Chapter 1
The girl was small and slim, but also quick and agile. She slipped free of the hands trying to pull off her headscarf. From far away, it might have looked like a game. Up close, you could see the tears in her eyes.
Raffi McCaffrey gripped his metal crutches. He wished he could turn them into weapons. He would aim them at the bullies and paralyzing rays would knock them to the ground.
But Raffi was weak, because he had sickle-cell anemia. His friend Carlito was in perfect health. The three bullies were tough guys from eighth grade Frank and his gang.
They were blocking the exit from the school yard. They wouldn't let the girl with the scarf leave until they had had their mean fun.
Raffi was about to yell at them to stop, when he heard the squeaky sound of an old van. His dad had come to pick him up.
The van pulled to a stop in front of Raffi and Carlito. In the back was a bulky shape wrapped up in blankets.
"Hi, guys! Hop in. I've got a delivery in the neighbourhood before we head home."
As he got out of the van, he noticed Raffi was upset.
"What's wrong?"
Raffi looked over at Frank and the other two boys, who were still bothering the girl in the scarf.
His father understood right away. Raffi had already told him about these bullies. He stood for a moment in thought, then reached into the van and pressed the horn.
The horn blared for a good five seconds. The bullies were startled and looked over at the van.
Raffi's dad took a few steps toward them.
"Isn't it time for you to go home, gentlemen?"
"That's none of your business," answered Frank.
Mr. McCaffrey stayed calm.
"I think it is," he replied.
"We were just playing a game with her," muttered another one of the big boys. He seemed less sure of himself.
"Well, the game is over now," Mr. McCaffrey said firmly.
At that moment the three thugs realized that, while they were talking, the girl had slipped away.
Frank muttered a swear word through clenched teeth. Then he pulled up his hood, and his buddies immediately pulled up theirs. The three shuffled off, their hands in their pockets.
"Have they ever picked on you, Raffi?" asked Mr. McCaffrey.
"No, they just make fun of him," Carlito answered for Raffi. "They say they don't waste their time on cripples."
Raffi's dad sighed.
"Do you two know that girl?" he asked.
"No, she's new in school."
"We only noticed her when she began to wear that headscarf," added Carlito.
"Does she have any friends?"
"I don't think so," said Raffi. "But why did those guys want to pull off her scarf?"
"People like that don't need any reason. There were bullies like that in my school too, when I was young. I guess there always will be bullies. But that's no reason to let them keep on hurting people. I'll have a word with the principal."
"We should run after them and pull off their hoods!" declared Carlito.
"They certainly deserve it," laughed Mr. McCaffrey. "But let's not stoop to their level."
I'm wheeled from the emergency room in the middle of the night and placed in a room alongside a morbidly obese patient who sleeps twenty hours a day and snores loud enough to trigger earthquakes two continents away.
Someone arrives to wake me up at regular intervals.
This really isn't necessary. The non-stop snoring ensures I won't be sleeping anytime soon.
Snort. Snort. Bluster. Snort. It's like lying next to a chainsaw with a faulty motor.
It occurs to me that this is what hospital administrators do to patients who can't take a hint. If a patient keeps coming back to the hospital after doctors have repeatedly dismissed her then they have no choice but to torture her in an effort to make sure that she will never, ever feel the need to come back again.
I feel like a character in a Stephen King novel.
The setting contributes to this feeling. The walls are painted a color that can best be described as drab and the window blinds -- which are inexplicably embedded between two panes of glass -- are broken, preventing them from being moved from their present position, which is partially raised yet slightly askew. The bed is a ramshackle disaster of technology that I can easily imagine being a cast-off from another, better hospital when it updated its furnishings forty years ago. And just to complete the horror-story effect, the hospital's power goes out several times one day, forcing the back-up generators to kick in and noisily expel stale air from the vents.
Again and again and again.
I half-expect a machete-wielding lunatic to burst into my room. I'm only vaguely surprised when this doesn't happen.
Or maybe it does; it's not like I would remember.
I'm in the hospital for more than a week, but my memory of that time is fragmentary, disjointed, as though someone loaded a random set of slides into a projector and is flashing them on a screen inside my brain without providing any narrative glue.
Slide 1.
Someone is speaking to me -- a nurse, I think -- but I can't understand what she's saying.
"Source black round fluid next."
"Are you talking to me?"
"Koi freak leaven irritate deer."
"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying."
"Winter serif all?"
"Still not getting it."
"Lewis late episode are ego ant alter window?"
"Look, whatever it is, can you just pretend I gave you the answer you're looking for?"
"Rifle did jelly art kudo?"
"Yes."
"Jungle dime?"
"All right then, no."
"Timeless dark swallow sit table juror dad."
"Screw it. You've got a brain. Whatever it is, just figure it out for yourself."
"Swat whiskey fur."
"Christ."
Slide 2.
A doctor is standing at the foot of my bed, flipping through pages in a chart that's resting on the rolling table where the trays of untouched food usually reside. He's telling me that I could be in the early stages of multiple sclerosis.
Possibly lupus.
Maybe rheumatoid arthritis.
Somehow I get the impression that the choice is mine and I try to consider the pros and cons of each disease, but quickly discover that I don't know enough about any of them to feel confident that I'll choose the one that will be the least destructive in the long run.
The conversation veers in another direction.
I fail to veer with it.
