Safe in the Black Sand

1

Mom never calls midday.

My knees crack as I rise from my chair at the crowded teachers' room table.

"Hey Ma, I've got a class coming up. Can't talk now."

Ten ESL students from around the world are about to learn the second conditional tense by way of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

"Jax...wait," Mom says, pain and panic in her voice. "Don't hang up."

Through the phone I hear voices muttering on intercoms. I step into the hallway and hide my nervousness by smiling politely at passing students.

"Where are you?" I ask. 

Mom speaks over the din. "Hospital."

My smile disappears. "What? Why? What's going on?"

"It's your sister."

"Angelica?" I say her name like a question.

"She's injured," Mom says. "Badly."

I feel like a fish washed up on a beach of hot sand. I'm flailing. My throat goes dry. 

"Injured how?" I ask. "When?"

A few students have stopped in the hallway to eavesdrop. Their faces mirror my concern.

Mom says, "I'm with Angelica now. She's unconscious. The doctors say she can hear, but I—I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"That's just something they say," Mom hurries. "The point is it's bad, Jax. Very bad."

Mom inhales hard through her nose, catching loose mucous. She's been sucking up snot in a room without tissues.

"Is Dad there?" I ask.

"Who?"

"Dad," I emphasize, feeling like she's on another planet. "Is he there with you now?" 

"Sorry—nurse is walking in," Mom says. "Just come to the ICU as fast as you can. Tell them you're my son. They'll let you in."

The chill of linoleum against bare skin. And a voice in my head repeating an old question, so old it feels like an ancient echo in the recesses of my mind: What's redder than blood?

* * *

Wax reflects overhead lights. The floor is an Impressionist's view of the ceiling. Wavy lines of reflected light glimmer underfoot like trapped ghosts.

An Escher maze of halls and stairs leads me to the ICU waiting room, where a vase of daffodils stands on a coffee table. The flowers' natural beauty and the room's sterile shine feel out of sync, like makeup on a corpse.

Two young boys have a play gun fight, armed only with their index fingers and thumbs. Close to them, a quietly sobbing woman presses a tissue to her eye.

I pick up a black phone and request access to the ICU beyond the waiting room.

Soon after, a nurse opens the door and sighs. "You must be Jax."

The boys in the waiting room break from their shootout to watch me disappear through the door.

I glance inside ICU rooms as I pass by. In one, a man with a tube down his throat stares wide-eyed at the wall. He's alone, and he doesn't turn to look at me. Next door, a woman sleeps to the sounds of soft orchestral music emanating from the phone near her bedside. In her window, a heap of linens soaks up the incoming grayish sunlight.

What's redder than blood?

What even is blood? Such a mysterious liquid—bodies make it, hearts pump it. The machinery needs no conscious instruction. Blood just flows. It can't be bought or made. When we need it, we depend on doctors who depend on volunteers. We hope people are kind enough to donate. Where do they store all that donated blood? Giant vats? Refrigerated bunkers? We hear it's always in short supply, somehow, despite its ubiquity. There aren't many types of blood, but you need the right match, and its color is a unique shade of red. You know it when you see it. Tongues and grapefruit are pinker than blood. The Red Planet is rustier. Red onions aren't really red but violet. And red wine is more a dark maroon like eggplant and the Dalai Lama's robe.

Blood-red is something else—more unnerving, more intimate. Red roses come close to the color of blood.

My left shoe pivots and squeaks. A nurse down the hall looks up from a clipboard. A janitor's head turns.

Then I enter my sister's room. Quiet beeps, no movement. The air is thick with dread.

At the sight of me, Mom wipes her watery eyes and stretches her arms out for a wordless hug. I rest my head on her shoulder, unable to speak. Her hair smells like orange peels.

Tubes connect Angelica's body to nearby machines. I can't see where the tubes meet her skin because a bed sheet covers her up, giving the illusion of comfort. The sheet hides something gruesome underneath, like a Halloween costume in reverse.

Angelica's hands lie limp at her sides, fingers curled upward, like a child reaching out to catch snowflakes. Her fingers twitch every few seconds. She's a monk in meditation, a pastor in prayer.

The attending nurse touches Angelica's bruised forehead before consulting a computer display of vital signs. Quiet beeps, no movement. Mom takes my hand and squeezes. 

What's redder than blood? Suddenly I see the answer to that ridiculous question, the one that's been sounding in my head since I got here.

Angelica's polished fingernails—they're the only things redder than blood. Her nails gleam like gemstones over the bed sheet. They sting my eyes, too shiny to stare at, ruby slipper over-the-rainbow red, gaudy as Technicolor.

Though Angelica's body is bruised and bloody, her fingernails are flawless. They seem almost holy in this hopeless place—proof that the person on this bed is my sister.

Red suits Angelica. It has always been her color, all the way back to the lipstick and heels she stole from Mom when everyone still called her Josh.