FACELESS

Chapter Five

This really sucks.

This absolutely, totally, to hell and back – sucks.

I'm not implying, nor am I saying that I rather have my face back, because I know that's physically and scientifically impossible. I'm not going to get my damn face back after this, that's for sure. But the process of getting my face partially back already sucks A LOT.

Here's why:

Firstly, every morning at 9 am sharp, the nurse in a white hat and a necklace embedded with diamonds spelling the letter 'J' would come in, her white teeth beaming and saying "Good morning, Audrey, how are you doing?" I don't sense any pessimism in her – not the slightest bit. I think maybe my parents hired her to make me more positive, maybe wishing that she'll infect me with her smile so I'll be more than happy to do the grafting surgery; then I remember that they don't really care about me anymore.

She is the first thing I see in the morning, excluding the wiltered flowers at my bedside, sent in by the Principal of my school; sort of like an apology gift; Oh, we're sorry your face got busted in our school during an unfortunate incident! Here's some flowers to make up for your loss and $20,000 as insurance to treat your permanent disfiguration!

Right, it's wiltering fast, but not fast enough. I'm planning to sneak into the janitor's closet one day and pour bleach into the goddamn bouquet. It's not a good thing to start every morning with the bright red roses staring right into my face, not to mention I absolutely loathe the smell of roses. And, for some reason, it strangely feels like a sense of mockery from the school – As if they somehow hope that the thorns from the roses will crawl up into my face at night and disfigure me some more.

'J' brings me my breakfast every morning, and I get to eat them before I brush my teeth. Somedays I am very tired for no reason, and J would watch me eat my breakfast half-heartedly, the spoon and fork held loosely in my hand and my face drifting down and me jerking it up and I try to keep myself awake enough to eat. The bandages are loose enough that I am able to move my mouth, but not anything else. They still keep me on the IV drip to make sure I don't scream with pain when I talk. Now, I know it's morphine, definitely. I think maybe if they hook me up onto opoids or weed, that would work too.

Sometimes, I am very much awake – perhaps even way before J even arrives. I would be wide awake, sitting up in my bed and staring at the coarse blanket in my hands again, watching the particles dancing in the air in front of me as the first ray of sunlight enters my gloomy hospital room. I don't remember what I think about mostly at the time of the morning. I only know I stare and breathe and sit until J comes in to greet me good morning and do my tests. The first time she saw me wide awake before her arrival, she looked shocked for a moment, before she gave me another beaming grin. "Isn't it a wonderful morning today?"

J does very simple things – to me, at least. I believe what she does is harder than it seems. She checks the bag for my IV drip and makes sure that it isn't empty, and if it is – she changes a new one. She also shines a torchlight in my eyes to make sure my pupils are not weirdly dilated, so I don't have some kind of hemorrhage or some sort. Her job is to basically make sure I don't die because of my injuries. According to my calculations, she changes my bandages every 3 days.

Today is one of those days.

I make sure that I am wide awake way before she arrives, because I don't want to accidentally fall asleep while changing my bandages. I did that once, and trust me –I do not want that to happen again.

J always knocks before she enters. A quick 3 knocks, a 3 second pause, then she turns the door knob and enters.

She always has her old converse sneakers on, a white pair with mid-cut and her laces changed into yellow, bumble bee stripes. I like it. Sometimes she wears colorful stripes leggings with fake paint splatters on them instead of the usual white nurse skirt. I'm pretty sure that's breaking protocol, but rarely anyone would care anyways. Besides, that's the only colorful thing I see in this dull hospital room.

J sometimes check underneath my bandages before she removes them. Today she opens them partially, I can see her face from the corner of my eyes and she does not look startled, nor any indifferent. She closes the bandages and smiles– same smile, as always. Nothing too different or drastic. I think for a moment that maybe I'm getting better. Until I realize no – no, it's not possible at all. My face is gone. Even if it heals well, I'll still be left with at least half of my face looking like red, melted wax. Like a blister, except this blister covers half my face and it will never heal.

J begins the routine – she pulls out a bucket of water out of thin air, and a basket of cotton wool beside it. I feel my face starting to itch because I know she's going to remove my bandages. J knows how my face looks like, meanwhile, I don't. The doctor still said that I couldn't see my face. I wasn't objecting to it. I let him tell me what to do, and I keep quiet. I think sometimes even the doctor is worried about me because of how quiet I am. I am too quiet, too silent for a girl who just lost her face. Too quiet for someone who just lost her face. Too quiet.

J quietly puts on her latex gloves, her fingers slides into the gloves easily, it's apparent she's done this over a thousand times. She makes it look so easy. Gloves are always hard to put on and take off, and especially when the palms are sweaty or wet. I wonder how long she's been working in the hospital, and why she chose this department, choosing to take care of the burned survivors and those who are disfigured. She takes a tweezer, grabbing the cotton wool and dipping it into the bowl of water, that was probably laced with some sort of medication because it always makes my face feel numb and loose and tight all at the same time.

She touches my ear slightly, and I swallow, trying to urge my body not to move away. It's always uncomfortable when people get too close to me. Like a sort of, intrusion, a deprivation of my own privacy.

I wait for her fingers to latch onto my bandage before she gently pulls it away from my face. I see the bandages covering my vision as she slowly unrolls it from my face. I can feel the cool air stinging my skin as the air begins to latch onto my ruined skin - I feel myself taking a sharp breath, the sound hitching in my throat. J ignores me, and she takes the soaked cotton wool and gently dabs it on my cheeks.

You would expect the cotton wool to hurt, but it doesn't – I don't know what liquid she soaked the cotton wool in, maybe liquid, maybe ethanol for disinfection. But it always feels better after she changes the bandages and my face is newly coated with the colorless liquid.

J smiles at me as she finishes the last round of coating my face with the bowl of mysterious that looks strangely like water. I look at all the discarded cotton wools and they are all stained crimson red, soaked full with my blood.

I wonder what she sees.

Iwonder if I'll ever be able to accept what I'll see in the mirror