Mirrored Cuts

Chapter 53

Flint had swallowed his questions about the crash when it became clear that I couldn't think well enough to lie. Flint and I played board games instead of watching T.V. shows. I already had to look at a computer screen more than was good for me. Uno, Backgammon and Monopoly became staples of our hang out sessions. He had started opening up to me again, being flirtier. It was probably because he knew I couldn't run away. He was himself, that is to say, nothing was safe from his humor, but he had begun mixing it with compliments.

"The past, present and future walk into a bar," he said.

"What?" I looked up from my cards. I had been about to go fish for a seven.

"It was tense."

I laughed, a deep belly laugh that burned the resident sadness from my veins. "You just don't want me to ask for your seven."

"Are you accusing me of cheating, mon frère?"

"Distracting tactics!" I said. "An unfair advantage against the damaged."

He smiled and handed over his seven. But the moment was lost in the sea of memories that had been engulfing me since the accident. The first time I considered myself damaged, I had been on a playground. This boy, one of those super geniuses who skipped a series of grades, had been playing with a Buzz Lightyear toy. I had wanted to see it, to know if it really did talk like the one in the movies. He had refused to let me touch it.

"I just want to see if it talks!" I said, grabbing for the arm.

He had pulled it out of my reach, wrenching the arm out of my hand and the toy itself. He began to sob uncontrollably, which I knew always brought parent's attention out of their phones and onto the playground.

"It's okay. I'm sorry. We can put it back together." I tried to keep him from being too loud.

"You broke it!" he said. "You ruined it forever. Now he can't fly."

My mother dragged me away from the scene, apologizing to the boy's mother and promising to replace it. She told me to keep it from my father unless he asked. The boy's mother called later that night and told my father everything though. My arm ended up like Buzz Lightyear.

In a few weeks it would be Spring Fling, the biggest party of the school year. It had been started by an architect almost a hundred years ago and had gradually evolved into a school-wide long weekend of debauchery. I had heard that if you remembered any of the weekend, you were doing it wrong. But to be fair, most of EMS "did it wrong." We were the ones that kept everyone from dying while they had their nights of endless bliss. At the beginning, everyone was sad because they couldn't participate like the other college students. By the end, no one was able to drink for weeks because of the visions of unconscious people lying in their own multi-colored vomit.

It was also the best weekend for passing calls. We got a ton of them, and they were very similar. It was a gold mine. I had been assigned to be on the Friday to Saturday crew, which was good, because the party would be in full swing. It was strange. My concussion had served to increase my ability to do EMS, rather than taking away from it. Perhaps it had taken away my inhibitions. I couldn't think too much about doing something wrong, so I just did it.

When I passed my second call, I ran to my dorm to tell Ruby, one of the few I could still talk to about advancing.

"If I had known all it would take was a concussion, I would have hit you on the head a long time ago," she said.

Her comment made me smile. It was her way of saying congratulations, good job, you're alright, kid. I took it.