Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6
Nurse Natalya had other plans. She must have noticed my coldness and decided that at the onset of TV hour she would (for the first time ever) wheel me right up next to Polina’s wheelchair and leave me there to drown in whatever flood erupted.
Now, Reader, please understand this: I had never been this close to her before. When my wheelchair was brought to hers, our elbows touched — skin to skin. This was the first time I ever had epidermal contact with anyone (besides one of the semi-ancient nurses), let alone Polina. I was completely unprepared for this, and consequently my pee-pole jumped to full attention, twitched to the rhythm of my escalating pulse and pushed the fabric of my shorts taut.
Now, it may be difficult for you to imagine a mutant with one arm to harbor any trace of self-consciousness. But please believe me when I tell you that this was the most horrifying moment I had ever known. I instinctively used my one flailing arm to conceal the protrusion in any way possible but this only brought more attention to the situation. As artfully as possible I tucked my hui between the nubs that would have been my legs and clenched them together to keep it hidden. I waited several painful moments for the fall-out to die down. I was red and sopping with sweat. But this didn’t keep Polina from speaking.
“Why didn’t you smile at me this morning, Igor?”
I was not at all prepared to respond, so instead I just sat silently and sweated some more.
“Igor, are you okay?”
“I like your hair, Polina.”
“Thanks, Igor.”
The rest was an incandescent blur. A hazy smear of conversation that I do not remember but only know resulted in a phase transition in my life and Polina’s. We became dear friends, and perhaps, in the most ethereal of ways, lovers.
Everyday from that point on, we sat together for TV hour. We began by talking about the weather and eventually moved on to discussing our likes and dislikes and then our favorite actors and actresses. I made her laugh on occasion, which I never knew I had the capacity to do.
Nurse Natalya, of course, caught wind of our brewing courtship and did everything possible to cultivate it. She raided the homes of her relatives for old Russian games. Then she would secretly wheel us out to the main floor after lights-out and let us play, unchaperoned. Looking back through diminishing vodka eyes, these nights seem so perfectly surreal. Reader, in that place, at that time, Polina wasn’t dying and I wasn’t a mutant. We shed our bodies and met in another place.
Towards the end, we found each other locked in a peculiar but mutual stare.
“Would you like to kiss me, Igor?”
Now, I’m not sure whether at that moment she was possessed by some divine and selfless charity, or if she, like me, was caught up in the fantasy that I wasn’t a hideous creature, but I didn’t care. I felt the urgency. But more than that I felt the addictive grandeur that a budding romance produces. Without answering, I leaned over and kissed her moist mouth. I had no idea what I was doing, but the more primal currents in my body took over and attacked her lips in a way that I can only imagine resembled what a passionate kiss should look and feel like. An impulse arose to pull away and see where her eyes were and attempt to assess her reactions through her facial expression. Before giving into it, I considered who I was kissing, succumbed to the ensuing avalanche, and sucked her upper lip.
When I pulled away I saw that Polina was bleeding from her eyes. Over the years, I had become intimately acquainted with this sight. It was one of the dependable signs I used to determine when a leukemia child had become a three-monther. Without thinking, I used my white T-shirt to considerately wipe the red droplets streaking down her cheek. Polina looked down in alarm, saw the blood, and hysterically cried out to Nurse Natalya to return her to her room.
About Scott Stambach
