She

by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

chapter four

  NO ONE SPOKE A WORD

  “I’M BUSY.”

  “But I have to go, go s-s-see that doctor, that Dr. Daring, Dering. The appointment is in an hour,” she says in a monotone.

  “So go get a cab. I have work to do.”

  “But you promised,” she says. It’s a week before Christmas Eve. Three months ago, after Haoma had booked her appointment with Dr. Dering, she’d talked to Jim about driving her. She’s sure he’d said yes. Has he forgotten?

  “I can’t be ferrying you round. You’re keeping me from closing this valuable deal.”

  “It’s Friday.”

  Jim turns his back on her and doesn’t answer.

  She paces out of the red, energetic dining room-cum-office, into their small royal purple living room. She paces back into the dining room where his desk shares space with their dining table.

  “It won’t be long.”

  He doesn’t reply. She stares at his rigid back, his back that says I have better things to do. She paces back out into the living room, into the sun room that faces west, whose narrow walls between the windows scream lemon, to stand in front of the window next to the front door. She gazes upon the street. She looks in the direction of the bare tree across the snowy road, its branches arching up into a candelabra, snow streaking down its trunk. She chews her lip. What is she to do? She doesn’t have cash for a cab. How will she get a cab back? Where is she going again? She turns abruptly and stalks into the dining room.

  “I really need you to come with me Jim.”

  “When I’m finished.”

  “The appointment is-s-s, is in an, an hour.” Fury flashes red in her face. “I need you now.”

  “I know when the appointment is. Your appointment. Leave me alone, or I won’t drive you.”

  “Don’t be so damn disrespectful!”

  She stalks back into the living room, back into the sun room, back to the window. Her chest hurts so much; pain grips her neck; she wants the pain to go away. Yet in the last six months, it’s become the background of her body. Maybe this doctor will get them to go away. She wants to be normal again; but she doesn’t remember normal. Is it normal to be this agitated? She frowns because she’s so used to it now yet she wonders if she has always been this way.

  “Let’s go.”

  She swings around. Jim is grabbing his coat off the coat rack across from the door, his briefcase in his hand.

  “I have to go to the bathroom.” You son-of-a-bitch she refrains from adding.

  “You always have to go,” he says as he slams out the door.

  She goes as quickly as she can. She pulls her coat down from the rack, picks up her purse from the table next to the rack, picks up her keys, exits, and locks up as fast as she can. She steps down the stairs carefully, for snow has made them slick. Jim is waiting in the car, staring out the windshield. She goes round the back of it and gets in on her side. He says nothing. She says nothing. She has nothing to say, feels nothing to say. She pushes into the car’s stereo k.d. lang’s CD Hymns of the 49th Parallel. Hallelujah soars sadness into her heart but not her eyes.

  Their object of direction, Dr. Dering, practices in a large ornate building on University Avenue. Parking is a bitch. The sidewalks are at least clear. She follows Jim through the tall glass doors and to the old-style elevators. He presses the Up button, and soon they’re waiting in a large carpeted waiting room. There’s hardly anyone else there, such a contrast to Dr. Jones’s waiting room. Dr. Dering comes right out, smiling.

  “Hello, I’m Dr. Dering. How are you?” he says as he shakes first her hand and then Jim’s. “Come on in both of you. My office is right down here.” Jim has no choice but to accompany her, to her intense relief.

  She sits in the chair in front of the window and faces Dr. Dering. Jim sits perpendicular to him, against the wall. His left hand rests on top of his briefcase, which rests on the floor.

  “So tell me what happened?” Dr. Dering smiles at her.

  “Well, um …”

  “Let’s start from the beginning. It was June 21 of this year, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were …”

  “I was si-si-sitting in the passenger s-s-seat …”

  “The front passenger seat?”

  “Yes. I was sitting in the front passenger seat …”

  “Go on.”

  She does. She relates the whole story to him as he nods encouragingly and writes on his lined note pad. When she’s done, he starts asking her questions.

  “Tell me about your day.”

  “My day?”

  “Yes, let’s say yesterday. What did you do yesterday?”

  She frowns; her eyes flit back and forth as she looks down at the floor, then up at the ceiling. Yesterday, what did she do? She’s not sure. Only a serene blankness fills her mind, refusing to be cluttered with memories.

  “What was your sleep like?”

  “Oh. I don’t sleep well. The pain keeps me, keeps me up s-s-so it’s hard to f-f-fall asleep. Then I keep, keep waking up.”

  “Is it restorative?”

  “No. I’m always tired, and I hurt when I get up.”

  “Okay. And once you’re up, what do you do. You have breakfast?”

  “Yes.”

  “And after that?”

  She grips her bottom lip. “I check my email.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “Well, um, I turn, I turn on the computer, and then I, I read my email.” She pauses, “But I don’t answer right away. I get too tired.”

  “Do you read all your emails?”

  “Yes. Well, um, no. I kinda s-s-skip the newsletters. They’re too long. I’m s-s-saving them for when I have more, more time.”

  “Okay. And after you check your emails, what do you do?”

  “I go for a nap. Watch TV.”

  “After that?”

  She knits her brows, “I have lunch. I’m sup-sup-supposed to exercise. But I can’t do much yet. The physio has me walking for,” she sends her eyes left and right, left and right, “um, for one minute and doing weights without weights. If you know what I mean. I do that most, most days.”

  “Exercise is helpful,” he nods. “In your condition, starting with a minute is a good idea. What do you do in the afternoon?”

  She is silent for a while as she gazes into her mind, looking for an answer. “I watch TV. Try to answer the emails.”

  “So you answered the emails you received yesterday morning in the afternoon?”

  “Yeah. Oh. Um, no. I didn’t. I didn’t have a chance. There’s a lot of them. I’ve been working on them.”

  “Ten, twenty?”

  “Um, three.”

  “Hmmm. Did you make dinner after that?”

  “No, Jim makes dinner most nights. I used to, but I’m really tired. My right arm gets so-so-sore quickly. And then my head hurts.”

  “I understand. After dinner last night, what did you do?”

  “I flaked out on the couch and watched TV.”

  “What did you watch?”

  “Um. I’m not sure,” she drags the last word out. “I was watching one show. But I got thirsty. And then was playing with the cat downstairs. I went back. There was another show on. CSI … maybe … no, it was This is Wonderland. So, so, so I watched that, but my bladder was bothering me. And when I, when I came back a commercial was on, so, so I, um, I flipped to s-s-see if I could f-f-find another show. Jim got mad. I don’t know why. He’s always flipping.

  “Anyway, um,” She pauses for a bit. “Anyway, I came back to This is Wonderland. Jim got mad, s-s-said to turn down the volume ‘cause it was too loud. But how could I follow the show otherwise?”

  “Mm-hm. You watched TV till you went to bed?”

  “Yes. And anyway, Dr. Kale sent me to an audiologist who said my hearing is excellent. So I don’t see what Jim is complaining about.”

  “Mm-hm. And you went to bed when?”

  She thinks for
a moment, “Eleven.”

  Jim sits silently through all this, not moving his head, not his hand, not even his eyes. She perceives him on her right; his stillness is distracting. She hears the cars roaring outside the window and footsteps walking down the hall outside the closed office door. The scratch of his pen fills her ears as Dr. Dering scribbles notes on his pad. She smells the faint scent of a familiar aftershave and starts racking her memory for which one it is. Jim doesn’t wear aftershave, it must be his, the doctor’s. She’d tried to get Jim into it when they were first dating, and he humorously went along, but soon he left off putting it on in the morning. And besides, he smelled good all by himself.

  Thump. She jumps. Dr. Dering had just put his notepad down on his desk. He leans forward with his hands between his knees and regards her.

  “I think you have AS, Akaesman syndrome. You have all the typical signs. Inability to concentrate. Poor memory. Fatigue. Bladder problems. Flat affect. Slow speech. I’m going to send you for an Akaesman scan. I’m working with a radiologist on diagnosing this problem more effectively. He has the best scanner in the city. But I don’t think he’ll find anything. It’s been six months, and we don’t find signs so far away from the initial event. Akaesman almost always leaves within seven days of invasion, after he’s begun what is usually an unstoppable cascading effect. There are exceptions to the seven-day rule.” He sits up, swivels back to his desk, picks up the phone, and calls the radiologist. He speaks for a minute while he fills in a form and then hangs up.

  “Okay. I’ve booked you in for December 24. I know it’s the day before Christmas. But it’s a quick test, and I don’t want you to have to wait till late January.” He hands her the form, with all the information on it. She takes it reluctantly.

  Dr Dering stands up, reaches out to shake her hand again. She hesitates. She dreads the shoulder pain from shaking hands, but how to say no? It’s kind of obvious she doesn’t have a cold and can’t plead being contagious. She shakes his hand. He shakes Jim’s, and then they all troop out and down to the waiting room, where Dr. Dering leaves them. Jim and she head to the elevator and home in silence.

  She’s sitting in another waiting room. Again. This one is packed. Every seat is filled, and it’s a tiny room. And everyone is antsy, not wanting to be in this place, wanting to leave as it’s Christmas Eve. She never knew this place existed before. Jim had dropped her off and then taken off for some last-minute shopping. She was kind of glad she was sitting here instead of shopping. All those stores, all those people, all those decisions, too overwhelming. Most of the time she just wants to run out of the store. Her name’s called, and she follows the technician in. The technician asks her to sit down, and then she injects her with some milky liquid. Ouch. She’s told to go back and wait. She obeys.

  She isn’t sure how much time has passed, except she feels hot and in more pain than she thought possible, before she hears her name being called again. With relief, she follows the technician out of the room and into one where a big round machine with a skinny tongue sticking out awaits. She’s told to get onto the skinny tongue. She looks at it, its metal u-shape covered with a thick white cotton sheet. It looks too narrow to fit her frame. How can anyone big fit on that? How can anyone normal size fit? She hitches herself up awkwardly until she’s sitting on the sheet. She swings her legs up and then lies down on the sheet-covered metal tongue, her head at the back of it near the entrance into the machine. It hugs her round The tongue starts sliding her, top-of-head first, toward the big round machine. She can’t see where it’s taking her. Her heart pounds. She’s claustrophobic and fears being swallowed up. But the tongue stops when only the top of her head is in the machine. She can still see out. Not too bad.

  The scan commences. She feels hotter, and then cool air rushes in from somewhere. The noise is too loud to ask the technician about that cool air, and then the cool air stops, the scan stops, the tongue moves out. She forgets to ask where the air came from. Before she knows it, she’s standing on the sidewalk on Edward Street, waiting for Jim to pick her up. Snow falls down on her head, her shoulders. She opens her palms to the sky and watches the flakes waft down upon her gloves. She lifts her eyes to the sky and watches the soft breeze raise the Canadian flag flying above her.

  Honk.

  She jumps and scrambles to grab at the door handle.

  They’re back in Dr. Dering’s office, waiting. Again. The lull of Christmas holidays is over; the new year has begun, much to her relief. The receptionist had shown them in this time. The door swings open, and Dr. Dering strides in with a big grin on his face. He’s looking at her as a scientist would a guinea pig. Her heart sinks. His reaction can only mean that the scan was abnormal.

  “I want you in my research study,” he points at her. He drops the file on his desk, grabs his chair, swings it round so it faces her, and falls into it. He pulls himself closer to her, puts his hands between his knees, and looks right into her eyes. She tries to hold contact.

  “You show signs of AS. The way it works is Akaesman invades you and sets up shop in your brain. Some people are more vulnerable than others. We don’t know why. My theory is that he brushes you physically, and your emotional response provides him with an easier way of entry. What I believe is, is he is attracted to minute electrical currents on your skin that he then uses to enter your body. He rides the nerve conductions up into your brain where he resides, and you can’t resist him. He’s able to set up shop in most people and change them permanently into his image within seven days, and then he leaves because most people don’t resist. A few people though do resist him, whether they realize it or not, and he has to stay. That’s when we still see active signs of him many months later.”

  “Who is this Akaesman?” Jim interrupts.

  “Ah yes, of course, invasions are a hidden epidemic so you wouldn’t know about him,” he replies as he swivels around to face Jim. “Let me go back a few years …”

  Honking outside the window from across wide University Avenue attracts her attention. She’s sitting this time partly facing the window, and she rubbernecks the traffic contretemps outside, before she notices the clouds scudding across the sky, which is so blue and beautiful. Too bad it’s cold. Yet the warm air of summer brings a textural film between them and those happy blue skies; they’re much clearer in the frost of winter. A scrape of a chair brings her attention back to Dr. Dering who’s facing her again. She sits up guiltily and refocuses on him. He’s in mid-sentence. Hopefully, he hasn’t noticed her wandering.

  “… You will feel angry and irritated all the time. He heightens your senses so that every pin drop feels like nails on a board. But he dulls your perceptions so that every word seems smothered in water. This paradoxical effect makes you frustrated and deaf to reality. He wants to create a new reality for you. What we want to do is to get him out of you, but we don’t know how. Some people question whether we even want to do that. They’re of the school that he can bring new meaning to your life. So. The next best thing is to help you compensate for any limitations he’s imposed upon you. As I mentioned before, these limitations are an inability to concentrate, to remember, to learn, to feel emotions. They will affect your ability to work or even to function normally. Do you have an independent source of income?”

  “Um. I, I have a trust fund my parents left me —”

  “Your parents are no longer alive?”

  “No. They, they died when I was little. My grandmother … raised me. I, I came into the trust fund when I, um, turned eighteen. I get a s-s-small income from that. And, and the house is-s-s mine. I mean, theirs, but they left it to me when they, when they died.”

  “Good. That’ll help you in the fight to come until you’re compensated. The best place for you to go to get help is TARC. There’s a waiting list, four, six months, I think. But it’ll help you the best. The other thing is you’ll need a lawyer because you’ll have to make a claim with the Shadow Court. All ASs are dealt with by them, but it’s c
omplicated. I recommend Mr. Quickley. He’s helped many of my patients before. I’ll send him a medical report, and he’ll take care of the rest. You don’t need to worry about gathering evidence yourself.”

  Evidence? AS? TARC? What’s he talking about?

  “With an abnormal Angra scan so long after you met Akaesman, it’s a slam dunk for you.”

  “What is?”

  “The diagnosis of AS. There can be no doubt.”

  She stares at him in confusion.

  “Akaesman syndrome. They can’t dispute that you have it.”

  His words shake her. She’s absorbed that she’s typical yet not typical in some way. She’s absorbed she’s had abnormalities show up on a scan. But … but she has Akaesman syndrome? “AS” he called it. She can hardly grasp the idea. It’s all so unreal, so … so melodramatic. They had a minor incident with wind. That was all. The car hardly moved. How can she be having so many problems? It must be in her mind. Yet he says —

  Dr. Dering is holding out some papers to her. She slowly reaches out and takes them. She puts them on her lap.

  “I’ll call up and make an appointment for you at TARC. The receptionist will let you know when it is. You keep seeing Dr. Jones and get that physio and acupuncture. They’re good, and what Dr. Jones is doing is helping you. But I want you to call up Mr. Quickley. All the information you need is in those papers, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She gets up, papers clutched in her hand. She forgets her coat on the chair next to her. Jim grabs her coat as he stands up. He touches her shoulder, takes the papers from her, hands her her coat. She shrugs it on. They walk side by side down the hall to the elevator and then into the cold blue-sky January day. He takes hold of her hand with his free one; it hurts but it’s comforting. They walk in silence back to the car.

  At home, on their street, he lets her out at their front door before driving off to find a parking spot. She ascends the stairs to the red front door and lets herself in. She takes off her coat, hangs it up on the rack, and stands and stares through the empty living room to the silent dining room beyond. It takes her a moment to realize that Smokey hasn’t come to see her. In the past, her cat had always come running when she had heard her open the door, but for the last six months, it’s like she doesn’t exist. Shrugging it off, she makes for the phone on the desk in the dining room. She wheels the desk chair away from the desk, sits down, and picks up the phone. She calls Nance. She calls Charlie. She calls Belinda. And to every one of them she says the same thing: I have Akaesman syndrome. I have to go to TARC, I think it’s rehab. I don’t know what this means. I’m sure I’ll be better soon. They each and all say, “I’ll be over.”

  Jim opens the front door after she hangs up on the last phone call.

  “I got a meeting to go to. Be back soon,” he calls out, and then he’s gone. She remains in the chair. The cat jumps up on her lap, and she absently strokes her.

  A knock on the door. She raises her head, slowly stands up, and drags herself to the door. Nance is standing there with a cake box in her hand, Charlie and Belinda beside her. They had met together to come and console and comfort her, for they can feel her great suffering.

  “I brought chocolate cake. I knew you needed some comfort food. Your favourite, eh?” Nance says, offering the cake.

  She nods as she receives it into her hands.

  Somehow the cake is sliced; everyone holds a fork and a plate with a slice of cake on it as they sit on the forest-green three-seater couch and two black brocaded armchairs, the three friends and her. They eat, forks clinking against plates, teeth occasionally snapping through the moist cake, saying not a word.

  ~~~*~~~