Scratch turns her head to the left and listens to the steady beeping of the heart monitor. The sterile scent of the room is clinging to her nose and settling heavy on her tongue, making it impossible to forget her prison even with her eyes closed. There’s no darkness to the room, dim lights keeping the twin hospital beds and medical equipment forever illuminated in case of emergency and refusing the darkness Scratch has always found comforting. She supposes there’s not much she finds comforting anymore, even as she listens to the sounds of approaching ambulances and nurses running between rooms on the other side of the door.
She rolls completely on her side, putting the window to the outside world behind her as she watches Johanna’s chest rise and fall, the hospital gown covering the craters the double mastectomy had left behind. Before the sickness, Scratch has never known a time where she and Johanna weren’t physically identical. She remembers being a teenager and wishing she could dye her hair, but the frizzy texture and red pigmentation would have been a nearly impossible task for her to maintain, and Johanna never minded sharing pale skin, freckles, or vibrant green eyes. She rubs her hand over her own scar on the right side of her chest, wondering if it’s worse to be lopsided like she is, or completely flattened like her twin. She figures they’re both pretty bad, in their own right.
***
She’s always thought Scratch sounded way cooler than it was. Being sixteen and learning how to park her father’s convertible had ended much less gracefully for her than it had for her sister, the elongated scrape going down the side of her mother’s minivan turning into a metaphor for her life. She knows it could have been worse, but that didn’t stop the guilt from eating a hole in her stomach. Seven years later, there’s a different kind of guilt sitting in her stomach, and her nickname stays the same.
***
Scratch was there the first time Johanna woke up crying with a clump of hair on her pillow. Her hair fell out in sheets and waves, while Scratch’s seemed to go a strand at a time. She was there when they told Johanna they would have to take both of her breasts. She was in surgery, losing her femininity when they told Scratch they’d only be taking one of hers. Johanna’s eyes grew tired as Scratch worked to keep hers sharp. Her hands became rough, but Johanna’s were always rougher. When their mother bought them wigs Johanna demanded the blond one, because she was desperate for a change of pace. Scratch took the red one, because she just wanted things to go back to the way they’d always been.
***
Scratch is tired, the day her mother picks her up from the hospital and brings her home. Johanna forces a smile, blaming red eyes on new medications and insisting that she’s okay. Scratch feels like a piece of her soul is being ripped off when the door finally closes behind them, a sick feeling settling in the pit of her stomach and an ache in her chest that she can’t focus on because if she does, she’ll start crying. Her mother talks the whole ride home, drowning out the Ich Und Ich album still tucked into the CD player. Scratch is pretty sure Stark is playing, but she can’t really tell over the sound of her mother’s insistence that they go to Victoria’s Secret.
Scratch doesn’t bother reminding her that bra shopping is a role she can no longer fill.
***
Scratch hears her doctor calling out her name – her real name, Leana Marshall – and stands to follow her to the exam room. They have to take blood, to run tests, to poke her and pull her apart at so many seams that she’ll barely keep it together. They want to cut her open and rearrange her insides, but she’s not sure she wants the debt that comes with a cure.
***
Johanna doesn’t look happy when her sister walks through the door, but Scratch figures she’s just too tired to waste any energy pretending. She looks tired, at least – no wig settled into neat curls on her head, no eyeshadow or blush highlighting her features. Her eyes look sunken in, dark, and her lips look so chapped Scratch is a little worried they’d split open if Johanna even tried to smile. Scratch isn’t sure if she’s ever looked that bad, herself. Her mirror image doesn’t feel much like a reflection, anymore.
“Heard they found you a kidney.” Johanna says. Her throat sounds dry, but Scratch knows if she offers water, Johanna will say no. She won’t take anything Scratch tries to give her.
“Yeah.” Scratch says, pulling at her sweatshirt sleeves. “They said-”
“It must be nice.” Johanna says, cutting her sister off. “Going bra shopping with mom. Helping Lyka pick a dress. Being normal. It must be nice.”
“Hanna, you’re going to get better too.” Scratch says, sounding desperate. Johanna narrows her eyes, but Scratch isn’t sure if it’s because she’s annoyed or about to fall asleep. “And Lyka’s in Manilla. She wanted to go dress shopping with her mom.”
“What’s the surgery going to cost you, anyway?” Johanna asks suddenly. Scratch meets her eyes, a whisper of pain sliding across her face.
“A lot.” Scratch says softly. “More than I can afford to lose.”
***
Sometimes Scratch wonders what it’s like to love someone the way Henry and Lyka love each other. She’s dated in the past, but nothing was ever serious enough to justify bringing someone home for thanksgiving dinner, or worrying about whether or not they’d like her hand towels. (She distinctly recalls shopping for matching towel sets with her brother, the day he’d announced to the rest of the family that he was going to propose to Lyka, but he adamantly denies that it ever happened.)
Henry brings Reese’s cups and Scratch’s favorite Labrador – Snickers – when he comes over for dinner with Lyka. The dining room and the kitchen are painted the same awful cream color they’d all spent weeks trying to talk their mother out of, but she hadn’t budged and Scratch was pretty sure the color only stayed because of pride. There’s one red wall in the dining room, the only wall shared with the living room. Her mother calls it an accent wall and insists it adds character.
Her mother groans and makes a comment about Henry leaving his work at home when she sees the dog, but Henry laughs it off and scratches behind the dog’s ears.
“I left the puppies at home.” Henry says, shrugging one shoulder and winking at Scratch. “And the stud. No breeding at Mom’s house, I know.”
Scratch nearly falls over laughing, her tongue heavy from the taste of the peanut butter and head resting against the soft fur on her brother’s dog. Living at home with her parents at the age of 23 has been a serious letdown, but any time Henry visits he comes with laughter and gifts.
***
Scratch lays in her bed, silence echoing around her as she stares at the four walls that shaped her childhood, then rolls to look at the empty bed on the other side of the room. The sheets are the same ugly tie-dye as Johanna’s first car, and Scratch kind of wishes she was brave enough to move across the room, break the unspoken rules about personal space, just to see things from her sister’s side.
***
Johanna doesn’t even look sick the next time Scratch stops in to visit. She looks more like someone barely clinging to life, a marionette being controlled by a sleepy caffeine addict. Her hands shake so badly she is no longer given water in a cup, but rather ice chips to suck on because she probably can’t choke on them if she stays sitting up. Scratch’s eyebrows are growing back in, and she’s got a new bra from Aerie pressing comfortingly against her ribs. Johanna can’t seem to focus her eyes.
“We need to go tanning, once you’re out of here.” Scratch says. Her mother looks like she’s about to snap at her, but Johanna lets out a sound that’s close enough to a laugh.
“So we can get skin cancer, too?” Johanna asks. Her voice is barely a whisper, and she falls asleep not long after.
Scratch goes to the bathroom and stares down her shirt, into the empty bra cup and puckered scarring, and wonders how empty she’ll feel when the other half of her soul is missing.
***
Scratch spends a lot of time wondering if her grandmother knew how much she was leaving behind, when she died. Sure, there was her family, and grandpa still names every clock he makes after her, but Scratch wonders if there’s more. More than the savings in the bank that were just enough to cover tuition and the start-up costs for Henry’s dog breeding business. More than the little yellow house aunty Doreen inherited with the stipulation that grandpa never be made to live in a nursing home.
Scratch can’t help but wonder if Mamaw knew she was leaving the cancer that took her away to her two granddaughters. She wonders if there’s an afterlife, and if Mamaw’s waiting on the other side of the sickness.
***
It’s nearly three AM when Scratch looks at the clock again. She’s got the fan going in the corner of the room, and her blanket is wrapped around her in the most comfortable way she’s ever had it. But somehow, she can’t sleep. Her mind is racing circles around the Student Film Festival going on at her Universities campus, and how this was supposed to be the year she got noticed. She was supposed to be somebody, someday. This wasn’t supposed to happen to her.
The house phone rings at three fifteen, startling her out of her thoughts and pulling her out of her bed. She presses her toes into the carpet as she makes her way down the hall and to the kitchen, and her mother’s back is to her as she listens to whoever is on the other end of the phone. When she hangs up she turns, and Scratch catches a glimpse of her face, and she knows.
Hanna’s gone.
***
There’s an ache deep in Scratch’s chest when she sees Henry and Lyka have shaved their heads. She understands the sentiment, but she wishes they would’ve just left well enough alone. Her mother, who’s been pretending not to cry for nearly an hour, finally breaks under the weight of her grief as she clings to Henry, leaving Lyka to hold her father’s hand.
Scratch slips away when no one is looking and makes her way down to the hospital room that served as her prison for so long. She’s not expecting Johanna’s body to still be in the bed, but there’s a faint outline of features Scratch has known her whole life under the sheet. Scratch pulls the sheet down from her sister’s face, half expecting her to sit up and say “gotcha!” but Johanna doesn’t move. Her chest doesn’t rise, her eyes don’t open, and she looks more peaceful than Scratch has seen her in half a year.
Scratch can hear her family calling her name, hear the nurses and the doctors insisting that she has to be around somewhere. She can hear them coming closer to the door, but she’s not ready yet. She can feel how stiff Johanna’s fingers are when she takes them in her own, and she rests her head down on the bed as she starts telling her sister about her day.
***
Scratch looks at Johanna and wonders how someone who’s dead can look so much like they’re sleeping, tucked into that little box with all kinds of pillows and padding around them. She wonders if that’s why it’s so quiet, now that everyone they’ve ever cared about is standing in a room with them. They’re acting like speaking is the ultimate sin, as if they could wake the dead with their words. As if Hanna were only sleeping.
Scratch can’t help thinking that the casket looks too small for her sister. She’s tempted to ask if they have another one that matches – another one she could climb into and sleep beside her sister until the nightmares stopped.
***
Johanna was born seventeen minutes before Scratch made her debut. Their mother always speaks of the labor like it lasted a lifetime, and Scratch is starting to understand how seventeen minutes can feel like a century.
***
Scratch has never had a plan to die. It never occurred to her that Johanna might not pull through. She’s never had to actually think about what she would do, if she was left on her own.
She’s tired, but she’s healthy. Her body is strong enough to come back from her surgery in the morning, which means she has to take matters into her own hands. She loves her parents, and her brother and his bride, but they’re not enough to make her want to stay. Without Hanna, she’s not even sure it’s a life she’s leaving behind.
She takes a handful of aspirin, then chases it with half a bottle of water before taking another handful. She chews, ignoring the nasty taste in favor of getting it into her system faster, making this end faster, and she pictures her life playing out on a movie screen as the world around her starts looking hazy. She wishes she would have remembered to leave a note. She wishes she would have stayed in that hospital room with Hanna. She wishes the cancer had taken her, instead.
She wonders if maybe it has.
