I have no fingers. I’m dead. Go away. Move them. They’re gone. Long gone. I am only stumps and spirit. Go. Leave. But the voice circles back, a rabid dog that keeps biting at me, tearing at flesh I don’t have. Move your fingers, dammit! A sharp stab pierces my right index finger. Pain shatters my fog. A finger! I have a finger! Light floods the darkness. Colors, more sounds, a screaming voice. “She’s awake!” And then Jenna. I blink my eyes. Jenna. Her face looms not far from mine. I lift my hand. Fingers. Not plastic, engineered, removable fingers, but flesh-and-blood ones. Permanent ones. Real fingers. One with a small drop of blood where it has been pierced. I bring these fingers close, running them along my lips and feeling the barest touch, tasting the blood on my tongue. And then the frightening sensation of toes curling on sheets. Not just the memory of toes, not just stumps and phantom movements, ghosts trying to remember the feel of fabric, but toes attached to feet…attached to legs…attached to me.
