The Anesthesia Game

by Rea Nolan Martin

  “Are you feeling okay, Syd?” Hannah asks.

  Syd nods. “Just…tired.”

  “Seriously? That’s all?” Hannah says.

  Syd nods again. “Seriously.”

  “Sydney?” says her mom, looking kind of comical with a towel wrapped around her head like a turban, spikes of amethyst poking out. “Is that a tattoo?”

  “Um. Maybe.”

  “When did you get it?”

  Syd rolls on her side to reveal it fully—might as well get this over with. “It’s a knife,” she says. “A dagger, actually. I got it a year ago.”

  Her mother breathes heavily. “A year ago? What possessed you? Who did it?” She screws up her face. “A dagger?”

  “I got it from a cousin of Z’s who specializes in these things. He’s an artist, no biggy. He knew what he was doing.”

  “You could have gotten hepatitis, Sydney. Or AIDS! This is not a laughing matter.”

  “She got a dagger as a symbol of fighting back,” says Hannah. “So she can defend herself.”

  “So. You. Knew. About. It?” says her mom in controlled little syllables.

  “Aunt Hannah happened to see it one day at the wig shop,” Syd says as casually as she can. “When I was climbing up on the stool. She had nothing to do with it. She wasn’t even around when it happened.”

  Syd can see Hannah eyeballing Mom again with one of those sister-drop it!-signals. It takes a second, but it works, thank God. Mom settles into the bar chair Hannah dragged out from the kitchen. “I see,” is all she says.

  Hannah starts combing through her sister’s new reddish-purply brown hair, and Mom says, “I’m glad you’re fighting, Sydney, honestly. But please don’t get any other tattoos. Will you promise me that?”

  Syd sighs. “Yeah, I guess.” She blows air through her lips like a horse. “Although…”

  “Although nothing,” says Mom.

  Syd flaps her arms. “I did want some wings.”

  Now Hannah, standing behind Mom, sends the hairy eyeball straight to Syd to end the conversation. Her expression is so extreme it nearly sends Syd back to comedy purgatory where you can’t stop laughing even though a red hot creature with a pitchfork is warning you to stop. She has to turn toward the window to get a grip. If she returns Hannah’s screwy look, her mother will get even madder. She stares out the window to ground herself, but her focus is completely changed. She can’t believe what she’s looking at. “Oh my God,” she says! “Look! Eagles!” She climbs up on her knees and points.

  Perched in the pin oak, left of the barn at the level of the cupola, are two massive birds. “Are they eagles, Aunt Hannah? They are eagles, right?”

  Hannah rushes forward. “Where?”

  “Right there!” says Syd, pointing. “What time is it? Jonah wanted me to note the time.”

  “Two o’clock exactly,” says her mother. She slips off the bar stool and hurries to the window.

  “Eagles right on our property,” Hannah says, awestruck. “Jonah said he’s seen them, but I didn’t really believe him. I thought they were probably vultures.”

  “They’re really eagles though, right?” says Syd. Her eyes are a little blurry and she doesn’t want to mislead anyone. Plus her joints are starting to ache like crazy.

  “Without a doubt,” Hannah says. “Look at their white heads and tails. Those are bald eagles all right.” She looks at Syd meaningfully.

  “Eagles are protectors,” says Syd. “This is really good news.”

  “Doubly good,” says Hannah. “Right? You wanted wings…here they are!”

  Syd visualizes The Taker in her mind’s eye. She looks right at him while her super-loud inner voice screams, “Take that, sucker!” She screams it so loud in her head, she’s surprised Hannah and her mother don’t ask her who she’s screaming at.

  They all stare for a while, kneeling against the back of the couch, shoulder to shoulder, all in a row. On the left is Hannah, Mom in the middle, then Syd. All at once the eagles take flight across the field, their wings spread out in a straight line. It’s something to see. When they’re gone, her mom turns to Syd, and kisses her forehead. Syd doesn’t remember when her mother kissed her last. She doesn’t kiss her back; she’s too stunned.

  She settles back into the couch as they all resume positions. Things are changing, she thinks. Definitely changing. She feels it. If only her body didn’t feel like a pile of molten lead—like she’s being pulled straight down into the earth’s core—everything would be perfect. But Syd is used to feeling like shit. Soldier on! She can deal.

  Back at her station, Hannah strategically clips the sides and back of Mitsy’s hair, applies a marshmallow-sized dollop of fluffy white mousse, and starts the dryer. Syd hasn’t had hair in so long, she’s riveted. So this is how you comb it!

  Next Hannah blows Mom’s hair out with a small round brush, giving it some lift. As the hair dries, it looks more auburn than purple, which is good and bad. Good because her mother actually looks great; bad because it kills the hilarious comedy featuring her mother’s punk hair.

  “Wow, Mom, you look…a-ma-zing!” she says.

  Hannah steps back, evaluating. “Okay, good. Now for the makeup.” She runs upstairs and returns quick before Mom has a chance to locate a mirror.

  “I haven’t really agreed to the makeup, Hannah,” Mom says.

  “Yes you have,” lies Hannah.

  “You have, Mom,” Syd swears. “You’re so stoned you don’t even remember,” she adds with a giggle.

  Her mother doesn’t protest, so Hannah just continues. Syd lays her head against the back of the couch for a minute and must’ve dropped off to sleep, because when she wakes up, the vision of her anti-mother stands right in front of her. There is no way this is her mother. No way!

  “How do you like it, Sydney?” her mother asks, hands on hips. “Are you satisfied?”

  Her hair is short, edgy with a light to medium auburn color. Purplish highlights, but nothing you’d be tempted to mock, even on a woman that old. The shape and color of the clipped boyish hairdo suit her angular face, emphasizing her wide-set, blue-gray eyes. Or maybe that’s the awesome makeup Aunt Hannah used—still natural, but like someone took an airbrush to her spotty skin and dull features.

  “You look like a model,” says Syd, awestruck. She sits up and rubs her eyes. Is this for real? For the first time in Syd’s life she sees the resemblance between her mother and Godmother.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” says her mother, flicking her hand.

  It’s not just the hair and face. She’s wearing a pair of Hannah’s slim, black leather pants, a fitted gray sweater, and a silver chain necklace that falls almost to her waist. She dropped ten years at least. “No seriously, have you seen yourself, Mom?”

  Enter Hannah through the hallway rolling a full-length oak swivel mirror that she slides in front of Mitsy. “Ta da!” she says.

  Syd can see that her mother is completely overwhelmed by her image. It takes her a minute. Her jaw hangs low while she stares, speechless.

  “Good job, right?” says Hannah, polishing her pretend medal of honor.

  “Mom, seriously, Dad would faint.”

  “This is not about your father,” says her mom, all tight-lipped.

  “Still,” says Hannah. “Syd’s right. When was the last time you dressed up?”

  “I don’t like where this conversation is going,” says her mom.

  Hannah holds up her hands in surrender. “Okay. You’re right. This is about you.”

  “It’s about me,” says Mom, still stunned. “Not Aaron.” She looks at Hannah. “Isn’t it?”

  Hannah nods. “It’s about you taking back your life, Mits.”

  Her mom looks back in the mirror and then to Hannah and Syd. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to take back my life.”

  After she catches her breath, Syd says, “I was the one who took your life away, right Mom? I did that.”

  Her mother’s fr
eshly painted pink lips form a shiny O. Her hands rush to cover her mouth as if it might betray her. Finally she says, “Of course not.”

  Syd nestles her brittle bones into the corner. “Are you sure? Because I know I’m a lot of work.”

  “It was me, Sydney,” she says. “Not you.”

  “I,” says Hannah.

  Her mother shoots Hannah a dirty look. “Touché,” she says then turns back to Syd. “I lost my life all by myself without any help from you, Sydney. Long before you came on the scene, I tried to live a life I had no business living.” She walks to the couch and embraces Syd. “I’m going to take better care of you, I promise.”

  “Just take better care of yourself, Mom. Okay?” Syd has to suck back a whimper. Some days are just too much. She doesn’t want to ask where her mother thinks she belongs. She’s afraid of the answer.

  Her mom claps her hands and faces Hannah. “Where can I get a good horse around here?” she says.

  Hannah cocks her head in disbelief. “You mean…to ride?”

  Mitsy nods slowly, smiling.

  “Mits, you’ve been lying around in bed for months. You’re completely out of shape.”

  “Plus you might still be stoned,” says Syd.

  “You refuse to drive a car!” Hannah says. “How will you possibly manage…”

  “I’m fine,” interrupts her mother. “I’ll take it slow. I just need to…ride.” She rubs her hands together anxiously. “I really, really need to ride. I need to… feel the wind.”

  Hannah considers this. “Okay, but I can’t hook you up until I talk to Jonah tomorrow. He’ll probably join you just to make sure you’re all right.”

  “You never forget how to ride a horse, Hannah. My muscles still hold the memory. It’s instinctual.”

  “Only if you have muscles to begin with,” says Hannah. “And you don’t.”

  Mom ignores her. “Where are the quarter horses,” she says, “and the thoroughbreds? Are they in the other barn?”

  Hannah nods, pointing out the window and waving down the hill. “Way down by Junior’s riding school,” she says. “He works them for me.”

  Mom just stands there pining for horses, of all things. Pining to ride horses in her leather pants and fitted sweater complete with designer hair and makeup, not to mention high-heel boots. This is like rubbing a bottle and having a genie produce a celebrity mother for you. Who is this? Syd’s never even heard her mother mention horses before. She can’t imagine her mother riding a bicycle, never mind a living, breathing animal. A fucking horse! Her mother hates animals! She didn’t even want Godiva! Plus she’s no athlete. The mother Syd knows is the opposite of everything she’s looking at right now.

  Arms folded, legs in a confident stance at the window, the woman pretending to be Syd’s mom surveys the fields. Her eyes shrink into slits like she’s trying to see something very small. She pokes her neck forward and asks Hannah for the binoculars.

  “Why?” says Hannah. “What do you see?”

  “It’s what I don’t see,” she says. “Daizee. She left the window.”

  They look at each other with expectation.

  “I’ll go down,” says Mom.

  “I want to go, too,” says Syd. But she’s not sure she could make it to the kitchen, never mind the paddock. Her body’s caving.

  Hannah must’ve noticed, because she tells Mom, “Let me get the laptop. Jonah hooked it up to a camera in the barn. You can go down while Syd and I watch from up here.” She checks her watch. “Doc’s due here shortly anyway.”

  Her mother points her hands in a prayer steeple. “Thank you, Hannah,” she says. “Thank you so much! Sydney, is that okay with you?”

  Syd smiles vaguely. She doesn’t want her mother to know she’s practically narcoleptic. She just nods.

  While Hannah’s getting the laptop, Mitsy spots the vet driving up in his truck. “The vet’s here!” she hollers up to Hannah. “I’m going down.” She looks at Syd. “Are you sure? Do you want me to stay?”

  Syd shakes her head. “Go lead your life, Mom. Seriously. I’ve never seen you so excited.”

  Her mom runs into the kitchen, through the mudroom, grabs whatever bulky jacket—probably Jonah’s, and charges down the hill like a high-heeled colt. “See you later, whoever you are,” Syd mutters to the window.

  Hannah returns with the laptop and sets it up on a tray table in front of her and Syd.

  “The vet is here,” Syd says woozily. Wow is she tired. Not just tired, but headachy and dizzy. “Did you hear Mom say…about the vet?”

  Hannah brings her head down to eye level with Syd. “Are you okay, cookie?”

  Leave it to Aunt Hannah to notice what her mother doesn’t. She shrugs. “Just really tired.”

  Hannah feels her forehead. “You’re hot,” she says.

  She runs into the kitchen and comes back with a thermometer, which she puts in Syd’s ear. When it beeps, she reads it and declares, “101.”

  “I just want to sleep,” says Syd.

  “They told us to bring you in if it got over 101,” says Hannah nervously.

  Syd slides down behind Hannah and rests her head on the cushion. “I have a headache,” she says.

  “I’m going to get you some water, Syd, and you have to drink it right down, okay? You might just be dehydrated. They told me that can raise your temp.”

  Syd nods in her half-sleep.

  The next thing she knows Hannah’s lifting her up to sip the water. She forces herself to drink it, which takes awhile. One thing she does not want to do is go back to the stupid hospital today or ever. She tries to pretend she has energy, but she doesn’t have the energy to pretend.

  Fifteen minutes later, when she’s finally finished the water, her mother reappears. “False alarm,” she says, then tunes into Syd and Hannah. “What’s going on here?”

  “She’s got a bit of a fever,” says Hannah. “101. I’ll take it again in fifteen minutes.”

  Mom eyeballs Hannah in some kind of evil code, and they disappear into the kitchen. To Syd it sounds like things might be getting a little testy; she’s not sure exactly why. Not that she can make out what they’re saying; she can’t. They’re talking in loud whispers. She just hopes the one who wins is the one who wants her to stay right where she is.

  In the middle of it, someone’s cell rings, and eventually her mother moves into the dining room with her phone. Syd can see her mother from the couch through the archway, but her mother’s not tuned in to Syd. “Hello,” she says.

  Next Hannah steps into the dining room, saying, “Mitsy, come on! You don’t need that gypsy anymore! Look at you! You’re a different woman for God’s sake. You have me now! And horses!”

  Her mother turns her back on Hannah and says into the phone something like, “What?! Are you sure? Oh my God! Oh my God!”

  To which Hannah remarks, “Oh my God, what?! Don’t believe a word of her bullshit, Mitsy, damn it!”

  Syd’s belly is a stew of anxiety just listening to all this tension crack like a giant rotten dinosaur egg over their perfect day. But she’s too tired to get overly involved, so she lies in wait.

  Her mother drops the phone and stares at Hannah, her features all exaggerated and bugged-out like she just reentered the atmosphere. What’s next? The Animal Uprising? Syd can’t take the pressure. Can’t they see she’s not feeling well?

  “What?” says Hannah. “Out with it. Not that’s it true. It isn’t.” She jabs the air with her finger right at her mother’s face. “Whatever that woman told you is a lie.”

  “I thought you were going to leave me alone about her,” says Mom.

  Hannah’s hip juts out. “I am…I was. I’m trying.”

  “She’s a…” says Mom, but Syd can’t make out the words.

  Then Hannah says something like, “blah blah blah….Dracula?”

  “No…” says her mother, but now she’s really whispering.

  Hannah leans in. “A…that’s impossible.”
/>   Things are blurry now, but Syd makes out her mom wandering into the living room like some kind of supermodel zombie, based on her wired expression. “Sydney,” she says, “you’ll never guess…”

  Syd tries to raise herself on the couch to hear the earth-shattering news, whatever it is, but before she can get all the way up, she collapses. The next thing she knows, she’s hovering over what looks like an ancient crime scene revealed by the light of a full harvest moon, staring down at a bloody child draped in a gray muslin robe in the center of a burning cottage. Behind her, vineyards roll for miles. In front of her, The Taker’s purple light vibrates in the shadows. All at once, two eagles dive down at a blinding speed, lifting the child. Clutching her between them with their talons and burdened by her weight, they fly low and unsteadily across the moonlit fields.

  Pandora

  Pandora’s head is a spinning globe. She’s trying to stop the rotation at an angle that gives her maximum visibility into the slip of the universe that contains the resources she needs to heal Sydney. At the same time she heals Sydney, she must somehow manage to hold the parallels open so she can slip back through them unharmed. So she can stay alive. To do this, she has to pry open time itself to create a portal into Sydney’s past—the lives she’s lived with Pandora and the lives she’s lived without her. She’s never done anything like this before; it’s a vexing task. But this is what she has to do to investigate the source of Syd’s disease—the moment it happened and why. The moment her energy crystallized into this exact disease at that exact time. If only her head were clear, but it isn’t, and it’s too late now. She has to work with what she’s got. What she’s got is a muddled brain, very little time, and the attention span of a gnat.

  The only thing Pandora knows for sure is that in spite of all the focus on stem cells and bone marrow, her physical DNA is not the real answer. It’s her energetic DNA that aligns with Syd’s in substance and sequence. No one has to tell her this; she knows it in the same way she knows the Earth spins on more than one axis. The way she knows the Earth, like the humans it hosts, is a living thing with subtle energetic bodies that live simultaneously on other planes in other dimensions. Wherever we go, the Earth in one of its forms is our home.