Chapter Text
“Ken, we need to dress the wound,” Gloria says, voice tight in a way that makes Ken’s stomach twist, a feeling he doesn’t like but can’t stop from happening, which is kind of how most feelings work lately. “Trust me, it’ll be a lot easier for you in the long-run if you take care of it. You’ll get the stitches out with no problem and your arm’ll look better.”
Ken crosses his arms—well, his arm, he’s still being careful with the left one because he’s very responsible for himself and his health—over his abdomen, staring up at the dull wooden boards of Barbie’s bed. He considers Gloria’s words, and then considers how uncomfortable dressing the wound is and how it seems kind of exaggerated to have to do that pretty much every day.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Ken, I know you’re under the bed,” Gloria says. “And, look, I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty impressed you managed to squeeze in like that, because you’re way too big for it. Get out of there!”
Ken sighs. Gloria’s right, he thinks morosely. Humans and their stupid bodies and their stupid stitches need more (stupid!) upkeep than he’s used to, like how he has to shave now.
Though he’s not surprised he managed to fit under here; it’s pretty much the same amount of room as he had when he was working on cars in Barbie Land.
(Well, he was kind of pulling on stuff and making noises with a wrench thingy, but he thinks he was doing something to the car.
Looking back, he was maybe breaking it a little.
It’s not important.)
“Kenneth, I am legitimately considering counting to three,” Gloria says.
The words are nonsensical, but Gloria only calls him Kenneth, which isn’t even legally his name, when she’s kind of annoyed with him, so Ken frowns, worming his way out from under the bed.
“Why?” he asks curiously. “What’s so special about the number three?”
Gloria looks down at him, her lip twitching. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “Come on.”
Ken sighs heavily, following her to the bathroom, and sits down on the closed toilet, which feels gross even though he knows for a fact he’s cleaned that toilet once today and a bunch more times yesterday.
He holds his arm out, squeezing his eyes shut because he knows cuts don’t disappear as fast here as they do in Barbie Land and he does not want to see what his arm looks like right now, and he tries to stay still while Gloria dresses his wound, which is not the fun kind of dressing; it just means she cleans and puts another bandage on it. And the bandage isn’t even a pretty color or anything.
“Okay, done,” Gloria says. “Was that so bad?”
“I guess not,” Ken says. “I just hate it and it sucks.” And it’s all my fault.
Gloria lets out a huff of sympathetic laughter. “Yeah, I know. Come on, let’s get some breakfast.”
“Can I help make it?”
“Sure.”
“Really?!”
“Really. But this doesn’t mean you can use the kitchen stuff by yourself yet.”
“Yes yes yes!”
+++
Ken kicks his feet against the examination table as the doctor peels away the bandage, keeping his face carefully turned away. He hasn’t looked at the stitches even once, and he’s not going to start now.
The hospital doesn’t feel any more inviting than it did the first time he had to go here, but at least that’s not really a new feeling. Ken’s never liked going to the doctor.
Ken likes it when he has feelings he recognizes from Barbie Land. He puts them in his list of things he hasn’t lost.
Barbie and Gloria are with him, at least, and Ken’s been looking forward to this visit. After this, he won’t have to have the wound dressed anymore, which is great because that’s both painful and boring, literally the worst kind of experience to have every single day.
After this, he won’t have to avoid looking at his arm anymore.
Sure, the human body takes longer to glue itself back together and smooth itself out, but that’s okay. It’s okay. Some things are okay.
He will never have to look at the wound again.
He makes faces while the stitches are getting pulled out, which is not a nice feeling, a little like getting the stitches put in but at least less painful. The same as before, but in reverse.
It’ll be simple, the doctor assured him after he waited in the clinic, which is in the hospital but not the same part of the hospital as before, for way longer than he waited in the ER. (“Because you’re not bleeding heavily this time,” Gloria said, so he guesses the longer wait was actually a good thing, even if it was boring.) And then I’ll give you some more wound care instructions and you’ll be out of here.
Ken didn’t really pay attention to the second part other than the you’ll be out of here. He was too excited to get his arm back.
Maybe he should’ve paid more attention, because the stitches are gone now, and Ken is staring at his arm, and it looks…
Awful.
There’s a long line of raised red-purple running down his forearm, from the bend of his elbow to almost the place where the back of his hand starts, and there are some weird little lines on the sides where maybe the stitches were, and he’s never seen anything uglier on his body.
He feels like there’s a rope tied around his chest, getting pulled tighter and tighter. He takes in a quick, short breath, just to test if he still can. His head feels heavy and hot.
He looks over at Gloria and Barbie, who are both sitting on chairs in front of him, watching him like an audience.
Gloria’s face is calm. Barbie’s eyes are wide.
He turns his gaze back to his arm. He swallows. He curls his hand closed, and then he opens it again. Nothing changes.
“Why does it look like that?” he asks faintly. “Shouldn’t you wait to take the stitches out until it’s gone? When does it go away?”
He looks back at Gloria and Barbie. Barbie’s staring expectantly at the doctor, curious about the answer. Gloria’s face has fallen.
The doctor, who is not the same one who stitched Ken up in the first place—and he seemed nice, how did he mess up so bad? Ken should’ve asked for a woman to do it—says, “It was definitely time to get those stitches out. I know it doesn’t look great right now, but I’m going to put some tape on it so that it doesn’t split open again, and then we’ll bandage it up—“
“I still have to dress it?” Ken asks. He doesn’t like the way his voice wobbles.
“For a little while. I’d suggest putting Vaseline on it and then a non-stick bandage over it; your discharge papers will have all the details.”
“Fred and I can keep helping you with that,” Gloria says.
“But it’s not gone,” Ken says. His voice sounds far away.
“It’ll heal up completely soon, and the mark will definitely fade over time,” the doctor says. Her voice is softer now, almost sing-songy. “And I’m sure your primary care doctor will have all sorts of suggestions for scar care.”
“Scar?” Ken murmurs softly, almost mouthing the word. “What’s a…what’s that?”
“What’s a scar?” the doctor asks. She sounds confused. She’s been walking around the room, and now she sits in front of Ken on a tall stool, taking his arm. His stomach flops and churns at the same time. He doesn’t know how it’s doing that.
The doctor starts putting little white lines of sticky stuff on the cut. She doesn’t answer his question. It’s fine. Ken has a more important question.
“So when’s it going to go away?” he asks. “If it doesn’t go away when the stitches come out, when does it go away?”
“Well, this medical tape will fall off, and the wound will be healed.”
“But when will it be gone?” Ken asks, frustrated.
“As long as you keep taking care of it, the mark should fade over the course of the year.”
A year? Ken isn’t very good with blocks of time that move forward and mean things yet, but he knows a year is a lot, and also there’s a difference between the word “fade” and the word “gone.”
Why won’t the doctor answer his question?
“When will it disappear?” he pushes.
The doctor gives him a frowny look. “Well, it’s going to scar, so it won’t disappear completely, but after a while you’ll barely notice it’s there.”
It’s going to scar.
Is this what a scar is? A cut he gave himself that stays there forever, a stain on his skin like a streak of permanent marker on his arm, making him Weird, reminding him that he’s not plastic anymore in the worst possible way?
“Won’t disappear…ever?” Ken asks.
“I’m afraid not,” the doctor says. “But if you take care of it, it really will fade a ton. It definitely won’t look like this forever. And you know, we’re in Los Angeles, we’ve got some of the best plastic surgeons in the world if the cosmetics of it are still bothering you in the future.”
Ken shakes his head. “No, I’m not plastic anymore, I don’t need plastic surgeons,” he mumbles, confused.
“…Okay,” the doctor says, covering his arm with another bandage. He’s going to have to wear a bandage forever, he guesses, if the wound really isn’t going to go away, an endless reminder of how much he isn’t supposed to be here, of how confused this place makes him. “Well, I’m going to print out those discharge papers, and then you can head on home.”
Ken doesn’t think that last part is true.
+++
Ken clutches the packet of discharge papers in both hands as he walks down the hallway, Gloria and Barbie next to him. He thinks they’re talking to each other, but he’s not paying attention.
He still has that tight feeling around his chest. Or maybe it’s in his chest. Or maybe it’s both. Either way, it’s crushing him kind of really bad.
His eyes are burning, but he’s not going to cry. He’s come to the conclusion that he definitely cries too much, and he feels so tired that he thinks that if he started crying, he’d have to lie down, and he’s pretty sure he can’t lie down and cry on the floor.
He feels like he’s been walking for a long time. Not a year, though, because his arm is still bandaged, and he knows what the wound looks like now and he’ll never not know, except for how he doesn’t know what it’ll look like in a year or in two years or when he dies other than still there.
They’re back in the lobby they came in through.
This hospital is huge. In Barbie Land, they didn’t need all these floors to fit the weird words he saw on the sign in the elevator like Oncology and Orthopedics and Radiology and Neurology.
In Barbie Land, there was a lot less to fix, and it took a lot more to make his skin split, and it didn’t matter that much when it did.
He looks down at his hands gripping the discharge papers, at the ragged skin around his fingernails. He needs to fix that, but he doesn’t know how. His fingers itch to tear away more skin.
Maybe once he does it enough, he’ll find who he really is under all the extra pieces of this body.
Or maybe it’ll just scar.
Ken walks towards the double doors. The car is outside. He’ll get in the car and he’ll go back to the house (not his house) and…he doesn’t know what he’ll do then.
There’s not a lot to do here and there’s endless things to do and maybe he’ll just curl up in bed all the way under the blankets and pretend that when he pokes his head out he’ll be surrounded by the bright colors and happy sounds of his home at its absolute best, when his body was whole and he missed Barbie but didn’t feel like he was going to fall apart without her and, sure, maybe strangers didn’t nod to him on the street, but there were no strangers.
No strangers, no walls, no crying, no blood, and death and dying were just words in songs.
(One time, Ken broke a vase with a golf club.
He wishes he had a golf club now.)
There’s light spilling in through the glass hospital doors, and for half a second Ken starts to imagine stepping into that light and fading away before he sees something else under the golden rays, something incredible, something that makes him stop thinking about absolutely anything but the something he’s seeing, because there’s a lady with curly gray hair and next to her there’s a…
Ken’s eyes widen so much he can feel it, and he stops walking even though a few seconds ago he didn’t want to do anything but get to the car.
He grabs Barbie’s arm, and, breathlessly, says, “Barbie, there’s a horse, do you see the horse? Do you see the tiny horse? There’s a tiny horse in here, Barbie!” His voice pitches up frantically as he bounces on his heels, unable to believe his eyes.
When’s the last time he thought about horses? He doesn’t remember. All he remembers now is that he missed thinking about horses.
“There…there is a tiny horse in here…” Barbie says in confused agreement, patting the hand he has on her shoulder.
“Oh!” Gloria says. “Oh my God, it’s one of those mini horses, that’s so cute.”
“A mini horse?” Ken repeats. “There are mini horses?” Well, he guesses that any toy horse in the Real World is a mini horse, technically, but this isn’t a toy. He’s pretty sure this isn’t a toy. “There are Real mini horses?”
“I guess so,” Barbie says before letting out a sweet, clear little laugh. “Isn’t that amazing?”
Ken would roll his eyes, not up for hearing about how great this place is right now, but actually at this exact right now he’s forgotten why he’d roll his eyes, because this is amazing.
Gloria is striding towards the lady who is standing next to the horse. Ken hasn’t really been paying attention to the lady, but now he sees, vaguely, that she’s smiling at him.
“Hi!” Gloria says. “I know—I mean, I’m pretty sure you’re leaving, but…can my friend pet your horse? He just had a rough doctor’s appointment.”
Ken would hold his breath, waiting desperately for an affirmative answer, but he doesn’t have time to before the lady says, “Oh, of course! She loves meeting new people.”
Gloria looks back at him, grinning, and Ken grins back, running over to the horse, who is wearing a little vest that says PET ME, and dropping to his knees next to her, fascinated.
Carefully, he puts a hand on her rough white mane, and he can barely breathe, but it doesn’t feel as bad as barely being able to breathe usually does.
The mini horse lets out a little neighing sound, but not like the horses in Barbie Land, who say “neigh.” This one’s like the sound horses make in the movies, with all sorts of pitches. Ken laughs, giddy.
“Her name’s Oatley,” the lady offers.
Ken laughs again. “Oatley,” he murmurs. “That’s a good name.”
Carefully, he moves his hand down to Oatley’s flank, petting her gently. “Wow,” Ken whispers rapturously at the feeling of Oatley’s soft fur under his palm.
He never got to hang out with the horses in Barbie Land until after Patriarchy, and even then, they didn’t feel like this. He loved them, but they weren’t so soft and warm, and they only came in Horse or Pony sizes, definitely no miniature horses.
“Wow,” he breathes out, petting Oatley again and again, squealing with joy when Oatley makes a huffy neighing sound and noses at his hand. “Wow!” He looks up at Barbie, grinning. “I love horses!”
He barely registers that Barbie’s eyes are shining the way they do when she’s about to cry, because her smile is shining even brighter. She’s so beautiful. “Yeah,” she says like she’s just remembering something important. “Yeah, you really do.”
He didn’t know his face could hurt from smiling, but it does. He thinks it’s the first kind of ache he’s ever liked. He’s so glad horses aren’t Patriarchy; it would be a huge bummer to have to unlearn loving them.
He keeps petting Oatley, feeling her flank move under his hands, wrapped up in the warmth and the simplicity of the company of an animal, solid and Real under his skin, which tingles with sensation, until there’s a gentle hand on his back, and he cranes his neck to look up at Gloria.
“So, Irma and Oatley have to go now,” she says, her words spilling out through a smile. “And we have to go too. It’s almost dinner, and Fred’s taking us to this restaurant I think you’ll really like.”
“So I have to say bye,” Ken says, resigned but not particularly sad, because it’s okay. Oatley will still exist somewhere in the world when he can’t see her, and that’s the best thing he’s found out today. He turns back to the mini horse. Very carefully, he puts his arms around her neck and hugs gently before pulling back and petting her snout one more time. “Bye, Oatley,” he whispers. “Thanks for existing.”
She bumps her snout against his nose, and he laughs, standing up. He doesn’t remember the last time he laughed this much. Grinning, he turns to Gloria. “Let’s go to the car.” He waves to Oatley. “Bye again,” he says, and then he waves to the lady—Irma. “Thanks for letting me pet your tiny horse!”
Irma chuckles. “Trust me, it was our pleasure.”
Ken feels light and bouncy as he leaves the hospital, still wrapped up in a blanket of joy.
He’s not holding the discharge papers anymore and he doesn’t know where they went.
He’s not thinking about them at all.
+++
Ken curls up in bed next to Barbie. It’s late, but he’s not even close to being as tired as he was earlier. The excitement of the day still vibrates through him like strumming a guitar.
(He misses playing guitar. He wonders if there’s a way to get one here.)
After the hospital, they met Sasha and Fred at a restaurant and there were dogs everywhere and Ken pointed out every dog that was bigger than Oatley and also every dog that was smaller, and he even got to pet a couple of them. It wasn’t as good as petting a horse, but it was still really good—dogs here have so many different textures, and Fred had the squirty alcohol thing so Ken’s hands wouldn’t get too dirty from all those textures—and he had sorbet for dessert and that was really good too.
His mouth tastes like mint now from his toothpaste and mouthwash, but he still remembers how the sorbet tasted. It was made of strawberries and it was watery-solid-cool-sweet in his mouth, and it melted in the sunlight.
In Barbie Land, there was only soft serve, and it never melted.
Everything is so present here and so impermanent at the same time, changing from one moment to the next. Most of the time it makes him feel dizzy.
Sometimes it’s kind of nice.
Ken’s eyes travel down to his bandaged arm, and all of a sudden he gets a feeling like falling, or maybe like hitting the ground, putting his hands out to land hard on the horrible truth.
Everything is so present here and so impermanent at the same time, except some things are permanent.
He’s not getting his arm back.
He did something stupid, he is stupid, and what he did to his arm was permanent and now it’s going to be ugly forever.
He’s never been ugly before, but now he’s covered with ugly things and full of them too and surrounded by things that can make him ugly and he’s one of those things and…
Barbie shifts. She lies on her side, facing him. He looks into her blue eyes, and something in his jumbled head calms.
Barbie is the first entry on the list of things he hasn’t lost, and always, always the most important one.
Softly, simply, Barbie asks, “Was today a good day?”
Ken blinks.
He’s not sure if anyone’s ever asked him that question before.
A lot of things happened today.
Not as many things happened in Barbie Land, so this would’ve been an easier question to answer there, if the answer hadn’t always been assumed.
In the Real World, he guesses the answer can’t be assumed.
This morning, Ken thought he’d be getting his arm back.
This morning, Ken didn’t know what scars were, didn’t know about the one lurking on his body.
This morning, Ken didn’t know what mini horses were, and had never petted one. He’d never petted a Real dog either.
He didn’t know what sorbet was, or what the strawberry kind tasted like.
This morning, things were different. Not all of them were better.
Ken wishes he were smart enough to find a simple answer to this question.
He’s not, though, so he whispers, “I don’t know. But there were parts I really liked.”