Disarmed, Chapter 1

Disarmed


I am at the bottom of a deep, dark well. I must be lying on my back, since I can look straight up and spy a small, bright light, miles up in the sky. It’s not a gentle, warm glow like the sun gives off, but a harsh one, assaulting my eyes with its cold radiance. I’m rising, coming closer to the brightness. Or is it falling towards me? I guess it doesn’t matter...the only thing that matters is that the light and I are coming together and now...now, I am afraid.

I walk into the hospital, the reassuring presence of my mom walking next to me. She is short, but radiates a commanding presence that can turn every head in the room. She is wearing a black suit outfit, the kind that a businessman would wear if he were a woman. White shirt with a black vest and skirt going down to the knees. Dark tights. Dark shoes. Her jet black hair mirrors mine in color and is cropped close to her head. In contrast, I am tall, with long locks that descend to my shoulders. I have a hooked nose and a stubborn chin, which Mom says I inherited from my father.
My father isn’t here. He was never here. Not when I lost my first tooth, rode my first bike, or got on the bus for the first time, was he here. It doesn’t matter. I have my mom and my dog, Marlee, named after the singer. No siblings. No relatives, except and uncle who I never see. I am Jake Martin, only son of Jessica Martin, owner of Marlee Martin. I am a torso, a head, two legs, and one arm.
We walk up the white stone stairs, my left sleeve rolled up past the stump of my left arm. It’s been a month since the silver pickup truck bumped us as it passed on Route 95. A month since the long skid out of control. A month since the crunching impact that smushed my arm like an overripe fruit.

I wake up in a hospital bed, my mom sitting next to me. I immediately know something is wrong, but it takes me a while to realize that I can’t feel my hand. I reach over awkwardly to pull the covers off of it, idly wondering why there doesn’t seem to be a bump on the smooth surface of the blanket. “Wait!” my mom says, her voice hoarse with the tears that she has cried. She grabs my arm, stopping me from touching my left arm. It’s too late though; my feeble mind has realized the fact that it had refused to grasp. The reason I can’t feel my arm; the reason I can’t see my arm; I have no arm. My left arm is gone.

I snap back into reality as the glass doors swing shut behind us and the cool rush of the air conditioning hits me. My arm is healed. No gross scab covering the end of it. Only smooth, pale scar tissue remains of what was once a healthy, functioning arm.
Today, I am here for a new arm. In the year of 2020, the science of prosthetics has reached a new age. They function as well, if not better than, a natural limb. Even so, it is strange to think that I am going to die with a different arm than I was born with, 17 years ago. That I will walk out of the hospital this afternoon with a replacement for my tanned forearm that burned with my mom’s car. I have seen the prosthetics and they are ugly, black, mechanical things that whir and click as they move. You would think that after making them so advanced that they can catch a speeding baseball barehanded, they might make them look a little less ugly, but apparently nobody’s gotten the memo.
If I can play again, I don’t care what it looks like. I remember my first day in school...

I walk towards the table, the table I always sit at. Other people in the school call it the jock table, but for us, it will always be the team table. Only there isn’t an ‘us’ anymore. Or rather, there is an ‘us’, but I am no longer included in it. Oh, I sit down and am welcomed by the boys who have been my friends and teammates for my whole life. We played baseball in Little League, JV, and Varsity, friends forever. But now we have nothing to talk about. We always talked about sports before. What do I have to do with sports? All I can do now is watch them from the sidelines. I pick my tray awkwardly up from the table, managing everything with one hand. The team is now a ‘them’ and I am irrevocably a ‘he’.

I walk on. We are passing through a door now, and white-coated doctors are greeting us with falsely cheery expressions and wide, vacant smiles, masks over dead-looking eyes. The loss of my team hit me harder than anything else. It hurt more than the pitying stares, the books dropped in the hallway, and the phantom pains combined. That’s why I want this new arm. I could play sports again. I could have my life back.
We walk through a set of double doors, white and sterile, like the corridor behind them, and the room beyond it. There is one of those bed-like things in the middle of the room, the kind you can either sit or lie down on. With a wave of his hand, the doctor motions me onto it. I sit down, pushing myself up with one hand. My mother takes a seat in a wood chair at the side of the room. Together, she and the chair create the only spot that looks remotely warm and comfortable in the room.
The doctor goes to a cabinet and takes out a metal arm, black and shiny. It’s been tailor-fitted to my exact size specifications. When it is properly attached, it will function just like a real arm. No more bobbling my books in public, no more pitying stares, and most of all, my team back. The ugly thing takes on a new beauty. In its reflection, I can see myself playing baseball again, doing a front handspring or a cartwheel. How could it have looked so bad before?
“Are you ready, son?” the doctor asks. His smile looks more real now, and I think I see a glimmer of life in those dead eyes. He is holding the arm in his hands. My arm.
I hold out my arm. “Yes”.