The Unlikely Ghost

“I told you that you wouldn’t need me” a small voice whispered to her, startling her awake. Jane forced herself to keep her eyes closed, convincing herself quietly that if she just kept her eyes shut, she wouldn’t technically be awake just yet. “I tried to tell you!” The voice exclaimed. “I tried to tellyou that you’d live without me, if you didn’t get to the emergency room!”

Jane willed her eyes to remain unopen, with everything piece of strength she still had in her. If she just kept her eyes closed, she wouldn’t have to see, or experience, this nonsense all over again. She wouldn’t have to have this conversation (with herself), and she wouldn’t have to think these thoughts.. she wouldn’t have to see how it was now..  How did she awake again so quickly? It seemed like no time at all had passed since she had been praying to herself to fall sleep, praying to herself to stop with this recent absurdity of thoughts going on in her head, doomed to drive her own self crazy. Sleep could be the key, she had hoped. Maybe sleep could stop this impossible voice from stirring up in her brain again. No. She thought. I will not start this again.  

           “I told you, I told you.” The small voice sang to her, no longer bothering to whisper.  Could this be the voice of guilt?  What else could provoke this voice to haunt the inside of her head? To badger her, nonstop, at any given moment of the day?

Jane did not have any desire to open her eyes or look at anything around her. She refused to see even one thing or object. She had no desire to look at this hospital room they had put her in, or look at herself in this awful, uncomfortable bed. She refused to look down at her lap, as she knew that would eventually lead to her legs.. and then past her legs, and down to her feet.

Her feet.

Her feet were the reason why she was in this dumb hospital to begin with.

Feet. Feet.

The word seemed strange to her in a way it never had before.

Feet.

As in two.

Two whole feet.

Feet.

Perhaps she ought to consider getting comfortable with the word foot now instead.  

This is what she had been hoping to avoid, though she knew she couldn’t keep her eyes closed much longer. And definitely not forever, as she so wished to do this day. Still, she wouldn’t budge for her eyes to open, not just yet. Because as soon as her eyes did open, she knew she would have to look at it. And Jane simply did not want to look yet. She still wanted to avoid seeing it, the way that it was now. Her former appendage- in its most inglorious and horrifying state, she thought to herself. No, she wasn’t quite ready to have to look at it all over again.

           She would’ve given anything to turn back the hands of time, to take her foot more seriously when she had first discovered the ingrown toenail on her right big toe. But who knew it could get this far out of hand so quickly? Thinking back, she supposed she had heard horror stories of people who were diabetic, like herself, getting a small cut or scrape on their foot that ended up getting infected… infected so awfully that it ended up getting amputated, as the infection quickly got out of control. Amputated. That meant that the doctors just took that thing off completely and the diabetic person would have to adjust to life as an amputee.

She had heard these horror stories, but she had never taken them that seriously. And she had certainly never envisioned herself as being the sufferer in one of those awful stories. She had simply figured if she were to get cut or scraped then she would tend to it- immediately. Infection couldn’t set into wounds properly tended to. And if infection never set in, nothing went haywire, and everyone kept their limbs. Sure, she was diabetic, but she had considered herself to be smarter than the people in those stories, or at the very least, more proactive.

“Check your blood sugar levels.” They had always said to her. Why didn’t she just listen? She could have prevented this had she decided to pay any attention to at all to the advice her doctor had given her. “Lay off the sweets. Eat your vegetables. Check your blood sugar twice every day.” Jane scoffed at the advice she has chosen not to listen to. Boy, had she learned the hard way on this one.

“I told you that you wouldn’t need me. But that’s your problem, Jane. You never listen! Not even when I tried to tell you.” That small, ridiculous voice was creeping up again. “I told you that you wouldn’t need me.” It intruded on her thoughts every time she started to think of how this whole situation had started, with that damn toenail.

It was supposed to be gone now. Her big toe had been the first thing to go. Later, once the doctors had seen how far the infection had spread, they operated again, and took the rest of her toes off that foot. The “entire fore foot”, they had called it.  But that toe, and that damn ingrown, infected, insidious toenail had been the first thing the doctors physically removed from her body. For that reason, Jane knew she shouldn’t still be hearing it… hell, she should have never heard it at all. Not still hearing.. but, ever hearing. It was a freakin’ toenail, for crying out loud.

“A toenail cannot talk on its own.” Jane reminded herself silently. “You can talk, because you’re a full person, with your own head and your own mouth. But it. It is a toenail, which means it cannot talk. It cannot haunt you. I mean the doctor did mention phantom pain, but this honestly a stretch, even for that!”

“Enough!” Jane sighed. She forced her eyes open, willing herself awake.

***

Things back at home were no better, and she felt no saner than when she had left the hospital. Opening the door to her bedroom, Jane turned on the light, glancing around the room somewhat expectantly. For some reason, it felt like something should be different, upon her return home, and so she couldn’t help but search the bedroom for something out of its place. Perhaps a drawer left ajar that she had not recently opened, or perhaps her floor would be carpeted in less clothes now than when she had left… her eyes wandered the room anxiously, but everything was exactly the same as when she had left it one month ago. Tiny dust particles had lightly covered her possessions in many areas of the house, a fact that she would have to attempt to ignore... for now, anyways. “Dusting” she sighed, as she rolled her knee scooter slowly across the carpeted floor. Jane parked herself in front of her bed and sat herself down slowly. Her eyes slowly moved over the many surfaces in her bedroom, furniture covered in dust, the floors covered in clothes... and suddenly she could feel her eyes swelling with tears, quicker than she could think to catch them, as droplets began to fall from her eyes. She sniffled, wiping away the tears quickly, as if someone were going to walk in any minute and she her there crying. “This is stupid.” She thought to herself, “I mean, who cries over dusting anyways.”

“You should have listened to me!” A small voice screamed to her, from just below the bottom of her bed. Jane stopped her eyes from looking down, attempting to follow the sound her ears had just heard below her.  “This is where we were when I told you. I told you that you wouldn’t need me.”

Jane shot her eyes up to look up at the ceiling. “No” she said sternly to herself. “This is not happening again!” She slowly lowered her gaze to be level with her bedroom again, focusing her eyes on what was in front of her, refusing to let them look any lower than eye level. Reaching to her dresser, Jane pulled a tissue from the box and blew her nose into it. “This voice your creating is absurd you know” she told herself, as firmly as she could muster. “And what’s worse is, it’s just plain stupid as well.” Her voice to herself was becoming heartless in a way. Jane covered her face with her hands, feeling hopeless in the way her brain was choosing to respond to her body’s recent trauma. She had a good head on her shoulders, and she knew for a fact that ingrown toenails were not alive, and they did not have voices.. they could not tell you to go to the emergency room or that you’d be fine to live without them.

           Jane hardly believed in ghosts, for crying out loud. And so, she certainly did not believe in ghost toenails. Or ghosts of ingrown toenails. Because who could ever think of such a thing? Jane shook her head with disbelief at the unique way her brain had chosen to respond to the fact that its body had lost a major appendage. “Of course, there would be some sort of mental response to such a huge physical trauma…” Jane thought to herself, calming down a little bit. “I mean of all the things a person can be haunted by, and my brain picks an ingrown toenail.” She rolled her eyes. “On a stupid foot that I don’t even have anymore!”

Jane flopped back on her bed and looked across the ceiling again, letting her eyes linger over the little white bumps of drywall that that covered it entirely. “There must be a way around this.” She thought.  “I cannot spend the rest of my life hearing the voice of my former ingrown toenail.” She was annoyed now, hearing her own words to herself. “Ingrown toenails don’t even have stupid voices” she mumbled.