by Debora Ryan
“Don’t worry about me, Cece. I’ll be fine.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Leah stared at Cecelia, dumbfounded. Cecelia was behaving as she had before the accident. Her sentences were more complex. Her vocabulary was improved. And her reaction time seemed to be back to normal.
Anne was similarly perplexed. “Cece?”
Cecelia’s grin widened. “Stitches or glue? Or staples? I hate the idea of staples. Remember that one time when I stapled my leg? Ouch. Even the memory hurts.”
Leah recovered slightly. “They glued it.”
“How do they do that? I mean, with stitches, they hold it together and sew. Do they pull it apart to put in the glue and then stick it together? It sounds gross. And painful.”
“I didn’t watch,” Leah said dryly. “I was trying to get them to hurry up so I could get back to you.”
“But you didn’t make it back. That’s okay, I understand. You have a concussion. Those things can be killer. I mean, look what head trauma did to me.” Cecelia baited them with her words, urging them to ask her why she was suddenly different, or to laugh like they used to. “Annie sat with me. It’s good to have two sisters. When one is out of commission, the other one can step in and take her place.”
“Cece, what happened? Are you…are you…” Leah couldn’t bring herself to say it. Both Leah and Anne were fastened to the floor of the lobby. Neither thought to move the conversation to a place that was less in the way of everyone entering and exiting the building.
“Am I cured? Yes and no. Some things are better. Some things aren’t. Take my legs for example. And my arms for that matter. They’ve become very hard to control. I’ve lost mobility, hence the wheelchair. But the tradeoff is that I’m here mentally. I can understand things now, almost to the point I was at before the accident. Marian is waiting for your permission to begin trying to retrain my brain. Leah, I have to say it has been so nice to be able to access my thoughts. It was like whenever I tried to understand abstract things before, there was a wall in my way and I couldn’t get past it. It was frustrating for me, and I know it was upsetting for the both of you.” Her brown eyes sparkled with glee and unshed tears. “Now that wall is gone. I remember things. I understand things. It’s not perfect. There’s a lot of rubble, but Marian thinks with time and therapy, I can overcome it.”
Leah felt as if she was being given a new chance at life. It was bittersweet coming on the heels of the loss of her relationship with Will, but she didn’t let thoughts of him diminish her happiness at having her sister back. She threw herself at Cecelia, and hugged her tightly. “I missed you so much, Cece.”
Cece’s hands were light against Leah’s head, and slow in responding. “I know, sweetie. I know. I missed me, too.”
Anne had joined the hug, sobbing so hard her words were unintelligible.
After a little while, Cecelia pushed them both away. “Sorry, guys, but that hurts if I do it for too long. It’s a tradeoff. You understand.” She indicated the common room. “Let’s go someplace more private. My flowers are in bloom. I have quite a garden, you know.”
Marian caught Leah before she could leave the building through the garden door. She placed a tiny, improbably strong arm on Leah’s and steered her away from Anne and Cecelia. “Ms. Keenan. I need to see you.”
Leah exhaled slowly. She felt as if she had been caught cheating on a test and was facing the music for it. “Can we talk about this later? I just got here. I haven’t seen Cecelia since the accident.”
“That’s what I want to talk about. The changes in Cecelia.”
Reluctantly, Leah consented. She knew the conversation would come around to money eventually, but she also wanted the medical explanation for the changes in Cecelia. “Okay. Cece? Anne? I’ll be there in a little while.”
Cecelia spun her chair in a circle. “I think I should be there when you discuss me. After all, it’s my life you’re deciding.”
“We’re only going to talk,” Marian explained. “I won’t be telling Leah anything you don’t already know.”
“Then it’s settled,” Cecelia said as she led the way to Marian’s office. “Anne, you can join us. You’ll find it fascinating.”
When they were all seated comfortably in Marian’s spacious office, she began her speech. “You have, no doubt, noticed the changes in Cecelia. Quite by accident, we discovered that the medication we were using to augment her mobility was also interfering with her cognitive abilities. We don’t know when her brain repaired itself. There is so much we don’t know about the human brain. But it did. Cecelia’s cognitive abilities are nearly where they were before the accident. Or where we assume them to have been. She did earn a bachelor’s degree in marketing, after all.”
Leah looked from Cecelia to Marian. “You’ve stopped giving her the medication?”
“We have.”
“Why did you stop?”
“It interfered with the effectiveness of her antibiotics. You were not available, so I made the decision to suspend certain of her medications. The results were surprising.”
Anne leaned forward. “What other medications did you suspend?”
Marian’s tiny head bobbed up and down, reminding Leah of a buoy. “Some of the antipsychotics. Specifically, the one that helped control her mood.”
Leah straightened. “But what about her outbursts? She can get quite violent.”
“Hello,” Cecelia said. “I’m right here. I can understand all of this.”
“Sorry, Cece. This is an adjustment for me, too,” Leah said. “But you broke an orderly’s nose and chipped another one’s tooth when you weren’t on your medication.”
Cecelia’s eyes narrowed. “The one was trying to get me to touch his privates and the other one hit me first. I can remember everything clearly now. I didn’t used to be able to explain any of this. I didn’t used to be able to understand the implications of most of what happened to me, but now I can.”
At Leah’s stricken look, Cecelia said, “Oh, Lee-Lee. I don’t blame you. I know you’ve stuck by me this whole time, trying to do what was right for me. You got me out of there. That’s the most important thing.” She tried to extend her arm to Leah in order to hold her hand, but her arm wouldn’t cooperate.
Leah saw her sister’s efforts and extended her own arm to Cecelia. “I should have known. I’m sorry. I should have known you wouldn’t have been violent without a reason.”
“Stop blaming yourself. You couldn’t have known.”
Marian interrupted. “Let’s get the elephant out of the room.”
Leah braced herself for Marian’s request for payment. She didn’t have the money. Will had told her to stop embezzling and she had. She doubted the bonus for ‘training’ Will would be forthcoming, so she had to start again. What choice did she have? She wondered if he would catch her this time.
Marian stood up and walked around her desk to lean on the front of it. “Do we put Cecelia back on the medications or not? Do we try lower doses to see if we can restore some mobility without compromising her cognitive abilities? What kinds of therapies are needed to cope with these new problems? What kinds of tests need to be run? And lastly, is Sunshine Acres still the best place for her? That, of course will depend largely on the results of the tests.”
Cecelia nodded sagely. “What did you have in mind?”
“A full battery of IQ tests to gauge your current abilities. Then tests to measure what kinds of mobility you’ve lost and how much of anything you’ve retained.” Anne and Cecelia became more and more excited as Marian explained the different tests and drug combinations she wanted to try out on Cecelia. “It’ll mostly be trial and error, dear, but you’ll be able to help us. The worst case scenario is that you stay the way you are now. Even that isn’t a life sentence. The things the brain can do continue to amaze us every day.”
As Marian spoke, Leah watched the dollar signs piling up, dollars she did not have. The tests and the medications would be
expensive. Marian coughed, a delicate sound. “These tests, some of them, are expensive.”
“I figured,” Leah said, studying the red and brown swirls in the carpet.
“Your account isn’t in the best standing.”
Leah looked up at Marian, ignoring Cecelia and Anne. “Wait on the more expensive tests. Get me a list of how much things cost. I’ll get the money as soon as I can.”
“Ms. Keenan, you’re almost ten thousand dollars behind in your payments. We’re not even charging you penalties.”
“I know. I thank you for that.” Leah stood up. “I’m expecting a ten thousand dollar bonus this month. You’ll have it then.”
Marian looked away as if she were deciding what she wanted to say next. She sighed heavily. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t care. But I’m not the owner of this place. I’ve been asked to tell you that if your account isn’t paid in full within sixty days, we will not be able to keep Cecelia here.”
She swallowed nervously. If she started embezzling again, there was a great likelihood she’d be caught. She had some hard decisions to make. “You’ll have the money.”
Anne excused herself, pleading a lunch appointment. “I’ll be back at four to pick you up,” she told Leah as they walked her to the door.
When she was gone, Leah helped Cecelia eat lunch in the garden.
“I’m not coordinated enough to eat soup,” Cecelia said. “So that’s exactly what they give me.”
Leah watched as the spoonful her sister was trying to eat made it half way into her mouth. Broth dribbled down Cecelia’s chin. “I wish you’d let me feed you.”
“I’m not a baby.”
“It would be very adult of you to admit your limitations and accept the help that’s offered.” Good thing Cecelia was ignorant of the problems in Leah’s own life. She could imagine the kind of stinging retort Cecelia would throw at her.
“I want you to tell me about your life,” Cecelia said. “You never talk to me about it.”
“Most of the people I see are people you don’t know. I don’t know why you’d care about them.”
“What you mean to say is that I didn’t understand the existence of people I couldn’t see, and so I was a pain in the butt to talk to about things.” Cecelia smiled tightly at Leah. “I remember the conversations. I remember your frustration. I remember my frustration. But things are different now.”
Tears rolled down Leah’s cheeks. She studied her fingernails.
“Don’t tell me you have a new best friend? Come on, Leah, you can’t replace me. We’re sisters.”
“I don’t have a new best friend, just Annie, like always.”
“Is there a man I should know about?”
“No.” Leah struggled to swallow the lump in her throat, but the pain in her chest didn’t leave room for more.
“But there was,” Cecelia said perceptively. “When did you break up?”
A spasm passed for a smile. “Last night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“He cheated on you?”
Leah shook her head. “It just didn’t work out.”
Cecelia leaned forward. “Give me the details.”
There was a time when she had no secrets from Cecelia. There was a time when Cecelia knew everything as soon as Leah knew it and vice versa. That time had long passed. “He lives in New York. He’s only here for another month.”
Shrewd eyes assessed Leah. She flinched under the scrutiny. This all seemed so much like a dream. This was the sister, the friend she had mourned for so long.
“Don’t use me as an excuse. What else is wrong with him?”
“He’s bossy and controlling.”
“That’s never good,” Cecelia agreed. Perhaps she saw that the wounds were still too fresh. Whatever the cause, she finally let the topic go. They chatted away the afternoon. Leah told Cecelia about her job, leaving out the part where she’d embezzled money to pay for Cece’s care. They discussed their hopes and dreams. Cecelia was afraid to look too far ahead. “You never know what I’ll be like next week. I’d hate to get used to being this aware, only to lose it again.”
Leah couldn’t think of anything in return that didn’t sound patronizing, so she settled for honesty. “I hope you don’t lose it again. I’ve missed you terribly.”
The stifling air in the greenhouse chased them outside where a breeze stirred the humidity.
“We need to have a serious talk, Leah,” Cecelia said. “I need you to listen to me without judging me and without interrupting. I know that last part is hard for you.”
Leah sat on a bench. The solemnity of Cece’s demeanor put Leah on edge. “I’m listening.”
“I got pregnant on purpose.” Cecelia held up her hand. She knew Leah had been about to say something. “You promised.”
Leah closed her mouth and silently indicated Cecelia should continue.
“I have always wanted children. I didn’t understand the implications of my action. I only thought about how badly I wanted to be a mother. I know now that you would have had to raise any child I had while I was like I was. I think I did it a little bit to get back at you. I was jealous that I wasn’t allowed to leave here unless I was with you or Marian, and you had this whole life outside of here that I wasn’t a part of.”
Leah hung her head. She didn’t know how to respond.
“I couldn’t have handled that on my own, not like that. In a way, it was a blessing because it made them stop the medication that kept me like that. I want you to know that I wasn’t raped. I seduced the father. I very carefully planned it all. He didn’t know that I was trying to get pregnant. He didn’t even know I was a patient here.”
“Is he a patient here?” Leah couldn’t help herself.
Cecelia’s head tilted to the side in a reproving look. “Leah, you promised.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m not going to reveal anything about him. He doesn’t matter. He doesn’t even know.” Cecelia looked over to Leah with tears in her eyes. “I still want those things, Leah. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here. Maybe I’ll never meet someone willing to put up with all of my problems, but I think I still have something I can contribute to society. I want to work. I want to live on my own. I want to control my own life.”
Bitterness curled Leah’s stomach. She wanted those things, too, for both of them. The weight on her shoulders increased tenfold. Now she not only had to find the money to pay for all of the testing and new medication combinations, but she had to find a way to help Cecelia become independent. Visions of a modified apartment and a never-ending line of helpers and specialists danced through Leah’s imagination. She managed to keep herself together until Cecelia pleaded extreme tiredness around three o’clock.
“I’m not on the medicine that made my hyper and energetic anymore,” she explained. “And the pain makes me tired, too.”
“That’s okay,” Leah said. “I have some things to do.”
Marian had handed her a list of the tests. In her hyper-organized way, she had put them in order of importance. Tests that should be done together were grouped together. She would have to rethink her process of hiding money on the books in order to move it off the books. Will had cleverly traced those transactions. She needed to do a better job of hiding her tracks.
These things took time.
Chapter 13
A neon-green eviction notice greeted Leah. Like she had with the others, she tore it down, balled it up and shoved it in the back of the drawer next to the refrigerator. She was growing quite a rainbow back there.
She made a cup of tea and flopped onto the sofa, unable to summon enough energy to move. Sometime during the evening, she fell asleep. She woke to the sun streaming through the drapes she had not closed.
It took Leah a long time to convince herself to stand up. She lumbered to the bathroom, her shoulder and back spasming painfully in protest to spending the night on the couch. She sh
owered and changed the bandage over her stitches. How long was she supposed to keep it on? Vaguely, she recalled that she had a follow-up appointment today. She couldn’t remember the name of the doctor or where the office was located. Will had made the appointment for her.
Leah misjudged her bus route and arrived at work half an hour early. She cleaned out her emails and prepared for the Monday morning meeting. Her colleagues welcomed her back heartily. Anne had explained the details of the accident, so there weren’t many questions on that front.
Anne was the most surprised to see Leah. She cornered her after the meeting. “You’ve avoided my phone calls. You look like hell. Will is nowhere to be found. What happened between you two?”
“I ended it.” Leah tried to turn away, but Anne caught her arm.
“Leah.”
“Annie,” Leah pleaded. “I’d rather not talk about it. Not here, not now.” Too close to the surface, tears would spill if she had to talk about it, especially to Anne.
Anne’s eyes filled with sympathy tears. “Oh, Lee-Lee, I’m so sorry. I’ll take you to see Cecelia today. You can tell me everything then.” Reluctantly, Anne left Leah alone and went to her office to work.
Leah left word with her assistant Eliza that she didn’t want to be disturbed unless it was an emergency. Eliza smiled brightly and assured Leah no one would get past her. “You know me,” she joked. “I strike fear into the hearts of all.”
Leah laughed and closed the door to her office. Eliza was one of the kindest, gentlest people she knew. However, once riled, she was a shrewd, formidable woman. Leah was glad she got along with Eliza. That would be one powerful enemy she didn’t need.
The mound of work on her desk quickly swallowed the morning. She had completed most of it before she could identify which accounts might be the most likely targets. The phone rang suddenly, startling Leah. She glanced at the clock. It was likely Eliza reminding Leah to break for lunch.
She picked up the phone without looking at the caller ID.
“Leah, I’m on my way down to see you.”
