by Andrea Ring
“Does anyone have any questions about the brain?” I ask.
Ten more hands go up to join the first ten.
“Daniel?” I ask, pointing at him.
“Where did you get that?” he asks, pointing to the jar.
“At the butcher’s. A butcher is a man who takes a cow and cuts it up into steaks and hamburgers and stuff. Some people actually eat cow brains.”
The class gasps.
“Colton?”
“What does it feel like?”
“A little like jelly. Like solid jelly.”
“Can we feel it?”
I hesitate. I don’t really want to eat anything that my classmates have poked and prodded, but this is an opportunity to send the wow factor off the charts.
“What do you think, Mrs. Gardener?” I ask her.
She wrinkles her nose. “It’s up to you,” she says.
I nod enthusiastically.
“Only if everyone promises to wash their hands after.”
Everyone lines up in front of me as I screw the lid off the jar.
My speech has gone to hell, but I don’t really mind. The kids are interested. They are listening. They are paying attention.
To me.
I wonder what part of my brain I’m using to control my brain.
A thing should be able to control itself, or it is just a puppet.
Why would God create something that works without will?
Am I a higher life form or a lower one? Perhaps autonomic nervous functions are the highest form—why worry about breathing when your body can do it for you? Automation frees up the human being to concentrate on other things, like building, creating art, or having fun. Like when people learned how to farm, and they could spend their days inventing things rather than scavenging for food.
That would make me an evolutionary throwback. Which means that long ago, human beings had control like I do. But there is not one scrap of evidence to support this theory.
So I must be a higher form. Which means that maybe I’m the first, the only one, that can do this.
Why me? Is it nature, or nurture, or both?
I don’t think Mom and Dad did anything special in the parenting arena that encouraged my brain to grow differently than other kids’. They’ve been affectionate. They’ve been attentive (Mom, anyway). They’ve encouraged my interests and my talents. Standard parenting stuff, for our culture.
Must be nature.
Either my brain is truly different in structure, or I somehow tapped a portion of it that no one else is able to tap, or maybe it’s some unknown enzyme, that allows me to grow neurons faster and in different places than a normal person can. Or, hell—I could have some new organ in my body that no one’s ever had before. I’ll call it the Tommy. If I can identify it and take some samples, maybe we can grow Tommys with stem cells for every person alive. It’ll be a moneymaker, for sure. I want my Tommy! Sign me up!
I really need some brain scans. Some full body scans, too. I cannot wait for my doctor’s appointment tomorrow.
Chapter Ten
I haven’t seen Dr. Morley since I was nine months old, but I remember him well. He has the same kindly eyes, the same saggy skin, and the same laughter in his voice.
Dr. Morley, of course, does not remember me.
Mom requested the last appointment of the day. One, she didn’t want me missing school, and two, she reasoned that we would get more time if the doctor didn’t have other patients waiting.
Mom introduces us, and Dr. Morley shakes my hand.
I smile wide at him, and he chuckles.
“Young man, most kids are not so eager to see me,” he says with a wink.
He examines my records on the computer attached to a mount on the wall.
“Looks like he’s behind on his immunizations,” he says. “I know there’s been a lot of hysteria about them, but I highly recommend—”
“Oh, he’s got them,” Mom says, pulling my records out of her purse. “We just got them at the clinic down the street.”
Dr. Morley examines the yellow immunization card. “Do you have other records, too?”
Mom shakes her head. “No. Thomas has only been to the clinic to receive his shots. No other checkups.”
“You must be a healthy one,” he says to me. “I recommend, though, that Thomas at least get yearly physicals, so we can make sure his growth is on track and we can prevent any problems that may come up.”
“Yes,” Mom says. “I’ve kept track of his growth—height, weight, and head circumference—every three months since he last saw you.” She hands him three sheets of paper stapled together.
“My,” he says. “Is there a reason you’re visiting me today?”
Mom nods slowly, and I can see that her eyes are beginning to tear. “I know it looks like I’m a horrible parent,” she says, “but I’ve kept Thomas away from doctors for a very good reason.” Her voice breaks at the end, and she has to swallow a few times to fight off the tears.
“May I?” I ask her. Dr. Morley swings his head to me. Mom nods. “I can control my entire body, including my autonomic nervous system.”
“What?” he asks.
“Let me put it another way,” I say. “I know what’s going on in every part of my body at all times. And I have control over it, too.”
“You what?”
“Take my heart beat,” I say, holding out my wrist to him.
Dr. Morley doesn’t move.
I sigh.
“Just take my heart beat. Right now it’s beating at 111, no 112 beats per minute, a little high, but I’m terribly nervous. If you give me about thirty seconds, I can have it up to 140 exactly.”
Dr. Morley doesn’t speak. He takes my wrist and looks at his watch. Ten seconds later he mumbles, “One ten.”
I take a deep breath and speed my heart. “Take it again,” I say.
“One forty,” he breathes.
We stare at each other.
“What…what else can you do?” he asks.
“I can flood my stomach with bile to aid digestion. I can call up adrenaline as required. I can tell when a virus has penetrated my system, and I can invoke my immune system to fight it directly. I can count my existing neurons…well, it’s more a knowing of how many there are than actually counting them, which would take too long…I can tell when my body needs more of a specific vitamin or mineral, or if I have too much of something and need to counter it, I can tell you what’s happening in my kidneys, and if they’re functioning properly—”
“How old are you?” Dr. Morley asks, even though I’m sure he knows the answer.
“I’m six years old, sir,” I say.
“And you’ve never been to a doctor?”
“Not since I last saw you,” I say.
Dr. Morley goes back to his computer screen.
“Oh…you’re the one…the baby that was talking at nine months. I remember.” He turns to me. “I palpitated your stomach and you grabbed my hands and said, ‘That tickles.’”
“Yes,” I say.
“You remember that?” he asks.
“I also rubbed your beard and said, ‘Prickly.’ I have perfect recall.”
“Perfect recall?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Morley lays a hand on Mom’s arm. “Do you have somewhere to be?”
I’m sitting on a cold metal table, wearing only a thin cotton robe and a thoughtful smile, when I hear Mom raise her voice outside the door.
She’s arguing with Dr. Morley. He wants to bring other specialists in; she doesn’t want anyone but him to know.
I hop off the table and dress.
“Get dressed!” Mom yells as she bursts through the door.
I stand there with the robe in my hands.
“Oh. Good. We’re leaving.”
Mom grabs my hand and yanks me towards the door, but I dig my heels in and begin to slide.
“No,” I say. �
�Not yet.”
“What?”
Mom looks down at me as though suddenly realizing I can speak.
“Don’t I have a say here?” I ask her.
Mom blows out a breath and doesn’t say a word.
“I would like to speak to Dr. Morley myself.”
“My job is to protect you, Thomas,” she says, squatting down in front of me. “I’m the parent and you are the child.”
“I won’t countermand anything you’ve said. I just want to speak with him.”
She narrows her eyes. “Then we’re leaving.”
“Yes.”
She straightens and opens the door, waving Dr. Morley inside.
“Thomas would like a word.”
Dr. Morley fights a smile and looks down at me.
“What do you think?” I ask him.
“I have no idea. This is not my area of expertise, as I pointed out to your mother. We need specialists to look at all the test results.”
“You’re an educated man,” I say. “You can look at test results and at least know when something doesn’t look right. You know what specialists to call in. So where, exactly, does my problem lie?”
“I’m not trained to give those kinds of answers, Thomas.”
“Bullshit.”
Dr. Morley’s eyes widen and he lets out a bark of laughter.
“You’re a pistol, aren’t you?”
“You’ve no idea,” Mom says.
Dr. Morley looks me in the eye. “The brain stem. The cerebrum. The pituitary gland. The cerebellum. You want me to go on?”
“Anything outside the brain?” I ask.
“Not that I can tell.”
“Any…tumors?” I ask, holding my breath.
“No,” he says. “But we haven’t done all the tests yet, and something could be hiding.”
I chew my lip. Of course he has to hedge his bets, but it’s good news.
“Blood work?”
“Not finished yet, but a couple of the preliminary results are ridiculously normal.”
“Ridiculously?” I ask.
“Perfectly in the middle of normal. Abnormally normal.”
I smile. “Excellent. So what do you recommend?”
Dr. Morley glances at Mom, still aware of the authority figure in the room. Mom nods.
“We need a plan. A long-term plan. I suggest bringing in neurological experts first, then we can add others as needed. You should be monitored regularly, so we can see what effects you are having on your body.”
“You mean studied, not monitored,” Mom says.
I do not want to argue. I decide we need time to process.
“Okay. Thank you, Dr. Morley. Mom and I will discuss this tonight with my father, and we’ll be in touch.” I hold out my hand and he shakes it. I glare at Mom. She sighs and shakes his hand as well.
“I just want what’s best for him,” she says.
“Me, too, Trisha,” he says, looking her in the eye. “I promise.”
“Thomas, I don’t think you understand the possible consequences here,” Mom says, for the thirtieth time.
I have to try a new approach.
“Let’s just say the worst happens,” I begin. “Say everyone finds out about me. Say I’m on the front page of every magazine in the world. Say doctors are knocking down my door. Say paparazzi follow us wherever we go. Say you homeschool me, and I spend most of my day in a laboratory being studied. So?”
“So? So? Is that the life you want, Thomas? Is it? Because you know what that means? No more school. No more friends. No high school dances, or football games, or dates, or trips to the beach on a whim. No more normal life.”
I snort. “You think that’s the life I have now? ‘Cause I don’t. I don’t! You want me to have friends, and I don’t have any. Nobody calls me up and says, ‘Hey, Tommy, come shoot some hoops with us.’ And school is a joke! It’s an excuse for you to get some time without me.”
“Thomas!” Dad says.
“Sorry, but it’s true. I’m leading the life you want me to have, the best way I can, but it’s not for me. You have to see that.”
“You’re only six,” Mom says. “Give it time. Things will get easier as you get older.”
“What makes you think that?”
My parents don’t respond.
“Look, maybe I’d like life in a lab. I could study. I could actually use my brain for once. Why would that kind of life be so bad?”
Mom starts to cry.
When I was younger, I had this recurring dream where I floated away in a hot air balloon. I didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t care. I just floated. Up and away in the big blue sky.
Chapter Eleven
Mom and I are at an impasse. I want to study my body, and she doesn’t want me to.
I ask her why she bothered to take me to the doctor at all—she had to know that this would be the outcome. But all she says is that she wanted to make sure I was okay, no inoperable tumors lurking in my brain, no cancer cells flooding my system. Her worst fears have been put to rest, and now she wants to move on with our lives.
We vacillate between arguing and silence. There is no middle ground. I don’t think I’ve ever been this angry with her. I’ve been disappointed, or frustrated, or even annoyed, but I’ve never felt such unreasoning, all-encompassing anger before. It clouds my vision. It consumes my thoughts. And it seems to be spreading. This morning I woke up filled with rage at God, who I don’t even believe in, for giving me this life. I am mad at Mrs. Gardener for not being able to teach me more. I’m pissed off at Dad for not siding with me, and for not siding with Mom, and for simply not making a choice like a man should.
I’m just mad, I tell you.
I sit in class seething, plotting ways to get what I want, when Principal Wasserman interrupts to take Mrs. Gardener outside for a chat. Damn her. The class starts whispering and getting generally unruly, and it’s so loud in here that I can’t concentrate on brooding.
The two women come back in, and the class immediately quiets. I take out my notebook and a pencil and sketch a wispy cloud. I add a couple of birds. An airplane. But my drawing is wobbly. Someone is shaking my shoulder.
“Thomas!”
“What?”
I look up into Principal Wasserman’s puffy face, and she’s crying and not even trying to hold the tears back. She pulls on my arm, and I follow her and my teacher outside.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, and then I catch sight of Mrs. Gardener, who also has tear tracks on her cheeks. She takes my hand and leads me to the office.
Dad is standing by the window, wearing holey jeans and a ratty t-shirt. This in itself is alarming, but then I see his feet—he’s got on two different tennis shoes, and no socks. A soldier always takes care of his feet. My head snaps up to meet his eyes.
“Where’s Mom?” I say, suddenly frantic.
Dad swallows.
“What’s happened to Mom?”
Dad collapses to his knees and hugs me tight.
“A car accident,” he whispers.
“Where’s Mom?” I whisper back.
“Gone.”
You’ve probably read The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs. These parents wish on a magical monkey’s paw for money, then their son is killed, and as restitution, they are paid the exact sum of money they wished for.
It’s a cautionary tale.
Or a bunch of fictitious, superstitious crap.
Either way, it’s now my reality.
Chapter Twelve
Grandma comes to live with us. Or me, since Dad’s scheduled to leave in a couple of weeks. The Navy gave him six extra weeks of bereavement leave. Very generous of them.
Grandma turns out to be a savior. She wrinkles her nose when she walks in the house and marches straight into the kitchen. She sets her powder blue hard-sided suitcase in the middle of the room and attacks the dirty dishes and crusty piz
za boxes with robot-like efficiency.
I don’t know her all that well since she lives in Florida and has only visited once, when I was born, and we’ve only been there to see her once, when I was a year old. So instead of trying to have a conversation with a virtual stranger, I drag her suitcase to the spare bedroom and set it by the door. I resume my place on the couch next to Dad. The only difference between us (except for the height, of course) is that I’m sipping orange juice from a box and he’s sipping beer from a can.
I want to be sad. I’m usually sad when Dad leaves.
Today I don’t feel much of anything except relief.
We don’t say much. A couple of “I love you”s, a hug, a “Take care of yourself” and a “Take care of Grandma.”
He lingers at the door, with the airport shuttle and five other passengers waiting, and I just want him to leave. I need him to leave.
And suddenly I’m yelling.
“Just go already, will you?”
I shove at his thighs.
“Go! Go! Just get out of here!”
I’m pushing at him with all my might, and beating on him with clenched fists, and I call up all the adrenaline I have available and beat him harder.
“Leave! You have to go! Get out, Dad! Now! Go!”
And suddenly I’m airborne, and the world turns upside down as Dad flips me over his shoulder, and I’m still screaming as I watch the shuttle take off down the street, its most important passenger missing.
I’ve read about what stress can do to the body, but I’ve never experienced it.
I had never experienced it until a month ago.
Now I look like a little old man.
I am hollowed out. My cheekbones stand at attention. My eyes have sunken into their sockets and are surrounded by bruise-like shadows. My memory is sketchy. I cannot remember what I ate for breakfast, if I ate at all. I don’t sleep. My head aches. My heart rate is up, and I cannot calm it down.