CHAPTER 127
Ginny and Jack feel the nightmares pass away. They know that no one will forget them unless it should be so. They see Jebrassy and Tiadba nearby—and together they make four points within the storm as ancient matter reacquaints, according to old rules that come into play only within the Sleeper’s spinning fortress—and just for this moment.
Tiadba and Jebrassy have joined in so many ways, Ginny and Jack are confused—and envious. Jack and Ginny collect Daniel’s two sum-runners. Daniel is not with them—they do not know where he is.
“Should we?” Jack asks, and holds up the stones and the polyhedron.
“Bidewell would say we should,” Ginny says. “So much pain and effort.”
Jack juggles the remaining pieces, smiling at Ginny. He is thinking of the last words of the Keeper. “I’m not asking Bidewell. I’m asking you.”
“Don’t be arrogant,” she says.
“That’s what I am,” Jack says.
“I do notfind it charming.”
“The old gods watch. They’ll forgive us—won’t they?”
“I’m not so sure…”
Jack continues to juggle. His smile is infinitely sweet and distracting. “You choose,” he says.
CHAPTER 12
The nurse weighed Jack and guided him to the doctor’s cubicle, a small gray and pink space. She took his pulse with expert fingers, then wrapped his wiry arm in an inflatable cuff and pumped it up to measure his blood pressure.
A few minutes later the doctor entered and closed the door. Miriam Sangloss was in her early forties, slender and strong-jawed, with short brown hair. She wore a white lab coat and a gray wool skirt that fell below her knees. Black socks with pumpkin-colored clocks and sensible black running shoes completed her wardrobe. On her left hand, he noticed, she wore a garnet ring, at least two carats. She flashed a knowing flicker of a smile and looked him over with sharply focused brown eyes. “How’s our rat man today?” she asked. He wondered how she knew—perhaps Ellen had told her.
“Fine. Losing bits of my day,” he said. He hated to admit to being sick. Being sick meant he was losing his touch. Soon he would become slow and wrinkled and stooped-shouldered and no one would want to watch him perform. “Going blank,” he added.
“For how long?” Sangloss asked.
“How long am I blacking out?”
“How long have you been losing bits of your day?”
“Two months.”
“And you’re how old—twenty-five, twenty-six?” She turned the page of the chart on her clipboard. He wondered how she had put together so many notes.
“Twenty-four,” Jack said.
“Much too old. Stop it right now.”
“Too old for what?”
Look at you. Handsome as a young devil. Strong and agile. Fit. You don’t get sick. You live life on your own terms. You always will—we expect that of you. So what’sreally wrong with you?
He could almost see Dr. Sangloss’s lips moving, telling him that, but she hadn’t spoken aloud, of course. It was all contained in the long look she gave him. Over a brief sigh, she bent her gaze to the tablet and said, “Tell me what you experience.”
“It’s probably nothing. I drop out for a few minutes or as long as an hour. Two or three times a day. Sometimes I’m fine for a week, but then it happens again. Last week I rode my bike on autopilot all afternoon. Ended up near the loading docks.”
“No bumps or bruises?”
Jack shook his head.
“Any recent trauma, lapses of judgment, odd behavior—hallucinations?”
Again, no.
“You’re sure?”
He looked at a poster on the far wall—a medical artist’s rendering of a male head in profile, cut in half, framed and mounted beside a corkboard. The poster reminded him of learning how to swallow and disgorge Ping-Pong balls and small oranges. “A kind of dream. A place. A mood.”
“Any smells or tastes or sounds before or after these episodes?”
“No. Well—sometimes. Bad tastes.”
“Mostly just the lingering sensation of a forgotten dream. Is that it?”
“I don’t know.” To her skeptical gaze, “Really.”
“No drugs? Marijuana?”
He solemnly denied this. “Cuts back on my timing.”
“Right.” She inspected his left hand, spread the fingers, stared curiously at the calluses. “Any family history of epilepsy? Narcolepsy? Schizophrenia?”
“No. I don’t think so. I don’t know much about my mother’s side of the family. She died when I was twelve.”
“Did your father smoke like a chimney?”
“No. He was large—fat, really. He wanted to be a stand-up comedian.” Jack gave her a squint. Sangloss waved that aside. “We should do a follow-up. No insurance, correct?”
“Zero.”
“Street entertainer’s union? Teamsters?”
Jack smiled.
“Maybe we can get you a pro bono appointment at Harborview. Would you show up if, if I arranged that?”
He looked uncertain. “What, like a biopsy?”
“MRI. Brain scan. Petit mal epilepsy usually occurs in children, drops off at puberty. Kids can have dozens of small seizures each day, sometimes hundreds, but rarely lasting more than a few seconds. That diagnosis doesn’t quite fit, does it? Narcolepsy—possible, but that doesn’t fit, either. Has anyone seen you black out?”
“I just did, in the waiting room. I kept turning pages. Nobody seemed to notice.” He pointed to the chair, where the Weeklypoked out of his jacket pocket.
“Ah.” She shined a small bright light into each of his eyes. “Phone number?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your phone number, for the appointment.”
He gave her Burke’s phone number. Dr. Sangloss wrote it down on his chart. “I’ll ask Dr. Lindblom to get you into Harborview. Do this—for my sake, if not for yours, okay?”
Jack nodded solemnly, but his eyes were elusive.
Sangloss brandished a tongue depressor. “Open wide,” she said. When he could not talk, merely issue round vowels, she said, “I saw you downtown three weeks ago. Does anyone complain when you juggle rats?”
“Awm,” Jack said. She lifted the wooden stick. He poked his mouth square between two fingers, then released it, letting it flop loose, and smiled. “Some. They pet the rats. I show them how I handle them.”
“What else do you juggle? That’s alive, I mean.”
“I used to juggle a kitten.”
“Really? Why did you stop?”
“Got big. I gave him to a friend. Not many cats like to be juggled—that one was special. And I had a snake, once. Snakes are tricky.”
“I bet.” Sangloss made more notes.
Jack clamped his jaw. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing obvious,” she said. “Keep a little notebook handy. Record each episode—frequency, sensations, aura, whatever you can remember. They’ll ask at Harborview.”
“All right.”
“And stop tossing your rats, okay? Until we figure this out.”
Dr. Sangloss finished her clinic hours, said good-bye to the receptionist and the nurses, then locked the doors, turned down the heat, checked the taps in the bathrooms and the lab, briefly inventoried all the locks and security cameras in the pharmacy, and stood for a moment, looking around the front office. The clinic served many different kinds of patient. Not all were responsible. The office was quiet, the street outside the half-shuttered window deserted. A light wind sent a whistling note through a crack somewhere. An old, drafty building.
She walked down the hall to her small rear office, where she filed a few folders and unlocked the lower desk drawer. As she plucked out her cell phone, she felt a chill—strange, since the old furnace had just finished its final blast of heat for the evening.