“Artemis,” said Lyra, a one-word sentence. “Artemis, protectress of women, children, and animals. But also she who brings them death. Through her, we can honor woman as the natural bearer of life, love, and death. Through this so-called pagan figure, we can end-run around the idiocies of fundamentalist Christianity and understand why abortion is not a sin but a sacrament, a power to be lovingly given by women attuned to the natural cycles of the earth.”
Sherry, leaning, whispered, “I like her.”
Katt nodded, a cold sweat banded on her brow. To her frenzy was suddenly added a new anxiety. Lyra knew. Lyra somehow knew. As she spoke, her eyes found Katt’s, locked in, mischief dancing there, then moving on. Strange as it sounded, she’d surely picked up cabin vibes, she knew what Katt had felt and planned there, what even now she carried out. This whole lecture was a ruse, Sherry in on it, Lyra ready to sledge the talk down upon Katt’s head, to come in with her righteous wrath on a fingertip and open up Katt’s secrets to the community in this public forum. Sherry had said something about baby-killing and the church; no great leap from there to son-killing, reeling about, drawing the moral line, condemning her for hurting Conner.
As if anticipating her fears, Lyra blasted the Church for its hypocrisy: “Contraception of any kind was banned, a sin condemned as fornication. But during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the poor would abandon babies on church doorsteps, they’d be sent to wet-nurses, the Church would close its coffers after a time, and the babies died, three out of four at the height of this practice. You can throw that at the know-nothing, care-nothing antichoicers next time they gather to deny your rights!” Katt couldn’t tell if Lyra was for or against this baby-killing. But it didn’t much matter. The air hung close and confining, and Katt’s heart was racing. She felt faint, a sudden wash of dull effervescence in her head, wrapped frontward from ear to ear. Lyra was speaking, but the sounds wouldn’t cohere into meaning. And then a knifepoint caught and wedged in, rising up sharply in her chest. She looked at Sherry, who bore that same oh-no expression in her eyes. The room did an abrupt flip, hands snatching at her, someone straddling her and pushing palms sharply downward against the pain in her heart and pressing cold nervous lips against hers, odd except that she’d forgotten to exhale so it made a kind of sense. Pretty Sherry, pain on her face, held Katt’s hand.
Two young angels arrived in a wail of sirens. Strong and assured they were, taping her onto a stretcher, saying soothing ununderstandable words, lifting her weightlessly, easing her into the oddsmelling vehicle, and rambling her closer to her son and his salvation.
7
Stopping a Runaway Train
The wooziness stayed with Katt through the ambulance ride, the ER entry (Sherry coming in soon after), a quick battery of preliminary tests. When they were assured she wasn’t in any immediate danger, a thick-lidded man decked out in greens wheeled her to a night room and settled her into a bed by the window, a roommate snoring behind drawn curtains. He and another younger man with a smile and an anchor tattooed on one muscular arm took her temperature, her blood pressure, a sample of arterial blood (“This one is gonna hurt,” and it did), and prepped her left arm for an IV. The ER interns had already taped an array of thin monitoring nodes to her torso, and these were now plugged into a flat weighty transmitter pocketed in her gown.
Sherry stood by the window, watching them.
“What floor are we on?” Katt managed.
They told her. It was the same floor Conner was on, but she had no idea how far away he was. “Conner?” This to Sherry.
“I’ll figure out where he is,” her friend said.
The lidded man spoke up. “Don’t be thinking about a walk now. You’re in no condition to go anywhere.”
Then Doctor Bein came in. “Hello there,” he said as if he’d been expecting her. She introduced him to Sherry, whom he acknowledged with a nod. But his hands had begun already to move upon her, the stethoscope settling in and pressing down into circle after circle of skin. She gave him, as he worked, a description of what had happened. A quick look at her retina, the little light blinding. She wondered why he did that and he told her it indicated the health of her arterioles, the tiny branches that fed into the larger arteries.
“You’ve stabilized,” he told Katt. “Coronaries come in all sizes. Yours was small. But even a small one can be serious, or it can be prelude to a larger one. In the morning, I’ll ask Doctor Gestner to look in on you. He’s a heart specialist. He’ll wheel you over for a scan, see what’s happening in there. Fair enough?”
“Yes,” she said.
Katt mapped out hospital corridors in her head. Her boy could be a distant maze away or half a minute’s walk. Either way, she felt an urgency to reach him. Right this second—or this—he could be breathing his last.
If Doctor Bein had examined her heart now, he’d have heard an upswing in its tempo. Katt couldn’t afford that most likely, but she couldn’t help it either.
“How is Conner?” she asked.
“About the same.” He squeezed her hand, a semblance of bedside manner but coolly professional. “The best you can do for him now is to get a good night’s rest. You’ll be given a stabilizer for your heart rhythms, a few pills four times a day. How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” she lied.
“Good,” the doctor said. “You’re weak, you’ve had a lot taken out of you. Try not to exert yourself. Call a nurse when you have to relieve yourself. She’ll help you to the bathroom.”
“All right, Doctor.”
“Tomorrow, we’ll wheel you in to see Conner.”
Tomorrow might be too late. She felt the tears come and couldn’t stop them. They emerged weak and whiny in a sound she hated but couldn’t halt.
He held her hand. “The nurse will give you something to help you sleep.”
She nodded. She’d be damned if she’d take it. There had to be some way to get to her son. If she died trying, she swore she would do it.
Doctor Bein, his middle-aged face somehow puckish and bright, said good night to her, joked with Sherry about no marathon runs around the corridors, and left.
“Cute guy,” said Sherry. “No rings.”
“He wants you,” Katt said.
“They all do. I’m being more selective these days.”
As Sherry came forward, Katt raised her right hand to accept her handclasp. Sherry glanced around, then lowered her lips to Katt’s, gently kissed her. She tasted like an oven redolent with bread. The kiss broken, Sherry settled a palm upon Katt’s cheek and smiled. “You’ll be okay.”
“You’ve been a good friend,” Katt said. “Better than good.”
“C’mon now. You say that as if you’re going to die.”
“Sorry,” she said. Speech was an effort. Everything was an effort. She didn’t know if she had the strength to carry out her plan, but she must. It had to be there, her summons the one thing needed to prime the pump. “Find out where he is. And bring a magazine, will you?”
“Which one?”
Utne Reader, Rolling Stone, whatever.”
“You got it. I’ll be back in a flash.”
“Don’t hurry.” She meant it. She’d need time. Just as Sherry left and she’d reached inside the folds to touch her left breast, a nurse came in. Katt replaced her hands on the blanket beneath her chin.
“Hi, I’m Brenda. I’m your night nurse. Open up—you know the drill, under the tongue. This white pill is your get-some-sleep one. These tiny yellow ones’ll steady your heart rhythms, prevent arrhythmia.” The thermometer beeped at her. “Looking good. You’ll do fine.” She held Katt’s wrist in her skilled grip. “Pulse is strong. Do you want anything? Need to get up? No? Okay. Here’s some water. Down the hatch.”
Katt took the yellow pills, gulped them down, palming the other, pretending to swallow it.
“You know how to work the bed?”
“Yes.” Leave now, she thought. Go away.
“Most patients n
ever get the rundown.” She proceeded to be sure that Katt was not one of them, going over every button, demonstrating their every nuance of movement, then painstakingly restoring the bed to its initial position.
“Fine, yes fine,” said Katt. And then, miraculously, Nurse Brenda was gone, drawing the ceiling-tracked curtain three-quarters of the way shut.
Katt slid a feeble hand inside her gown, wrapping her fingers about the monitor wires and the nodes taped to her chest. She closed her eyes. The power was weak, barely a dip below the surface. But she stopped trying to push it, calming her breath instead, refusing to entertain thoughts or anxieties, just letting them go and concentrating on an easy inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale, the warm hand around her breast her sole bodily focus. And the energy came, slowly at first, then with more confidence. 1 ler vision deepened. And suddenly, the heart came into view, at once this moist meaty thing and a sacredness akin to self. Her fingers in ghostly touch lightly soothed the moving muscle, following paths into and out of it, bloodflow she’d seen before only in encyclopedias or cartoons. Katt remembered what Doctor Bein had said about the arteries. She lound the pulmonary artery, the big one coming up
and over into the heart from the lungs, and concentrated on relaxing and dilating it, a tonal soothe, and doing likewise to the smaller arterioles that fed into it. She brushed them with light, a salve of light, and it was as if into a gloomy forest thin probings of sunlight took their green and mossy way, illuminating a wide path of freshness and forgiveness. Where she sensed, as she moved, the habit of constriction, she massaged that hardness, that tautness, away, and it was almost as if the arterial walls audibly sighed at their newfound freedom of movement and flow.
On the periphery, Katt gradually became aware of more energy feeding into her, pouring in, it seemed, from close locations about her, from hidden vortexes akin to those in Lyra’s cabin. She fed this new energy back into her right hand, her healing of the arteries she soothed growing more supple and sure with each passing moment. Physician, heal thyself, came the phrase. In all her dealings with trying her power on her massage clients, it had never occurred to her to turn it inward; now she did and it felt exceedingly good. An image of Baron Munchausen, by mere will, pulling himself and his horse up out of a lake, came to her. Then it vanished, before she could even smile, and she saw, not more than a few corridors away surely, Conner lying in bed and deteriorating cell by cell, her the cause, her the way to his cure.
In her mind’s eye, he looked at her with reproach—no hatred even though he knew, but just a mild resignation in those tired young eyes. He knew. And yet he forgave her, even as he died. It was unbearable. If her boy died as a result of her insane actions, she’d never forgive herself. Grief, Katt knew, like sudden water in a flashflood, would sweep her under; and she, unlike Grandma Jasper, would end by killing herself as well as her husband and son.
Her eyes opened. Her roommate was snoring loudly. A wave of despair came over her. Though her heart felt like new, the warmth of healing full upon it, her body remained enfeebled by the attack. She felt enervated, drained, and spent, but there was no time to give that the attention it needed. She had to reach Conner now. Sherry could help. But if Sherry was not back in five minutes, she’d find him on her own. She grappled her watch from the table unit by her bed, gripped it, held it close, urged it, urged it, an urgent mind-summons to her friend to hurry back.
Sherry, having found the way to Conner’s room (a long corridor and two short turns away from Katt), descended to the lobby, where a gift shop full of unspeakable gewgaws and a slight rack of magazines and paperbacks greeted her. An old man on a cane licked his lips at her. Or maybe he was just adjusting his dentures—hard to tell with his type.
Newsweek was the best she could do. As she bought it from the raptor-clawed, puffed-faced, smiling woman behind the counter, it struck her how lovely in her grotesqueness that woman was, how beautiful .md complete the old man and his cane. These were people she would scarcely have given a glance at a month before.
Now they seemed perfect.
“Here’s your change,” not counting it out like a real cashier, not abrupt either. Those gnarled fingers brushed Sherry’s palm, and that was all right too.
She recalled her comment to Katt over the phone about not getting involved with inconvenient people, not finding herself stuck behind a wheelchair. That had been ages ago and now here she was, en-' tangled for over a month with Katt and Conner. A more inconvenient, more unfortunate pair of people she could hardly imagine. And yet Sherry had borne the inconvenience lightly, had welcomed it, had hardly had time for a second thought about it. They needed her. She loved them. So she provided and nurtured, a second nature emerging she had never suspected. Simple as that.
Sherry thanked the woman and left, headed back toward the elevators past the information desk. A bouffant lady, pudgy with her fat right leg straight out in a white cast, was wheeled in by a slight woman, pinched-faced, her brown hair bobbing about her head like lamp fringe. She guessed they were lovers. Maybe, maybe not.
Pressed for the up elevator. The red arrow lit. Had her friends been an inconvenience? Sure. And bid fair to be so for months to come. Conner, she was afraid, had not long to live. It would hurt to lose him. And then if she guessed right, Katt would find herself having to process a double grief, something that couldn’t be rushed, something that Sherry, if she truly loved her, would have to see her through with patience and forbearance.
Bing! The doors opened. Two interns got out and one held the door for her and the wheelchair ladies. He waved at her as the doors closed, lust-sparks lighting his eyes. They would have left her cold, unmoved a month ago; or she would have boldly sauntered up to him and taken him aside, asking him straight out—her eyes fixed on his, taking his measure—what he’d like to do and where he wanted to do it and just what he was waiting for. But now those sparks of lust were like bursts of blue flower, waving in a field, a temptation easily acknowledged and as easily passed by.
At home, taking a break from class preparation, habit would draw her to the BBSs. But she posted nothing, heard the occasional BBSer wonder, along CFRnet, what had become of Love Bunny, watched the interplay of puerile lust among the regulars, the Denverites, the rare Boulderite, news of parties and gatherings of swingers. Dependable Zipper and Zap-per, a sad chunky couple from Longmont, touted the joys of multisex, as usual, to clueless newcomers.
And speaking of Newcummer, she hadn’t logged onto any of the BBSs for more than a month. Checking userlists for Newcummer showed her last on 7-3 everywhere. Ratt’d given it up soon after Marcus had been stricken. Funny. In all the weeks since, the subject of BBSing hadn’t once arisen. A playpen for the simple folk. That’s mostly what it was. Personals on the net were the same way, sporadic grains of wheat lost among truckloads of chaff.
The wheelchair ladies were holding back. Not talking nor touching. She could feel their restraint. Definitely lovers. The uptightness was closing her up too. The hell with that, she thought. “Nice cast,” she said. “A little dull though.”
The one behind the chair smiled. “We’re going to see about that. Some friends are coming over tonight, bearing gifts, I hope, and Magic Markers.” Her friend beamed, her lipsdck mouth bending upward. “Sally’s idea. I kinda like the white, though. Makes the leg look sorta prehistoric.”
Sherry raised a finger, mock lecture. “White’s good. Magic Markers are better.” The elevator dinged, as though agreeing—a punctuadon mark. Its doors opened. Sherry’s floor. “See you guys later.”
“Bye,” Sally said.
“Ciao,” said her seated friend.
A simple bond. Would have been unforged a month ago, the stiffness growing, then her floor. She amazed herself at the change that had eased into her. Smiles. The doors closed. Sherry wished them well.
The corridors, indirecdy lit, had that night-feel to them—a trick, surely, since there were no windows to tell her what she knew. The doors to the rooms were closed, n
o visitors, and strictly speaking she guessed that her being here was in violation, but she wasn’t about to voluntarily leave. Three doors down on the left, Katt’s room. Sherry drew down the handle and slipped in. Dim light but mostly darkness, instruments outlined in shadow against the walls and a large TV set dormant above—a fully curtained snorer kept up her now-familiar rhythm, and beyond that, somebody had drawn Katt’s curtain. Sherry rounded the hidden bed, black windows lined up and moving as she walked. A shock. Katt was sitting, her legs over the side, IV in her arm, wires coming out of the folds of her hospital gown.
“Help me,” Katt said, a hand to her temple.
Sherry came around to her, dropping the magazine on a chair. “Jesus,” she said, folding back the bedclothes and urging her down. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Katt, though feeble, shook her off. The sudden surge of power surprised Sherry. “Listen to me.” In her voice, in her eyes, a stone sobriety asserted itself. “I haven’t told you something about Lyra’s cabin. Something that was in the air two nights ago when I was there. I’ll tell you now, but you’ve got to believe me.”
And Sherry listened. All about healing powers moving into her, trusting in their veracity then, but not at home when she had the chance to use them, about how she’d fixed her heart and now had to find Conner, quickly, without any of the hospital staff catching on. It seemed like madness to Sherry, and yet she’d never felt such affirmation, such truth, from Katt before. Would she help? Her mind wanted to say no, but her heart said yes, and the instinct was as strong as instinct ever got.
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