Faceless Read online

“I was just trying to touch my face. Dr. Boden, is it all right if I touch it?”

  “Let me get you some gloves,” he says, his voice even and calm. “You have to be sterile, otherwise you risk infecting the new tissue.”

  He slips a surgical glove over my right hand. I begin with something familiar: First I touch my lips. They’re dry and chapped, but otherwise, they feel the same as they always have. Slowly, I walk my fingers toward the chin, like a little kid using tracing paper.

  The chin is pointier than my old chin, thinner. My jawline is familiar but my new checks feel round, like a baby’s. Up farther, to my forehead; even though I can’t feel them, I know that my freckles are still there, above my eyebrows. I trace my fingers down over the bridge of the nose, which feels narrow and bony, harder than my nose used to feel.

  “You look good,” Mom says finally. “Great. You look great.”

  It’s one of those hollow compliments she gives from time to time, like when I was in eighth grade and didn’t get cast in the school play. She was absolutely shocked, insisting that I was such a great actress—this, despite the fact that I’d never acted a day in my life before the audition.

  I just came out of a sixteen-hour surgery, getting a new nose sewn onto my skull. Or maybe stapled or glued, I don’t even know.

  How great can I possibly look?

  I wish I could turn my head to see my dad’s face, but I can’t. I’m pretty sure he’s disappointed. Because he hasn’t said We have our daughter back like he thought he would.

  I fall back asleep about a dozen times after that, the anesthesia working its way out of my body, just like it did when I came out of the coma. I’m out of recovery and settled into a new room—in the pediatric ward rather than the burn unit now—when they finally give me my mirror.

  I lift it slowly. I feel like the wicked queen in Snow White, waiting for a mirror to deliver her fate. Though I’m certainly not expecting to be told that I’m the fairest of them all.

  I thought I was prepared. I touched it in recovery, over and over, every time I woke up. It would be me, just with round cheeks and a narrow nose. But I never expected to see a monster staring back at me.

  There are jagged lines running down my cheeks, hot pink, like I’m a toddler who played with her mother’s lipstick and completely missed her mouth.

  Another scar is visible when I tilt my head skyward, where they attached the new chin to what was left of my neck. My new cheekbones are as full as a chipmunk’s. Dr. Boden slips a fresh glove over my left hand—my right hand is holding the mirror—and I gently touch my new cheeks, careful to avoid the pink lines. I can’t feel a thing.

  “It may take months for you to regain sensation,” Dr. Boden supplies before I can ask. I’m not sure what would be stranger: Not being able to feel the stranger’s features pasted onto my face, or being able to feel them.

  “The swelling will go down,” Dr. Boden adds, anticipating the next question I’d ask if I could. But I don’t think I can. Technically, my mouth works just fine, but my own face has scared me into silence. I point to the lines on my cheeks.

  “They won’t always be so bright,” Dr. Boden explains, his voice as calm as ever. “Right now, they’re fresh, but they’ll fade,” he adds, as though scars are no different from produce or flowers or milk.

  My parents certainly do not have their daughter back. I’m not sure who they have. I’m not sure what they have. I barely look human. I lower the mirror, my hand shaking. I’m not the evil queen in the fairy tale—I’m the monster who lives in the woods, keeping to the shadows so that no one will see her.

  “We’ll try again tomorrow,” Dr. Boden says. “Your psychologist will be here. She’ll work with you every day while you’re here in the hospital.”

  Every day? I’m going to have to look at this horror every single day?

  “It will get easier,” Dr. Boden promises.

  My mother walks into the room, a sandwich from the cafeteria in her hand. Not that I think she’s been eating much lately. I don’t imagine looking at her daughter—wrapped in bandages before and in someone else’s skin now—is all that appetizing.

  My mother is the kind of person who will send back steak at a restaurant if it wasn’t cooked exactly the way she ordered it. Who’d send back a dress if it wasn’t exactly the fit she’d been promised. Who’d make a painter repaint the entire house if the color wasn’t exactly what she’d imagined.

  I bet there’s a part of her that’s just dying to yell at Dr. Boden: Maisie doesn’t look anything like you said she would! But you can’t send back your daughter, no matter how badly they screwed up your order.

  A few days later, a bad taste in my mouth wakes me from a hazy, painkiller-induced sleep. A bitter kind of metallic flavor sitting in the back of my throat. When I complain, the doctors literally cheer.

  I can taste. Later, I’ll learn that the bad taste was probably adrenaline, from fear, and I’ll wonder whether it had been sitting in my throat, unnoticed, every day since I woke up from the coma.

  Now Dr. Boden, Dr. Cohen, and a new doctor named Dr. Woo, an immune specialist, come into the room and tilt my bed so that I’m sitting up straight.

  “We’re here to discuss your medication,” Dr. Woo begins.

  “The nurses have been keeping a tight schedule,” I say. All the pills look and feel alike to me. The doctors lean against the wall across from my bed. My parents are sitting in the only chairs in the room.

  “Yes, but you can’t count on the nurses forever,” Dr. Boden says, a smile playing on the edges of his lips. “We’re going to send you home in a few days.”

  Tiny beads of sweat spring at the nape of my neck. “Seriously?” My doctors look disappointed. I guess they were expecting something along the lines of Hooray! But I can’t muster hooray, not even for Dr. Boden, whom I’ve come to like. Instead of excitement, I feel almost feverish.

  With effort, I tilt my head to look at the ceiling, relishing the fact that I’m able to turn away at all. Since the surgery, without the plastery mask over my face, my field of vision isn’t limited, and I can turn my head and look around normally. Which would be great if it wasn’t for the fact that my new face weighs a million pounds. When I close my eyes, I imagine that my new features are sliding right off of me, the stitches that hold this nose and these cheeks and this chin to my face strained until they are about to snap. And I have a new pain to concentrate on: a literal pain in the neck. For the past few days, I’ve kept my head tilted downward slightly. Everyone probably thinks that I’m on the verge of nodding off.

  Dr. Woo explains that she’s here to make sure that my parents and I understand exactly what each and every pill is and how many I’ll be taking each day.

  I don’t even care that I’m interrupting her when I say, “Why is this face so heavy?” Mom shoots me a Look with a capital L, annoyed that I’m not paying closer attention.

  Dr. Boden jumps in with an answer. “The weight should be temporary, Maisie. The new tissue was transplanted onto your tissue bed, so it’s not yet integrated into your nervous system.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with the fact that I can barely hold my neck straight.”

  “Right now, all the new parts feel, for lack of a better term, like a big flab of tissue hanging off your face.”

  I am so sick of hearing people say things like for lack of a better term. There’s no way to make the details of my condition sound pretty, and everyone seems to think they should apologize for that fact. Dr. Boden continues, “Over time, as your own nerves grow into the tissue, you won’t feel that heavy sensation anymore. All that new tissue will feel like part of you.”

  Why don’t doctors understand that the science that’s so interesting to them is pretty gross to everyone else? Except for Chirag. He loves that kind of stuff. Maybe that’s why he decided to be a doctor in the first place.

  “Dr. Woo,” Mom suggests, an edge to her voice. Clearly she’s irritated that I was too busy thi
nking about the heft of my new face to pay attention. “Maybe you should take it from the top?”

  Take it from the top. Like this is all just a play we’re rehearsing, not real life. I’m tempted to tell her that I didn’t think I needed to pay attention. Not when she’s scribbled down every word the doctors have said since I woke up from my surgery on one of her ugly yellow legal pads. I wish Chirag was the one taking notes across the room. Chirag would have a laptop balanced on his long legs, tip-tappily recording the doctors’ instructions. He’d type up a schedule for me, the same way he did last semester for our SAT prep. He’d make it seem fun, like my health was an at-home science project, not another way for my mother to control me.

  Instead, Mom’s pencil against paper sounds like nails against a chalkboard to me. Maybe she thinks there will be a test later.

  I mean, I guess that’s what me coming home is. A test. Find out what happens when the girl without a face ventures into the real world with her new parts hanging off of her.

  Dr. Woo starts again, explaining how my immune system is going to treat the new tissue—the new tissue, she says, not my new tissue. My doctors use a lot of very non-medical-sounding terms. They say that to my immune system, the new tissue is an invader, an alien, an imposter. The pills aren’t pills but a regimen. Apparently, we’re fighting some kind of epic battle here.

  “But,” Dr. Woo continues, “it’s something of a delicate dance.”

  Am I the only one who thinks it’s kind of funny that we just went from war talk to ballet?

  “We don’t want to weaken your immune system too much. As it is, on these pills you’ll be more susceptible to a variety of infections—”

  “Which is why,” Dr. Cohen breaks in, “we’ll also have you on antiviral and antibacterial medications.”

  “I don’t have a virus,” I say.

  “They’re prophylactic,” Dr. Cohen explains. If Serena were here, she’d giggle at the word prophylactic. And if Serena were here, she’d distract me by standing behind my mom making funny faces. Though none of her faces would be nearly as funny-looking as mine. I sigh heavily, and Mom shoots me another Look.

  “We’re also going to put you on blood thinners to begin with,” Dr. Boden explains, “to make sure your blood vessels don’t clot off.”

  Dr. Woo says, “After you go home, you’ll be coming in for regular blood tests. We’ll start with once a week and then gradually taper off to once a month. Just so we can keep a close eye on your immune system.”

  I’m going to be poked and prodded for the rest of my life.

  “And you should try to avoid people who are sick,” Dr. Woo adds.

  “That should be easy,” I say. “I don’t plan on leaving the house much.”

  “Maisie, don’t be rude,” Mom admonishes.

  “Sue, this is all a lot to take in,” Dad says, defending me. It’s the first time he’s spoken since the doctors came into my room. He looks at me and smiles gently. His smile brings out the deep, dark circles under his eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so tired.

  My mother wants me to be the kind of strong and special patient you read about in books, the kind who doesn’t get cranky even when she can barely move half her body, has lost her face to an electrical fire, and is in quite a lot of pain. Instead I’m the kind of person who says, “I think I’ve earned the right to be a little bit rude.”

  “Rude to the doctors who saved your life?”

  “But now they all get to put my face transplant on their résumés,” I joke, though no one laughs. I glance at Dr. Boden and see him struggling not to smile.

  “I think we’re getting off track,” Dr. Boden says finally. “Why don’t we let Dr. Woo keep going, and then each of you can ask all of your questions when she’s finished. We’ll go over this as many times as you need. Right now, nothing is more important than your immunosuppressive regimen.”

  Every day something else is the most important. First, it was pain management. Then it was Marnie’s PT. Then the transplant. Then surgical recovery. Now immunosuppressive, a word I didn’t know existed a few weeks ago.

  Dr. Woo starts again. “One of the drugs you’ll be taking is called CellCept. You’ll be taking it twice a day. Normally you’d be required to take a pregnancy test before starting CellCept but since you’ve been here in the hospital for so long, we already know you’re not pregnant.”

  Serena would be giggling so hard she’d be choking by now. My mother’s face is bright red and Dad can’t even look at me.

  “As long as you’re on CellCept,” Dr. Woo continues, “you’ll be required to take birth control, since it can lead to serious harm to an unborn baby.”

  Dr. Woo’s face turns particularly stern. Come to think of it, why does everyone look so serious about this point in particular? Dad’s smile has vanished and Dr. Boden can’t even look at me.

  Then I realize … they’re telling me I can never get pregnant. I have to be on immunosuppressives for the rest of my life, and immunosuppressives cause birth defects. I mean, I’m in high school, everyone’s priority is not getting pregnant. I know that having kids was a million years away, but it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t at least have the option.

  “Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath. I can be levelheaded, even about this. If Chirag were here, he’d just add this new detail to the list, so I try to do the same. “Birth control. CellCept. Blood thinners. Antivirals and antibacterials. What else?”

  “Now, we’ll give you some literature about the side effects, but I must tell you, they are legion. The serious ones include: fever, chest pain, bloody or black stool—”

  “But of course,” Dr. Boden breaks in, “there are plenty of less serious side effects. Nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, anxiety—”

  Those are the mild side effects?

  “And of course, fatigue and insomnia.”

  “Wait, these pills are going to make me tired and keep me awake?” I ask, at the same time that Mom asks, “Will the side effects—will they lessen as Maisie’s body acclimates to the medication?”

  Dr. Woo waves her head from side to side noncommittally, ignoring my question to answer Mom’s. “Her body may adjust. But of course, there may always be changes to her regimen, and as we update her doses, the side effects will vary.”

  Mom’s pencil scratches endlessly against the surface of her pad. I close my eyes and try to imagine the rhythmic click of Chirag’s fingers on the keyboard of his laptop.

  “These are very powerful drugs, Maisie,” Dr. Woo says. “We are weakening your immune system, and over time you’re going to be more susceptible to certain types of cancer, diabetes, and of course any number of infections.”

  “Yippee,” I say. Dr. Woo doesn’t even crack a smile. I don’t know why I keep trying to make jokes. Can you even call them jokes when no one laughs?

  “This is all very serious, Maisie. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that you take these drugs as directed by me and by the rest of your team.”

  “Don’t worry, Dr. Woo,” Mom interjects. “I’ll make sure Maisie stays on schedule.”

  Dr. Boden says, “It might be best to keep Maisie in charge of her regimen. Give her a little bit of agency over her condition.” I open my eyes and look at my plastic surgeon. When Mom isn’t looking, he winks at me. Maybe he grew up with a controlling mother, too.

  “Who are we kidding?” I say drily. “I’m not in charge of any of this.” I glance at Mom, her hand hovering above her pad, ready to record the next doctor’s order.

  Just then, Marnie comes in. Apparently, it’s time for physical therapy.

  “Good afternoon, everyone,” she says merrily. Dr. Woo gives her a stern look, but even Dr. Woo can’t wipe the smile off of Marnie’s cheerful face.

  I notice that unlike Dr. Woo, Dr. Boden and Dr. Cohen and even my father are returning Marnie’s smile. She doesn’t seem to notice. I guess she’s used to the way men react to her.

  “Marnie,” Dr.
Boden says, “I’d say Maisie is one of your easier cases.”

  What are you talking about, easy? My case is one in a million, intricate and complicated. Dr. Boden said so himself a dozen times. “You wouldn’t say it was easy if you knew what it felt like,” I mutter. I’ve come to dread Marnie’s entrance into my room every day. Come to hate the rubber ball she puts in the palm of my left hand with a passion usually reserved for the hatred of evil dictators and serial killers.

  “Dr. Boden means that you’re lucky you didn’t need your jaw transplanted. I have to work for months teaching patients how to use their jaws again: to chew their food, to smile, to kiss.”

  Oh my god, would people please, please, please stop calling me lucky? And it’s not like my mouth feels great or anything. I’m still speaking slowly, careful not to open my mouth too wide. For all I know, saying big words like defenestrate and tintinnabulation too quickly might mess up the work they just did.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” Dr. Boden says finally. “Dr. Woo will be back in the morning to go over all this again.”

  “We’re going over this again?” I moan.

  “Maisie,” Dr. Woo says, “we’ll be going over your immunosuppressive regimen every day until you’re released from the hospital.”

  A few days later, a group of nurses burst into my room singing “Happy Birthday.” I hadn’t even realized what day it was, but I guess that today, I’m seventeen. On Chirag’s birthday back in March, we went out to dinner with a bunch of our classmates. Afterward, when everyone else had gone home, we made out in his car until our jaws ached. Gently, I touch my lips now, remembering how it felt to kiss him.

  Marnie steps into the room, holding a chocolate cake with three candles, my parents hovering in the doorway behind her. “Why three?” I ask her.

  “One for the past, one for the present, and one for the future,” she says. “Though we can’t light them in the hospital,” she adds. “Could cause an explosion with all the oxygen tanks, that kind of thing.” She grins, then holds out the cake in front of me like I’m supposed to make a wish anyway. I purse my lips and close my eyes. I imagine that I’m kissing Chirag, not blowing out the candles. I guess that’s my wish.