“How was that?” Mitsy says tentatively.
“That was…breathtaking,” says Pandora. “All right then. Proceed. But use your authority for purpose, Mitsy. To guide people. Not to bully them.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Mitsy commands.
“Enough.”
“Sorry,” Mitsy says.
Pandora rolls her eyes and ends the call. Hoping her efforts aren’t hopeless is the best she can do at this point. After all, she didn’t climb on board this sinking vessel for Mitsy’s sake; she did it for Sydney’s. As long as the girl’s alive, there’s hope.
She crushes her cigarette in the ashtray slowly. So much to think about. She turns to her left to see if the plasma cloud has returned, but it hasn’t. She glances back at the painting which has faded again, so she knows the life force was temporary, not fully received or sustainable. Of course it wasn’t. It was a message.
Message received.
She folds her arms. But if the geomagnetic storm comes and goes randomly, how can she rely on it to heal anybody? And if it only comes and goes on Heavenly Peak, how will she conduct it all the way to Virginia? Can she do it remotely? Is her astral body strong enough? Probably not, she thinks. How could it be? She’s been taking such terrible care of herself. In truth, she doesn’t know what will happen to her own life force if she even tries to transfer the zeon charge all the way to Virginia.
A lump forms in her throat and she can barely swallow. It’s a risky plan filled with literal astronomical variables. For instance, if the aurora comes and goes, is there a way to harvest and store the zeon? And if so, how much should she harvest? Is it possible to take too much? Too little? And what about isolating it from the other colors in the first place? And conducting it all the way across the country to Sydney? Her head spins.
She walks purposefully to her computer, sits down, and searches “auroras”. Reads madly about the massive magnetics in the solar superstorms and how coronal mass ejections (CME’s) can send pulses of magnetized plasma barreling into space and from there, right into Earth’s orbit. How the magnetized plasma wreaks havoc on the electrical grid. How these storms are capable of disabling satellites and GPS’s with ejections that have the potential to travel over 1,800 miles per second. This set of facts stops her cold. Is she capable of surviving such an experience? Is she insane?
She reads further that geomagnetic storms are not exclusive to Alaska, Scandinavia, and northern regions, as she had thought. They have in fact been spotted as far south as Hawaii, Mexico and Cuba. What?! And these events have been associated with the sunspot cycle, it says, so they are becoming easier to predict. That they are even slightly predictable by scientific measures gives her hope. Though science is not the likely means by which she will know.
She will just know.
She sits back on her desk chair, thinking about how far south Cuba is from Virginia. Pretty far. So an aurora of this magnitude is scientifically possible in Virginia. It’s not unprecedented. But would she have to go there? She hates flying. Well, not astral flying, but plane travel. And could there be a geomagnetic storm approaching that area now? Is that what this is all about? Is Anjah behind this with all his pushing and prodding? She doesn’t know. To be truthful, she’s never fully trusted him. Just something about him that’s so…manipulative. He’s a high intelligence without doubt, but their relationship is so combative. He thinks he owns her! She will not be owned.
She realizes that she’s probably been given all the information she needs—from Anjah or elsewhere. She realizes that it resides somewhere accessible to her, though she has not yet attempted to retrieve it or process it. But processing everything with her physical brain isn’t really the point. After all, most of the data derives from mystical channels. She gets exactly what she needs when she needs it, and only then. Which is not to say what she does is easy; it isn’t. Getting exactly what she needs when she needs it requires quantum faith on the deepest spiritual level.
And right now, that’s exactly what she lacks.
Sydney
Syd shakes out a powerful dream-like experience that returned her to Bangkok, a place where she was once strong. She tries to remember how long ago that was. Probably months if she remembers correctly. It was even before Aunt Hannah came to Connecticut, so—early winter. But this time The Taker came closer, his pulsating purple halo brighter and more threatening. At least it seemed that way. This time when she tried to dart at the horizon to take back the dawn’s first light, the living light, he completely blocked her path. This was unprecedented.
Maybe he was more aggressive because the light was different this time. It really was. Not just the quality of light, but the colors themselves. Colors on fire. Colors on steroids. Colors on crack. Colors she craved like love or drugs or life itself. She was pushed to risk her life to suck the colors into her bloodstream, as if they possessed the cure for everything. Not just the cure for disease but the cure for evil and hate and mortality itself.
But anyway, she failed. Not because she didn’t try, but because she couldn’t get to the light without going through The Taker. He wasn’t saying she couldn’t have it exactly; just that she had to pass through him to get it. At least that was her understanding. Even now she thinks no fucking way. She will not negotiate with a terrorist. Something inside her just knows not to sell her soul, which is exactly what The Taker wants. Her soul. At least she thinks he does.
But there are consequences for refusing him. In rejecting The Taker’s demands, she lost her light. Or more clearly, she was unable to take back the light she’d already lost. She can’t live without it; no one can. It’s her vitality, her life force. How can she compromise that? Compromising that would be like negotiating for her breath or her heartbeat. She’s not giving up exactly. But she does feel as if her power is breaking down. And that’s an unsustainable condition.
Oh my God.
A single tear drains down the left side of her face, and she feels someone wipe it. The physical contact startles her, and she opens her eyes. There stands…Mom? What?!
“Mom,” she says groggily. “Why are you here? Aren’t I in Virginia?”
“Yes, Sydney, you are,” says her mother with forced brightness. “We’re all here now.”
Syd frowns. “What! Why?”
“Well,” she says uncertainly, “to support you, of course.”
Just by the way her mother says this Syd knows the panic switch in her mother’s brain is on full tilt. She squints, focusing more closely on her mother and says, “You look awful. Are you okay?”
Her mother’s eyes widen freakishly, her face frozen with incapacitation. Syd knows what she’s done. Timing is everything. Her mother has looked like shit for years. It’s probably the reason her father’s gone half the time. Someone’s got to get through to this woman. Wake up and get over yourself, Mom! You’re not the one who’s sick! It might as well be Syd who delivers the news.
“Well, I haven’t gotten much sleep lately,” her mother snaps.
“Yeah, but…” Syd’s head feels heavy, like it’s filled with water. “Still. You look…old. Sorry.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not trying to be mean, Mom. Just, you know…your overall dreariness has an effect on people.”
“I see. Like…”
“Like me,” Syd says. “The way you don’t take care of yourself makes me feel responsible. Like I might be too much trouble. Like I might be…I don’t know…dying.”
Her mother gasps.
“Am I?” This is a real question as far as Syd is concerned. She’s not putting anybody on. Why is her mother here?!
Before her mother can answer, a rush of new energy enters the room. Before Syd can see who it is, she hears, “How’s my girl?” in an unmistakable, deep-throated voice.
“Dad?!” she says, smiling. She tries to raise her head.
He squeezes her toe. “Yes, indeed,” he says then hands a cup of something or other to her mother. “You f
eeling okay, Syd?” He walks around front and kisses her on the forehead.
Syd lays her head back on the pillow. “Much better since I got all those bags of blood and FFP.”
“What’s FFP?” says another male voice, also familiar.
Syd looks around, trying to focus. Out of the shadows and behind the curtain enters Oh my God! Dane? No! Maybe she’s not dying. Maybe she’s already dead. What are these people doing in the same room? All at once she feels a crush of despair. “Why are you here?” she groans.
“See, everybody?” says Dane. “I told you this wasn’t the most ingenious idea. I should’ve gone home.”
“Right about that,” says Syd weakly. “What the hell?”
At that, her mother stands and prods her father by the elbow. “Let’s leave the young ones alone for a few minutes,” she says.
“Let’s not and say we did,” says Syd. “Where’s Aunt Hannah anyway? Leave me with her.”
“Hannah and Jonah will be by later,” says her father. “Your mother and I will be in the parents’ lounge if you need us.”
When they’re gone, Syd says, “Why are you here, Dane? Haven’t you done enough damage?” She turns her head away from him. “Not that I care,” she adds.
He pulls a folding chair from under the window ledge and sets it up closer to her bed. “Your mom needed someone to drive her down,” he says. “I came to the house to see you and she begged. I couldn’t refuse.”
“I thought you were going to Pennsylvania.”
“I decided not to. I decided to try to mend things with you instead.”
She struggles to sit, and he jumps up to help, holding her back forward while he rearranges pillows for support.
“You can adjust the bed from under there,” she says, pointing down. “Just pull the lever. Duh.”
He looks down, puzzled, then jerks the lever so hard she’s thrust forward like a slingshot. Stunned, he stands with one hand over his mouth saying, “Oh my God, Syd, are you okay?”
“Yes, asshole, I’m okay,” she says, though a part of her gets off on the slapstick. She accidentally releases a giggle.
“Ha ha, good,” he says, his handsome chiseled, dark-eyed face all lit-up, grinning.
Syd wants to die laughing at the comedy of it, her in a hospital bed with an IV stuck in her arm catapulted forward by an apologetic traitor. But she’ll be damned if she lets him know how hilarious she thinks it is in theory. She’s still in the mode of wanting him to jump out a window, and since they’re on the sixth floor, this window would be as good as any. “I wouldn’t be patting myself on the back if I were you,” she says.
“I know we’re not in the best place right now,” he says, “but I hope you let me explain.”
“You came down with my mother?” she says, reaching for the cup of water on the tray table. “You drove seven hours down here with my mother!” She takes a sip. “Are you insane?”
“I am now,” he says, his eyebrows raised hopefully.
Syd bites her bottom lip to stop from chuckling. After all, she hasn’t spent seven hours with her own mother in the last seven weeks. He might be a traitor, but he’s a little bit of a hero for accomplishing that feat. “Who drove?” she says.
“I did. And for the record, it took more like ten hours.”
“You’d get more points if you put up with her driving,” she says. “Her foot hovers over the brake the entire time. We stop/start the whole way until one of us hurls. Usually it’s me, with the chemo and all.”
All of a sudden she realizes her cap isn’t on, and he’s never seen her bald. She throws her left hand over her head, blushing. “Get me that cap,” she demands, pointing with her chin to the window sill.
He retrieves it. “Allow me,” he says, sliding the red knit cap gently over her head. He sits down again. “You’re beautiful without it, though, Syd.” He nods reassuringly. “Seriously.”
“Oh really,” she says. “Is that why you were screwing around with Zelda? Because I’m so beautiful?”
He lowers his chin, staring down. He places his heavy hand on her left leg which is tucked under the thin hospital blanket. She feels his warmth, but shivers from the unexpected touch.
“I wasn’t screwing around with her, Syd,” he says.
“What would you call it? Not that I care.”
“We were crawling around looking for the guitar pick I dropped. It was my last one.”
“Oh really? You lost your guitar pick in the storage room?” She rolls her eyes. “I don’t even know why you’re bothering to lie. I couldn’t care less.”
“I’m not lying,” he says. “I was playing in the back since that’s the only room with a window. I was composing a new song and I wanted to look out at the woods with those frilly trees, you know?” He moves his fingers all around, dancing. “With all the fresh snow weighing the branches down like heavy karma, right? Karma so frozen you don’t even know it’s there, never mind get rid of it. But how great you feel when it’s lifted.” He smiles. “You know?”
Syd sighs. “Did you tell this to Z? Is that why she got all romantic? And anyway, who cares? I wasn’t like, I don’t know. Forget it.”
“I don’t talk to Zelda like that because she doesn’t get it.”
“You got that right,” says Syd.
“Look,” he says, “we were crawling around and she kissed me kind of spontaneously. It was just the moment, that’s all.” He shrugs, “I kissed her back because, why not? I don’t have a girlfriend, and honestly, I didn’t really know you were available.”
She lifts her left arm, IV tubes and all. “Yeah, right. I’m not available.”
“No, not that. I mean, I know you’re ahead of your age, but you’re a couple years younger. I don’t know. It seems like a lot. Like whatever might happen isn’t going to happen yet.” He flashes a grin.
She turns her head. This guy knows how to climb out of a ditch. “Z’s only a year older.” After a long silence, she says, “I don’t care if you go out with Z as long as you didn’t pick her because you think I’m a slug.” She blinks back a threatening tear. “A slug with a…whatever.”
“You’re not a slug,” he says. “And anyway, I’m not sure I’m going out with Z. She feels as lousy as I do about you walking in on that. She wouldn’t hurt you for the world.”
Syd frowns. “Is she here, too?”
“No. Just me and your mom and dad and aunt and uncle. Like I said, I drove your mom down here.” He leans forward, widening his eyes. “In a fucking apocalyptic snow storm!”
“Ha ha ha!” She can’t help herself. It’s quite the image.
“And that’s not all,” he says. “She forgot her wallet, so I had to put us both up in one room of a sleazebag motel when the sleet got so bad they closed down the highway!”
“Oh my God! No!”
“And there was a fucking leak in the ceiling between our beds! Drip drip drip all night long!” His fingers trickle down like raindrops.
Syd is laughing so hard now, her stomach aches. “You’re killing me!” she squeals.
“Oh yeah!” he blurts, tears of hilarity coursing down his cheeks. He raises his arm. “So help me God!”
She can barely get it out—“You…stayed…in a motel room with my…mother?!” She slaps the side of the bed so hard the IV pops out and the whole pile of attached wires start going ‘beep beep beep’.
A nurse walks in briskly. “What’s going on?” she says as smoothly as she can. “Something going on in here?”
The nurse is followed by her mother who’s followed by her father. “What’s happening?” says her mother frantically. “Are you okay, Sydney? Is everything okay? Why are you crying? What’s all this beeping? Did something happen?”
Dane stands and holds the chair out for her mother.
“Dane?” she says anxiously. “What’s going on here?”
“Just…I don’t know…” he’s still laughing too hard to answer. “Sor...ry,” he manages, but he can ba
rely come up for air, which is contagious to Syd, who’s now got the hiccups.
“Well, it looks as if you two have made up, anyway,” says her father.
“I don’t know about that,” says Syd. Just the idea of Dane in a motel room with her mother makes her burst out laughing again punctuated with a long stream of hiccups which does Dane completely in. He laughs long and high like a girl, which kills Syd all over again, so this might never end.
Luckily there’s a rap on the door frame and Hannah strides in like a runway model in all her high-fashion auburn-haired glory. Jonah is in tow, the perfect masculine complement to all her girliness. The focus thankfully shifts.
“Hey cookie!” Hannah says brightly then nods to Dane. “How nice of you to drive my sister down here! Wow!” She raises her eyebrows. “Yikes!”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Hannah?” snaps her mother. “Yikes? Really?”
Her father places his hands on her mom’s shoulders to calm her down, but she shrugs them off.
Dane tries hard to force a lid on all the uncontained residual comedy. He doesn’t dare look at Syd and vice versa.
The nurse finishes the IV and assists Syd as she tries to sit back up. “Don’t overdo it,” says the nurse firmly.
Syd looks from guest to guest and says, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure I’m not dying?”
Her father frowns. She tries to read his expression to figure out if she has half a chance at survival.
“Absolutely not,” he says. “No. Not at all. We just came to support you.”
“And get tested,” says her mother with obvious effort.
“Tested?” says Syd. “For what?”
Her mother looks hysterically at her father, who clears his throat. “You’ll be getting a bone marrow transplant, Syd,” he says evenly.
Syd freezes. “I will?”
“Dr. Blanca will be by shortly to explain the technicalities, but the transplant is the best treatment…the best cure for you.” He glances down. “A transplant will cut the whole process short, if I understand her correctly. Cut out years of chemo.”
The Anesthesia Game Page 19
