47
They came for Lilly about ten that morning.
There were three of them. Because of the sedative they had given her, she was fuzzy-headed. A man and a woman.
Vera. Her name was Vera. The man was Phillip.
Phillip had a dark mole on his cheek. Every time he came in, she could not help staring at it. Phillip also had a big head and short black hair combed straight forward.
They picked her off the bed and put her on a stretcher with wheels like the kind they use in ambulances, and they took her out of the room and down the hallway.
She was glad to be leaving that room. There were no windows, the door had no handle and it was always locked. And the lights were always on. She also didn’t like all the stupid cartoons, because they kept playing over and over again. Also, the toys were old and some were broken. But she liked the big blue stuffed elephant because it had straps for your feet and hands so you could dance with it. But it was strange looking since it didn’t have big blank elephant feet but actual hands like people have. And arms. Four of them. It was kind of creepy. Like an elephant centipede. His name was Mr. Nisha.
As they wheeled her into the hall, she hoped that they were taking her outside. The day when she arrived, she had spotted some kids in a playground. She had only gotten a glimpse through the van’s window, but she saw two kids on a jungle gym and two other kids at a nearby picnic table playing computer games on laptops. Which made four. She wondered who they were.
She had also noticed that they were beside a big lake with a real seaplane.
She hoped they were wheeling her outside to play with the other kids. And no more tests. Maybe somebody was going to explain what she was doing here. Maybe this was the day she would go home, and that when they took her outside, her mom and dad would be there, and Bugs, her dog. Maybe.
One of the wheels on the gurney squeaked, and she tried to look down. It sounded like mice in a cage. She once had mice in a cage at home. They weren’t hers, but belonged to the school. One Christmas vacation she had volunteered to take them home for the break. Her mom didn’t like the idea because they were too close to rats, and rats were mean and filthy animals, Mom had said. But Lilly convinced her that these mice were clean and cute and wouldn’t be any fuss. By the end of the vacation, Mom got to like the “little critters.” She also got a kick watching them run through the Styrofoam structure the kids had made in class.
The gurney squealed down a corridor that seemed to be a long bright tunnel with rows of windows with venetian blinds pulled down. That was strange.
They took a hard turn to the right and pushed their way into a big bright room.
Inside she saw lots of fancy equipment—machines with wires, dials, and lights, some computer equipment, a sink, and more drip bottles. She had not been in a real hospital since she was born, and she didn’t remember that; but this looked like one of those operating rooms in the hospital shows her mom watched.
She closed her eyes again to doze off. But that did not last long because something snapped them open.
A buzzing sound.
Like the electric clippers her mom’s hairdresser used. Sure enough, she felt somebody from behind run it across her scalp. For a moment, she just let the buzz fill her ears, as the cool metal mowed its way across her head. Then she looked down to see large chunks of her hair land on the ground.
“Don’t take so much off,” she insisted.
“Don’t worry,” somebody said. “It’s not going to hurt.”
Because there was no mirror in front of her, she couldn’t tell how much they were cutting—but her head suddenly felt cool. Naked. She tried to raise her hands to feel, but they were clamped to the sides.
Hands brushed away the hairs from around her. Then the sound of somebody vacuuming the floor under her.
Then it was quiet, but for feathery-soft voices and the squeal of the wheels as she was rolled across the room.
Somebody said something, and she felt herself being lifted off the gurney and onto a table under a huge round dome with lights blazing down on her. She could feel their heat.
Then she was being cranked up a little. She looked down the length of her body and saw lots of the machines with colored lights and screens with orange squiggles going across, and some people moving about. But the light was too bright, and her mind was too fuzzy to make them out clearly. They seemed so small and far away, as if the world had gone to miniature.
Hanging over her was a large television, but there was no picture—just bright blue with what looked like ruler lines making a cross right in the center—like looking through the scope of her father’s rifle. On another screen next to it were black-and-white pictures of a skull with numbers and lines drawn through it.
All around her, she heard the soft hum of the machines and the murmur of voices. She tried to move, but her hands were tied for the new IV somebody taped onto her arm. Then she felt herself lifted up as a pillow was placed under her neck.
“Lilly, how do you feel?” she asked.
She knew that voice: Vera.
She didn’t like Vera. She was a fake. She would pretend to be friendly so Lilly would take her medicine or eat the food or do the tests. She said things like how they had her locked up like a jailbird—such a shame. But if she ate and took her meds, Vera would talk to Phillip to let her outside. But she lied. They brought her outside only once—to dance with Mr. Nisha.
“Fine.”
“Can you tell me your name?”
Silly question, they all knew her name. “Lilly Bellingham.”
“Good,” Vera said. “Oh, look, it’s Lilly dancing.”
Lilly opened her eyes again, and there on the television was a video of her dancing with Mr. Nisha.
“And who’s dancing with you, Lilly?”
“Mr. Nisha.” Why were they asking such dumb questions? Nothing like the tests.
“Good girl.”
Lilly kept her eyes fixed on the video, trying not to doze off. Suddenly she felt something on her head. From behind her, a hand drew marks on her scalp. Four marks—two on her forehead just above the hairline, another two at the back of her head just above the ears.
“These are where the screws will be inserted,” said a man with a soft voice.
He had a funny accent—“broken English,” as her mom would say.
“Since the brain itself is not sensitive to pain, only the surface requires local anesthetic.”
“Lilly, how you doing?”
“Fine.”
“Good girl. And when this is over, Oliver is going to take you for an airplane ride. Would you like that?”
“Yes, I would,” she said. She couldn’t see any faces because everybody was wearing green masks and caps. Just eyes staring down at her. And hands.
“Nurse Cooper is going to put a little cream on your head so you won’t feel anything,” the man with the accent said. “Dermal analgesic, please.”
Hands spread some cool sticky stuff to her head.
“An equal mixture of lidocaine and prilocaine,” the man continued, “the substance works subcutaneously and is one hundred percent effective. We’ve used it for years. As you’ll notice it has a strong almond odor.”
Lilly could smell the stuff, although she didn’t know what almonds smelled like. Then she felt some dull scratching on her head.
“We make four small incisions for the screw supports of the frame,” the man said to the others.
