Numb
Soon after, I notice while washing my face in the shower that the palms of my hands have a new texture, rough and bumpy. I turn off the water, squeeze drops from my hair, and step out of the tub. I wipe my face with a towel and peer at my hands. The palms are criss-crossed with dozens of lines, like the skin of an old woman. My fingertips normally get prune-y if I stay in the shower too long. But I took a quick shower this morning, not even bothering to shave my legs, and both of my palms are wizened, wrinkly, scrunched-up prunes.
"Your hands have no oil glands," Dr. Anderson says over the phone. I've known her a dozen years – we went to high school together – but she's using her Nonchalant Doctor Tone. It turns me into a patient, just one of many patients; it makes her seem like a stranger. "No oil glands means your skin expands and prunes up," she explains.
"So there is something wrong with me?"
"Beg pardon?"
"You're saying my hands are supposed to have oil glands but they don't?"
"No, no, everyone's hands are like that. It's nothing to worry about."
"Oh." I gently rub my thumb across the alligatored texture. Already the pruneiness is melting away; they are turning back into regular palms. I feel foolish. "Sorry to bother you, Val," I say. "I just thought it was strange."
"It's no bother – I'm glad you called." Her voice softens. "How you holding up?"
"Fine, I'm doing fine. Thanks."
* * *
The next morning, I wake up and my right hand is pins-and-needles-y. "I must have slept on it wrong," I tell Gary. We sit across from each other at the breakfast table, with our Cheerios and coffee, reading the newspaper to avoid eye contact. I massage my right hand with my left, gently squeezing each fingertip. My nails turn a brief white as my fingers press down, then immediately flood with pink as the pressure is released.
"Do you want me to rub it?" Gary asks. But I’m already half up out of my chair, carrying my bowl and mug to the sink. "Oh, no, it's okay," I say. I don't want him touching me.
* * *
That day, I was exhausted. The bathwater felt warm and soothing on my bare skin. Laura was napping in her nursery across the hall. I didn't fall asleep. My eyes were closed, but my ears were not. I would have heard her crying.
She didn't cry. She didn’t, or I would have heard.
* * *
The tingling has spread to my toes. I sit down next to Gary on the couch, prop my feet up on the coffee table, and wiggle my toes in my socks. I watch them move, but it is like they are someone else's toes.
Gary sets down the latest issue of Golf Digest and meets my eyes. His hair is sticking up like tufts of dead brown grass. "Call the doctor," he says.
"But I just called her a couple days ago. She said it's nothing to worry about."
Gary reaches for my hand. I let him hold it for a minute, then I squeeze his hand and pull mine away. I stand up.
"Honey," Gary says. "Do you think..." He pauses.
I am already walking away, into the living room, so I pretend not to hear. He doesn't finish the sentence.
* * *
Laura was sixteen months, three weeks, and five days old. I said she had Gary's blue eyes; Gary said she had mine. She was beautiful. When I held her, she would nuzzle her face into my neck and I could feel her soft eyelashes blinking against my skin.
The numbness has spread from my hands up my forearms, past my elbows, all the way to my shoulders. My limbs are dead weight.
Dr. Anderson requests a blood test. I might have diabetes, a thyroid problem, lyme disease. The nurse tells me to squeeze a foam ball and taps on my arm, searching for a vein to mine. "You should drink more water," she scolds.
"I inherited my mother's veins," I tell her. "They're naturally small. I’m sorry." I think of Laura's tiny veins, blue beneath her translucent baby skin. The nurse misses my vein the first time, but I don't feel the prick of the needle.
The blood tests come back normal. Meanwhile, the numbness continues to spread from my toes, enveloping my feet, my ankles, my shins, surrounding my knees, inching up my thighs. Dr. Anderson sends me to a neurologist, who tapes electrodes to my legs and arms and sends jolts of electricity through my numb body.
"Yep," he murmurs, "that's right, good," as my limbs jerk on the examining table. I feel like a marionette puppet. "Everything looks normal," the neurologist says.
On the wall, beside his diploma from medical school, he has a picture of three little girls, with light brown hair and freckles. "Those are my daughters," he says, following my gaze. "Kids," he sighs. "They grow up so fast, don't they?"
My smile feels like a grimace. "Yes," I say. "They sure do."
* * *
It is midafternoon when I arrive home, the sun slanting through the bare-limbed winter trees, already close to setting. I run the bathwater, clenching and unclenching my hands underneath the warm spray from the tap. After a few moments I climb into the tub. The water steadily rises, slowly covering my goose-pimpled legs and stomach. I bend my knees so they are two islands; I lay my head back and look at the ceiling. It was just like this. The water is loud, roaring into the tub, but not so loud that I wouldn’t have heard her crying.
That day, I was exhausted. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. When I woke up, the warmth had faded from the bathwater. Still, I wasn’t alarmed. I hadn't been away more than twenty or thirty minutes. I slowly toweled myself dry, slipped into a T-shirt and sweatpants, and tip-toed into Laura's nursery. She was asleep.
The bathwater rises higher and higher, creeping up my arms, covering my breasts. My palms are wrinkled prunes, like they were that day when I climbed from the bath. Now, I take a deep breath and let my head sink under the water.
That day, I bent down and kissed Laura's forehead. And then, everything shifted, like in a dream when you suddenly realize something is off – the house you are in is not your house, your bed is in the wrong place, your car out-front is a different color and model than it's supposed to be. It was as if my entire life up to that moment, up to that single kiss upon my daughter's forehead, was the weight of an elephant balancing on the head of a pushpin. The balance shifted, and everything came down in a colossal violent tumbling when I realized Laura was not breathing.
Underwater, I feel the pressure building inside me. I come up gasping for breath, clutching my numbness around me like a threadbare baby’s blanket.
Dallas Woodburn is the author of two short-story collections and a forthcoming novel. Her fiction has appeared in the literary magazines Cicada, Palaver, flashquake, and the Hudson Valley Literary Magazine, and she has also written articles for Family Circle, Writer's Digest, and The Los Angeles Times.