The door opened and a social worker came with admittance paperwork, questions about my mother’s history. She would check on me soon, she said, and left. I stared at the pages, dug around in my mom’s purse for her driver’s license, copied the number. I did the same with her insurance card. I did my best with the rest of her story; the first diagnosis, the surgery in which bones were cut and tumors removed. The leftover holes were filled with special cement. But she still felt them, spaces of ache and absence. This is how she explained the pain.

Halfway down the forms, my phone lit up. I followed it. To a picture tagged by Blaze and posted to his personal account.

The picture was of me, no Girl, no Jake or faceless men. I pinched the screen to see. The expressionless shine of my forehead, the outlines of my implants, the vape pen I forked with my fingers. Smoke funneled in a conical cloud from my mouth and all around, neon light cast a filtered sheen. The picture was a message and only I could read it: I was special. And that was why I had been chosen, shown to the world who saw—

@steveooo912:

@Kelliegel_: Fine as wine

@A.design17: @BlazeCannabis girls are the hottesssst

@cassandrawins: STUNNING

@earthgrab: Bellissima principessa ti amo

@skincareg: Photoshopped

@marinabern: a perfect storm

@tsimolova: Beautiful

@guy.hilal97: Get Hard to Last Longer

@patricialocc: MAKEUP GOALZ

@alamedamai: Muahhhh sexxxxo

I moved to my own account, ordained by Blaze, and growing. 80,000 followers, 85,000, 90,000. From a narrow, windowless room, I watched them build, bought by the surgical perfection of my body, the failure of my mother’s, as if any love I earned was both a trade and a punishment.

The social worker opened the door, put her head into the room. I jumped, settled, shut the phone.

“I have the papers,” I said and held them out.

“I have your mother’s doctor here,” she said.

The doctor, surgeon, decision maker. His white coat, blue scrubs, stubble. Just yesterday he’d looked at me, my trademark smile, and agreed to let my mother go. I stood, put out my hand for him to shake. I could see he didn’t want to. In my palm, his palm was limp. “I’m so sorry to tell you,” he said, and the room turned smaller. “There was, at some point, contamination,” he said. “In surgery or aftercare, we can’t know.”

“Okay,” I said and started to ask next steps.

He interrupted. “By the time we got to your mother, the infection had progressed. We can’t say why this sometimes happens when a patient is sent home.”

“What is it you’re telling me?” I said.