Diane Duane - The Wizard's Dilemma

Nita and Dairine stuck close to their father as they made their way through the hospital corridors and to the reception desk, where someone could tell them where to go. "They've moved her out of ICU, Mr. Cal-lahan," the lady at the desk said. "She's over in Neurology now. If you go down that hall and turn right—"

Her father nodded and led them off down the hall. About three minutes' walking brought them through swinging doors and up to a nurses' station.

One of the nurses there, a large, cheerful-looking lady in a pink scrub-style uniform, with her brown hair pulled back tight in a bun, looked up as they approached. "Mr. Callahan?"

"Yes."

"The doctor would like to see you—that's Dr. Kashiwabara, she's the senior neurologist. If you can go into that room across the hall and wait for a few minutes, she'll be with you shortly."

They went into the plain little room—white walls, beige tile floor, noisy orange sofa that was also literally noisy, with plastic-covered cushions that wheezed when you sat down on them—and waited, in silence. Nita's dad put an arm around her and Dairine, and Nita hoped she didn't look as stiff with fear as she felt. 7 can't believe this, she thought, bizarrely angry with herself. I'm so scared, I can't even think. I 'wasn't this afraid when I thought a shark might eat me! And this isn't even about me. It's someone else—

But that makes it worse. That was true, too. There'd been times when Kit was in some bad spot, and the terror had risen up and had nearly choked the breath out of her. And that was just Kit—

Just! said the back of her mind in shock. Nita shook her head. Kit was so important to her... but he wasn't her mother.

The door opened, and the sound made them all jump. "Mr. Callahan?" said the little woman in the white coat who was standing there. She was extremely petite and pretty, with short black hair, and had calm, knowledgeable eyes that for some reason immediately put Nita more at ease. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. These are your daughters?"

"Nita," said Nita's dad, "and Dairine."

"I'm pleased to meet you." She shook their hands and sat down on the couch across from them. "Doctor, how's my wife? Is she any better?"

"She's resting," said the doctor. "I don't want to alarm you, but she had several minor seizures after we admitted her, and sedation was necessary to break the cycle and allow us to find out what's going on."

"Do you know?"

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.