Chapter 34: Thursday, August 19, 2010

Thursday, August 19, 2010

“I was surprised at the findings by Ellen’s neurological examination this morning, so I ordered another MRI,” Dr. Mitchell said. “I just came back from looking it over with the radiologist.”

He paused for a minute. He had come into the room while they were readying Ellen to go to the airport.

“And?” Gramma said when she could not contain herself any longer.

Dr. Mitchell shook his head. “I was surprised by the reduction in her aphasia and the improvement in her assessment of visual relationships. The MRI showed a decrease in the width of the lesions in Ellen’s cerebral cortex.”

“Aphasia?” Gramma asked.

“Her trouble speaking and understanding speech, Gramma,” Jake said.

“Right,” Dr. Mitchell said. “I’d like to think that her improvement is a good sign, but since we don’t know what caused the lesions in the first place, I don’t really have a basis on which to venture an opinion.”

“Does this mean she’s going to recover?” Gramma asked.

“Fully? I don’t know. To be honest, Mrs. Fielding, Ellen has shown more improvement in a single day than I would have expected from her for the rest of her life. I’m very curious to see how much better she gets. A full recovery would be nothing short of miraculous, but then, in the course of my career, I’ve seen several things that I regard as miracles.”

It was excruciatingly laborious, but Ellen stood up from her wheelchair and sat in the airplane seat by herself. She had to move each limb consciously and methodically. Gramma took the seat across the aisle from her. Granddad looked on sadly and then sat next to Jake.

“Your mother is lucky,” Granddad said as he looked around. “I don’t think my insurance would have sent me a private jet to get me home.” He looked around at the other people. “I can’t believe that so many of Ellen’s friends came to see her.”

“They’ve rallied around her. They’re good people who love her.”

Granddad’s glance fell on Wilson Greenlee who was sitting in the seat farthest aft. Greenlee was still wearing the same wrinkled clothes. His hair was hanging lankly.

“Who’s that back there?” Granddad said, his voice soft.

Jake glanced back at Greenlee.

“He’s somebody Mom knows. He’s really crabby. I wouldn’t even talk to him if I were you.”

“He sure looks like he’s had a bad day. Three, in fact. And how about you, lad? How are you holding up? You seem in control of yourself.”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t feel very good, but I figure that it wouldn’t do Mom any good for me to crack up on top of her other problems.”

“I’m glad you can be strong for her. Don’t forget that you can talk to your grandmother and me about the things that bother you. You can’t be strong all the time.”

“Come and sit down, Connie,” Leanne said. “Annabelle just made a fresh pot of coffee. Have a cup.”

They had just gotten Ellen settled into her own bed. The trip had exhausted her, and she was already dropping off to sleep. Jake was glad that the workmen had already quit for the day. He hoped that the noise and dust they were making, as well as their constant coming and going through the kitchen and down to the basement, wasn’t going to be a burden on Ellen.

“Just one,” Gramma said. “Then I think I’d better go home.”

She sat at the table with Granddad. The other seats were occupied by the adults who lived at the lake house. Jake looked on from where he was leaning against the wall. Annabelle brought coffee to Gramma and Granddad.

“You’ve always been welcome to visit,” Leanne said. “Even more so now while Ellen is recuperating.”

“Thank you, dear,” Gramma said. “I think it’s important for me to be here to help Ellen through this time.”

“Of course, although I can promise you that Ellen will not lack for care.”

“Jake, I guess you’ll be starting back to school next week,” Gramma said.

“Maybe not,” he said. “I’m thinking about homeschooling this year.”

“I haven’t heard anything about this before.”

“I’ve been thinking about it all summer. With Mom needing attention, it’s looking like an even better idea.”

“Jake, it’s hardly your job to care for your mother. There’s insurance to take care of that.”

“There’s no one who will take better care of her than me,” he said. “And I owe it to her.”

“Don’t you think she’d rather you give proper attention to your studies?”

“I think that I can get a better education this way, Gramma. Maybe you don’t remember how much time is wasted in public schools.”

“But that’s a big decision to make on your own at your age.”

“I think that Mom will be agreeable.”

“She can’t agree to anything. She can hardly communicate.”

“I think that maybe she is doing better than you realize.”

“I don’t know, Jake.”

“Don’t worry so much, Gramma. I’ll consult with Leanne and Jan, too. My plan is to get a better education than I would in a public school and still be here to care for Mom.”

“What do you think, David?”

“Let’s see what kind of arrangement he comes up with before we decide there is a problem.”

“Thanks, Granddad,” Jake said. “You’ll see. I’ll work something up that will satisfy you.”

Granddad stood up. “Good. Now that Ellen’s asleep, it’s time for us to collect Carol and go home.”

Gramma looked balky.

“What?” Granddad asked. “Are you going to wake Ellen up just so that you can tend to her?”

“She’s in good hands, Connie,” Leanne said. “I promise.”

Gramma reluctantly let herself be led away.

Jacob, can I have a word? Leanne sent.

Jake was sitting hunched over Ellen. She had awakened after a nap, but an hour later she had fallen asleep again. With help from Kara, Jan and Leanne, he had almost finished one complete pass over Ellen’s wounds. In the morning, he would show the second wave how to give treatments. Nina and Shannon already had enough fine control that they could help. Alice, Donna, and Boris would be ready soon. Leanne had been helping him until just a few minutes earlier. He had barely noticed her leaving.

Jake straightened up in his chair and stretched.

Of course, love. What can I do for you?

No, here.

She was in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, he read.

I’m almost finished with this pass. Can it wait for a bit?

No, Jacob.

He had to admit that he was pretty stale. He couldn’t even work up the interest to scan Leanne and find out what was so important. He stood up, his stiff muscles complaining. Leaving Greenlee kneeling at the foot of Ellen’s bed, he shuffled out the door and down the hall to his room. Shannon was there, too, standing next to Leanne.

“Come, sit,” Leanne said, patting the bed beside her.

Jake shuffled over, finding himself yawning. He sat down.

“Shannon told me what she did for you when you learned Ellen had been captured,” Leanne said.

“It’s been a big help. I’ve been meaning to thank her, for that and everything else.”

“Don’t worry about it, Jake,” Shannon said. “I know that you’re focused on Ellen. We all understand.”

“It’s time for you to return to normal,” Leanne said. “The emergency is over.”

“I don’t think I’m ready yet. There’s stuff that still needs to get done.”

“Oh, you’re efficient all right,” Leanne said. “You’ve been all business except for when you were trying to fool your grandparents that you’re all right.”

“She’s right, Jake,” Shannon said. “It’s creepy the way you keep working on Ellen with hardly a break.”

“It’s important. The first 48 hours following her injury is critical. The information in the damaged synapses will be lost if we don’t stimulate the neurons and get them to reconnect. Leanne, you remember how it was with Donna.”

“And that’s why Kara’s going to finish stimulating all of the injured neurons tonight. And that’s why we will continue doing it until Ellen has recovered as much as she is going to.”

That last phrase struck Jake hard. The loss and guilt began to agitate underneath the cap of calmness.

“I don’t want Ellen to end up disabled. The more we do the better she’ll be.”

“She wouldn’t want you damaged by this either, and I want my Jake back, too. You’ve been like a zombie.”

Jake looked down at his lap. He had avoided thinking about it, but in truth, he was scared of what was going to happen when Shannon’s control was removed.

“Jake,” Leanne continued. “You need to come to terms with what’s happened. You have had a very momentous time. I wouldn’t be doing you any favors if I let you limp along while your emotions fade, unprocessed.”

“I don’t want to do this,” he said, looking down at his hands which were resting on his thighs.

“No, of course not. You’re a man. You run from your emotions. But I love you too much. I want you whole. And I want my Jacob back. Are you ready?”

Jake looked at her, beseechingly, but her face was unyielding. He steeled himself.

“Yes,” he said, his voice only a whisper.

He saw Leanne nod at Shannon. Jake felt his calm dissolve. He watched almost clinically as a cacophony of emotions began to agitate him, quickly eroding the detachment to which he had clung since Tuesday night. He strove to hold off the sorrow that rose from his depths, not wanting to feel the anguish that was waiting to overwhelm him.

Leanne put her arm around his shoulders and spoke quietly. “It wasn’t your fault. There’s no reason to feel guilty.”

Jake’s sense of entitlement as Ellen’s dom, pushed back at the guilt. For a long moment, they were in balance and he felt an awful tension. And then the balance collapsed. The guilt engulfed him. He knew that it most certainly was his fault. He could point to a dozen bone-headed decisions springing from his arrogance and ignorance and bad judgment. If he had avoided any one of them, war with the Council might have been avoided and Ellen would not have found herself helpless in the clutches of a merciless animal. And now Ellen, his Ellen, the sweetest woman he had ever known, couldn’t communicate. She could barely move her limbs. And here he, the one who deserved to bear the consequences of his actions, was whole and sound.

None of the others brought up how he was to blame, but he knew. Ellen was lying broken in her sickbed, and Jake had as good as put her there.

He felt pressure building up in his chest. He could no longer hold his breathing steady. His diaphragm began to convulse, and his eyes started to burn. He resisted it for as long as he could, but a sob finally burst out. And then Jake’s control fled. His Ellen was lying maimed, mutilated, broken. His sobs became a wailing that soon became a shriek. His misery engulfed him and he knew nothing but guilt and grief.

Jake awoke. It was dark. He must have slept for several hours. He remembered clinging to Leanne, though for how long he did not know. Reliving the breakdown in his head, he was ashamed of how he had behaved. What must Leanne and Shannon think of him? Hell, he had probably been projecting to every mind reader in the house. They all had to know that he had acted like a baby. How was he going to face them?

As he sat up, he heard steps moving quickly down the hallway. The door banged open.

“Don’t you dare, Jacob Fielding,” Leanne barked. “Don’t you cheapen good, honest grief by pretending it is something infantile.”

“But what will they think?” he said, cringing at the whining tone he could not stop.

“They will think that you are a human being who loves his mother, who hurts for a damaged woman, who wishes he were a better person.”

Jake didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t still his emotions, but they shamed him. He wanted to cry out and to plead for her sympathy, and for Ellen’s forgiveness, but he also wanted to rise above his emotions and show that he could control himself. His thoughts and emotions thrashed back and forth.

Leanne knelt in front of him.

Jake, stop being such a man. It doesn’t have to be this hard. Stop fighting your emotions. Accept them. Let yourself be the way you are. There’s nothing wrong with you. She caught his eye. It’s okay. It really is. See for yourself. Read the others. See how they feel about you. You’re shrinking away from them because you’re scared they will hold you in scorn. Well, they don’t. Scan them and see.

He almost asked her if she was sure, but decided he looked too pitiful as it was. He summoned his courage and cast his awareness out. Most of the women were in the kitchen. There was Kara. She wanted to reach out to him, to send him her love and sympathy. Only her concern that she would undermine what Leanne was doing kept her passive.

Shannon was worried that she had made his grief worse in the long run by sheltering him from it. Julie was uneasy. Jake had come to be her rock. He had been stable, confident, sure of right and wrong, accepting of her foibles. Seeing him off balance shook her. Alice had never known sorrow like Jake had experienced. If he was going through such a rough patch, it made her worry about how she would do when it was her turn.

Boris had buried comrades who had died in battle. He just hoped that Jake could work through his emotions and move on to the acceptance phase that came to the soldiers who could handle combat, and that somehow eluded the ones who ended up scarred by their wartime experiences. Not that those sentiments stopped Boris from being glad that Jake’s histrionics were finally over.

But what Jake didn’t detect, not even from Boris, was contempt or scorn. He knew that there was a certain kind of man who would have reacted to him like that. If he encountered contempt at that moment he would have taken it to heart no matter Leanne’s assurances that his grief was normal. No, wait. He touched Greenlee’s mind. Greenlee almost felt that way. Contempt kept trying to rise up in his mind, but it couldn’t break through his newfound loyalty.

Jake realized that Lizzie and Emily were also at the kitchen table. He cringed when he read them and saw that they had arrived in the middle of his wailing. He looked at Leanne with his eyes wide.

“Read her, Jacob. This, more than anything, will tell you what kind of woman she is,” Leanne said.

Jake hesitantly reached out to Lizzie. It had been awkward when the Broadmans had arrived. Brenda had let them in and invited them to join the others in the kitchen. Lizzie had not even sat down when she heard cries coming from down the hall. She asked the people around the kitchen table what was going on. They had been reluctant to talk about it. Jake was warmed by the display of protectiveness from his friends.

Finally, Kara had explained that Ellen had been hurt and Jake was upset. Did it have something to do with Jake’s secret or the attack on him the previous week, she asked. Yes, Kara had conceded. Ellen had been injured when they went to deal with the people who had ordered the attack. Had Jake and Ellen been successful? Yes, Kara said, despite Ellen’s injuries. Is there anything about this affair that puts Emily at risk? No, neither Emily nor Lizzie had ever been in any danger.

A particularly wretched wail had erupted at that moment. It had upset Emily to hear Jake’s pain. Would it help for her to go back and comfort him, Emily asked. No, Kara had said, Leanne was doing all that could be done. That had disappointed both of the Broadman women. The longer Jake’s grief had lasted the more it made Lizzie want to go back to his room and mother on him.

Finally Jake had wound down and fallen asleep. Leanne had joined the others in the kitchen. They had told Lizzie about the seriousness of Ellen’s injuries and Jake’s sense of responsibility for them. That had eased some of Lizzie’s concern that Jake was putting people at unnecessary risk with his mysterious conflicts.

“I’m not sure what to make of Lizzie,” Jake said to Leanne, “except that her first loyalty runs to Emily. I’m not sure that I like it that she wants to mother on me so much.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Are you going to tell me that I can’t mother on you either?”

“I’m grateful for your comfort, but I don’t really want that to be a big part of our relationship.”

“It’s not, but women — mothers especially — are driven to comfort our loved ones when they hurt. If you associate it with children, that’s just because children need it so much. I think you should just accept it — from both of us.”

“I notice that Lizzie isn’t feeling the same attraction that she had when she and I first met.”

“No, but the circumstances are very different. She’s seeing you wounded, not confident and in command. That brings out different emotions. Everything considered, I think it shows that Lizzie is not head over heels in love with you. On the other hand, I also noticed that she has barely thought about the age difference since she arrived.”

“I don’t know if I can face her, or the rest of them.”

“Of course you can, and you should. These people love you, Jake. Don’t hurt them by withholding yourself.”

“I’d like to check on Ellen.”

“If you aren’t out in a couple of minutes, I’m going to drag you out.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Leanne popped him on the top of the head, then took his face in her hands and kissed him tenderly on the lips.

“I think you’re going to be okay, Jake Fielding,” she said and left.

Jake went to Ellen’s room. She was awake and had been following the developments of the previous hour. Shannon was sitting with her. Seeing both of them together strengthened Jake’s feelings of dominance.

Jake gave Ellen a lingering kiss on the lips. She smiled up at him. Then she frowned. Her thoughts showed her impatience with his feelings of guilt over her injuries.

Read me, he sent.

He imagined her sitting in her wheelchair at the kitchen table.

I want to show off my warrior. Are you up to visit with the others?

Ellen smiled and nodded. She imagined a clock, its hands showing the passing of an hour.

Jake sat her up and put a robe over her nightgown. Using the skills he had learned with Nina, he transferred her efficiently to her wheelchair.

“Remain here,” he said to Greenlee who was kneeling at the foot of her bed, disheveled and greasy.

Master, read me.

When he did, he experienced the memory of the smell of someone who really needed a bath.

“New orders,” Jake said to Greenlee. “Take a shower and wash your clothes. Ask one of the servants where the washing machine is. Wait at the machine until your clothes are clean and dry. Then report back to Ellen.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jake pushed Ellen to the kitchen. Ellen gave Lizzie and Emily her usual dazzling smile. She looked so normal that Lizzie smiled back in relief.

“I was so worried about what had happened to you, Ellen,” she said. “I’m glad you’re doing so well.”

Ellen frowned and looked back at Jake.

“J-j-ake, w-w-what?”

Jake looked into her eyes and played back Lizzie’s comments.

Ellen nodded. “T-t-t-ell. Her.”

Jake turned to Lizzie. “The damage to Ellen’s brain mostly affects how Ellen talks and understands speech. There are other problems, too. For instance, she has lost some control over the movements of her hands, arms and legs.”

Lizzie looked horrified. “No wonder you were so upset.”

Jake felt uncomfortable. “I’m sorry you heard all that.”

“Ellen is your mother. Of course you were upset.” She looked toward Ellen. “She can’t understand what I’m saying, can she?”

“She has shown some improvement today. She might have gotten the point of what you were saying, more or less.”

Jake got a can of Coke from the refrigerator and sat next to Ellen.

“But it looked like you helped her understand,” Lizzie said. “Well, sort of.”

Jake smiled. “We’re learning new ways to communicate.”

He raised the can to offer Ellen a drink. She nodded. He carefully put the can to her lips and let her sip.

“Will she get better?” Emily asked.

“The doctors don’t seem to know,” Leanne said.

Jake mostly tuned out the conversation and looked into Ellen’s mind, closely examining the injury. He saw which pathways became active when someone spoke but were interrupted by one of the fissures. He sent a focused stream of energy into those neurons, hoping that they would be able to send axons across the lesion to the other side and restore the broken connections. Every once in a while, he offered Ellen another sip of his drink.

Ellen sometimes attended to the thoughts of whoever was speaking. Jake smiled when he took a brief break from treating her and saw Ellen trying to follow the conversation. She was being fooled by the disparity between what people were thinking and what they were saying. The thoughts were clear to her but not the words, and it was the words that carried the thrust of the conversation.

“Look at how attentive Jake is to her,” Lizzie said at one point in an aside to Kara, but what Ellen heard was Lizzie’s unvoiced wish that Jake would pay more attention to her, not Ellen. Ellen was confused when Kara nodded sadly and seemed to agree.

Jake put his hand on her arm. Read me, slave, he sent when Ellen turned to him.

He replayed the exchange from his perspective. She made a gurgling sound when she finally understood. Jake knew she was giggling.