the world. We’ll scour the earth. We will not rest. If Daddy and I have to spend every cent we’ve ever saved—Cash in our life insurance! Sell the house!—we’ll do it.”

I should have just let it go. I should have let us lapse back into silence. But something in me needed to convince her. “Chip is not going anywhere,” I tried again. “He loves me.”

“The old you, maybe,” she said. “But now?” She frowned. “But we’re not going to let that happen. I’ve been online every night, researching people who’ve faced this type of thing and overcome it, and I know that more than anything, it takes determination. One girl I read about dove into a too-shallow swimming pool at her bachelorette party and broke her neck. She should have died—but she fought her way back and now she teaches water ballet. Another woman? Crushed by a truck! Broke every bone in her body and then some. Now she’s an aerobics instructor in San Bernardino. Another girl was just crossing the street when a drunk driver mowed her down. Now she’s an underwear model.”

“I get it, Mom.”

But there was no stopping her. “What do all these people have in common? Gumption. Grit. Strength. And you’ve got all that in spades—you always have. And you’ve literally got extra, too, because you’ve got me.”

It wasn’t uninspiring. It was good to know she had my back. Plus, she wasn’t wrong—the woman was strong as an ox. But somehow the sensations it was leaving in me—hazy as they were to identify—seemed equal parts worry, inspiration, and panic. As was always true with my mother, you never could get exactly what you wanted. I wanted the strength without the fear-mongering. I wanted the determination without the control. I wanted the pep talk without the underwear model.

Mostly, right now, I just wanted to close my eyes.

Lucky for me, my dad walked in next with a tray of coffees. He knew in an instant just from the vibe what kind of conversation we were having. “Look at this room,” he said, attempting to redirect. “Linda, you’ve worked your magic.”

But Linda wasn’t having it. “The doctor came in. He says there’s no guarantee that her face will recover.”

“I believe he said there should be minimal scarring,” I volunteered.

“You know what?” my dad said, reading us perfectly, “I think our girl needs some rest.” He’d been with my mom for thirty years. He was an expert on damage control.

“What about the coffee?” she protested.

“We’ll take it in the car.”

He came to me, looked me right in my burned face, and crinkled his eyes into a smile while he squeezed my hand. “Get some rest, sweetheart.”

“Dad?” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“Where is Chip?” Now she kind of had me worried.

My dad just chuckled. “I’m sure he’s just sleeping it off, sweetheart. We could all use some rest. This’ll be your first quiet night’s sleep in ages.” Then he noticed me frowning and patted my hand. He knew what I was asking. “Sometimes, when you really need your man to be big and strong for you the most—that’s when we go to pieces.”

“I’ve never seen you go to pieces,” I said to him.

He gave my mother a sideways glance. “I’m saving it all up for later.”

Okay, I thought, after they left. Okay. A good night’s sleep. I can make that happen. That was something to look forward to, at least, if nothing else. Rest. Recuperation. A restful sleep in a quiet, dark room.

*

EASIER FANTASIZED THAN done. Nurses were still in and out quite a bit, checking monitors, emptying catheter bags, and turning me over. I was not wearing a brace—surgeon’s orders—so I was extra laborious to turn. I had just fallen asleep when I got a visit from the surgeon, checking in, and had just dozed off again when a hospital social worker woke me to see how I was feeling.

“Fine. Good,” I said.

“Any depression?”

“Depression?” I wasn’t fully awake.

“Depression’s pretty common for situations like yours. It’s nothing to be afraid of. And there’s medication, if you need it.”

“Oh. No.”