The Anesthesia Game

by Rea Nolan Martin

  “Chemo that doesn’t work, you mean,” says Syd.

  Dane moves toward her and picks up her hand.

  At the base of her bed, her father clutches her blanketed toes. “It could take a bit of time, though. She said that uh, well…at least so far… none of us is a match.”

  “Aaron,” her mother says, “is it really necessary to divulge every little step along…”

  “Yes,” he says, staring her down. “She deserves the truth.” He looks at Syd. “But the doctors are hopeful they’ll find a match soon. No one’s giving up. Not even close.”

  Silence descends on the room with a black cape and a scythe. Syd is breathless. Giving up? Since when was that even a suggestion? Nobody talks until finally Syd says, “How long do I have? You know, before…you know.” Each word weighs a metric ton.

  Her mother gasps again and darts out of the room. When no one attends to her histrionics, Dane excuses himself and follows her.

  “Oh, they have time to find a donor, don’t you worry,” says her father on a fake high note. His voice cracks.

  There’s a rap on the wall and Dr. Blanca peeks around the curtain, sort of smiling. Syd has a sinking feeling.

  “How are you doing?” she asks Syd. “Your color has definitely improved.”

  Dr. Blanca glimpses her chart. She pushes her glasses on her nose a couple times, stalling. Or maybe that’s just Syd’s psychic antennae picking up static. She hopes she’s wrong. In her experience people never stall for good reasons.

  “So…let me explain what’s next,” she says, and dives headfirst into an explanation of the whole transplant procedure—or BMT as she calls it—the crippling chemo prep beforehand and the long quarantine after. “We have every reason to believe you’ll do well with this, Sydney.”

  Syd shrugs. What can she say? Nothing.

  Dr. Blanca checks the chart. “We’ve done as much as we can in-patient until we get a match. At that point, there’ll be some serious preparation, as I said. But for now, I think it would be an excellent idea for you to take a break from the hospital, what do you think?” She smiles. “For a few days anyway.”

  Syd nods. “Yeah, get me out of here. But where?”

  Her father says, “Wherever you want, honey. Wherever you feel most comfortable. Here or back home.”

  “Here,” she says.

  Her father rubs his chin stubble. “No need to be hasty, Syd. Don’t you want to think about it?” He nods side to side. “Take the evening and let us …”

  “I’ve thought about it a million times already,” she says. “Every time I see myself whole I see myself at the farm.”

  He rubs his hands together nervously. “Ok. Very well then. We’ll all settle in and wait for the donor.”

  “All?” says Syd. Seriously? All of you?!

  “Where else would we go?” he says in a raspy exhausted voice.

  Syd shrugs. “Work? Remember that?” She’s testing him, but he doesn’t know it. If Dad doesn’t go to work then Syd’s in worse shape than anyone’s letting on.

  “Well, I’ll eventually go.” He smiles. “But not…just yet.”

  “Okay then,” says Dr. Blanca. “We’ll release you tomorrow as long as your numbers are reasonable. Sometime late morning, I’d say. We’ve got some new meds which may make you tired and mildly nauseous.”

  Syd shrugs. “What else is new?”

  Dr. Blanca and her father file out; Jonah stands at a distance; Hannah sits on the folding chair on the side without the IV.

  “It’ll be okay,” Hannah says softly. “I promise.” She takes Syd’s limp hand tenderly, lifts it to her lips and kisses it.

  Syd watches Jonah watching Hannah, thinking Hannah doesn’t even know he’s there. Is he in or is he out? Syd wonders. She just hopes he leaves Hannah alone while Syd’s at the house. She wants the independent Hannah all to herself, not the one all worried about where she stands with Jonah. As if sensing this, he turns and leaves.

  With all the comings and goings, Syd is suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. She can’t absorb it all. First The Taker, and now all this…medical mystery and human drama. How much more can she take?

  Hannah strokes Syd’s cheek as she falls asleep. “You okay, cookie?” she asks.

  Syd barely opens her heavy eyelids.

  “You’re gonna be okay,” Hannah says, nodding repeatedly. “You believe me, right? I wouldn’t lie to you, sugar.”

  With great effort, Syd says, “If only they hadn’t gone to Virginia…” She looks searchingly at Hannah, “Right? She wouldn’t have…”

  Hannah gulps. “She wouldn’t have had as much fun,” she interrupts. “If they hadn’t gone to Virginia, life would have dragged endlessly on.”

  With that, Syd retreats into her other world like an ocean wave returning to its source. She stands in the cave like a shadow, watching the ivy-covered cottage at a distance, illuminated by a full moon. The Taker’s purple halo hovers ominously, pulsing, waiting. Wild boar chase each other playfully in the lush vineyards.

  Without warning the cottage is engulfed in flames. Someone drags one of the women out by her feet. Another woman remains. Syd wants to help, but she can’t move. She watches as the walls of the cottage crumble, revealing the injured woman inside, her clothes and skin charred. The woman’s right arm reaches up in desperation towards a pair of eagles flying awkwardly into the night sky. A squirming creature of some kind is clutched between them in their claws.

  Everyone is screaming.

  Mitsy

  No sooner does Dane park the car on the side lot than Mitsy bolts out the passenger door, heading straight downhill for the paddock. “Don’t follow me,” she calls out behind her. “I need space.”

  And she does. Nothing she’s said or even thought has ever been truer. Right now her brain is a torture chamber of hideous thoughts and desperate fears. There’s no sorting through them; they’re radioactive. No matter how much Dane tries to comfort her—why Dane? Why not Aaron!—she can’t calm down. If Pandora were here, she’d order Mitsy to march directly upstairs and meditate. Just breathe deeply! But Mitsy doesn’t feel like breathing deeply. What she feels like doing is visiting the horses. It’s been so long. Why has it been so long! The truth is Mitsy was meditating with horses long before she even knew what meditation was.

  Head down, arms swinging, half-sliding down the gravel culvert in her haste, she arrives at the fence where she reaches out for the filly, Ireland. “Come to me,” she begs. Show me the way out of this hell! The filly neighs and bucks playfully under the careful watch of her mother, Jolie.

  In spite of the usual ravages of recent motherhood, Jolie is a splendid beast—a handsome chestnut racer with a white star on her forehead and chrome on all four legs. As much as Hannah complains to Mitsy about the extravagant expense and tedious labor of maintaining the ancestral estate, she knows what she’s doing with horses. At least she can pick a good one, Mitsy thinks, and whoever thought that would happen? Unlike Mitsy, Hannah never even rode as a child. She never wanted to. She barely rides now.

  The other broodmare, Daizee, peeks out plaintively from the opposite side of the barn as if to say, What about me? Mitsy wanders down to pet her. Hannah keeps them separated because the new foal is too rambunctious, Jolie too protective. Like Mitsy, Daizee needs space. Judging from her full belly, she’ll be foaling any day now. This gives Mitsy a thrill she hasn’t felt in some time. She hasn’t been present for a foaling in decades. How she loved it once! All that new life just standing up and walking around—practically born upright and mobile. Miraculous. Life!

  She strokes Daizee’s pale gray muzzle. “Good girl,” she says soothingly. “Good mama.”

  The words sound so foreign. When was the last time anyone spoke them to her? “Good girl, Mitsy. Good mama. Difficult job well done!” The answer is never. No one has ever told her that. If someone had, maybe she could have gone the distance instead of giving up and falling completely apart.

  She w
anders back to the paddock and leans against the fence, staring out at the familiar, inspiring scenery. Soon it will be a riot of honeysuckle, magnolia, forsythia, wisteria and wild dogwood. Standing here in the dirt and muck like this, she admits to a measure of peace even in the midst of the emergency that has become her life. She wonders how she ever got so separated from the earth. From the dirt! She reaches down and feels it beneath her fingers. Was it Aaron? Can she blame him and his sanitized, urban ways? His corporate mentality? Still, she could have had horses in Connecticut if she’d wanted them. He would not have denied her that. Why didn’t she want them?

  Conversely, she wonders how Hannah ever got stuck with the farm. Not that her sister loathes it; she doesn’t. In some ways it grounds her. Still, Hannah was much more suited for the refined, extravagant life Mitsy pretends to lead than she was ever suited for mucky barn stalls, laborious hay fields, and lactating mares. Are they leading each other’s lives?

  Mitsy remembers meeting Aaron when the Loudoun Hunt chased through their farm, as they did every Sunday in autumn. Mitsy’s and Hannah’s dad, Jock, had been the Hunt Master years before, and he’d granted permission for the Hunt to pass through their property in perpetuity. It was always a thrill to see them in their crisp scarlet coats, black helmets, tan breeches, and high black leather boots as they galloped through the fields. Jock installed jumping coupes down the hill to advance the challenge. Aaron was an experienced equestrian who was equal to the task. Aaron’s father, a famous trial lawyer from D.C., was grooming him to join the prestigious hunt, though it never actually happened. Instead, an impossibly lucrative job offer seduced him to Wall Street. Life took over and he never really rode again.

  On that particular Sunday nearly thirty years ago, Mitsy was brushing the stallion, Infidel, who’d been reserved for Aaron. She was fit and athletic then, a golden-tanned, long-legged country girl with her own mane of sandy, sun-drenched hair and impressive riding skills. She belonged on a horse farm. Why did she allow herself to turn her life over to Aaron, anyway? What was she thinking! It was not what she’d imagined for herself. No matter how hard she tried, she never got the hang of corporate life. She sees now that she lost her power when she stopped doing the thing she loved. When she lost her power, her self-respect spiraled, as often happens to frauds.

  “Hey,” she hears behind her.

  She jumps. Shit! She told Dane not to follow her down. But when she turns, she sees Aaron instead. She didn’t even recognize his voice. “Speak of the devil,” she says.

  He sidles up against the fence a few feet to her right. “Is that what I am now?” he says. “The devil?”

  Mitsy purses her mouth. “Just reminiscing,” she says.

  He places his foot firmly against the bottom board of the fence and stares out at the rolling hills. Sighing deeply, he says, “Things are tough.”

  She nods.

  “We don’t know what’s going to happen here,” he says.

  She turns away. “Don’t say it.”

  “Not saying it won’t make it not happen.”

  She doesn’t speak. She won’t be consumed by the vortex of Aaron. Aaron in possession of all her power. Give me my power back!

  “I’m proud of you for driving down,” he says. “I know it wasn’t easy.” He waits for her to reply, but she doesn’t, so he says, “Great jeans. I haven’t seen you…”

  “They’re Hannah’s,” she says curtly then turns to face him. He’s still indecently handsome, she thinks. She’s not equal to his physical presence or really anything about him. Was she ever? But back here on the farm, she at least sees who she was when they met and why he fell for her. Here on the farm, she understands the natural habitat of her authority, where it dwells, as it always has, awaiting her return. Reflected in the deep, liquid eyes of the horses and the rich, fertile soil underfoot, she has hope that she may one day recover herself. This prospect makes her bolder.

  “What’s happened to us?” she asks. “Where did ‘we’ go?”

  He blinks. “I don’t know. We’re disappearing.”

  “Not you,” she says. “You’re fine. I’m the one who’s melting away.”

  “Well, we can’t afford that, can we?” he says. “Right now neither one of us can melt away. Our daughter needs us both.”

  “Easier said than done.” After a pause, she shocks herself by saying, “Where will you stay while you’re here?”

  He closes his eyes; opens them slowly. “At the Inn,” he nearly whispers.

  She nods. He’s staying at the Inn. Probably already registered. Of course she knew it was over before she asked, or she wouldn’t have asked. Aaron isn’t staying with her at the farm because, let’s face it, they’ve been a cardboard couple for years. At least now they’re acknowledging it. This must be progress of some bizarre sort. She feels oddly calm, like she’s locked herself in a vault to open at a safer time.

  “Syd will know,” she says. “She’ll wonder. Do we really want to make this point in front of her right now? And everybody else?”

  “Just tell her it’s a hen party,” he says. “Let all you women bond. Jonah won’t be there either, not sure about Dane, but I can put him up in the Inn if he doesn’t go home. So in a way…”

  “Please,” she says. “Do me the favor of not manipulating this into something good and worthy.”

  He nods, pausing. “At least now we can move forward,” he finally says, and gives her a friendly pat on the shoulder.

  “There’s someone else,” she says, “isn’t there? Don’t insult me by denying it.”

  He grimaces, considering whatever. “It’s not about that,” he says. “It’s about…”

  “I knew it.”

  He points his finger threateningly. “Intimacy is not about sex,” he says. “It’s about sharing and understanding. The only one you’ve ever shared anything with is that…whatever you call her…psychic.”

  “Who else was there to talk to?” she snaps. “Not you! Unless I was lucky enough to catch you on your way out the door.”

  “You leave it all up to me,” he says angrily. “All of it. Every single gruesome medical detail! Because of that woman you won’t let the doctors tell you anything significant. You don’t even know the full diagnosis, never mind prognosis! You call that a partner?” He leans in hard on the fence rail. “How is one person supposed to handle all that?”

  Mitsy would spit fire if she could. “One person? And who might that be? I was the one caring for her day in and day out. Cleaning up after …” Her whole body shakes. “Before Hannah came along, it was only me. Me! In the clinic…and the hospital. Excuse me if you had to hear a few medical terms from the doctors. Somebody had to hold onto…”

  “Onto what?” he says.

  “Onto hope,” she says. “Hope.”

  “Oh really? Because it felt a lot more like fear and anxiety mixed in with a good dose of despair.”

  A dog barks behind them and Ireland neighs. They both turn, only to see Hannah standing there with a slobbering, velvety brown Godiva on a rope.

  “Oh hey,” Aaron mutters.

  All Mitsy can think is—so now Hannah knows. She was certainly close enough to hear. But maybe she already knew, Mitsy thinks. Maybe that’s why she came up to Connecticut in the first place. Or maybe that’s why she left.

  “Hey y’all,” Hannah drawls, waving her hand coquettishly.

  Mitsy never acquired the coquette gene. It would have made life so much easier, she thinks. One flirty wink dissolves everything toxic right into thin air, or at least delays its impact. All the coquette genes went to Hannah. Hannah’s got more than she can use.

  “I can just…” Hannah points uphill at the house. “If you all are…”

  “No, that’s okay,” says Aaron. “We’re done.” He half-smiles at Hannah, ruffs up the top of Godiva’s head, and walks away with his hands in the pockets of his perfectly fitted navy cashmere pea-coat.

  After a moment, Mitsy says, “So. You heard?”<
br />
  “Yeah, sorry. Terrible timing.”

  “It’s over,” says Mitsy.

  “Over? No.” Hannah shakes her head. “It’s nothing we can’t fix,” she says brightly, her flirty auburn hair swinging forward as she bends.

  “I don’t even care,” says Mitsy. “Honestly. Fix what? It’s been over for a long time.”

  “But look at you!” says Hannah. She waves her hand up and down, “You’re a different girl down here. Hell, you look the part more than I do.”

  “So what? I don’t live here anymore.”

  Index finger to chin, Hannah analyzes the situation. “Let’s go take care of a few things,” she says.

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Your hair? Your nails? Your face? Your…”

  “Are you kidding me, Hannah Chandler?” Mitsy shrieks. “My hair?! My nails?! My damn face? Maybe you’re unaware that my entire life…my daughter is…”

  “All the more reason to pull yourself together, Mits. Don’t you think it would tickle Syd to see you looking chic for once? Don’t you think it would help with Aaron too? And now that you’ve lost weight…”

  “So you’re the reason Sydney said that,” Mitsy says with disgust.

  “Said what?”

  “That I look ‘awful’! That I look…‘old’.”

  Hannah grimaces. “Oh, wow. Sorry. But no, I’m not the reason for that. Syd’s on her own there. Definitely not a collaboration.” She pulls her pearl white cashmere sweater coat tightly around her waist and cinches the belt. “However it does prove my point.”

  Mitsy narrows her eyes. “Is that all you can think of in the midst of this crisis?”

  “What?”

  “Appearances!” Mitsy juts her chin forward for emphasis. “All you can think about is how I…look? Not how I feel? Is that how empty you are?”

  Hannah postures, hands on hips. “And your life is so full, right?” she says. “Sign me up for your very full and satisfying life led curled up in the dark cave of your total waste of a designer bedroom. Come on, sis. Looks may not be everything, but they do reflect self-image. And yours sucks.”