He closes his eyes, counting the pulses of the ventilator until he’s asleep again.
The next time he opens his eyes, the morning glories have closed, and the last person he was expecting to see is sitting beside him, reading a book. He watches her, not entirely sure he’s not hallucinating. When she notices he’s awake, she closes her book.
“Good! You’re awake,” says Miracolina Roselli. “That means I can be the first to officially inform you that you’re an idiot.”
Miracolina! The willing tithe he had saved from her own unwinding. The girl he fell for in spite of how much she hated him—or maybe because of how much she hated him. The girl who, in the dark, claustrophobic confines of a Greyhound luggage compartment, offered him absolution for all that he had done. He was afraid to even think of her, for fear that she had been caught and unwound—but here she is!
He tries to talk, forgetting the ventilator. Instead he just coughs, and the machine beeps, registering a burst of erratic breathing.
“Look at you! I don’t even recognize you with all those names tattooed on your face, and that peach-fuzz hair.”
He weakly lifts his hand, putting his thumb and forefinger together in the universal Let me write this down gesture.
She sighs with feigned exasperation, and says “Hold on.” She leaves the unit, and returns with a pad and pen “As they didn’t shoot you in the head,” Miracolina says, “I assume you still have enough brainpower to write legibly.”
He takes the pen and pad and writes
Why am I alive?
She looks at the pad, gives him a beat of the stink eye, and says, “Oh right, it’s all about you, isn’t it. Never mind saying, ‘Good to see you, Miracolina. I missed you. I’m glad you’re alive.’ ”
He takes the pad back and writes all that, but of course it’s too late.
“The most annoying part about the idiotic thing you did is that it worked,” she tells him. “Suddenly people are seeing the Juvenile Authority as the enemy—but don’t you think for a second that excuses you!”
He can tell Miracolina enjoys the fact that he can’t talk back and that she can berate him freely.
“Just so you know, your stunt has cost you your liver, your pancreas, both of your kidneys, and both of your lungs.”
Considering how many bullets tore into him, that sounds right—but wait . . . if he lost both of his lungs, how is he breathing? How is he still alive at all? There’s only one way he could survive the loss of so many organs, and he begins to thrash in his bed in angry panic, then grabs the pen and writes in big block letters:
NO UNWOUND PARTS! TAKE THEM OUT!!
She looks at him with mock attitude, and says. “Sorry, suicide boy, but you did not receive any unwound parts. Charles Kovac from Montpelier, Vermont, offered up the one lung that’s currently in your chest.”
He raises his hand to write, but Miracolina stops him.
“Don’t ask me who he is, because I have no idea. He’s just some guy who would rather live his life with one lung than see you die.” And she goes on. “A woman from Utah donated part of her liver, a guy in a car accident actually bequeathed you his pancreas with his dying words. And the day you were admitted to New York Hospital, half the city seemed to show up to donate blood.”
Finally she offers him a smile, although he suspects it slipped though her defenses. “I don’t know what it is, but people suddenly love you, Lev. Even looking like that.”
He tries to smile around the ventilator tube but finds it too difficult.
“Anyway,” she says, “everyone who donated part of themselves to save your life were total strangers, except for one.”
Perhaps it’s the medication he’s on, or perhaps he truly is dense, but he doesn’t figure it out until Miracolina stands, turns around, and raises her blouse to show a six-inch wound on the left side of her back. “I think giving you my left kidney buys me the right to tell you that you’re an idiot,” she says.
Yes, it does, Lev writes. And yes, I am.
• • •
The rest of the day becomes a receiving line. First comes Elina, who is, of course, his primary physician. When Miracolina leaves, Elina tells him that the girl has barely left his bedside since the day she arrived two weeks ago. “She offered her kidney, but only with a guarantee that she and her family could come to the Rez while you recover.” And then Elina adds, “She’s a sweet girl, although she tries not to show it.”
Chal takes time out of an extremely hectic day to give him a legal briefing of sorts. He tells him that the Tribal Council revoted on his petition to officially give AWOLs sanctuary, and it passed. Now the tribe is threatening a veritable war against the Juvenile Authority. Lev would like to think that his failed attempt at martyrdom might have had something to do with it, but they made the decision a day before, when the Parental Override bill passed in Congress. Still, Lev was the one who planted the idea in their heads.
“One more thing,” Chal tells him. “In order to get you back here to the Rez, we had to jump through some legal hoops. Elina and I had to become your official guardians. . . . The easiest way to do that was to adopt. I’m afraid you’ll have to change your business cards,” Chal jokes. “Because now you’re Lev Tashi’ne.”
“You certainly are building up the identities,” says Elina.
Pivane comes and sits beside him in stoic silence for a while, then later in the afternoon, Una and Kele pay him a visit. They bring with them something Lev was never expecting to see. In truth, he was never expecting to see anything in this world again, but this is something he really wasn’t expecting to see. It’s a small furry creature clinging to Kele’s shoulder. Its large, soulful eyes dart everywhere around the room, before making eye contact with Lev.