The Dryad's Kiss

by Scott VanKirk

  To my disappointment, I woke up that morning to a new nurse. He was also short and looked Lebanese or something swarthy and dark with a seven o’clock shadow. Definitely not cute. I woke as he poured a dark yellow liquid from a bag by my bed into a graduated container. As soon as I recognized that the liquid was urine, I fumbled around with my covers and my flowered gown and discovered that I had become a cyborg, wearing diapers. The diapers were bad enough, but it freaked me out to see a plastic tube sticking out of a place that nothing should ever be sticking out of.

  I must have looked as stunned and violated as I felt, but Nurse Hairy didn’t slow down or even blink. After seeing the mess downstairs, I was grateful he wasn’t the cute nurse from the night before. Then, I wondered who had stuck it in me or how someone could even do something like that. I lay back, sickness rising in my stomach, while Hairy finished his checklist.

  As he packed up to go, another guy brought in breakfast. With my recent discovery, I didn’t expect to have any appetite at all, but just the thought of food got my saliva going. The smell made my stomach grumble, and I watched eagerly as he lifted the plastic lid off the breakfast dish.

  All of you who have ever been in a hospital should know the end of this story. Gray eggs, gray sausage, gray porridge-like stuff, and a plain piece of white toast. All topped off with that nasty OJ in the little steel can.

  I devoured it all, and it was wonderful. I was searching for more when my parents came in. My heart swelled three sizes when I saw them. I suddenly realized how fragile my mood had been since waking up in the hospital. Fear, vulnerability, and loneliness had been my sole companions since then. I needed my mom, and she must have known it, because she rushed over to me and gave me a big hug while my dad stood by in silence. When you’re low, nothing makes you feel quite so much better as your Mom.

  “Oh, sweetie! You had us so scared!” She pulled back from her hug, and I got a good look at her face. I immediately forgot about how good she made me feel.

  Her pale face, sunken cheeks, and the dark circles under her eyes made me wonder if she had been getting visits from her own dryad. Tears ran down her tired face, and my heart twisted with guilt. I started blinking fast to get rid of my own tears.

  “I’m okay, Mom. I feel a lot better. Cut it out, or we’ll both be bawling!”

  She gave me a weak smile and sniffled back the tears. Her cool hands covered mine, and she searched my face like she could find answers to some question there if she looked hard enough

  “I was just tired, I guess,” I offered.

  “No, Finn, you weren’t just tired.” My dad stepped forward.

  I looked at him, but couldn’t see his eyes because of the reflection of the light off his glasses. It gave him an ominous look, or perhaps that came from his words.

  “You were comatose. You were completely unresponsive in the ICU for a day, and nobody could figure out what had happened to you. We didn’t know if you were going to live or die.”

  My eyes widened as I digested this little new tidbit. Whoa! I hadn’t considered the seriousness of what had happened to me. When it settled in just how bad my condition had been, I trembled.

  Mom ran a hand over my hair. “Sweetheart, is there anything you can tell us?”

  Panic bubbled up in my chest. “Uh, no, I’ve just been really tired and stressed lately.”

  My dad moved closer, and my relief at finally seeing his eyes evaporated when I saw what they contained. He had the face he got when he was about to call bullshit on one of my lies.

  “Finn, people don’t fall into a coma for three days because they’re just stressed. What aren’t you telling us?”

  Nothing I could say would help. I could imagine their joy when I told them my condition came from being loved to death by a mythical creature who lived in our tree. They’d put me away for certain. Either that or think I was covering for worse things.

  “No, nothing, Dad!”

  He leaned closer. “Finn…,” he began, menace in his voice.

  I started to freak; my blood ran cold, I had to grip the covers to keep my hands from shaking, and my heart slammed against my ribs. If I told them, they’d take her away from me. They might even take the heart from me. I couldn’t let that happen. My breath started coming in short gasps as anxiety launched me into a full-fledged panic attack. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t relax, my hands clenched into fists, and I became lightheaded.

  My dad’s face turned from anger to concern. He and Mom both recognized the symptoms, though it hadn’t happened for several years.

  “Finn,” my dad spoke in a controlled and even voice. “Listen to me. It’s okay. You’re not in trouble. Your mom and I are both here. You’re safe. Finn, remember the light, remember the warmth, you’re safe. Your mom and I are both here…”

  He repeated the familiar words over and over. With difficulty, I tried to imagine the warm yellow sphere of light surrounding me, protecting me. When I finally brought it up, its warmth surrounded me, calmed me, and made me feel safe.

  The protection of the light enabled me to pull back from the panic. My breath slowed, and the world refocused. Tears streamed down my face. I wasn’t sure if they came from the fear or the release from it.

  Mom had leaned over me and stroked my head and face with warm hands and love in her eyes. She repeated, “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

  I cried more when it hit me how much my parents loved and supported me. I cried from relief, and I cried because I couldn’t tell them what was happening. Hey, you wake up in a hospital after all this weird shit, and you'd be crying too.

  My sobs eventually subsided into ragged breaths and then came the inevitable: I got the hiccups.

  I tried telling them that I was all right. It came out, “I’m (hic)… I’m (hic)…I’m (hic)…” Frustrated, I cried, “Arrrrrggghhhh! (hic)!”

  We all started laughing. I had always hated the fact that I got hiccups after crying, and my parents gave me endless good-natured grief about it. Now, the noise came as a great tension breaker and mood lifter, but if you have never tried laughing with the hiccups, I wouldn’t recommend it. It hurts!

  After holding my nose and drinking a glass of water with a knife sticking out of it, I conquered my nemesis. With a final hic of promised return, the hiccups crawled back to wherever they came from. I lay back with a heavy sigh and turned to my parents.

  “Dad, I can’t tell you what’s happening to me or why. I would if I could. If I knew what was really happening, I’d tell you.” I strode the fence between truth and lies, searching for balance and the right words. “I swear I don’t do drugs! I don’t even drink! You know that.”

  Mom threw in her towel with me. “We do know that, honey. We’re just worried about you, and want some explanation. The doctors can’t give us one.”

  “So, they don’t know what happened?” I asked.

  “No, they ran every test they could think of. At first, they thought it must have had something to do with the head trauma you suffered, but there isn’t any swelling in your brain. After that, they tested your blood, your liver, your heart. They looked for poisons or chemicals. Then, sometime during the evening, the doctors told us that you had come out of the coma by yourself and had slipped into a deep sleep. They didn’t know why that happened, either.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, wow,” she agreed in a soft voice.

  After that, they filled me in on what I had missed while off in my own little ya-ya land, which wasn’t much. We chatted, gossiped, and when that died down, we relied on our old hospital staple: we worked together on the crossword puzzle in the daily paper.

  During this time, a couple of nurses (or aides or orderlies or whatever) bustled through the room. The hospital color-coded them, but I never found a key to the code, and truthfully, I never got curious enough to ask.

  Then hell sent its emissary, announced by a quick double rap on the open door. When I looked to see Dr. “Gazer Beam” Mengele in
all his cherubic, blue-eyed menace, my heart flip-flopped. Oh, crap!

  “May I come in?” He walked right into the room without waiting for an answer.

  “Dr. Anderson!” Mom said getting up. “It’s good to see you again.” She rose to shake his hand and motioned to my dad. “Dr. Anderson, this is Jack, my husband.”

  The two men shook hands with polite greetings.

  “Good to meet ya,” my dad said.

  “The pleasure is mine.” The spotlight of his attention quickly swept my direction. “And, good to see you, young man!” he chirped, walking over to the bed with his hand outstretched. This time, I was prepared for his vice grip and suffered only minor nerve damage to my pinky.

  “You gave your parents quite the scare.” He waited in blink-less anticipation for my reply.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

  “Dr. Anderson, what brings you here today?” asked my dad.

  “Oh, I wanted to check on Finn, and I was hoping I could get a word with him.”

  “About what?” Dad asked, suspicion tingeing his voice. He seemed more reserved around the good doctor than my mom.

  The doctor’s gaze turned on him. “Oh, I was just hoping we could chat some more about the day that young Jennifer's troubles started. I hoped I might find some connection between Finn’s collapse and what happened to her.”

  “Well, the doctors would be in a better position to answer that.”

  You go, Dad!

  Anderson replied in a reasonable tone. “Some of it only Finn can answer. I’m trying to understand the basis for Jennifer’s paranoia. At least some of it is rooted in your son’s fantasy world.”

  Uh-oh!

  “We’re putting that behind us for a while,” said my dad with finality. “How is his game connected to Jennifer’s condition?”

  “There seems to be some connection with his world. He and I discussed this briefly before. She talks a lot about some place called Illyria, and sometimes she seems to think she’s Il Saia, a high priestess in your son’s fantasy-land. There seems to be some threat linked…” He trailed off when he saw my dad’s face.

  It had gone still and white.

  “What’s wrong, Mr. Morgenstern?”

  “Jack, are you okay?” my mom chimed in when he didn’t answer.

  Without leaving whatever world had captured him, my dad said, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.” He turned and swept from the room.

  “Jack?” called my mom. She turned to us and said, “Sorry, I need to go see if he’s all right.”

  “Certainly, I understand,” said Dr. Anderson to my mom’s retreating back.

  He turned to me. “Did I say something to upset him?”

  “Uh, I don’t know.” This seemed to be my standard response lately. I was worried about my dad, too. I’d never seen him so rattled. “Maybe he feels sick or something?”

  “No doubt.” A cheery smile lighted his mouth. “He didn’t eat the hospital food, did he?” I snorted, warming to Anderson a tiny bit at his show of lame humor.

  The moment didn’t last, though, and the cold front moved back in. “So, can we take this moment while your dad is indisposed to talk?”

  “Uh, about what?”

  The laser stare fired up again, and I finally understood how an atom could be cooled to near absolute zero by a laser.

  “Let’s start with what brought you here to the hospital.”

  “I, uh, got sick and fell unconscious?”

  “Why did that happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you sure? Is there perhaps something you’re not sharing?”

  I squirmed under his scrutiny, so I tried what had worked minutes before. “I can’t tell you what happened to me.”

  “You can’t or you won’t?” he responded, as intent as a hound on a fresh trail.

  Shit! “I don’t know anything that can help you.”

  I tried not to fidget under his never-ending Stare-O-Doom. “Listen, I’m awfully tired. Can we talk about this later?” I threw him a bone. “I promise I’ll think about it, and if I come up with anything, I’ll let you know.”

  The bone hit him on the nose and fell disregarded to the floor. He continued to stare at me.

  “Really,” I added, trying to ooze sincerity out every pore, drooping my eyelids for that extra verisimilitude. “I’m really beat, and I need some sleep.”

  Dr. Anderson at last pulled out his forgotten charm. “Of course. You’ve had a trying experience. Get some rest, young man, and we can talk again tomorrow.”

  Without more ado, he turned and left.

  I sighed in relief, and felt even better when minutes later my maître d' arrived with my delicious, or at least nutritious, lunch.

  My mom came back to collect their things. Her brow was creased and her shoulders rigid.

  I swallowed my partially-chewed gray mouthful and asked, “Is Dad all right?”

  “I’m sure he is, sweetheart, but we’re heading home to let him rest.”

  “What happened?”

  She gave me a half-hearted smile. “It’s probably just a bug.” Then, coat in hand and her purse over her arm, she came over, gave me a hug, and a better smile. “I’ll be back this evening to check on you. Anything I can bring?”

  “Yeah, an extra-large pizza with the works! They don’t feed me enough to keep a gnat alive.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Now, get some rest!” She tousled my hair and left with a quick, “I love you, kiddo! See you soon.”

  I lay back and thought about what I had seen with my dad. Something Dr. Mengele had said about Jennifer had rattled him. Could it have been Anderson’s mention that my gaming was somehow involved in her breakdown? God, I hoped he didn’t think my game did this to her. He never approved of the hours I spent gaming—in his mind, I could have been more constructive with our time. I think only my mom’s intervention kept him from shutting me down sooner. That made me think about his latest ban on gaming. I hated the idea of losing it. It was an important part of my social life. I'd probably move out first.

  I was busy flushing that particular toilet-full when I realized my right hand was grasping the heart again. On impulse, I took the strings holding it from around my neck and dangled the object in front of my eyes. I dropped it into my hand and knew that my dream about it had been true. This really was the Heart of Wendigota. As with my dryad, I had actually believed this for some time now, but I don’t know when that belief had been born. The beating black heart of my dream had somehow become a black stick in my hand, pulsing out a beat in my head.

  Jeff the shaman had warned me that it could awaken other spirits. Could it be that was why Spring comes to see me every night? Does she really want the heart? Could she kill me to get it? Will I have to get rid of the heart and Spring to survive? Crap. Then, I made the basic mistake of those not sufficiently versed in the irony of life, and I thought, How could things get any worse?

  Of course, Gregg chose that moment to show up.

  “Hey, Gregg!” I said when he walked in, trying to wrench my mind back into mundane affairs.

  He just scowled at me, shut the door to the room, and came over to my bed. “What the hell have you been up to, Morgenstern?”

  “What do you mean? I’ve been—”

  “Don’t you ‘what do you mean’ me, white boy! Something’s going on. People don’t just up and collapse for three days without a reason. People don’t just lose their minds for no reason. You’re going to tell me what’s happening, or I’m going to beat it out of you. Are you on something? Have you been feeding my sister some sort of shit?”

  “No I haven’t! I would never!”

  He narrowed his eyes at that, and his nose scrunched up like a beast’s. “Spill, or I’ll gut you like a trout.”

  I took a deep breath. “Listen, Gregg, something’s going on, but I can’t tell you right now.”

  “Why the hell not?” he growled.

  “Because you won’t belie
ve me.”

  “Try me.”

  “No, I wouldn’t even believe me if I hadn’t been living through it.”

  “You’re gonna tell me!” He balled his hands into fists, each about half the size of my head.

  I shied back from the threat of incipient violence. “I will! I promise, I’ll tell you.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “I’ll tell you when I get back home.”

  “The hell you will!”

  I raised my hands to stop him. “Gregg, I promise I’ll tell you, but I can’t tell you here. You won’t believe me. I have to show you when I get home. I promise. Trust me, please. Maybe, once you know, you can help me figure out how to help Jen.”

  He eased up, but his eyes were still slits of anger. “Boy, this had better be good, or I will mess you up. If you’re in some way responsible for what happened with Jen, so help me…”

  I swallowed hard as he whirled around and stalked back out the door. Gregg avoided fights as much as I did, but I had no doubt about the sincerity of his threat. The door slammed shut behind him.

  After Gregg left me, I fell into a funk. Yup, things could always get worse.

  My misery occupied me for quite some time, I paid little attention to anything else happening outside of the closed door until I heard, “There’s our mystery man!”

  I looked up to see Dr. Bouras, our family doctor. A smallish, roundish, brownish, oldish man with a kind face and a higher voice than you’d expect from someone of his heft, he always was friendly and interested in whatever I had to tell him. He strolled into my room with his open smile. “Mighty Finn! How are you feeling?”

  “Good.”

  “Good, eh?” he said with a quizzical expression.

  “Well, better at least. I’m still a bit tired.”

  Dr. Bouras walked over to the bed, dropped the handrail on the side, and sat down next to me. “Tired? That’s it? Dead seemed more likely when we brought you in.”

  “Practice your bedside manner much?” I quipped to try and shake the chill from his words.