Chapter 6
Faces gradually became clear. Leaning over me. I felt out of it, like my body didn’t belong to me anymore. I wanted to move, but I couldn’t. Tried to speak but my mouth was so dry my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my lips were sewed together. My eyes burned as my eyes wandered over the funny shaped people. She adjusted my pillow, my sheets and pulled my arms on top of the covers. My head felt weird. Sticky. Itchy. I turned it slightly and saw thin leads coming up from my neck and down to a machine that recorded colored lines, and came out on graph paper.
A BP cuff inflated on my arm, but I couldn’t see the results. That Doctor and another one that looked Chinese-American were standing near my Dad and Ms. Penny, Felice and holy cow, President Rickover was there, too.
“Dantan,” he said formally. “I had to thank you in person. For saving my life,” he started.
“I’m still not voting for you,” I mumbled past the dryness.
Dad understood me and laughed. “Just take it easy, Danny. You just had surgery on your brain. You’re going to feel weird. Doctor Soong did a biopsy. You had a seizure two days ago and it was on the EEG, gave the Doctor something to work with.”
“Epileptic?” I managed.
“No, Danny,” the Chinese Doctor said in perfect English. “You’re not an epileptic.”
“Am I gonna die?” I heard Dad and Felice’s gasps.
“In about seventy years, Danny, I hope. The biopsy isn’t cancerous. Frankly, we don’t know what it is, but it’s not normal brain tissue. These seizures or episodes are indicative of something wrong in your brain, and trigger a circulatory shutdown. Do you remember when it started?”
“Don’t remember even doing it,” I mumbled. Looked at my father and Felice. “Daddy, I’m scared.” Felt my eyes brimming with tears and the two of them hugged me. I felt wetness on my neck and cheeks, never heard the rest of them, leaving as I burst into sobs on my Dad’s chest, unable even to hug him back. I was enfolded in their arms and was not comforted.
*****
I lay in bed in the room darkened to give my eyes some respite as bright lights triggered those massive headaches with nausea. The slightest movement would make me hurl. My appetite was gone, I no longer wanted to eat anything.
Felice stayed with me as well as my Dad. The orderlies had brought in a spare bed where he could sack out and I could see him when I woke up.
They had me on drugs. It made me sleep most of the time, had me hooked up to IVs and I’d overheard them telling Dad, if I didn’t start eating, they’d be forced to put me on IV food or a gastric tube down my nose.
“Dad?”
“I’m here, Danny,” his voice came instantly.
“How long is this going on, Dad?”
“Till you’re better, Danny.”
“Not gonna get better, Dad.” I paused, struck by a certainty. “Dad, go talk to Uncle Town.”
“Why, Danny? He’s got dementia. He can’t tell us anything.”
“Dad, please. Tell him. Ask him for help. He knows.” I felt myself fading away again. “Dad, he’s like me.”
Wasn’t sure if he heard me. Felt Felice tug on my arm and say something. Couldn’t hear her either. Saw an electrical sheet in front of my eyes, as if fireworks and welders torches were playing a musical score. Felt a warmth on my tongue, a brassiness give way to velvet darkness.
*****
Danny? Dantan Townsley? Time to wake up, boy. I knew those names, that voice. Forced my eyes open, struggled at the horrible fullness in my throat that made me want to gag. Looked around as tears pooled involuntarily down my eyes.
“Danny, relax. There is a breathing tube down your throat, helping your lungs. I can feel you struggling to breathe on your own. Your 02 levels are up so we can remove the breather. Cough and on three we will pull it out.”
I coughed violently, wanting it out NOW. He removed it smoothly and the gagging sensation left but my throat was really sore. I couldn’t speak, just flailed my arms at them in anger. Someone grabbed them and held me down. “Relax, Danny or I’ll sedate you,” Doctor Kujowski said sternly.
Dad’s terrified face. Doctor Soong. Two nurses, two orderlies. No Ms. Penny, no Felice. Uncle Townsley. He shuffled forward, dressed neat and clean with a visitor’s badge on his lapel. In a suit.
“Uncle Town? You going to a funeral?” I asked. The last time he’d worn that suit was at Mom’s funeral.
“No, Danny boy,” he smiled, his odd eyes the same as mine and Mom’s. “You asked for me. Do you remember that?”
Dad stared at my uncle. Sure didn’t seem like he had dementia.. His eyes were bright and focused.
“I remember Dad telling me about a cat. Felice and her Dad visiting me. Being in the hospital.” It hurt to talk and Dad gave me some ice chips, which helped.
“You’ve got to learn to back off, Dantan. To keep part of yourself out or it’ll kill you.”
“How, Uncle Town?” I asked and it was like we were the only two people in the room. Abruptly, I was inside his head, not on my own but he’d carried me in there.
A small cozy room with a red velvet chair that Uncle Town gestured me to sit in. I sat. “You’re like me, Danny boy. A little something extra that goes with our eyes. I call it Psi. Your Mom had it also, but it went away after you were born or she would’ve known about the minivan.”
“Uncle Townsley, why are you in this nursing home if you’re not…”
“Crazy? I am crazy, Danny boy. I learned too late how to filter what happened in my brain. Sometimes, I can push it back for a few hours, enough to warn about what I see. I can feel it creeping up on me now. See?”
He pointed at a pulsating darkness that was encircling us, with gibbering monsters slowly taking shape and morphing into even worse ones. “Try to make a room in your head, Danny. A place only you have the key. Tight, impregnable like the vaults in Fort Knox. Keep your mind in there when you feel yourself losing your reality.”
“I don’t lose reality, Uncle Town. I see and hear everything the cat or dog does,” I protested.
He smiled. “I wondered how yours would progress. I see events before they happen. You can read animal minds?”
“Not read them, I’m in there, but I’m still me. I… use their senses. It’s after I get out that I’m… sick.”
He wandered around the chair, ignoring the approaching willies, searching my eyes. It felt like fingers poking in my head.
“Don’t bring all of your mind with you when you go in,” he told me. “You have to learn how to step back a bit.”
“How?” He grimaced and hands reached out to grab him and disappear into the swirling maelstrom of what I knew was his particular madness. I jumped up, lunged for his arm, and we engaged in a tug-of-war that resolved by a sudden snap of both arms where my uncle popped free to bounce on the armchair on top of me.
I screamed as a wave of intense light burst out of my eyes, mouth and nose to swallow the writhing darkness.
“What did I do?” I asked shakily as white light bathed us both, opening up the room around us into a real room under bright fluorescence.
“You fixed me,” he said in amazement and he slowly faded as I opened my eyes in my hospital room.