5.
As Duncan and Rachel entered the room, Juanita immediately jumped from her chair and assumed a rigid stance beside Amy’s bed.
Duncan countered with a brisk salute. “At ease.”
The moment she saw them, Amy immediately sensed the silence surrounding her parents. Both were pretending that nothing was wrong, of course, all for her benefit. But she could tell they’d been fighting. Something they did a lot more of these days. Judging by their faces—the wider the smile, the hairier the fight—it must have been one heck of a knock-down-drag-out, she decided.
Beneath the sheets, Amy rubbed the glass fragment between her right forefinger and thumb like a worry stone. Having to stay overnight in a hospital was probably her own fault, something she could have prevented if she weren’t so young, so…childish. And not knowing why she was here only deepened her guilt. She could recall the previous day’s events just fine, up until the time she was about to have her picture taken. Then she’d wakened in this room, in front of that window, all the in-between points seemingly erased.
Other than the dreams…
To hold on to those brief but distinct memories, afraid that they might somehow go away, too, she tightly squeezed the object.
Duncan bent over and kissed her forehead. “Ready to get out of here, pumpkin?”
She smelled Old Spice, her favorite. And booze. “Sure. But it’s been okay here,” she said, hoping to placate her father. He’d been worried sick, she was sure, as he didn’t usually start drinking until dinnertime.
“Amy?” Rachel said, as if she wasn’t quite sure. “How are you feeling, sweetheart?”
“Great,” she said.
Duncan took some bills out of his wallet, then handed them to Juanita. “Here. Chapel’s open. First floor. The vendor out front has some quake-damaged dashboard Madonnas from Argentina, fifty-percent off. Knock yourself out.”
Peeved, Rachel glanced sidelong at Duncan, then said to Juanita, “You look starved. Go on down to the cafeteria, hon. We’ll catch up shortly.”
“Thank you, Mrs. McNeil,” Juanita said, then mumbled something in Spanish as she pushed by Duncan. She waddled out the door, toward the elevators.
“Why do you and Juanita hate each other, Daddy?”
Jumping in, Rachel explained, “They don’t hate each other, sweetheart. Your father’s still bitter because I wouldn’t let him hire that cute little thang from Memphis.”
In a passable British accent, Duncan countered, “The young professional to whom your mother is referring was more than skilled for the job. It was her long legs, full lips, and firm bosom that disqualified her. As for Juanita, well—”
“They just sense in each other things that make them both…uncomfortable,” Rachel said.
Amy stared across at her toes as she wriggled them beneath the thin white sheets. “Like when I sense that you and Daddy have been fighting, even though you try to hide it?”
Rachel glanced at Duncan, abashed. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Is it that obvious?” Duncan said.
Amy nodded.
Rachel cleared her throat. “Well, I won, if that makes any difference.”
Leaning in, just inches from her ear now, Duncan said to Amy, “Smart girl. Very perceptive. Care to divulge any of your current feelings about Wall Street? Interactive Television? How many fathoms the Andria Gail is under?”
Amy giggled.
“Or maybe you’re just plain psychic,” he offered suspiciously, “like that Uri fellow we all saw on TV the other night.”
He took the fork from her breakfast tray, then slowly swung it back and forth in front of her face like a hypnotist’s pocket watch. “Now concentrate,” he said slowly, deliberately drawing out the words. “I want you to bend this with your miiiiiiind.”
She giggled even louder.
“I know you can doooooo it. Just pretend that your brain is a garbage dispooooosal.”
Amy sank into her pillow, laughing uproariously.
“Go on, girl!” he prodded.
“I can’t,” Amy said, tittering as if her ribs were being goosed. She sensed the gaps closing, felt her guilt subsiding, and knew she was just moments away from walking out of this small, sanitary room and back into LA’s hot autumn sunshine.
Rachel scooted a chair to the edge of the bed and sat. “How would you like to take a vacation, princess?”
Duncan’s eyebrows shot upward, but he remained silent.
“A vacation?” Amy said, delighted. The glass in her hand began to tingle and burn slightly.
“Yes, with your father,” she said, turning to Duncan’s waylaid expression. “To Massachusetts.”
“Lobster Country,” her father said, pronouncing it lobstah, reminding her of the way her mom sometimes sounded.
“Rock Bay, to be exact,” Rachel said. “My hometown.”
On these last words, as if on cue, the glass in Amy’s hand began to lose its solidity, becoming loose between her fingers like warm, runny dough. It tickled.
“Why are we going there?” Amy said, then recognized that something inside her knew, but was keeping it secret.
“To see an old friend of your father’s,” her mother said with a strained smile. “Someone you’re going to like very much. And who’s going to like you as well, I’m sure.” She winked.
Amy was suddenly concerned. “But what about school?”
“You’re in fourth grade, sweetheart, not Harvard Medical,” her mother reminded.
“Oh, okay then,” she said, satisfied. “But why can’t you come?”
“I’ve got a commercial to shoot tomorrow. It’s Mommy’s big break, kiddo, and she can’t miss it.”
Duncan grinned. “Yeah, your mom’s gonna—”
“Don’t start,” Rachel warned.
Entwining like rose vine, the warm, resinous glass spread urgently up and around her wrist and lower arm, tightening. Then she could feel it begin to seep parasitically into her pores, then her bloodstream. This did not alarm her, though; was not painful, or even uncomfortable. Oddly, it felt as natural as breathing air.
She lay back down. She did not cry out to her parents, for the nursing staff, did not hurl her arm out from beneath the covers, shouting “Look!” This was something personal, something no one else would understand. She’d realized this the moment her fingers rescued the fragment from the cold hospital floor.
Rachel leaned in. “Amy?”
Amy stared unblinkingly ahead. A wonderful sensation was surging through her body now, one that made her feel feather-heavy. Her surroundings wavered into clearer focus, and the fringes of her peripheral vision began to stretch toward the front of her, as if the walls, the ceiling, were nothing but Hollywood trompe l’oeil being rolled away from her soap-operatic sound stage.
Everything continued traveling forward until she felt drawn into the center of the room and could see everything without turning her head. It was as if her eyes, her pupils, had elongated, had wrapped around the sides of her head and converged on the backside. Her vision had been distended to a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees.
The reality seized her then that she was not seeing with her eyes, but was experiencing a truly magical form of cognizance. And she was confident that it would extend infinitely in any or all directions, given the notion.
As she lay there, she re-experienced an unfathomable passing of time. Starting out as a protozoan in the warm virgin oceans of Earth, she saw this one-celled animal through every transmutation, branching out with each descendant, and its descendant’s descendants, aware of every thought, every minuscule twinkling of consciousness, every glint and pulsation of energy leading up to its species’ present awareness. The cycle would repeat, each time a different organism, a different evolutionary process. Then onward to different worlds. Finally, after countless eternities, she’d come to know everything there was to know about everything. She didn’t understand the workings of the universe and all within it—she’
d become the universe. Or perhaps something even grander.
“Amy?” Rachel prodded. “Honey, are you all right?”
Amy winked back in, her binocular vision restored. Something colossal recoiled out of her at such velocity that she was certain nothing had been there at all.
Then a portion of that something returned. And nested. Something incredible.
“Y’okay, kiddo?” Duncan said.
Realizing only a few seconds had passed instead of consecutive millennia, Amy glanced around the room, wanting to inspect her surroundings a bit more closely before committing herself to an answer.
“I feel fine,” she said finally. “Can we have McDonald’s for lunch?”
6.
Doctor Constance Strickland entered the room in a graceful flurry. So many patients, so little time. “How are we feeling this morning?” she asked the chart in her hand.
This bit of insouciance provoked Duncan. “Well, I’m feeling just ducky, thanks,” he offered, “despite a little indigestion I picked up this morning from a tequila worm. And my beautiful daughter here appears to be spry as a March hare.” He turned to Rachel. “And if you’ll overlook the scowl on my wife’s face, you’ll probably find that she’s just as happy and healthy as a pig in a turd patch.”
Amy giggled.
Rachel elbowed Duncan in the ribs. He grunted.
Strickland looked up from her chart, countering with a sense of humor that surprised Duncan. “Considering your abundant use of animal analogies,” she observed, “one might be inclined to believe that you were raised on a farm—if one overlooks all the other obvious signs, that is.”
“Hey, not bad,” Duncan said.
“You’ll have to excuse my husband,” Rachel said. “He has a particular dislike for hospitals.”
Strickland smiled at Duncan. “Bad childhood memories? Let me guess: Tonsillectomy? Appendectomy?”
“Gunshotectomy,” Duncan said.
“Oh?” Strickland said warily. “War wound?”
Duncan shifted uncomfortably. “You could say that.”
“Show her your scars, Daddy,” Amy said.
Strickland waved a hand. “Keep your clothes on, I’m not a scar monger.” She looked at Amy and added, “But I’m sure they’re quite awful.”
Amy nodded slowly.
“Duncan was shot in the line of duty,” Rachel said, then glanced at Duncan as if she might have said too much.
Strickland said, “You’re a police officer?”
“Was,” Duncan said stiffly, wanting to end the conversation. “It was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”
“He’s a hero,” Amy vouched, now sitting in the middle of her bed, raring to plunge right into the subject. “He saved some lives and got a medal for it.”
Duncan gazed at Amy with eyes that said, secrets should never be revealed, then raised a finger to his lips.
Amy said, “They still hurt him, too, especially at night. The scars, I mean. Sometimes I can hear him crying—”
“Amy,” Duncan sighed.
“She’s just concerned, Duncan,” Rachel said. “Maybe it’s not just psychosomatic, like you say. Maybe now’s a good time to—”
“To what?” Duncan said. “Air my dirty laundry?”
Rachel exhaled loudly, dropping her shoulders so low that Duncan was sure they would disengage from their sockets. She said, “My God, Duncan, what is so horrible about being a hero? I can understand a healthy display of modesty, but you become downright defensive whenever the subject comes up. It’s as if—”
“Just drop it!” he snapped.
Strickland jumped in. “I can see that this is a very touchy subject, so before we leave the matter entirely, let me just say that I can refer a doctor who specializes in post-traumatic disorders, if you like.”
Duncan guffawed. “Been there, done that.”
Strickland raised both hands in defense. “Okay, okay, I’ll take that as a no and consider the matter closed. Now, let me take one last look at your daughter before I sign her walking papers.”
“Stubborn, stubborn man,” Rachel said.
“Look, it was a long time ago—”
“I know, I know, in a galaxy far, far away.”
But not far enough, Duncan knew. His own personal time-traveling rocket ship had taken him back thousands of times. And each and every one of those times he was forced to make one of two decisions through the narrow sights of a Smith and Wesson, and each and every one of those times he’d chosen the same one. He’d more than entertained the idea that it was the infant in the deranged woman’s arms who finally swayed him into making that decision, that tiny little bundle who could not have understood its mother’s heroin addiction any more than it could have the true reason why he and his partner were there that tragic night.
Taking two bullets to save the child’s life would have certainly been a noble reason for his decision, one that would at least justify the medal hanging on his wall.
But the sad and lonely truth that forced him to lower his gun that night, he’d eventually admitted to himself, was death. He’d wanted to die, to make final atonement for sins committed against his brethren officers, against all that was supposed to be decent, against himself.
But he hadn’t died. Close, but no cigar.
Deep down, and sometimes not so deeply, death still tempted him; called out to him in the quiet night, perched like a sylph on black, memory-worn rock, urging him, taunting him, singing to him as he lay there, listening.
And he was convinced that the only thing that had so far kept him from dancing to that temptress’ song was the adoration staring up at him from his daughter’s eyes.
Rachel nudged him from his trance.
“...photosensitive epilepsy,” Strickland was saying, “is normally caused by light passing through regularly spaced objects, like trees or light poles along a roadway, as seen from a moving automobile. Stationary patterns of striped lines. Even the flickering of a television set or computer monitor. In Japan some years back, for example, the same thing happened to over six hundred children. All of them simultaneously suffered seizures while watching a popular animated TV show. Cycling colors were blamed.”
“In Amy’s case, a strobe flash,” Rachel said.
“Exactly,” said Strickland.
“Is that your diagnosis?” Duncan said.
“Everything else checks normal.” she said. “But if she experiences any other attacks, mild or otherwise, then bring her in immediately. But really, I’m not the least bit worried. Your daughter here is about as hearty as they come.” She offered a confident smile. “I’m sure this was a just a one-time thing.”
Yesterday, Duncan would have accepted the “Photosensitive Epilepsy” diagnosis without question. His faith in doctors had yet to be aggrieved by the same suspicions of malfeasance that had long ago ruined his trust in nearly every other occupation.
Of course, had those doctors twelve years ago not performed a medical miracle by saving his sorry ass...
But now, after last night’s escapades at the photographer’s house, it had become wickedly obvious that Western medicine was going to fail his daughter, though not through any fault of its own. What Amy really needed, he feared, was a voodoo priest to shake a headless chicken over her body and mumble purging incantations, as it might be the only way to rid her of that possessive spirit called Katherine.
He sensed that Rachel wasn’t buying the seizure explanation either and, like himself, was just being patient and polite.
“I’m not sick anymore?” Amy said.
“Nope,” Strickland said. “And if you stay away from stampeding elephants and fatty foods, then I think you’ll be just fine.” She scribbled her name on the release form. “You’re free to go, sweetie.”
Juanita, who’d been standing in the doorway for God knew how long, rushed over with a bagel and cream cheese in one hand and a brown shopping bag in the other.
“Here,” Juanita said, hand
ing Amy the bag and keeping the bagel for herself. “I wash these for you last night. Socks, your favorite jeans and shirt.” She leaned in, and whispered discreetly, “Your panties are hiding in-between.”
Amy was smiling, but not at Juanita. She was beaming at the doctor. “That’s a beautiful necklace,” she said.
The doctor smiled back, then pulled the chain up from her blouse, revealing a round, silver emblem. “Thank you. It was a gift from a friend.”
Right before Duncan’s eyes, Amy had relayed some kind of understanding to the doctor. And he was equally sure the doctor had assented with a relative expression.
Whatever just happened between them, he thought, definitely went beyond any kind of doctor-patient relationship. It was too deep, too personal. Was more like…camaraderie. But the more he thought about it, even that seemed too soft a description.
He chewed on it some more, searching.
Then it finally came to him: Allegiance.
Then, coming from somewhere inside the sane quadrant of his mind, a strangled voice said, Don’t you think the world has enough conspiracies without you adding to the pot?
He didn’t answer the voice, just regarded the blood pressure machine mounted on the wall, wondering if there was any similar instrument available for the healthy monitoring of one’s sanity.
7.
As they neared the nurses’ station, Duncan led Rachel aside.
“Why the sudden change of heart?” he said.
She crumpled a piece of Juicy Fruit into her mouth. “During the drive here, I reminded myself that it’s not you who’s crazy. It’s the situation. Your dick, on the other hand, could use some therapy. Anyway, given the circumstances, a trip to Rock Bay to see whatsername does feel like the next logical step. Therefore, I would only be pampering my own womanly sensitivities if I didn’t let Amy go with you to Massachusetts.”
“I’m…flattered. I guess.”
She reached up and jabbed a finger into his chest: “Yeah? Well before you go and officially open up your own fan club, take note, buster. I’m still hugely pissed off about you and whatsername. I don’t care if it happened twelve years ago or twelve minutes ago, you’re just damned lucky I haven’t called my lawyer.”
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