The Anesthesia Game

by Rea Nolan Martin

  “I’m Ronald,” he says searchingly.

  Hannah nods. “I can see that.”

  Dr. Blanca and Ronald take seats on the orange chairs facing Hannah’s orange couch. Right now orange is the most alarming color she can think of. She’s never felt so trapped in her life. Orange is a dangerous color.

  “I thought you talked to the father,” Hannah says. “Didn’t you just talk to Aaron Michaels?”

  “I did,” says Dr. Blanca. “And he authorized me to share the information with you.”

  Hannah wrings her hands and wrists and quivers right up to her neck. “What information? Isn’t he coming? Where is he? He can’t delegate every damn…”

  Ronald swings off the chair, around the glass coffee table, and sits eagerly beside Hannah on the couch. He reaches reassuringly for her hand and she swats the air, nearly smacking him in the face. “Don’t touch me,” she says, shaking.

  He shrinks back. “Sorry,” he says soothingly as if he’s played this act a thousand times. “Can I get you some water?”

  She looks at him, leaning in eye-to-eye, their faces inches apart. “You can get me a martini, how’s that?” Her eyebrows rise while her mouth straightens into a thin determined line. “Straight up, three olives. Just keep them coming, and we’ll get along fine.”

  “Mrs.….er…Chandler,” says the doctor, “we do understand your reluctance, however we must continue. Someone on premises has to be informed of this child’s situation.”

  “I don’t even know what illness she has,” says Hannah wildly in a voice she barely recognizes. “And I don’t want to know! Okay? How’s that? Syd and I have a pact that we’ll never utter the word.” She raises her trembling chin. “Her parents know; that’s enough.”

  The doctor pulls on her right ear, considering her next move. “Very well, I won’t tell you the diagnosis, but I must tell you that we, in consultation with her doctors in Connecticut, have determined that she will most likely require a bone marrow transplant in the very near future.”

  Hannah’s eyes fill with spontaneous tears; it’s hopeless. Ronald touches her shoulder and she’s too freaked out to remove his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he says gently.

  Hannah chokes back a hurricane force cry. “She didn’t remember the question,” she mutters through tears. “She didn’t remember that I asked her to tell me ‘somewhere in Italy’.” She gulps air, gasping. “Anywhere at all!” she says incredulously. “It could have been Rome or Capri; it didn’t matter as long as it was somewhere in Italy.”

  The doctor stares ahead. “Italy?” she says. “I’m sorry; I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She pauses. “Should I?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” says Hannah. “It’s just…the game. The Anesthesia Game that Syd plays to keep things under control. She asks a question and then remembers it when she wakes up. But this time…she didn’t remember.” Hannah puts her head in her hands and wails. “This time I told her I never asked her the question, but…I lied!” She looks back up at the doctor. “I lied to my niece,” she whispers.

  Ronald nearly curls up in her lap. “There, there,” he says, handing her a new wad of tissues. “Let me get you some water.” He jumps up.

  Hannah blots her face. “I just want to know if that’ll do it,” she says to Dr. Blanca.

  “I’m sorry,” says the doctor sympathetically. “If what will do what?”

  “The transplant,” says Hannah. “Will that do it? Heal her?”

  The doctor nods tentatively. “It might,” she says. Then more reassuringly, “It has a good shot.”

  “Okay then,” says Hannah into her lap. “Thank God.”

  “Even though it’s unlikely you’ll be a match, the entire family should get tested,” says the doctor. “The easiest matches are generally found with siblings, but we know Sydney doesn’t have any.”

  “No,” says Hannah, “she doesn’t.” Her hands are trembling.

  “Does she have any cousins?”

  Hannah’s chin drops to her chest. She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “But I’ll get pregnant right now if you think she could wait that long.”

  “I’m afraid we can’t,” says Dr. Blanca. “And I can’t give you a clearer prognosis until we find a match.”

  Hannah nods. “What, um…what’s… involved?”

  “It’s a simple mouth swab,” she says. “No pain I promise.”

  “And, um…”

  Ronald hands her small cup of water and she sips while he rubs her back in irritating circles. Even though she would like him to stop, she allows this small gesture of misplaced kindness to continue unattacked. She’s just glad she doesn’t have access to a pair of scissors or a knife. She feels capable of anything right now. “What do we tell Syd?” she asks. “And…when?”

  Dr. Blanca brushes a wayward curl off her pale forehead as she glimpses her notes. “Her father wants us to wait,” she says. “He expects to be down here early this afternoon, depending on flights.”

  Hannah reaches out to Ronald for more tissues. “So she’ll be going back to Connecticut tomorrow? For treatment?”

  “I can’t say for sure,” says the doctor. “This facility has an excellent transplant program if she chooses to stay. That will be up to her parents. But in truth, our program is much more leading edge than the one she’s in. I don’t think she can do better, as long as you all have accommodations.”

  Hannah’s head is a bowl of spaghetti, her thoughts all starchy, tangled up and impossible to separate. If Syd stays, will Mitsy stay too? Will Aaron? It’s a carnival of possibilities. On the other hand, if Syd returns to Connecticut, what then? Will Hannah go with her? If so, for how long? And what about Jonah? She dishes this idea around in her head until she realizes it doesn’t matter. If Syd and Jonah are placed on the scale of justice, Syd’s little body outweighs Jonah’s ten to one. A thousand to one. Syd wins hands-down every time. So somehow Hannah has to figure out how to deal with this terrifying reality without running away. She can’t play the crazy aunt this time. She has to take charge. God knows the parents are useless.

  Whoever thought Hannah would be the only one standing?

  She returns to Syd’s room to tell her she’s going out for coffee, another lie, since she’s on her way to the ground floor to get her mouth swabbed. But anyway, Syd’s asleep, so she leaves with her conscience slightly less eroded.

  After the swab, which, as the doctor promised, was not an issue, Hannah grabs a coffee from the nearby cafeteria along with a couple of blueberry muffins, hoping Syd will indulge with her. On her way down the sixth floor hall to Syd’s room, she stops cold, incredulous at the sight in front of her. Is that Mitsy? Mitsy Michaels dressed in…are they Hannah’s jeans? They sure as hell aren’t Mitsy’s waist-high dungarees! Hannah barely recognizes her sister out of the usual sweats. But it definitely is Mitsy, not just based on the fact that she’s walking with Jonah, but also on the outgrowth of her gnarly gray haircut, which was nearly shaved when Hannah first arrived at the mansion. Now her hair hangs haphazardly to her ears, sticking out at all angles like a hedgehog. She looks damn good in those jeans, though.

  In spite of all the questions Hannah has regarding Mitsy’s instantaneous appearance, or really, appearance at all considering she’s an agoraphobic hermit, Hannah is in no hurry for the answers. She takes a seat on a nearby bench down the hall. She wants to let Mitsy and Syd have their say without anyone picking Hannah’s brain for the real reason Syd’s been hospitalized. After all, only Hannah and Aaron know about the transplant. Let the rest of them revel in their ignorance. Hannah only wishes she could revel with them. Once Aaron appears and they go into conference, it’s all over. But Hannah will be damned if she’s going into conference with the doctor and Ronald again just to update Mitsy. Even Hannah’s first rate imagination can’t conjure up a freak show freaky enough to animate that scene. And anyway, Mitsy is Aaron’s job, not hers.

  Pandora

  Every ti
me Pandora touches the painting with the tip of her finger, the color fades from the canvas. “What are you trying to tell me, Elysha?” she whispers, mesmerized. She has to figure this out now.

  No answer is whispered to her from the ether; no one guides her from the next realm. Her breath becomes rapid and she stomps her foot. So frustrating! My God!!! All that’s left of her daughter is an image that’s vanishing before her eyes, and yet she can’t stop touching the picture as if touching it will inspire the information she seeks. Yet it doesn’t. But it must! After all she’s seen and all she’s done in every corner of the mystical world, the situation before her right now is unprecedented. It’s a phenomenon she’s compelled to investigate at any risk. Even if it means the destruction of the painting.

  Her fingers at her lips, her eyes searching, she digs deep into the pool of consciousness available to her. The painting is the past, she knows, and she, Pandora, is the present. But where’s the future? Where? One thing she cannot afford to do right now is to search for the future through the tedious, plodding sequence of time. There’s no time for it! Somehow she must figure out how to surpass time, to rise above it, without bypassing it entirely. Her temples pound. There is a way!

  She raises her neck to realign her posture and breathes deeply to recover composure. She looks to her left across the pine-planked room to the kitchen and from there through the plate glass windows over the tall pines to her mystic lake. Even from across the room she can see mist rising from its chilled surface, guiding her sight upward toward Heavenly Mountain.

  She sees it then.

  Oh my God, she thinks breathlessly, it’s back! A plasma cloud of brilliant color circles the peak, igniting it. The hot reds and wildly energetic oranges and other tantalizing colors dance seductively around the center. The center is illuminated by…that blue. The cool pool of electric blue in the molten center of all that perilous heat draws her in like a desert mirage. The power is there, she knows. Right there. The power she seeks is unequivocally zeon.

  She shakes her head thoughtfully. But how do I get to it? How? She knows it won’t be easy, and may even be impossible, but somehow she has to try. Something tells her now…has been trying to tell her all along…that wave function can regenerate in the middle of that storm. Or out of that storm. Or around it. Her vision penetrates the color…right there, she thinks, pointing. Right there! As if to confirm her understanding, the blue light blinks repeatedly, spitting splashes of zeon in every direction like a paint gun. Does anyone else see this, she wonders. Or is it only me?

  In her mind’s eye, she scans the data she’s been collecting about color and waves and particles and the frequencies of health and disease, and suddenly all doubt is released. She knows! She knows that this is it, the answer, the sum of the parts. What she cannot figure out is the equation—the quantity and combination of A plus B (or C? D? E?) that will render the result she needs. She can’t figure out how to get the zeon blue in the first place or how to apply it therapeutically. How to secure the right calculus to derive the answer she already knows—that in some way or in some combination, zeon holds the signal of the cure. But she’ll get it, by God. She’ll get it. She will not give up.

  It’s right there!

  Instinctively she closes her eyes and reaches out with her left hand, pointing toward the aurora. She breathes deeply, drawing the magnetic current to her core. Eyes opened, she touches the painting with her other hand at the space directly between Elysha’s eyebrows. Seconds later a signal jolts through her system and she is thrown against the back of the couch where she lies stunned for some time. She has no idea how long. So this is how it works, she thinks. Like this. A human conduit. Or maybe that’s just one way.

  Fragile from the jolt, she pulls herself up slowly against the back of the couch. She stares at the ceiling as she approaches the painting, afraid to look. After all, Elysha’s image may be gone completely now, a hole burned through all that was left of her. It’s possible. More than that, it’s probable, given the force of the surge. Gathering emotional strength, Pandora lowers her chin then her eyes, forcing herself to look.

  Before her is the painting, the one she abandoned twenty years ago, fully restored in fresh, lifelike color. She sees the unmistakable penetrating ice blue eyes, the ringlets of sun-kissed mahogany hair, the tawny skin, the full lips, the sharp, irrepressible knowing. She sees Elysha, yet…not Elysha. Not exactly. Pandora can’t take her eyes off the image. It’s as if she just put down the brush, as if Elysha were coming through the canvas about to speak. But the picture is not the child Elysha. It’s a holographic amalgamation of every age and lifetime Elysha has ever lived. It’s her spirit. Her vibrant spirit. In this painting at least, her child lives.

  But what does it mean? Pandora is so close to the absolute center of a seismic truth she can’t quite process. Does it mean she’ll get Elysha back if she accomplishes this impossible task? If she draws the future into the past to ignite the present? Will it bring her daughter back to life? And what will happen to Pandora if she succeeds? It’s not without risk.

  Her chest vibrates with too much excitement, too much hope, too much life. She doesn’t know whether she’s rejoicing or grieving. A little of each perhaps, or a lot of both. Every emotion she’s ever experienced burns at the altar of this moment. She has never felt so much of anything at one time. Her mind and body respond greedily. She wants a drink. She wants a smoke. She wants to walk naked through a harem of powerful men who lay prostrate at her gold-sandaled feet. She wants to part seas and burn bushes with the touch of a finger. She wants to ascend the ladder of desire until the only desire left is consummation with the Infinite. She wants to burn there—in the eternal flame.

  But for now, she’ll settle for a cigarette. She scrambles through the drawer of the hutch for a smoke and grabs one; lights it. The flame ignites her weakness. Forgive me, she thinks. I’m so weak! But to lay down all her lovely crutches at this age at this time is even more overwhelming than the task at hand. And the one thing she can’t afford to do at the apex of this much unraveling is become overwhelmed. Whatever she’s being called to do, cigarettes, at least, are part of the deal.

  The phone rings, startling her. She glances down; it’s Mitsy again. Of course it is. Mitsy is part of the circuit. Mitsy and Hannah and Sydney are a circuit, but only Pandora can access the energy. Once the energy is conveyed, it has to travel through the entire circuit to heal the child. Hopefully to heal the child.

  “Hello?” she says.

  “Pandora?” says Mitsy, nearly intelligibly. “Uh uh, uhhhh…”

  “Calm down!” Pandora commands. “I can’t understand you.” She inhales her cigarette.

  “She…she…she needs a…a transplant,” Mitsy sputters.

  Pandora’s heart stops. Is it too late? Exhaling, she turns back for a look at Heavenly Peak. The aurora has disappeared. Where did it go? Has she waited too long? Again? How many lifetimes will it take? She walks robotically to the couch and sits, listening to bits and pieces of truncated information punctuated by Mitsy’s long and irritating wails.

  “I’m sorry,” she tells Mitsy. “I really am.”

  “But can’t you hhhhhheeeeeellllp?” Misty wails. “Can’t you…can’t you get tested too?”

  Pandora frowns, cocks her head, and listens for inspiration. Can I? But how could she be a compatible match? What chance would there be that she is? Her DNA is Peruvian, Ethiopian, Caribbean, Scandinavian and Dutch. She’s anything but British, Irish or Scotch, which, as far as she knows, is Sydney’s entire heritage. And even though Pandora knows there’s more to every story than meets the eye, she doesn’t see her place in this story as a donor of anything physical. That’s not what she’s here for.

  “Please?” Mitsy begs.

  Before she answers, Pandora inhales a long, thoughtful drag. Exhales. “Well…I can certainly take the test. Why not?”

  “Oh my God, would you?” Mitsy says. “Oh my God, thank you!”

 
; “But I’m not a match,” Pandora warns. “Please don’t count on me for that. You know nothing about my ancestry. Most of my tribes are pretty far south of yours.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I’ll do it anyway, just because every effort is an energetic vote for the child’s survival. The more votes the more chances there are. Energetically, that is. Which in the end is what counts.”

  “I didn’t know that,” says Mitsy.

  “And I’ll publish a blog, too. I’ll try to get others to register for her specific marrow. There’s got to be a match out there somewhere, right?”

  “It might be me,” says Mitsy, “I don’t know. Or Aaron or Hannah, although it’s unlikely. But that’s it. That’s our entire family.”

  Even though Pandora has a sinking feeling, she says, “See her in the light, Mitsy. See your daughter filled with light. Always! Do not let your thoughts deteriorate into fear and anxiety. If you do, your daughter will absorb that. She needs light, not fear.”

  Mitsy calms down. “I’ll try.”

  “You do your daughter a disservice when you fall apart.”

  “Ok,” she whimpers.

  “And take care of the dog. Dogs tend to empath the sickness of those they love. You cannot afford to lose that dog.”

  “Oh. Well, Godiva seems fine. I just saw her.”

  “You can’t afford to stumble around in the dark,” Pandora says. “Do you hear me? Don’t drop your guard for a second. Think and act with a confidence you don’t feel.”

  Pretend, Pandora thinks. Like me. I’m pretending, too.

  “Okay,” Mitsy snivels.

  “Try it out on me,” Pandora says. “Right now. Speak to me with confidence.”

  After a moment of silence, Mitsy says, “Stop telling me what to do, damn it!”

  This takes the air right out of Pandora’s lungs. She’s never heard Mitsy exercise any authority whatsoever in any form. At least not to her.