Harold and Ida

[Rance]

This is a spur-of-the-moment story, a bit of brain-prattle that I spilled out on paper right quick before a show that I watch comes on! I'll likely continue tonight and post a bit more. Editing and revising other work of mine has caused a little bit of a creative hole to open up in my heart, and it's been looking for a short-story to fill it. Hopefully you'll enjoy the direction in which the story is going, but for now, this is what you get!

Harold and Ida - Part One

I remember when I first discovered I was sick.

Remember is an awfully strong word, though. Memories are usually accompanied by ideas of time or place, feelings of intense emotion, stimulants to senses particularly affected. This memory doesn’t have any of those things; it was wrung free of them like a sopping-wet towel, leaving only a bare dampness of fact and occurrence. I remember it not because of what happened, but because it was the beginning to everything that happened afterwards. I remember it the way someone looks up towards the sky whenever it rains. You know where the rain comes from, but be damned if you don’t always look just to be sure that nothing’s changed since the last time.

I was working. It was a tiny summer job while I was home from college, something I managed to get through the local temp agency. Temporary employment agencies work wonders when you’re only home from university for two-and-a-half months. I can’t recall too much about that day, but I can remember that I had eaten scrambled eggs with ketchup that morning and that I’d worn my favorite pair of socks. I remember how my boss kept asking what was wrong and kept saying my name over and over.

“Ida, Ida,” she said, making her sound like she was stuttering over the beginning a sentence rather than repeating my name. “Ida, sit down, sit down, else you’re going to hurt yourself!”

But I couldn’t sit down. When the fit struck me, I can’t recall what I was doing. I remember launching myself from my desk and sprinting without direction towards what I thought might have been the lady’s room. The world suddenly went from being wide and sensational to being like a small, multi-colored pinprick through which only slight sounds and colors managed to leak through. I was lucky I didn’t wear high-heels. I would have fallen a lot sooner than I did.

I almost managed to make it to the toilet. I threw open the door (with enough force, I later discovered, to break two of my fingers at the second knuckle) and collapsed on the powder-blue tile. My throat tightened. I vomited. I kept vomiting. Usually, if I have to be sick, I get scared of doing so, but nothing during this diluted frame-of-mind seemed to really have any substance to it. You would think a life-changing event like that would have filled itself in inside of my mind between when it happened and the present, but it hasn’t. The only thing that comes back is a permanent tattoo of coolness on my cheek from the floor-tiles that I sometimes feel in the middle of the night if I wake up in a feverish sweat.

Besides that, I woke up out of it all under the hot, fluorescent halo of a hospital’s exam-lamp. There were three faces above me – my mother, my father – and then a third, with a hawk nose and thick-rimmed glasses. He seemed more interested in his clipboard than he did in me, though. The words were something from an Oscar-winning movie – the script, it seemed, of a tear-jerking climax, but I had forgotten my tear-ducts on that particular day.

“There’s a lump in her brain. A growth, a tumor, tucked just between two of the lobes, here—“ said the unfamiliar face, turning to poke at a black-and-white photo stuck on the wall, “—and it’s something that, with a bit of attention, we might be able to slow. Has there ever been any history of brain trauma?”

No, my parents both said, or maybe I said it, or maybe nobody said it.

“Was she ever dropped as a baby?”

No.

“Did she ever take place in any sports where she received blunt force to the skull?”

No.

“Has there been a history of seizures in her past?”

No.

“Black-outs?”

No.

“Forgetfulness? Confusion of senses? Sensory stimulation with no origin?”

No, no, no. What does this mean, what does this mean, they said, or maybe I said, but the memory wasn't enough to merit a voice.

“I’m afraid that this situation,” the doctor said, monotone and matter-of-fact – the kind of guy who had gotten his doctorate, but had taken Tennis courses instead of Drama 101—, “is considerably disturbing. Mr. and Mrs. Rousseau,” said the doctor, tucking his clipboard under his arm, “it looks, though not all the tests have been completed, like your daughter Ida may very well be suffering from a malignant tumor.”

And that, my friends, is precisely how I remember it – one minute, I was working, typing, pounding out letters from my boss and waiting for lunch, and the next, I was in a hospital, and my brain was on display in monochrome. From the middle of it, there was a thick and black oil seemingly frozen in place, something that brains shouldn’t naturally have, and my parents kept staring at it. My father was holding my mother. One of them was crying. To this day, I still can’t remember which.

My name is Ida Rousseau. I have a brain tumor, and in six months, I’m going to die.

[Abigail]

Oh, Rance! This is amazing, and it's going to drive me nuts to have to wait for the next part!

I really have to say, I love the fact that it's not all sunshine, skittles and rainbows! It's intense, thoughtful, and truly original.

[blarg]

Nicely written, i'm not much of a drama reader, but you wrote the beginning well. I think details are sufficient especially considering her lack of memory of the ordeal. As for the type of story that this will be turning into- please i beg of you do not twist events into giving her a stroke making her incontinent or something! Keep up the good writing as always Rance!

P.S. just an obvious typo (i didn't go for catching errors since you didn't edit it first):

memory isn’t enough to merit a voice.

~blarg

[Rance]

Thank you for your compliments, Mandi! And thank you for yours too, blarg! I will say that this story is my sort've underhanded attempt at writing something with infantilist aspects in it ... however, it won't apply to the usual formula, nor will it focus heavily on those things. There's a larger story at work here. I hope you guys keep enjoying it!

Harold and Ida - Part Two

It was all so normal up until that fit, up until awakening beneath the faces of my family and the doctor that said, without detail, heart, or reason save a blotch on an x-ray, that I was going to die.

I’m a political science major. My family has never been anything more than your run-of-the-mill, proud-to-be-whole-grain, blue-collar. My father owns a farm-equipment store where the usual customers have about six teeth between them, and my mother is his accountant. They speak with a southern accent. We visit my grandmother every Sunday. They’re firm in their Christian beliefs, and though I do not share them so strongly, God and I have our own little understanding. When the news came down the pike that He had thrown us a curve-ball – thank you, Cy Young –, I expected so much to change.

One of the first things I can say that I’m grateful for is that oranges are still oranges, and apples are still apples. Not so much is different, at least for my family.

When I awakened – and I mean awakened, to the point where I could understand time and place – my mother was the first person to notice. The first realization that I made was that I was no longer in the examination room. A thin sheet of morning sunlight filtered in through thin curtains, but the beige paint of the hospital-room walls seemed to absorb whatever invigorating properties it might have contained.

My mother’s hand was cold when she placed it against my forehead. I instinctively turned away. The white daylight made me cringe.

“Thank the Lord,” she whispered. She had that kind of accent that made all the vowels last longer than they should have. “I was hoping you’d wake up. I kept asking and asking, and then I saw your eyes start aflutterin’, and—“

“G-.. Good morning, Mom,” I said, pressing my palms down into the mattress to lift myself up. That was her cue. She was on me like a Portugese manowar, voraciously – if gently, like I were some lovable ticking time-bomb – smothering my cheeks and forehead in kisses. She viced my head between her palms, keeping steady so that she could shower me with maternal love. Her hair, which was the same dark-blonde as mine, smelled like her favorite strawberries-and-cream shampoo; good enough to eat, but clean enough to smell like shampoo so you didn’t make that mistake.

“You gave us quite a scare,” she whispered in my ear, “and your father and I came down here as soon as we could. Your boss gave us a call right after she called for the ambulance, and … and I was so scared, Ida – you’re our one and only, and I couldn’t imagine if—“

“Mom,” I whispered, to stop her. Her words were wet with tears. She sniffed against my hair. I reached up to touch her cheek and I let loose a little laugh. “It’s okay, Mom. I’m good for now. I’m glad she called you,” I said, “because … I don’t really know what happened. Is Dad around?”

“He’ll be back soon,” she said. “He went down to get a coffee and a bagel.”

“Dad doesn’t like bagels.”

“The bagel’s for me,” she admitted, and she patted her stomach before she sat down on the side of the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Dizzy,” I admitted. “My head is pounding.”

“You took a fall on the bathroom floor. Your boss—“

“—Darlene,” I corrected her, because Darlene hated being “the boss”.

“Darlene said that you got pale all of a sudden and you shot up out of your chair like you’d gotten startled, and when she came to you, you pushed her aside and bolted for the bathroom. Were you feeling ill yesterday at all, Ida?”

“Not … not really,” I said, looking up to see Bob Barker instructing me to spay and neuter the pets that I didn’t have from the soundless television. “I … don’t really remember much.”

“You got sick and passed out in front of the toilet. You weren’t waking up, and when we got here, they had already admitted you and had you on fluids.”

I looked down at my arm. As if my Mom’s tears weren’t enough hydration, there was an intravenous tube lashed to my arm. Right about then, I became aware of the cool trickle tickling the inside of my vein. It was a saline solution, most likely. I flopped my head back on the pillow and rolled my eyes up to the ceiling. I silently congratulated my mother on her strength – even with the news she had received regarding my condition, she still smiled, still seemed to maintain her natural affluence for humor and fun.

I said, “Sorry to be such a bother, Mom.”

She reached out and took up my hand in hers, stroking her thumb along the back of my knuckles. My other hand was laying at my side, and the index and middle fingers were wrapped in a single splint. What is it in a hospital room – a place that stinks like antiseptic and rubber – that always brings out the most tender of feelings?

“You’re never a bother to me, Ida Marie. Never have been. I’m just happy that the Lord woke you up for us. Your father’ll be so thrilled to see you.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Since yesterday afternoon,” she admitted, biting her bottom lip. “Be gentle with that head of yours, baby – you got concussed when you hit the floor.”

Then, almost naturally – as if I’d already accepted the fate that I only half-remembered from that dreamy examination memory, I added, “You and I both know it’s more than that, Mom.”

She looked up at me for a moment, her face screwing into a rind of confusion. Her lips parted as if she was going to say something, but before she could, the door to the room opened, emitting a deluge of sounds: the pat of rubber-soled shoes, the squeak of unoiled gurneys, the chatter of the overhead pager. I squinted my eyes and thought, for a moment, that the man standing there was my father, but he strode with a distinctly different carriage than my father. My father was leisurely, always smiling, always cheerful, but this man seemed stiff and unemoting.

“Good morning, Ida,” he said, and I knew at once that he was the doctor that had first examined me. His thick glasses were tilted forward on his nose. His white coat flapped like a king’s robe around his thighs, and without even acknowledging my mother, he stepped towards the end of my bead. He had a manila folder tucked beneath his right arm. He lifted the clipboard off of the end of my bed. “It’s good to see that you’re finally awake and responding. You took some fall yesterday, and we’ve been making sure your body stays on track.

“I’m Doctor Nichols, head of the department of neurology,” he said, a smile flinching somewhere beneath his rigid nose. “In a little while, we’ll be transferring you to a stretcher to bring you downstairs and take some numbers. How do you feel?” he asked.

“Alright,” I admitted, “though my head is a bit light.”

“As it likely will be. For the next few days, you’ll have to bear with us while we work on sorting out your condition. You’ll be staying here with us. You’ll quite notice that your meals are going to be smaller and your liquids thicker for the time being.”

“Why’s that?” Mom piped in.

“A substitute for nutrients while we control regular functions,” he said. “May I ask who you are?”

“Oh,” she sputtered, and thrust out a hand. “I’m Gloria Rousseau, Ida’s mother.”

He nodded. “Ida is currently catheterized, and we’ll be switching her over to a primarily liquid diet to reduce the amount of bowel movements. Until such a time that we know exactly what’s going on neurologically, we can’t have her straining – even over the act of eliminating – in case she causes more stress. Any nutrients that she cannot obtain through a liquid diet are being intravenously provided.”

“That seems odd,” said my Mom.

“It’s normal procedure for head conditions as well as heart conditions.”

I whispered out of the corner of my mouth, “Elvis Presley died on the toilet, Mom.” She gasped and looked at me in amazement.

“I loved Elvis…”

Doctor Nichols, however, did not seem to have time to banter. “It’s almost noon. Ida, they’ll be bringing you in your lunch very shortly. At around two, we’ll transfer you downstairs, and I’ll meet you down there so that we can view and discuss the results of the tests. It’s nice to meet you,” he said, and for a moment, he seemed gentle, even warm. “You as well, Mrs. Rousseau.”

“Thank you for your help, Doctor Nichols. My husband will be returning shortly,” she said. “May I send him out to speak to you?”

“I’ll be busy attending other matters, but I do hope he’ll be coming with you and your daughter this afternoon.”

“He will,” she said, and without further ado, Doctor Nichols replaced the clipboard after scribbling a few notes. With his manila folder still tucked beneath his arm, he turned and stepped out of the room, white coat billowing as he swept around the corner, and like a white bandit, was gone.

My Mom raised her eyebrows and whispered, “What an odd man. But either way,” she said, standing to lift the bedsheet around my chin, “your father will be up shortly, and you’ll be needing to eat in a little while. It’s best that you relax. How about I get my Bible, and we can say a prayer or two in the meantime?”

“Maybe later, Mom,” I said, and though I said nothing, I had a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach – a twisting, turning knot of disturbance, an acidic premonition that seemed to let me know that something was not as it should have been.

“Mom?”

“Yes, dear?”

“That doctor didn’t know you.”

“Of course not,” she said with a smile, “though you look like a spitting image of me, so I don’t see why he had to ask.”

“That’s not what I mean. He was there last night, wasn’t he?”

“Last night?”

“With the lights. The tests. You and Dad.”

She stared at me blankly, the beaten-up Bible resting half-opened in her hands despite my earlier reluctance. “Huh?”

“You … don’t know him?”

“No,” she said. “Why should I?”

“He was there when we looked at the films. The ones of my head. The ones … the ones of my brain.”

“We … haven’t seen any films or photos of anything yet, sweetheart.”

I wish that I could say that the end of the conversation was something like you see in movies; the girl who knows the truth ends up shaking the shoulders of the person who doesn’t, explaining that she’s a time-traveler, a seer, or that she’s had a revelation, and she does her best to explain how time’s folded over on itself. That didn’t happen here, though, because whether or not that was the case, I was as confused as my mother. But instead of it leading towards some distinct climax, it just ended with me placing my head back against the pillow and closing my eyes. I head my mother whispering prayers beside me, though what she was saying, I couldn’t necessarily tell you.

I just kept thinking about the films, the dark room, the bright light, my mother and my father holding each other and crying. I kept thinking about that black spot on the pictures of my brain, like a place where someone had just erased the white. I kept remembering the doctor’s firm tone, the same one with which he had told hundreds of people and their families that they, too, were on their way to dying.

I ate my lunch when it came. I spent time with my mother and my father until, at nearly two o’clock, a heavyset nurse with one dimple on her right cheek and none on the left shuffled in to help transfer me down into a ratty, leather-backed wheelchair.

When we arrived at the neurological department, Doctor Nichols met us with the same manila folder he had before. He shook hands with my father. He shook hands with my mother. He did not smile.

And two hours later, under the glow of a circular overhead lamp, in a half-medicated haze, my mother and father shed tears and held one another in a way that seemed so strikingly familiar, like I had been there before. They stared at the white-glowing board where the translucent picture hung, brain-and-all, and there, smack-dab in the center, was the tumor that I already knew I had.

Harold.

Right then and there, I named it. I named him. We weren’t strangers anymore. To my father, to my mother, to Doctor Nichols, he was nothing more than a black blotch with a keen ability to wipe out any future I might have. Doctor Nichols had no emotion. My father and my mother had all of it – all emotion, all silence. But I had already known.

And if you and I put money down on it – a bet, if you will – I would have told you that it was Harold that had let me see it all before had even happened.

[Abigail]

That was extremely amazing! This is short... and sweet, but only because I have no criticism whatsoever!

[blarg]

yet another well written chapter, i congratulate you yet they're stunningly short :/
Nice twist with the sight of the future and i'm surprised that the story is with a name tumor and not some romance you surely fooled me big time

P.S. DSFSDFJ:SKDJF:KLSDJ MANDI you beat me every time cause i forget that i'm even posting and come back later to press the post button >,<


~blarg

[Abigail]

Sorry blarg! I'm just awesome like that! Rance fooled me as well.... I thought it would have been a romance! Although I don't think they are too short, I think they are sufficiently long!

[Rance]

Thank you again, Mandi! I'm always partial to unrealistic, fantastical aspects in any story -- I don't know why. That, and the irony behind someone being able to "tell the future" who has no future at all seems like a particularly neat thing to write about!

Blarg: I kept you in mind when I wrote the part of this addition that discusses catheterization -- that that actually is standard procedure for injuries of this sort, and in many other medical situations like this. Just wanted to point that out so you didn't think I was deteriorating away already!

As for shortness: These aren't necessarily chapters as much as they are just ... sections. Whenever I write a memoir / first-person story / what-have-you, I usually write scenes in small, jerky pieces. It's probably something I need to remedy!

[Abigail]

Don't you dare remedy anything! I love your style! I'll.... do something bad to you if you change your style! -_^

[blarg]

gahhh did u just change ur avatar mandi :/

as for the story, it's going along pretty nicely, i just wish it would have less cliff-hangers! But hey i write like that myself- keeps ppl reading the story

I need to rap up chapter three for my own story- i've been writing it very slowly all day -_-