Fix

I listen to the throbbing of blood in my ears.
I sigh. Just to hear a bit of noise.
It’s not enough.
“Hello,” I say, to no one. To myself… maybe.
Minutes pass. And like butter melting into a warm piece of toast, the Roxy begins to soak through the millions of cell walls throughout my body. The scratchy flutter in my chest settles, but the pain never fully, truly leaves. It’s like a shark circling me in dark water.
I don’t mind that the pain stays nearby. I actually kind of like it. It reminds me how lucky I am to know I’m no longer in pain. If the Roxanol erased everything, I probably wouldn’t appreciate the pills half as much as I do.
Now I lie listening to the nothingness. Unlike the hospital, home is silent. And dark. My toes slide into a cooler spot under my covers while my eyes wander about the room. They stop on my telescope.
It’s not really my telescope. It’s my mother’s. Although I don’t think she’s ever used it. She bought it in one of her fits of feeling like she needed to expand herself—the same way she ended up with the jumble of mountain-climbing equipment still in its packaging in the storage space, or the barely worn martial arts uniform folded neatly on her closet shelf. Or the way she decided to be artificially inseminated to have me.
I rescued the telescope from the hall closet, thinking I’d use it one day. And I do use it. Kind of. To hang clothes on that aren’t dirty enough to throw into the hamper but aren’t clean enough to hang back up.
There are no clothes thrown over it tonight, and the light from the streetlamp makes the black cylinder glow. I stare at the sheen. Slowly, the telescope bends and twists, stretches and turns. And when it speaks to me, I’m not surprised or scared.
“How do you do, Miss Abbott?”
I grin at the extreme formality. It seems like how a teapot should sound, not a telescope.
I’m also not surprised it knows my name. Lots of things know me. Roxanol makes the world come alive with movement, and everything and anything can become animate. In the hospital, the people on my little TV spoke to me all the time. And last night, on my first night home, the stuffed rabbit Lidia gave me for my tenth birthday woke me from a sound sleep and accused me of stealing its house keys. I didn’t steal them, and I didn’t know what to do. So I called Lidia. It was the millionth time I’d called her since that night, though the first time I’d done it at four o’clock in the morning. I knew she wouldn’t pick up. Maybe that’s why I called again. And then twenty or so more times after that… whispering a bunch of stuff that I don’t remember following the beep. I do remember that once I filled her voice mail, I called her mother next. Why, I don’t know. It was four o’clock in the morning, and you always do weird shit at four o’clock in the morning.
Mrs. Banks answered. I wish I hadn’t cried so much. But she was as kind as ever. In her soft Polish accent, she told me to go back to sleep and said that she was sure I’d find the rabbit’s house keys tomorrow. For a minute, it felt just like the old days when Lidia took care of everything. I hung up and fell asleep, hoping that just like the old days, Lidia would show up in the morning.
She didn’t.
“Miss Abbott?” The telescope persists.
I glance over at the bell. Would my mother hear it ringing from her office at the community college? Maybe she didn’t really go to work. Maybe she went out with Mary Fay. My mother likes Mary Fay a lot. I know because she’s been dating her for four years, and my mother has never dated anyone that long. Does my mother like me a lot? I have this urge to ring the bell. But I’m afraid she won’t come.
“How are you tonight, Miss Abbott?” Its voice seems to be rising from deep within the long cylinder leading to the lens.
“Not that good,” I answer.
There’s no reason to lie to my telescope.
I see myself reflected in the dark circle of the lens, which is facing me instead of the stars. My nose looks very large and wide, and my long hair is wild on one side and smashed flat on the other. I always wanted a short bob, but Lidia insisted it looked better long.
“Let me help,” the telescope says. “Have you ever been to Minnesota?” it asks.
I sigh. “You mean the state shaped like a mitten?”
“That’s Michigan,” it says.
Being corrected by my telescope makes me feel like the sun is setting inside my chest.
“I feel like shit,” I confess. “Just so… so shitty.”
My body fills with a tremendous ache that rolls and swells and heaves itself against my sawed-off ribs, my tender spine, my fresh incisions lined with staples.
“I can help,” says the telescope, the sound of his deep voice making the hairs on the back of my neck come alive and the terrible aching recede.
“How?” I sniff.
“Leave the how to me. Just tell me something: Have you ever been to Minnesota?”
Minnesota? “Please, I’m so tired…”
“Eve.”
He uses my first name. The sound of it wrapping warmly around me.
“No,” I tell him.
“Do you care about Minnesota?” he asks quietly.
Cold. Lakes. Snow.
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, then. I can help you, Eve. But each time I do… a tiny piece of Minnesota will disappear. Do you mind?”
“What?” The medicated fog in my head must be pretty thick because I have no idea what the hell my telescope is talking about.
“Every time I help you, Eve, a tiny piece of Minnesota will disappear,” he repeats.
“Why not a tiny piece of Idaho?”
The sound of his laughter makes the top of my head tingle.
“Okay,” he says. “Idaho.”
“No, no, Minnesota’s fine,” I tell him.
He