#and i told my mom about the aphasia and she was like go to the doctor???? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cwnerd12 · 6 years

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Be Fruitful

“Be Fruitful” David reclines in a comfortable leather seat in the royal private jet while around him, Abby and Jessie get into place. David, “Okay, the jet is nice. I like having a jet.” Jessie, “This is so exciting! My first royal wedding!” David, “Um, your second? What the hell did Jack and I do three months ago?” Jessie gets into her seat, “Oh, you know, you know.” Abby, “Well, there’s 14 Judd children, so we’ll be making plenty of trips to Rabbath, as long as we keep the peace with Ammon.” David gets his phone out, “Am I gonna be allowed to bring Jack to them?” He begins sending a text message to Jack, “On the plane.” Abby, “He’s the fucking prince consort, they’d better fucking let him. I will bring the fire and brimstone if there’s even a hint of homophobia, don’t you worry.” David, “Their whole ideology is based around reproduction. There’s gonna be a few hints of homophobia.” Jessie, “Then Jack made the right decision to not come.” David grimaces, “Please tell me Laura’s gonna be there.” Abby, “Nope. Not after the whole funneling money to terrorists thing.” David, “Shit!” Jessie, “Oh, David, come on, this is a fun vacation!” David, “I’m glad you can think of it as vacation, Mom. It’s still work for me and Abby.”

David, Abby, and Jessie go into the lobby of the hotel: there’s an enormous centerpiece of a golden, radiant cross surrounded by huge, gaudy flowers. Behind them, staff members scramble with their luggage. Jessie, “Oh, that’s nice.” David, “It’s not nice, Mom. It’s to remind you where you are. You’ve gotta be careful here. Women are supposed to stay in their place.” Jessie, “I know. I watch the news, too, David. Besides, I had seven boys. I can get more respect around here than you can.” David, “Fair point.” Abby, “We’re each getting our own rooms, though, right?” David, “Well, this place is strictly royalty and staff only for the weekend, so, yeah, I guess.” Jessie, “That’s just wasteful!” David, “We can get a room with two single beds, if you want.” Jessie, “You don’t want to spend your big royal event with your mom.” David, “Well, that’s kind of why I brought you here.”

In their room, Jessie and Abby look over the room service menu while David facetimes Jack and Michelle, “We made it in okay. We’re at the hotel, gonna order some room service. How are you doing?” Jack, “Lonely.” David, “You need to make more friends. I’m serious! Give the phone to Michelle, I want to talk to her.” Jack yells, “Michelle!” She takes the phone, “What?” David, “There’s a speech loss group at the palace tomorrow, make sure Jack goes.” Michelle, “What? Me? Why me?” David, “You’re his sister!” Michelle, “You’re his husband!” David, “I’m kind of busy!” Michelle, “He’s not twelve.” David, “Come on, you know he needs to talk to people who aren’t you or me.” Michelle, “At a fucking speech loss group?” David, “You know what I mean!” Jack rolls his eyes and makes jack off hands. Michelle, “Right now Jack rolling his eyes and making jack off hands.” David, “He knows I’m right, then. If I can survive this fucking wedding, he can survive an hour of a support group. Either you do it, or Thomasina will do it.” Michelle, “I’ll make him go. Making Jack suffer is my unique gift.” Jack, “Traitor!” Michelle smirks, “Don’t you worry.” David, “Okay, thanks?” Michelle, “And, David?” David, “Yeah?” Michelle, “You take it easy. I mean, I know this sucks but, all you have to do is smile, shake hands, and be polite. You’re good at that.” David, “Thanks, Michelle, and I will. I promise.”

Night time, David swims in the empty hotel indoor pool. He wears a small pair of shorts that Jack picked out for their honeymoon, showing off his body and scars. The room is empty save for David’s security guys. He swims a few laps, trying to clear his mind. He floats peacefully on his back, eyes shut, letting the water lap around him, enjoying the solitude. He opens his eyes and sees the faces of Michael, Fredrick, and Leon Achison-Shaw sneering down at him. Michael, “Jesus, who the hell chewed you up like that?” David begins swimming away, “I’m not speaking to you, this is not a business trip! If your father insists on talking to me, he has to go through Abigail Benjamin-Hatch!” Michael follows along as David swims, “What, can’t I get to know you a little bit? Considering that you lead Gilboa and I’m one day gonna be leading Gath.” David reaches the steps leading out of the pool, “I don’t want to talk to you.” Michael stands firmly in David’s way, “How’s Jack?” David, “He’s fine. Can I please leave now?” Michael, “You know, I spent almost my whole life figuring I’d one day fight a war with him. I always paid close attention when I was near him, listened for his name in the news. I thought I had him figured out, but then you came along, and suddenly now it’s you I have to worry about.” David, “Well, here I am.” Michael, “Where’d you get the scars?” David, “Around. I kind of comes with leading a rebellion." Michael smirks, “You know you look different up close than you do an camera.” David, “Oh yeah?” Michael, “You’re less impressive when you see that you’re actually made out of flesh, I guess. You’ve got scars like the rest of us. Kind of makes me wonder what else you’re hiding.” David, “I usually have people telling me I’m even more handsome in person, but I guess that’s something you’d be unfamiliar with.” Michael, “You know, I’ve been to the farm where you grew up. Fred’s unit has their base of operations there.” David, “Oh, so that’s what this is about. Trying to rub it in my face, huh?” Michael, “You’re here with your mom, aren’t you?” David, “If any of you go near her, I will have my security take you away, I don’t care about causing a scene. The same goes for your father. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going back to my room.” He pushes past Michael and grabs a towel. Michael, “Say hi to Jack for us.” David grits his teeth, ignores him, and walks away. Back in the room, Jessie luxuriates in a fluffy bath robe and bright pink facial mask, her hair in rollers, “Have a good swim?” David, “Yeah.” Jessie takes a second look at him, “Doesn’t look like you did a whole lot of relaxing.” David, “I’m tired. I’m gonna wash the chlorine off and then go to bed.” Jessie, “All right. I’ll be in bed soon, too.” David pauses and looks at Jessie. He smiles slightly, “Luxury suits you, Mom.” Jessie grins at him, “I try to enjoy it. This mask was made with real roses, you know!”

Pitch blackness. Jessie’s soft voice, “…David?” a short pause, and then louder, “David!” David jerks awake, a single lamp illuminating the hotel room. Jessie stands over him, a look of concern over her face, “Are you all right?” David, still somewhat disoriented, “What?” Jessie, “You were making noises. It sounded like a bad dream.” David lets out a sigh, “Oh,” he sinks into his pillows, slightly relieved, “Yeah, um, I kind of have those every once and a while. It’s nothing. Just go back to sleep. I’ll be fine.” Jessie, “Are you sure?” David, “Yeah. I’m sorry I woke you up. I… I haven’t had bad dreams in a while, but… I guess I’ve been kind of stressed. They tend to come back when that happens.” Jessie, “Was it about Jack again?” David, “No. I…” he thinks for a moment, “I don’t remember what it was about, actually.” Jessie, “Are you sure you’re all right, baby? Can I get you anything?” David, “I’m fine. I’ll get myself a sleeping pill, fall right back asleep. I can give you one if you need it.” Jessie, “I’ll be all right. I’m just worried about you.” David, “I just have bad dreams sometimes.”

The next morning, in the residence, Michelle threatens Jack, “I may be a foot shorter than you, but I’ve been doing cardio and I will drag your ass downstairs!” Jack, whining, “Whyyyyy?” Michelle, “David says you have to. I guess the PTSD group did him some good. I dunno, he just told me to do it. He said you need to talk to some new people.” Jack,“I can’t talk.” Michelle, “Yes you can.” Jack rolls his eyes. Michelle, “Hey, if you do this and it sucks, that’ll just give you a reason to say no next time David tries to get you to do something stupid.” Jack crosses his arms and stubbornly remains sitting on the sofa. Michelle, “Ugh, I can’t believe you’re making me do this.” She goes over, grabs his wheelchair, and parks it beside the sofa. She goes over to Jack and starts to hoist him upwards, “Come on, get up!” Unhappily, Jack goes along as she moves him into the wheelchair. Michelle, “And you know you’re supposed to be walking everywhere now. If your recovery halts because you’re being a fucking asshole, I’m going to laugh at you.” Jack raises his middle fingers, “Push me, bitch.” Michelle pushes Jack out the door, “How the hell does someone who can’t fucking talk manage to complain so much?” Jack, “I’m talented.”

David walks with Abby and Jessie down towards the lobby of the hotel. Abby wears a tasteful grey sleeveless dress. She smooths out the skirt, “I can’t believe they’re making me wear a fucking skirt.” Jessie, “You look lovely.” Abby, “It’s not about looking good, it’s the principal of being forced to wear a skirt.” They get in the elevator. David, “Hey, Mom, at the wedding, don’t talk to anyone from Gath. If someone tries something, come get me or Abby right away, okay?” Jessie, “I can look out for myself!” David, “I know you like to talk to people. If you even say so much as hi to the wrong person, before you know it, they’ll be saying terrible things to you.” Jessie, dismissively, “Don’t worry!” David sighs, “I mean it, Mom! Give them room, they’ll end up telling you terrible things about what they’re doing with the farm, or bring up Dad and Eli…” Jessie, “Did something happen last night?” David, “Just promise me you won��t talk to anyone from Gath.” Jessie, “I promise, I promise.”

Downstairs, the speech loss group is mostly old people with aphasia and their care-takers. Jack shoots Michelle a look. Michelle, “Shut the fuck up.” Behind them, a female voice says, “Look, there’s someone else in an AFG jacket.” Michelle turns around, and sees a brother and sister, Amanda and Gus, both wearing AFG jackets. Amanda, “Oh shit. Well, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who had to drag her brother here.” Jack and Gus exchange looks. Michelle laughs, “Hi. Is this your first time, too?” Amanda, “Yep.” Michelle, “You got a brain injury, too?” Amanda, “Nope. Gus got shot in the throat.” Michelle’s eyes widen with med student glee, “NO WAY,” she catches herself, “Oh, shit, sorry, I shouldn’t say that. I’m a med student. My professors are always yelling at me not to say ‘Neat,’ when I’m examining patients.” Jack rolls his eyes. Gus raises his chin and points to the scar. Michelle gawks, “Woah!” Amanda, “The bullet cauterized the jugular.” Michelle, “Oooh, I’ve heard of that happening. That’s one of those things you hear about but like never see. You’re like medical Bigfoot.” In halting, awkward sign language, Gus says, “Thank you not say lucky.” Amanda, “He says thank you for not calling him lucky.” Michelle, “Oh, yeah, Jack hates being called lucky.” Jack and Gus exchange understanding grins, grateful that someone else gets it. Michelle, “Throat injuries will fuck you up.” Amanda, “Yeah, Gus has to have all of his food pureed and his liquids thickened. I tried eating like that for a week, and,” she gives Gus a regretful look, “I’m sorry! I don’t understand how it works. If his food isn’t the exact right consistency, he chokes on it, but at the same time, he doesn’t have a gag reflex any more. Throats are weird.” Michelle, “Jack doesn’t have a gag reflex, either, but that has nothing to do with his injury.” Jack makes an exaggerated OH MY GOD backwards flop.

In the lobby, Jessie happily chats with Queens Caroline and Gloria while David keeps a wary eye on the Achison-Shaws. Gerald talks to King Lawrence, occasionally casting conspiratorial glances at David, who pretends to be minding his own business. The brothers stand with their wives, talking and snickering. Princesses Iris and Tabitha approach David, “We’re so glad to see you again!” David, still keeping an eye on the Gath party, “Hi." A handler approaches Abby, “Pardon me, Miss Hatch?” Abby, “It’s Ms. Benjamin-Hatch.” Handler, “Yes, I’m afraid there’s a bit of a problem with your dress. You see, women in Ammon are expected to adhere to a standard of modesty-” Abby, “This is modest.” Handler, “It doesn’t have sleeves. Your dress needs sleeves.” Abby, “Queen Caroline is wearing a sleeveless dress.” Handler, “The standards are allowed to be relaxed somewhat for royalty.” Abby, “So? I’m royalty. I’m married to a princess.” Handler, “You need a title.” Abby snaps, “David!” David turns around, “What?” Abby, “Give me a title.” David, “What?” Abby, “I need a title so I can be royalty. Give me one.” David, “Fine. You’re Duchess Abigail.” Abby looks at the handler, “There. I’m titled.” Handler, “Miss Hatch’s dress doesn’t fit our standards of modesty.” David, “It’s Benjamin-Hatch.” Abby, her voice rising, “I didn’t bring anything else!” Handler, “You need to change.” Abby, “That’s bullshit!” Iris intervenes, “Is there a problem?” Handler, “Miss Hatch-” Abby, “BENJAMIN-HATCH! It is not that fucking hard!” Handler, “Miss Hatch needs a new dress.” Iris, staying calm, “I have another dress you can wear. It should fit fine.” Abby looks at David for help. He shrugs helplessly. Iris, “We’ll change and be right back.” She discreetly leads Abby away. Abby, still seething, mutters, “This is because i’m fucking gay.” Iris, “I know.”

Amanda talks hesitantly to the group, “I- I feel bad when I talk about my needs. I mean, Gus is the one who got shot and… God, he was conscious through the whole thing. He had to hold his neck wound closed, and then let the medics start sticking all these tubes in-” Michelle, “A Foley catheter. They balloon up and stop a punctured blood vessel from bleeding.” Amanda, “I didn’t see him until we figured out he was in the hospital under a false name. When he didn’t check in, I- I thought he was dead. The only reason I didn’t list him dead was because nobody could verify that they’d seen his body.” Michelle reaches over and puts her hand on Amanda’s. Amanda, “Gus has been through so much I just feel like I’m not allowed to complain- I- I don’t even want to call it complaining, I’m happy to be the one taking care of him. Ot’s just that sometimes it gets really hard and I don’t know how to acknowledge that.” She sniffs and wipes tears from her eyes. The group leader, “Perhaps you should just try finding the right words for how you feel. Would you say that sometimes you feel frustrated and overwhelmed?” Amanda, “Yeah. That’s a good way of putting it.” Michelle looks around. Jack and Gus are missing. Michelle, “Wait, where’s Jack and Gus?” Cut to: on a balcony, Jack and Gus sit in the sun without speaking and pass a joint back and forth. Jack blinks in the bright light and takes a deep hit. A satisfied smile appears over his face. Behind them, a door opens and Michelle and Amanda come out. Michelle, “Oh for fuck’s sake!” She goes over to Jack and grabs the joint, “Is this where you’ve been?” Jack, “Nice day.” Michelle, “You’re supposed to be going to therapy!” Gus, in a quiet, raspy, barely a whisper voice, “We have therapy.” He exchanges looks with Michelle and Amanda. Amanda sighs, “At least you’ve made a friend.” She takes the joint from Michelle, sits down, and takes a hit. Michelle sits down, too, and Amanda passes her the joint. She takes a hit, “You know, just because you’re going through more shit the rest of us doesn’t mean we aren’t going through shit, too.” Amanda, “Don’t bring it up. I just need to talk sometimes.” Gus and Jack exchange looks.

David waits outside of Iris’s hotel room. The door opens, and Iris brings Abby out, wearing a very un-Abby-ish dress with bright green stripes, elbow-length sleeves, a pussybow, and a full skirt. Abby, “Thank you for the dress, Iris.” Iris, “You’re more than welcome!” Iris goes off. David, “You still look lovely.” Abby, hissing, “Shut the fuck up or I will skin you alive.” David grins and offers her his arm. Abby takes it. David, “Hey, check out the cufflinks.” Abby looks down and sees that David is wearing bi pride cufflinks. She grins at him, “Nice.”

In a bright, sunny, open field, guests sit in their chairs. TV cameras and crewmen scramble to get into place. Abby fans herself furiously and David tries to discretely wipe sweat off of his forehead. Warner and Mae beam at Wayne, standing in his cowboy-style military uniform up at the altar. Music starts to play. Skylyn Judd walks down the aisle in a yellow flower girl dress, followed by her brother, Gideon, the ringbearer. The bridesmaids, dressed in yellow dresses with enormous matching fascinators walk down the aisle with their groomsmen in cowboy boots. David suppresses a laugh. Abby, through gritted teeth, “Don’t laugh.” David, “I can’t help it. It looks like a canary exploded on their heads.” Abby, weakly, “If you laugh I’m gonna laugh.” David, still stifling his laughter, “Okay. The band begins the bridal march and everyone stands. Wayne’s bride, Hattie, wearing the biggest, tackiest modest wedding dress imaginable, is led down the aisle on a horse. David and Abby both dissolve into suppressed laughter.

Warner gives a speech later in the ceremony. He speaks with slow, calm earnestness, looking out at each person in the crowd, “I find myself thinking of Adam, quite often. God created him first. He was given his own paradise, lord of all the plants and animals, but he was by himself. Loneliness is an awful thing. It can drive the strongest man mad, and make the most unthinkable things suddenly appealing.” He glances at David, and David shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Warner goes on, “Adam’s loneliness was such that it made paradise unbearable. And so from Adam’s rib, God created Eve. From the creation of Eve, comes the greatest gift that God has given us: love.” sappy smiles from all around. Warner, “We honor God’s gift of love with the sacred covenant of marriage. What God has joined together, let no man tear asunder. There is no greater insult to God than when we dishonor his great gift with the sins of infidelity. When we betray our spouses, we betray God.” His eyes settle on David. David glances around and notices Michael and Fredrick also glancing at him. Warner goes on, “We honor God by repaying his gift of love: we create life for Him. We give Him our children. That is the only true way to honor God and to honor the gift of love.” David looks over at Abby, and she rolls her eyes. David grins a little bit, heartened slightly, but he remains uneasy.

Back on the balcony, Michelle stands up, “Would you two like a tour of the palace?” Amanda, “What? That would be amazing!” Jack, “I’m good here.” Michelle looks at Gus. Gus, “I’m good.” Michelle leads Amanda away, “Come on. I’ll show you where David keeps his socks.” They go inside. Gus and Jack sit peacefully looking up at the sky. Jack sighs and closes his eyes, deep in thought. He glances over at Gus and concentrates on what he wants to say, “Do you… talking… try it?” He falters slightly at the end, embarrassed. Gus replies in sign language, “I’m learning sign.” Jack grimaces slightly, “I can’t,” he points to his scar, “Brain thing. Language is hard.” Gus, “I also write.” Jack leans back in his seat, and they sit in silence for a long moment. Jack, “Do you get angry?” Gus, “Constantly.”

David and Abby awkwardly stand around at the reception at the palace. Abby, “God, this hell hole doesn’t even have booze.” David, “Few more hours, we’ll be back on the plane to Shiloh. You might even be able to catch some sleep before work tomorrow.” Abby, “Fuuuuck!” David looks over to where Jessie happily chats with a group of princesses. David, “I knew bringing Mom was a good idea. She always does well at this shit.” Abby, “Moms make great diplomats.” David looks over and sees the Achison-Shaw boys talking to the princes of Aram and the older princes of Ammon, and looking at something on a phone. Michael looks up and sees David looking at them. He gestures for the princes to move away from David, and they follow him. An aide approaches David, “Your Highness, Prince Wayne has requested an audience with you.” David, “Okay.” He gets led into a small, private room where Wayne waits by himself. David, “Uh, hi. Congratulations on getting married.” Wayne doesn’t say anything. He smirks and gives David a long, appraising look, “You recently got married, too, didn’t you?” David, “Yeah, I did.” Wayne, “Shame it’s not a real marriage in the eyes of God.” David, “Okay are you just going to berate me, because I really don’t want to be here in the first place and I’d love to just fucking leave. My husband is back in Shiloh, waiting for me.” Wayne, “Getting married is my first step towards my future as the king of Ammon. Considering that I’ll one day be facing off against you, I thought I should talk to you.” David, “Are you already plotting a war?” Wayne, “I’m considering my future realistically.” David, “Okay, well, I don’t know if you’re aware, but fighting a war fucking sucks.” Wayne, “Don’t you dare condescend to me, Shepherd. I know what war is like. My father fought for his crown just like you did. As soon as I could walk, I was a soldier of Christ. I didn’t have a settled home until I was ten years old. I never knew the luxury of peace and comfort.”

#Kings

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lacommunarde · 7 years

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A Stroke of Bad Luck (The Flash/Legends of Tomorrow fic)

Ao3 link to Chapter 1 : http://archiveofourown.org/works/13090689/chapters/29948106

Summary: In canon, Mick Rory has noticeable hesitation around words that he clearly has learned. This is known as aphasia. One common source of aphasia - particularly that gets worse when one is anxious or doesn't have someone around to answer any rebuttal - is a stroke. Given that he doesn't show any other affects, it could be a childhood stroke, in the 1970s, when no one really understood that children could even have strokes, let alone what this meant, and before Stroke Rehabilitation was really set up.

Warnings: Hospitals, Hospital Care in the 1970s, Stroke, Childhood Stroke, Ableism, Bullying, Pyromania, Did you know childhood strokes caused by traumatic brain injury can completely rewrite kids’ brains?,

Characters: Mick Rory, Mick Rory’s Mom and Dad, Sisters and Brothers, Original Characters, Leonard Snart, Leonard Snart’s Mom, Leonard Snart’s Grandfather, Lewis Snart,

The little boy – scarcely older than a toddler, though his Mama said he would be old enough to go off to school the following year - squirmed into his Da’s barn, dodging past the various shears and shovels and seed bags lining the walls. He figured he had timed it right - his Da would just be starting to fix the tractor. It was his favorite activity of the day, one that he’d started sneaking off to watch last summer, even though he was supposed to be napping then. The sounds in the main section of the barn informed him he had showed up at the right time.

The air was hottest at this time of day. He had heard his Da tell his older brothers that that was why he chose this time of day to be in the shade of the barn to do the repairs, which needed doing every day lest something big go wrong with the tractor and other big words that described equipment that served various functions according to what the season was and what the tractor was being used for at the moment. The tractor served a variety of purposes, he knew, like planting and watering and harvesting and taking older kids from school on hayride, which was a great responsibility their Da rested on the shoulders of the boy’s oldest brother, Jake. The little boy – youngest but for the babies – wanted to be entrusted with that wondrous responsibility, but for now, he was told to stay away from the tractor, and actually to stay out of the barn altogether. Da told him that no one could spare a moment to watch a toddler who kept sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted, but the little boy trusted himself in here. After all, he was just watching.

As long as he was just watching, he could come here every day and watch, and that meant his older sister, Jeannie, who was supposed to be watching him, could sneak into their Mama’s room to try on some of her expensive make-up. The little boy’s second-oldest brother Billy, who was twelve and a snot-nosed twelve at that, at least according to Jeannie and to their aunt, said that the make-up made Jeannie look like a cheap hooker. The little boy didn’t know what that meant but whatever it was sure made Jeannie start wailing on Billy with her fists.

So he was here, during the hottest time of the day, wiggling through the farm equipment to get from a window to where he could watch his Da do his daily repairs on the tractor. Today, his Da was fixing the engine. He had all the parts carefully lain out in front of him and was picking up and polishing each with car oil – to make sure they moved smoothly, the little boy knew, and didn’t squeak or jam.

There was a loud noise from outside and both the boy and his Da jumped, before realizing it was likely all the chickens putting up a call as they did whenever anybody went near them with anything. It was probably Jake coming back with the car from town. Sure enough, Da slammed down the part he had been polishing and shouted, “Jake, shut those damn chickens up, will ya?”

The boy moved around to get a view of what was going on outside when he bumped against a board, one of the one that Da, Jake and some of the boys from town used to fix up the barn when something was leaky.

The board swung. There was a creak from one of the pulleys up above, that Da and Jake used to store other farm equipment near the ceiling when they didn’t need it for a few months. The boy was aware that one of the ropes started moving quickly.

And then something struck him on the head and he was falling.

“Michael. Mikey,” he came to blearily to find his Mama saying. She was aiming for soothing, but her voice was ineffectively hiding a tone of panic.

“He likes Mickey, Mom,” Jeannie said.

“Who the hell cares what he prefers? Why was he up there in the first place?” Da roared. “And why weren’t you watching him?”

“Patrick, language.”

“Do I look like I’m in the mood to be corrected on language, Fiona! What was the boy doing around that dangerous equipment anyhow?”

“Jeannie?” Fiona turned to the fourteen year old. “Weren’t you keeping an eye on him today?”

Jeannie looked from one parent to the other and flushes red. “Uhh. He must have wandered off?”

Mickey coughed. Everyone’s eyes turned to him. “I’m sorry. I wanted to watch you fix the engine,” he explained. His tongue felt like cotton and his head was throbbing.

“Well, things like this are exactly why you aren’t allowed to until you’re eight.”

Mickey pushed himself up so he was sitting. “I wasn’t hurting nothing, Da.” A wave of dizziness hit, so he had to close his eyes. “I don’t feel so good.”

“Have some water, Mickey,” his Mama said, shaking her head. “And, in the future, do as your father says.”

He nodded. His Mama helped him up. “If you do that again, I’m gonna have to take a switch to your backside,” his Da said, shaking his own head in turn before he turned and stalked out to go back to repairs.

Mickey nodded again.

The next day at dinner, as Mickey was chewing on chicken and tomatoes, his mouth stopped working properly.

The food in his mouth tumbled out.

Jeannie, seated next to him, flinched, “Mom, he’s playing with his food.”

Mickey stared down at it, because he hadn’t been at all. He was just eating and then it tumbled out. He looked up at his Mama and opened his mouth to explain. Or tried to. He managed to open his mouth, but his tongue felt too big and didn’t want to move properly, and he could only feel half his lips. The left side of his mouth felt like his feet went he sat on them too long: just not there.

When talking didn’t work, Mickey gestured at his mouth and shook his head and tried to explain again. Pushing as hard as he could with the side he could feel, his mouth finally gaped open, but his tongue still wouldn’t move. Tears started welling up in his eyes.

His Da, Jake and Billy – practically everybody - always told his that big boys don’t cry, so he wiped them away with his arm and sniffed back a desire to cry.

Mama frowned at him. “Michael, are you feeling okay?”

He shook his head.

“Do you want to go to bed?” she asked, in the same tone.

He nodded.

Da put down his fork. “He just wants attention, Fi.”

“He doesn’t look good, Patrick. I’m putting him to bed.”

She picked him up and carried him to his bedroom in the converted storage room between hers and Da’s room and the babies’ room. Mickey was way too big for her to do that – he was a big boy now, he didn’t cry – but he didn’t mind it right now, and he clung to her.

She laid him down in his bed and put her hand across his forehead. “Well, baby, you don’t have a fever. I’d say just rest for now.”

He nodded. She picked up his jammies out of the bureau. He pushed himself up and raised his arms to let her put them on him. His left arm felt a little weaker than normal, but he just pushed it higher with an effort. She helped him change into jammies and tucked him in.

“I’m going back down to dinner now.”

His tongue began feeling pin and needles, like when he got off of his foot after sitting on it too long. That meant he’d be able to move it again soon. He nodded again.

“I’m going to turn the lights out. Try to get some rest.”

As she was about to leave, he managed to get control of his tongue enough to say, “Thank you.”

He slurred a bit, but she didn’t notice.

In the dark, he rubbed at his arm and pinched his tongue and lips. They still felt weird, all weak and wobbly, but at least he could feel them and move them.

He wondered what had happened.

The next day, he was helping feed the chickens and the big, old pig Billy had named Bacon and Mama had renamed Grumpy when the arm that was holding the bucket of chicken feed lost feeling and dropped to his side, the chicken feed scattering as he could no longer hold the bucket upright.

“Mickey! Watch what you’re doing?” Mama scolded.

He tried to right it with the hand that was holding it, and failing to move it, reached over with his right hand to grab it.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” he said once he had it firmly in hand again.

“Mickey, you have to pay more attention to what you’re doing!”

He knew that was her typical protest, and he was trying, but this time that was not it. He glanced away from her and said, “I was, but I can’t feel my arm.”

She glanced at his arm. “Did you sleep on it wrong?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

She sighed. “Come here. Let’s take a look.”

He walked over to her, put down the chicken feed bucket between them so the chickens could not get into it, and picked up his arm to hand to her. She stroked his hand. He could feel it but only very distantly. She took his hand and pressed it at various points. “I need to know if anything hurts when I do this.”

He shook his head.

She began pressing her thumb up his wrist and arm. She got to mid-way up his arm before feeling returned with a rush. His hand curled into a fist. He winced.

“There we go, baby. Feeling pins and needles?”

He nodded. “I can feel it now.”

“Good boy. Now let’s continue feeding the chickens and afterwards we can go feed Grumpy.”

He smiled, picked up the bucket and continued tossing the feed out to the chickens.

A day later, as he was playing tag football with Jake and Billy, his left ankle twisted and wouldn’t untwist. He rubbed at it, because that’s what Mama did whenever something fell asleep, and then smacked at it, because that’s what Jake and Billy and their friends always did whenever their limbs fell asleep. Then he just started crying.

The two older boys stopped. “What the hell is wrong with him, Jake?” Billy said.

“I don’t know. Go tell Mom.”

Billy turned to Jake with a groan, his voice raising up in whining tone. “Why I always gotta do it?”

Jake shoved him. “Cause you’re younger, that’s why, Billy!”

Billy sneered. “I’d say we just let him sit there and cry it out.”

Mickey gestured at his foot and grabbed at his pant leg to move it. Jake began chewing on his lip. “No. Listen. Go get Mom now. Okay? Or I’ll beat you up.”

Billy ran to go get Mama. Jake crouched down by Mickey. “Hey, Mickey. Stop your crying and tell me what’s wrong.”

Mickey gestured at his foot. “It won’t wake up,” he tried to say, but his syllables dragged and it ended up sounding like, “I-a’won wayuh.” He frowned at the missing letters and tried to find them in his mouth with his tongue. But his tongue was dragging.

Jake sighed. “Mickey. Mick. You gotta calm down, okay?”

Mickey looked at his brother and nodded.

Jake smiled and tousled Mickey’s hair. “Now, does it hurt?”

Mickey shook his head.

Jake gestured at his foot. “What’s affected?”

Mickey pointed at his foot, to his ankle, and up to his knee.

Jake put a hand on his leg. “Does that hurt?”

Mickey shook his head.

Jake moved his hand down. “That?”

Mickey shook his head again.

Jake nodded and moved his hand a little more. “That?”

Mickey shook his head again.

The process was repeated down his ankle and foot.

“Well, you haven’t broken or sprained anything, so let’s see if we can turn your ankle right.”

He picked up Mickey’s foot and rotated his ankle. Mickey watched but couldn’t feel it. “That hurt?”

Mickey shook his head again.

Mama came out of the house with Billy. “How’s he doing?”

“He can’t feel his leg, but nothing’s broken or anything.” Jake stood up.

“What was he doing when it happened?” Mama asked.

“He was just running for the ball,” Billy said.

Mickey nodded in agreement.

“I straightened out his ankle. Maybe it had something to do with that.”

“Good thinking, Jake,” Mama said and crouched down next to Mickey. “Hey, Mickey, I think that’s enough playing with the older boys for today. Don’t you?”

Mickey nodded and reached for her. She picked him up, resting his head on her shoulder and petting his hair. “I’m going to take him in and put him down for a nap.”

Jake nodded.

After the kitchen door swung shut, Billy said, “So, you want to continue tossing the ball?”

Jake nodded, picked up the football, and threw it to Billy. “Sure.”

Mama put Mickey to bed. He caught her before she let go of him. “Tay.” He couldn’t get his tongue to make the s.

She put her other hand on his forehead. “Baby, Mama needs to go make dinner. Rest a little and I’m sure you’ll feel better.”

He nodded, knowing the importance of Dinner.

“Try to rest, baby. I’ll come up with dinner later.”

He sighed and closed his eyes. She turned out the light on the way out. He thought he could hear murmuring outside, likely to Jeannie as it sounded like two female voices. But he was trying to be a good boy and rest. So he willed himself not to let his attention go onto them and just to focus on sleep.

However, that provided him plenty of time to think about how he couldn’t feel the weight of the blanket on his leg or, he found, his arm. He tried to wiggle his toes and couldn’t tell if they were or not. A glance down at the blanket and a repeated attempt said that they were not. He took a deep breath and tried to be a good boy and not start crying, though it was difficult. But if he focused on finding out what was going on, that seemed to distract him.

Left arm, leg and the left side of his tongue all didn’t work. Right side still did. No lack of movement or feeling there. He took a deep breath.

He must have drifted off because he awoke when Mama was bringing him food in bed, which must mean he must be really sick, because he had only ever seen her do that when Jeannie had a fever of 104 and when Billy caught the flu. She gave him soup, which he ate. He drooled, though Mama seemed not to mind, and then she left one of the storm candles burning inside an oil lamp on his dresser when she turned out the lights and advised sleep again. He was able to rotate, with difficulty, onto his side, and kept his eyes on the storm candle to keep from thinking about what could be going wrong, which would lead to crying and he didn’t want to cry, until he fell asleep.

The following morning, he awoke to find Dr. Francis, the kids’ doctor, looking down at him. “Hi, Mickey. How are we feeling today?”

Mickey blinked up at him. “Hi-ya,” he managed to say.

“Can you sit up for me?”

Mickey shook his head and then, to make it seem like he wasn’t just being disobedient, he patted his left arm and picked it up in his right, holding it out to Dr. Francis. Dr. Francis didn’t take it so Mickey let it flop, and pointed at his leg as well.

Dr. Francis nodded. “I see, Mickey. You may have to spend the night at the doctor’s office so I can keep an eye on you.”

The only time he had ever heard that was when the words “near death” had been uttered, or in the case of Spot the barn cat, when someone was not going to make it home again. That must mean it was very serious, that his condition, whatever it was, was very dire. Tears jumped to his eyes. “Am I-ya gon ta die?” he asked, merging the consonants with the next syllable to make them easier to drag his mouth into.

Dr. Francis smoothed Mickey’s hair. “No, Mickey. You won’t die. Now I’m going to help you to sit up.” Mickey nodded and Dr. Francis supported his left side as he sat. “If I let go, can you stay sitting up?”

Mickey thought about it, tested it and seemed to be able to. “’es,” he answered, finding that “yes” could be said without moving his mouth.

The doctor took his hand away from Mickey’s back, opened his bag and took out a little rubber hammer. “I’m going to check your reflexes, Mickey.” Mickey nodded as the doctor placed his hand over Mickey’s knee and hit the back of his fingers. Mickey’s right knee bounced. His left almost kicked the doctor’s kneecap out.

“Was-sa mean?” Mickey asked.

“I’d like you to smile for me,” Dr. Francis said.

Mickey tried to smile, but could only feel half his face responding. He brought his right fingers up to find that the left side of his face wasn’t responding. He pushed it up so he was.

“What stuffed animal would you like to have with you at the doctor’s office tonight?” Dr. Francis asked.

“Pfig Pfear,” Mickey answered as best he could.

“I’m going to go meet with your mother outside.”

Dr. Francis left the oil lamp burning on the top of the dresser. Mickey turned and stared at it to get his mind off whatever was happening to him, which would hopefully keep him from crying and let him act like a big boy. So he stared at it, watching the flames lick at the inside of the glass lamp cover, wondering where the breeze that occasionally blew it was coming from and how it was able to move the flame behind the glass.

Dr. Francis came back in with Mickey’s Mama, who came over and picked him up and clutched him to her hard enough it hurt. “Baby, you’ll be okay. Okay? But I want you to be brave. Can you do that for me?”

Mickey murmured. “’es, Ma-ma.”

“Good boy, my baby.”

He put his head against her cheek and hugged her tighter with his not-useless arm.

A quarter hour later, he was buckled into the back seat of Dr. Francis’ car and driven away.

He was not driven to the doctor’s office but to the hospital. “Whey?” he asked.

Dr. Francis answered. “We’re at the hospital, Mickey. You’re going to be spending the night here, and then tomorrow, we’ll go back home.”

Mickey felt his heartrate start to speed up too fast. He couldn’t get enough air to his lungs. “I’n no’ dat tick-ka!” Mickey said. He might have shouted it actually, but surely he could be forgiven: his ears were pounding, and he didn’t have control over his volume, and he just felt sick, and he wanted to go home.

Dr. Francis turned around and leaned between the front seats to put a hand on Mickey’s arm and forehead and force him to look at him. “Mickey!” he called. “Calm down. Mickey, I want you to count to ten with me. Can you do that? One. Two.”

Mickey caught up to saying it with him after five. “Good boy,” said Dr. Francis after he got to ten. “It’s just for a check-up, same as you have with me, just with equipment they only have here. Understood?”

Mickey nodded. Dr. Francis took him out and carried him into the hospital before putting him into a wheelchair – “It’s just procedure, Mickey. I promise,” which though it helped him realize there was no need to panic, it didn’t really: the white everything of the hospital was so unlike everything at home, and the hostile smell that everything was coated in was making his eyes sting, so he still had an elevated heart rate and couldn’t get enough air, and what’s worse, he was still on the verge of tears, and Mama had said to be brave. And he wished he had something other than Big Bear to distract him, even that storm candle covered by the glass oil lamp cover had worked better than nothing. He could look at it and let his mind go off on the endless games of why and how that he liked to play with himself that he planned to ask next year when he got to school, because surely the teachers would know all the answers and not tell him to be quiet and to stop being silly.

And at least the candle had provided him that distraction and therefore calm. Here, there was nothing to distract him from the question of what tests they had to run on him that involved equipment only had at the hospital, because he wasn’t sure he believed Dr. Francis, not really. But what that could mean for him, whether that meant he was very sick and no one would tell him because they all thought he would start crying like a baby, whether he would die like Auntie May had and wouldn’t see his family ever again, and he’d be buried underground and left there for worms to eat.

And he needed a distraction, otherwise he would start crying. He put his bear on his lap, picked up his hand and moved his fingers like one would move a doll, then pushed him fingernails into his hand and noted that he couldn’t feel it at all, even when he pushed so hard that he started drawing blood. He stopped doing that, put his hand on his lap and rubbed at it to make the blood go away before anyone could notice.

They wheeled him into a room and then without warning picked him up and put him down on a bed. “Was wrong with me?” he asked and thought he got that through with enough clarity.

“Michael, try to rest,” one of the doctors in white said to him. He had an awful haircut and his hair was shiny like it was wet or greasy.

“Whas ong-ga wit-sa me-ya?” Mickey enunciated, bringing his working hand up to his lips to make sounds his lips would not on their own. He picked up his hand and shoved it at the doctor. “Tis does s’not-ta ‘ork-ka!” His tongue and mouth dragged and he couldn’t stop the air from making a goofy “a” after every syllable, but at least it was clear enough to be understandable.

“Stay still. We are trying to find out the extent of the injuries, Michael.”

“My-a name-a is-sa not-ta Mi-ka.” He couldn’t get his tongue to make an “l” sound. It was worse than making an “m,” where he could go into it but then couldn’t get his lips apart again.

Dr. Francis came in. “Mickey! There you are!”

Mickey nearly burst into tears, which made no sense to him – after all, he was relieved to see Dr. Francis, unlike this doctor. Asshole… Jake and Billy would have called him asshole, which Mickey was never to say aloud, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t think it at this doctor. He held his working arm up for a hug. Dr. Francis gave him one.

“Mickey, you’re going to have to be a good boy and do what the good doctor tells you to, okay?” Mickey frowned as best he could and nodded.

Dr. Francis tried to disentangle himself and Mickey pulled him tighter. “’tay?” Dr. Francis met his eyes. Mickey remembered his Mama’s instructions that adding please to things made them more likely to happen. “Pa-wease.”

Dr. Francis smiled at him and nodded, and Mickey let him disentangle himself and pull up a chair. The doctor got a few tools, a hammer similar to the one Dr. Francis had used on his knee, a tongue depressor like were in popsicles he and his siblings got on the Fourth of July and in the hottest summer, and a few others Mickey did not recognize, and then pulled up a chair opposite him.

Mickey waited as he did a lot of tests, including the hammer thing but on his elbows too, and then pressing – or trying to with his left hand – against the doctor’s, then having him smile and nod and blink. Then he held down his tongue and had him try to say each letter of the alphabet, which Mickey knew: he had older siblings, but it was hard to get his tongue to say it, especially with the tongue depressor in his mouth.

“Stay put, young man,” said the doctor after a while. Mickey nodded. The doctor and Dr. Francis left the room but didn’t close the door all the way.

“Well, he’s not getting any worse, and the stroke doesn’t appear to have affected his mental facilities at all, only physical ones. Whether he will regain those is anyone’s guess, but I would recommend physical therapy exercises and watching him. It’s new, and it goes against everything we were taught, but it might help. I would hate to see so young a patient have his life thrown away because we didn’t try something. He will have to stay overnight. Did his parents mention what he was doing?”

“He was playing outside with his brothers. But earlier this week, he was in his family’s barn and a ceiling board fell on his head.”

“That could have done it. Children this age.”

“Yes, I know, Richie.”

“Ken, I know you know. But what I’m saying is it could have been that, it could have been something else as well. We’ll never know.”

“I still think, given the recent head injury.”

“Oh, very likely, yes. But we’ll never know.”

Their voices faded off into the distance. A nurse came in. “Hello, young man. I will be bringing lunch later and helping you go to the bathroom.”

Mickey scoffed. “I-ya don’ta nee-da hep! I’m a pfi-ga pfoy!”

The nurse shrugged. “I am to help you get there. Can you stand up?”

Mickey tried. With much effort and only half his body actually working, he got onto one foot.

The nurse seemed genuinely impressed. “Very good, young man. Now can you walk?”

Mickey put his other foot down and tried to put weight on it. It did not hold his weight and he fell. With nothing to stop him, it could have been a bad fall. She caught him. He clung to her arm, trembling.

“May I carry you to the bathroom?” she asked.

He nodded.

When she put him back into bed, she said, “If you need anything, there is a little buzzer there. If you push it, it will notify the main desk and they will get my attention or one of the other nurses.”

He nodded again, and she left the room. And he was alone.

He clutched at his stuffed bear and began playing games with her ears, covering her eyes and hopping her across the bed. However, within fifteen minutes he was bored and his back was itchy.

Someone, a different nurse, stopped in with a folded blanket to put in one of the closets. She looked over at him and brought over a coloring book and crayons. “These are for you. There is a table here. Would you like it up so you can color?”

He took them. “Thank you.” She put it up and continued on with her duties. He opened the coloring book and took a red crayon and colored with it, at first trying to stay in the lines, then in big angry strokes across the pages, which his Mama would be angry at him for but which helped for some reason – he didn’t know why. He colored that way until the red crayon broke. Then he shoved it back into the box and folded up the coloring book.

The nurse who had promised lunch came back in. “I need to draw blood from you.” She took his bad arm and wiped it down in the strongest smelling stuff he had smelled. He wrinkled his nose and then she held it, moved her thumb around and stuck him with the needle.

That he felt. “Ouch!” he said.

“You do have feeling there?”

He nodded.

“I’ll be careful then.” She drew blood from it. He watched as she filled three tubes of in, then took out a Mickey Mouse bandaid and put it on him. Before leaving, she scribbled down a note on a chart.

He was left alone again. He could color more but he didn’t want to. Instead he set out the crayons on the table and moved his arm over to where his hand could grasp at the crayons if it really wanted to. He took a deep breath and stuck out his tongue. Carefully and with enough effort that tears sprang to his eyes, he dragged his pointer finger across the inch across the desk so it touched the orange crayon. As if rewarding his hand, he curled his fingers around the crayon with his right hand and just let it stay there, as though he could feel the pressure. He thought he could a little, and it helped to see it curled around something instead of flopping about uselessly.

He gave himself a five-minute break then opened the coloring book and tried to move his left hand onto it. His hand didn’t respond at all. He tried again, finally finding that shoving his jaw in the direction he wanted his hand to go actually helped and allowed him to jerk his hand sideways over the coloring book. Then, he moved his jaw back and forth and tried to hang on for dear life to the crayon and dragged his fist with the crayon poking out the bottom back and forth across the page until his arm hurt and was shaking from exhaustion.

The doctor came back in with his Mama and Jeannie. “Ma-ma!” He smiled up at them and noted that Jeannie’s eyes were puffy from crying. He wondered whether she had gotten walloped from Da.

“Baby!” She ran over to him hugging him.

He wrapped his working arm around her. “I’m-a not-ta pfapfy!”

“You’ll always be my baby, Mickey.”

When she said something like that, he knew it was said with so much love that there could be no protest.

He pulled back. “I can move-a my fing-as.”

“That’s wonderful, Mickey. Do you want to show me,” she told him. He nodded, opened the coloring book, curled his fingers around the crayon again, and, moving his jaw back and forth again, he managed to move the crayon back and forth across the page again.

This time his Mama burst into tears, and Jeannie took her from the room. He wasn’t sure what he had done wrong. When the doctor asked for his arm again to take a blood sample, he held it up with his good hand without meeting the doctor’s eyes and did not try to speak.

The nurse came in with jello and soup. He ate it, but couldn’t keep his lips curled around the spoon so some dribbled out. Oh. “I’ma sorry,” he told the nurse. “I don’ta mean-a to eat-ta like-a pfapy.”

“You’re doing very well,” she told him.

He gave her his best sardonic expression. “No-a, I’ma not-ta.”

He could hear his Mama, Jeannie and the doctor talking outside after the nurse had told him to take a nap. “Full paralysis of his entire left side. There will likely be residual effects, even if it has stopped for the time being and can be reversed. Is he in school?”

“No, he’s going to be entering kindergarten in the fall.”

“That will likely have to be delayed. In many cases like this, even when the child is alright and it is a one-time event, the patient does not regain the ability to walk. Additionally, his mind could be delayed as well. And there could be developmental effects.”

“Are you telling me he’s going to be stupid just because he was where he shouldn’t have been and something fell on him?” He froze. His Mama’s voice had never gone dismissive and cruel like that in regards to him before.

“That would not be the professional word, but yes.”

“He’s too bright to be stupid!” Jeannie protested. He could almost hear the expressions they were giving her, and he felt hot with shame. He would still be smart, he made a silent promise. But he wished he had something to play with that wasn’t his stuffed bunny and something to do that wasn’t the stupid coloring book. Actually, he wished his hand worked so he could color properly without having to move his jaw back and forth to control his hand, and his legs so he could even get to the bathroom on his own like he wasn’t a baby being potty trained, and his lips so he didn’t drool and could speaking without having to try so hard to move his mouth. His eyes began stinging, for all big boys didn’t cry. And he sat and willed himself not to let any tears spill over.

The doctor’s voice cut through his reverie. “We would like to hang onto him to observe him a few more days, but at this point, it’s up to him whether he wants to get better or not.”

“If there’s nothing you can do for him, I’ll take him home then,” she snapped at him.

“We believe he should be here a little longer.”

“If there’s nothing you can do, why should I leave him here to ring up a bill?”

“We could watch him for free. Just to make sure he doesn’t relapse or die.”

“You’re paying for it then.”

“Fine. Just long enough to make sure he doesn’t relapse.”

“After that, how likely is he to be useless?”

“I wouldn’t say he will be useless. You love him.”

She sighed. “Yes, I do. Come on, Jeannie, we’re going home. You will call if there are any developments?”

“I’d like to see him,” Jeannie protested.

“He’s trying to nap,” the doctor said.

“I won’t make any noise. I promise,” Jeannie insisted.

“Very well. Run in and see him,” the doctor said.

The door opened and he pushed himself up. “Dean-nie.” He smiled at her.

“You should be napping,” she told him in that bossy tone of hers. He didn’t understand why, but it filled him with joy to hear her use it, even though normally he hated it.

“Not ti-erd,” he sounded out.

“What’s wrong with your speaking?”

“My-ya tong’ga doesn’ ‘ork-ka,” he emphasized. “Tis-sa paw-ta.” He reached up with his good hand and indicated the left side of his mouth. “Ah-so, my-ya ‘ips-sa don wor-ka.”

“I can’t understand you, Mickey.” Jeannie took a step forward and then glanced at the door, and though unsure. “They haven’t said your contagious or anything, have they?”

He shook his head. “Tey haven’t-a sai-da anytin-ga at all-a! And-da what-a is con-ta-da…?”

She frowned a little at him. “Oh, are you trying to say that they haven’t said anything at all? About any of it?” He nodded in response to her question. “They’re trying to find out as quickly as possible. They do think you’ll get better though.”

He beamed at her then he remembered what they had actually said and his face fell, “I could-a he-ya tem-ma, Dean-nie. Tey don’-ta tin-ka I’ll pfe apfle ta wal-ka again-na.”

She sighed and looked at the floor then back at him, “Prove them wrong, okay, Mickey?” He nodded. “And the second question, it means somebody else can’t catch it.”

He shrugged. “I don’t-ta tin-ka so-a. ”

“Good.” She came over and hugged him. He hugged back with his good arm. “Now be good and get better.”

He tucked himself back down and fell asleep, curled his already numb hand under his cheek with his good hand, and closed his eyes.

He woke back up to find the same nurse as gave him soup and carried him to the bathroom in the room. “Mickey, I need to take you to another room to do some testing. Do you understand?”

He nodded.

She picked him up and put him in a wheelchair. “Are you ready?”

He nodded again.

They left the room. “The room we’re going to is at the other end of the hall. Do you want to see how fast we can get there?”

He grinned – or tried to grin, the left side of his face didn’t respond – but she got it and began pushing the wheelchair at a run. He laughed and hung on tight as they barreled down the hallway and around the corner.

Once there they stopped. She pushed the chair into a room, deposited him onto a bed. “The doctor will be in to see you in a few minutes,” she told him and left the room.

He lay there, noting how cold it was in the room, for what felt longer than a few minutes, before a doctor finally came in. “How are we doing today, Michael Rory?”

“It’sa Mick-ey!”

“Mickey? What a nice name? Now let’s see if we can find out what’s going on with you.” The doctor put on his stethoscope. Mickey knew that word. He had one his Jake and Billy had played with that had been handed to him two years earlier.

“Hwut’s ong-ga hwit me-ya is I-ya can’ta moofa half-a my-ya pfody!” Mickey said – too quickly: he couldn’t even make out what he was saying and he was the one that said it.

The doctor stared at him with a frown on his face for a minute. “Yes, do you know the word symptom?”

Mickey shook his head.

“Symptom means that it’s a side effect of the real issue. We’re going to find out what the real issues is, what’s causing you not to be able to move half your body.”

“I-ya was hit-ta in-a te head-da pfy a pfoard-a in Da’s-a pfawn,” he stated, just for the record.

The doctor sighed. “We’re going to find out if that’s related. It might not be or if might have just been an immediate cause. We want to make sure there is nothing wrong with your heart.” The doctor reached over and handed him a board. “Here. This is what can happen during a stroke.”

Mickey stared down at the pink, red and blue shapes on the board. The pink was laid out in an oval that looked like it was drawn by a shaky hand. It was divided into four sections with red and blue fat lines running out of it with little black arrows indicating direction or something near each of the lines and in the oval itself from one chamber to the next. Over on the red line out, which was about the width of his thumb, there was a yellow block most of the way across it. He had no idea what he was looking at. His nearest guess said maybe it was an engine like the type his Da drew when teaching Jake and Billy about the tractor and cars. His second best guess said maybe “abstract art” like Jeannie brought home from art class, in the style of something called Picasso. “Was-sa?” he asked.

“It’s a heart.”

“I-tsa not a heart-ta. Heart-tsa ah ‘ike tis.” He demonstrated a valentine heart with his good hand.

The doctor chuckled. “That’s a Valentine’s Day heart. This is what the heart in your body that pumps your blood looks like.”

“It-ta ooks ike an engine!” Mickey commented.

The doctor beamed at him. “It does, doesn’t it? Well, it is. It’s the engine for the human body.”

Mickey stared at him.

The doctor continued, “The blood pumps through the heart like this.” He swirled his finger around. “Then goes out through here.” He pointed at one of the red lines going out of the engine – heart. “However, if there is a blockage here, that might mean you cannot move half your body.” Mickey’s eyes widened, and he picked up his bad arm and let it flop back down. “Yes. Exactly. We want to make sure that isn’t what’s going on with your heart.”

Mickey nodded.

“So first I’m going to listen to your heart. Then, I’m going to give your heart an ultrasound, which involves sticking electrodes onto you with jelly. Now take a deep breath.”

Mickey did. The doctor put his stethoscope to Mickey’s chest. “Hold it. Now let it out.” Mickey did. He was told to take two more, before the doctor noted something down on his pad of paper and took the stethoscope out of his ears.

“I didn’t hear anything unusual.”

He pulled out a bunch of wires and a jar of something that looked like clear Jell-O. He pressed something on the ends and then swiped it through the Jell-O. “I will stick this to your chest now.”

Mickey nodded.

The doctor attached the sticky gel to his chest. It felt like an ice cube being put down his shirt. He shivered. “If you could sit still,” the doctor told him. He tried. The doctor hooked the wires up to a machine, which proceeded to give a visual up and down line.

“Wassat?”

“That’s your heart rate,” the doctor answered. “Everything appears normal, but let me check to make sure.” He put his stethoscope back on and held it to the inside of Mickey’s good elbow. It was cold enough to hurt. Mickey flinched but kept his arm still. The doctor listened to it for a minute then put it on his bad elbow and listened to that. He jotted something down in his notebook.

“Now I’m going to draw blood. I need you to stay still.”

Mickey nodded. The doctor took his bad arm and swiped it with rubbing alcohol strong enough to make Mickey’s eyes sting, pressed his thumb against the inside of his elbow and frowned. Mickey only had enough time to frown back before the doctor grabbed his hand, swabbed the back of it with the too-strong alcohol and stuck a needle into the back of it.

Mickey couldn’t move his arm, but that hurt bad enough that if he had been able to move it, he would have pulled his hand back and never let the doctor near it again. As it was, his entire body was jolt upright. He clenched his jaws as much as he could and grabbed his lower arm hard enough that he no longer felt most of it.

The doctor misinterpreted the gesture. “That’s good of you. If you hold it still while the needle fills up, the needle should fill up faster.”

“I-ya can’t-ta move it-ta,” Mickey answered, his tone biting. His eyes wanted to cry. He wouldn’t let them, but it was taking so much effort not to that he wanted to hit something, probably this doctor with his pleasant, mild facial expression.

“I know, but you’re still being very brave,” the doctor told him. Mickey wanted to respond by saying it wasn’t like he had a choice about it, but he figured he could quite get the words out right.

The tube filled up, and the doctor replaced it with another one. Mickey lost count after four tubes. By the time the doctor said he was done and pulled the needle out and then pressed a cotton ball to the back of Mickey’s hand, he felt dizzy and sick and wanted to lie down.

“When you go back to your room, there will be a cookie and apple juice waiting for you.”

The doctor left and Mickey sat there in the cold room for what felt like hours until the nurse poked her head in. “I’m here to bring you back to the room.”

Mickey nodded and didn’t protested when she picked him up and put him in the wheelchair, pushed him back to the room, or deposited him back into bed. She spun around his table and, sure enough, on it was a juice box and a cookie. He grabbed the cookie and ate it, then used his hand to open and close his mouth, since he had taken too big a bite of it. The nurse checked with him to see if he had too big a bite, but he showed her he was managing to chew it. “Have some juice,” she said after watching him eat it with a frown on her face. He did and felt better for it.

“Do you want to color or sleep?”

“Seep,” he said, because l’s could go to the bad place right now and stay there forever and ever.

“Alright.” She lowered his bed into sleep position. “Remember that button on the side of your bed of you need anything,” she said, turning off the lights.

He yawned and fell asleep.

He only woke up twice to drag his arm over when he tried to turn over.

He was woken up for dinner, which consisted of soup and mashed potatoes. He ate it, using his hand around his mouth to keep from drooling like a baby. He colored for a little, with his good hand because his left hand hurt from his efforts at moving it.

When the nurse was tucking him back into bed, he asked, “Miss good-a nuss, was you name-a?”

She laughed and smiled at him. “Miss Betty is my name if you need me for anything. But Miss Good Nurse can be my name between us.”

He smiled as she put his bed back. “Okay, Miss Good-a Nuss.”

“Goodnight, Mickey.”

Jeannie was there when he woke up, dressed up nice in her school uniform. “How are you?”

“You-a should pfe a sool, Deannie,” he told her.

She frowned for a moment than nodded. “I used my allowance money to take the public bus here, and then I’ll take it to school. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I till can’ta move it-a.” He gestured at his left side then touched his face.

“But it’s no worse, right?”

He smiled, or half-smiled. She made a concerned expression. “No-a wuss!” he answered her.

He picked up his left hand and shoved it at her, then took her hand and put it in his. Then he closed his left hand around her fingers with his right, and having done all that preparation, he willed his fingers to squeeze around hers. They both watched as his fingers moved just a little bit, but it was enough. She beamed and hugged him so hard it hurt his shoulder, but he determined that it was in a good way.

“That’s wonderful!” she said. “Now I gotta go or I’m gonna be late. Don’t tell Mom I was here, okay?”

He nodded. “Secet’s safe wit-sa me.”

She walked to the door, picking up the schoolbag she must have set there before he had woken up. “Deannie?” he said.

She turned to him.

“Sank-asa fo comin-ga to see me,” he said.

She ran back and kissed him on the head and then was out the door before he could wipe it off.

Miss Good Nurse came in a few minutes later. “I saw your sister was here.”

“Don’ta te Mama. She was suppose-ta pfe on-a te sa-kool-pfus, pfut sung pfy he-e on her way-ya.” He frowned and sighed a long-suffering sigh, as only a small child can. “I hate pfees.”

Good Nurse nodded. “I know. They are hard to make with only half your lips, aren’t they?”

“You-a had-a…?” He gestured at the left half of his body.

She shook her head. “My dad did. Half his face.” She pulled her face down. “Because he was older when he had it, the doctors don’t think it will move again. But you are very young, so you can recover. But it will be hard and take a lot of work.”

He nodded. “I-ya wi. Wat-a should-a I-ya do?”

After bathroom and bath time – where he insisted she help him rather than carry him to the bath, and he made it, even if it involved hopping, as he couldn’t feel his foot at all and it wouldn’t support his weight, and after breakfast – which consisted of cream of wheat, he found himself seated on a tricycle with his foot held in place by a strap like what Jake and Billy and Da put on the donkeys to lead them around. But it held his foot on the pedal and she was telling him to try to push down with both feet, which meant that she was telling him to ride a bike inside. He found it utterly delightful, as did she, judging by the little smirk she got when he asked her if it was against the rules to ride a bike inside, so he tried.

He succeeded in running into the wall five times. But Miss Good Nurse said he did very well, so he was basking in that glow until it came time to again be taken to the room where his blood was drawn the day before, where he again held out his arm, was stuck by the needle and taken back to drink a juice box and eat lunch.

Lunch consisted of a bowl of soup and a thing of jello. The soup tasted okay. The jello tasted better. He told Miss Good Nurse and she laughed and told him to eat his soup anyway. She was nice, he wanted to be told he was a good boy again, so he did.

Afternoon consisted of more exercises and another rubber hammer applied to his knee. The doctor noted something down but didn’t say whether it was good or bad.

Miss Good Nurse was back in later that day. “Your mom called and said they were busy at the farm. So I’m here for visiting hours to make sure you don’t get lonely.”

“Fisitin hours?” he asked. “Wassat?”

“A time when people can come visit you in the hospital,” Miss Good Nurse said.

He gave a little shrug. “They aw-ways pfusy wit te farm,” he informed her.

She nodded, biting her lip like Jeannie did when he had reached a conclusion he really shouldn’t have.

“What-ta?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’ll be here for visiting hours,” she stated.

He nodded.

She took out a coloring book and they colored together and talked. He made jokes some that he had heard, some that he made up, and she laughed. Then she had to go do nurse duty for someone else.

Dinner came and another nurse came to bring him to the bathroom. This one just carried him, despite his insistence that he could walk with help.

Morning came with more blood tests and another trip to the machine with the jell-o and the wires that beeped as it was supposed to. Another cookie and juice awaited him when he got back along with Mama.

“Mama!” he hopped to her.

“Mickey!” she scooped him up and hugged him to her. “How are you?”

“I-y am-ma gettin-ga pfetter,” he carefully sounded out.

She took a deep breath and looked down at him, picking up his left hand in hers and squeezing it.

“How’s he doing?” she asked Miss Good Nurse.

Miss Good Nurse smiled. “Much better than he was. Isn’t that right?” Mickey smiled back at her, resting his head on his Mama’s shoulder.

Mama shook her head “How soon will he regain full movement? In time for school in the fall?”

Miss Good Nurse frowned. “I might keep him out a few more weeks.”

Mama set him on the bed and said, “I don’t have hands free to watch him and the babies, not since we’re sending Jeannie to a summer classes program.”

Miss Good Nurse glanced at Mickey, who was hauling his leg out from the bad position his Mama had deposited him on the bed in. He smiled at her. “With work, he should be able to attend school. But he will likely need physical therapy.”

Mama frowned. “And how much will that cost?”

Miss Good Nurse frowned back. “I can provide it. I am getting my specialization in stroke care.”

Mama glanced her up and down and nodded. “Fine. When can he be taken home?”

“You should speak to the head doctor about when,” Miss Good Nurse answered.

“Mama, it okay-ya. I’ma earnin hwalkin again-na.”

“Baby, I can’t understand you. Speak more clearly.”

Mickey’s face fell, as he was rather proud of how clearly he had been speaking. He tried again, ending the syllables too soon rather than too late and pausing between every word to avoid slurring them together. “I tot I was.” It was exhausting to speak like that.

Mama came over and hugged him. “Baby, give Mama a hug. I will see you tomorrow, okay?”

Mickey embraced her and said, “Okay.”

Mama put him down and swept from the room.

Miss Good Nurse said, “I’ll be right back.” Mickey nodded as she left the room. He could hear them arguing, but not what was being said.

When she came back, she looked notable agitated. “Come on. How did you like that bike yesterday?”

Mickey brightened. “I-ya iked it-ta a yot!”

“Good. Then let’s go.”

Mickey spent the rest of the morning riding it around the hospital after Miss Good Nurse and saying hello to the other patients in the hospital, who were overjoyed to see a toddler saying hello to them, though one of the older ones whose room was smelly said he was very articulate for a two year old. He corrected her that he was four. She laughed, complained about how her reading glasses were on the side table and Miss Good Nurse delivered her a tray of food.

Mickey wound up staring up at a dark-skinned, very skinny person with a halo of close cropped black hair and the tiny boy who was sitting in bed on her lap. Together they were reading a book. He started in. Miss Good Nurse stopped him. “No, Mickey. Let them finish reading.”

Mickey looked up at her. “Tey ook nice.”

“They are.” Miss Good Nurse seemed pleased that he thought they looked nice. “She’s Ella and that’s her son.”

“H-why ah tey he-e?”

“Ella’s getting treatment for cancer. And her son is here visiting her,” Miss Good Nurse told him.

“Oh. Whas cancer?” he asked on realizing he didn’t know.

“It’s an illness where the cells in the body – little tiny things that make up your body – start growing at such a fast rate where they shouldn’t be growing and push healthy cells out of the way.”

Mickey nodded and looked back at her. “Pfut you can-a fik it-a, ight?” he lowered his voice to ask.

“Yes, but not easily.”

Mickey nodded. “I-ya hope-a see get pfetter soon.”

After she was done reading and had closed the book, they went in, Miss Good Nurse on foot, Mickey on the bike with training wheels. The little boy saw him and tucked himself up smaller, peering at him with piercing eyes.

“Hello, Ella. How are you today? And how’s little Leo?” Miss Good Nurse asked.

Ella gave a weak laugh and nudged the boy. “Leo, answer her.”

“Good. Thank you, Miss,” the boy – Leo - said.

“Here is a juice box for you, little Leo.” Miss Good Nurse held out a juice box to him. He uncurled just enough to take it.

“And who might this be?” Ella nodded at Mickey.

“I’m-a Mick-ey.”

“Like Mickey Mouse?” Leo asked, looking interested.

Mickey frowned. “Yeah, so what-a?

Leo smiled. “Cool!”

Ella laughed. “It seems you two are making friends.”

Mickey asked, “Why-a ah you he-e, Leo?”

Leo looked up at Ella and curled into her arm.

“He’s here visiting me,” Ella said, petting the boy’s hair.

“Oh, I’m-a he-e be-a-cause tis s-topped workin-ga.” He gestured at his entire left side.

Ella turned to Miss Good Nurse, alarm showing through in her expression.

“He had a stroke,” Miss Good Nurse explained.

Ella glanced back at him. “He’s so young.”

Miss Good Nurse nodded. Mickey rode the bike closer to Leo, who was leaning out in interest.

“HI-ya,” Mickey greeted.

“I like your bike,” Leo said.

Mickey beamed and looked at Leo. “I like your hair. It looks soft.”

“It hurts when Daddy brushes it, so I let Mommy brush it,” Leo said, touching it.

"Is Eya your Mommy?"

Leo nodded. “Yeah.”

Mickey smiled. “Deannie brushes my hair.”

“Who’s Deannie?” Leo asked, glancing at Miss Good Nurse.

Mickey shook his head. “My-a sister.”

“I don’t got a sister,” Leo said.

“You have any buthers?”

“It’s brothers, not buthers,” Leo informed him.

Tears jumped to Mickey’s eyes. “I’m trying!”

Leo hid behind his mother’s arm again, looking scared.

Mickey sighed. “I didn – did no -ta - mean to.”

“Ok,” Leo said, untucking himself from his mother’s arm.

“Can he come-ma pway-ya wit me-ya?” Mickey asked.

Ella smiled down at Leo, who had turned to smile up at her at Mickey’s suggestion. “Provided you play in here, I don’t see why not? Is that okay, Miss Becky?”

Miss Good Nurse smiled at both of them. “It should do both of them good.”

Leo slid down the bed and said to Mickey, “Can I ride your bike?”

Mickey looked at the bike and at how his foot was tied on. He knew he could not get off of it. “Umm.” However, he remembered how Pa used to take him on the tractor on his lap. Sure, he was not as big as Pa but Leo was so little. “If you-a sit on-a my-ya nap-pa, I-ya can-na take-ka you ridin-ga wit me-ya.”

Leo peered at him. “Do you mean lap?”

Mickey nodded.

Leo scrambled up into his lap. “That ok?” he asked.

Mickey nodded and rode them around the room, while Miss Good Nurse sat with Ella as she ate.

When Miss Good Nurse said it was time to go, Leo got off and then waved at Mickey as he and Miss Good Nurse left.

On the way back to his room, his leg from his thigh down to his foot started aching, but it was a good kind of ache, the type when he was playing with Jake and Billy too long and his lungs hurt. He pushed with his good foot, trusting the bike would bring his bad foot the rest of the way around. It did, and when he got back to the room, he accepted being picked up and carried to the bathroom and then to bed.

“So you made a friend?” Miss Good Nurse asked after he was there.

He nodded and smiled.

“I’ll bring you down there the next time he’s in.”

“Tank you,” he said. Something else occurred to him based on who was closer to him, versus them, at the far end of a hall. “Why are they so far away?”

Miss Good Nurse shifted uncomfortably. “This is the west wing of the hospital. They are in the east wing.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Ella is black.”

Mickey rotated his body to look up at her in surprise. “Tat’s what a bwack person is ike?”

Miss Good Nurse frowned. “Yes.”

“See was not dirty or mean tough!”

Miss Good Nurse winced. “No, she wasn’t. Who told you black people were?”

“Pa did.”

“Fathers aren’t always right about everything,” Miss Good Nurse said.

“I ike her!” Mickey declared.

“Very good. Mickey, I’m going to tell you something and it won’t be easy but I want you to try.” Mickey nodded. “I want you to try to form your own opinions about people rather than taking what is told to you about them.”

Mickey nodded. “I wi try.”

“Good.” Miss Good Nurse smiled at him.

“I sill don know why see is in anoter win-ga,” Mickey said.

“A lot of places are still segregated by color.”

“Oh,” Mickey took in the new information. “It should no pfe.”

“No, it shouldn’t.” She smiled at him. “Places actually have to try not to be. But many individuals still don’t want to be treated next to a black person.”

Mickey looked up at her. “Tat’s sa-tupid.”

Miss Good Nurse smiled at him. “Yes, it is. Adults sometimes are.”

Mickey stare at her, unsure what to do with this information, so he filed it away for future use and changed the subject. “Can I-ya have a duice pfok-as?”

She smiled at him and handed him a juice box.

The following day he went back down the to play with Leo again, following his daily blood drawing in the cold, doctor’s office, his daily knee tap with the rubber hammer, and his visit from Jeannie. He was able to drag his foot after him and hobble to the bathroom all by himself, and he was able to clutch the little toy they gave him to squeeze - just a little and it hurt, but he was able to get actual movement out of his left hand. He got a cupcake – chocolate with vanilla frosting and real sprinkles – for that.

Then he went back down to play with Leo again with an attitude that whatever that term was – segre-something – could go to the bad place if it kept him and another kid he could play with apart.

Leo was sitting there next to his mom in a big chair instead of next to her on the bed when Mickey arrived, foot strapped down to his bike pedal, which he insisted on tying himself this morning, even though he still couldn’t do bows. “Leo,” he called over.

Leo scrambled to his feet, eyes wide, all but standing at attention for a moment. His eyes were red and puffy, though he was not crying anymore and wiped his arm across his eyes when Mickey came in. When he saw who it was, he smiled and ran over to Mickey. “Shh! Mommy’s asleep,” he said in the loud whisper of someone who doesn’t quite know how to whisper yet, but knows he should. He gestured back into the dimly lit room. “Mommy had chemo this morning, and… and I don’t know what that is, but it always makes her nap all the time, like I used to when I was a baby, but the docs say she’ll get good-er? Better soon if she does it and naps after.”

Mickey didn’t know what chemo was either, but if it made her tired all the time, it must be serious. “Oh. Can you-a come-a to pway wit me?”

Leo looked back into the room at his mommy and nodded. “There’s a room with lots of toys I remember from when Mommy would take us here when I was little.”

Mickey nodded. “Do you know h-where it-ta is?”

Leo turned and beamed up at him. “I love how you talk.”

Mickey frowned until it turned into a pout. “I don. It’sa hawd-a.”

Leo shrugged. “Then why don’t you talk easier?”

Mickey sighed. “It’sa hawd to talk at-a all!”

Leo frowned as if he was having a think and one arm across his chest and rested his chin on his other fist. Mickey thought he was silly, in a good way, but didn’t want to laugh because it looked rather serious and Pa and Jeannie had both said not to interrupt people when they were thinking. Finally, Leo brightened. “I like talking! I’m a regular chatterbox! So I’ll talk for you!”

Mickey grinned. “Tank you.”

Leo put on a concentrating face and looked around. “I think the room is this way. C’mon.”

Mickey followed. They edged past an empty nurses’ desk, Mickey on his bike, Leo on the handlebars because that how big kids took passengers on bikes, and into a room with a lot of chair and a basket full of toys.

“See? Told ya so!”

Mickey nodded. “Et’s pway!”

Leo climbed off the bike, steadying himself against it so he could balance and then turned to Mickey, who was frowning at his foot. “C’mon.”

“I-ya tied-da it in a doupfle knot,” Mickey explained. He had no idea if his foot would even move anyway to get him over to the toys.

“Why?” Leo asked.

“So it ould tay on da pedal,” Mickey told him.

Leo came back over to him, staring at the knot on his foot. “Can I help?”

“No-a. I have ta earn how ta untie it-ta on my own-a!” Mickey declared.

Leo squatted down and stared at his foot and the difficulty he was having untying it. “What if I untie it, and then when we gotta go, you tie it back up, and show me how to.”

“You can’ta tie a knot-ta?”

Leo shook his head. “My shoes are Velcro.”

“Okay. Pfut ony if you don get tem more knotted.”

“Won’t,” Leo said, reaching his chubby little fingers out – almost thinner than the shoelace Mickey had used to tied his foot down – and wiggle them through the knot and out the other side to wiggle the knot lose. Sure enough the knot came lose.

“Tat’s helpfu.” Mickey picked up his leg with his hands and dragged his foot over the bike.

“Luh. Luh luh luh luh luh,” Leo said.

“I can’ta do it yet, okay?” Mickey snapped, raising his voice, grabbing his bad arm and holding so tight it hurt.

Leo’s face showed a moment of shock and terror before he started crying.

That stopped Mickey’s pout. “I didn’t mean it,” he said.

Leo swallowed his tears, but shoulder shakes said he had the hiccups. He nodded. “Okay.”

They played with the toys for a while. Leo seemed to love seeing how fast he could build the marble machine and let the marbles run down it. Mickey loved the toy catapult attached to a tank.

“There you are, boys!” Miss Good Nurse said.

An older man with sandy but graying hair and a farmer’s sunburn if ever Mickey saw one came over and scooped up Leo, who began to cry out, saw who it was, and his cry turned to a squeal of happiness. “Grampa!”

“Hey, monkey!” Leo’s Grampa gave him a raspberry on his bared stomach, making Leo squeal even more. “Are you getting lost and having the nurses search the hospital looking for you?”

“Uh uh!” Leo rotated himself upright and caught onto his grampa’s shirt. “I made a friend and wanted to show him the toys!”

“Did you now?” Leo’s Grampa looked at Mickey for the first time and squatted down next to him. “Hello, young man. Were you watching my grandson?”

“Hwe hwere pwayin’ wit te toys. He showed tem-a to me,” Mickey explained, trying to have it come through as clear as possible.

Leo’s Grampa said, “Didn’t understand the first part of that sentence, so you gotta forgive me. But from what I got, I heard toys. My grandson showed you the toys?” Leo took the opportunity to inch his way up his grandfather’s arm.

Mickey exhaled in relief and nodded.

“Do you have a favorite?”

“Ma favor-it-ta un is te cat-pult.”

Leo’s Grampa frowned again but eventually nodded. “The catapult, huh?”

Mickey grinned and nodded. Leo meanwhile had gotten his short, toddler arms and chubby, toddler hands firmly in place to let him move his legs freely.

“You know, half your face doesn’t seem to be working properly, kid.”

Mickey glanced at Miss Good Nurse.

“He is in here for stroke treatment,” she explained.

“Ain’t strokes typically what make older folks kick the bucket?” Leo’s Grampa asked. Leo managed to get one leg anchored beside his arm.

“Sometimes they happen in children.” Her voice held a certain sadness to it that made Mickey go up to her and hug her leg. She laughed and smiled down at him.

“Huh. Nothing contagious, right?”

Miss Good Nurse shook her head. “An injury.”

“Huh.” Leo’s Grampa nodded. Leo stuck his hand across his grandfather’s forehead, trying to pull his other leg around. “What are you doing, my little troublemaker?” Leo’s Grampa reached up and took Leo’s down. Leo’s did a little ahh shucks gesture with his fist. “You was trying to climb Mount Grampa, ain’t’cha?”

“Maybe,” Leo said from in his arms again.

“Let’s go say goodbye to your Mommy before I take you home,” Leo’s Grampa said.

“When will she come home?” Leo said.

“Don’t know, my little angel. She’s got the operation later this week. Here’s hoping she’ll be out soon after.” He carried Leo from the room back in the direction of his mom’s room.

Mickey looked up at Miss Good Nurse.

“Did you have fun?” she asked.

“M’a sorry I-ya din’t tell you hwhere hwe hwere goin,” Mickey said.

“I’m just glad you had fun and made a friend.”

Mickey nodded and beamed.

“How is your leg feeling?”

Mickey reached down and picked up his leg with his hand, shaking it from side to side. “It doesn hurt-ta as much as yesterday.”

Miss Good Nurse smiled. “Good for you. Do you think you can ride back to your room?”

Mickey nodded, sat on the bike, and tried to tie his foot to the pedal. “Sorry. I ony jus-ta earned to tie-a my-a shoes.”

Miss Good Nurse took the two laces and showed him in exaggerated motions. “Around the tree, bunny loop, around the bush, through the hole.”

Mickey’s hands sought the laces from her and he repeated what she had shown him, “Round the tee, pfunny oop, round the pfush, too the hole.”

Miss Good Nurse smiled. “I’ll walk you back to your room now.”

Mickey slid his bad hand around the handle bars with his good hand and pushed off down the hall back to his room.

The following morning, he awoke on his stomach, laying on his arm. He tried to push himself up but couldn’t, and couldn’t get to the button to call for help either. His heart started pounding – he could feel it in his throat and skull and wondered why he couldn’t feel it in his chest, and was going to ask Miss Good Nurse, as soon as she came and got him out of this position, which might not be for another hour. The thought of staying in this position for another hour, with his body unable to get him out of it made him start whimpering, tears streaming down his face as Da had always told him big boys don’t do.

So he sucked them back and started kicking his bed, as his free arm didn’t work enough to pound it into the bed. His legs kicked the bed, once, twice. The third time, his foot struck something metal, possibly the edge of the bed, and it hurt. He gave in and started howling.

Hands were on him turning him upright. It was a nurse, but not Miss Good Nurse, so he kept howling.

“Calm down, Michael!” a man’s voice said to him.

Mickey flat out refused, so he kept screaming and kicking, and now his good arm was free, shoving against the nurse. “Restrain him. We need to make sure he doesn’t damage himself.”

He felt something – a strip of heavy fabric – across his ankles, making him not be able to move them. “No-a!” he shouted, sitting upright and trying to push them off.

“You must stop screaming,” the doctor said.

“No! No!” Mickey managed to wrench his legs free, his right one by itself, his left one with the right one’s and his hand’s help, and sat on them to make sure the nurse couldn’t get to them.

“Do you agree to stop screaming?”

Mickey nodded and stopped howling, and tried to stop crying to, which left him feeling like he had hiccups.

“Good. Now does it hurt anywhere?” the doctor asked.

Mickey shook his head.

“We will need to run tests on you to find out why…”

Mickey was able to fill in the rest and explained, “I-ya couldn move. I was on my-a tummy, an’ my arm was under me-ya an’ I-ya couldn get up. An if I-ya had ta go, I couldn’ta.”

The doctor sighed and put a hand on his forehead, petting his hair. “There, there. Do you have to go to the bathroom now?”

Mickey shrugged. The nurse carried him to the bathroom. Mickey didn’t protest. The doctor was noting something down as she did. When Mickey and the nurse got back, the doctor was no longer in the room. Another nurse wheeled in oatmeal, which Mickey tried to eat and managed to only drool a little out of the left side of his mouth. Still, at the nurse wiping his mouth with a napkin, he felt a sickening, hot feeling that felt like tears tasted. “Can-a you give me-ya te coworin pfook-a?”

“The coloring book?” the nurse repeated.

Mickey nodded. “Yes.”

The nurse put the coloring book on the desk with the crayons next to it. “There you are.”

Mickey sighed and leaned back against the bed. “Tank you.”

“Anything else?”

Mickey shook his head and the nurse left the room. After she was gone, he opened to a page and took out the red crayon and the orange crayon and scribbled back and forth over the page with both hands in jerky motions until he was no longer feeling the sick, angry heat.

He was still in a sulky mood when lunch arrived. It was soup and jello. “Can I-ya have ticken pwease?” he complained when he saw the soup.

“No, Michael. You can’t move your mouth well enough that you might not bite the inside of your cheeks,” the nurse with the food said.

Mickey found being told he couldn’t do something that he could do before brought the same hot feeling as earlier that morning to all his limbs. He shoved the soup away from him, spilling some of it on the side table they slid across his bed to eat or color. “Es I-ya can-a!”

“Michael…”

“It Mick-ey!” he shouted. If his Da was there, he would have gotten a walloping for shouting like that at any adult, but that was part of the problem. His Da wasn’t there. His Mama would surely understand and let him eat just a little to show he could, or Jeannie would sneak him some, or he’d wander by Billy or Jake’s plate and take some from it when they weren’t looking and make Jeannie giggle. But here he was explaining to this dumb nurse who couldn’t even call him by the right name that yes, he could eat it. “I-ya won’ eat it-ta!” he said, pulling his stupid arm across his chest with his good arm and then tucking his good arm into it – he could make believe it could hold itself up that way.

“Mickey…”

“I-ya won’ an’ ‘ou can’ta make-a me-ya!” He could hear his speech getting worse the angrier he got, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He wanted to cry, but big boys didn’t, so that just made him angrier.

“You can’t eat anything else,” the nurse tried to calm him down.

“Ten-na I-ya sa-tawve!” Mickey declared. His face felt sunburnt it was so hot.

“Would pudding do?” the nurse asked.

Mickey’s frown deepened. Normally pudding would work, but he wanted chicken and burgers and normal people food. He wanted out of these jammies and back into real clothes. He wanted to go running around with Billy and Jake, instead of getting his foot laced to the bike pedal so he could ride around. He wanted a lot of things, and staying in this room wasn’t working. “I-ya want ta see Leo-a!” he burst out.

“Who?”

He thought about it, unsure why he had said that. Maybe it was because he was the only other kid in the whole hospital. Maybe it was because he understood and didn’t talk down to him at all. Maybe it was because Mickey still had to show him how to tie a bow. Whatever the reason, he wanted to see him. He didn’t even think a toddler would mind if he cried in front of him, though he was going to be the brave bigger kid and not cry. “Te kid-da hwhose Mama is gettin’ chemo,” Mickey declared.

The nurse nodded. “I will check. But in return, you must eat the soup.”

Mickey’s pout deepened. “I’ma sick of it-ta!” he whined. He knew it was whining too, and knew his Mama would greet it with her typical warning of saying his name in that tone, and yet he didn’t care.

“Try two bites of it and then I will go see what I can do,” the nurse coaxed.

Mickey rolled his eyes, grabbed the spoon and shoved a spoonful at his mouth. It was indifferent tasting again, but he took another bite then met her eyes. “Two.” He nodded at her.

She raised an eyebrow at him, replied, “Very well,” and left the room.

Just in time too, because Mickey’s stomach growled so he shoved down another spoonful and another.

When she came back, she nodded at him. “I asked, and he will be here later this afternoon.”

Mickey leaned back with a sigh. “I-ya will eat-ta te soup-pa.”

Afternoon came and the older man with white hair and very pale skin compared to Leo carried the toddler in. When Leo saw Mickey, he looked at his Grampa and nodded. His Grampa set him down and he walked over to Mickey’s bed. “Hi,” he greeted, climbing up on the bed.

He sat on Mickey’s leg, earning an “Ow!” out of Mickey. Leo’s face shot up in surprise.

“What hurts?” He glanced around and at his Grampa, face seeming timid, scared even.

“You ah sittin on-a my-a leg-ga!”

“Oh.” Leo scrambled six inches over and off Mickey’s leg.

Mickey laughed. “It’s-a good.”

Leo began to smile back at him and then started laughing as well. Mickey began to laugh along with Leo, making Leo laugh more.

“I’ll leave you two to it,” Leo’s Grampa said.

“You said tutu!” Leo gasped out between laughter.

Leo’s Grampa shook his head. “May you one day have a sister who’s into ballet and tutus.”

Leo sat up, expressive face dropping into a look of mock-horror.

Leo’s Grampa laughed, came over to pet Leo’s hair and said, “I’ll be right outside if you need anything.” And he grabbed the chair that was in the room and left.

Leo said, “So what do you have to play with?”

Mickey shrugged. “I-ya have a co’orin pfook-a.”

Leo grinned. “Cool! I want to color in it!”

“Okay.” Mickey pulled it out and the crayons too and gave them to Leo, who opened the book and flipped past Mickey’s coloring pages. Mickey felt hot and sick for a few moments as Leo surveyed each one, but he didn’t comment or it seemed even notice that Mickey’s coloring was bad, except to see that there was already coloring on each page.

Mickey relaxing and moved his legs, and his bad leg moved all the way up and under him as well. He laughed and tried to swing his legs back to fully extended again. They both did. “Leo! Leo! Look-ka!” He pulled back the blankets as well as he could and tucked his legs up again. They both moved again.

Leo looked down at his legs and back up at him. “Couldn’t you move them before?”

Mickey shook his head. “No-a. Dat-a is why-a I-ya needed te shoelace around it-a.”

Leo frowned and nodded. “So you’re getting better.”

Mickey nodded and beamed. “Yes. I am.”

“Great! Let’s color!” Leo tore out a page, took out a crayon and began coloring in big strokes, not even staying in the lines, though his look of concentration said he was trying to. Mickey grinned, ripped out a page as well, took another crayon and began coloring.

The day after, Mickey awoke feeling like his entire arm had pins and needles, and it hurt. The nurses came soon enough. “My-ya arm has pin an’ needles!” he said amid panic to them.

Miss Good Nurse was there. “Pwease. My-ya arm hurt-sa!” he repeated to her.

They brought another bed in, put him on it, and began to wheel it out of there and down the hall. He smelled the same icky smell that had filled the air whenever he was getting blood drawn. “No-a.” He flinched away, trying to hide his arm.

Another nurse held his arm away and Miss Good Nurse held his bad arm down and stuck him with it. There was a long tube attached. Instead of drawing blood, it looked like it was pumping stuff in. Mickey began crying. “Why are you…? Where are you…?”

“Shh.” Miss Good Nurse put a hand on his forehead. “We’re just taking you to make sure that it’s due to it waking back up.”

Somehow, that didn’t help.

“Why-a te eme’dency?” he asked, catching Miss Good Nurse’s arm.

She rotated her hand around and gave his wrist a little squeeze. “We are just making sure you aren’t relapsing.”

“E-apsin?” Mickey repeated.

“Yes, Mickey. We’re just making sure you aren’t having another stroke. It’s just protocol. Your arm is probably just waking back up.”

Mickey could hear the panic behind her statement. It wasn’t just protocol, otherwise they wouldn’t be moving as fast as they were. “Dere’s a shance dough?”

Miss Good Nurse met his eyes and gave his wrist a stronger squeeze. “We’ll take care of you, Mickey. Don’t worry.” He nodded, and she let go of his hand.

He lay very still and tightened and untightened his hand around the blanket, trying with his bad hand as well, for all it inched, but he could feel the needle in his arm tugging at his skin, trailing the tube, so he stopped. He could feel his heartbeat pounding away again, and wished he had something to look at to distract him, the way he’d had on the last night he was having a stroke, something nice and bright like the candle, flickering every so often, changing color so he wasn’t distracted from it.

“Breathe, Mickey,” Miss Good Nurse said to him. He nodded and took a deep breath in. He found he couldn’t release it though. He tried to swallow it, but that only caused him to start hiccupping. Miss Good Nurse put her hand on his chest. He sought to move his bad hand to get a smile out of her and curled his hand around her sleeve, clenching it tight with his hand despite the tugging of the needle in his arm. The fabric helped. She looked down at his hand, then met his eyes and smiled, however briefly. He found he could exhale. “It’s going to be alright.”

He nodded. The bed turned a corner and one of the other nurses pushed it up against the wall. Miss Good Nurse reached down and picked him up. He sought to wrap his legs and arms around her as best he could, because he needed the hug, the same way Mama used to give before the twins were born. She gave him a hug then put him down on a cold mat. He cried out.

“Shh,” she said, touching his forehead again, brushing the hair on his temple.

The other nurse was putting the cold gummy gel on him and sticking wires to him.

Miss Good Nurse took her hand away and back up. “Don’t-ta go-a! Pfwease don go-a!” he called after her.

“I promise this won’t take very long and I’ll be here the whole time.”

“It’sa col-da and too bwight-ta!” he declared. But he was fairly sure all of them knew that and for some reason they would not fix it.

He could feel a tear sneaking out of his eye and making a run down his cheek. He wouldn’t let any more do that. He scrunched his eyes together and willed future tears back into his face.

There was a bright flash, like lightning coming from all around him, and he froze. Another bright flash left him breathless, his heart pounding on the inside of his chest. There were a few more – he lost count, thinking instead that this was it; one of those bright lightning flash was going to strike him like Mama always warned – and when they stopped eventually, he still saw them on the back of his eyes, more so when he closed them to try to make the dizzying effect go away, and that was worse.

So as they detached him from the gummy wires and wiped up the sticky, gummy gel, he just stared at the ceiling lights. When they detached him from the tube, his hand curled by itself into a tight fist and he could feel his nails digging into his palm. But his arm had stopped doing pins and needles. He felt he should tell someone that but couldn’t work up how his mouth worked enough to speak up.

Someone reached down to straighten his hand. He grabbed onto their hand and squeezed. They squeezed back, a comforting squeeze, Miss Good Nurse. She let him keep holding it until he was pushed into a room and returned to his own bed. The nurses, including Miss Good Nurse, left the room, closing the door behind them.

Only then did he start howling, and turned himself over to pound his fists into the bed.

No one came in. He preferred it that way so he could rage against the whole world.

“The good news is he isn’t having another stroke and appears to be getting better. He has increased mobility in his left hand and leg, though recovery will still take time. We suggest that even after he goes home, you put him through a rigorous exercise regime to build up his strength,” he could hear one of the nurses explaining to someone in the hallway later that day, when he was feeling less sick and his brain felt less like bees and cotton.

“When will that be?” his Mama asked.

“We’re not sure. If he continues to make progress the way he has been, by the end of the week.”

His Mama made a pleased noise. “Can he start school then?”

“We recommend against it for another year. He will not be able to speak with any clarity and will not be able to keep up with his classmates at physical activities.” Mickey thought he was doing a very good job speaking.

His Mama sounded disappointed when she spoke again. “And all this because he was playing somewhere he shouldn’t have been?”

The nurse tried to say. “Children are fragile, Mrs. Rory.”

There was a deep sigh.

“I’ll take care of him.” Jeannie’s voice said into the pause, which meant she was here. Mickey smiled.

Mama snapped at her. “I want you to do well at your schoolwork. Find yourself a good husband to settle down with.”

“I’ll talk to him when I’m not at school,” Jeannie responded.

“That would be very good for him. He will need speech exercises.”

“What will that involve?” his Mama asked.

“Just get him speaking and correct him when he makes the wrong letter. We also can recommend a therapist -.”

“Why would he need a shrink?” his Mama interrupted.

“An occupational therapist who can work with him on moving and on speaking clearly again,” the nurse answered.

“Why can’t he just manage it in a few weeks same as my other boys’ injuries?”

“Ma’am. It isn’t just a broken bone. In this case, it was his brain,” the nurse tried explaining.

“Mom, can I go say hi to him?” Jeannie interrupted as soon as the nurse paused for a breath.

“What? Yes, fine.”

Mickey slipped his coloring book away and opened his bad hand with his good hand then pressed it to the desk so it looked okay. When Jeannie opened the door, he was all but bouncing it his bed.

“Deannie!” he said.

“Hi, Mickey!” she greeted him and came to sit by his bed. “And how’s my favorite little brother doing today?”

“I-ya heard tem in-na ta hall.” He waved at where his Mama and the nurse were talking.

“Ahh. Yeah. Umm. It sounds like school is gonna have to wait.” She looked embarrassed.

Mickey pouted. “Can you tell tem I’ma awight-a?”

Jeannie looked at the floor and frowned even more. “I can’t always understand you.”

Mickey gaped. “Ten-na I-ya h’will peak cwearer!”

Jeannie burst out laughing and slapped her hand over her mouth, looking horrified.

Mickey frowned. “What’d I-ya say-a?”

Jeannie said, “It sounded like you said ‘queer.’”

Mickey jutted out his lower jaw. “I didn’t-a! I-ya said-a keer! K… Kw… Fuck my-a tongue!”

Jeannie looked horrified. “Mickey! I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap! And tell Mom!”

Mickey shouted. “No! Deannie! You know I dust sai’ it ‘cause I can – cannot – say keer! Or anytin else eiter! I-ya can say eff dough.”

“Just don’t repeat it okay. Not everything you hear is good to say.”

Mickey sighed. “I-ya know tat.”

Jeannie smiled.

“What’s sat mean? Queer?”

Jeannie’s jaw dropped. “I don’t know. When two men go at it. You know what? You’re too young to be having this conversation.”

“Dean-nie,” he elongated the syllables into a whine and gave her his best pleading eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that!” Jeannie said. “I taught you that while you were still in diapers!”

Mickey grinned and leaned forward. “I’ma pfetter at-ta it-ta ten you are.”

“What can I get you to get you to stop asking about that?”

He bit his lip. “Can I-ya get a cand’e and a lighter like Da’s?

“Did you say candy?” She looked like she was trying not to grin.

He shook his head. “No-a, cand-ell.”

Jeannie stared at him as if he had grown a second head. “Why?”

He shrugged. “If I-ya ‘ook at it-ta, I-ya feel pfetter.”

Jeannie frowned. “I feel like I should mention that to someone.”

He pouted. “Pwease?”

Jeannie glanced out into the hallway and flashed him a smile. “I’ll see what I can do. Now what have you been up to since the last time I was here?”

He told her, and when his Mama came in and hugged him and kissed him on the head, he smiled back at her and told them both, “I-ya ‘ove you.”

“I love you too, sweetems.”

Miss Good Nurse came in shortly afterward.

“I-ya hwan ta ‘ide te pfike,” Mickey declared.

She nodded. “Very well. Let’s get you up and on the bike.”

Once there, she tied his foot down. “Can-na you teash me-ya to tie a pfow?”

She grinned. “Of course, Mickey!” She untied her previous bow. “Over, under, around and through. Meet Mr. Bunny Rabbit, pull and through.”

He watched her do it then untied her knot and took the lace in his right hand. He tried to get his left hand around it but could not get it open. So he took his good hand, opened his left hand with it and closed it around the lace, then took the other lace up in his right hand again. “Over.” He did the motion. “Under.” He copied that motion as well. “’ound-da?” He looked at here for confirmation that he was doing it right. She nodded. “True!” he yelled.

“No, like this.” She repeated it.

“Oh-wa.” He tried it again. “Mee Mr. Pfunny Apfit?” He did that. She nodded. “An pull true?” And there in front of him was a lovely bow. “I-ya did it-ta!”

“Great! Now where would you like to go?”

“To see Leo!”

“Let’s go check if he’s in today.”

Mickey nodded and started pushing down on the peddles.

“By the way, you just made the L sound. I thought you might want to know.”

They rode and walked down the hall to Leo’s mom’s room, to find her gone and a young man sitting in the chair by her bed, holding onto a stuffed animal that Mickey was fairly sure was a bear but it had bright pink ears and was holding a bright pink heart. He was also holding his arm stiffly, the same way Bill had for a while when he had broken a bone. He also smelled like the bar down the street on Sunday morning. Mickey wrinkled his nose. It wasn’t a good smell. He also looked like he could use his mama telling him to straighten up his clothes and wash them for him.

“Is Leo here?” Mickey asked.

The man started, wincing as he moved his arm too suddenly. “What the hell is wrong with you, boy?”

Mickey gasped and tried to get off the bike, but something hung onto his shoe, and the bike started tipping over. Miss Good Nurse put a stabilizing hand on his shoulder.

“Sir, he is in stroke recovery.”

The man scoffed. “That’s a lie. Brats his age don’t get strokes. Everybody knows only old folks get strokes.”

Miss Good Nurse’s scowl deepened. “Well, he’s here and he’s a child and he’s had a stroke, so make of that what you will. Now he’s looking for his friend.”

The man frowned. “What the hell does he want with my son?”

Mickey did not see how such a smart, funny kid could ever be this man’s son.

Miss Good Nurse shared a glance with Mickey and smiled at him. “They’ve become friends.”

The man glanced back at Mickey, giving him an expression that made Mickey want to stick out his tongue, even if it meant his Mama would threaten to wash his mouth out with soap. “That entire safe? What if what gave him his stroke is contagious?” the man said.

Mickey could feel Miss Good Nurse not being impressed. “I can assure you it is not.”

“Well, I don’t know where the hell that brat is right now. Probably with his grandfather driving him around town in his ice cream truck if I know my old man.”

Mickey nodded. “I-ya can-na wait till-a tomowow ten, sir.”

The man turned an expression of mockery towards Mickey. “’Canna?’ What are you, Irish, boy?”

Mickey frowned. “I-ya from just up-pa Oak-ka Steet.”

Miss Good Nurse said, “He has speech difficulties because he just had a stroke, sir.”

“Eh, if it were up to me he wouldn’t be allowed near my boy.” He went to lean forward and groaned, putting a head to his forehead.

Mickey’s Mama recommended if anyone ever smelled like that and had a headache, they should drink some water or orange juice or coffee. “You thould dink some-a water, sir. It might help with your headache,” he said.

“Get out of here or I’ll make you regret it!” the man said.

Miss Good Nurse took the back of Mickey’s bike, turned it around and walked it and Mickey out the door. Once outside, she said, “What a terrible man!”

Mickey turned to her. “Tat couldn’t-a be Leo’s-a Da!”

Miss Good Nurse nodded. “Sometimes people aren’t always raised by their mommies and daddies. Sometimes it’s only their mommy, or their grandparent.”

“So Leo’s Grandpa and te nice lady from-a pfefore are raising him?”

Miss Good Nurse nodded. “It’s sounds like it, Mickey.” She glanced back at the door and put and hand on Mickey’s head to brush his hair. “Let’s go back to your room, and you can pick out another coloring book, or maybe a dot-to-dot book.”

“And tomowow we can go pway wit-a Leo?” Mickey said.

Miss Good Nurse smiled. “We’ll see, Mickey.”

Mickey got an idea and turned to her. “Is it tomowow aweady?”

Miss Good Nursee laughed, and Mickey smiled.

They spent until lunch doing dot-to-dots.

Jeannie stopped by the following morning. “How are you feeling today?” she asked.

He looked down at her outfit then back up at her. “Did you take-a the pfus?”

She nodded. “I can’t stay long, Mickey, but I got you Da’s spare lighter and a candle. Just don’t light the candle in here.”

He stared at her. “But wha’ am I-ya ‘upposed to light ten?”

“I don’t know. Can you even light Da’s lighter? Maybe just work on that?”

“Course I-ya can!” he insisted. It was a lie. He had never held Da’s lighter ever, but he was sure he could figure out how to light it.

She saw through his first lie. “When have you ever held a lighter before, Mickey?”

“Da let me,” he lied.

She made an impressed expression, and looked at him as though reassessing his abilities with the implement. “Alright then. If Da’s determined you’re old enough. Just don’t burn yourself or light anything on fire you shouldn’t!” She bossed him.

He beamed up at her. “So I-ya can-na light te candle?”

“No, they’ll find out and then they’ll take it away and we’ll both get in trouble!”

“I won light it-ta where tey can-na see-ya,” he told her.

She stamped her foot. “Why can’t you just hold the lighter lit up?”

He considered it. It would probably work just as well as staring at that candle had to distract him from how bad he felt.

Unfortunately, she saw something in his face that made her grab for it. “I shouldn’t have given it to you in the first place.”

He held it away from her.

“Give it back! I shouldn’t have given it to you!” She reached across him and nearly caught his hand, but in doing so she leaned on his bad ankle.

“Ow!” he yelled, holding it even further away. “Deannie, I-ya won tell anyone!”

“They’ll see you with it and take it away from you! And you can’t lie to save your life!”

“No-wa, tey won’t! I on’y use it when nopfody’s looking!” he promised again.

She pulled back. “Fine. Watch as they take it away from you and get both of us in trouble!”

“Tey won’t! I-ya promise!” She looked back at him.

“Fine. As long as you promise. Pinkie swear.”

“You said swear.”

“It just means… ugh, pinkie promise.”

“Okay. Pinkie promise.” He held out his pinkie, and she hooked hers with it.

“Now, you can’t show anyone.”

He nodded.

“Alright. Come here. Lemme give you a kiss.”

“Eww! Deannie!”

“On the forehead, you little pest! Come here.” She kissed him on the forehead. “I have to go.”

“Don’ta miss your pfus!” he called after her.

He shoved the candle behind the blinds and the lighter under his coloring book at the side of his bed. Just in time too, because the nurse arrived with breakfast.

Once she had gone, he took out the lighter and held the mechanism close to his face to see how it worked. He saw the spinning wheel and the hole and the button. He tried pressing the button. It didn’t light, but it did release a smell like the tractor, or the stuff Da and Jake poured on the wood to build a bonfire. Having it so close to his face made his nose itch. He sneezed and shook his head.

Button then. He tried pushing the button. It clicked, but other than a momentary crackle, there was nothing. He frowned at it, chewing on his lip and remembering what Jake had told him about bonfire and the smell – “you have ta make sure there’s enough gas on the wood so it goes up.” If he pulled that to this, he had to make sure there was enough gas for it to light.

Button closely following wheel. He spun the wheel and the pressed down on the button. A shot of flame rushed into the air. He let go of the button and dropped the lighter in surprise. The flame died.

He picked it back up and tried in again, this time holding it a little further from his face. Wheel then button.

The flame stayed lit.

He let out a deep breath and stared at the little flame coming from the lighter, noting how it blew sideways when he breathed out. He chuckled to himself and watched as the flame danced. He took his thumb off the button, and the flame when out. It would work well if after lights out, he lit the candle and watched it until he fell asleep. He tucked it in beside his coloring book, pulled that out and started coloring on a blank page.

Leo’s Grampa and Leo came in, thanking someone outside. “Leo!” Mickey shouted. “Look-ka I’ma coloring wit pfot hands-sa!”

Leo’s Grampa patted Leo on the back on the shoulder and the toddler ran over and climbed on his bed. Leo’s Grampa said, “Can ya now? Ya know they call that ambidextrous and it’s a talent.”

Mickey grinned at him. “Ampfi – wha’ now?”

“Ambidextrous, kiddo. It means both-handed.”

Mickey frowned. “Are you-a making fun-na of me-ya?”

Leo’s Grampa approached. “Never. May I sit?”

Leo scrambled to the other side of the bed as Mickey nodded.

Leo’s Grampa sat. “May I see your crayon?”

Leo grinned. “What are you gonna draw, Grampa?”

Leo’s Grampa smiled at him and pulled him close. “I’m not gonna draw something. Gonna show your friend here that sometimes grown up’s hands ain’t up to snuff either.” He switched the crayon into his left hand and wrote a few words in what was clearly very trying and careful writing for him. He had his tongue out. Mickey would have loved to adopt him, if adopting a Grampa was even possible. He handed the page to Mickey.

It was chicken scratch. Mickey could tell where the spaces were, but that was about all he could tell. He knew the shape of his letters and the sounds each of them made. He could even recognize a few letters in his Mama’s delicate cursive, when she was trying to write all fancy in letters and thank-you cards. Here, he could not recognize anything.

“This is writing?” he asked Leo’s Grampa, who threw back his head with a grin.

“Never learned to be ambidextrous. So if you’re learning that, you’re ahead of the game,” he explained.

Mickey grinned up at him. “I like you.”

Leo nodded. “He’s cool. And he’s my Grampa!”

Leo’s Grampa smiled at him. “And don’t you forget it!”

Mickey looked at both Leo and his Grampa. “Do you wan ta color?”

Leo’s Grampa looked down at Leo, who beamed. “Yeah! I’d love to!”

Leo’s Grampa smiled at Mickey. “I’d love to.”

Mickey ripped out two pages from the coloring book and handed one to each of them. Leo picked up a crayon and started scribbling across the page. Leo’s Grampa picked up a crayon and started coloring more carefully.

Leo got bored after he had covered half the page in blue and gazed down at his Grampa’s page. Mickey put down his crayon and glanced over Leo’s Grampa’s arm at the drawing as well and was taken aback at how good the coloring was. It seemed to pop out of the page. “I like your dawing.”

“Thank you, Mickey.”

A nurse came in through the door then. “Mr. Snart?” she said.

Leo’s Grampa looked up. “Yes?” He stood up after a moment of studying her face, moving Leo off his lap. “Is everything okay?”

“Mr. Snart, come with me.”

“Wait here,” he told Leo, then crossed the room to the nurse. “Alright.” Before he left, Mickey scanned his face and saw that it was gray with a clenched expression.

Leo tugged his sleeve. “Come on, Mickey! Let’s keep coloring!”

Mickey turned from the door, grinned as best he could at Leo, then tore out two pages, one for him and one for Leo and grabbed a crayon.

He was teaching Leo how to color in the lines – by drawing lines just inside the thing you wanted to color in then coloring inside of them – and Leo seemed to be getting the hang of it, when his Grampa walked in.

“Leo,” he said. There were tears in his eyes and his eyes were red and puffy. He squatted down as Leo ran to him. “Leonard.”

Leo ran into his arms and hugged him. “Are you alright?” An idea occurred to him and he started inspecting his Grampa’s face with fast, worried, little hands. “Daddy wasn’t mean to you, right?”

Leo’s Grampa winced and took Leo’s hands away from his face and arms and then picked the toddler up. “If he’s ever mean to you again, you tell me, right?”

Leo nodded.

“No, it’s…” he winced again. “The surgery didn’t go so good.”

Leo frowned. “Mommy’s surgery?”

His Grampa nodded.

“Is she okay? Does that mean she’s gotta be here even longer?” Leo asked.

His Grampa hugged him.

“If I give her my picture, will that help her feel better?” Leo asked.

His Grampa hugged him tighter.

“If I draw her something, or, or maybe you can bring her ice cream? That always makes Mommy and me feel better!”

“Leo,” his Grampa said. “I’m afraid she won’t be coming home.”

Mickey started feeling the salty, hot feeling well up in the back of his eyes. He didn’t know why and yet he did.

Leo pushed himself back from his Grampa’s shoulder. “She staying here forever?”

The Grampa shook his head. “No, Leo. She going to old Rabbi Cohen’s place.”

Leo’s frown deepened. “Why’s she staying with him and his wife?”

“She… I’m afraid she’s dead, little one.”

Mickey felt like ice water had been dumped over him. Dead meant that thing that happened to animals when they had to be buried or to old people when their rooms stank and then you didn’t see them again, but not to people like Leo’s Mommy.

Leo’s tipped his head in non-comprehension. “Why is she dead? She didn’t do nothing. She didn’t break the law. No cops were involved. She can’t be dead!”

Mickey felt the salty, hot feeling well up in his throat. His shoulders started to shake and his eyes started to burn. He sniffed back tears before they could fall.

“Leo, that’s not the only time people die. Sometimes things go wrong with people and the hospital can’t fix them.”

“But she’ll come back, right? I can still see her.”

“No, Leo. I’m afraid she’s dead, baby.”

“But then who will tuck me in at night? Who will sing me songs? Who will make me lunch? Who will make Daddy lunch?” Leo asked. “She’s gotta come back.”

“I’ll keep tucking you in at night and making you lunch, kiddo.”

Tears were starting to overcome Leo’s eyes. “But then who will take me to temple? Who will be Mommy?”

“I’m sorry, Leo, kiddo,” his Grampa murmured the words of apology under his breath. Leo began hiccupping. Mickey found tears at the backs of his eyes that were starting to leak over his eyelashes.

“No!” Leo shouted. “No! No, no, no!”

“I’m sorry,” Leo’s Grampa repeated.

Leo grabbed hold of his shirt and stuffed his face into it. “I wanna see her! I wanna see Mommy!” he demanded.

His Grampa carried him from the room.

After the door had closed, Mickey started sobbing too, and was still crying with his face stuffed into his pillow when Miss Good Nurse came in. He let her pick him up and hold him, but would only stop crying after she called his Mama and let him speak to her.

The following day, he was able to get his foot to follow his instructions to it enough to walk across the room by himself to go to the bathroom, though his foot was still angled out too far and the inside of his heel was lifting up making his ankle turn under him.

He turned to Miss Good Nurse when he got back to bed. Chest puffed out, he declared, “I-ya wan ta go-wa home-ma.”

“I will discuss it with your mama when she comes in today.” She put her hand on his.

“I-ya can-na talk-ka. I can-na walk-ka. I can-na ‘ide-da a-ya bike-a. And da docta say-za tere’s not’ing he-ya can-na find dat’sa ‘ong wit me-ya. Can-na I-ya go-wa home-ma?” Mickey said.

“Let’s see what the doctor says.”

He shook her hand off. “Docta – doc-ka – say-za he-ya can-ta fin-da not’ing ‘ong! I-ya want ta go-wa home-ma ta Mama! I-ya want ta see-ya Mama.”

She stopped and stared at him, then closing her eyes, sighed and nodded. “You will still have to have regular appointments.”

He frowned at her. “Pfut f’om home-ma, ‘ight?”

She nodded again. “We will see, but the doctor should say yes. Now, will you try something for me?”

He tipped his head, frown deepening. “I-ya don want ta.”

“Give it a try for a minute.”

He stared at her. “I-ya get ta go-wa home after, ‘ight?”

She nodded again.

He shrugged.

“Press your lips together.”

He tried to press them together as much as he could and nodded at her when he couldn’t press them anymore – the muscles only wanted to follow his control so much.

“Buh. Buh. Buh,” she repeated.

“Puh. P-fuh. Puh,” he tried to get his lips to make that sound.

“No. Buh.”

He pinched his lips together with his finger and then tried to make the sound. “Buh.” He grinned. “I-ya did it-ta!”

She ruffled his hair. “Yes, but now we’re trying to get you to a point where you don’t need your fingers to let you make the sound.”

“How?” he asked.

He shouldn’t have, as she ended up giving him a licorice shoelace with a marshmallow of the end of it and telling him that only if he got to the end using nothing but his lips to inch the thing into his mouth could he have the marshmallow.

He got halfway before his lip muscles were spasming in agony, and he had to stop. He pulled the offending piece of licorice out of his mouth. “I’ hurt-ta-sa!”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “You did very well for a first try.”

“Put Uh didn’ get ta da ma’s’meyo-a!” he spoke too fast and heard the utter garbage coming out of his mouth.

“Marshmallow.”

He tugged his bad arm up to fold it across his chest and then folded his other arm around it and glared. “No-wa.”

“Mickey,” she spoke in the same tone as Jeannie did when he didn’t want to do her chores.

He shouted at her. “No-wa! No-wa! No-wa! No-wa! I’ma tire’!”

“Marshmallow,” she kept insisting.

He shoved at her. “I don wanna. An’ ya can’ta make-ka me-ya!” He curled both hands into little fists on the desk across his bed. His left one curled around his thumb.

She held up her hands to admit defeat. “Alright. Tomorrow then. For now,” she pulled the marshmallow off the licorice, “here is the marshmallow.”

He reached over and plucked in from her hand. “Tank you, Miss-a Goo’ Nurse.”

She smiled at him and gave him a juice box with a straw. “Here you go. I’ll go see where lunch is.”

He watched her go and said to himself and the teddy bear in his stuff, “I want ta go-wa home-ma an’ see Mama.”

Sure enough, his Mama was in later that day. The first thing he did when he saw her was stand up on his bed – thank goodness his leg held and he could bend it when he wanted to with his brain – and launch himself into her arms as soon as she got close.

“Mama! I want ta go-wa home-ma!” he said from her shoulder, which smelled just like her soap and shampoo. He hugged her tighter and wrapped his good leg around her waist. She hugged him too, shifting his weight around to her hip. He let himself be moved, but they could dream on if they thought they were detaching him from her ever.

“Are you okay, Mickey, baby?”

“You’re not-ta goin’ ta die ever, ‘ight-ta? Not till you’re old-da an’ sa’mell like-ka onion’sa an’ pee-ya like old Mrs. Sanford-da use’ ta, ‘ight-ta, Mama?”

She shifted him back around to peer at him. “Mickey, what’s wrong? What happened?”

“One of the other patients died of cancer. He had made friends with her boy,” Miss Good Nurse’s voice sounded from the door.

Mickey’s Mama turned to face her. “And he found out about this?”

“Yes.” Miss Good Nurse gave a nod.

“How much longer does he have to stay here?” his Mama asked.

“He can stand and walk on his own now. But I would recommend occupational therapy to retrain him to use his hand and mouth and to get him to run.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“No, just a nurse, but I have experience with strokes -,” Miss Good Nurse started to answer.

His Mama interrupted with, “I want to hear it from a doctor.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Miss Good Nurse ducked back out.

The doctor who ran the blood tests came. “Mrs. Rory?” he asked. She nodded. “Come with me.”

She managed to detach herself from Mickey with reassurances that she would be back and followed the doctor down the hall. Mickey looked up from the bed at Miss Good Nurse. She pulled out the chair from the wall and sat down across from him.

“Mickey, I want to tell you something.”

He nodded.

“Life won’t be easy for you. I want you to take a deep breath and count to ten. Can you do that with me?”

“Un, two-wa, tee-ya, four-a, fife-a, sick-a-sa, sefen-na, eight-ta, nine-a, ten-na,” he counted.

“That’s very good. And I want you to do that whenever people are mean to you,” she told him.

He gazed at her, his eyes taking in that for some reason, she was worried people would be. “I’ya will.”

His Mama came back into the room shortly. “Come on, Mickey. We’re going home.”

Mickey held up his arms. His Mama came over, dumped his stuff from the side bin, including the lighter. He held his breath, but it slid under the stuffed animal, and no one saw it.

She picked Mickey up, putting him on her hip and his stuff on her other hip. Mickey curled his good hand into her blouse and leaned his head against her shoulder.

“Say thank you to Miss Betty,” she told Mickey.

“Tank-a you-wa,” Mickey said to Miss Good Nurse.

Mickey smiled up at his Mama. It would be nice to be home. He promised himself he wouldn’t let her out of his sight for the next week and then he’d be off to kindergarten, no matter what anybody said.

#my fanfic #my fics #the flash #legends of tomorrow #mick rory #stroke #hospitals #hospital care in the 1970s #bullying #ableism #abuse #child abuse

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kentonramsey · 5 years

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At 30, Abigail Bruley Forgot Who She Was—Then She Became Someone New

I first heard of Abigail Bruley’s story last fall, when she submitted a short, fascinating essay about memory loss to the Man Repeller Writers Club. Unsure whether it was fact or fiction, I got in touch and asked if she’d be willing to tell me more. Over the course of the next few months, she told me everything that happened to her, first via email, then phone call, and finally over a five-hour visit to her home in Philadelphia. Her story is unlike any I’ve heard before, but woven through it is something curiously universal—a flash of clarity in the chaos of the human condition.

Abigail Bruley doesn’t remember her wedding day. She knows she was 24, that she married her boyfriend Ryan. She can say there was a mashed-potato bar and that she danced to the Beach Boys, but she knows these details like I know my mom got married in a cowboy hat—not because I was there, but because I want (and choose) to believe the story. Bruley’s husband has told her the day was a blur of playing host and managing logistics, which she imagines is partly to blame. “I guess I wasn’t that emotional on my wedding day,” she reasons with a shrug. “And the best way to access memories is through emotions.”

The human brain captivates Bruley. The way it processes new and old data, tracks patterns over time, tucks information away in mysterious places, like the nervous system or dark recesses of the mind, just out of our conscious reach. Her fascination is not borne of fear or even curiosity, but veneration for something she doesn’t fully understand. After losing “millions of memories” in a car crash, she’s been forced to form an unflinching relationship with the unknown. This is, among other things, one of the unlikely benefits of her traumatic brain injury.

The neuro-fatigue is less welcome—it creeps up on her every day around 3 p.m., a mental weariness that, if not carefully heeded, can make her behave as if she were black-out drunk. Ditto the expressive aphasia, which inhibits her word recall, or the fact that she can now only hover around the edges of parties rather than thrust herself into the milieu. Her processing speed isn’t ideal. Sometimes she’ll think of a witty remark hours after it ought to have been delivered, something “old Abigail” might have found embarrassing. But even these downsides have their upsides: motivation to use her energy and words wisely, a sense of self untethered to her social standing, a disinterest in the insincerity sarcasm demands.

Of course, to digest the facts of her life this way requires a kind of blunt optimism, but that she has in seemingly unlimited stores—a survivor’s response, no doubt, to an intimate brush with death.

A sharp left turn

On February 5, 2013, a then-30-year-old Bruley and her husband Ryan Kerrigan touched down in Costa Rica for vacation. Their hotel was a few hours from the airport, so they rented a car and proceeded down a narrow, winding road that was crowded with traffic. It was hot, they kept getting stuck behind trucks with heavy exhaust, and soon they grew impatient. Then they noticed other cars passing trucks in the left lane—the one reserved for traffic going the opposite direction—and decided to follow suit. They successfully passed trucks twice. On the third time, Kerrigan pulled into the left lane right as another truck came out of nowhere, heading straight toward them. To avoid a head-on collision, he yanked the wheel to the left, inadvertently exposing the side of the car containing Bruley to a near-fatal crash.

Bruley and Kerrigan were rushed to the hospital, where Kerrigan, who suffered minor cuts and bruises, proceeded to endure the worst 14-hour period of his life, one in which he did not possess enough Spanish to discern whether his wife was alive or dead. Eventually he learned she was in critical condition, that she had broken her femur, her hip, and some ribs, and dislocated vertebrae in her lower back. The most serious injury, though, was a contusion to her right frontal lobe—the part of the brain concerned with language, memory, and judgement—which caused shearing, or tearing, of brain tissue underneath. The head trauma was also axonal, meaning it reverberated in her skull, causing bruising in other areas, too. Initially this injury was not apparent, as her head appeared unharmed—the first challenge of what would become a lifelong invisible illness.

She had to relearn the rhythms of conversation, the days of the week, the meaning of expressions like “no strings attached.”

Three days later, when Bruley and Kerrigan’s insurance provider sent a small plane to bring them back home to Philadelphia, her behavior became erratic. She kept trying to tear the tubes from her arms, and was making lewd comments about the nurses. This is consistent with what doctors call “post-traumatic amnesia,” or PTA, a period of time after brain injury defined by bizarre, uncharacteristic behavior, and especially an inability by the injured to form memories or conceive of their situation. Soon after being admitted to Thomas Jefferson Hospital, she was put into a medically-induced coma and sent into a series of surgeries that involved outfitting her lower back with brackets and her femur with titanium rods. A month later she was transferred to Magee Rehabilitation Hospital, where she’d wake from her coma and begin the most treacherous months of her life.

“Your oldest brain wakes up first—your primitive brain,” Bruley tells me of coming out of a coma. She’s sitting on a velvet couch in her sunny Philadelphia loft, her two little dogs, Arnold and Potato, napping to her left. It’s been seven years. Her posture is a little stiff, and her words come slowly, methodically, as if she were reciting them from memory. “Your primitive brain… reproduces, eats, sleeps.” She pauses, looking for one more: “Prevents death.” It’s the part of the mind in control of base instincts like fight-or-flight, and she spent her first weeks at Magee like that, not understanding why she was there, dizzy with terror and confusion. She has no memories of this time, as the brain’s recording function is turned off during PTA, but it’s been recounted to her by her family and team of doctors.

How long a patient stays in PTA is said to be the best measure of the brain injury’s seriousness—under one hour is considered mild, anything over 24 is severe. Bruley’s lasted for three weeks, a period during which doctors were focused on reassuring her safety and repeating basic truths, like that she had been in an accident and was in the hospital. At some point, she started retaining small pieces of information, a sign that other parts of her brain were waking up. Her doctors called this “clearing.”

“I think they meant it as her clearing stages,” Kerrigan tells me over the phone. “They would always say, ‘She has cleared.’ And the next day, ‘She has cleared again.’ Eventually, she got over some kind of hurdle and she now knew who her sisters were.” But there was no single climactic return to mental form for Bruley, not like in the movies. Although she always remembered Kerrigan, something they both point out with quiet pride, most of her memories were gone. Tessa Hart, PhD, an expert in rehabilitation for traumatic brain injury, says this kind of loss is unusual, but that no two brain injuries are the same. Bruley had to relearn the rhythms of conversation, the days of the week, the meaning of expressions like “no strings attached” (one she’s finally nailed after much repetition). More than that, she had to reacquaint herself with her former life: her friends, her family, her apartment. A process of self-discovery brought to its physiological extreme.

Forget & forgive

Bruley was born in 1983 in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. She was a silly, energetic kid, riding bikes, playing basketball, trying to make her family laugh. Her early teens were a bit more turbulent. “I went through many phases—found punk rock, got kicked out of Catholic school, ran away, the whole deal,” she says. Things changed when she landed at a public high school, where she blossomed, made great friends, and played field hockey. At Drexel she studied Dramatic Writing, where she combined her love of words with a new passion for film. Her twenties hit a lot of familiar beats: She interned, worried about making the most of her career, got married, balanced her paid work with hobbies like comedy, art, thrifting, and exploring Philadelphia.

Then, at 30 years old, when cultural mythology says all that will coalesce into a sum greater than its parts, Bruley forgot who she was. When she arrived home from the hospital, everything was unfamiliar. What is the identity of this person with this name and this apartment? she remembers thinking. Who chose this haircut? Her apartment was filled with old records, her closet with vintage knits and dresses. From this, she gathered she liked old stuff—an affinity that, along with painting and storytelling, has become one of her strongest threads of continuity with her former self. Today she’s wearing camel cords and hi-top Converse, a cream sweater layered over a red-striped turtleneck, and her hair in a messy bun with thick bangs. “My sense of style, everyone will tell you, is exactly the same as before,” she says. It’s hard to imagine a more acute achievement of authenticity.

She shows me a photo album her family made for her to study those first months, a reference guide to her loved ones. It has an orange fabric cover gently scratched and stained from use. It’s filled with men and women and kids I don’t recognize; a perception I imagine Bruley once shared. On the first page are photos of her with her husband and dog. “Bruley & Ryan & Arnold,” the label reads. On the next are pictures of her with her mom and two older sisters, dressed up for a fancy event she doesn’t remember attending. A man with gray hair and glasses in a red sweater smiles warmly—“DAD.”

She shows me a note she wrote to herself early on, blue pen on an old Simpsons Post-It: “It takes a lot longer than you think,” it reads, and on the other side: “Keep starting over.” She doesn’t have much from this time—“I got rid of a lot of my stuff because I was like, I’m done being brain-injured,” she says. But what’s left tells an interesting story: A black weighted vest she had to wear to rebalance her center of gravity, which shifted in the accident (“It sounds poetic but it’s actually real”); a small printed-out photo of Mary Tyler Moore making a fist and a wince, saved by Bruley for its perfect embodiment of how she felt; a painting she made about brain injury. In the painting, a dark, ominous cloud fills the canvas, lightning striking from its center. A small woman watches motionlessly from a chimney below, a slingshot in her hand and a propeller attached to her back. “It’s the only painting I just can’t seem to sell,” Bruley says. “I think it’s because I’m supposed to hold onto it.”

I need all my energy to build this new life. I don’t want to waste energy trying to remember that old life.

Her pre-accident life isn’t a blank page. Some memories have returned to her over the years, especially those associated with intense emotions. She doesn’t remember her wedding, but she does remember being proposed to (“that feels more important”). She’s accessed these recollections through doing memory-recall work with her therapist, and through exposure to triggers like photos, stories, or either of those things in repetition. But she says there are an infinite number of memories she’ll never retrieve, and even if she did, they likely wouldn’t be enough to stitch together the narrative arc of her former life.

This doesn’t distress her nearly as much as it does me, a writer who hoards memories like infinitely shrinking nesting dolls. And as I try to tease out the specifics—does she remember graduating college? What about meeting her husband?—I struggle to conceal how devastating I think it all sounds. But over and over, she meets my questions with a gentle disinterest, forcing me to reckon with the idea that identity isn’t quite so linear. That losing your old stories could be neutral rather than catastrophic. It’s also difficult, I realize, to mourn something you cannot recall, and Bruley has no desire to think her way into melancholy. Her loss registers more like a mental hurdle. She does not listen to old songs, she does not wonder what she’s forgotten. She only looks ahead.

“Remembering your past is useful if it helps you recognize patterns within yourself,” she concedes. “But I need all my energy to build this new life. I don’t want to waste energy trying to remember that old life. That seems like heaviness I don’t really need to be concerning myself with.”

Heaviness would be medically inadvisable. “Once brain-injured,” she explains, “you don’t heal back to where you were before, it’s not like a broken leg. It’s a disability like any other.” This means the separation between “old Abigail” and “new Abigail” is more than one of differing data sets. How she thinks, talks, and processes have been permanently altered. By many estimations this makes her life more difficult—“old Abigail” was a freelance writer, “new Abigail” struggles to put complex ideas to words; “old Abigail” liked to go out, “new Abigail” can’t handle too much stimulation. Whether as a means of survival or through some miraculous force of personality, however, she sees these shifts as opportunities.

“I most likely think vastly differently [from before],” Bruley says. “But setting back to zero—fading back in from black—means a natural revealing of reality as it is, a close-up of truths.” “Old Abigail” never would have had the pleasure.

Still, her life these days is carefully organized around her brain: what it wants, what it needs, what it can and can’t handle. I imagine this is something like monitoring the temperature in the room, or how often you breathe. There are certain realities I’d rather accept and forget forever, like my ability to absorb new information until my brain burns to a crisp and sends me to bed. Bruley doesn’t have that luxury. Her mental capacity must remain a focus for the sake of her safety and ability to live a reasonably normal life, and that’s made her an expert in what you might call “cognitive self-care.”

Slowing down by design

Bruley and Kerrigan’s apartment is one big, industrial room. There are leafy plants everywhere, crowded book shelves, a velvet couch next to a leather couch next to a leather chair. Light pours in from five eight-pane windows. There are records, trinkets, little pieces of art nestled in corners. Their bedroom is tucked behind a curved pony wall, like something out of a TV show about friends living in New York City. Except we’re in Philly and here it doesn’t feel so unrealistic.

We sit in their living room on separate couches for hours, exchanging words carefully. Talking to her is pleasant. She’s kind, thoughtful, a bit chilled-out like a stoner. In many ways she resembles someone neurotypical, but the subtle differences amount to something significant. We meet at 11 a.m., when she’s mentally strongest. Barely audible classical music floats through her speakers because “it’s brain-injury-friendly.” When I fail to space out my heavier questions, we pump the breaks. Get a tea. Take a beat. Sometimes she’s exuberant and verbose, other times careful and unsure, pausing often to ask, “What’s the word?” She’s accepting of her wavering energy, doesn’t apologize, asks for what she needs. It’s around the one-hour mark, nestled into her vintage furniture, that I realize that there is a lot to learn from Bruley. That her modus operandi may be one of medical necessity, but broken down for parts, it isn’t so different from self-respect.

Consider her relationship with consumption. Due to her processing limitations, Bruley must be hypervigilant about what she takes in. Whereas most people budget time regardless of their energy, she does the opposite, safeguarding her energy like a precious resource. This means looking forward instead of back, committing only to things in which she finds purpose, dropping lines of thought that don’t serve her. Anything less is a threat to her wellbeing.

We went through my feed and unfollowed or unfriended anyone or anything that wasn’t interesting to me or beautiful to look at or helpful.

In her first year of recovery, a psychologist advised her to pare down her Facebook friends. “We went through my feed and unfollowed or unfriended anything or anyone that wasn’t interesting to me or beautiful to look at or helpful,” she says (would that I could). She’s unable to binge-watch TV, so she chooses episodes and movies carefully, watching them in short chunks, and not often. She doesn’t do well with the endless scroll of online shopping, or the aimless wandering of thrifting, so today she buys with intention: “The only way I can shop now is to get something in my mind that I want and search for that one thing.”

She requires a lot of quiet. While many of us internet-dwellers go to great, toilet-scrolling lengths to avoid being alone with our thoughts, Bruley needs to create that space for herself. The relaxed schedule and stretches of undistracted time have led her to meditation study. It helps her process her thoughts. Even her conversational training has had a zen-like effect on her worldview. “The steps to turning every human interaction into a connection is remembering the steps,” she says. “Pause, relax, open, trust emergence, listen deeply, speak the truth. Six steps.” Trust emergence is her favorite. It reminds her to enter conversations without expectation or assumption. If you shine Bruley’s coping mechanisms through a wellness prism, they look a lot like healthy habits.

But if her life is beginning to sound like a day at a Goop retreat, I’ve overstated it. Bruley’s days require an incredible amount of forethought. “If we are going to dinner with friends on a Saturday night,” Kerrigan tells me, “we’re not doing anything Saturday morning or afternoon. We may be taking a nap. We’re certainly not doing anything Friday night and we’re probably not doing anything all day Sunday. All of that just so we can go to dinner on Saturday night with a few friends for two hours.” This frustrates him only insofar as it’s hard for others to comprehend, especially when Bruley seems just fine. This is one of the challenges of invisible illness, and why Bruley carries a card in her wallet that says “I am a person with a brain injury,” with her name, address, and a list of symptoms on the back, including poor coordination, slurred speech, sensitivity to light and sound. (She says she’s never used it, but has been tempted when people are assholes.)

Kerrigan is otherwise unfazed. “She’s my best friend and I want to spend time with her and I want to be with our friends with her,” he says. “If this 20-point checklist needs to happen for us to do that, well, that’s what we’re going to do.”

Over the course of our phone call, Kerrigan’s indefatigable support of Bruley strikes me as more romantic than any mid-budget romcom about memory loss I’ve ever seen (Overboard, The Vow, 50 First Dates, to name three of literally dozens). “I still see that person that I met 15 years ago,” he tells me. “If she’s different now, I’m ignoring that in a way. From the moment all this happened our whole entire world fell to pieces. If it feels anything like it did 10 years ago that’s a massive compliment to the two of us. This is a person I deeply love and I’m going to find those things again in her.”

Still, weathering this kind of storm changes you as a couple, and last year they sought out counseling. “At first, he was my caretaker,” Bruley says. In fact, a whole team of people were tending to every aspect of her recovery, but Kerrigan’s life had been up-ended, too. “He was greatly ignored because I took the spotlight for so long, and then it wasn’t until last year, when one of my wounds kind of brushed up against one of his wounds and some conflicts started happening.” Talking to someone proved transformational, and Bruley’s since become a public advocate for couples counseling following traumatic brain injury—even before people may think they need it.

Moving on, in earnest

Before I head back to New York, Bruley and I walk to a cafe down the street from her apartment for lunch. “They have an exciting menu that is slightly disappointing when it actually arrives at the table, is my review,” she says (this turns out to be perfectly astute). The pop music here is loud and I worry it will bother her, but she seems okay.

Our conversation turns to writing. Bruley used to be a freelance writer and editor, covering fashion, culture, and music for various digital publications. But her expressive aphasia—which she describes as “knowing what I mean to say but not being able to say it with words”—sounds almost like a diagnosis for writer’s block. A year and a half after the accident she tried to return to her career and was fired from multiple jobs. This was heartbreaking. Ever since, she’s turned to more visual forms of storytelling, like film and painting, which are more in tune with her creative sensibility post-accident. In seven years, she’s written and directed three short films (all of which you can watch on her website).

There’s a humorous element to all of them, but she says she’s mostly parted ways with comedy. Whereas “old Abigail” was sarcastic, quick-witted, and in the middle of making a sketch comedy series with her friends, she’s since lost her taste for that kind of humor. “There’s a superiority attached to sarcasm,” she says. “Like a pretension.” At one point she uses finger quotes to explain something then immediately apologizes. She hates finger quotes. She thinks they’re patronizing.

Dr. Tessa Hart says this aversion isn’t unusual for someone with a brain injury of the right frontal lobe, where language pragmatics are stored. “Language pragmatics are things like your tone of voice in speaking and listening,” she says, “understanding and being able to express things using tone of voice, getting humor, getting subtleties, getting the social parts of language—not the actual words and phrases, but more their connotation.”

There’s a reason why you are how you are.

Bruley still can’t work full-time—her mental energy is incompatible with a 9-to-5—but she finds the freelance projects she does at home fulfilling. She’s also currently training to teach mindfulness, loves to cook and look after the house and dogs. Her life these days is one of calm precision. It’s also one of constant adjustment and renegotiation, not just of her time and energy, but of her life story. It can be hard to fathom the loss of one’s narrative arc, or the kind of self-mythologizing implicit to looking back. Early on though, she learned the challenges were not her enemy; her own resistance to them was. “Change is difficult for people, period,” she says. “But resistance is what stops people from embracing the strategies they need to make or build change.” Bruley no longer resists. Instead, she’s soft with herself, and she believes this is the difference between knowing one needs to grow and actually doing it.

That Bruley’s compensatory strategies for dealing with brain trauma feel so culturally and emotionally relevant to everyone may seem coincidental, but Dr. Hart isn’t surprised by the connection. She references the concept of “universal design,” a principle which asserts that things designed for people with limitations are better for everyone. It’s most often applied to products, like OXO kitchen gadgets that have big handles for arthritic hands that are actually easier for all hands. But she thinks it can be applied to the rehabilitative process for brain injury, too: “Things that help you calm down, reduce your anxiety, and give meaning to your life; the love, support, and patience of other people—those help everybody.”

It took time for Bruley to see her accident as an opportunity rather than as a deterrent, and the fact that she eventually did is a testament to the impact of working with rather than against oneself. “There’s a reason why you are how you are,” she says. “Don’t give yourself a hard time about anything. Because it all really leads back to something tangible.”

For her, it leads back to a left turn she hoped might save some time but that ultimately saved her life. This is why she is how she is, and maybe, if you change some of the details, it’s why I am how I am, or you are how you are. We could spend our time sifting through the particulars, assigning blame or regretting things didn’t turn out differently, but Bruley thinks we’d do better to look ahead. Be soft. Write new stories.

Photos by Alexa Quinn.

The post At 30, Abigail Bruley Forgot Who She Was—Then She Became Someone New appeared first on Man Repeller.

At 30, Abigail Bruley Forgot Who She Was—Then She Became Someone New published first on https://normaltimepiecesshop.tumblr.com/ At 30, Abigail Bruley Forgot Who She Was—Then She Became Someone New published first on https://mariakistler.tumblr.com/

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parttimespellbinder · 6 years

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SoTW Chapter 1: Best Birthday Ever

So, this was the first year that I attempted to do NaNoWriMo and for all the effort I put in all I was able to do was...a single chapter! YAAAAAAY! Either way, I haven’t posted any of my own writing here in a while and I really wanted to share this. This story, Struggles of a Teenage Wizard was originally heavily based on Sabrina the Teenage Witch but I like to think that I’ve come a long way since I originally started it way back when. So, as I continue to knock out chapters of it, I’ll probably post them here for whateves. To any who read it, I hope you enjoy it.

Tj stood against the wall, tapping his feet and glancing at his watch every few minutes, waiting for the party to end. I told them I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this. He looked around again at the banners, the balloons, the mountain of presents on several tables and shook his head. “It’s not a sweet sixteen or anything,” he said, pushing up his glasses.

With a sigh he directed his gaze towards the center of the room where he could see his father surrounded by family members Tj never knew he had. His father, Thomas, was the better, more perfect version of Tj himself. Both Tj and his father had the exact same dark chocolate skin tone, the same hazel eyes and the same afro comprised of naught but the tightest curls known to mankind. But that was where the similarities ended. Thomas’s good looks, his broad shouldered, athletic body and height were nowhere to be found on his son. Tj’s face was covered with acne, he was a little smaller than most of the boys in his class and he was quite skinny. He often felt that he wasn’t even swimming in the same gene pool when he looked at himself in the mirror.

Maybe one day I’ll look like that, he thought. Or maybe one day lemon custard will rain down from the sky.

��Hey!”

He turned to face his cousin, walking up to him from out of the crowd. Khail smiled at his cousin, revealing a set of blinding, pearly whites often used to mask his deceit and trickery. His eyes were a perfect mirror of Tj’s own with an added mischievous gleam to them while his hair had long ago been straightened and dyed all seven colors of the rainbow. His skin tone was the same as Tj’s with a lithe body obtained from hours of working out. “What’s wrong? Why the wallflower routine?”

Tj turned away from Khail. “I told Aunt Vivi and Uncle Eddie that I didn’t want a big and stupid party for my birthday and, well look at all this!”

Khail surveyed the room. “I mean, first of all, my parents aren’t the ones who threw this party. That was Uncle Thomas’s idea. And second of all, why are you bitching about a party!? In your honor? When my next birthday comes, I want a much bigger spread than this. I’d be the belle of the ball.”

“Well, yeah, you would,” Tj said. “But I’m not really much of a ‘party person’.”

“Well, you’d have to be the type that gets invited to parties to be one of those,” Khail said.

“Ouch,” Tj said, dryly. “You wound me.”

“So it seems,” Khail replied. “But either way, you really need to lighten up, Tj. You only turn sixteen once, and trust me, this is one birthday you’re gonna love.”

He patted Tj on the back and made his way back into the crowd, leaving Tj alone with his thoughts once more. A couple minutes later, his friend Philip made his way towards him, a large goofy smile on his awkward face. Philip practically ran up to Tj, his golden curls bouncing behind him, and his green eyes alight with happiness. Due to his smile, Tj could see the braces that had been in his best friend’s mouth since the start of middle school as well as the results they’d had on the boy’s teeth. His face was similarly covered in blemishes like Tj’s but also spotted with innumerable freckles.

“Dude! This party is mondo awesome!”

“So everybody keeps saying,” Tj said, rolling his eyes.

“God, you’re such a stick in the mud when you don’t get what you want, Teej. This is way better than sitting in old used bookstores! It’s a celebration of you! Who wouldn’t want that?”

“Someone who’s really not big into these kinda things,” Tj said. “Someone like-”

“You, clearly,” Philip finished. “Dude, I haven’t seen this many people in a room for someone since my sisters quince.”

“Which one?”

Philip took a moment to remember, mentally sifting through his many siblings. “Rebecca,” he said finally. “But even she managed to enjoy it. You’re just over here like the loser who can’t get anyone to dance with him.”

“Don’t compare me to you, Phil,” Tj said.

“Dude! Harsh much?”

“I live only to tell the truth,” Tj said. “But don’t let me spoil your fun. I can see you’ve been trying to bed one of my relatives but to no avail.”

“Oh, so you are enjoying this?”

“It’s always fun to watch you strike out,” Tj said, a sinister smile creeping along his face. “That’s how many now? Tiffany, Aphasia and Glinda?”

“Eh, those girls don’t know what they’re missing out on,” Philip said, proudly. “I’m just too much man for them.”

“Maybe it’s just ‘too much’ acne for them,” Tj said, laughing as he poked at several of his friends zits.

“Oh you’re hilarious, Teej,” Philip said. “A real comedian.”

“Sometimes the truth is funny,” Tj said.

“Yeah, it’ll be real funny when you get your ass kicked at your own birthday party.”

“Ha! You couldn’t take me if you wanted to!”

The two boys threw a few harmless punches and kicks at each other before attempting to wrestle the other to the ground.

“Alright, alright, that’s enough, boys.”

The two boys were torn from each other by seemingly invisible hands, sending them both into a state of confusion as Tj’s father walked up to them. “Philip, the birthday boy isn’t allowed to get bashed by his best friend,” Thomas said, smiling at them.

“Even if he deserves it?” Philip asked, still wondering why his arms were no longer wrapped tightly around Tj’s waist.

Thomas laughed. “Especially if he deserves it. How are you enjoying the party? Clearly more than the birthday boy himself?”

“Um...yeah,” Philip said. “I’m having a great time. Thanks a lot for the invite, Mr. Jackson. I mondo appreciate it.”

“I’m glad you do. Where’s Ariel? She showed up with you, didn’t she?”

Tj and Philip both looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders and then proceeded to look around the room to find their other friend. “There she is,” Tj said, pointing at a red headed girl standing by the punch bowl talking to one of his other cousins. With her blood red hair, bright blue eyes and fair skin, Ariel was easily the most noticeable person in the room aside from Philip and even Khail. This however was the last thing she wanted, as her hair was used to partially cover her eyes and she stood completely withdrawn into herself. There was a nervous smile on her face, as if she were only partially listening to Tj’s cousin out of polite obligation. When she noticed Tj looking over at her though, her face flushed and she seemed to relax, if only a little bit.

“One of you had better go save her,” Thomas said. “Tj, you know how Vairdan gets when he starts about his...hobbies.”

Tj nodded and began to make his way across the crowded room. He watched as Ariel shrank more and more ever so slightly while his cousin Vairdan gesture wildly and talked loudly. His curls were wilder than Tj’s own but much looser, and behind his glasses his hazel eyes were wide and excited. He stood much taller than both Ariel and Tj, dwarfing them both at a height well over six feet and a muscular body that seemed to almost tear through his clothing. He barely noticed Tj as he walked up and joined the conversation, continuing to talk mostly at Ariel.

“...and then in volume seven of the Gavandian chronicles, Bross gains a sword of light which he’s supposed to use to overthrow Vangar, the evil emperor from the other book series, but he uses its divine powers to restore the blighted kingdom of Zathrel! It was such a twist, I never even saw it coming! If you wanna borrow it, just have Tj ask me for it.”

“Dan, I’m sure that Ariel has better things to read than the second rate spin off to Fractured Kingdoms,” Tj said.

Vairdan jumped, finally taking real notice of Tj. He pushed his glasses up, smirked and then pulled Tj into a crushing bear hug. “Oh really? Second rate, huh?”

“Dan! Let go of me!”

“No way,” Vairdan laughed. “Blightmares is in no way second rate!”

“The author only wrote it cause he needed to develop Bross after he came the hell out of nowhere and wrapped everything up with no effort! It had to be written!”

“Bullshit! Bross was foreshadowed way back in the first volume of Fractured Kingdoms!”

“You call a throwaway line foreshadowing?”

“Damn straight!”

Tj struggled to escape the vice like grip of his cousin’s arms, but Vairdan never wavered. The two boys continued their argument, as Vairdan swung Tj around like a ragdoll. “Admit it! Bross was the hero we needed!”

“The hero the series needed to have some shade of consistency,” Tj shouted at the top of his lungs. “And who the hell names a comic Blightmares?”

Vairdan let out a gasp. “Take it back!”

“Never!”

“Okay,” Thomas said. “C’mon boys! I just broke up one mock fight. Let’s not have another, please.”

“He’s the one the started it, Dad!”

“And the one who’s gonna end it,” Vairdan said, a cocky smile on his face.

“Vairdanthrel,” Thomas said with a slight edge in his voice. “Please put Tejarun down.”

Both boys shuddered at the sound of their full names being used, but Vairdan obeyed and released his hold on his younger cousin. “Sorry, Uncle Thomas,” he said.

“No harm no foul,” Thomas said, the edge vanishing from his voice. “You boys know I hate playing disciplinarian. That’s more for your dad, Vairdan, and your mom, Tj.”

Tj rolled his eyes. Absent for four years and now he wants to play hard parent? Guess I can’t blame him. I’d probably do the same thing.

“You’re okay, right, Tj?” Ariel asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Huh? Yeah,” he said. “Dan’s always swinging me around like that. You kidna just get used to it.”

“If he were as smart as he is large, you wouldn’t have to be ‘used to it’,” Khail said.

“Don’t you have another part of the room to be in?” Vairdan asked.

“Oh heavens no,” Khail said. “I saw everyone over here and felt excluded from the fun. And it’s always fun to bother you, dearest brother.”

Vairdan and Khail locked eyes with each other, Vairdan’s glowing with irritation while Khail’s were alight with smug satisfaction.

“Come on boys,” Thomas said. “I’d prefer to not have to break up another pointless argument. Especially now that we’re about to start the main event.”

They both looked from each other to Thomas and then at Tj. Khail then shrugged his shoulders and flipped his hair. “Very well,” he said. “This episode of sibling rivalry can wait until after Tj’s big moment.”

Vairdan still looked annoyed but sighed and turned away. “Fine, for Tj’s sake, I guess we can wait to settle things till we get home.”

“Good boys,” Thomas said. “Now, Tj, come with me. Let’s take a little walk.”

Tj looked momentarily at his friends and cousins before turning from them and walking side by side with his father. They didn’t seem to have much of a destination, as Thomas simply lead him all around the room. “So, tomorrow’s the big day,” Thomas said.

“Technically tomorrow is in...a few minutes,” Tj said, checking his watch. “Is that when the party ends?”

“Mmm, some things will end,” Thomas said. “You’ll be starting a new chapter of your life. Sixteen is a very important year in our family, Tj. I’m...I’m very glad that I get to share this birthday with you, at the very least.”

Tj smiled to himself as his father put his arm around him, hugging him close to his side. “Sometimes, Tj, I feel as though I’ve let you down.”

“Why would you think that?”

Thomas laughed. “Let’s be honest with ourselves, son. You can’t deny that I’m barely a parent to you. Random inconsistent phone calls and yearly gifts can’t make up for years of just not being there. You know it, I know it, it’s a thing.”

“Well, you can’t help it that your job, whatever it is, has you globetrotting all over the world,” Tj said. “Yeah, I get that you and mom are busy but, I’ve never hated you guys for it. It’s just…”

Thomas smiled sadly at Tj. “I know. And I can’t promise that things are going to change in that regard, at least not right now. But, things are about to change for you. And for your friends, but mostly you.”

“Well, yeah, turning sixteen means I can start driving and staying out later, right?” Tj asked. “I could get an after school job, if I wanted to, couldn’t I?”

“Yes, yes, all that is true,” Thomas said. “But it also means being more responsible. You’re growing up. And because of that, I get to share something very special with you.”

Thomas clapped his hands loudly, drawing everyone’s eyes to himself and Tj. “Good evening friends and family members,” Thomas said. “First of all, I’d like to thank all of you for coming out to the party tonight. I realize that it’s quite a journey for most of you to get here and back to your own homes, but I’m still incredibly thankful that you were able to make it out here for my son’s sixteenth birthday party. Let’s have a round of applause for the birthday boy, Tejarun Jackson!”

Tj’s face flushed and his legs began to shake as he stood in the center of the room, surrounded by an army of family members clapping and cheering for him. This is in no way awkward, he thought.

Thomas held up his hands and the crowd fell silent. “Now before the big announcement that you’ve all been waiting for, I’d like to first invite Tj’s mother, Carla to join me here as well as my son’s two best friends, Ariel and Philip.”

Both Philip and Ariel managed to squeeze their way through the many relatives, each of them coming to stand on either side of Tj. After a few moments of silence though, a cough came from the back of the room and the crowd parted to make a narrow path for Tj’s mother, Carla. She was of average height and in comparison to some of the other females far less attractive. This however did not stop Thomas from getting lost in her dark brown eyes. Her black hair had been put up in an elegant bun and she smiled sweetly at her former husband. As she made her way down the narrow path, she completely ignored the snide comments and dirty looks that were thrown her way by the rest of the guests. She just calmly and confidently continued walking until she stood next to Thomas and beamed at her son.

“Happy birthday, Tj,” she said, giving Tj the tightest hug she’d given him in years.

Tj couldn’t help but blush as she kissed his forehead. “Mom…”

“Hey, I’m your mother,” she said, playfully. “It’s my job to embarrass you in front of lots of people. Nice to see you, Ariel and Philp.”

“Nice to see you too, Ms. Jackson,” Ariel and Philip said in unison.

“Hello Thomas,” she said, gazing at Tj’s father.

“H-hi,Carla,” he said. “Y-you look...incredible.”

“Thank you,” she said. The two of them gazed warmly into each other’s eyes. It seemed as though they didn’t even need words to express what they were feeling for each other, as everyone could see it. Both of their faces were awash with dream like expressions, as if they were meeting each other for the first time all over again. Tj was very familiar with this look as it came upon his parents every time they were in the same room. But the longing looks eventually would devolve into curses and shouts. It always happened and Tj had no reason to expect that it wouldn’t happen again. Even if it is supposed to be my birthday.

“So…,” Thomas said, finally tearing his eyes away from Carla and returning to his original thoughts. “So, Tj! Your mother and I...well, I have something very important that I’d like to discuss with you.”

“Oh God, Dad! I don’t need you to have the….sex talk with me, here in front of all these people!”

“Oh, he’s got something far more important to tell you than use protection,” Carla said. She watched as a wide smile spread across Thomas’s face. He began to tremble with excitement and looked as though he might explode if he didn’t say what he’d been waiting years to tell their only son. “C’mon now, Thomas. He’s sixteen now! You can tell him.”

As if a bomb had exploded within Thomas he let out a howl of excitement as he grabbed Tj and shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Tejarun Jackson, I’m so finally happy to announce that you’re a wizard!”

Amidst the thunderous applause and cheering for him, Tj couldn’t help but look questioningly at his father. Thomas, eyes watering with tears, rushed forward and gripped Tj in what might’ve been the tightest hug he’d ever given him. Tj raised his eyebrows and looked back at his two friends, his eyes asking the question he didn’t need to voice; what happened?

They both shrugged their shoulders, equally as confused as he was. Philip in particular mouthed, rather obviously, “Your Dad’s mondo crazy!”

“I'm not insane, Philip,” Thomas said, releasing his son and causing Philip to blush furiously.

“Really, Dad?” Tj asked. “Cause...um...you sound kinda batshit right now.”

“Hey! Language,” Thomas said warningly. “And as ‘batshit’ as I may sound, I’m being completely honest and I’m quite sane.”

“But if I’m a wizard-”

“Well, technically, you’re half-wizard,” Thomas said scratching his head with minor embarrassment looking back at Carla. “Not that I regret it for a second, mind you. I certainly don’t love you any less for it.”

“You’d better not be,” Carla said. “Last I checked, you were the one who initially asked to marry me. And you were the one who wanted kids.”

Thomas laughed nervously. “Yeah, t-that’s very true.”

Tj rolled his eyes and just looked at his parents with minor frustration. “Okay, so, let me get this straight. I’m ‘half-wizard’ and judging from how excited he was, Dad’s the wizard in the family, right?”

Thomas nodded vigorously. “Yes! That’s right, son!”

He waved his hand towards the table containing all of Tj’s birthday presents. The table sprang to life, standing momentarily on it’s back legs before galloping towards the guests like a horse. Tj’s jaw dropped as he continued to watch the table run in their direction, jump over the group of guests and then land in the center where he stood with his friends and parents. His eyes felt like they were going to jump out of their sockets as if he were in a cartoon. He made several attempts to speak, each more feeble than the last.

“The fucking table just...horsed!” Philip cried, pointing at the animated table and looking scared out of his mind. “Holy shit! Everyone just saw that, right? Right?”

The various relatives just laughed at Philip’s reaction. One even said, “Watching the morts react is always good for a laugh.”

“Um…,” Tj began, still not entirely knowing what he wanted to say in response this whole affair. Okay...okay so let’s get this straight. Magic is real. God, just thinking about it sounds so fucking ridiculous it’s not even funny. But, it also sounds...kinda nice, doesn’t it? Magic? Magic. Magic! Fucking magic! He started rocking back and forth, rubbing his hands together with anticipation. Holy shit! If I’m able to use magic then-waitaminute! That explains...I mean, you know what? Let me just take this one step at a time. Even as he thought it, Tj knew himself at this point well enough to know that taking it slowly was not at all in his nature. Taking a few deep breaths, he did his best to regain his composure.

“Okay, okay so-”

“So? Soooo?!”

Philip ran up to Tj, placing one arm around his best friend. “TEEJ! I need you to set me straight here! I’m kinda...freaking out here. Did we just learn that your father is a wizard, presumably from some other dimension or hidden world or something like that and that as yoooou’re also a wizard you’ve inherited a bunch of special powers that’re about to make our mundane lives fantastical and wondrous?”

“Y-yes,” Tj said nodding his head. “I do believe that that’s what just transpired.”

“Okay,” Philip said. “I just wanted to make sure that’s what was going down right now.”

“Wait a minute, Dad, is it okay for Philip and Ariel to know about this?” Tj asked. “Isn’t this usually the part of the story where you tell me that my magical powers have to be kept secret from anyone outside of our family or something like that?”

“Usually, yes,” Thomas said. “But the High Magus Council has decided to make an incredibly rare exception in your case.”

“Your father’s pretty famous in his world,” Carla said. “He’s done quite a lot and still does, so when we were discussing telling you the truth we felt that you should be able to have someone outside of the family to share this with. You’ve all been friends for years now so it felt like the right choice.”

“But that also means that the two of you will be held to just as much secrecy about this as Tj will be,” Thomas said. “I’m quite good with curses you see and-”

“Thomas!”

“What?”

Carla rolled her eyes and huffed in disappointment. “Why do you always feel the need to do that? It’s not enough to just trust the kids? You have to threaten to curse them too?”

“What?” Thomas asked. “It wouldn’t be anything lethal or anything! I wouldn’t even hurt or harm them! You don’t even know what I was going to do, Carla!”

“After knowing you for twenty years, I should think that I do! You will not be cursing or hexing or casing any sort of spell or incantation on these kids!”

“Um...I-I have a question.”

All eyes turned to Ariel who began to shake terribly under everyone’s gaze. Tj knew that she was only moments away from possibly crying so he put a comforting arm around her. The effect was immediate. Her body stopped shaking, she stood a little taller and when she spoke, it was clear and without any form of stutter or stammer.

“Why did you wait so long to tell Tj that he was a wizard?”

“It’s an ancient law,” Thomas said. “Half breeds are usually raised by their...other parent.”

“Is that supposed to be you, Mom?” Tj asked.

“Well it certainly isn’t him.”

“If I may continue,” Thomas said. “Since I couldn’t raise Thomas in my world, he was raised here as a…”

“As a normal human boy, Thomas,” Carla said. “If humanity was such a problem for you I can’t imagine how you put up with me for as long as you did.”

Thomas spun rapidly to face Carla, his eyes glowing with anger. Carla looked on at him, completely unfazed. “Now you listen here! Do you really think that I’m the one who has a problem with humans? If I did, I’d have never married the most remarkable woman in any universe, now would I?”

A faint smile formed on Carla’s face. “‘Most remarkable woman’ huh?”

“Without a doubt,” Thomas said.

“More remarkable than the Queen of Antheria?”

“Of course.”

“Or that princess you rescued a couple years ago? The one who threw the heaven’s into disarray due to being more beautiful than…”

“She was rumored to be more beautiful the local Goddess, Pherynos,” Thomas said. “And yes, a thousand times more remarkable. Carla you’re-”

“Hey!” Tj said, snapping his fingers at his parents to get their attention. “As much as love watching you guys and your never ending soap opera, can we get back to the topic at hand? I’m also pretty interested in knowing why this information was kept from me for so long.”

“Oh, right,” Thomas said. “See, you’re distracting me,” he added looking back at Carla.

“If I’m so distracting, Thomas-”

“Uh-uh,” Tj said. “Nope! Your interpersonal issues later, my magical backstory now please.”

“Sorry, Tj,” Carla said. “Go on, Thomas.”

“Since you were raised human, Tj, I only had two opportunities to tell you. Your thirteenth and sixteenth birthdays.”

“Those seem like pretty random numbers, dude,” Philip said.

“Not really,” Ariel said. She was rather surprised that she said it at all as again, all eyes were on her the moment the words left her mouth. She began nervously twirling her hair around her fingers, silently hoping that she would somehow become invisible.

Thomas smiled at her though. “Why’s that, Ariel?”

“Yeah! If you know so much why don’t you tell us,” Philip said.

“Philip…” Tj said warningly, glaring at the other boy. “If Ariel doesn’t want to talk, let’s not force her. This isn’t her story to tell anyways,” he added turning his gaze towards his parents.

“T-thanks Tj,” Ariel said, trying to raise her voice a little bit. “B-but i-i-it’s okay. It’s...I mean, I’ve only read about it in books...but isn’t thirteen the age where witches and wizards finish their magical training?”

“That’s right, Ariel,” Thomas said. “In our world, most mages leave the nest at thirteen. They’re taught all their basics and then go out to refine what they’ve been taught and learn independently. But that’s really only for those who were homeschooled by their parents or families.”

“That sounds like there are options in magical education,” Tj said. “We talking...like, Hogwarts?”

Thomas rolled his eyes at the thought of it and through clenched teeth managed a very stern and bitter, “Yes.”

“Ooookay,” Tj said, filing that under ‘discussions to be had at a later time’. “What about sixteen?”

“Well, most mages come of age at thirteen,” Thomas said. “And that’s why the whole going out in the world/independent study thing is...well a thing. But in a lot of human cultures, children come of age at sixteen. Sweet sixteens and what not, you understand. I was planning on telling you when you turned thirteen but...I got...involved in some...circumstances. And that brings us to where we are now.”

Okay, Tj thought. Okay, that...that makes sense. So, here I am, sixteen years old and now I know that I’m magical. “So, what comes next?” he asked.

“Next? What do you mean next? You’re a wizard now, Tj,” Thomas said.

“Yes, we’ve had that part of the conversation, but I’m talking about where does my life go at this point?” TJ asked. “Like, you’ve told me that I’m...what, half-wizard, that’s great. Perfect! Fantastic! But what do I do with this? When do my powers kick in? Who’s going to be teaching me? Clearly, you’re not pulling me out of school to live with you in this...whatever other dimension that’s been talked about. Otherwise there’d be no need to let Ariel and Philip in on the secret, right?

Is this really it? No big flash of light? No waking up floating above the bed? No groundskeeper of a special school coming to take me away from my aunt and uncle? Just ‘Hey! You’re magical now!’ and that’s it? You’d think an announcement like this would have a bit more...I don’t know, fanfare to it.”

Thomas laughed. “Well, now that you know, your body should start letting your mana-”

“We’re really using that?”

“-flow properly. And yes, it’s actually called mana. It’s a little late for you to be starting any spell casting tonight, but we can start in the morning.”

“It is morning,” Tj said. “Very early morning, but morning nonetheless. C’mon Dad! You can’t be out of my life for years and then just pop in for something like this! I want to start now!”

“Ignoring that...rather hurtful comment,” Thomas said, looking a bit crestfallen at his absence being brought up. “Tj, I’m going to be the one teaching you magic.”

“Come again?” Tj asked, hardly believing what he had heard. “You’re gonna teach me?”

“For a while, yes, I will,” Thomas said. “I can’t stick around as long as I’d like, but I’ll be around to get you up to speed on your basics and need-to-knows.”

“Wait, you’re serious? Y-you’re really gonna be living with us at Uncle Eddie’s?”

“We both will,” Carla said. “I’ve always wanted to be there when you started learning your magic. I need to make sure your father isn’t grooming you to be the Wicked Wizard out of a fairy tale.”

Tj felt like jumping for joy. Most teenagers would relish in the thought of their parents being largely absent but all Tj had ever really wanted was for the two of them to be there. A large smile formed on his face as much as he wanted to, he fought back tears of happiness.

“So, what do you think, son?” Thomas asked. “Was this the best birthday ever, or what?”

Tj shrugged his shoulders. “I think that it’s off to a great start.”

#Struggles of a Teenage Wizard #Tj #Tj Jackson #writeblr #writers on tumblr #My writing #Ariel #Philip #Khail #Vairdan #Magic #wizards #witches #mages

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