The doctor looked at the chart she was carrying, though she didn't open it. "We have some early indications, but first I want to talk to you about some things we didn't have time to discuss while we were admitting Mrs. Callahan. Has she been having any physical problems lately?"
"Physical problems—"
"Double vision, or problems with her sight? Headaches? Any trouble with coordination—a little more clumsiness than usual, perhaps?"
"She's been saying she needed to get reading glasses," Dairine said softly.
Nita looked at her dad. "Daddy, she's been taking a lot of aspirin lately. I didn't realize until just now."
Their father looked stricken. "She hadn't mentioned anything to me," he said to the doctor. "The hours I've been working lately, sometimes the kids have been seeing more of her than I have."
Dr. Kashiwabara nodded. "All right. I'll be going over these issues with Mrs. Callahan myself when she's more lucid. But what you've told me makes sense in terms of what we've found so far. There's been time to do an X ray, anyway, and there seems to be a small abnormal growth at the base of one of the frontal lobes of her brain."
Nita swallowed.
"What kind of growth?" her dad said.
"We don't know yet," said Dr. Kashiwabara. "I've scheduled her for a PET scan this evening, and an MRI scan tomorrow morning; those should tell us what we need to know."
"This is a brain tumor we're talking about," said Nita's father, his voice shaking. "Isn't it?"
Dr. Kashiwabara looked at him, then nodded. "What we need to do is find out what kind it is," she said, "so that we can work out how best to treat it. What we do know at this point is that the tumor seems to have grown large enough to put pressure on some nearby areas of Mrs. Callahan's brain. That's what caused the seizures. We've medicated her to prevent any more. She's going to be pretty woozy when you see her; please don't be concerned about that by itself. For the time being, while we run the tests, she's going to have to stay very quiet to keep excess pressure from building up in her skull and brain. It means she needs to stay flat on her back in bed, even if she feels like she's able to get up."
"For how long?" Dairine said.
"Depending on how the tests go, it may be only a couple of days," Dr. Kashiwabara said. "We'll do the scans that I mentioned, and then there'll have to be a biopsy of the growth itself—we'll remove a tiny bit of tissue and test it to see what kind it is. After that, we'll know what our next move needs to be."
The doctor folded her hands and rubbed them together a little, then looked up. "I'll be doing that procedure myself," she said. "I don't want to trouble your wife about signing the permissions, Mr. Callahan. Maybe we can take care of that before you leave."
"Yes," Nita's dad said, hardly above a whisper, "of course." "I want you to call me if you have any questions at all," Dr. Kashiwabara said, "or any concerns. I may not be able to get back to you immediately—I have a lot of other people to take care of—but I promise you I will always call you back. Okay?"
"Yes. Thank you."
"All right," said the doctor, and got up. "Why don't you go see her now? But, please, keep it brief. The seizures will have been very fatiguing and confusing for her, and she won't be fully recovered from them until tomorrow. Come with me; I'll show you the way."
They walked down the corridor together, and Dr. Kashiwabara led them into a room where there were four of those steel beds: two of them empty, the third with a cloth curtain pulled partway around it, under which they could see a nurse in white shoes and pink nursing sweats doing something or other. In the fourth bed, beyond the partway-pulled curtain, their mom lay under light covers, with one arm strapped to a board, and an IV running into that arm. She was in a hospital gown, and someone had tied her hair back and put it up under a paper cap. Her eyes suddenly looked sunken to Nita; it was the same tired look she had been wearing this morning, but much worse. Why didn't I notice? Nita's heart cried. Why didn't I see something was wrong?!
"Mrs. Callahan?" said Dr. Kashiwabara.
It took Nita's mom's eyes a few moments to open, and then they seemed to have trouble focusing. "What... oh." She moistened her lips. "Harry?"
It was as if she couldn't see him properly. "I'm here, honey," he said, and Nita was astonished at how strong he sounded. He took her hand and sat in the chair by the bed. "And the girls are here, too. How're you feeling?"
There was a long pause. "Like... bats."
Nita and Dairine looked at each other in poorly concealed panic. "Baseball bats," their mother said. "Very sore."
"Like somebody was hitting you with baseball bats, you mean?" Nita said. "Yeah."
From the seizures, Nita thought. Her mother turned her head toward her, across from her dad. "Oh, honey...," she said, "I'm sorry..."
"What're you sorry for, Mom? This isn't your fault!" Nita said. And even as she said it, she knew exactly whose fault it was.
There was only one of the Powers Who at the beginning of things had insisted on inventing something never contemplated before in the universe: entropy, disease... death. That Lone Power had been her enemy more than once, but suddenly it seemed to Nita that she hadn't done It nearly as much damage as she should have.
Dairine, next to Nita, leaned over the bed. "Mom, why didn't you tell us your head was hurting you?"
"Honey, I did." She shook her head on the pillow. "I thought... I thought it was stress." She smiled. "Seems I miscalculated..."
She drifted off then, her eyes closing. Nita and Dairine exchanged a glance. Nita took her mom's hand and closed her eyes, trying something she had never tried with her mother. She slipped her consciousness a little way into her mother's body, gingerly, carefully. Without a wizardry specifically built to the purpose, she could get nothing clear—just a fuzzy, muzzy feeling, a faint vague pain at the edge of things, an odd sense of dislocation...
... and one other thing. A small something. A lot of small somethings that were not her mom. They were all gathered together into something little and hot and strange, burning against the cooler, "normal" background: something alien... and malevolent.
Nita gulped, and opened her eyes. / could be wrong. I didn't do that exactly by the book. But boy... will I, later.
Her mother opened her eyes. "I don't want you to worry," she said, very clearly.
Her dad actually managed to laugh. "Listen to you," he said. "Worrying about us, as usual. You concentrate on getting rested up, and help these people do whatever they need to do."
"Don't have much choice," Nita's mother said. "Got me outnumbered." She closed her eyes again.
Nita met her dad's eyes across the bed. "We should go," he said softly. "Sleep's probably the best thing for her."
"Mom," Dairine said, "we'll see you tomorrow, okay? You have a nap." " 'nt to extremes... to get one," her mother whispered. "Sorry."
They sat there for a few minutes more, saying nothing. Finally one of the nurses looked in the door at them, put his finger to his lips, then gestured out into the hall with his head and raised his eyebrows. Nita got up, bringing Dairine with her. "Dad...," she said.
His eyes had been only for their mother's face. Now he turned, saw the nurse, who looked at their dad and tapped his watch. Nita's father nodded, got up. It was hard for him to let go of their mom's hand. Nita had to look away from that, as she felt the tears welling up in her. I'm not going to cry here, she thought. The whole world can hear me, and Dad—
She headed for the door. Behind her came her dad and Dairine, and they stood lost for a moment in the hall. There was nothing they could do but go home.
It was dark, it was late, when they got back. Where did the evening go? Nita thought as her dad locked the back door. Somehow hours had fleeted by as if in a few minutes, leaving only pain and a feeling of having been cheated of time, somehow... not that Nita wanted that particular slice of time back. Going through it once was enough. Dairine apparently agreed; she went upstairs to her room, and Nita heard the door shut.