Michael Grant - Eve and Adam

Many thanks to the dedicated, talented, and just generally amazing people who helped create Holly West, assistant editor; Rich Deas, art director; Ashley Halsey, interior designer; Dave Barrett, managing editor; and Nicole Moulaison, production manager.

Special thanks to Jean Feiwel, who came up with the concept and agreed in advance to cover post-collaboration marital counseling.

I am thinking of an apple when the streetcar hits and my leg severs and my ribs crumble and my arm is no longer an arm but something unrecognizable, wet and red.

An apple. It was in a vendors stall at the farmers market off Powell. Id noticed it because it was so weirdly out of place, a defiant crimson McIntosh in an army of dull green Granny Smiths.

When you dieand I realize this as I hurtle through the air like a wounded birdyou should be thinking about love. If not love, at the very least you should be counting up your sins or wondering why you didnt cross at the light.

But you should not be thinking about an apple.

I register the brakes screeching and the horrified cries before I hit the pavement. I listen as my bones splinter and shatter. Its not an unpleasant sound, more delicate than I would have imagined. It reminds me of the bamboo wind chimes on our patio.

A thicket of legs encircles me. Between a bike messengers ropy calves I can just make out the 30% OFF TODAY ONLY sign at Lady Foot Locker.

I should be thinking about love right nownot apples, and certainly not a new pair of Nikesand then I stop thinking altogether because I am too busy screaming.

I open my eyes and the light is blinding. I know I must be dead because in the movies theres always a tunnel of brilliant light before someone croaks.

Evening? Stay with us, girl. Evening? Cool name. Look at me, Evening. Youre in the hospital. Who should we call?

The pain slams me down, and I realize Im not dead after all, although I really wish I could be because maybe then I could breathe instead of scream.

Evening? You go by Eve or Evening?

Something white smeared in red hovers above me like a cloud at sunset. It pokes and prods and mutters. Theres another, then another. They are grim but determined, these clouds. They talk in fragments. Pieces, like I am in pieces. Vitals. Prep. Notify. Permission. Bad.

Evening? Who should we call?

Check her phone. Whos got her damn cell?

They couldnt find it. Just her school ID.

Whats your moms name, hon? Or your dads?

My dad is dead, I say, but it comes out in ear-splitting moans, a song I didnt know I could sing. Its funny, really, because I cannot remotely carry a tune. A C+ in Beginning Womens Chorusand that was totally a pity gradebut here I am, singing my heart out.

Dead would be so good right now. My dad and me, just us, not this.

OR 2s ready. No time. Now now now.

Im pinned flat like a lab specimen, and yet Im moving, flying past the red and white clouds. I didnt know I could fly. So many things I know this afternoon that I didnt know this morning.

Evening? Eve? Give me a name, hon.

I try to go back to the morning, before I knew that clouds could talk, before I knew a stranger could retrieve the dripping stump of your own leg.

What do I do with it? hed asked.

My mothers Terra Spiker, I sing.

The clouds are silent for a moment, and then I fly from the room of bright light.

I awaken to an argument. The man is simmering, the woman on full boil.

Theyre out of my view, behind an ugly green curtain. I try to do what I always do when my parents fight, adjust my earbuds and crank the volume to brain-numb, but something is wrong. My right arm is not obeying me, and when I touch my ear with my left hand, I discover a thick gauze headband. Ive sprouted long tubes from my arms and my nose.

Shes my daughter, the woman says, and if I say shes leaving, shes leaving.

Please, listen to me. Shes going to be your one-legged daughter if you take her out of here.

The man is pleading, and I realize hes not my dad because (a) my dad was never a pleadermore of a pouter, really; and (b) hes dead.

I have superior facilities, the best medical staff money can buy. The woman punctuates this with a dramatic exhalation. Its my mothers trademark sigh.

Shes in critical condition in the ICU after a fourteen-hour surgery. Theres every chance shes going to lose that leg, and you want to move her? Because what? Its more convenient? Your sheets have a higher thread count? What exactly?

I feel pretty okay, sort of floaty and disconnected, but this man, who Ive decided must be a doctor, sounds a little freaked out about my leg, which, as it happens, doesnt seem to be behaving any better than my arm.

I should probably reassure him, get my mother off his casewhen shes like this its best to retreat and regroupbut the tube stuck down my throat makes that impossible.

I will not release this patient, the doctor says, under any circumstances.

Silence. My mother is the god of painful pauses.

Do you know, she finally asks, what the new hospital wing is called, Doctor?

More silence. The contraptions Im tethered to chirp contentedly.

That would be the Spiker Neurogenetics Pavilion, the doctor finally says, and suddenly he sounds defeated, or maybe hes missing his tee time.

I have an ambulance waiting outside, my mother says. Check and mate. I trust youll expedite the paperwork.

She dies, its on you.

His choice of words must bother me, because my machines start blaring like a cheap car alarm.

Evening? My mother rushes to my side. Tiffany earrings, Bulgari perfume, Chanel suit. Mommy, Casual Friday edition.

Sweetheart, its going to be okay, she says. Ive got everything under control.

The quaver in her voice betrays her. My mother does not quaver.

I try to move my head a millimeter and realize maybe Im not feeling so okay after all. Also, my car alarm wont shut up. The doctor is muttering about my leg, or whats left of my leg, and my mother is burying her head into my pillow, her lacquered nails digging into my shoulder. She may actually be crying.

I am pretty sure were all losing it, and then, on my other shoulder, I feel a firm pressure.

Its a hand.

I follow the path from hand to arm to neck to head, moving just my eyes this time.

The hand is connected to a guy.

Dr. Spiker, he says, Ill get her into the ambulance.

My mother sniffles into my gown. She rouses herself, stands erect. She is Back in Control.

What the hell are you doing here, Solo? she snaps.

You left your phone and briefcase behind when you got the call about thehe jerks his chin toward methe accident. I followed in one of the Spiker limos.

I dont recognize this guy or, for that matter, his namebecause, really, what kind of a name is Solo, anyway?but he must work for my mother.

He looks down at me, past the tubes and the panic. He is scruffy-looking with too much hair, too little shaving. Hes tall and wide-shouldered, muscular, blondish. Extremely blue eyes. My preliminary taxonomy: skater or surfer, one of those guys.

Id really like him to get his hand off me because he doesnt know me and Im already having personal-space issues, what with the tubes and the IV.

Chill, Eve, he tells me, which I find annoying. The first phrase that comes to mind involves the word off, preceded by a word I have absolutely no chance of pronouncing since it includes the letter F.