J. Albert Mann - Fix

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Copyright 2021 by Jennifer Mann Discussion Guide copyright 2022 by Little, Brown and Company Cover silhouette by Neil Swaab. Cover pill art mecaleha/istockphoto.com. Cover hand-lettering and design by Karina Granda.

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Little, Brown and Company Hachette Book Group 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104 Visit us at LBYR.com Originally published in hardcover and ebook by Little, Brown and Company in May 2021 First Trade Paperback Edition: May 2022 Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Names: Mann, J. Albert, author. Title: Fix / J.

Albert Mann. Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2021. | Audience: Ages 14+. | Summary: In the aftermath of major surgery, sixteen-year-old Eve struggles with pain, grief, and guilt while becoming increasingly dependent on pain medication, revisiting memories of her best friend, and exploring a potential romance. | ScoliosisFiction. | Best friendsFiction. | FriendshipFiction. | Drug addictionFiction. | Mothers and daughtersFiction. | Mothers and daughtersFiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M36614 Fix 2021 | DDC [Fic]dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048433 ISBNs: 978-0-316-49352-9 (pbk.), 978-0-316-49340-6 (ebook) E3-20220323-JV-PC-REV For Kevin MannThe only lie Ive ever told my children is that we make our own lives.You made my life.

I M COLD .

Cold and confused.

Do I feel the tube between my lips? The staples sunk deep into my torso? The bars and screws bolted to my spine? The pain?

No. All I feel is cold.

A warm shadow lingers over me. Maybe. Maybe.

Then nothing.

I dream of soft blurry voices and distant bright lights. Slowly, so slowly, I realize these arent dreams at all, but reality flittering into focus. Colors. Sounds. Everything hazy and high-pitched and filled with beeping and clicking and the whooshing sounds of air.

At some point, they pull the tube from my throat. I think about screaming but then forget. Nearby, I hear someone calling out over and over. I beg them to please stopalthough only in my headbecause my voice is off somewhere. Lost. I see the light of day coming in through a window.

And I hear Dr. Sowah, talking, laughing. Where is my mother?

Eve! Someone calls to me from a distance, as if Im floating far away from them. Ey, lazy, open up those eyes. You can totally ear me. Sowah. Sowah.

His missing h so familiar. He always joked that he left that letter back in Ghana when he came over at age eighteen. I think I must have smiled because he chuckles. Dr. Sowah is always chuckling. Thats right, I know youre there.

Am I? Or am I on a river? Sliding along in the sunshine. Safe. Warm. Happy. Until he leans over me, blocking out the sun like a rain cloud. Nineteen degrees? Its easy to hear his pride in that number. Nineteen. Nineteen.

But I cant wrap my head around it. This new Cobb angle measuring the tilty twist of my spine. Large progressive scoliosis meant my forever-collapsing spine was forever producing a new one. Forty-eight degrees fifty-two sixty-seven who could keep track? Although, this onenineteenis now fixed to me. By titanium. The river spins me.

Then stops flowing with a loud snap, sending a searing shudder all along that nineteen-degree angle.

The beginning of the second week in Massachusetts General Hospital is filled with pain, needles, thirst, and screamingmostly mine. I am pinned under cold wet skin and bones. I cant breathe from the terrifying pain, the fear that this bloodied slab is forever on me, in me, is me. Then there is the shuffle near my IV. The surge of air deeply entering my lungs.

And me, grasping at the nearest scrubsto let them know they saved me, they have to keep saving mebefore Im floating off again on that river, light as a duck feather.

Sometimes I wake up screaming in the light.

Sometimes I wake up screaming in the dark.

Every time I open my eyes, and even when I dont, I scramble for the button to my morphine pump and cry out to Martin, the nice nurse, regardless if its his shift. And there he is, bending over my arm with an extra dose. A sting. A sting.

And I hear her again.

Martin, I whisper. Shes here. Lidia. Its the drugs, baby, Martin tells me.

When I was six years old, I could not imagine being anything but strong and fast and tough.

When I was six years old, I could not imagine being anything but strong and fast and tough.

I thought as much about my spine twisting deep inside me as I did about the worlds economy or my mothers day at workwhich meant not at all. I wanted to play. I always wanted to play. And couldnt believe my luck that sunny afternoon when a game of red rover began around me. Hand slapped into hand slapped into hand. Forming a human chain.

A chain I wasnt part of. Turning every which way, desperate for entrythere she stood reaching out with an arm that did not end in a hand. Not knowing what to do I did nothing. But she knew. Take it, she said. I took it.

Clutching the arm where it ended, a little way up from where a wrist would be. Our line began to chant. Red rover, red rover,send Justin over. Across the field, a kid in stiff new jeans and a Red Sox T-shirt broke from the line and started running toward us. Fast. Toward us.

Me and the girl. Me and Lidia. Hold on, she screamed. And I did.

H OLD ON, DARLIN , I M ABOUT TO REMOVE YOUR CATHETER , Martin says. Its time to get out of that bed.