Lori had been stuck for weeks in the little room behind the kitchen. There was something wrong with the air outside, her family said. Lori couldn’t remember what it was, exactly, a chemical fire at the refinery, or maybe the new cellphone towers down the road—an event of some kind had made the air unsafe for the elderly to breathe. Lori would concede that she was old, but still could not believe that her daughter Victoria, traitor, flesh and blood, had confined her in the back of Lori’s own house, leaving her to eat her dinner out of tin cans and a plastic bucket for a toilet. Victoria and her family meanwhile went on like normal, their cooking and cackling phones on the other side of the door, and whenever Lori heard her granddaughter, Zoe, out there, she would whine and paw at the door like a dog.

“It’s not safe out here,” they said.

None of them doubted that the hazard was real, not even Lori, who had coughed for hours the morning the incident had begun. But today Lori had an idea. The danger was in the air, some kind of contamination, and the lungs were how those particles gained entry to her body. It stood to reason that if she removed her lungs, the point of vulnerability would be excised and she could safely go outside again.

Persuaded, Lori got to work, standing up her cot against the wall and floating her bedsheet out across the floor. She grabbed her scissors, pulled off her dress, and knelt down in the operating area. Cutting back there was awkward, requiring her to nearly dislocate her shoulders to get her arms where they needed to reach, and it was painful beyond description, but she kept on, cut by cut, holding her scissors firmly so they wouldn’t jam or slip from her grip. Finally, her lungs lay across her lap, healthy, pink, and smelling of copper, like organ meat from any other vigorous animal, and she wrapped them up in a soft sweater and set them aside. The sheet was ruined, she sadly thought, but that was the point, to protect the floor.

Sponged off, taped up, and freshly dressed, Lori threw open the door: Hello, world. Zoe ran to her from the kitchen table, shrieking in surprise and delight, and Lori scooped her up, careful not to pop any tape. Victoria and her husband, Jon, stared, stuck in their chairs with specks of egg on their lips. Lori ignored them and triumphantly carried the girl outside. It was an early spring day, unseasonably hot. The magnolia tree and tulips were already in bloom. Zoe toddled around the garden, gleefully trashing the blossoms and kicking apart the green shoots, Lori looking proudly on. Victoria came trailing after.

“Zo . . . Ma . . . please.”

Lori tried to comfort her, but Victoria was inconsolable. So Lori brought her back inside and showed her the lungs, safe and sound, first wrapped in her good cashmere sweater to keep them warm, then in a plastic bag for hygiene. Lori lifted her dress to reveal the hatches she had made across her lower back, taped closed for now. Clever, see? Victoria started crying.

“I bought you that sweater,” she said.

“Let’s go on the boat!” Zoe shouted. The girl had marched back inside and was throwing around petals. “Boat! Boat!” Now she was stomping and grinding the petals into the floor.

“Jon!” Victoria shouted. He was still at the table, fork in hand, the way a statesman in an oil painting might hold a pen.

“You know, boat’s not a bad idea,” he eventually said.

...

They had never gotten the boat out on the water so early in the year. The lake was packed with young families who had all had the same idea, enjoying themselves and not looking up at the sky too much. Lori and Zoe splashed around in the ice-cold shallows. Lori was wearing a shirt that clung uncomfortably to her body, now that it was wet, but otherwise it felt like a normal day on the lake. Zoe drummed her hands on the water, panting with effort. Victoria sulked on the boat, and Jon stayed aboard to keep her company. He looked mildly toward the shore every now and then; two teenage girls were sunbathing on the grass beneath some still-naked trees. They were playing a pop song that Lori thought she recognized, though she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t focus really. The lack of air was making her lightheaded, and she would need a break soon.

“Knock it off, Jon,” Victoria said.

“What’s that?” he asked, and dreamily looked back over.

“Seriously,” she said.

This was Lori’s chance. She scooted Zoe back up onto the boat and signaled to the others that she was going ashore. Victoria didn’t even look over as Lori waded out of the water, and in the parking lot, when the boat was out of view, she broke into a run. Her chest was very tight, as if it were wrapped up with a long cord, and her vision was blurry with shadows and stars. Mercifully, Jon’s pickup truck was right there, and she threw open the backseat door and crawled up into the cabin, frantically rooting around for the shopping bag that she had left on the floor. But when she saw what was in the bag, she froze.

A big black lump was where the sweater should have been, fuzzy and moving slightly. She shook the silt from her eyes and saw that it was black ants, thousands of them crawling over one another. The floor of the truck was also covered in ants, so much so that the ground seemed to pulse. Lori ripped open the sweater, scraping off ants in clumps. They had completely swarmed one of the lungs, scurrying in and out of the folds of tissue and scattering when she tried to pick it up, the organ crumbling apart in her hands like puff pastry. Lori snatched up her other lung, luckily ignored and intact, and peeled off her wet shirt and shoved it back inside of her body. Without thinking, she flung the shopping bag into some bushes nearby, then twisted her shirt into a whip and slashed around the car, crushing the ants all around her.

When everything stilled, she climbed into the seat and started to catch her breath. Her chest loosened. Her vision cleared. Calm, she removed the lung and put her shirt back on, feeling stupid for being so careless, small and ashamed in her wet clothes, as though she had become a little girl again in back of her daddy’s car. He had died when Lori was thirteen. For years after, she had dreams where he was up in front driving, and she was in the back seat, talking to him. He would answer but never look back. But she had been given one more chance, an amazing act of grace, and she wrapped the lung up in aluminum foil and stowed it in the cooler under an ice pack, swearing to be more careful. When Lori looked up, the whole family was there.

“You look sweaty,” Zoe said.

“You really do,” Victoria said.

They had gotten cold and hungry out on the water, so Jon was going to grill them up some food. Lori took Zoe to the playground to pass the time. The playground was a giant wooden castle, and Zoe brutally threw herself against the walls, scaling up the side and hanging off the railings, screaming and kicking her legs through the air. She climbed over the railing and knocked down a boy who had watched her approach in stunned disbelief. The boy started to cry, and Lori decided that that was enough and walked up into the castle to go get her. Zoe took this to be part of the game too and ran away, yelling that she was the most beautiful and powerful soldier in the entire state. Lori chased her, surprised by both of their speed, and caught up with Zoe on the ground and they both crashed into the mulch in a fit of laughter. But Zoe squirmed away and sprinted back to the car as if it had been her idea to leave all along, and Lori followed, her chest tight again and flint-sparks crowding her vision. One lung could not do the work of two.

“Burgers!” Zoe shouted.

Lori also smelled Jon’s grilling—he was already adding the cheese. Victoria had set up the tailgate for lunch. The ladies took their seats, and Lori nodded her thanks to Jon when he handed her a plate. She just needed to get through the lunch, discreetly open the cooler, and sneak a few quick breaths. She took a hungry bite, her mouth painfully salivating, relishing the hot meal, even if it was Jon’s miserable cooking. The others dug in too. Lori took another bite, this time properly registering the fatty, charred taste, but also acrid, off somehow, like a glaze of brine had been brushed onto the patty. The result wasn’t necessarily unpleasant, just unusual. With her next bite, though, she noticed the texture, oddly mealy and uneven, as if flecks of rubber had been mixed up in the hamburger. Her eyes fell on the cooler, the lid open and the ice pack sitting on the asphalt nearby. She stopped chewing, the wad of food resting on her tongue.

Zoe’s attention had wavered from eating as well. Victoria was gently encouraging her to
have more.

“See? Grandma and daddy are eating. It’s good!”

Jon waved the burger in front of his face like a spaceship and landed it into his mouth. Zoe giggled, then looked up at Lori with her big brown eyes. Lori swallowed, and took another bite, making a show of chewing for all of them, big exaggerated bites. It was good, for what it was. Zoe giggled again and took another bite, and so did Lori, thanking God for every second.

Jordan Gisselbrecht's fiction has appeared or will be out soon in PRISM International, Salt Hill Journal, Potomac Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Baltimore with his boyfriend and cat.