Chapter 1
The penlight was off but I could still see the circle it had left on my cheek. That was the strange part. The exam room was dim and the walls were that flat green-gray color they use in clinics, and the air smelled like alcohol wipes and old paper, and my pink t-shirt stuck to my back where I'd been sweating through it. The woman in blue scrubs held the light steady near my face and then she didn't. She clicked it off and my eyes stayed watery and the three scratches on my left cheek throbbed like they were still under the beam.
She was supposed to be checking if I was okay and at the same time she was holding something I didn't want her to have. Her glove made a soft squeak when she shifted the forceps, and the brass key caught the overhead light and threw a little dull glint onto the metal tray beside me. My dad's plaid shirt had been right behind me a minute before. Now the door was closed and I could feel him not being in the room more than I had felt him standing there.
My name is Maya and I was thirteen that Thursday in late August.
It was just after four because the clock over the sink said 4:17 and the blinds were half-closed against the afternoon sun. Nurse Practitioner Ruiz had told me her name when she came in and I hadn't answered. She didn't push. She'd put on the blue gloves slow enough for me to watch, looped her stethoscope around her neck, and asked if she could look at my cheek. I nodded because my dad was right there with his hand on the back of my chair. She held the penlight close, not touching, and asked me to look to the side. The light was harsh and white and it made my tears show. I tried not to breathe too loud.
Then she asked me to open my hands. I didn't want to. I had the key balled up so tight in my right fist that the round part was pressing a perfect circle into my palm. I had put it in the small pocket inside my cheek at first, the way I'd seen kids hide a mint, while we waited in the chairs outside. My mouth tasted like metal. When she said please, just so I can check your hands too, my dad shifted his weight behind me and the chair creaked. I opened my mouth and let the key drop into my palm and then opened my palm because if I didn't she would ask why not.
She didn't grab it. She picked up the forceps from the kidney tray with her gloved hand and lifted it clean, like it was something sharp.
"You don't have to say whose this is yet," she said.
I didn't answer. I stared at the tray and not at her eyes.
"Is it yours?" she asked.
I shook my head once. It was a lie and she let it sit there without calling it that.
The door with the little rectangular window was to my left. I wasn't supposed to look at it but I did, in the quick sideways way I'd learned at home. There was a shape behind the glass, a head in profile, blurred, not moving. Dad. I knew the slope of his shoulder in that plaid shirt even through the frosted glass. He hadn't left the building. He was just on the other side waiting for the door to open again. Every time Ruiz moved toward the tray, my eyes flicked back to that window to see if the silhouette had shifted.
Ruiz crouched down so her face was level with mine. She wasn't smiling big. Her voice was low and even. The forceps didn't shake.
"I'm going to set this right here," she whispered. "No one takes it unless you say."
May you like
She lowered the key onto the metal kidney tray. It made a faint, thin clink that I heard more in my teeth than my ears. My breathing was loud in the quiet room. I could hear the paper sheet crinkling under my legs every time I swallowed. I kept my hands in my lap, empty now, with the red mark still fading from my palm. I didn't touch the key. I didn't claim it.
The light was still dim. The scratches on my cheek felt hot. The silhouette in the door window stayed where it was, and then a knuckle hovered near the glass on the other side, not knocking yet, just waiting for permission that hadn't come.
