Under the sheets my hands reach like a tongue that can't stop playing with a loose tooth.

Over and over the rough bandages my fingers run, trying to smooth over reality.

In the morning I feel Paati's hands kneading my temples.

Not even her touch soothes me.

Murmuring a prayer, she places the bronze idol of Shiva I won at the compet.i.tion on my bedside table.

"Mukam karothi vachalam; pangum langayathe girim."

G.o.d's grace moves the mute to eloquence and inspires the lame to climb mountains.

I glance at my dancing Shiva, His left leg raised parallel to the earth, His right leg crushing the demon of ignorance, His inner hands juxtaposed, palms flat, His outer hands holding aloft the fire of creation and destruction, and a drum keeping time to the music of His eternal dance.

I try to repeat Paati's prayer. I strain my ears to hear His music.

It feels like Shiva destroyed my universes of possibility, like He's dancing on the ashes of my s.n.a.t.c.hed-away dreams.

NAMELESS.

"Veda, you've got a roommate," a nurse announces.

A woman with a mop of gray hair gives me a yellow-toothed smile.

"I heard you lost your leg. How?"

I don't want this stuffy s.p.a.ce invaded.

Especially not by a chatty old woman.

I don't answer.

"Talking will help you heal, you know.

They cut my toes off. Diabetes.

Now tell me about you."

I give her more silence.

"What's your full name, girl?

Veda what?

You can tell me that, at least, hmm?"

No.

I don't know who I am anymore.

PAIN UNCONTROLLED.

Nurses come and go, black strands of hair escaping bleached white caps, flowing saris peeping from beneath starched coats.

"Pain under control?" they ask.

As a dancer, how carefully I mastered the mechanics of my body- learning to bear just enough pain so I could wear it proudly, like a badge of honor.

I want to tell the nurses no scale can measure the pain of my dreams dancing beyond reach.

PINS, NEEDLES, PHANTOMS,.

and

PAIN.

The nurse pulls the faded privacy curtain around my bed to keep me partially hidden from my roommate's curious eyes. Why bother?

The curtain isn't soundproof.

My surgeon, Dr. Murali, lists my injuries in a tired voice, his limp hair matching the glint of his silver-rimmed spectacles.

Below-knee crush injury, concussion, two cracked ribs, cuts on thighs and shoulders.

"Nothing more."

Sounds more than enough to me.

My once-golden-brown skin mottled with more blue-black bruises than a rotting mango.

My once-strong body bandaged in so many places I feel like a corpse someone started to mummify and abandoned halfway.

"Will I have scars?"

"None a sari won't hide."

My sigh of relief is cut short by a stab of pain from my cracked ribs.

Dr. Murali says, "You may have phantom pain.

You might feel the part of the leg you lost is still there.

Many patients say it feels like when a part of your body falls asleep and later the numb part wakes up with a p.r.i.c.kling sensation.

Like pins and needles.

Except it hurts worse."

Pain from the ghost of a leg that's gone, adding to the excruciating ache in my existing limbs?

Just what I need.

He continues, "Most patients get over it soon.

A year or two at most."

Maybe when you've got hair as gray and gla.s.ses as thick as he does two years feels like a short time.

When my roommate and I are alone, she says, "Sometimes they cure ghost pain by cutting more off."

Butcher what's left of my leg?

No, thanks.

ALL I.

STILL HAVE.

Paati says, "You have your whole life ahead of you.

You have me, Ma, Pa, Chandra.

And G.o.d.

G.o.d is within you, Veda. So is His strength."

I don't feel G.o.d is anywhere nearby, let alone inside me.

"Your grandpa was a wonderful man," Paati says.

"When your pa was a baby and I was widowed, I fell from the heights of being a joyful young wife and mother into a dark valley of sadness.

I could have stayed there.

My in-laws wanted to look after me.

They were loving and kind.

And working widows were rare in my day.

But I didn't dwell on what I'd lost.

I returned to college, became a teacher, grew independent.

Because I chose to focus on all I still had: my son, my intelligence, my supportive in-laws."

In the past, Paati's spoken of my grandpa.

But until now I never realized how much she loved the man her parents made her marry.

And how unusual and brave Paati was.

As she leaves the room Paati says, "Doesn't mean it was easy.