Experimental Film

by Gemma Files

  I pause—stop short, mid-sentence. Say: “Ow,” just like that. Then start over, and stop again. Say: “Ow,” once more, but harder, with a sort of wondering pain. “Oh, oh, OW, shit. Shit, oh shit. Oh shiiiit, my head, fuck meeee . . .”

  Moraine snaps around, eyes wide but increasingly framed sidelong, as my iPhone’s screen starts to droop, to wobble. “Miss Cairns—Lois? Lois, are you all right?”

  “I dunnoh.”

  “What did you say, what? I don’t—”

  “Seh, I duh. I doh. I dohntnoh, dohhhhhnnnttt . . . knooohhhhwww . . .”

  And then the phone falls, and I fall, right on the aforementioned glass, the dirty mess of broken tile over cracked stone where the greenhouse floor should be: crack, thud, crunch. Visuals cutting out, though sound sticks around slightly longer, picking up Val Moraine as she yells out and lunges to not quite catch me in time, shaking me even as I start to shake. Grabbing me underneath the back of the skull with both hands as I start to outright seize, to thrash and kick up dust, trying like hell to keep me far enough off the ground so I won’t split my scalp open and bleed out all over this little piece of forgotten Canadian cinematic history.

  And here, at last, is where I’d love to tell you my memory finally kicks back in—where I begin to filter up once more through layers of nothing much, peeling them away like dead skin to reveal the still-raw burn beneath. Except I can’t tell you that, because I don’t, and it doesn’t, and none of the above happens. Not one bit of it.

  Instead—what I do remember, sort of, is a dream. Very vivid, bright; all the details sharp enough to cut, as though they’re etched in pain. The kind of dream you have when you’re sick, or maybe drunk—hung over, sinuses alight and hammering hard, though you’re not quite awake enough yet to realize it. When you’re high on a fever, when everything shrinks and the world starts to blur, and you know just enough to understand that if you could only get your brain to work the way it should, you’d probably feel like you’re going to—

  —like you want to—

  —die.

  Thinking: Hurts. Thinking: Just make it stop. Thinking: Oh God, please, I don’t know what I did. I’m sorry, so sorry. I’m so, I’m so, so, so . . .

  (Sorry, sister)

  (I tried, though. I did try. I warned you. But you, you simply wouldn’t)

  (listen)

  Safie’s notes say she was coming back from the maze when she saw me go down, right over Axel Beckenbauer’s shoulder—keeled over and fell with a flump, like a sack of wet laundry, right into Val Moraine’s arms. She took off running, and by the time she got there I was already having some kind of full-on attack; Moraine was yelling at Axel to get his belt off, stuff it between my teeth before I started choking, as Safie grabbed my phone from where it’d fallen, thankfully only slightly cracked across its face. Stabbing 911, she was redirected to the Quarry Argent Fire and Rescue dispatch centre:

  DISPATCHER: 911, what’s your emergency?

  CALLER: This is Safie Hewsen, calling from the Vinegar House—that’s Whitcomb Manor on Stow-apple Road, off RR #10. I’m on Val Moraine’s tour, and my friend is having a seizure or something. We need help!

  DISPATCHER: Okay, Safie, we’re hooking you up with ambulance services now. Where are you, exactly? At the front of the house, the driveway?

  CALLER: Uh, no. We came that way; the bus is still there, but we’re out back now, near the glass house, that old greenhouse. At the bottom of the field.

  DISPATCHER: Near the maze with the garden?

  CALLER: Just past it—oh man, she’s really not doing well. I think she’s throwing up. Should we try to move her?

  DISPATCH: No! No, don’t do that. I got an ambulance on the way—they’re on speakerphone. It’s Mickey Vu and Loretta Coy. You can talk to them directly now, Safie.

  PARAMEDIC: Safie, this is Mickey. Can you describe the symptoms?

  CALLER: Val was there when it happened, not me. Val?

  NEW CALLER: Yeah, okay—hey, Mickey, this is Val. She was taking a video in the greenhouse and then she just fell down, it was like—um, she dropped the phone she was using, put her hands up over her eyes like her head hurt, and she kind of yelled “ow,” stumbled back, and then she fell.

  PARAMEDIC: On her head, she hit her head?

  NEW CALLER: No, I mostly caught her, but there’s some blood still—ground out here’s all covered in stones and some of them are sharp. There’s glass, too, and metal, but I don’t think she got cut anywhere except the back of her head. We tried to put a belt in her mouth—

  PARAMEDIC: Don’t do that either! Just hold off, okay? [To other paramedic] Tetanus shot, for sure. A seizure, you said?

  NEW CALLER: I don’t know, I don’t. She’s just lying there trembling, you know? Shaking all over. Her friend’s with her. She’s like yelling, then making sounds like she wants to puke—

  PARAMEDIC: Okay, Val, we can see the house now. We’re maybe two minutes away, so hold on, just make her comfortable.

  NEW CALLER: Thank you, thank God. Thank you.

  PARAMEDIC: What’s her name, the patient? You know her name?

  NEW CALLER: Yeah, sure. Lois, from Toronto. Her name’s Lois Cairns.

  According to Safie, the ambulance rushed me to the clinic in Chaste, because Coy and Vu judged it to be both marginally closer than Quarry Argent’s own and more easily accessible by transport back to Toronto, if necessary. Safie caught a ride back to the Quarry in Moraine’s bus with the rest of the tour, picked up the rental car we’d arrived in, and drove over, where she wound up playing middleman between the clinic staff and Simon, who she’d gotten hold of en route.

  To Doctor Ustan Souk, who examined me first, I insisted I couldn’t say exactly what was going on just before my seizure, let alone what might have set it off—a viewpoint experts at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto later endorsed, claiming what Dr. Souk diagnosed as a “stroke-like episode” might well have left me with limited partial amnesia. But as Safie told me later, she didn’t believe this could be entirely true. Apparently, she’d heard me whispering something over and over while I lay there in Moraine’s grip, eyes wide and fixed and streaming tears:

  “It was her. I saw her. Just like in the film.”

  I saw.

  I found something written in an old notebook of mine the other day—two lines, unattributed: When the witness is ready, the ghost will appear. When things wear thin. Possibly a quote, though from what I don’t know. It also reminds me of that old line about students and masters. As for wearing thin, meanwhile—

  In retrospect, I suppose my life had worn plenty thin enough to let anything in, by the time this all began to happen.

  But didn’t you know, by then? Everyone’s going to ask that, no doubt, as they watch me continue to flail around, to deny what’s literally right in front of my eyes. Given everything that’d happened, for Christ’s sake, wouldn’t anybody have stopped short and said to themselves: holy shit, it’s like I’m in some kind of horror movie, here?

  To which I can only reply: I think not. Because, as you might have already noticed, nobody ever does think that.

  Not even when they are.

  I woke up in hospital two days later, by slow degrees. Didn’t have the least idea where I was, until I recognized the smell—astringent, metal-and-antiseptic—and the stiff, flex-framed feel of the mattress underneath me. Last time my back hurt this badly had been after my breast reduction. That jolt of memory was enough to kick me the rest of the way awake; I rolled my head side to side and shifted, pushing myself up a little, as bright, cold morning sunlight spilled across the floor. In a chair next to the bed, Mom sat, dozing with her chin propped up on one hand.

  I tried to say something, but my typical morning-dry throat brought it out as an unintelligible rasp, which triggered a coughing fit. Mom jerked awake, sat up, and grabbed my hand. “Lois!�
�� she gulped. “Oh my God, honey, thank God, thank God . . .”

  I got the cough under control, worked my jaw until some spit came back to my mouth and throat, squeezed her hand back. “What happened?” I asked at last.

  Mom opened her mouth to answer, but then her face crumpled and she began to cry instead; sounded by the tone like it might be as much relief and exhaustion as anything else. Not knowing what to say—as ever—I let her weep it out, guessing she’d probably have far too much to say to let herself go too long. Sure enough, within a minute she was wiping her eyes and swallowing, back in control.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just—with you here, and then last night . . .”

  I stared. “What happened last night?”

  “You, ah, well, you had another seizure, sweetheart. Yesterday evening, while they were taking X-rays. Not as bad as the first one, up at that place, but afterwards, they couldn’t wake you up. Dr. Harrison said you were responsive to stimuli, though, so they said they’d try to let you sleep it off. . . .” She trailed off, perhaps finally noticing my expression. “You really don’t remember?”

  This time, it was me who swallowed, and it hurt. “What . . . what day is it?”

  “Tuesday, that’s why I’m here; Clark’s at school, Simon’s at work. God knows how he’s keeping his head straight, but—what?”

  “This is St. Michael’s, right?” Though the smells were familiar, my breast reduction recovery room had been windowless, barely more than a two-cot closet to park people in until the anaesthetic wore off. But I’d finally matched the layout and positioning of this slightly more deluxe suite, obviously meant for somebody whose stay might be indefinite, to what I remembered from back when Clark was born. She nodded, confirming it. “Mom, I . . . honestly don’t know how I got here. Last thing I remember is, is—”

  (Flash of skull-splitting agony, a grey reflection in broken glass, dirt-rimed and dull)

  “—going up to Quarry Argent, on Friday. Being in the car with Safie. We talked about . . . Yezidic texts. That’s it.”

  “You went to Whitcomb Manor on Saturday, took the tour. That’s where—it—happened.”

  “What, ‘it’? You said another seizure . . .”

  “That’s right. Listen, let me call Dr. Harrison—” As she reached to press the nurse’s button, I yanked on her hand without meaning to; must have done it extra-hard, because she stopped mid-gesture, letting slip a small, hurt noise. I let go.

  “Shit, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to . . .”

  “All right, that’s okay.” She patted me with her other hand, awkwardly, smile just a hair shy of a grimace. “It’s fine, honey. Just let me make the call, and he’ll explain everything.”

  So I slumped back. Moments later, a tall young black man with a Trinidadian accent was briskly checking my vitals, chart in hand. “Look up, please,” he told me. “Now down. Good. How’s your head?”

  “Hurts, mostly.”

  “Sharp pain or a dull pain?”

  “Dull, I guess. Like a bad hangover.”

  A nod to the IV stand, which held two bags, one half-deflated. “That’ll be the dehydration; we’ve had you on fluids since Sunday, but that’s just enough to keep the wheels greased. Are you hungry?”

  “Um, maybe. Need the bathroom, though, pretty bad.”

  “I’ll help you,” Mom said, eagerly. But I shook my head, wincing, and waved her away as Harrison levered me up. “I’ve got it,” I said, and limped off to the john, dragging my glucose behind me.

  One incredibly long, verge-of-ecstatic pee later, Mom all but forced me to sit back down on the bed before allowing Harrison to fill me in on exactly what I’d missed.

  “Before we start, should I introduce myself again?” he asked, without any sort of embarrassment or impatience. To which I flushed, feeling enough for the both of us, and replied, “Probably.”

  “Thought as much: Guy Harrison, intern.” He offered me his hand so we could shake, and then turned my wrist over to check my pulse. “All right, that’s better. You were airlifted here from a clinic in Chaste, after an episode at somewhere called the Vinegar House. . . .”

  “Yeah, that much I’ve gathered. Any idea why?”

  “Well, good news first—we gave you an MRI, and there’s no sign of epilepsy or tumours, plus no ischemic effects, so there’s not likely to be any immediate alterations to your overall health. That said, bad news is, we’re still not sure what caused the seizures, and since we’re talking more than one, that’s worrisome. Blood work hasn’t shown any signs of natural allergens or poisons, though I’m not too happy with the amount of medications you’ve been mixing on the regular.”

  “Medications? I mean, Mobicox and Tecta, that’s basically all I’m on—”

  “By prescription, yeah. Except you told me yourself you’ve been topping that off with all sorts of over-the-counter pills: Robaxacet, Maxidol, migraine-level ibuprofen. Robaxacet alone you’re not supposed to take more than three caplets per twenty-four hours, and you’ve been taking upwards of six, seven, eight. Add in the others, and that’s quite a tolerance you’re courting.”

  “How would you—?”

  “Because you told me, Ms. Cairns. ‘Keep going till my lips go numb, that’s the standard.’ Ring any bells?”

  Again, the quote did sound like me. I didn’t want to look at Mom, to see her reaction to this little piece of information, so I looked at the floor instead. “Are you saying that had something do with . . . whatever happened to me?”

  “There’s no proof of that, no.” Continuing, as I opened my mouth: “But before you speak, there’s no proof to the contrary, either. We have no idea what set your first seizure off, let alone your second; every person’s biochemistry is unique, and mixing medications is generally a bad idea. My recommendation, therefore, is that you try to cut back as much as possible—reduce your doses, scale down. Maybe even stop everything except the prescriptions.”

  “I . . . just don’t think that’s going to work, for me. I mean . . .” I exhaled through my nose, thought a moment, then continued. “I have a job, a kid. I need to be functional, for both of them.”

  “You can be functional. It might take time to detox, but—”

  “Detox? For Christ’s sake, I’m not an addict!”

  “Anything you do alone, anything that becomes unmanageable, anything you regularly lie about to others, or yourself . . . that is an addiction, Ms. Cairns, no matter how low level it seems right now. But you don’t have to beat yourself up about it; we all want control. Things like these are your body and your mind fighting each other for control, and developing bad habits along the way.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Mom nod, and felt a wave of unreasonable anger lap up over me: oh yes, of course, classic Twelve-Step jargon. We understood we were powerless against our compulsions, took a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, turned ourselves over to a higher power as we understood it. Next thing I knew, it’d be meetings and sponsors and what have you, spilling my guts to strangers in church basements full of bad coffee. All of which had worked just fine for her, thankfully—but me? No. The only therapy I’d had thus far had always been on my own terms; if I wanted counselling, I’d damn well pay for it.

  “There are lots of programs for chronic pain,” I only then realized Dr. Harrison was saying at the same time—great minds, as ever. But I just shook my head and snorted.

  “‘Chronic pain’ sounds a little . . . elevated, frankly,” I told him. “Like describing a bad review as bullying. This isn’t anything I can’t handle, but believe me, if it ever gets to that point, I’ll take it under advisement. Right now, though, I just—”

  “‘Don’t have the time,’ yes, a lot of people say that.” Harrison sat down, leaned back in the chair, eyes fixed on me. “You know, people say men are the stoics, but you’d be surprised how muc
h effort it takes to get some women to think about themselves for a change. Look at your situation objectively. Your physical condition is bad enough to cause habitual sleep disruption, you spend hundreds of dollars on pain relief you can’t even claim on your husband’s health insurance, and by your own admission, this has been going on for years now. As the parent of a special-needs child, you’re under exceptional mental stress, while your emotional state sounds borderline manic-depressive.”

  “Again, no. I had a friend who was manic-depressive. That’s something chemical, something real, diagnosable. They gave her pills for it.”

  “Ah. And what happened then?”

  I sighed. “She’d even out, stop taking them. Eventually, she jumped off a bridge.”

  He smiled. “Well, at least you haven’t done that.” To which Mom chimed in from behind him: “Not yet.”

  Not fucking helpful, I wanted to snap. But the fight had already gone out of me, all at once: a body-wide slump, breath hissing out, energy sapped like a switched-off light. Not just because I knew everything he’d said was undeniably true, but most specifically because I couldn’t remember telling him.

  Sometimes you can tell the truth in advance—lie that you’ve done something, then make it so. I’ve done it most of my life, and I don’t feel guilty. But nothing will put a pattern of misdirection back in place once you’ve been dumb enough to map it out for someone, however tried and true; it’s like a cracked bone. Might heal right eventually, but you’ll feel it the rest of your life, especially when the weather starts to turn.