The System

“It’s like I’m a stranger in my own house,” he said to her.

Darla smiled a reply. “I guess it’s not really your house anymore.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Teddy slipped away to a corner of Ethan’s room that housed a used collection of Star Wars figures. Ethan’s love for Luke Skywalker started when he was in late elementary school. His father introduced him to the otherworldly tales. While he had outgrown playing with the action figures and racing around his house with his plastic light saber, he had never outgrown the way the stories made him feel—the themes carried him year after year. There were clear battle lines between good and evil and the corruption of power; Ethan liked knowing who to root for.

“Did you ask to play with those things, Teddy?” Darla chastised in her mom-voice without taking her eyes off of Ethan.

Teddy kept playing with the figures, bending a miniature light saber around inside Obi Wan Kenobi’s hand.

“Who’s this?” Teddy asked and held the guy up for Ethan to see.

Ethan smiled. “I’ll tell you all about those, little man. Later. Okay?”

Teddy, satisfied, spun back to the toys, ignoring his mother’s request for permission.

“So,” Darla continued. “You feeling okay?”

“No,” Ethan responded without hesitation. “I’ve got pain where I don’t have a body. And pain everywhere else too.”

“Like I said, the doctor is on her way up…she’ll help.”

“She’s helped plenty, yes,” Ethan replied and he couldn’t help tipping his hand, laying his resentment bare.

Darla turned to Ainsley and then to Teddy who, while leaning on Ethan’s shelf, had knocked it down off of the brackets with a crash. With a sigh, Darla hung her head.

“I’ve got him,” Ainsley volunteered and she swung Teddy off the ground; he was still clutching a Yoda and a miniature Mille

With the door closed, Darla turned her head back to Ethan and her eyes narrowed.

“You do realize that without the doctor you would’ve died. Right?”

Ethan shrugged. He looked away.

“No,” Darla said and she stood up. She leaned down over Ethan and poked her finger into his bare sternum, and he flinched. “No. No way.”

“What?” Ethan whined and he tried to pull away from the pressure on his chest, but Darla had him pi

“There’s no room for self-pity. You hear me?” He lifted her finger off his chest and when he didn’t answer right away, she poked him again and Ethan let out a yelp. “You’re alive, Ethan. That’s worth it. You can’t deny that.”

“Stop!” Ethan said and he brought his hand up and tried to grab her wrist to prevent any more finger-poking, but she swatted his hand away. She was so much faster than him. “I lost my leg, Darla.”

“Are we doing this? Are we making lists of the things we’ve lost?” She stood tall and crossed her arms over her chest.

He conceded. It should have been the argument to end all arguments.

“I’m in pain,” he said after a long moment.

“I know.”

“I just don’t want to be in pain anymore.”

“Give it time.”

“Time,” Ethan mumbled. “I guess we have all the time in the world now. Got nowhere I need to be, right?”

Doctor Krause entered without knocking. She smiled at Ethan and Darla, but it looked forced, like she had practiced it in a mirror; she flashed her teeth, but even that seemed robotic, inhuman. Ethan looked at her and assessed her; she looked like how he had always pictured doctors—thin, tired. She gave Darla a pat on the back and Darla bristled at the touch.

“It’s good to see you awake,” Doctor Krause said to Ethan. “Ainsley told me your fever is down. You feeling a bit more aware?”

Ethan nodded. “I suppose.”

“Joey was able to hit a new pharmacy yesterday…we’re well-stocked with pain killers. When you’re better, you should thank him. It’s no easy task to fulfill my shopping list, on foot, with the state of the world out there.”

“Yeah.” Ethan cleared his throat. “I’ll be sure to do that.” Darla shot him a warning look. He rolled his eyes.

Doctor Krause hadn’t seemed to hear his sarcasm, she continued blithely on. “But I do want to be cognizant of building up a tolerance. If we can’t adequately meet your demand for pain medication with our supply, we could get into scary, painful territory.”

Ethan waved his hand. “Whatever. I’m not the type of guy who needs to know what you’re doing. Just give me the meds.”

Darla threw her hands up and sighed. “Come on, Ethan.” She turned to Doctor Krause, “I’m sorry, Gloria.”

“Please,” Doctor Krause replied. “He’s hardly the rudest patient I’ve encountered. And amputation is emotionally and physically draining.”

“Where’s my leg?” Ethan asked, shooting a look at Darla. She clamped her mouth shut.

“I’m sorry?” Doctor Krause moved toward Ethan and sat down on the edge of his bed—it was an action that required familiarity, and he moved his hand away from her side, resting it across his belly, watching her with a sideways glance.

“Where is my leg now?” Ethan asked again.

Doctor Krause still looked confused. She looked to Darla and then back to Ethan, concerned. “I don’t think I underst—”

“We just left everything over at the other house,” Darla answered for her. She had understood immediately what Ethan wanted to know.

“Which house?” Ethan turned his gaze to Darla.

“I don’t know…three houses down…right side. Brown house…”

The DiCarlo house. He knew it. Sophie and Ryan. Young couple with kids in elementary school. Ethan wasn’t ashamed to admit, even now, that he enjoyed Sophie DiCarlo’s little hot pink workout outfit that she do

“Where?”

“The tan—”

“No,” Ethan snapped. “I know which house. Where inside the house?”

Darla drew in a long breath. So Doctor Krause took over. “The open area in the front had the most light at midday. You don’t remember anything?”

He shook his head. And closed his eyes.

“We performed your surgery in the front room. The one with the floor to ceiling windows,” the doctor added.

His disembodied leg was discarded in Sophie DiCarlo’s living room.

Ethan’s emotions flashed between anger and amusement.

Sitting up, Ethan tugged the blanket off of him again. Even though Ainsley had drawn it back over his leg with efficient calmness, he really wanted to see it again. Right above his knee, there was nothing. His brain thought of toes and an ankle that wasn’t there and made an attempt to co

His right leg, now left to rot in a once-pined-for dead woman’s house, wasn’t just an appendage. It was a road map of childhood battles, sports injuries, drunken dares. There was the scar a few inches long on his calf from a playground accident when he was five; and a patch of hair that never grew back the same way after a group of college friends dared him to try out a home waxing kit; a webbed toe, a badge of honor as well as a junior high embarrassment; a tiny birth mark on his ankle.

Gone. All those characteristics, those ties to memory and individuality, were gone. His housemates seemed so concerned for his pain level, his fever, and his risk of infection. Ethan just wanted to see his leg again—to acknowledge its absence in a tangible way—but he would be forever at the mercy of everyone else until he was healthier.

Ethan registered Darla and Doctor Krause’s concern.

Darla’s warnings about wallowing in self-pity rang in his ears. She was right, of course; he wanted nothing more than to make them feel even half of what he was feeling. Maybe for a moment it would help. But only for a moment.