She reaches up the birth canal, feeling around. “There it is,” she says. “Right….there.” She catches her breath. “One of the legs is caught in the pelvis. They call it an elbow lock. I’ve never released one, but I’ve watched Doc do it.
“Come on, Daiz,” she says. “Give us one more contraction. Oh my God, Daiz, come on…”
“Come on…” begs Mitsy. “Please! Don’t give up, Daizee!”
Just as the mare delivers another weak contraction, the truck bearing Jonah and the vet screeches onto the gravel. Jonah leaps out, followed by Doc, running. The sky has lightened a shade from coal black to steel gray. They leave the engine running, headlights streaming into the barn.
“Damn computer went down!” Jonah says breathlessly. His long legs carry him there in a few strides. “Damn technical piece of crap blanked out about an hour ago. I thought Daizee was sleeping.”
“Same with ours,” says Mitsy. “Everything in the house is on the blink.”
“Didn’t the generator go on?” he asks.
“Off and on,” she says. “But I think there’s a problem with the generator, too.”
“There it is,” says Hannah. “I can feel it—a hoof.”
“Holy crap, Hannah,” he says when he realizes she’s the one tending to Daizee.
Secretly pleased, Hannah knows she couldn’t have planned it better. Not that she planned it at all; she didn’t. Jonah’s never seen this side of her—the roll-up-the-sleeves farm girl side. No one has, including Hannah.
Doc Benton pulls on a pair of gloves and gently moves Hannah aside. They watch, riveted, as he tugs gently on the one free leg, then reaches up, grimacing, grunting. “There we go,” he says.
Daizee neighs soulfully.
“Sorry, girl,” he says. “Come on! Come on! There! Ooooo. Got it!”
“Oh thank God!” says Mitsy, trembling.
Slowly, he brings the left leg down, even with the right then grabs them both firmly in his big hands and tugs. The long spindly legs appear followed by the white muzzle; the forehead; the wet, flattened ears. They hold their breath. The foal opens its eyes and blinks.
Hannah gasps, grabbing Mitsy as they both nearly collapse onto the hay in exhaustion and excitement. “He’s okay,” says Mitsy, crying. “Oh my God, he’s alive, Hannah. He’s alive.”
“Might be a she,” Hannah whimpers, nearly as emotional as Mitsy.
“Normally I would leave Daizee to do the rest,” says Doc. “But none of us knows how long she’s been at it or how much strength she has left.”
Jonah, kneeling at Daizee’s head, juts his chin at Hannah in a ‘best to leave’ gesture, which Hannah instantly decodes. It means they don’t know what’s next or how bad it will get. It means leave us alone so we can concentrate on the horses.
Hannah pulls off Mitsy’s gloves then her own and rotates Mitsy in the other direction. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s let them do their job.”
They walk into the alcove and scrub up at the sink in silence. As they enter the paddock, Hannah looks up. She is nearly speechless at what she sees, but manages to whisper, “Damn, look at that!” A pair of eagles circles the barn so close she can almost touch them.
“Oh my God,” says Mitsy, mesmerized. “That’s got to be a good sign, right? Eagles are auspicious? Aren’t they? I remember you saying that.”
Hannah nods, but really, what does she know about this day? Its secrets are locked in this vault of steel gray featuring atmospheric pressure so low it feels like an iron boot instead of sky.
They walk out of the paddock and up the hill for a better view. Hands on hips, Mitsy stares at the eagles, the barn and beyond it all into the fields. “The sky is a weird color,” she says.
Hannah nods. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say tornado.”
Mitsy turns to her. “When was the last time you had one here?”
“Decades at least. These foothills take the steam out of them; they love a flat plane.”
Mitsy smiles. “You know more about nature than you admit to.”
Hannah shrugs. “More than I want to, maybe.”
“I don’t remember any tornadoes when we were kids,” Mitsy says. “But everything’s changing.” She shakes her head plaintively. “Everything.”
Hannah doesn’t know what to say. It’s true. Everything’s up in the air and threatening to knock them out. She doesn’t want to bring up more than they can chew in a simple conversation. She finally understands why Mitsy never wanted to talk about her life once Syd got sick. What was there to say that wouldn’t explode in her throat?
Suddenly, Mitsy’s face lights up. “But look at what we did in there!” she says with more life than Hannah ever remembers seeing in her sister. “And you!” Mitsy wraps her arms around Hannah and hugs tightly. “You stuck your hand up there! You just did it! You never even thought about it.” She shakes her head. “And I’ve never heard you talk like that before. Like a pro!”
Hannah places her fingers modestly over her mouth. “Shucks,” she says. “Well, that’s because I’ve never done it before. That was a first.” She widens her eyes playfully. “And hopefully a last.”
As they stand on the hill, hugging, swirls of wind kick up. In the adjacent field Jolie gallops in a tight circle that progressively widens until it includes the entire periphery of the field. Ireland clumsily follows.
“Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?” Mitsy says, tears spilling. “All this.” She waves her arm right to left just as a brilliant violet light shoots like a comet above the hills on the western horizon.
“Whoa!” says Hannah, rubbing her eyes. “Did you see that or am I hallucinating?”
A strange screech pierces the air behind them and they turn toward the house where the gypsy’s Persian cat, his back arched, screeches into the wind. He stares ahead, his strange eyes reflecting the filtered light like diamonds.
“What the hell?” says Hannah.
“Better get him inside,” says Mitsy. “How did he get out anyway?”
As they trudge up the slope to retrieve Guru, Godiva races out from the front hedge of juniper. She trips on a rock, is knocked off-kilter, and lands on her oversized head.
“What the…?” says Mitsy.
“Don’t know,” Hannah says, wide-eyed. She assesses their options. “I’ll get Godiva, but let’s leave the feline warlock out here for the eagles, shall we?”
Mitsy shakes her head in admonishment as they labor uphill. “You know we can’t do that,” she says.
“Unfortunately, eagles don’t eat cats, anyway,” says Hannah. She stops for a second to catch her breath. “My body feels like dead weight, like I’m dragging a freaking rhinoceros uphill with every step.” After a few shallow breaths, she says, “That was a hell of a workout down there.”
“I feel the same way,” says Mitsy. “Not to mention the hideous headache. Imagine how Daizee feels.”
Just then Guru charges downhill, still screeching, but now he’s also jumping up on his back feet and clawing the air.
Mitsy puts out her arm to stop Hannah. “He’s trying to tell us something,” she says. “I’m sure of it. Animals see things we don’t.”
“He’s casting a damn spell on us is what he’s doing,” says Hannah, though she stops obediently. That cat is as insane as its owner. He might claw their eyes out. Best to stay back.
Mitsy approaches the cat carefully, bends at the knees and circles it for capture. She closes in on him, but not so fast. The thing darts between her legs and out the other side. Hannah chases Godiva with as much luck. It’s not that the animals are moving so quickly, as much as the women’s reflexes are nonexistent. Hannah’s arms and legs feel like cast iron. She’s honest-to-God not even sure she can make it up the fifty feet to the house—with or without the dog. She stops at a cedar tree and leans against it for support.
“Hannah,” Mitsy says, turning. “Do you think…?
Bent over with hand-to-chest to support her heavy b
reathing, Hannah says, “What?”
“The magnetic storm…?”
As if in response, the raptors rise from the barn roof, wings flapping, then set off in synchronous flight into the vast abyss. In flight, their impressive wings spread straight out, nearly touching each other at the tips as they disappear into a vanishing point beyond the hills. The wind is so loud it’s impossible to hear anything more than ten feet away. Mitsy points down to the barn, where Jonah’s half-hanging out the window hollering something that might as well be Arabic for all the sense it makes. Hannah places her hand behind her ear to indicate they can’t hear him.
The next thing they know, he’s running up the hill, shouting, “It’s a boy, ladies! We’ve got ourselves a colt!”
Before they can even rejoice, the sky blackens. Guru’s fur stands practically on end as he continues to screech and claw the air. The lights in the house flicker then die. The generator kicks on like a rumble of thunder, then hiccups and chokes. All the way down the thirty-five miles of rolling hills, barns and homes turn to shadow in the inky sky.
“Oh my God, Hannah,” Mitsy says, gasping. “No!”
“What?”
“Sydney! The hospital!”
“I’m sure…”
“And what about Dane!” Mitsy says. “Where is he? He left hours ago to get Pandora!” She pulls her cell phone from her back pocket, fidgeting madly. “It’s dead,” she says.
Hannah stares at her, frowning.
“They couldn’t have called us if they wanted to,” Mitsy says. All at once her terror is backlit by bands of brilliant color the likes of which Hannah has never seen. “Is that…?”
“What?” Mitsy says, turning. She freezes. “Oh my God! What is that? It’s like…an aurora or something.”
Hannah’s skin and hair are on fire with static electricity. Anymore and she’ll ignite. Even her eyes…
Before she can finish that thought, Jonah appears out of the corner of her right eye, his slumped figure exiting the barn, head down. Hannah sees him, knows what it likely means. Not Daizee! No! Realizing that such an outcome would be more than Mitsy could bear right now (or maybe ever), Hannah places her hands on her sister’s shoulders and steers her toward the house.
“Come on,” she says reassuringly. “Let’s take a ride to the hospital. Everything’s all right, you’ll see.”
Not that she believes a word of it.
Sydney
Syd is a tight-rope walker straddling two worlds. One false move and it’s over. No one has to tell her this. She just knows.
The first world is a hospital room where the tiny flashing red lights that once endlessly beeped on her monitoring system, have been silenced, thank God. Next on the list of blessings, her IV’s have mercifully stopped pumping chartreuse poison into her fragile ecosystem. The chartreuse poison, of course, is intended to kill the putrid disease that also poisons her body. Which will kill her first?
It’s a race.
It all came to grief about an hour ago, but, really, who would know since the clocks have stopped. The world has come to a grinding halt. At least this world has—the first world. A code red hospital emergency was issued a while ago, and ever since, no one’s monitored her at all. It’s as if she isn’t there. Maybe she isn’t. She doesn’t even know what the emergency is, and to be honest, doesn’t care. All she knows is that whatever it is, it doesn’t involve her for a change. Except of course that it involves leaving her to her own devices.
The lack of medical attention is not what bothers her; that part is a godsend. What bothers her is the unbearable weight of her body. Ever since this morning, a mysterious force has been pulling her down, pulling her under. Right through the mattress springs it feels like, into the floor and straight to the earth’s core like a giant magnet. She feels like a chunk of embedded rock. Her head pounds steadily. Compression. She couldn’t talk if she wanted to. But all around her, children scream. Nurses walk purposefully up and down the halls in what, from Syd’s room at least, appear to be slow motion. Or maybe not, how would she know? She herself is in some kind of suspended animation. Only her eyes are alert, hypnotized as they are by tiny glimmering particles of what look like fairy dust floating around the room. Or maybe it’s heaven. Maybe heaven has come to get her.
Or maybe she’s already there.
On the other side is the second world, the world of nebula. It beckons like the finger of the gypsy queen. Come to me! Come! What choice does she have? She’s balancing on a string across the canyon of infinity. She collapses in and out of that world, entering it partially then returning to the hospital room with a start. Where am I? Who am I? These questions are real. As wary as she is of the nebulous nature of the second world, absence from the hospital room is a blessing. Her heavy body, pounding temples, and burning veins can’t follow where her broken body won’t go.
Maybe she’s had enough.
She tries to keep her eyes from closing in case her family returns, or Dane. Funny Dane! But she can’t do it; it’s impossible. Her leaden eyelids are doors to a secret passage. She enters. Behind her, they seal shut.
She travels back. Back. And further back. As far back as she can go.
More aware now in her second world than she ever was in the first, she drinks it in—the fullness of light, the vibrant, palpable energy, the infinite breadth of space. For some reason, Pandora stands beside her. But why? Doesn’t Pandora belong to the first world? So maybe Syd is delirious and the wizard seer is sitting beside her in the hospital room as she was this morning. Maybe it’s still morning. Maybe the second world is just a psychedelic version of the first.
Both of them suspended in the cavernous sky, Pandora grips Syd’s right hand while raising her own left arm into the wind, directing them to a new location. Seconds later they share the summit of a misty mountain in the midst of a majestic range. The Blue Ridge, maybe, or the Adirondacks. But no…these peaks are higher, more remote than any Syd has ever seen. All around them are snow-covered peaks surrounding a crystal blue glacial lake. At a distant point, bands of neon light stack on the horizon like a sandwich of melted crayons.
“Do you see that?” Pandora asks searchingly.
Syd nods. “The magnetosphere,” she says, surprising herself. The name just comes to her like that. She knows without asking. Barriers to language and physical motion removed, this world is an altogether easier place to be.
“Exactly,” says the gypsy, grinning. Her white hair whips around like a halo of laser lights; her topaz eyes sparkle like a cat’s.
This woman is somebody here, Syd thinks—a goddess, maybe, or an angel. Or maybe a witch, she doesn’t know. She’s being careful. The woman bends down, looks at Syd, and locks eyes. “We’re going to get you well,” she says pointedly. “Do you hear me? But you have to do everything I ask.”
Syd doesn’t nod. She doesn’t know what will be asked.
“We have to do two things here,” says the goddess witch. “First, I’m going to harvest the zeon blue from that storm.” She points her elegant ringed fingers at the horizon. At the base of the ribbons of color lies a far-off river of indescribable blue, highlighted with sheens of magenta and emerald iridescence.
“Why?” says Syd, concerned. It’s so far away!
“To heal you,” she says gently. “To heal you of the false disease that consumes you.”
“The false disease?”
“Yes,” she says. “Like a wounded animal, false disease burrows in at an opportune time. When the host is frail. Every living thing seeks immortality, even disease.”
“Disease is a living thing?” says Syd. “I thought it was dead. That’s what it feels like. Like I’m carrying something dead inside me.”
“No, dear,” she says kindly. “It’s a living thing whose life depends on consuming yours. Just as the disease seeks to kill you, we seek to kill the disease. It’s a competitive world.”
“Why?” says Syd.
A wild gust billows the gypsy’s r
ich, blousy silks and she raises her arms to honor its force. “Our enemies hone us,” she says. “That’s why. They build our strength. Without them, we would be weak. Untested.”
Her posture erect, she raises her chin nobly into the air. “But we have allowed this enemy enough life. You are sufficiently honed. It’s time to destroy it now and for all time.”
Syd’s eyes tear in the whipping wind. They are real tears. She touches her cheek to feel them. Wet! Everything in the second world is real in a different way than the first, dense and at the same time luminous and transparent. She’s surprised to feel anything as concrete as a tear or even an emotion.
“How?” she says into the wind. “How will we destroy it?” Her words echo. “destroy it? destroy it? destroy it.”
“Ah,” says Pandora. “It has taken me lifetimes to conjure that answer.” She looks at Syd earnestly. “Everything has a signal,” she says, “even disease. We simply locate the signal for your particular affliction…” She claps her hands firmly. “… and cancel it.”
The simplicity of this answer nearly knocks Syd off the mountain. Find the signal and cancel it. Of course! Can it really be that simple?
“Zeon holds the precise signal we need to cancel the opposing signal of your disease. Once we cancel it, we will open up the coordinates of time, you and I,” she says. “We’ll travel back to reclaim your original light. It’s the absence of that light that made you vulnerable in the first place.”
“No,” says Syd. “I didn’t give it up. It’s right here…” She pats her belly. But closing her eyes, she sees that the light is already dimmer than it was this morning.
The Anesthesia Game Page 29
