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"It looks like your finger has looked every single time you've ever worried about it."
I squeezed some hand sanitizer onto the cut, felt a deep, stinging burn, unwrapped a new Band-Aid, and wrapped it around my finger. I sat there for a while, embarrassed, wishing I were alone, but also terrified. Couldn't get the redness and the swelling out of my mind, my skin responding to the invasion of parasitic bacteria. Hated myself. Hated this.
"Hey," Daisy said. She put a hand on my knee. "Don't let Aza be cruel to Holmesy, okay?"
This was different. The sting of the hand sanitizer was gone now, which meant the bacteria were back to breeding, spreading through my finger into the bloodstream. Why did I ever crack open the callus anyway? Why couldn't I just leave it alone? Why did I have to give myself a constant, gaping open wound on, of all places, my finger? The hands are the dirtiest parts of the body. Why couldn't I pinch my earlobe or my belly or my ankle? I'd probably killed myself with sepsis because of some stupid childhood ritual that didn't even prove what I wanted it to prove, because what I wanted to know was unknowable, because there was no way to be sure about anything.
It'll feel better if you reapply the hand sanitizer. Just a couple more times. It was 3:12. We had to get to the bank. I took off the Band-Aid, applied hand sanitizer, reapplied a Band-Aid. It was 3:13. Daisy said, "Do you want me to drive?" I shook my head. Started Harold up. Put him in reverse. Then back in park.
Took off the Band-Aid, applied more hand sanitizer. It stung less this time. Maybe that means they're mostly dead. Or maybe it means they're in too deep already, that they've gotten through the skin into the blood. Just look at it one more time. Does it look like the swelling is getting better? It's only been eight minutes too soon to tell. Stop. It was 3:15. "Holmesy," she said. "We need to go. I can drive."
I shook my head again, put the car into reverse, and this time succeeded in getting moving. "I wish I understood it," she told me as I drove. "Like, does it help to be reassuring or is it better to worry with you? Is there anything that makes it better?"
"It's infected," I whispered. "And I did it to myself. Like I always do. Opened the callus up and now it's infected." I was that fish, infected with a parasite, swimming close to the surface, trying to get myself eaten.
--
When we finally got to the bank, I stood in the back while Daisy introduced herself to a teller, and then we were escorted to a glassed-off private office in the back, where a thin woman in a black suit placed our cash into a machine that shuffled through the bills, counting them. We filled out a bunch of forms and then had brand-new bank accounts, complete with debit cards that would arrive in seven to ten days. The woman gave us five temporary checks to use until our real ones arrived, encouraged us not to make any major purchases for at least six months "while you learn to live with this windfall," and then started talking about the places we could put the money--college savings accounts or mutual funds or bonds or stocks--and I was trying to pay attention to her, but the problem was I wasn't really in the bank. I was inside my head, the torrent of thoughts screaming that I had sealed my fate by not changing the Band-Aid for over a day, that it was too late, and now I could feel the heat and soreness in my fingertip, and you know it's real once you can physically feel it, because the senses can't lie. Or can they? I thought, It's happening, the it too terrifying and vast to name with anything but a pronoun.
--
Driving to Daisy's apartment complex, I kept forgetting why I was stopped at a stoplight, and then I'd let off Harold's brake only to look up and notice, oh, right. The light is red.
You hear a lot about the benefits of insanity or whatever--like, Dr. Karen Singh had once told me this Edgar Allan Poe quote: "The question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence." I guess she was trying to make me feel better, but I find mental disorders to be vastly overrated. Madness, in my admittedly limited experience, is accompanied by no superpowers; being mentally unwell doesn't make you loftily intelligent any more than having the flu does. So I know I should've been a brilliant detective or whatever, but in actuality I was one of the least observant people I'd ever met. I was aware of absolutely nothing outside myself on the drive to Daisy's apartment building and then to my house.
I went to the bathroom when I got home and examined the cut. The swelling seemed down. Maybe. Maybe the light in the bathroom just wasn't strong enough for me to see clearly. I cleaned it with soap and water, patted it dry, applied hand sanitizer, and then rebandaged my finger. I also took my regular medication, and then a few minutes later an oblong white pill I'd been told to use when panicky.
I let the pill melt on my tongue into a vague sweetness and waited for it to kick in. I felt certain something was going to kill me, and of course I was right: Something is going to kill you, someday, and you can't know if this is the day.
After a while, my head got heavy, and I sat down on the couch in front of the TV. I didn't really have the energy to turn it on, so I just stared at the blank screen.
The oblong pill made me feel exceptionally groggy, but only from the bridge of my nose up. My body felt like its stand
ard self, broken and insufficient in the usual ways, but my brain felt sloppy and exhausted, like the noodle legs of a runner post-marathon. Mom came home and plopped down next to me. "Long day," she said. "I don't mind students, Aza. It's the parents that make my job hard."
"Sorry," I said.
"How was your day?"
"Okay," I said. "I don't have a fever, do I?"
She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. "I don't think so. Do you feel sick?"
"Just tired, I think." Mom turned on the TV, and I told her I was going to lie down and do some homework.
--
I read my history textbook for a while, but my consciousness felt like a camera with a dirty lens, so I decided to text Davis.
Me: Hi.
Him: Hi.
Me: How are you?
Him: Pretty good, you?
Me: Pretty good.
