by Laer Carroll
“Poor man,” Beth thought, not without some amused malice, “He may never get over this.”
·
A few final tests were OK’d and performed. By then it was dinner time. Much discussion by the test supervisor and Bethany’s doctor, with her mother weighing in, got Beth thin chicken broth with Jello and milk for dessert.
She ate this insubstantial meal with great enjoyment, then complained to her mother that she needed more food. Her mother disagreed. It had already taken a three-way discussion bordering on three-way war to get this much. Beth gave in, vowing privately to push harder for more the next day.
The visiting hour that evening saw more than two dozen people cycle in and out of Bethany’s private room. By the time it was over she was ready to go to sleep early.
·
Her dreams, what she remembered the next morning, were ordinary: endless replaying of testing and the visiting hour.
Breakfast at least paid lip service to solid food. It was runny scrambled eggs, toast soggy with butter substitute, and orange juice.
Bethany was licking her plate absolutely clean at 7:00 AM when Dr. Chu-Thi walked in the door.
“How do you feel this morning?” she said, removing her stethoscope from a pocket and cupping the “ear” in a hand to warm it up. This was one of the many small thoughtful touches which had kept her for five years as the Corcoran-Rossiter family’s personal physician.
Beth gave her plate a last lick and put it down. “Hungry. Full of energy. I’m leaving today.”
The doctor blinked but otherwise kept a poker face. But Beth had noticed it.
“It’s too early, dear. We need to keep you here where your condition can be monitored.”
“I am now perfectly healthy. I was quiet through all the tests yesterday but I was listening carefully. I didn’t understand most of the jargon. I did understand that absolutely nothing is wrong with me that can’t be fixed at home.
“I have to regain muscle mass. I’ve lost all body fat. My coordination is shot. Careful diet and exercise will fix that. I am leaving today.”
The doctor wasn’t willing to accept that. The two went around three times before Beth gave in. She’d used an old tactic on the doctor, one a smart younger child had long ago hit upon: Ask for a lot, give up enough to get what you really want.
Her mother arrived at 9:00. Bethany was ready to work on her. Different tactics would be needed for Dr. Corcoran.
She started with the knowledge card as soon as they’d exchanged hugs and Ryanna Corcoran was assured her daughter was well.
“I want all my school books and notebooks and my laptop. And a cell phone so I can talk to my teachers. I have three weeks of work to catch up on.”
“Dear, you can’t catch up. I’m afraid you’ll have to repeat this semester.”
Seem to give up but don’t . Another of the tactics a smart youngest child learned early on.
“Well—you’re probably right. But I’ll feel bad if I don’t at least TRY.”
“Very well. But remember that your number one job is to get well. Don’t push so hard it will get in the way of that. And don’t be disappointed if you can’t make up your lost time.”
Bethany gave a brilliant smile. “OK! Now, what happened while I was...asleep?”
Satisfied she had set her daughter straight her mother began to fill her in on family gossip and, predictably, what was happening with herself.
When afternoon visiting hour arrived so did her brother Kendall and “uncle-in-law” Miguel. They were dressed in their working uniform: tough jeans, tee shirt covered by a loose and very tough leather jacket, light boots. In their SUV she knew they had various weapons. The two had a small security firm which did body guarding, bounty hunting, and site guarding. A couple of their sidekicks were heavily into electronic security.
Mike was a bit tall for a Latino, strong, and showed his Indian ancestry in his face. Ken was a little over six feet, smoothly but massively muscled, and handsome. Eleven years older than Beth, he’d always been very protective of her.
Which today showed in a heavy bag of books. He swung them up onto the narrow rolling table which served as a dining surface. Then he leaned over and kissed a cheek. She kissed him back on his rough cheek. She knew he’d shaved this morning but already he had a shadow.
“How’re you doing, Sleepy?” He’d called her Sleeping Beauty the day before. Now he was in his usual abbreviation mode.
“OK. Mike; get your sorry ass over here. A poor sicko like me deserves another kiss.”
Miguel smiled slightly and leaned over to peck her cheek. She returned the favor.
Mike pulled the book bag off the serving table and replaced it with a computer notebook case. Beth quickly opened it and extracted her cell phone. Flipping it open, she checked to be sure she had enough bars to make a call from her room.
“Yeah!” she said, laughed, and flipped it closed.
Mike turned a sardonic eye toward her brother. “Told you,” he said, added scornfully “Books! How can I know your sister better than you do?”
Her phone and notebook had been the real goal of her argument with her mother about studying. But as soon as it was hinted she was a gossip and not a scholar her contrary nature surfaced.
She lay the phone onto her bed and gestured at the book bag.
“Gimme!”
Ken picked the bag off the floor and placed it on the bed by her side. “Are you really going to try to make up for lost time?”
Bethany had privately agreed with her mother about how unlikely it was that she could catch up. But she’d made a stand and now had to stand by it.
Besides, she couldn’t let Lihua graduate a year ahead of her; the two planned to go to college together. Super-smart Lee needed her more worldly friend to keep her out of trouble.
“I certainly am,” she said with a raised chin and a superior look.
“So. What are you two up to?”
·
As soon as the two were gone Beth opened up her phone and texted a flock of Hearts to her Homegirls and Homeguys at the HomePlace web site, following the trail of pink icons by She’s baa-ack!
Then she struggled down from her bed and with two hands lugged the notebook bag over to a wall which had a small fold-down table. She let the bag flop flat onto the floor, unlatched the table, and pulled it down to latch into a support surface for her laptop.
It took two hands to lift the bag onto the table, then pull out her notebook computer, position it, and plug in the power and network connectors. She turned it on, pulled a visitor’s chair with a bright blue plastic back and bottom over to face the desk, then slumped into a sitting position before her computer. It took her several minutes for her heart rate and breathing to settle back to normal.
Then she went to her HomePlace page, wrote up a brief summary of her situation, and sent it to her Homies.
Lastly she struggled back into bed. The exercise had been good for her. It had been a lot easier than she’d expected.
It was about 4:30. Her BFF Lihua would be out of classes for the day and (likely) on her way to cheer practice, or even there already. Football season was over but basketball had just begun.
Beth had a momentary pang at the thought. If she really tried to catch up to her studies there was no way she could do cheerleading.
Well, she couldn’t anyway until she got back into shape. It had taken Miguel months before he’d been able-bodied again.
When Lihua answered her phone Bethany spoke loudly in a gruff voice. “HEY, GIRLIE. I WANT A GOOD TIME.”
“Besty? Is that you?”
“IT SAYS HERE ON YOUR HOME PAGE YOU KNOW HOW TO GIVE A GUY A GOOD TIME. DO YOU DO AROUND-THE-WORLDS?”
A shriek answered her. “It IS you! Are you all right?”
“God! Not after having my ear drums burst.”
But there was no answer. Instead Bethany heard Lihua yelling at someone that Beth was on the line. Several someones, judging from the gabb
le that answered her.
In moments Lee was back on the phone, breathless. “How are you?”
“Fine. If you don’t count having muscles limp as noodles and not an ounce of fat anywhere.”
“We heard you were dead. Then in a coma. And if you ever came out of it you’d be paralyzed from the neck down. Coach cried.”
Then: “I cried.”
“As well you should, an excellent person such as myself dying young.”
“Don’t joke about it. Ah, what happens next?”
Then in an aside. “Hush. She says she’s fine and is about to say what happens next.”
“Next I have therapy and eat a lot. Probably awful healthy food. Shudder.”
Then Coach was on Lihua’s phone and Beth had to reprise her conversation with Lee—minus faking someone looking for a prostitute .
“Well, we are all immensely relieved to hear you are well, Bethany. Now I think you should get back to resting and we should get back to cheer practice. Keep in touch, dear.”
“Thank you. I will.”
Then Beth had to tell Lee when visiting hours were and her friend hung up her phone.
She was no sooner off her phone than her sister Helen was on it, demanding an update on Bethany’s condition. It took some convincing to keep her from flying up from San Diego in the middle of her college school week.
·
The visiting hour that evening was busier than the night before as more of her “entourage” wanted to see and touch her to convince themselves she was truly going to survive her ordeal. Finally Bethany spoke up.
“I love you all. But could you give me the last few minutes with Mom and Dad?”
The room was cleared, but not quickly, except for her and her mother and “biodad.” Her step dad Nicolas had herded everyone else out of the room and trailed after them with a last smile at Beth and a wave.
“We have to discuss my food situation. I’m not getting enough. It tastes OK. And they’re now on a solid diet, pretty much. But I need more of it. I can feel it inside of me.”
“Dear, you have to stay on a proper diet to get better.”
“I know. But I KNOW I need more. And I need something a little different. I have this craving for milk. I think I need more calcium. My bones need it.”
Dr. Corcoran opened her mouth again but was stopped by Beth’s father. Police captain Allan Rossiter was normally so easy-going that even those who knew him well were shocked when the hidden steel showed itself.
“And you’ll have it. If I have to pull you out of this hospital myself. And get you another doctor.”
Ryanna Corcoran closed her mouth and looked stubborn for a moment. But she knew her ex-husband too well to fight about this.
She sighed. “Very well. But let’s do this sensibly. Suppose we get Dr. Chu-Thi to increase the quantity by 10% and see if that works for you. And adds perhaps another pint of milk. Then if that works out we can consider other changes. Do you think you can go along with that?”
Bethany’s smile was like the sun breaking through clouds.
·
Her sister Helen called shortly after the end of the visiting hour. Bethany and she chatted for almost another hour. Finally Beth’s normality reassured her enough to get her to delay coming “home” another day, till the weekend.
After Goodbyes Beth slid off her bed and went into the bathroom to pee. It wasn’t until she was back into bed that she realized she’d had no trouble getting out of and into bed. In fact, she’d accomplished the tasks with almost feline grace.
That night she dreamed strange dreams again. She was Maelgyr again, but before she’d become “Maelgyreyt” (whatever that meant). She was running for her life but knew it would be saved in something she thought of as the DemonForest. Then she was Maelgyreyt, a healer who needed only to touch someone to make them well. Then later she was something very like a demon herself, all black armored flesh and blood-red eyes and immense strength from whom even armies fled.
Bethany woke from that with clear memory of a scene of slaughter arrayed all around her on a shockingly green and beautiful field. But instead of wanting to vomit at the butcher-shop bloodiness which she had caused she was grimly calm, certain that she had protected a country from invasion which would have caused wholesale and even bloodier slaughter.
She sat up and filled a plastic cup half-full of chilled water from a plastic carafe. She drank it slowly, reflecting.
She was not crazy. The memories were as clear as her memory of going to the bathroom just before falling to sleep. She knew not what they meant, but it SEEMED as if she had lived as someone else before. And there was no urging for her to do anything, horrible or otherwise. Her mind and desires were her own, and they were ordinary.
She could tell no one about her dreams. Unless they caused her to do something awful or dangerous or nonsensical.
She slid out of bed and approached the worktable on which rested her laptop. But instead of opening the computer she bent lithely to where her heavy book bag was lying underneath the table, enjoying the slide of her muscles underneath her skin, the certainty of her movements, a feeling of immense strength quietly kept in reserve. She lifted the bag and began to slide books out of it, then paper notebooks and pens and pencils, and arranging them neatly on the work surface.
That done she returned to bed and easily to sleep.
·
The next morning her breakfast was substantially larger and she had two pints of milk instead of one. She watched the morning news on TV as she ate, then relieved herself in the bathroom and brushed her teeth.
At the worktable she readied her computer and sent off an email to each of her teachers. Each expressed her desire to catch up the three weeks she’d been out of circulation, but she tailored each to match what she knew of her teachers.
For instance, for her sophomore Honors English class she emphasized how much she enjoyed the books she’d been assigned to read. For her Geometry math class, in which she was earning a mere C average, she said she had realized that she was not applying herself fully and that her accident had make her think more seriously about her education.
At 10:00 she had to temporarily abandon reading the literary selections for her English class. A nurse took her in a wheelchair to the first of her physical therapy sessions.
It began with a very fit black man wearing a blue shirt, white tennis shorts, and tennis shoes doing several simple tests of her current physical state, establishing a baseline. Bethany faked difficulty walking a straight line, bending to touch her toes, lifting her arms above her head, and so on.
Next he attached her with several wires to instruments recording such measures as heart rate and cardio nerve activity and put her on a treadmill. She grasped two high handlebars to help her keep her balance while the walking belt began moving at a slow pace. Gradually it began to speed up, forcing her to walk faster.
The regular thump of her feet on the belt and the hum of the electric motor which drove the belt began to have an almost hypnotic effect. She began to focus ever more inward on the workings of her body, her muscles flexing and relaxing, the steady movement of air into and out of her body, her blood’s flow. Not intending to, she told her body to improve its working as the demands on it picked up. And it did.
Till Bethany noticed that the therapist was frowning and realized he was noticing unusual results in his instruments. He was expecting her to have more and more trouble as the stress increased till it began to approach too much. NOT to have no trouble at all adapting to the stress.
So she began to fake having that trouble until she gasped, “That’s it! Shut it down!”
Instantly he pushed a button and the belt slowed more and more till it stopped.
“Very good, Ms. Rossiter. Sit down here and rest a bit. Want some water?”
“Yes, please.”
After a minute she faked summoning up her energy and stood, wavering, on her feet. Then she did several exercises to build up her w
asted muscles: ten shallow knee bends, ten push-aways from the wall like easy pushups, and so on.
She’d had absolutely no trouble with any of the exercises. She was sure she could do hundreds instead of ten.
Her faking was too good. The therapist insisted on having a nurse’s aide push her back to her room in a wheelchair.
She lay in her bed on her back and thought about what had happened. Her body, even as weakened as it had been, had changed during the session. It had become stronger and more agile. Come to think of it, she’d been changing that way ever since she woke up.
It reminded her of all the silly superhero comics Ken had loved when he was a boy. Someone got bitten by a radioactive spider and became able to climb and jump like one. Someone got bitten by a strange wolf and became a werewolf.
She also remembered what happened when the superheroes went public. They were admired a lot, but even more they were feared and hated.
“Here you are! You’re getting a hamburger today!”
The student volunteer who wheeled in her lunch wore a pink-and-white striped frock. She was maybe twenty but seemed much younger, maybe because she was awfully perky.
“Oh, yum!” said Bethany, smiling at the woman, who arranged Beth’s food on her rolling table and left with a cheery Bye!
The burger was dietetically balanced and bland and the fries salt-less. But thankfully there were several packets of catsup to make up for that. And the milk came in the form of a milkshake still icy from the mini-fridge part of the serving cart .
After lunch Beth retired to her worktable. She had an email on her computer from her English teacher. She was willing to help Beth try to make up her lost work but urged her not to be too ambitious. Getting well had to come first. Repeating a semester is not the end or the world, you know!
There was also one from Lihua written during her lunch hour. It had several short addendums from other cheer friends, most of them pretty silly. But they made her laugh.
Then later an email from her World History teacher, business-like and willing to help but not encouraging. It did include a list of selections from her history book. Beth began on them. She’d already caught up on her literature reading, even gone a bit beyond into what everyone was reading next week.