Broken Nation
Every time I close my eyes, I dream about the time before everyone I loved was dead.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t keep my eyes open. Over and over, I’m taken back to when my worst problems were in calculus and the Civil War was something that happened in my AP American History book. They have me so doped up that I drop in and out of sleep like falling off a cliff and then being yanked back up by a bungee cord when I need more of whatever they pump into my veins.
It’s not the dreams that are bad. It’s the waking up. There is just enough time, before the pain hits, for me to situate myself back into reality. And then I’m grateful for the pain because it’s so intense I can’t think of much else.
They took my right leg at the middle of my thigh. None of the people who take care of me look healthy enough to be out of bed themselves, but here they are, slipping in and out of my line of sight as I lay flat on my back under thick, heavy layers of misery and narcotics.
It occurs to me, in a rare moment of clarity, how important it must be to them to keep me alive. There can’t be many patients left in the hospital. There aren’t very many people left at all.
Before my surgery, there was a shot of something that burned like acid through my veins. That’s impossible to forget because a new injection comes every day.
And I remember Alex kissing my feverish forehead and telling me that it was over, just before they wheeled me away from him. Then things get fuzzy, because all that matters for a while is that my leg is gone. The idea that it is detached from my body, but still somewhere—in some containment unit, waiting for disposal or rotting in a biohazard bag in a landfill—makes it hard for me to think about anything else.
It was a week of those horrible shots cutting through the painkillers they give me for my leg before I finally start to spend less time dreaming about the time before. By then, I know the shots cure the Virus. They keep it from coming back.
I also know that the Virus put a quick end to the Second Civil War. The war in the Midwest that my mother went to Kansas to try to stop. That war started when the United States government tried to deport tens of thousands of illegal Mexican farmworkers all at once.
I’m not afraid of war, though. It’s the things that aren’t true anymore that are almost more than I can stand. When those things overwhelm me, I tick off the things I know for sure.
I know my mother is dead. She was one of the first victims of the virus that took my leg.
I know that the government put Mexican Americans in camps around the country. To keep them safe, they said. I know that I was taken to one after my mother died, when someone figured out that my father was half Mexican and that my only living relative, his aunt, was already there.
I know that I was lucky to escape with everything but my leg.
I know that I am Leanne Wood, orphan, one-legged, but not alone. Because I know that Alex Santiago will come back for me, if I can’t get to him.
“I need to go to Denver,” I say to the nurse who comes in to check my bandages. “I need a transfer to the hospital there or something.”
The nurse looks at me, her hands still smoothing clean wrappings over the place where my leg used to be. I can’t watch, so I focus on her face. She looks so tired. She isn’t very much older than I am, and it occurs to me that this wouldn’t have been her job before. She has an odd way of looking into the middle distance that makes her seem haunted.
“No one can leave the city,” she says. “The migration is over.”
“Migration?” I have an opiate-fueled image of people moving across the plains like buffalo.
“Everyone left in Nevada is here, in Reno. No one in, no one out, now.”
“But I have to get to Denver.” I say it like maybe if I say it a little slower, she’ll get it, even though it’s me who is slow to understand.
“I think I heard
Every time I close my eyes, I dream about the time before everyone I loved was dead.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t keep my eyes open. Over and over, I’m taken back to when my worst problems were in calculus and the Civil War was something that happened in my AP American History book. They have me so doped up that I drop in and out of sleep like falling off a cliff and then being yanked back up by a bungee cord when I need more of whatever they pump into my veins.
It’s not the dreams that are bad. It’s the waking up. There is just enough time, before the pain hits, for me to situate myself back into reality. And then I’m grateful for the pain because it’s so intense I can’t think of much else.
They took my right leg at the middle of my thigh. None of the people who take care of me look healthy enough to be out of bed themselves, but here they are, slipping in and out of my line of sight as I lay flat on my back under thick, heavy layers of misery and narcotics.
It occurs to me, in a rare moment of clarity, how important it must be to them to keep me alive. There can’t be many patients left in the hospital. There aren’t very many people left at all.
Before my surgery, there was a shot of something that burned like acid through my veins. That’s impossible to forget because a new injection comes every day.
And I remember Alex kissing my feverish forehead and telling me that it was over, just before they wheeled me away from him. Then things get fuzzy, because all that matters for a while is that my leg is gone. The idea that it is detached from my body, but still somewhere—in some containment unit, waiting for disposal or rotting in a biohazard bag in a landfill—makes it hard for me to think about anything else.
It was a week of those horrible shots cutting through the painkillers they give me for my leg before I finally start to spend less time dreaming about the time before. By then, I know the shots cure the Virus. They keep it from coming back.
I also know that the Virus put a quick end to the Second Civil War. The war in the Midwest that my mother went to Kansas to try to stop. That war started when the United States government tried to deport tens of thousands of illegal Mexican farmworkers all at once.
I’m not afraid of war, though. It’s the things that aren’t true anymore that are almost more than I can stand. When those things overwhelm me, I tick off the things I know for sure.
I know my mother is dead. She was one of the first victims of the virus that took my leg.
I know that the government put Mexican Americans in camps around the country. To keep them safe, they said. I know that I was taken to one after my mother died, when someone figured out that my father was half Mexican and that my only living relative, his aunt, was already there.
I know that I was lucky to escape with everything but my leg.
I know that I am Leanne Wood, orphan, one-legged, but not alone. Because I know that Alex Santiago will come back for me, if I can’t get to him.
“I need to go to Denver,” I say to the nurse who comes in to check my bandages. “I need a transfer to the hospital there or something.”
The nurse looks at me, her hands still smoothing clean wrappings over the place where my leg used to be. I can’t watch, so I focus on her face. She looks so tired. She isn’t very much older than I am, and it occurs to me that this wouldn’t have been her job before. She has an odd way of looking into the middle distance that makes her seem haunted.
“No one can leave the city,” she says. “The migration is over.”
“Migration?” I have an opiate-fueled image of people moving across the plains like buffalo.
“Everyone left in Nevada is here, in Reno. No one in, no one out, now.”
“But I have to get to Denver.” I say it like maybe if I say it a little slower, she’ll get it, even though it’s me who is slow to understand.
“I think I heard
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