Reaction

by Jessica Roberts

  “Heather,” Nick interrupted, “Don’t you remember? She taught us both semesters of our Creative Writing class.”

  Everyone was waiting. Liz was looking up at me with little wide eyes, Creed was across from me, waiting for his childhood friend to speak up, Peter was looking at me with arched eyebrows as if to say it was my turn to speak, Paige…well she wasn’t really looking at me, but she was waiting too, Mayra was looking, and Nick—believe it or not—looked more confused than anyone.

  “You mean the Creative Writing class that Teacher Jerry taught?” I questioned, beginning to clench the edges of my jacket.

  “Who’s Teacher Jerry?”

  Chapter 9

  I dropped my books and sprinted toward his office. I could hear the commotion behind me, Liz yelling my name, Creed too; footsteps trailed after me. But all I cared about was Professor.

  When I reached the grassy hill where I took my naps, I froze. For a moment there was nothing secure in the world.

  Where had his white office gone? Where had they moved it? Who was playing the joke?

  “Heather,” I heard Nick from behind me. “What are you doing?”

  “It was there yesterday,” I told him, pointing across the hill at nothing but wide-open space.

  “What was?” Creed asked out of breath, catching up to us, with Liz right behind him.

  “Professor’s office,” I told them. “I swear.” I put my hands over my face. I was going insane. “Nick,” I turned to him, pleading with my face for him to put my mind at ease. “Our Creative Writing teacher. Professor Jerry. He was our teacher. Not Mayra. Mayra was a student. She was a student in our class.”

  His head did exactly what I hoped it wouldn’t, it shook, and mine suddenly filled with a roaring noise.

  “How is that possible,” I said to myself, with them listening in. Did he really not remember Teacher Jerry? “Then where is Teacher Jerry?”

  “Heath?” Creed moved near me and took my hand. “Who’s Jerry?” He rubbed my hand inside his. “Is he a friend?”

  The look on Creed’s face scared me, which must have meant the look on my face had scared him. I shifted that same look to Nick, begging him to know the answer to Creed’s question.

  The one thing in my life that had always been certain was my rationale. If I wasn’t the most patient or even-tempered girl, I was always logical, even after the coma.

  But here, now, there was suddenly two of me. The “me” standing on the grass going through the experience, and the “me” that was watching the experience from a ways away, trying to make sense of what was happening.

  All at once, reality slammed into me, so hard that my lungs squeezed and I thought I might faint.

  “She’s insane,” I heard Paige say. And then she laughed from a long, swirling tunnel away. She stopped at a quiet murmur from Nick, turning toward him with a shrugging glance. I watched from afar as it unfolded in slow motion.

  Could I tell them to go away and leave me alone to figure this out? I was making a loon of myself. Even so, I was sensible enough to stop talking. At least I would appear to be half sane. If this was really happening, I would work it out in my own mind and make sense of it, at least to myself. But how could Teacher Jerry not be real? All our conversations, his understanding, his twinkly smile and wise old eyes….

  At some point I must have sat down because I felt someone pick me up. Leave me alone, I wanted to say, but then I guess I didn’t want to say it because nothing came out. What I really wanted was my bed. I was exhausted.

  Home. I was home on my couch, cuddled like a child in Nick’s embrace. I had no idea why I was crying so hard, other than it kind of made me feel like I was leaping into a cool lake on a scorching day, cleansed and revitalized. I knew he’d carried me from my little grassy hill into the car and taken me home. And here we were.

  The deep, dry sound of his voice soothed the dull ache inside; sensual words that closed every space between us.

  “Closer,” he urged, and I adjusted in his lap, wrapping my arms tightly around him. I held on as if I were possessed. His hands massaged my back, lulling my sobs away.

  Eventually I no longer felt like I was sucking breaths through a small straw. My cries turned into small, occasional, recovering hiccups.

  He turned my head and dropped his lips to my cheek, wiping my tears away with calm, chaste kisses.

  “Why are you here?” my thoughts turned to words. I couldn’t imagine what he must be thinking.

  His lips kissed my swollen eyes, and the side of my eyebrow. I never would have suspected, at such a dismal moment, that I would have wanted this. But his lips were so aware, attentive, and affectionate.

  “Because,” he whispered as he moved his lips back to my cheek and kissed me there.

  My defenses were completely down, and maybe that’s why his gestures of affection were slowly shifting my mood. It seemed out of place to feel pleasure in his advances when I’d just had an out-of-body, and just recently decided to stay out-of-touch with him. But maybe both of those reasons were why it felt so ruthlessly right. I clung to the way my body warmed with the each gentle press of his lips.

  “Because,” he continued, “I need you so bad that I ache with it.” He didn’t pause for a moment as he moved his lips toward mine, kissing half of my mouth in a soft petition. And nothing, nothing could have made me resist. Something otherworldly, basic and elemental, turned my lips into his.

  It was the first time he kissed me fully, and I felt every nerve in my lips pulsate. His mouth stayed where it was, purposeful and pressing, warm and supple, breathing air and life back into me, sending my body soaring.

  I tried not to think of what happened earlier. Let my thoughts fly away with the rest of me, I told myself. There was nothing but him. I needed him, and he’d just said he needed me….

  “Even though I’m crazy?” I asked between kisses.

  He chuckled against my lips and then lightly kissed them. I opened my eyes and saw a mocking curve of a smile. “What’s new? You’ve always been crazy.”

  Crazy, maybe. Psychotic, no.

  “I’ve done research,” he said, sweeping his lips across my cheekbone. “If dreaming up an imaginary teacher is your worst side effect, your doing pretty well.”

  The way he trivialized my problems was therapeutic. But the real therapy came in his touch. He was my very own personal, prescription drug. His hands gathered me into him, our arms tangling together as his mouth again began to drag over mine, sensual and deliberate, and so potent that it slowed my thoughts, exactly what I wanted it to do.

  He seemed to know precisely when my brain clicked off because his kisses lost all subtlety. A blistering flame rocked through me as his mouth worked mine in a greedy, savage way. He knew exactly what I needed, how to awaken my body, as if I were instructing him aloud. Kiss me here, now there, longer, harder. He picked me up and straddled me onto him, capturing my mouth again with a fierceness that engulfed me like a heat. My lips were throbbing from the pressure, swollen from the force of his.

  If this was paradise, I wanted to bask in it forever.

  And he was correct at the banquet, he knew just how to make me moan. Before long he was pushing me down to the couch, taking me in a crushing embrace. His hands eagerly wandered lower down my back, and then he pressed my body into his. The intimate moment was getting heavy.

  He groaned. “We have to stop.”

  “Why?”

  “For one, I’m uncontrollably aroused.”

  Being wrapped around his solid, heated body was ecstatically familiar, and that must have been why I spoke my mind. “Do we have to?”

  A long, recovering breath pulled from Nick’s chest. “Heather, if we keep going…I don’t want to do something we might regret.”

  We lay fused together for a few more moments, breathing each other’s air, extending our kisses till the last possible tipping point. It wasn’t near long enough.

  When the blanket of his warmth lifted of
f, my body rebelled, shivering.

  “I called Doctor Adams,” he said while walking into the kitchen. “You have an appointment to see him tonight.”

  “Yeah, I know. I heard you talking to him earlier.” It took a moment to return from wonderland and remember where I was. My little lamp in the corner, my jewelry on the round table, the couch vinyl underneath my hands, all helped remind me. “Where is everyone?’

  “What?”

  “Creed and Liz? Are they freaking out?”

  “They know you’re okay. That’s what matters.” He walked out of my little kitchen biting on a piece of licorice. “I better leave so you can get to your appointment, and I can cool off.”

  His words made me smile inside. “Do you need me to drive you home?”

  “No, my car’s outside.”

  Was it happening again? Another reaction? Because I was almost certain we drove in my car. “I could have sworn we rode in my car,” I spoke up. No, I was positive. I remembered it took a few tries to get her to start.

  “We did.” He was standing in front of me now, calling for my hands. I placed them in his and he lifted me up, moving the long piece of licorice to the side of his mouth so he could kiss my forehead. “Paige dropped off my car here, she had a friend follow her and take her home.”

  “Paige drove your car here?”

  “Whatever qualities she lacks, loyalty isn’t one of them.”

  “Shouldn’t you have gone back with her?”

  “I’m not with her, Heather. The engagement is on hold for now. I told her a few days ago that I needed a break. I need to spend time with you. It’s useless to fight it.

  “And she deserves my honesty.”

  *******

  “You’ve heard of the expression ‘In my mind’s eye’?” Doc asked. “That’s the best way I can describe it. It was in your mind’s eye that you were functioning from.”

  “I get the part about Professor being a part of my reflection-dreams. It’s like any dream where you make up a supporting cast.”

  “Exactly,” Doc agreed.

  “But how did I make him part of my reality? How could I have made that mistake? I don’t think a sane person’s brain would have allowed that.”

  “You are not insane; you are very normal. Though it probably feels to you like a psychological complication, it’s not, unless of course you make it one. It’s more physiological. And once the brain snaps back into full working mode, that’s really all it takes. It’s all part of the process of your recovery.”

  “But how did it happen to begin with?”

  “Let me explain it to you in terms of physiology. Your accident left you with some intracranial hemorrhaging and damage to your cerebellum, which is a part of your brain in the back area of your head.” He reached out and briefly patted my scar. “Without getting too technical, the back of the brain relays information between the peripheral nerves and the spinal chord to the upper areas of the brain. Now, the cerebellum, in particular, works a little different than other areas of the brain. The signals in that area are unidirectional, or what we call ‘feed forward’. It’s a lot like reflexes. You don’t have to think in reflexive responses. If your knee is hit in the lower, patella area, it automatically contracts. Same with information that moves through the cerebellum. It bypasses the thinking part and causes an automatic response.

  “Reactions have a similar effect on the body. Normally, when you are dreaming, the thoughts are forwarded to your brain, and then when you wake up, your brain forwards back the message that those thoughts were only dreams. A reaction happens when there’s a blockage in that system, in this case stemming from the damage to your cerebellum, triggering that area. The dreams you had and continued to have about a particular friendship, forwarded to your brain, but your brain never responded back that the thoughts were only that, thoughts.

  “This isn’t exclusive to brain complications in PRS comas, either. Haven’t you ever remembered something about your past, and then one day you couldn’t decide if it was a dream or if it really happened? On a small scale, it’s the same thing. Everyone has brain glitches. Your coma triggered one on a larger scale. But as far as long-term effects go, it’s not that big of a deal.”

  “But what if I have another reaction? What if there’s something else in my life I’ve made up from my reflection-dreams. I know it sounds bizarre, but he was real to me, Doc. That’s why I’m freaking out so much. We would actually have conversations.”

  “Let’s talk about that. The conversations you were having with him. Did they feel different?”

  They did. They felt exactly like a dream would feel. “Yes, they felt sort of like I was out-of-body; that underwater feel, like I was removed from the situation.” Now that I was informed, I could see the discrepancy so clearly. “But what about all the conversations I had with him?”

  “You were conversing with yourself. Your own deep thoughts.”

  “No, but he would say things way beyond me.”

  “Inspiration. There’s nothing strange about that. And your subconscious thinks much deeper than your conscious does. It’s normal to have had thoughts that don’t seem yours at first.” I didn’t realize my head was shaking until he said, “Listen, I can assure you, Heather, now that your brain is aware, it will not let you make the same mistake again.

  “And I can also assure you that you won’t be as tired anymore. Because your brain was working overtime when it was experiencing the reaction, it brought on tired spells. So, unless you continue to stay awake all night playing with your antiques,” he gave me a critical smile meant to brighten my mood, and it worked, “you should feel much more energetic.”

  *******

  Friday morning I woke up feeling better than I had in a long time. I went for a short, brisk jog around my neighborhood and came home to Creed raking some end-of-autumn leaves from the yard.

  “You’re just like your dad, obsessive-compulsive with dead leaves.”

  Creed turned to me, smiling. But his smile fell as he watched me march up the sidewalk. “Did you go running?”

  I searched my mind to determine what I might have done to make him upset. Did we have plans this morning that I’d forgotten about?

  “Heath, next time you run, I want to come with you.”

  Oh, the jogging. He was worried about my health, for no sound reason. Okay, so I did get run over once while jogging, and I did have a breakdown last week, but I was fine now. “You’re not always going to be here when I want to go,” I told him.

  “When I am, I want to come.”

  I shrugged. “Okay. Tomorrow morning at nine?”

  “It’s a date.” He began raking again. “Aren’t you going to be late for school?”

  “Not if I hurry!” I yelled, jumping down my stairs and then slamming my door shut.

  Doc was right, now that the reaction was over, my energy was at one hundred percent. There was nothing that brightened a day better than good health after a bout of bad health.

  Saturday morning I ran up the stairs and knocked on Creed’s door. He answered in his gym shorts, ready to go.

  “Are you sure you want to do this? You hate jogging.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “You did,” I smiled.

  “I’ve never said that in my life,” he answered, taking off at full speed.

  Grinning, I closed his front door for him and followed his lead. “Creed!” I screamed down the road. “Wait up!” I might have been able to catch him had I not been laughing so hard. He was running full speed with his arms straight down, his bum shifted out, and his face lifted so that from behind I saw the top of his head; a ridiculous form I knew wasn’t his. He didn’t stop until he got to the end of the long block. I was still choking with laughter by the time I caught up to him. He had collapsed on some grass in a random front yard.

  “That’s all I got,” he breathed out, lying down with his hands over his lungs.

  I sat down next to him and ended my
amusement on a sigh. “Me too, now that I have a side ache from laughing so hard.” He was actually breathing pretty hard, which made me start to chuckle again. “Nice form with the jogging. One of the sexiest trots I’ve ever seen.”

  “What are you talking about? That’s how I run. Are you making fun of the way I run?”

  I smiled wryly. He wasn’t fooling me. He wanted me to take it easy, and this was his way of seeing to it. Or maybe he really was out of shape. Either way, he wasn’t budging, so I decided to do sit-ups right there in the unfamiliar yard.

  “Since you’re a wacko too,” I said after my first set, “I have to ask. Do you think I’m a nutcase?” I chuckled at myself. It sounded so nutty.

  “It’s not funny,” he muttered. “Don’t ever freak out on me again like you did at school. I thought you were on your way back to the hospital. I don’t want to see you in another hospital gown as long as I live!”

  “You don’t go to the hospital when you have an imaginary friend. Maybe the loony bin, but…” I made light of it. “But don’t worry. You’re still my best friend. He won’t take you’re place. You two are very different.”

  Eyes helpless, his mouth pursed, showing off his lovable dimples. “Stop fooling around like that.”

  “I have to joke about it,” I said, pushing through more sit-ups. “It’s kind of weird though, isn’t it? What were you thinking when it happened?”

  “I was thinking how mad I was at myself for not making sure you were getting enough sleep and taking better care of yourself.”

  Though I speculated over it, it wasn’t necessary to ask Creed why Nick was the one who took me home that day, when it would have made more sense for Creed to. After all, we pretty much lived under the same roof. And he was my best friend.

  I didn’t think it was a pecking-order issue as much as a personality one. Where Creed allowed things to happen, Nick made them happen. A shocked Creed would watch, whereas a shocked Nick would act. And Nick acted, which I certainly had no complaints about. He healed me that night in ways no one else in the world could have. Not even Creed.