She's Not Here

by Mandi Lynn

  She waited for Dr. Ash to speak up, but something ignited in her and she continued on before he could speak. “Sam has told me over and over, something doesn’t feel right. Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  Dr. Ash ran his hand through his hair and let out a sigh. In his mind he ran over Sam’s records again, but of course nothing had changed. Still no abnormalities.

  “The mind is a complex thing,” he said, but even he couldn’t stand his own excuse.

  Avery wrapped her arms around her stomach and blinked. “Of course, it is,” she said. “You think I don’t know that? But there has to be something that we can do.”

  “All the tests I’ve run so far have come back normal. We can keep monitoring, but we don’t want to start treating for something until we know what it is. She stable and she’s awake and talking. As of right now, if you’re just going off her charts, she’s perfectly healthy. The IV that she’s hooked up to is a precaution. She doesn’t need it, but we’re trying to do everything we can for her.”

  He backed away, knowing he only had so much time to talk to her, and that time was almost up. Avery didn’t speak, so he began to turn.

  “Dr. Ash,” she said, once his back was to her. “Have you ever had to tell someone their parents are dead?”

  He didn’t turn to look at her because all he could picture was Willow on the side of the road with her father. The agony in her face was a permanent fixture in his mind that showed no signs of fading away.

  “Imagine having to tell someone, every time you see them, that their parents are dead, and you both have to re-live that moment every time. I know she doesn’t seem sick or is in pain physically, but isn’t mental anguish enough? Isn’t that enough to want to figure out how she can remember things without having to learn over and over that some of the only family she’s ever had is gone?”

  Dr. Ash turned to see Avery holding her stance, but her arms were shaking, still wrapped around her stomach. Her face was stone, but her eyes were watering.

  “I will do the best I can, Avery. I will always do the best I can.” And with that, he walked away.

  Chapter 18

  The sound of the MRI machine vibrated across the room. Sam’s eyes were shut and her headphones blocked out only a small amount of the sound coming from the machine. When they first started putting her in the machine, she would count. She’d start from 100 and count her way down. Recently, it had become harder. She’d get the first few numbers and then something would slip. She wasn’t sure if it was lack of concentration from all the noise, or just because whatever was wrong with her was getting worse. Even starting from one and counting her way up was becoming a problem. She could only get so far as twenty before something pulled her attention away or she just forget the sequence of numbers.

  “Hold still,” a nurse said.

  Sam kept her eyes shut. She wanted to hum to the beat of the MRI machine, but the nurses always said that she was moving too much. Was she moving too much to breathe as well?

  No one came to stand at the foot of the machine anymore. Avery came to visit, but only after going to school first and her grandparents came at least every other day, but her biggest visitors were the doctors and nurses. The days blurred together, and her sense of time was waning. She wasn’t sure it was because she had been there a long time or if her memory was getting worse. One thing she was sure, there seemed to be little time she was alone. All these tests and yet the medical staff still stood baffled. Twelve days since the fire and still no answers.

  “Okay, Sam.”

  The slim surface she was laying on was pulled out of the machine. The plastic contraption around her head was removed and a hand was placed behind her back to help her sit up.

  There were two nurses helping Sam, talking amongst each other. Sam tried to catch their words, and at first she could, but the longer their conversation went on the more lost she began to feel. Their words simply flowed too fast. For all she knew, they might as well have been talking in another language.

  “Sam,” the nurse said. Her voice was firmer than usual, and Sam knew she must have been trying to speak to her for a while.

  “We’re going to send the results over to Dr. Ash, and he’ll meet with you. Will your grandparents will be coming in today?”

  The nurses always knew the answers to these questions. She was an impaired patient so information was never reliable. Yet, they always asked her in an attempt to make her feel more independent, but for Sam it always had the opposite effect.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. The last time Shelly and Paul came to visit they said they’d be back in two days. Sam wrote it down on the paper pad beside her bed that they had given her, but it wasn’t a fool-proof plan. She’d write “Grandparents will be back on Tuesday,” but that only worked for a little while. As the weeks went by and her memory grew worse she never knew what day of the week it was and never remembered to ask one of the nurses. Soon enough she gave up on trying to keep track of days. Instead, she wrote it was April so whenever Dr. Ash or the nurses came in, she could have at least one answer correct—until the next month came around that is.

  “Well, let me walk to your room and we’ll find out, okay?”

  Sam was escorted out of the room, leaving only one other nurse who was sanitizing the equipment. Willow had been waiting outside the room while the MRI was being performed and once Sam was led away, she slipped in. She was thankful when the nurse working to clean it didn’t look up when Willow took control at the machine.

  She typed a code into the machine and pulled up Sam’s scan. Dark splotches were scattered across the screen. It was frightening how much it looked like her father’s scans. The peripheral of the brain showed cells dying. Twelve days since Sam had arrived in the hospital and the similarities of Alzheimer’s disease in her brain were uncanny.

  Willow pulled her small notebook out and began to write down notes. Where the spots were located, how much they’d changed since Sam’s last MRI. The notes were quick but thorough. Finally, she slipped out her phone and took photos of the screen. Once she was done , she entered another code into the machine and deleted the file, replacing it with the first scan of Sam’s brain before the serum had been injected. She finished by changing the date listed on the scan.

  The switch was done in a matter of minutes. The first time Willow had to switch out the MRI scan, she panicked thinking there was no way she’d ever be able to pull it off, but practice proved perfect. Every week, as Sam declined more, she was sent in for another MRI. Each week, Willow made sure her shift was during Sam’s MRI and that the technician never saw the real results before they loaded onto the screen. It was an act of being in the right place at the right time, and so far, it had worked. Willow was the only one to ever see the real results and she switched them out before anyone else got the opportunity.

  “Is it all set?” the nurse who had been cleaning the instruments asked.

  “Just sending it now.”

  With a few clicks of the mouse, Sam’s information was gone.

  — — — — —

  “I don’t get it.”

  Randy was in his office when Willow walked in. He was sitting at his computer and had Sam’s file pulled up. The MRI of a healthy girl was on the screen.

  “What is it?” Willow said. She had a coffee for him in her hand, but he didn’t take it. His eyes were glued to the screen and there was nothing she could do to take him away from it.

  “The MRI results. There’s still nothing wrong. I don’t know what else to do. When I talk to the girl, she’s impaired. She can’t remember things, she has a hard time concentrating. It’s like she has,” but he stopped himself, and it was not lost beyond Willow.

  “You can say it,” she said. “It’s like she has Alzheimer’s.”

  He stared up at her, waiting for her to show some sign of distress. For so long, any talk of the disease seemed to send her spiraling, but now she seemed calm. He tried to remember the last time she had
a breakdown but pushed the thought away when he saw the MRI results in the corner of his eye.

  “Every test, she passes. It can’t be possible. I don’t know what to do. I have grandparents who just want their grandchild back, but I can’t even tell them what’s wrong with her, never mind treat it.”

  He was quiet while he looked over the files again. Willow had never seen him so invested in a patient, then again he’d never encountered a patient he couldn’t diagnose. She had considered once or twice, telling him what she had done, but she knew her husband. What she did, he would never approve of, and even more frightening, she wasn’t sure if he’d ever forgive her.

  She wondered if she could go back in time, if she would undo it. The moral part of her said yes, but the desperate part, the part that needed the cure, that feared she’d die from the same disease her father had, wished more and more to push the experiment further. She also needed to protect Randy from what she had done, and there was very little she could do.

  “Maybe I should refer her somewhere else. There has to be some kind of technology or some other doctor out there that can pick up on whatever’s wrong.”

  “No,” Willow said, too quickly.

  He looked up at her, confused at her reluctance. They referred patients out all the time.

  “You’ve invested too much time into this already,” she said, gripping on to some way she could keep Sam in her care. “Any other physician will be starting from scratch, and she doesn’t have the time to start from scratch. She’s been declining. We can all see it in front of our eyes, so we can’t wait for another doctor to give their input.”

  Randy covered his face with his hands and sat back in his chair. He couldn’t deny her logic, and yet he couldn’t push away the sense of dread.

  “This is my patient,” he said. “I won’t be able to live with it if I can’t find out what’s wrong with her. What if someone else can?”

  Her throat began to close in on itself. He had no idea what he would unearth. There was a part of her that frightened even herself, and at times she couldn’t control it. She had to fix her mistakes before they put Randy at risk.

  “There will always be a what if. What if another doctor does find what’s wrong with her, but what if you could have found it sooner if you had just stuck it out one more day?”

  “Willow, this is someone’s health, maybe even life, on the line. I don’t care about vanity. Whoever finds out what’s wrong with her, finds it. I want her to be better. Her grandparents have already lost so much; they don’t need to lose a grandchild as well.”

  She was afraid to talk. If there was one thing she loved about her husband, it was his dedication and compassion. When she compared herself to him she knew he was a much better person. He was meant to be in the health field, and often times she questioned whether she was. She wasn’t willing to sacrifice her father to finding a cure, but she too easily put an innocent life at stake.

  Chapter 19

  When Dr. Ash walked into the room, Sam was holding a small stuffed animal in her hands. “How are you feeling today, Sam?” he asked.

  She looked up at him and smiled.

  “This is my pup,” she said. She held up the small dog for him to see, the stuffed animal’s legs falling out to the sides.

  “Can you put the dog down?” he asked. He’s always asked, ever since she first received the toy, but she never let it go. She attached herself to it, and it became the only thing that was consistent to her. He caught her tending to the little dog, brushing hair that didn’t exist, asking the nurses to bring him food. At first it started off as just a fondness for the toy. She would put it down but there was always a resistance to let it out of her sight. Now, she tended to it like a living thing.

  “I can’t.”

  Dr. Ash pulled his chair forward, keeping his notes in his lap.

  “Do you know what month it is, Sam?” he asked.

  For almost a week, Sam could answer the question correctly. He could see her eyes wandering around the room until it found the notepad beside her bed that had the month written down, but he let her cheating slide. With so many wrong answers,he always allowed this answer to be right.

  “Umm,” she said. Her eyes wandered the room but they don’t find the notebook.

  Dr. Ash looked over to the notebook where March was crossed off and replaced with April. The handwriting was too neat to be Sam’s.

  “Look at the notepad,” Dr. Ash whispered. He pointed to the bedside table until Sam turned her head enough to read. She stared at the paper and bite her lip.

  “April?” she finally said, but even reading it off the paper she sounded unsure.

  Dr. Ash smiled and took out his own notepad. He wrote out a quick sentence in large script.

  “Can you read this for me?” he asks.

  Sam frowned and looked at the dog.

  “Pup can’t read.”

  “I want you to read. You can pretend you’re reading to your pup.” He tried to sound encouraging, but when he heard himself all he could hear was exhaustion.

  Her fingers loosened from the dog’s neck, and she shifted forward to read.

  “The yellow,” she paused. “House. Was down the road. From the green house.”

  She finished the sentence and turned back to the dog. She pet his hair and held him up to her face, giving him small kisses.

  Dr. Ash wrote another sentence and held it up to Sam.

  “What about this one?”

  Sam didn’t let the dog drop this time. She held it close to her face as she leaned forward to read. “The cat,” this time a longer pause. She blinked before she could continue. “The cat danced all night long.”

  Her face contorted like she smelled something bad.

  “I don’t want to play anymore,” she said.

  “Then tell me about your dog,” he said, trying to switch gears as fast as she could.

  He didn’t think she heard him at first. She kept the stuffed animal close to her, never once looking up or at Dr. Ash.

  “His name is Pup,” she said in a soft voice. “And he doesn’t like it here.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You’re mean to him. He doesn’t like it when you’re mean to me.”

  All the while she refused to look at him. Her eyes were for Pup and Pup only.

  “Why do you think that?” he said.

  “You hurt me!” she said. The words are too loud for the small room. “You poke me and pinch me and put me in that big machine.”

  She turned to Dr. Ash with fire in her eyes. In her voice, he heard anger, but her eyes melted away to something deeper. He imagined a girl trapped inside her own body. Did she know what’s happening to her? All the things she’d lost?

  “I know it’s scary here, Sam.”

  When she heard her name, her face twitched and whatever anger had been holding her together shattered.

  “I want my mom,” she said. It was like she transformed from a small child to a young girl in front of his eyes. Her voice had gone from belittling to a serious in a matter of seconds.

  “I know,” he said. She had been asking for her mom for days. As time wore on Dr. Ash contemplated not telling her that her parents died. He wanted to say, “She’s on her way,” or, “She’ll be here tomorrow.” Save the anguish and let her have that one moment of peace. But he was always afraid. Would that be the one thing she remembered? Would she wake up every day, still asking for her mom, knowing Dr. Ash said she was coming?

  He was selfish. He didn’t want to watch the child go through the realization that her mother was gone, so he let the moment pass and hoped she didn’t ask for her mother again.

  “Do you want to count backwards for me, starting from 100?” he asked.

  She frowned and held the dog up in the air. She didn’t look like the girl who had been transferred to the hospital weeks ago. Everything about the way she acted seemed unnatural. Her smile was too large and her frowns too deep. When she spoke, the words
sometimes slurred, and yet other times her diction was perfect. Nothing was consistent except that week by week, she was fading away.

  “Pup says he’s hungry,” Sam said.

  “No, Sam.” He stood up and took the dog from her hands. The stuffed animal was a ragged thing and flopped lifeless in his arms. Sam sat, watching in terror as Pup was ripped away from her. The reaction was slow, but it was also unexpected. Dr. Ash thought she would scream, throw a hissy-fit of some sort, but she just stared at him. Her eyes were more focused than he’d seen them in weeks. He tried to decipher if she was upset, but there was no emotion in her eyes.

  “I need you to concentrate,” he said.

  She blinked. Her mouth was in a straight line, her face was flat.

  “I can’t,” she said. And there it was. The flicker of her old self. The childlike Sam that was holding onto a dog was replaced with the Sam full of doubt. Was it this doubt that made her so sick? Could all this just be some large physiological mess, her way of protecting herself from her parents’ deaths?

  “Why?” he said. His voice was soft and he sat once again. He still held the small dog in his hands, terrified that if he gave it to her again that she might slip away.

  She looked around the room as if she was seeing it for the first time. Her eyes roamed and lingered on the machines and he saw the question in her eyes. Why am I here?

  “We’re trying to help you,” he said.

  When she looked at him it was like she was looking past his physical being and to his soul.

  “I don’t feel safe here,” she said. Her words were simple. They were more solid than anything she’d ever spoken before and never once did her eyes flicker away from Dr. Ash’s face.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again soon after. She kept her eye contact until he spoke.