“Could I get something a little stronger?” I ask. “It really jabs at me. I’d like to be able to sleep.”
“Is that why she’s been acting weird?” Patrick asks. “Pain? Not enough sleep?”
“The pain is likely coming from an underlying bone bruise. It’s not uncommon. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do for it, other than give it time to heal. I’ll write you a prescription for pain medicine.”
“Doesn’t she need an antibiotic?” Patrick asks, sounding somewhat panicked. “That’s got to be infected. Look at it!”
Dr. Leonard checks the computer. “You’re not running a fever,” he says, but then he raises his eyebrows at me. “However, Ruby, if you see redness around the cut, pus coming from the wound, or a red streak up your leg, you must return for reevaluation. Understand?”
“Yes,” Patrick answers for me.
“Anything else going on, Ruby?” the doctor asks.
“Nothing,” I say, looking directly at Patrick. “I didn’t fall off a bike and hit my head.”
“Anything at home?”
“Things are a little complicated,” I admit.
“A little?” Patrick laughs. “Divorce, remarriage within weeks, a stepsister who’s been in jail, and our stepmom painting all day long … these dark globby things called Beneath and The Obsolete Desire.”
“Bad titles,” I agree.
“A lot of stress,” Dr. Leonard says. He peels his gloves off and runs his fingers through his beard. “Have you had any headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, or slurred speech?”
“No.”
Patrick slaps his hands together. “I know! Why didn’t I think of this sooner? It’s the tattoo she just got. Maybe the needles were dirty.”
I turn my head so Dr. Leonard can look at the Einstein tensor. “What does it mean?” he asks.
“It’s one of Einstein’s general relativity equations. It has to do with space-time, which has been on my mind a lot lately. More than when I got the tattoo, actually.”
Dr. Leonard looks interested, so I continue. “Did you know that two uncharged parallel plates, metal ones, put really close together, create negative energy? Negative energy is what you need to make a wormhole.”
“What?” Patrick slumps back into his chair, covering his eyes, as if I’ve just dropped my drawers and totally embarrassed him.
“It’s called the Casimir effect,” I say. “I’m not making this stuff up!”
Dr. Leonard runs a finger over the nape of my neck. “It’s not a new tattoo.”
“Not new?” Patrick leaps up and cranes to see. “Ruby! You’ve been hiding that under your hair? For how long?”
Dr. Leonard holds his hands out, like he’s trying to push some space between himself and Patrick. “Ruby,” he says. “Is it possible you need someone to talk to? A family counselor, perhaps.”
“Not at all,” I say. What I need is someone to translate the inscriptions carved into the tree. I need to get back to the tree, I need to get home, I need to figure out string theory.
Dr. Leonard hands me a business card. “It’s up to you. Linda Bell is excellent. I highly recommend her.”
The business card is purple and in the shape of a bell, or maybe it’s supposed to be a hat.
“I’ll call her first thing tomorrow,” Patrick says, snatching the card out of my hand. God, his overly worried voice is so like Dad’s. It’s irritating and confusing to hear it coming out of Patrick’s mouth. I still can’t fathom that I have a big brother.
“We have some work to do here,” Dr. Leonard says to me. “We need to irrigate this wound, get it thoroughly cleaned out, and dress it.” He turns to Patrick. “You can go back to the waiting room.”
Patrick nods. “Thank you, Doctor.” He has his hand on the door, then pauses. He pulls his vibrating cell phone from his pocket. “Text message from Mom. Stuck in construction. Be there asap.”
I nod, and even though they say I don’t have a fever, I’m burning hot. Burning with an anticipation so intense it hurts. This cannot be happening, but it is.
My not-dead mother is on her way.
Chapter Eight
Patrick and I sit on a bench outside the ER entrance. I chug a bottle of water that Patrick bought for me from a vending machine. Turns out the quarters also have the face of Henry Lee III on them.
I start reciting the periodic table in my head. It’s the only thing I can think of to keep my mind occupied. Hydrogen, helium, lithium.
Patrick checks his watch and scans the parking lot. “Mom should be here any minute.” He’s fielded at least three calls from her so far, and now his cell phone rings again. I catch a few words here and there: head injury, gash on leg, just not right, and really worried.
Every time Patrick thrusts the phone to my ear and tells me to say something to Mom, I turn away. “I can’t,” I choke out.
Have I ever felt this particular emotion before? Amped up to the point of short-circuiting? No, not the time I gave a speech to a thousand people at a science fair, and not when I first pressed my eye to a high-powered telescope and saw Jupiter’s atmosphere. But maybe when I was ten and climbed too high, into the weak upper branches of a tree. Because once again it feels like I’m teetering on something spindly that can’t support my weight.
“I’m driving Dad’s Jeep home, and you’re going with Mom back to her apartment for the night,” Patrick says.
Mom. Ghost Mom. Resurrected Mom. Alive-and-Breathing Mom is coming to pick me up. How can it be? How can this be true?
I remind myself that sometimes complicated phenomena unfold backward. We discover a truth in nature, in the universe, and then we figure out the science and the math much, much later. Or a seemingly zany theory comes first, and then we find data to prove that it’s possible. Like when Hugh Everett III, back in the fifties, wrote about his many-worlds interpretation. He wasn’t nuts. He was a PhD candidate at Princeton. He was brilliant and ahead of his time.
Science can explain all of this. Somehow.
Mom is coming. To pick you up. She’s not dead.
“Stop that,” Patrick says.
“What?”
“You just said oxygen, fluorine, neon. You’re making me nervous.”
“I have the feeling you were born nervous,” I say.
You were born.
Born.
The words resonate through my brain, my chest, my gut. “You’re my big brother.”
Why didn’t I think of this earlier? Why didn’t I make the connection?
A few years ago—and only once—Dad had mentioned that there was a baby before me. But something went wrong during childbirth; he didn’t get enough oxygen. Now, in my mind, I see a blue baby, tiny but with Patrick’s face, his legs pulled to his chest. Stillborn.
Mom got pregnant with me about a year later. When Dad told me this story, I remember thinking: I wonder what they were going to name him.
I look at Patrick and I feel a rush of warmth. Are you my big brother, who died at birth in Universe One?
“Yes, I’m your big brother.” Patrick sits up straight, a proud look on his face. “I take that job seriously.”
Suddenly, Patrick isn’t a stranger anymore. He’s the brother I should have had all along. He would have taught me to throw a ball, make paper airplanes, swim underwater. We would’ve fought over the TV remote and the phone and who got the bigger bedroom. I reach out and squeeze his hand. He squeezes back. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“It’s like Coach Brown always says. Family above all else. Even football.”
Too bad Dad doesn’t have a similar motto. Family above work. “I like your priorities.”
We sit in silence for a long while. “By the way,” Patrick finally says, “I didn’t tell Mom about Kandy’s shoplifting relapse. So don’t bring it up.”