“Please mom. Can you just… not?”
“Let me talk to Emma,” her mother said.
“What? Seriously?””
“Yes. Is she there? Can I talk to her?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess so. Hang on.” Cynthia got up from her desk and went to Emma’s sitting room. “My mom wants to talk to you,” she said.
“What’s that?” Emma asked.
“My mother. She’s on the phone.” Cynthia handed the phone to Emma. “She wants to talk to you.”
Emma smiled. “Well alright then! Hello?” she said, putting the phone to her ear.
“Mmm hmm… Yes, it’s nice to talk to you too… Yes… That’s right…”
Cynthia shook her head and went to Emma’s kitchen to find something to drink. She wanted tequila, but the doctor had told her not to, so she settled for iced tea. She took her time making it. When she came back out, her phone was lying on the table.
“So?” she asked, picking up her phone and seeing the call had ended.
“We had a nice little chat. I told her I was planning to take care of you, and we exchanged information, so I can keep her updated.”
“Oh, great. So now you’re her spy?” Cynthia said, slumping onto the couch.
“Yes, ma’am. Double-oh-seventy-five. That’s me,” Emma replied with a smile.
“Thank you for getting her off my back. I just couldn’t deal.”
“All part of her majesty’s secret service,” Emma said with a terrible mock British accent.
“You’re too much. So, how are you doing? Recovered from our night out?” Cynthia asked.
“I was moving a little slow this morning, but I’m better now. That was fun. We should do that again sometime. Maybe get the digits.”
“You didn’t get that boy’s number? I thought for sure you had him eating out of your hand,” Cynthia teased.
“He was very nice. But I don’t think I’m his type. He likes ’em a little older,” Emma said, scrunching up her nose.
Cynthia laughed. “I’m sure that’s it. Afraid he wouldn’t be able to keep up with you.”
“Precisely,” Emma agreed.
“Can you watch the desk? Talking to my mother always stresses me out. I need to take a walk in the garden,” Cynthia said.
“Sure thing, child. Feel free to do a little weeding while you’re out there,” Emma replied.
TWENTY-THREE
Cynthia awoke to the same clicking noise she heard several nights ago. Standing at the end of her bed was Evan, flipping the butterfly knife around in his hand. He was wearing surgical scrubs. “I see you’re awake,” he said. His voice had the slight Texas accent she liked.
“I thought we were getting rid of you,” she said.
“Now why would you want to do that?” he asked.
A man burst into the room, dressed like a swashbuckler. It was Mandy Patinkin. “Can I help you?” Cynthia asked.
“No! But I can help you!” He drew his sword.
“He killed your father,” she said, pointing at Evan.
Mandy Patinkin turned slowly, raising his sword. “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” He thrust the sword, and Evan deflected it with his butterfly knife. The two engaged in what Cynthia thought was the most ridiculous sword/knife fight she’d ever seen. She was mesmerized.
Cynthia was startled when a side door burst open, and John Cleese came through it pushing a large piece of medical equipment on a rolling cart.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m the doctor, of course,” he replied.
“And what is that?”
“This? Oh this is the machine that goes ‘ping!’” He pressed a button on the machine and it made a “ping” noise. But not the noise a medical machine would ordinarily make—more like the sound you’d hear on a submarine.
“That’s a very interesting noise,” Cynthia said. “What’s it for?”
John Cleese had pushed the machine all the way to the corner. He was watching the ongoing sword/knife fight. He looked at her. “What? Oh! Well it tells us if the baby is doing okay, of course.”
“The baby? What baby?” she asked.
“That one,” he said, pointing at her stomach.
Cynthia looked down and saw that the skin of her stomach was stretching. It looked as though something was trying to push its way out.
“A little help here?” John Cleese shouted to Mandy Patinkin.
“Hmm? Oh. Certainly.” Mandy Patinkin paused the sword/knife fight to point the tip of his sword at Cynthia’s distended belly. With a quick flick of his wrist he sliced an X on top and then turned his attention back to Evan.
Cynthia watched in horror as her stomach ripped open and Tragic Monkey popped out. It looked at her with its sad, melted face, and then leapt to the IV stand beside the bed. It swung from there to the curtain rod, and then carried itself hand over hand down the rod to an open window, where it dropped out of sight.
“They grow up so fast.” Cynthia recognized Emma’s voice and turned toward it. But the face wasn’t Emma’s. It was John Malkovich.
“Who are you?”
“I’m your doctor, child,” John Malkovich replied, using Emma’s voice. “This is a hospital.”
“A hospital?” Cynthia replied.
“A hospital,” John/Emma replied.
“You keep using that word,” Mandy Patinkin interrupted. “I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
“I think it does, actually,” Cynthia replied. “Why am I in a hospital?” she asked, turning back to John/Emma.
“To get rid of him,” John replied, in Emma’s voice, pointing at Evan.
Cynthia turned toward Evan who was no longer fighting Mandy Patinkin, but rather was tuning a guitar. “This is a blues riff in B,” he said. “Watch me for the changes and try to keep up.”
He lifted his hand to strum, but it became transparent, and he wasn’t able to play. He watched in horror as his body disappeared.
“Looks like it’s working, child. You should get some sleep now,” John Malkovich said, in Emma’s voice.
“I am tired,” Cynthia said. She was now watching Mandy Patinkin and John Cleese engaged in a sword/rubber chicken fight, both of them on unicycles. “I’ll just close my eyes a bit.”
She felt Emma run her hand across her hair as she drifted off to sleep. The machine made one final “ping!” sound.
¤
Cynthia smelled smoke. She opened one eye and in the corner of her hospital room, Mandy Patinkin, John Cleese, and John Malkovich were sitting around a small campfire roasting marshmallows on long sticks. They were singing, “Always look on the bright side of life,” from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. She bobbed her head to the catchy tune and tried to whistle along during the whistling part. But she couldn’t whistle. She blew air out with a sort of “whoosh” sound.
“You awake, child?”
Cynthia recognized Emma’s voice, and when she turned slightly to look, was relieved that Emma’s body and face were attached to it this time.
“Cactus waffle,” Cynthia told her.
Emma looked at Cynthia, confused.
“Cactus waffle!” Cynthia repeated.
“What’s that now, child?” Emma asked.
Cynthia grimaced. She waited for the verse to end, bobbing her head to the music, then when the chorus came back around and it got to the whistling part she tried and failed to whistle. She raised her eyebrows and pointed at her mouth, “Cactus waffle!”
“Are you thirsty, child? I’ve got some ice chips here,” Emma scooped a few chips of ice from a plastic cup onto a plastic spoon and put them in Cynthia’s mouth. Cynthia spit them out.
“No snow! Syrup!” Cynthia exclaimed.
Emma stifled a laugh. “Well I don’t think you’re allowed to have syrup just yet, dear.”
Cynthia was confused. She wanted water. Why was Emma talking about syrup?
Emma tried again with the ic
e chips, and Cynthia allowed her to place them in her mouth. She waited for them to melt. It hurt her tongue. Everything hurt. Her head hurt. Her legs hurt. Not a sharp pain, but a dull ache. She looked down at her arm and saw an IV attached. She figured she must be on something to dull the pain from surgery.
“Charlie was asking whether it would be okay to come visit,” Emma said.
Cynthia liked that idea. “Snail penis?” she said.
Emma burst out laughing. Cynthia didn’t know what was so funny. She scowled at Emma.
“Oh, I’m sorry, child. You just…” and then Cynthia lost her to the laughter again.
A woman entered the room. She and Emma started talking, but Cynthia had trouble understanding them. It didn’t sound like English. She tried to place the language. Was it even a language? She listened carefully. She concluded they were speaking in that click language of the San Bushmen. How rude, she thought.
She turned away and closed her eyes. If they were going to exclude her that way, she would simply ignore them.
TWENTY-FOUR
The sun fell across Cynthia’s face, warming her cool skin and bringing her gently out of her sleep. She opened one eye and saw Emma napping in the chair. Cynthia’s mouth hurt from dehydration. She struggled to speak. “Water?”
Emma opened her eyes. “Oh, you’re up. Hang on, I’ll go get some ice chips.”
Cynthia closed her eyes as she waited, the veil of sleep still lifting slowly.
“Here you go, child,” Emma said, placing a few chips from a plastic spoon into her mouth.
She rolled them around with her tongue, trying to get everything working again. When they were gone, she sat up a little so she could feed herself. “Don’t you have an inn to run?” she asked Emma.
“Oh! You’re talking normal again,” Emma said with a big smile.
“What’s that mean?”
“You probably don’t remember. But you’ve been in and out for the last couple of days, talking a lot of nonsense,” Emma explained.
Cynthia nodded, then winced at the pain. “Ow,” she said.
“I’ll get the nurse. You probably need your meds fiddled with or something. You be careful with these ice chips. Take it slow, okay.”
“Yes, mom,” Cynthia said with a wink.
Emma left the room again, and Cynthia worked to get comfortable. Everything ached. She found the button to raise the head of her hospital bed and wriggled around as she got to more of a sitting position. A nurse appeared, followed closely by Emma. They fussed over the bedding, adding a pillow and pressing various buttons until Cynthia felt somewhat at ease.
“So how long have I been out?” she asked.
“It’s Thursday. So about two days,” the nurse said. “The neurologist will be stopping by later to give you a full workup. I’m going to check your vitals now.”
Cynthia waited as the nurse poked and prodded her, checked her eyes, tickled her feet, and did various other tests. She thought she passed, although the nurse didn’t tell her one way or the other.
“Did they do the biopsy?” Cynthia asked.
The nurse looked at the chart. “Oh, yes. Nothing to worry about. Benign.”
Cynthia sighed with relief and looked at Emma, who was smiling broadly, like someone who already knew. “Okay, smart guy. Like I said, shouldn’t you be at the inn? Have you been here the whole time?”
“The girls are covering it. And they got a cousin to come in and help with the rooms. Nothing for you to worry about. I promised your mamma that I’d stay here until you were out of the woods,” Emma explained.
“I guess I’m out, huh? So that’s it? Kind of anti-climactic,” Cynthia said.
“We need to keep you here a while longer,” the nurse said. “Couple more days, probably. Get you up and walking around. Back on solid food and so on.”
“Super,” Cynthia said. “Can I have some water?”
“Just keep working on those ice chips. If you can keep them down, then we’ll step up to some apple juice, okay?” the nurse said.
Cynthia nodded, then grimaced.
“I’ll get you some Tylenol.” The nurse left the room.
“Charlie’s here,” Emma said.
“What? Here here? Like in the hospital here?”
“Yes’m. He wants to see you, but I’ve been keeping him at bay until you stopped talking nonsense. You wouldn’t have wanted him to see you like that.”
Cynthia smiled sheepishly. “Thanks. I must be a disaster.”
Emma leaned in and tried to fix Cynthia’s hair a little. “There you go. You look fine. Should I go get him?”
“I guess so. If he doesn’t run screaming from the room, maybe he’s a keeper.”
Emma laughed and went into the hallway, leaving Cynthia alone in the room. She had a Monty Python song stuck in her head, but she didn’t have any idea why.
¤
Cynthia closed her eyes for a minute. Or so she thought. When she opened them again, Emma was back in the chair napping. “I thought you were going to go get… oh fuck… what’s his name?”
Emma laughed. “I did go get Charlie, but you fell asleep in the twenty seconds I was out of the room.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I’m a little tired.”
“No worries, child. Charlie went down to the cafeteria to get himself some lunch. He should be back up soon.”
“I don’t understand why he is here. We’ve been on like. I don’t know. Not a lot of dates.”
“You know, I was wondering the same thing. But he seems to have taken a shine to you.”
“Well I am pretty irresistible,” Cynthia said.
Emma laughed. “You a’ight.”
Cynthia laughed at the response, which hurt like hell. “Ow. Ow. Ow. No funny. Funny hurts.”
“Sorry, baby girl,” Emma said.
Charlie walked into the room. “You’re awake!” He rushed over to the bed and kissed Cynthia gently on the forehead. “How are you feeling?” He took her hand gently in his. It felt nice.
“Everything hurts, and I can’t remember your name or how many dates we’ve been on,” Cynthia replied.
“Hmm. I go by a couple different names, so it’s understandable that you’d find that difficult. Lately you’ve been using Chuck, which I hate. And we’ve been on about two dates.”
Cynthia smiled. “Oh yeah. I like that you hate that I call you Chuck, Chuck. So tell me, Chuck, why are you hanging around the hospital room of a girl you’ve been on about two dates with? Hmm?”
“I thought it’d be a good way to meet some nurses,” he deadpanned.
“That’s good thinking, Chuck. Do you do the French act with them?”
“But of course I do,” he said, switching to his faux accent. “It… how do you say? Drops the panties, non?”
“I’m not wearing any panties, Chuck, so I wouldn’t be able to tell you. So how’s that working out for you?”
“Not so good,” he said, back in his native Indianan. “The nurses see a guy waiting around for a beautiful girl to wake up from brain surgery, and they just assume he is off the market.”
“Bitches,” Cynthia said.
Charlie smiled. “Total bitches.”
“You should sit down,” Cynthia said. “I’m prone to drift off to sleep any second. That’s my new hobby.”
“I have that effect on women,” he said.
Cynthia smiled. “You really don’t have to stay. I know you have a restaurant to manage. It was nice that you came, though.”
“They can get by without me for a while longer. It’s only Thursday. Things are pretty calm.” Charlie settled into a chair.
A man in a suit stepped into the room. “I’m going to have to ask you folks to leave for a little while,” he said. “It’s time for Cynthia’s exam.”
“I didn’t study, professor. And also, I’m naked. This is like every bad dream ever,” Cynthia said.
The doctor smiled, but said nothing.
Charlie stood and gave Emma
his arm. “Let’s you and me go for a walk,” he said, back in the French accent.
“Okay, Claude,” Emma replied. The two headed out.
The doctor stepped over to the bed and took a pen light out of his shirt pocket. “Okay, let’s get started.”
¤
When Cynthia next awoke, she looked at the window. Judging by the light and the shadows, she figured it was late afternoon. Emma was napping in her chair, and Charlie was reading something on his phone. “Who wants to help me pee?” she asked. Emma perked up and Charlie looked at her with a wry smile. “I have no shame. Get your ass over here, Chuck.”
Charlie came to the bed and helped Cynthia get her legs over the edge. He walked her over to the bathroom, which involved more carrying than anything else. Once in the bathroom, Cynthia got a firm grip on the bars around the toilet and excused Charlie. He waited by the door until he heard the water running. Then he came in and helped Cynthia get back to the bed.
“Play your cards right, and you could be doing that every day when I’m old and infirm, Chuck.”
“That sounds delightful.” He adjusted her pillows to help her get comfortable. “How are you feeling?”
“A little better. I wish I didn’t keep falling asleep. Must be the drugs.”
“Probably. What’d the neurologist say?” Charlie asked.
“I’m nominal.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Emma asked from the chair.
“I think it means they didn’t mess anything up when they were poking around in my brain. I had a similar exam last week, and they said the same thing. Everything is just kind of normal.”
“I don’t understand,” Charlie said. “If everything is normal, why did they have to operate at all?”
“Oh. I guess you don’t know about that part, huh?” Cynthia asked.
Charlie stared at her, eyebrows raised. “You mean the nightmare?”
“Yes. That lump in my brain—the one they took out—his name is Evan.”
“Why Evan?”
“Dunno. But he’s been visiting me quite regularly for a long time now. Which was fine, really. I kind of like this new course he’s set me on. But then he started getting violent. So he had to go.”
Charlie looked over to Emma, who shrugged.
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