H2O: The Novel Part 6

I faced Andrea, throwing an Ice Slice in her direction.

"I'm serious, Kate," she said, and then turned back to the boss. "Call Kyoto Bar and get some help, Xavier. She needs the rest."

He stood in silence, gritting his teeth. Jaw muscles danced beneath a fresh shave.

Say something, Iceman.

He shook his head, then turned and picked up his near-empty wine gla.s.s. "Go on. Get cleaned up. I need you at full strength." He waved his hand toward the bathroom, adding, "If that's possible."

Andrea let go of my arm and spun around, tossing her knife into the sink with a clatter. "This is stupid."

"Please, Andrea," I pleaded, looking away from Xavier to retrieve the knife. "I can do this." I motioned to the bathroom with my head, and she relented. Xavier set down his gla.s.s, and much to my surprise, grabbed an empty sack and scooped up bowl fragments.

"Get some more rice ready," I said to Andrea, as though there'd never been a standoff. "I'm going to go wash up."

While Xavier gingerly lifted razor-sharp porcelain fragments off the tile floor, I headed to the half bath near the hostess's den. Some water on my face would make me feel better. I struggled to focus on the task-two hundred servings of sus.h.i.+. Only the soft warmth of my bed would make this evening all worth it. But try as I might, the images of a howling hungry baby, wrapped in brown and floating in a basket on a broad river, dogged me all the way to the toilet.

Xavier's hostess made her money in the soap business, or so the story went. When the only way to wash your hands came packaged in a bar of soap, local legend says she convinced her husband to buy up all the plastic pump dispensers in the world. "Liquid soap," she told him, "is the future of the industry." The old man had the guts and the money to do it, bought up every pump device on the market, and launched the soft-soap phenomenon. As I suspected, plenty of liquid hand soap waited in the bath.

Her decorations were ultramodern; a freestanding deep brushed-silver sink floated magically above the floor without visible support. A tall gooseneck emerged from the wall above the suspended pot, and a lever at knee level was the only contrivance I found to start the flow. Hands under the long silver spout, I pushed hard with my right knee and cupped my hands, waiting on a stream of blessed wet.

The cool shocked me, more frigid than I'd expected, and I bent over the stainless bowl, immersing my face in water as it swirled below me. I longed for refreshment, and for a clear head.

As the water hit my face, my vision failed for the second time that day. As if I had shoved my face into pitch, my eyes were sealed in an instant. I could feel the water, cold sending s.h.i.+vers down my spine. But the bathroom and its modernity evaporated, replaced by an ebony void.

I gasped, alone in a place I'd never been before, and I spun about, hands extended, groping. Blackness consumed me as I stumbled forward, in hopes I'd find a wall or a door. Wetness dripped from me as I hovered in free s.p.a.ce, flailing in the large powder room to touch something firm. Part of me wondered if I'd stepped off a threshold into a dark pit, falling away forever.

"Andrea!" I yelled, panic rising in my throat.

The dense black began to glow in the center of my vision, like a fire burning somewhere deep within it, rising up to meet me. I tripped on a bath rug and stumbled into a wall, sliding down it to the floor. I groped along the cold baseboard, seeking a portal to this cavernous washroom.

The red blaze at the center of my sight grew, like frothy arterial blood that gushed on black velvet. It filled my vision, rivers of life force coursing in front of my eyes. I followed the junction of wall and floor with both hands and began to scoot to the right.

"Andrea!" I screamed again, hoping my voice's volume would wash away the blood in my eyes. The river began to flow, its bright red darkening to a venous purple-black. I saw people standing at the edge of the crimson flow, moaning. Their hands were raised to the sky; their fingers dripped bloodred as they groaned in deep pain. I screamed again and at last heard her reply.

"Kate!"

She's behind me!

I was on my knees and spun about on a loose rug. With my good right hand firm on the floor, I pushed up as I came about, determined to stand and get out of this place. I could hear her running, her shoes clacking on tile, then on the wood of the den floor.

"Andrea!" I yelled again, sure she'd soon reach the door. Following her sound, I pushed upright, my left hand touching what I hoped would be a door handle. I grabbed at it, despite the clumsy bandage, and the lever gave way, the portal swinging in toward me.

There were thousands of people before me, lining the edge of the ochre mental river, their screams and panic now my shriek. Clad only in white, drenched in red, they moaned at the water's edge. Dunes of sand stretched out in the distance behind waves of grieving brown people with dark eyes, their tunics soaked in sticky blood.

"Kate!" I heard Andrea scream, no more than a foot away. I could feel a rush of air in my face.

The door!

Before I could react, the heavy door ripped free from my tenuous grip. The red of the river and the moans of thousands were silenced instantly as something ma.s.sive smashed into my face. Red transformed into the white blinding flash of a concussion, and I fell back, a taste of blood and its thick wetness on my tongue.

"Kate!" Xavier's voice boomed. I could smell his distinctive cologne pungent on air that rushed in as the door opened. I felt his ma.s.s behind the brutal impact with my jaw and forehead as the door cracked into my head. The flash of light in my eyes faded as sharp pain engulfed my teeth and cheek. I fell back on the cold tile, run over by a perfumed charging bull in the black of night.

My last image was of green. Summer in New Jersey, where my parents took us on picnics to the countryside, away from the concrete jungles of New York. Carpets of thick gra.s.s lined dark ponds where lilies floated like flat leaf boats on mysterious waters. I recalled my favorite playthings at those ponds-slick green bundles of croaking magic that drizzled on me when I squeezed too hard. I could hear them, their throaty bellows chirping around me now.

In a strange confluence of imagery, the red river swirled before me, the screams of white-robed figures piercing my heart. The slimy creature in my hands at the Jersey pond suddenly multiplied times over and leapt toward the people on the sh.o.r.e. Thousands of the creatures erupted from my hands in an instant. The blood-red river sp.a.w.ned teeming ma.s.ses of croaking creatures. They overran the river's bank and thousands of white-robed people fell over, suffocated by a wave of slimy green.

Frogs.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

"THERE'S NOTHING wrong with her," the doctor said, his voice tinged by the lilt of a native tongue. The young Indian at the hospital was up to his old tricks. He never looked at me when he spoke. Xavier stood above me, pretending to be my protector . . . but I didn't need it.

"I've run a series of scans of her skull. She took a nasty chop on the forehead and jaw when you threw that door open. But fortunately there are no fractures and there's no concussion."

"What about her blood work, Doc?" Xavier asked. "She's been getting dizzy, too. Frequently."

He shrugged, like he saw women every day that fell apart when they washed their faces or rode a racing bike in the rain. "She's not anemic. Blood sugar's normal. Regular lipid profile, far as I can tell."

"But is she pregnant?" Xavier demanded, never looking in my direction. I shuddered and closed my eyes.

The doctor paused, and I wish I'd seen his face. My eyes sprang open, and at last he paid attention to me. Somehow, in his silence, I felt he understood my pain. He shook his head, then lowered his eyes to the chart and headed for the door.

"Ms. Pepper has no obvious medical problem that we can find. We can discharge her today, but I recommend bed rest. I sent her home for a week last time." He looked at Xavier at last. " Try to follow doctor's orders this time," he offered as an afterthought, and then walked out of the room.

Xavier stood still, watching as if the physician would return for one last question. Like a master waiting on his dog to return at his command. But no one came. Finally, he turned back to me, where I sat on the bed white-gowned and upright.

"Do you remember any of it?" he asked.

I shrugged.

"I had to call Kyoto," he said with a tone of disgust.

"That's good. What time is it?"

"About eleven. You fell apart around five."

"Fell apart? Is that what you call it?"

He raised a waxed eyebrow in that weird Mr. Spock kind of way and then shrugged. "We found you in the bathroom. You were out."

"I don't remember much, but I do recall thinking that a bull ran through that door."

He nodded but said nothing.

"I want to go home, X." I reached down, checking to see if I still had on my underclothes. Someone had brought me here, dressed me, and cared for me. I'd lost all track of six hours of my life. I put my face in my hands, remembering the moments just before my vision faded the last time.

I don't know why I'd missed it when I looked outside earlier, but when I glanced back at the window, I saw daylight. It wasn't night. The sun was out, near the top of the sky. Time was slipping away without me.

"What time is it again?" I asked. "What day?"

"Monday. Monday at about eleven. You were out all night. Scared us to death."

Days were slipping away. Not just moments.

"I've changed my mind," I said, rotating my shoulders to stretch and work out the kinks. I could feel the pain of the cycle accident more than ever. "I want to stay here. If they'll let me."

"That makes sense," Xavier said as he grabbed a coat off the back of the one chair in the hospital suite. "I'll go arrange it."

"I need to check on something. Can you go to my condo and get my MacBook? Please?" It was the least he could do.

"Sure. Let me work out the hospital thing, then I'll head over. You stay here."

I nodded slowly, watching him, in hopes he'd make eye contact with me. Just once. A nod or a blink my direction. Any sign of recognition, a shred of care or concern. But his gaze locked on to something outside the door, some movement.

White. A skirt. As she pa.s.sed, his eyes followed her. I slipped out of the bed, my humiliating gown gaping behind me, feet s.h.i.+vering on cold linoleum, before he finally turned and acknowledged my presence.

In that moment, watching his eyes follow the nurse in too-tight-white, I vowed to myself that I would stand on my own. I'd confront this problem-whatever it was-alone.

I could no longer depend on X.

I'm seeing things.

I typed those words into the search bar of Google, my laptop laying beside me in the hospital bed. Doctors-at least the young Indians-weren't answering the mail for me. I had to take control of my health care in this place.

"Hallucinations. Delusions. Delirium." I read aloud the major headings of suggested web pages that answered my search.

Great. I must be crazy.

A friend of mine once took too much of a bad drug in college. I remember one particularly crazy night as she ran around the dorm lobby naked, convinced that someone clung to her shoulders. A lunatic meth-head, scratching at her arms, boils breaking out on her face. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think of her every time I have an itch or think I've seen something. But I've never touched meth.

Hallucinations?

I read aloud again. "Arise from fever, or other illness involving a fever. Also extreme fatigue, dehydration, sleep deprivation, bereavement, depression, narcolepsy, dementia . . ." and a host of things I knew I didn't have. Mania. Migraines. Brain tumor. Kidney failure. Stroke and cataracts. Postpartum depression. That last one certainly wasn't my issue.

Was I seeing things? I had to be. I could still sense the river of red and the robed mourners on a muddy sh.o.r.e, stark against the backdrop of sandy dunes-and the nauseating wave of slimy-green frogs. That mental image chilled me, despite the warmth of the bedroom in the hospital. The pictures in my head were linked inextricably to the sharp stab of a heavy wooden door that slammed into my face. A door that caved in under the impact of Xavier's heavy body.

Somehow, I'd come through a crisis again, unbroken. Unscathed after two serious accidents, my sound body that defied logic and probability. What was it a nurse said, tending me after the bike wreck? "You're blessed." Any other time I would have said I was lucky. But not this time. Maybe the nurse was right, about my body at least. But not my mind.

I propped the laptop on my knees, sitting up in the hospital bed, and surfed in search of an answer, with no idea what that might be. Half a dozen "ask-the-doctor" and "find-a-nurse" websites later, I had all the information I needed. Either I had a serious physical problem, or I stood on the threshold of insanity. I felt fine . . . so the logical choice suggested I'd gone nuts.

"Will that thing tell you what's wrong?"

I looked up at an older man standing in the doorway. Long gray lamb chops extended down the side of a wrinkled face, and reading gla.s.ses rode low on his nose. His hair unkempt, and his doctor's smock a little soiled, he was a rumpled old man compared to the starched precision of my youthful Indian resident and his crisp clothes.

"No," I responded. "It hasn't. Not yet." I looked back down. "But my own diagnosis is no less conclusive than what I'm getting from this staff. They're nice people, but no one seems to know what's wrong with me."

He smiled and entered the room, then perched himself on the foot of my bed. It seemed a little bit intimate, but the doctor was sitting at my feet before I could do anything about it. He leaned into me, his hand taking my wrist without so much as a "May I?"

"You're not hot, so I doubt it's a fever. You weren't feverish when you crashed the bike, were you? Sweating? That kind of thing?"

"How do you know about the bike wreck?" I asked. This oddball in a lab coat seemed to know all about me.

"I run this place," he said with a wave and a long laugh. "I'm sorry, I'm Dr. Lin. Chief of Medicine, humble servant of the sick and ailing." He smiled and looked back at his clipboard, but only for a moment. His warmth was hard to miss. The man cared more about me than he did the stupid paper, a sure change from what I'd seen of the other doctors in this place. He scooted closer, taking a gander at my white laptop. My thin gown gaped in all the wrong places.

"You like Macs?" he asked, pulling his stethoscope from his shoulder and leaning toward me again. "May I?" he added, gesturing to my chest. There was no privacy here.

"Why not? If you think you can hear the crazy movie that's been playing in my head, I'm all for it."

A few probes in sensitive places, a few knowing glances and wise utterances like "uh-huh," and an index finger waved in front of my eyes seemed to satisfy him. At least he listened.

"There's another option you might consider," he said, his wide smile a sign that he liked me.

"Another option?" I asked. His eyes locked with mine. His lamb chops and the gla.s.ses that rocked on his nose gave him a gentle sort of look, the ant.i.thesis of control and coercion. He wasn't here to pry information or decisions out of me; he radiated an "I'm here to help" kind of warmth. A welcome change.

"It's entirely possible you're not hallucinating."

I frowned. "You mean I'm crazy?" Maybe this guy was a shrink. No wonder he made me feel at home.

"Nope. Not crazy. But I've seen enough of this kind of disorder here in Seattle, and in this hospital, to tell you with some certainty that you're not alone. Not by a long shot." He lifted the chart and clipboard, adjusting the stethoscope on his neck as he stood and walked toward the door. His smile radiated care, dotted on each end with a strip of gray fur. Just hearing his voice, conversing with him, gave me a sense of peace that everything would be all right, even if I waded in the swamp of the most unusual trial of my life.

"I'm not alone?" I asked, suddenly aware of what he'd just said.

The doctor stopped at the doorway, leaning into the frame in a natural pose. I could see his st.i.tched name now that he stood erect, a ragged blue of tattered thread that had been washed a hundred times too many.

Dr. Lin, Chief of Medicine.

"Correct. You're not alone. Not in this rainy city. I've seen your condition a dozen times in the last twenty years. But now's not the time for me to talk to you. You're not ready to hear what I have to say. Not just yet."

" Try me. Please. Don't walk out on me now!" I had to know, but he shook his head.

"Nope. You rest up." He turned and walked into the hall as I cried out, despair launching a deep cry that surprised even me.

"Please!"

He stopped.

"Give me some hope. Tell me I'm sick and not going nuts!"

Dr. Lin's hand caught the doorjamb and he spun around, that furry smile wrinkling layers of well-smiled skin. A strange peace radiated from him.

"Answer the phone, Kate," he said, his smile infectious. "Some-one's trying to give you a call. Sort of like Captain Kirk getting an incoming transmission on the bridge of the stars.h.i.+p Enterprise. But it's not Kirk. It's someone far more important."