by Ray Garton
Margaret reached over and took her sister’s limp left hand in hers. She sat there holding it for a while, staring rather blankly at the silent television set mounted high up on the wall across from the bed, trying not to think about exactly how ugly this trip to Harlie could turn out to be . . .
Margaret jerked awake when the nurse came in. She was middle-aged and thin and smiling with dark shoulder-length hair; she hadn’t noticed Margaret yet. The nurse carried a bag made of heavy transparent plastic and filled with a clear liquid. She went straight to the I.V. pole on the other side of the bed from Margaret and hung the bag on the hook opposite the I.V. bag that was already there. She unraveled a narrow tube that came from the bottom of the bag and leaned over Lynda.
Margaret’s eyes widened as the nurse opened Lynda’s hospital gown and took between her fingers a small tube that was connected to Lynda by an I.V. needle inserted just beneath her right clavicle. The nurse was about to connect both tubes when she noticed Margaret.
“Jesus Mary and Joseph!” she exclaimed in a quiet, breathy voice and with a melodic Irish lilt, so quickly that it all sounded like one word. “I didn’t even see you there, lass.” She chuckled. “I’m Mary.” Then she went back to her work, connecting the tubes, checking the other I.V. She walked around the bed to Margaret and said very quietly, “That’ s her chemo.”
“Her what?” Margaret asked in a whisper.
“Chemotherapy. For the cancer.”
“But I thought the cancer was incurable.”
Mary averted her gaze and ran her tongue quickly over her lips. “I guess you’ll have to talk to Dr. Plummer about that, now, won’t’cha.” Suddenly, she smiled broadly and looked directly into Margaret’s eyes. “So, now. You know who I am, but . . . who are you?”
Margaret stood, plopped the magazine down in the chair behind her, and whispered, “I’m Margaret Fuller, her sister.”
They shook hands and exchanged pleasantries, then Mary said, “You’re the first visitor she’s had, far as I know. I think it’ll be doin’ her a lot of good, too, you want my opinion.”
“Tell me something. Is it normal for her to just, um, you know . . . fall asleep so much?”
Mary reached out and patted Margaret’s shoulder. “What with all the chemo she’s gettin’, plus the pain medication . . . and not to mention, of course, the, um . . . the cancer . . . well, it’s pretty natural for her to drop off now and then. Her body’s havin’ to deal with a lot and she’s pretty drained. Just be patient.” She gave that bright smile again, then turned and left the room.
“She’s nice, isn’t she?”
Margaret spun around to see Lynda trying to sit up in bed, her smile splitting her pale, gaunt face so completely that it looked like the top half of her skull might fall to the floor.
“Would you like me to bring up the head of the bed?” Margaret asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
Margaret unclamped the remote from the edge of the mattress beside Lynda’s pillow and hit the appropriate button. The head of the bed began to rise with a rattling hum, and Lynda told her when to stop.
“How about a little knee action down there?” Lynda asked, nodding toward the lower end of the bed. “Otherwise, I’m gonna slide down to the foot of the bed like a paraplegic.”
Margaret hit another button and the bottom half of the bed curled upward beneath Lynda’s knees. “Is that okay?” she asked cautiously.
“Perfect. Just perfect.”
For a moment, Margaret wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself. She clamped the remote back on the edge of the mattress, and removed the magazine from the chair, tossed it to the floor and planted herself in the chair, screeching its legs over the floor as she turned it to face the bed so she could look at Lynda.
“You okay?” Margaret asked, frowning.
“Come on, will you? Stop looking so serious. We both know I’m not okay, but I’m . . . okay. Okay?”
They both laughed, but Lynda’s sounded like a small rodent caught in a wet, clogged drain.
“Actually, come to think of it,” Lynda said, “I feel pretty good, all things considered. I’m usually nauseated. I mean all the time. I guess that nap did more good than most. I’m always dozing off like that. I’m really sorry. I mean, for falling asleep.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it.”
“Yeah, but we haven’t had a chance to really talk yet, have we?”
“Well, maybe not. But if you need to sleep, that’s more important.”
“If it means not being able to talk with you . . . well, then it is important.” Lynda’s smile withered. “I think you know as well as I do that I don’t have that much time. And we have a lot to discuss, don’t we? I mean . . . well, I guess what I’m saying is that . . . aside from falling asleep every twenty minutes . . . I have a lot to apologize for.”
Margaret took in a deep breath as she averted her eyes, then emptied her lungs slowly. She was trying to decide what to say, how to respond. Something in her gut tightened, telling her that hell, yes, Lynda did have a lot of apologizing to do, and Margaret should just sit back and let her do it!
But when she looked at Lynda, Margaret felt differently. She took Lynda’s hand again and held it between both of hers as she leaned toward the bed. Very quietly, she said, “What do you say we just let bygones be bygones, and . . . and all those other things people say in situations like this. We’re sisters, and in spite of all the time we’ve been apart, we’ve always been sisters. Always will be. All I’m concerned about right now is that we try our best to make up for lost time. I guess . . .” Margaret frowned a moment. “I guess if anyone should be apologizing, it should be me. I mean, if I’d listened to myself, I never would have made this trip.” She chuckled. “I doubt you’re likely to meet anyone who can hold a grudge as long as I can, Lynda.”
Lynda’s hand tightened its grip on Margaret’s. In fact, that grip was surprisingly strong. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For everything. Really. You’ve had every right to hold a grudge. I’m just glad you came. I guess we’ve both changed over the years. For the better.”
“Well . . . all that stuff was a long time ago. Let’s drop it, okay? For now, let’s concentrate on making you feel better.”
Lynda smiled weakly. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Margaret. But I know I’m happy to spend what time I’ve got left with you . . .”
6
By the time she got into her car in the hospital parking lot it was dark and Margaret was exhausted. Her muscles ached as if she’d just put herself through an extended workout, and there was a dull ache behind her eyes. And yet, she carried with her a strange and comforting sense of satisfaction and relief.
Her mood, in fact, was better than it had been upon arriving. In spite of her aches, she felt quite relaxed. She found an oldies station on the radio that was playing something by Herman’s Hermits and smiled as she drove through the parking lot toward the exit.
That was when it hit her. It was more of a seizure than a memory because it was so physical, so consuming, as if she were being violently shaken by some monstrous hand.
Her foot stomped on the brake pedal and the car jerked to a halt in the parking lot as she clutched the wheel with both pale-knuckled hands and stared wide-eyed out the windshield . . .
She was surrounded by a green light, sickening green, a green that seemed to soak into her skin and gather in her stomach, nauseating her. Lying on her back, she stared upward through the green haze to a curved metal ceiling. Then the faces appeared above her, all at once. They leaned forward and looked down at her with their huge heads and huge eyes and no mouths. And then, one of them touched her . . .
It stopped, leaving Margaret as she had been, gripping the wheel and staring straight ahead, her foot pressing on the brake, the engine running, the radio playing a song by Harry Nilsson.
A car behind her honked and she flinched, looked in the rearview mirror, and pulled her Lexus out of the way. The man
driving the car behind her flipped her off as he passed, but Margaret didn’t notice. She was still wide-eyed and slack-jawed, stunned by the runaway train that had just roared through her mind.
It was a fragment of memory, a piece of what had happened to her last night.
“It was real,” she whispered to herself. “Real!”
Still shaky, Margaret left the parking lot and drove to her hotel . . .
It happened again as she was on her way to bed.
She’d cleaned up, brushed her hair, her teeth, and was walking toward the bed when she was, once again, engulfed by a memory so vivid that she could feel it . . .
The creatures lean forward until their faces are only inches from her body, from her face. She tries to scream but has no voice at all, and hardly any breath. The oversized hands touch her lightly, everywhere; the long, thin fingers crawl over her body like the legs of tarantulas, exploring, touching, examining. All the while, she is surrounded by a thick, unsettling silence. She watches as the creatures exchange glances and nod occasionally, as if they are speaking to one another. Then, very slowly, all those heads turn toward her and look directly into her eyes . .
When it was gone — No, Margaret, thought, it’s not gone, not gone at all, it just stopped for now! — she was curled up on the pillows, her back pressed hard against the headboard of the bed, both hands clamped over her mouth. Her eyes were gaping and darting in all directions, searching the room to make sure she was alone.
She relaxed very slowly, a bit at a time, until she was lying on the bed, taking deep breaths.
“It was . . . real,” she whispered to herself, her eyes still wide. “Real. I didn’t dream it. It . . . really . . . happened.”
Margaret stared up at the ceiling, suddenly exhausted, drained, but unable to close her eyes. Eventually, with the lights still on, she began to doze . . .
7
Margaret slept late, mostly because she’d slept very little the night before. After untangling herself from the bedclothes, she cleaned up and dressed quickly, and it wasn’t until she put on her makeup that she noticed something different about herself.
She couldn’t put her finger on it at first, and simply stared at her reflection in the mirror, frowning. Then she leaned forward, moved her face close to the glass and touched a fingertip to the skin just beneath one eye. Had that puffy little moon-shaped patch of flesh gotten a little smaller . . . maybe even a little less puffy?
Finally, Margaret smiled, laughed quietly at herself, stood up straight again and continued putting on her makeup.
“What’re you gonna do, complain?” she muttered to herself. “You get two hours of sleep and still look good, what’s to complain about? Hell, they weren’t even two consecutive hours.”
She went to the drive-through window of a Burger King and bought her breakfast — she was ravenous — and when she got to the hospital, she stopped at the gift shop to buy a bouquet of flowers in a sparkling vase.
Lynda was asleep when Margaret walked into the room, so she put the vase and her fast-food breakfast on the bed table, then went to the window and opened the blinds. Then she turned to the bed, put her hands on the side rail and looked down at Lynda, who only stirred slightly. When Lynda did not wake, Margaret went around the bed, seated herself in the chair and began to eat her breakfast. She almost never ate fast food because she was always watching her diet, and she’d never eaten the fat-loaded food from any of the major burger chains, but she found it deliciously decadent. She was still so hungry halfway through her second Croissandwich that she wished she’d ordered a third.
“Oh, how long have you been here?” Lynda asked, propping herself up on an elbow quite suddenly, her eyes squinty with sleep.
“Not long,” Margaret said with her mouth full. She smiled. “I’m eating a junk food breakfast. And you know what? It’s great! I didn’t know what I was missing.”
Lynda gasped. “Flowers!”
“Oh, yeah, I brought those for you. I thought you could use something pretty in here, something that stinks nice.”
Grasping the side rail, Lynda lifted herself into a sitting position with surprising ease as she stared at the flowers.
“You’re wonderful!” she squealed girlishly. “Oh, they’re gorgeous, really, Margaret. Thank you so much.”
Margaret was eating her bite-sized hash browns. “No problem. Hey, would you like some of this?”
Lynda reached behind her to fluff up her pillows, then sat up against the headboard. She smiled and said, “It sure smells good. But I’m afraid that if I eat any of it, I’ll puke all over you.”
“Oh. Well, in that case . . . never mind.”
Laughing, Lynda reached up to straighten the bandana on her head. “This thing’s crooked,” she grumbled quietly.
“Why do you wear it? If . . . you don’t mind my asking.”
“Not at all. I wore a wig for a while. I don’t know which is more humiliating — being bald or wearing some stupid curly helmet that everybody knows is a wig. So, I settled for this. It’s a compromise. I know I don’t have hair, and they know I don’t have hair . . . but I don’t have to show everybody my ugly bald head.”
“What’s ugly about it? Didn’t you see that Star Trek movie? Persis Khambata was completely bald, and she was gorgeous.”
Lynda laughed and leaned on her side to watch her sister as she ate her two orders of hash browns.
“How do you stay so thin eating that kind of stuff?” Lynda asked.
“Listen, sweetie, after you’ve spent years sticking your finger down your throat to puke up food, and after years of taking laxatives and going on crash diets, every once in a while you deserve to give yourself a break without any guilt. I’ll work it off.”
Lynda sat up a little straighter, looking concerned. “You did all that? I mean . . . the throwing up and the laxatives? You did that to yourself?”
“To get thin? I would have done anything. Finally, I decided on just changing my life, my diet, my . . . schedule. I haven’t had food like this in a long time, and it’s delicious.”
“Did you . . . do it because of . . . me?”
Margaret looked at her sister’s face and saw sadness and worry. She reached over and covered Lynda’s hand with hers on the side rail. “No, not because of you. I did it because of me, because I was fat. But I’m not fat anymore, am I?”
Lynda put her other hand on Margaret’s and grinned. “My God, Maggie, you look fantastic. Really. You’re so pretty!”
“Oh, get out of here. I slept in my car on the way here! I hardly slept at all last night . . . I look like I fell out of the back end of a sick horse.”
“Stop it!” Lynda said with a giggle, slapping Margaret’s hand.
Margaret put the small container of hash brown chunks on the bed table and stood, putting her other hand on Lynda’s and looking at her sister very closely.
“Speaking of looks,” she said, frowning ever so slightly as she stared down at Lynda, “you look pretty damned good yourself.”
“Oh, yeah,” Lynda said, leaning her head back to laugh. “I’m completely bald. I weigh ninety-one pounds, and I can’t walk without help. I look fantastic!”
“No, really, I mean it. You look . . . I don’t, know. There’s something different about your face. You look different than you did yesterday.”
Lynda’s hand rose to pass over her face, touching it self-consciously — just her fingertips, brushing her flesh here and there. Then the hand dropped loosely to the bed.
“Maybe it’s you,” she said. “Maybe you’ve made me look better. I wouldn’t be surprised. Because it’s so good to have you here.”
Margaret did not reply. She just kept staring at her sister. Lynda did look different. Maybe it was her imagination, her lack of sleep . . . but Lynda’s face had something it did not have the day before. Her skin had more color in it and her eyes more life and sparkle.
But Margaret simply smiled and said, “I’m glad.”
&nb
sp; Lynda pulled her hand away. “Go on, finish your breakfast.”
With a little reluctance, Margaret went back to her hash browns.
As she ate, Lynda said, very quietly. “Hey, you didn’t get to meet my roommate yesterday. She was out for tests. From what I hear, she’s got all the doctors stumped. Anyway, she’s really old and she doesn’t have anybody. Maybe after you’re done eating, you could go see her and say hi. She gets so lonely. I don’t think she’s, um . . . you know, quite right, but . . . she’s really nice, and she’d love it so much. Would you mind?”
Margaret was finished, but she smacked her lips over the tip of each finger before asking, “What’s her name?”
“Mrs. Watkiss. That’s all I know.”
“Sure, I don’t mind.” She stood, stuffed the foil wrappers and cardboard containers into the Burger King bag, wadded them up and dropped them into the garbage can. After slapping her hands together a few times, she walked across the room toward the drape that was wrapped around the other bed and said, “Hello, in there.”
A frail voice responded: “Yes?”
Margaret pulled the drape along its track and smiled at the old woman lying in bed. “Hello, Mrs. Watkiss. My name’s Margaret. I’m your roommate’s sister. I wanted to say hi.”
The old woman’s wrinkles were so deep and her skin so pasty, that they didn’t look real; they looked like movie makeup or a latex mask with threads of thin white hair splaying from the top of the head and over her flat pillow. There were small bandages on her face — one over her right cheekbone, another on the line of her jaw just to the right of her chin, one on the side of her nose, and another in the center of her forehead. She squinted up at Margaret.