Pandora's Key

by Nancy Richardson Fischer

  The paramedic didn’t answer and they rode in the ambulance in silence.

  Chapter Seven

  Malledy lay on a couch in the townhouse trying to nap. He’d left early that morning and spent the whole day pretending to be something he wasn’t. It was only four in the afternoon but he was exhausted and totally drained. Suddenly Malledy’s hand was gripped by a powerful tremor. His time was running out.

  There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” Malledy called, jamming his hand under his thigh to control the spasms.

  Juliette carried in a tray of food and set it on a low table. “How about a snack?”

  Malledy looked at the plate of steamed spinach and brown rice—Dr. Aali’s prescribed diet. “I’m not hungry.”

  His mentor sat down in a winged-back chair. “You need your energy.”

  “Why?”

  Juliette tucked her shoulder-length hair behind both ears and met Malledy’s gaze. “To fight for your life.”

  “Who would have thought that a few hand tremors would lead to this?”

  “It wasn’t just hand tremors, Malledy,” Juliette’s voice was gentle. “There’ve been sudden outbursts and misdirected anger. Do you remember?”

  Malledy blushed and looked away. “I know. I’m embarrassed. Please tell them I’m sorry.”

  “You’ll get the chance to tell the Archivists yourself.”

  “I may not live that long and if I do, I won’t make any sense.” Malledy was supremely aware that very soon he would experience his biggest fear—logic replaced by dementia. If I was a God, I would never get sick. I would never die. I would be in charge of my life. “But I’m not a God,” Malledy murmured.

  “Quoi?” Juliette asked.

  “Nothing.” Malledy shook his head. “Would you mind if I sleep a bit longer? Then I’ll eat—promise.”

  Juliette nodded, kissed his forehead left the room.

  Malledy closed his eyes but his mind was churning. Longingly, he thought about the times when he’d felt most in command and powerful, knowing he needed to summon that strength to accomplish his final goal. I have to do it for Juliette—so she won’t be so sad when I’m gone. His eyes burned with tears.

  As Malledy calmed a bit, images shifted in his mind like scattered pieces of a puzzle. First the glimmer of an idea formed—he tried to grasp it, but it slid away. Then he almost had an inspiration, but let it go as if it had burned him because it was too bizarre, too…dangerous. And then, an epiphany struck him like a truck barreling down the highway without brakes—he was simply unable to avoid it. It crashed into him, shattering his defenses, leaving him shaken, breathless.

  Malledy opened his eyes and sat up. Throughout his life as an Archivist, whenever he’d held artifacts he’d discovered and demonstrated their ancient magic to his colleagues, he wasn’t just a boy or a young man showing off a God’s enchantment. His mind, his research, his genius had allowed him to unlock every artifact’s power.

  In a blinding flash, Malledy made the connection: if he could control elements and individuals with the Gods’ ancient artifacts, surely he could control his own destiny with those artifacts. If Malledy had been able to wield the Gods’ magic in the past, even as a child fighting for the right to exist within the Order of Archivists, it was not such a great leap to assume that should he find the most powerful talisman in existence—he’d be able to command it, too. If he could do that—and he could—of course he could!—then he could obliterate his disease.

  Pandora’s Box—the artifact required for Malledy’s salvation—was the very artifact he was currently seeking for a client of the Order. Suddenly he realized that fate had conspired in his favor instead of against it.

  His cell phone rang and he answered it quickly with the code name he’d chosen for his latest acquisition. “Magnus.”

  “Cronen,” the caller responded with his corresponding code name.

  “Were you successful?” Malledy asked.

  “No. My two colleagues never returned.”

  “Don’t worry. There are other ways to gain access.”

  Malledy hung up. Opening his laptop, he typed a security code in Clickita and pulled an image up on the screen. The Google Earth photograph showed a city. He narrowed the parameters to a large neighborhood, then to a single street, and, finally, to a small, solitary pale-yellow house.

  “Where is it?” Malledy asked the screen, and then, overcome by sudden fury, he slammed the laptop shut. Stop it. Shaking with rage, he picked up the laptop, readying to throw it against the wall. STOP IT! Malledy forced himself to put the laptop down. The disease is violent, not me. Not me. But that wasn’t exactly true.

  For a moment Malledy felt a profound sense of loss for all that he could’ve been—should’ve been. If he hadn’t been abandoned as an infant; if he hadn’t been forced to become an Archivist or die; if he hadn’t been used as a pawn in the Archivists’ game of acquisition and mastery over powerful men and governments, who and what would he have become? I can’t change the past so why does it still bother me?

  Shaking his head violently, Malledy forced himself to refocus. He opened the laptop to study the photograph of the yellow bungalow.

  Chapter Eight

  Evangeline perched on the windowsill in a stark hospital room that smelled sharply like medicine and bleach. An empty bed with white sheets and a flat pillow jutted from the wall and the blue linoleum tiles were marred with gray wheel-marks. A plump nurse in peach scrubs and a matching headband entered the room, her clogs squeaking. She replaced the IV bag, filled the plastic mug by the bed with water, and then poked a straw into the cup. Evangeline cleared her throat so she didn’t scare the nurse.

  “Oh, hello, there,” the nurse said, only slightly startled. “Who are you?”

  “E—Evangeline.”

  “I’m Stacy.”

  “Hi. Um, please, can you tell me where my mom is? Her name’s Olivia Theopolis.”

  “She’s getting a few more tests and then she’ll be brought up here.” Moments later a muscular man in green scrubs pushed a narrow bed feet-first into the room. Evangeline’s mom looked really pale, with dark purple smudges beneath her eyes, but she was awake.

  “Mom!” Evangeline said, leaping off the windowsill. Stacy and the orderly helped her mother slide from the gurney onto the bed while Evangeline hovered at their side. Stacey covered her with a white cotton blanket.

  “Are you feeling better?” Her mom nodded.

  “I told you that you needed to eat more, Mom! I told her,” Evangeline said to Stacy, wincing at the slightly hysterical sound of her voice. “Mom, are you really okay now?”

  Before her mother could answer, a group of doctors appeared in the doorway. The man in front had Dr. Tim Sullivan stitched on the pocket of his white lab coat. He was about six-foot-three and wore frameless circular glasses. His receding dark-blonde hair was brush-cut and just starting to gray at the temples. Dr. Sullivan stepped into the room and slid a multi-colored scan out of the folder at the foot of the bed. He placed it on the light-board hanging on the wall, his gold wedding band clinking against the board’s metal frame.

  “Mrs. Theopolis? I’m Dr. Sullivan.”

  “Hi. This is my daughter, Evangeline,” Olivia said.

  “Hello,” Dr. Sullivan said, reaching out to shake Evangeline’s hand. “Mrs. Theopolis—”

  “Olivia, please.”

  “Okay, then, Olivia, this is a teaching hospital and residents learn by working with me and discussing each case. Do you mind if they join us?”

  “Um, okay.”

  The residents quickly shuffled into the room, crowding around the light board. They all studied the scan. “Olivia, I think it’s best if we discuss this in private.”

  Olivia shook her head, then grimaced. “Evangeline should be here. I want her here.”

  “Ah…well, alright then,” Dr. Sullivan said. “Who can tell me what they’re seeing here?” he asked the residents.

  “An abnormal growt
h in the frontal lobe,” a young Asian resident responded. “Malignant tumor.”

  Evangeline’s pulse sped up. She opened her mouth, and then closed it because she didn’t know what to say. She’d read somewhere that people in a hospital needed an advocate to look out for them when they were too sick to do it themselves. But mom isn’t that sick, is she? Evangeline waited for her mom to speak. Say something, mom. Say something—say something—please.

  “Um, can you tell me, um, how you know it’s malignant?” Evangeline finally asked, her voice so soft that the doctors had to step closer to hear her.

  “A brain tumor is deemed malignant not just because it consists of cancer cells, but due to its location,” the resident answered. “The skull is made of bone and it can’t expand to make room for even a small tumor growing in the brain. With a tumor as large as Ms. Theopolis’, it’s categorized as malignant due to its location, which can damage and destroy the brain’s delicate tissues. Ms. Theopolis complained of severe headaches and vomiting which tell us that she has increased intracranial pressure, or ‘IICP.’ These symptoms all factor into a diagnosis of malignant tumor.”

  “Correct, Yuske,” Dr. Sullivan said. “What grade are we looking at Veronica?”

  Veronica stepped forward, pushing thick, black bangs back so she could more easily peer at the scan. “Looks like a Grade Four.”

  “What does that mean?” Evangeline asked, embarrassed to hear the tremor in her voice but terribly aware of her mom’s silence and the need for both of them to understand what was happening.

  Veronica turned to face Evangeline and her mom. “Small tumors with distinct borders are Grade One,” she said gently, “which means they are the most easily cured. This tumor is quite large and the borders aren’t distinct. Ms. Theopolis’—your mom’s symptoms suggest that her tumor is already damaging her brain tissue because she has already experienced headaches, black-outs and delusions.”

  Evangeline wanted to shout that only crazy people have delusions and her mom wasn’t crazy—but hadn’t her mom thought her teeth were falling out? And then her hair? What was going on? Evangeline said nothing.

  Dr. Sullivan turned to another resident, tapping the scan. “What type of tumor are we looking at, Aaron?”

  “Hard to say for certain without a biopsy, but we can narrow the field.” The resident scratched his patchy mustache as he thought aloud. “The most common adult brain tumors are metastic tumors, which we can rule out from the MRI scans we’ve already done, leaving Meningioma or Anaplastic Astrocytoma. My money is on Anaplastic Astrocytoma, and more specifically the sub-group, Glioblastoma Multiforme or ‘GBM.’”

  “Please, wait! You’re going too fast. What’s all this stuff you’re talking about? What’s a GBM?” Evangeline asked the questions, even though she was certain—totally and one-hundred-percent certain—she did not want to hear the answers. What she really wanted to do was to run far away from this hospital and these doctors and their clinical diagnosis of the most important person in her life.

  “GBM,” Aaron replied, “is a brain tumor made of several different cell types. This makes it difficult to treat because while one type of therapy works on a specific type of cell, another type is needed for each different cell. So we treat GBMs with aggressive chemotherapy and radiation. In Ms. Theopolis’ case the tumor is so large and in such an inaccessible area that we won’t be able to remove it all without causing severe neurological damage. The best we can do is attempt to keep it from growing and hopefully shrink it a bit to alleviate the headaches and other symptoms.”

  “The option of surgery shouldn’t be entirely ruled out, though,” Veronica added, looking to Dr. Sullivan for confirmation.

  “It’d create way too much damage,” Aaron countered, also looking to Dr. Sullivan.

  Evangeline turned to her mother. This roller coaster was climbing way too high and someone needed to stop the ride so they could get off before they started plummeting.

  “Mom? Please tell them they’re wrong,” she begged.

  Looking directly into Dr. Sullivan’s eyes, Olivia said clearly and loudly, “I’m going to be fine, Evangeline. Could you let me talk to the doctors alone, honey?”

  Even though she knew that she should stay, Evangeline nodded, feeling like a coward but unable to stop her feet from trudging out of the room. She slid down the wall and settled on the hall’s tiles beside the open door so she could eavesdrop. She swiped at the hot tears running down her cheeks.

  “Are you in a lot of pain?” Dr. Sullivan asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Stacy, let’s start the IV morphine,” Dr. Sullivan said. “You said you’ve only been symptomatic for a few months?”

  “It started with nightmares, headaches, then no appetite, nausea and some vomiting.”

  “And the delusions?”

  “Um…they started about a month ago, but I thought—I guess it doesn’t matter what I thought now. I saw things like my teeth and hair falling out, and spiders on my face…”

  Spiders? Evangeline clenched her eyes shut and thumped her head against the wall trying to wake up because this had to be another nightmare. But when she opened her eyes, she was still sitting in a hospital corridor beneath harsh, fluorescent lights.

  “Hallucinations aren’t uncommon with a tumor of this size and location,” Dr. Sullivan said.

  “I think…it’s the same thing that happened to my mother.”

  “Your mother had a brain tumor?” Veronica asked.

  “I don’t know, but I heard she had headaches and delusions before her death …maybe it’s hereditary?”

  “How did your mother die?” Aaron asked.

  “She drove her car off a cliff—I was seventeen.” She paused. “How long?”

  “The tumor is inoperable,” Dr. Sullivan said.

  “But—” Veronica started.

  “It’s inoperable,” Dr. Sullivan repeated. “We can give you aggressive chemotherapy and radiation and try to keep the tumor from growing, but best-case scenario, you’re looking at buying yourself a few months, and in addition to the pain you’re already experiencing, you’ll have severe nausea, hair loss, and vomiting. Or, we can make you more comfortable. Is there anyone we should call, maybe your husband?”

  “No, I’m not married.”

  “A relative, then?”

  “It’s just Evangeline and me…and Sa—” Olivia’s words trailed off. “Dr. Sullivan,” she mumbled, “will you make sure Evangeline gets home safely…dinner, homework—”

  Evangeline pulled out her cell phone and dialed a number, listening to the line at the other end ring four times.

  “This is Samantha Harris. Please leave a message. Beep.”

  “Sam, are you there? Pick up—please! It’s me. Call me back, please! Call me right away! It’s my mom…she’s really sick.”

  Chapter Nine

  The maze-like greenhouse was jam-packed, filled with rows of tiered plants in all sizes and shapes, creating a forest of rough trunks, swaying stalks, random shocks of bright flowers, and canopies of leaves. Most of the plants were not beautiful. Some were gnarled and yellow-brown, like bunions on an old woman’s foot. Others had blossoms that looked like a sickness, weapon, or poison. Vines slithered everywhere—along the floor, climbing the wooden planks, and stretching their greedy fingers up the glass walls. The air was moist, warm, and fetid.

  Beeswax candles suspended in battered copper lanterns illuminated the greenhouse. Clad in a long, hooded white robe tied with a belt fashioned from interlocking loops of hammered gold, a woman walked between the narrow rows of plants. Following her was a group of women in matching robes. On the second toe of their right feet, they each wore a gold ring inscribed with a single word: Pandora.

  The group entered an open space—concrete floor, glass walls, encroaching brown vines. Candlelight cast vein-like shadows around the room, making it seem like a malignant creature was breathing just beneath the walls. The women formed a circle and began to
chant in ancient Greek. The sound washed through the greenhouse like water over time-worn stones, gathering speed, energy, and power until it was a rushing river, fogging windows and making blooms and leaves quiver in resonance.

  The leader stepped into the center of the circle and nine of the women dropped to their knees—these were initiates of Pandora who had reached the age to decide whether or not to become full members and pledge their lives to the Sect. One member of Pandora walked before each of those kneeling, pulling back their hoods. As she reached the last young woman, her own hood fell back, revealing Juliette’s contemplative face. The remaining followers stepped behind the kneeling sisters’ shoulders, bracing them for what was to come. The chanting died away.

  The leader took a deep breath, releasing it in a soft sigh. “We are not Gods. We are mere mortals fulfilling the destiny that the Gods have set out before us.” She took in all the figures around her, feeling the weight of this moment. “Do you come willingly?” she asked the kneeling women.

  “We do,” they replied in one voice.

  “Will you sacrifice your life for Pandora and her descendants?”

  “We will,” answered the chorus of voices.

  “Pandora is forever,” the leader warned. “It is a beautiful and terrible gift.”

  “Forever,” the women agreed. The leader drew a curved blade with an intricate silver handle from the folds of her robe and stepped toward the first kneeling disciple, carving a P deep into her palm. Blood dripped onto the floor. She moved from disciple to disciple until every palm of the kneeling had been branded with a P, the symbol of Pandora, and the concrete was stained red.

  Chapter Ten

  Juliette sat down on the edge of Malledy’s bed. “You can’t sleep?”

  Malledy shook his head. He’d been tossing and turning for hours and Juliette, always in tune with his needs, had brought him a glass of warm milk. “I’m afraid,” he admitted to his mentor, taking a sip of the milk.