Her eyes closed, and she thought of the farthest thing from her head.
I must be paralyzed because this asshole’s not telling me anything. My toes. My toes. If I can’t move my toes, then that’s proof I’m paralyzed. Move, big toe, move!
The big toe of her right foot twitched slightly.
“Margot, please relax, please listen. At this point, please do not attempt to move your body in any way. Any forced movement could cause injury in your body tissues and limbs. You see, we are using a special chemical that replaces traditional mechanical therapies. The chemical freezes various muscles. No, you are not paralyzed. Please believe me. When we have further evaluated your condition, now that you are awake, we will gradually reduce levels of the chemical so that your body may slowly adjust to your conscious, intended movements. If you move, in other words, you are only risking pain and discomfort a few days from now.”
How the hell do I communicate until then?
“Until then, please communicate with us in this way. One blink signals a no, two blinks signal a yes.”
Rovada pushed back from the monitors and sighed. “Poor thing,” he thought, shaking his head to and fro. “So much shock, such a reorientation that will occur. She has seen nothing yet of the truth. It will hurt to tell her the truth, as it has hurt the other few. But this is a versatile, adaptable lot. For the most part, they have come through this well with only minor problems. How I wish that they could have been treated with medication to have lessened the initial shock. This one too will see much in the next few days.”
Okay, you putrid slime mold! Can’t you see I’m blinking my freaking head off? Where are you, asshole?
Rovada scanned his console and peered through the clear partition that separated him from the events in the room. Her eyelids were moving furiously. “Margot,” Rovada pleaded, “please, you are straining your heart and internal organs! You must calm down or I will be forced to apply calming medications!”
Margot slowed her blinking.
Got your attention, lowlife. You patronizing idiot, you are in control and this pisses the holy hell out of me. Wait until I get your name. They’ll burn your ass for being so damned stupid!
“Family? When can you see your family?"
Margot blinked faster.
“Margot, please let’s learn the rules. You’ll only be here for a short while. One blink means no, and two means yes.”
Her head held hostage, Margot’s eyes glared back at the bright lights that beamed in her eyes. She blinked very deliberately, twice, the muscles in her upper cheeks painfully contracting.
“You will be able to see them,” he began.
“A string of lies!” Rovada winced to himself. He noticed the reflection of his long face in the clear partition of the Wall that separated them. He hated this. Indeed, he hated this.
He continued as the voice in the room. “In a few days, they will be here. As I said, we are in the process of notifying them now. Remember, you’ve been in a coma for over five years, and they could not be at your bedside every day. When they get here,” Rovada felt his insides contracting from the stress this caused him, lying through this Wall-created contrivance of comfort, “we will let them visit you. By then, you will be out of this room and this predicament you are in, and you will be moving like you always did. By the way, every limb and finger works just fine.”
Margot breathed a deep sigh of relief and stared blankly at the lights.
“Do you want me to tell you what happened to you again? How you got to be here?” Rovada repeated, feeling relieved at returning to a fact.
Margot closed her eyes twice, hard and slow.
This puke, he thinks he owns the world all right, won’t even speak to me face-to-face. Probably owns a Porsche, the piss-ann. I’m the one who needs the Porsche for going through this royal screw-up, not him.
“You were in a department store. You had just purchased a dress. The store provided you with a garment bag, a plastic covering, with which to protect your new dress. Your shoes were mid-heels. Your right heel got caught on the bottom of the garment bag as you were stepping onto the escalator. You lost your footing and fell over the side, the slick plastic of the bag apparently facilitating your stumble over the edge. Your body descended to a marble floor. Your fall was broken by a chair at the bottom. If it were not for that chair, you likely would have died splitting your head open on the floor. It’s just that the chair back became embedded in the back of your skull. They took you to the hospital and thought you had died. Massive hemorrhaging. Your heart was not beating when you arrived at the emergency room. It started on its own after twenty minutes. Can you imagine, human brain cells going twenty minutes without life-giving oxygen? But your body was strong. Aside from the fracture, you suffered a badly damaged pituitary, and the physicians at your Phoenix hospital had to remove most of it, along with other tissue. There’s now a large scar at the base of your neck, the only scar you have from the accident. Your spinal cord was not otherwise injured, and miraculously your neck was not broken and no nerves were severed, although your skull suffered a major fracture. We have been waiting for you to wake up. You see, you showed some minimal frontal lobe activity, so there was no issue of euthanizing you. Do you understand?"
Margot rolled her eyes back. "Yes!" she blinked twice intently.
“Good, good Margot, I see you’ve got the instructions down pat.”
Asshole!
“Now let me continue. You were sent to a facility, here at the Mayo Clinic. This facility has one of the finest head trauma clinics in the nation.”
Jesus, my parents must be living in debt! And my dad, so concerned about his retirement.
“Are you still listening, Margot?”
Her eyes hunted around to determine the location of the voice.
Come out of that darkness, pig! Let me see your face! Where in the hell is a real doctor, you low life? You’re probably some low-paid orderly enjoying seeing me like this. Jesus! This asshole has probably seen me naked a million times! Jesus, he probably has even shaved me down there! Margot! Get the picture? This asshole could have done any number of things. Margot, don’t be so morbid! Look, shit-for-brains, where’s my doctor, a nurse, anyone with authority? I want to see somebody!
“What strange thoughts you are having,” Rovada pondered as he glanced over the monitors in his small room.
“I need for you to understand this, so I will say it again. You are in a hospital room designed specifically for you. The doctor is in the scrub room right now, so it will be just a little bit before he can examine you further. Please stay calm until he arrives.”
Rovada turned and glanced to his right. A large opening appeared in the Wall, revealing his friend.
“Yivda, I thought you were at the feeding this hour!”
His friend turned his angular head to glance at the hovering body nearby. “No, buddy. Trying to build up credits and don’t mind skipping a meal now and then. We’re still on with our plan, aren’t we?” he laughed.
“You bet,” Rovada replied. “We will eventually make it out of this five hundred. The monotony was really getting to me until today. This one, Margot. She made it through. Chalk another one up for the human race.”
Rovada continued. “Doggone Council. Nothing like being a zookeeper, is there? They just don’t care about this stuff the way the few of us do. We have to live it daily. You’d think they would remember when they were in these same positions, but most things are quickly forgotten in the world of the Das.”
“How well did she come out of it?”
“She’s humming along but pretty angry about the situation, a little bit unlike the others who were all conscious when it happened. A much easier adjustment for them it may well have been. Except for Sergio, of course, at least initially. Margot’s the last. She’s quite a bit older than Sergio in human terms, and he’s been anticipating this moment. He’ll be so excited. Maybe she can substitute for his parents, you know, he’s so youn
g and misses them. It’s too bad we’re so restricted. You see different cultures and sentient beings and occasionally there are some that stick with you, you know? I guess these few have stuck to me. I just wish we could help them adjust a little better through a more gradual reorientation.”
“I know,” Yivda shook his head. “Vastness of space, such distances, and short life spans for them. You and I have had this conversation a million times, I’m sure. So much to see outside of this zoo, the real stuff. Hey, are you going to stay past your shift?”
“I suppose. I might want to extend this one, given that Margot has just regained consciousness. Makes you wonder if she’ll adapt. Okay with you?”
Yivda laughed. “Sure. I imagine she’ll have a memorable few days. You kind of feel sorry for her, though, but I know we’ve felt sorry for all of them before. Sorry doesn’t seem to help the pain. Pain simply is, as always.”
Yivda quickly disappeared and the opening from which he entered suddenly closed. Rovada returned to his thoughts. “The bureaucrats who devise these therapies. Such a short time to adapt to so much, and so many other beings have died in this way. Fragile, these humans and us. We ought to try it ourselves some time, the same shock, and see how we’d fare. Not the only thing we do that seems to fly against Interlocking Effects. These creatures are not inconsequential. Even after all these years, I don’t get it.” He looked back at the hovering body.
“Margot, are you still awake?”
He saw her eyes blink twice, very hard.
“The doctor will be with you soon.”
In less than a minute the doctor walked up to her and began to address his patient. “Hello, Margot, I’m Doctor Smith. Here, let's turn those lights down some!”
As the lights faded, Margot discerned the outline of a large, barrel-chested man whose dark complexion was offset by graying hair at the temples and a tuft of thick, black hair above a receding hairline. His face below his eyes was covered by a surgical mask, and he placed his hand lightly on Margot’s shoulder.
“Sorry I can’t turn the lights down any further. They’re here for a purpose. They kill bacteria. Nor can I remove my mask. That’s for your protection.”
Margot didn’t like something about his voice. Maybe it was an air of overconfidence.
“I want you to know,” he continued, “that you are one lucky lady. Very lucky to be alive. They say you were saved by a chair. Well, you’re none the worse for the fall. We have monitored you carefully. All systems are functioning well, and now you’re conscious. I’m going to take a little look here in your eyes.”
He pulled a large scope from inside his white cape and bent over Margot. She felt her body jolt inside as his hands touched her forehead.
Dirty old man. He too has probably seen me naked a hundred times. I know I’ve been on public display for a thousand gawking medical students. My God, everyone seeing my breasts and pubic hair. Must have been a big charge for all of them, a living body after slicing through cold cadavers. She began to close her eyes at the thought.
“Now, now, young lady. I need some help here. It’s a little hard for me to look in your eyes if you’re not cooperating. There, that’s better.” He effortlessly extracted the tube from her nose.
She relinquished control of the only muscle she felt she had any real control over. Her body was numb. She couldn’t feel, couldn’t turn her head to see the bed beneath her. But this machine above, the lights, this doctor, these things she could see. She thought to her father and his desire to help Joey through college, just as he had helped her.
God, poor Joey. No Ivy League for him. What was that mostly women’s college he wanted to attend in the East? What a riot that kid was! Women, sex, women, more sex. I wonder if he’s sowed his wild oats in the five years gone by?
Margot felt her face begin to sweat, and she knew too that her body had suddenly turned cold. It wasn’t the doctor’s cold hands. She couldn’t even feel him as he elevated her arms slowly and checked her reflexes.
Five years! Five years of life unlived! My God, I wonder if I have gray hair too, just like this doctor? Who has been doing my nails? What do my parents look like? Joey? My friends, are they all still in Phoenix? Have they ever visited me? Is my Lady dog still alive? What happened to my Facebook pages? My God, five years of my life wasted away, not recoverable, gone forever! Forever!
In an instant her mind flashed back to the precipitous fall, reliving it as if it were happening again.
My heel, my damn heel is stuck and I’m off-balance! The dress, the plastic, it’s sliding off over the side! Catch it before it goes, it’ll get dirty on the floor below! Jesus, it’s slick. Oh my God! I’m over! I’m sliding over the side! My God, the floor! That chair! Falling back!
She felt the sharp rap of a hand across her cheek. The doctor’s black eyebrows furrowed and he stared at her intently. “Trying to relive your misadventure with the escalator, are you? Your heartbeat shot from 90 to 180 in six seconds! Are you attempting to tie a record here? Are you trying to eject your heart from your chest? Sorry about the slap, little woman, but you will find yourself reliving that moment time and again, time and again! You must manage yourself through it. Learn to live with the fear of falling! It hurt, and your body is just now recovering from it. But don’t let the fear manage you. These thoughts will come to you, madam, just manage through them and come out alive as you are today. The important thing is that you come out alive. Come out alive!”
The doctor patted her shoulder with an air of authority and stepped back. “Beyond that little incident you just had, you are the picture of health, young woman. It’s a good thing you had climbing as a sport, or your body would have been too weak to handle the stress. We can now begin lowering the level of muscle inhibitors in your system.” He turned toward the large metallic arch at her feet and slowly adjusted a large knob. “You will feel pain, however, as your body adapts to being moved by its own force rather than the force of others. You have had daily physical therapy, but the only good muscle contraction is one initiated by your own brain. You should be able to move your jaws and speak by tomorrow morning and then our friendly attendant at the monitor over there. . .” the doctor paused and pointed to an area to Margot’s left. She strained but could not move her eyes far enough to see. “Well,” he continued, “he and you can have a tête-à-tête about your needs. Until then, this little machine will serve all your requirements for the next few days, until you are up and running at least.”
Margot’s eyes widened at the thought.
Up and running? You mean I’ll be sitting up? On my feet? Running? Does he mean I can still run?
“Yes, young lady, you will be mobile again. We will find you some shoes around here, and hopefully you won’t abuse your joints by too much running about. If you do,” he warned her, “we’ll have to give you a sharp rap across the knuckles, just like the nuns did at my reform school. Did I say reform school?” he chuckled. “I meant prep school. Got to go now to other patients.” He beamed a big smile at her and quickly disappeared from her view into the darkness of the room.
Her mind imagined the glistening, perfect white teeth beneath his mask.
Golf courses. Easy life. I can smell it. Just for a few more lousy years in school than what I did. Well, maybe more than a few. Hey asshole, did you know I have my masters? But the last thing I wanted was med school. Sorry, no, too many competing for that. My friends who did it, they were way out, way out, to study and get only three to four hours of sleep every night. I was not about to make that sacrifice, no way. Healing bodies, yeah, it seemed the cool thing, but when you look at the investment of time. No, I chose business. In that I can be anything I want to be. Do whatever. No calls in the middle of the night from patients. No, I’ve got it better than you, that’s for damn sure. But maybe not so much. I miss the thought of helping people. Of actually contributing something much more tangible and immediate to society than just another spreadsheet full of numbers.
Rovada’s voice awoke her from her brief reverie. “Now was that so bad? Doctor Smith is a nice guy. He did, however, ask that I give you another bath, and I’d like you to keep your lips open as much as you can as this machine does its thing.”
Margot thought she heard a hum of a motor, and she watched the large sandpaper-brown arm of the machine at her toes as it began to move over her. Although numbed, she felt the trickle of water as it sprayed her legs and worked its way up to her head. For once, she did not feel like fighting this voice, so she opened her lips and tried painfully to unclench her jaw as the appendage sprayed a fine mist over her face. She suddenly felt drowsy.
Comfort. No longer in this bed. My Asics. Too much excitement. My parents, Joey, they’ve been notified, must be a six-hour flight to Minnesota. Will they wake me up when they get here? God, they’d better clothe me. I hope none of them saw me here. What a relief, though! I still have my legs.
Oh God, what a reverie, this brief afternoon sleep. These strange and wondrous images are flying past my eyes. Little beams of light with extended tails. They move too fast to discern them entirely, to analyze them. I don’t know what they are. I’ve seen them before, though, when I’m light-headed, when I’m having an afternoon nap like today. It’s hot out, boiling hot, maybe in the teens. The air outside is so humid! What month is it? August? I get groggy in the afternoon heat. My bed is so soft it’s almost not there, as if I’m floating in a cool, bottomless bath. Colors and images, images and colors, these strange darting objects as they speed past my eyes, from left to right, always from left to right. In Israel, do people who take afternoon naps see these things move from right to left? Are they photons? My mind is conscious, but my body is asleep. I cannot feel myself, I cannot hear, but I know I am conscious. I can feel my chest move up and down. This is like a second stage of sleep, but so euphoric that it's hard to wake up. I’m entertained by the movement of pictures and exotic images across my eyes. What are these things that my mind creates? I feel like a computer core dumping its many connections, but I can see remnants of the images I saw today, maybe out in my car, as they pass by my eyes. They aren’t the same, though, pieces of them, or less, maybe just the skeletons of their structure. Too much thought, it’s an afternoon nap on a hot day. Don’t think too much, it will obliterate the enjoyment. Why do I not always sleep this way? I am so refreshed afterward. This lightness of my body is as if I’m in heaven, lofted above. This spirit has left the body and I am pure essence right now, pure essence, no longer Margot. One with all things in the universe.
The Space Between Her Thoughts (The Space in Time Book 1) Page 2