by Jill Summerville

She used to ride in taxicabs. Truthfully, she still prefers them–the plush seats offer padding her thin frame lacks–but starting today she’ll have to ride the public bus. The taxicab took her to her local doctor, who insists she doesn’t have scoliosis. He’s wrong.

Even while she’s asleep, she can feel the vines. They shoot from her spine, pulling it into unnatural curvatures as they root themselves wherever she’s sitting or lying. Her local doctor never sees them, never feels any damage when he runs a hand down her back. He prescribes antidepressants, says she’s physically healthy, even attractive. But even as he speaks, the vines are pressing her into her chair. So when he refuses to see her after fifteen visits in as many months, she decides to take the public bus to another clinic. She’s actually looking forward to being a new patient, listing her myriad ailments on myriad forms. She closes her eyes, imagines filling countless blank spaces with her tentative, spidery script.

Then she smells the smoke. She panics briefly, fearing that the bus has somehow caught fire, that she’ll perish while everyone else escapes because the vines will claim her. When she lifts her head slightly (a slight lift is all the vines will allow) she can see that the man sitting beside her is smoking a cigarette. “You’re not allowed to smoke in here.”

The man has been looking out the window, but he turns to her when she addresses him. “I’m not.”

“What?”

For a moment she fears he might be a joker like her father, who used to smoke cigars in their station wagon during family vacations, ignoring her mother’s continuous pleas that he stop smoking or at least roll down a window. “I’m not smoking,” he’d say. “The cigar is smoking; I’m just inhaling.” But this man says, “I’m not just smoking this cigarette. I’m savoring it. I’m thirty-five. I started smoking when I was twenty, but I quit five years ago. Since then, all I’ve wanted is a cigarette. So I’m savoring this one.”

“Well, you can’t savor it here.”

“Troy said I could.”

Troy is the bus driver. He isn’t politically savvy, but he talks about controversial political issues because he hopes to engage his passengers in conversation. She doesn’t follow politics–the economy and the environment are the least of her problems–so she’d rather not question Troy. “Oh,” she says simply.

“Light?”

“No, thank you. I don’t smoke.”

Yes, you do. You keep tapping the fingers of your right hand against your thigh. Because you’re used to having that hand occupied, I’d guess. I used to do it too.”

“I don’t smoke on public buses.”

He grins, and she notices how pronounced his cheekbones are. “Fair enough.”

“Where are you going?”

“Miss,” he says with mock seriousness, “are you subtly suggesting I could be damned for daring to light a cigarette while utilizing our exemplary public transport system? I’m visiting my brother in the next town over.”

“Why don’t you drive?”

“Why don’t you?”

“I’m not supposed to. Meds.”

“Same here.”

She’s surprised to learn that he takes medication too. She has never met another person with a condition. She’d always thought that if she did she’d know it immediately, that tingles of recognition would swirl up her twisted spine. She stares at him, trying to find marks of suffering and strain in his pale face.

“Is something wrong, miss?”

“Yes. I have scoliosis.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, and she can see he means it. “But you don’t have a brace.”

“What?”

“If you have scoliosis, shouldn’t you have a back brace?”

There is such concern in his dark brown eyes that she decides to tell him the truth. “I don’t…It’s not like that. There are vines. They wind between my vertebrae. And they reach out and hold me to wherever I am. Sometimes I’m afraid to breathe, afraid that if I move even that little bit, the vines will tighten and I’ll never move again. Can’t you…Can’t you see them?”

Impulsively, he grounds his cigarette and puts his hand on her lower back. His fingers are cool splayed against her skin. “I see something much worse,” he whispers. “I see that, hard as you try to forget it, you’re alive.” He stays still for the space of several breaths. When he removes his hand to take another cigarette out of the pack in his pocket, she misses his touch.

He tries to light his cigarette, misses, tries again. “Last one.”

“You can always buy another pack.”

“Yes. But I probably won’t. There are better things to savor.”

Troy calls out, “Your stop is comin’ up, yeah?”

“Yes,” he calls back, his deep voice suddenly brisk. He stands, and, without knowing why, she stands with him as Troy coasts to a stop. He puts his fingers under her chin as though to lift her face. Instead, he takes the cigarette from his mouth and places it between her lips. “Enjoy,” he says softly. Then he walks through the doors Troy has already pulled open for him.

As he shuts the doors and drives away, Troy notices her staring after his former passenger. “He told ya, huh? Sad, isn’t it?”

She sits down and turns to Troy, realizes she hasn’t really looked at him. “Told me what?”

Oh…He’s sick. Real sick. He’s got six months, but he doesn’t wanna get any sicker, so his brother’s agreed to, ya know, help him out. Probably couldn’t afford the healthcare even if he wanted it, the world bein’ what it is. When he asked for one last cigarette, I couldn’t refuse him…Are you all right?”

She doesn’t know she has brushed her cheek until she feels the wetness on her fingers.