One Last Song Part 2

I slipped silently into the kitchen so I could catch him when he came in. Leaning against the counter, my breathing got shallow as I waited for the faux-jovial greeting he always bellowed out when he returned from one of his trips. There was something about the way he said it that grated on my nerves every time.

I didn't have to wait long.

"Where's my beautiful family?" He said it extra-loud so the baritone of his voice rang out in the mudroom.

I heard Mum put her dollhouse supplies down and head over to greet him. After knuckling the abscess I was so carefully cultivating, I followed.

My parents were deep in a whispered argument when I walked into the mudroom. My dad's head was bent down toward hers, his comb-over trying hard to disguise the fact that he was getting older. When they saw me, they stopped talking. My mother's face settled into its default nonchalant expression, and my dad beamed at me. His expression was so bright and joyful, so completely overcompensating and fake. It reminded me of those tacky plastic gems I used to collect when I was little.

"Hey! There's my girl!" He came forward and patted my shoulder. I could tell it took him aback, how tall I was now. The gesture wasn't as easy to do anymore. Dad hadn't really paid attention to me in a long, long time.

"Hey, Dad. How was Phoenix?"

He set his briefcase down and adjusted his tie. "Ah, it's much too hot down there. Felt like August instead of January." He brushed by me into the kitchen and opened the fridge. "What do we have to eat in here?"

Ignoring him, Mum went back to her dollhouse and her tea. I sat down on a barstool and watched him rummage through the shelves. I caught Mum occasionally watching me from beside her dollhouse, but every time I actually looked at her, she looked hurriedly away.

"So, Dad. Aren't you going to ask how I'm doing with therapy? Or did Mum already fill you in?" My affection for my dad had always been secondary. I wasn't sure how exactly that came about. Perhaps it had been a slow trickling away of emotion; the more time he spent away from us, the less I seemed to crave his approval.

"I'm sure what needs to be done is being done," he said, without turning around. "I trust your mother."

I couldn't help it. I coughed out a laugh. "But don't you want to know more? Don't you want to be involved in my healing process? You know what the shrinks say: A sick child means a sick family." I'd been through enough therapy sessions to have the lingo down pat.

"Thankfully, you're not a child anymore, Saylor." He turned around, a piece of fruit and a bottle of water in his hands, and used his foot to close the fridge. "Well, I better get going," he said, glancing at the clock on the wall. "My next flight's due out soon."

I glanced at my mother, but she was busy sanding a part of her dollhouse. She didn't even look up. I turned back to my dad. "You're leaving already?"

"Criminal lawyers in great demand have to travel, Saylor, you know that!" he said, still so ridiculously jovial. And no, I didn't know that. Weren't laws different from state to state? Why would he be needed in other states anyway? "Flights in and flights out. I just wanted to come by to see my beautiful girls for a minute."

"Are you leaving because I brought up therapy?" The question came out sounding desperate and whiny. I wanted to pummel myself. What was wrong with me? I was usually adept at keeping a handle on these things. Dad was like a skittish deer in some respects-too much emotion and he ran.

"Don't be absurd," he said, rus.h.i.+ng to the stairs as quickly as he could without running. "I told you, I need to catch a flight. I just have to grab a new overnight bag really fast."

He came back down a few minutes later and rushed into the mudroom, where he slipped on his shoes, his shades, and his briefcase. Once again, he was in costume, ready to take on the legal world.

"Right... See you later, Dad."

When the door closed softly behind him, I heard my mother sigh in the absolute stillness. I looked up. She was looking at me again, something inscrutable in her eyes. It occurred to me that I hated that look. I'd seen it countless times before. Her expression was equal parts pity and confusion, as if she couldn't figure out where I'd come from or how to make me go away.

"What?"

She blinked and jumped a little, as if I'd startled her. "Nothing."

"What are you thinking?" I leaned forward. "Just say it."

She shook her head and went back to her dollhouse. "You're imagining things. I wasn't thinking of you at all."

No. I supposed she wasn't.

Chapter Five.

Four days later, as I struggled to the surface of wakefulness, I was aware of multiple sensations. One: There was a deep ache in a spot on my chest. Two: My skin hurt. And Three: my stomach felt like I'd eaten too much and then got on a roller coaster.

I sat up and pulled the neck of my sleep s.h.i.+rt down. The area I'd been injecting looked raw, turgid, and s.h.i.+ny, like an overripe berry. It was slightly swollen, too, but not as much as I wanted. I pressed my knuckles into it and winced.

After I'd grabbed my syringe from my nightstand, I padded into the bathroom and closed the door. Going through the process of spitting into the syringe and injecting it, I thought about the weird parallels between my life and that of a junkie's.

We both closed ourselves into the bathroom first thing in the morning, syringe gripped in our sweaty hand, like it might be the nectar to life we'd been searching for. We stabbed ourselves willingly for a momentary high, for that rush that made life less boring, made it more like something we'd been promised by a steady diet of angsty teen dramas on TV.

But I guess that was where the similarities ended. A junkie wanted to stay well and avoid the pains of withdrawal. I wanted to stay sick, to force my body to its knees, to make it cry and beg for mercy. If a parent had a chance to choose between a junkie and me, who would they choose? If I was honest, I knew it'd hardly be any choice at all. Who wants a f.u.c.king nut job who longs to be cradled in the scabby, rotting arms of disease? Send a junkie to rehab and she'd get on with her life. Send me to the hospital and I wanted more.

Once my heart had stopped banging against my chest, once my mind knew my body was once again besieged with bacteria intent on breaking my immune system's barriers, I was free to think about other things.

The first order of business was taking my temperature. The thermometer screen turned a bright red, informing me that I was running a hundred-degree fever. Perfect.

Next I needed to figure out why my stomach felt so... clench-y. I could tell that it wasn't just the need to get sick, there was something else. I let my mind wander and then the thought struck me, like an arrow to the forehead. I had a meeting with the hospital administrator this morning, the one Dr. Stone was going to tell about my "issue."

I threw on an old t-s.h.i.+rt and a sweater hoodie over it and slid into my jeans. After my syringe was safely hidden in my pocket, I made my way downstairs. My mother sat in a kitchen chair, poring over the newspaper. From the back, she looked thin, frail and small, like a child whose parents had abandoned her in this giant house and strange life. She looked lost. Why couldn't she see that I was lost, too? That we could both be everything to each other?

I cleared my throat and she tossed a glance my way.

"Good morning, Mum."

"You should leave right now if you want to make that meeting on time. Would you like a ride?"

"No," I said, as she expected me to. "I can walk."

I grabbed an apple, put on my jacket and boots, and slipped out the door.

Gramercy was a private hospital and a short two-block walk from the gates of my parents' neighborhood. The architects had designed it to look like an old Catholic cathedral. I suppose being seen going into a hospital that actually resembled a hospital would be too tacky for its white-collar patients.

The double doors slid open and the musty cold air wrapped itself around me. If the hospital looked like a cathedral from the outside, it looked like an elite day spa on the inside. They even had new age Muzak piping from the speakers between pages. I walked up to the receptionist's marble-topped desk.

She smiled at me, her teeth a brilliant white. "Hi there."

"Hey. Um, I'm here to see Linda Adams. My name's Saylor Grayson."

"Hmm..." She looked down at the clipboard on her desk and her blond hair fell in a curtain to the desk. "Ah, you're the volunteer!" Another grin. "Super. If you'll have a seat right there in that chair, I'll give you a form to fill out. 'K?"

I sat down, my head feeling hot and muddled with the fever. I fiddled with the zipper pull on my jacket. How much did this receptionist-I looked at her name plate; Betty-know about me and why I was here? She wasn't casting too many "discreet" glances my way, which told me that maybe she didn't know.

"There you are." She handed over a translucent pink clipboard and a gold pen. "That's just a regular volunteer application all our volunteers need to fill out, 'k?"

I nodded and glanced down. The questions looked pretty standard. Name, age, emergency contact... my gaze stuttered over one question at the bottom: special medical conditions. I looked at Betty through the fringe of my eyelashes, but she'd gone back to tapping away at her keyboard. Gripping the pen tight, I tried to think rationally. Dr. Stone had said I didn't have to tell anyone about the Munchausen except the hospital administrator. Then again, this paperwork was for the hospital's administrative purposes, wasn't it? Was I supposed to be honest on this piece of paper? I didn't want to have to ask Betty. d.a.m.n it, where was Linda Adams? Why hadn't Dr. Stone told me that this might happen?

My hand shaking, I wrote MS in the area that asked about medical conditions and handed the paperwork back. Betty scanned it, and when her eyes lit upon the last column, she looked up at me with pity in her eyes.

"My aunt has MS," she said. "You poor thing."

A frisson of pleasure and guilt spread from my scalp to my toes, like warm wax. "Yeah, it sucks."

"Well, let me page Linda and she'll be right down to get you."

I sat in the chair, nursing my lie in secret glee.

Linda Adams came downstairs to get me a few minutes later. She was a short, squat African American woman with her braided hair in a bun high up on her head. She moved with a sort of uneasy grace, as if she used to be much more pet.i.te than she was now. When she offered me her hand, it was smooth and dry, her grip much surer than her demeanor.

"Welcome, Saylor."

"Thanks."

"Do you want to talk in my office?"

I shrugged and got up to follow her, fingering my syringe in my pocket.

Linda's office was littered with papers and manila folders. The fluorescent lights and nasty industrial carpet made it clear that the spa-like quality of the hospital didn't extend to its employees' quarters. Noticing me taking in the details, Linda smiled a chagrined sort of smile.

"Sorry. I usually meet volunteers at the cafe downstairs, but I'm expecting a call today."

"No worries." I sat in a chair and crossed my ankles under it.

"So, Betty said you filled out the application. Any questions so far?"

"When can I start?"

She smiled. "Eager. I like that. You could start today, if you wanted to. There's just one thing I feel I have to mention." The smile slipped off her face. She searched my eyes apprehensively and cleared her throat. "About, ah, your..."

She was clearly waiting for me to finish the sentence, put her out of her misery. But I didn't. I held her gaze. Why? Maybe I just felt like being a b.i.t.c.h. Maybe it was nice that someone else was feeling the shame of saying the words besides me for a change.

"Munch-Munchausen?" She glanced at a note she had on the front of my file.

"Yes?" I touched the needle point of the syringe, let it sink its fang into my skin.

"Dr. Stone said you could be allowed downstairs, where we have the support group meetings, but not into any of the clinical areas. You'll have a badge that says 'restricted access.' Is that okay with you?"

I shrugged. "Do I have a choice?"

She smiled a little. "No, unfortunately not. But as long as we're clear on that, I think we're good to go." The phone on her desk rang. "I do need to get this. But my secretary Sh.e.l.ly will take you to get your badge done right now."

As if she was listening at the door, a thin, reedy-looking white woman in gla.s.ses appeared in the doorway and smiled at me. "Ready?"

Chapter Six.

The badge process was quick, and the woman manning the counter didn't ask me or Sh.e.l.ly why I had restricted access. She chatted to her coworker about her diet the whole time she was printing it up, handed it over to me-still warm from the printer-and then turned her back on us.

"Okay, let's head to the support group area," Sh.e.l.ly said, opening the door to the stairway. "It's in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

We went down one flight of stairs, my nose p.r.i.c.kling with the scent of industrial-strength cleaner and stale skin. Sh.e.l.ly's soft-soled shoes made muted shuffling noises, the only sound as we descended into the lowest part of the building.

When she opened another door, I walked through and found myself in the most stylish building bas.e.m.e.nt I'd ever seen. The floors were a luxurious cream-colored tile, and the hallway I was in opened up to meeting rooms with gla.s.s walls and comfortable couches and armchairs. The one to my immediate right even had a fireplace and wall-to-wall bookshelves.

Sh.e.l.ly gestured to the fabric-covered bulletin board on the wall to our left. "See that pink laminated sheet? It lists all the support groups and meeting times and days. If there's a holiday or a group won't be meeting for some reason, it's listed at the bottom."

I let my eyes run over the text. "Okay."

"So what you're going to be doing down here, from what Linda said to me, is setting up the rooms and breaking them down after the members leave. The kitchen is down this way..."

She led me to a little kitchenette and showed me the basics of coffee making and how to arrange snacks for hungry members. I was so bored I wanted to yawn. If this was the kind of bulls.h.i.+t I had to do to eventually gain access to clinical information or apparatus, though, it was worth it.

"I think I got it."

Sh.e.l.ly smiled. "Yeah, it's not too complicated. The next meeting starts at one thirty in 1A, so you can go ahead and get everything ready for that if you want."

"Great."

She stared at me for a moment as I began to gather up snacks. I saw her from the corner of my eye, saw her studying my profile, but I didn't turn. Finally, she said, "Linda said I should stay with you. But she didn't really say why, except that you had a disorder of some kind? She didn't seem to understand it very well herself." She laughed a little, maybe to lighten the mood.

My hands trembled a little as I scooped coffee grounds into the filter. Still not meeting her eye, I said, "Um, yeah. It's sort of stupid. My parents have me seeing a shrink, and he doesn't think I'm mature enough for my age or something." I looked at her then, rolling my eyes to show how annoying I thought that was. Sh.e.l.ly didn't look too much older than me. Maybe, just maybe, I could have her on my side in this whole thing.

"Oh." I saw the faint flush of her cheeks as embarra.s.sment took hold. "I'll just hang out down here, make sure the rooms are in order," she said, casually changing the subject. "Come get me if you need me."

Once the serving cart was set up, I walked back toward the bulletin board and checked to see which group was meeting. Families and Friends. I rolled the cart into room 1A and waited, a sentinel on duty.

When the people began to arrive, I wondered if I was in the wrong room. These didn't look like the families of sick people; they looked like the patients themselves.

First to arrive were three women, their skin stretched too tight over their delicate bones. Their hair was greasy and unwashed, pulled into hasty buns or ponytails. There was also a man who stared off into s.p.a.ce and didn't say much of anything.

One of the women got a cup of coffee, smiling wanly at me, through me. I could tell she registered by my shape that I was a person, but wasn't aware enough to note anything else. She shuffled back to the chair with her hands wrapped around the foam cup as if it was her lifeline.