Machine Man - Max Barry [43]
Lola’s hand closed over mine. Our eyes met. Suddenly I didn’t know why I had wondered who she was. She was Lola, of course. “I was born with a congenital heart defect,” she said. Her voice was low and distant. “Hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Only one side developed properly. I had surgery three times before I turned two. It bankrupted my family. And I needed more. It was only a matter of time. I was a time bomb. We never had vacations, or a new car, or ate out. My parents never had another kid. They scraped everything together against the day I would faint and cost three hundred thousand dollars.
“So I decided to die. There was a photo album under the coffee table I used to read, and I’d look at the pages where my parents were young and happy and went places, and I wanted them to have that again. We lived way up north, in a snow town named Chabon, and one day I walked out and took off my coat and hat and sat down next to a frozen stream. I was being romantic, I guess. But I meant it. I wanted to save my parents’ lives. I sat there until I couldn’t move, and then I fell asleep.
“When I woke, I was in a hospital bed and my mom was crying. My chest hurt. I had damaged my heart. It couldn’t beat by itself anymore. The hospital had installed an artificial one. It was a stop-gap measure, the doctor said, because I was still growing. In a few years, it would need to be replaced.
“So there we were. Me with an expensive new heart and my parents wiped out. This time I took down my grandparents as well. I found that out later. The retirement plans that were shelved, the homes and heirlooms that were sold. All for my temporary heart. And maybe five years until I needed a new one.
“A few weeks later I was watching TV and my mom got a call. Her face went tight and she grabbed the wall. Like somebody was pushing her over. It was the auto assembly plant. Dad’s work. He’d been on the factory floor and one of the robots had caught his hand. You know. The robots that make the cars. His hand was welded to a door. The foreman, when he visited, he kept saying he couldn’t understand it. There were safeties. They were actually one of the things Dad was in charge of. So it was a little ironic. I mean, it seemed ironic. At the time.
“They amputated Dad’s hand at the wrist. When he came home, he had a check for fifty thousand dollars. The payment schedule—there was a set amount you got for injuries on the job. Because of the union. You lose your left hand, like Dad did, and you get fifty thousand. A thumb on the dominant hand, twenty grand. Big toes, ten each. The little ones, three grand a pop. Diminished hearing is worth ten. Each foot is forty thousand dollars.” Her eyes reflected the window behind me, mapping straight lines to curves. “Guess how I know that. All these amounts.”
“DAD WAS home for six weeks,” Lola said. “I made him breakfasts. He walked me to school and afterward I ran to the gate to meet him. All bundled up against the cold, you couldn’t tell he was missing a hand. He didn’t have a prosthesis. He didn’t see the point. He liked being home. It was the first time he hadn’t had to work in years. We were both so sad when it was over. I wanted him to stay. But of course we needed the money. So he went back.
“Four days later, it happened again. Another accident. The same arm. He lost it up to the elbow. We visited the hospital and Mom cried and said we were cursed. But Dad didn’t look sad. He got ten weeks’ recuperation. When it was over I said, ‘Are you going back to work now?’ and he said, ‘We’ll see.’ It was two days. The die stamp, this time. Some toes. Mom couldn’t bring herself to visit him. She was losing her mind. But I went. And I was worried, because he looked really hurt. His foot was bandaged and he was missing his arm. I climbed into bed and hugged him as hard as I could. I cried and said he was dying. He said no, I was wrong about that. He told me about the payments. He had a little booklet. He said, ‘See, Lola? The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.’