Arcadia's Gift Part 6

"There's something there. In her chest," I insisted. "Right here!"

Dr. Kristy patted Lucy down, checking her bones, palpitating her organs. "I don't feel anything."

"That's because it's under the rib cage," I explained. "On her lung."

Dr. Kristy exchanged a glance with Gina, who stepped forward and began feeling around also.

"I don't feel anything, either," Gina confirmed.

"Please!" I insisted. "You have to believe me! Something's in there and it's bad!"

I started pacing in circles, trying to find a way for them to understand. The truth was I didn't know myself how I knew Lucy had a lung problem -I just did. I was as sure of it as I was my own name.

"Cady, maybe you should sit down," Dr. Kristy said in a calm, compa.s.sionate voice that agitated my fragile nerves.

"Don't do that!" I pleaded. "Don't patronize me! Don't talk to me like I'm losing it. You know how much I love these animals, right? Do you think I would lie to you? Would I make up something that could be harmful to Lucy?"

Both the doctor and Gina shook their heads.

"Just take some x-rays and look. It doesn't hurt to look."

Dr. Kristy thought about it for a moment before replying, "Okay. I'll take a look. Gina, can you help me check Lucy out?"

I knew she was only doing it to humor me, to appease the grieving girl, but I didn't care. I knew deep down in my gut that there was something in Lucy that shouldn't be there.

The doctor picked the jolly terrier up off the desk. "Cady, you can go back to work. I'll come get you as soon as I finish with Lucy."

I reluctantly returned to the kennel to remove the leashes from Tank and Murphy. In the few minutes that I'd been gone, Tank had managed to drag his through his water bowl, soaking it.

"It's okay, boys," I whispered, patting them both on their sides. "Lucy's going to be okay. Dr. Kristy's on the case."

I tried to busy myself filling water dishes and sweeping out kennels, but my heart wasn't in it. I wanted to know what was wrong with Lucy. My head snapped up when the clinic door opened. Gina was waving at me.

"Come *ere," she called before turning back inside. I dropped the broom to the ground and rushed in to find her and the doctor examining black and white scans against a backlight on the wall.

Dr. Kristy's lips were tight, and a deep line formed between her pencil-thin brows. She cast me an odd glance at my entrance.

"Cady, come look at this," she said, pointing to the picture with the end of a pen.

I stepped forward to see the skeletal outline of Lucy's torso. The white ribs curved gracefully, protecting the precious cargo within. Even with my un-trained eyes, the white blurry ma.s.s in the lower-right lung was obvious. Dr. Kristy's head shook from side to side as if she were having an internal debate and losing.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Some kind of tumor," she answered. Her voice was distracted. After a silent moment, she turned and looked at me with puzzlement. "How did you know Lucy had a tumor on her lung? I didn't notice any symptoms."

My cheeks reddened, and I stared at her blankly. "I don't know. I guess I just...felt it."

"How did you feel it? The ma.s.s is beneath the ribs. It's not detectible from her exterior."

My mouth dropped open dumbly. How could I tell her about the buzzing, about the coldness and the vibrations that apparently only I could feel?

"Gina, can you give us a moment?" the doctor asked, then gestured for me to sit.

Once we were alone, Dr. Kristy slipped her gla.s.ses off and gave me that serious expression that adults give when they are trying to get you to level with them.

"I'm just trying to get a better understanding, because without your detection, Lucy might be in serious jeopardy. She still might be, but because of you, at least I know to go in and remove the ma.s.s. Cady, can you tell me what exactly you felt?"

Dr. Kristy was the adult I trusted most, even more than my parents sometimes.

"I'm not trying to be difficult, honest. It's just hard for me to describe."

"Can you try?"

I nodded and began to tell her exactly what happened from the time I set off down the trail with the dogs to when I realized something was wrong with Lucy.

"It was like this cold glow that vibrated off of the spot. The feeling would get stronger, more concentrated, the closer my hand got to the bottom of her right lung. Then, some -instinct, maybe? -told me that there was something in her that shouldn't be there. I just knew."

The doctor gazed at me thoughtfully, her head bobbing slowly as she took in my words.

"Has this ever happened before?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No. Never. It was weird."

She sighed. "Well, I need to go help Gina prep for surgery. We have to wait until tomorrow for Lucy, since she's eaten today. I don't know how you did it, but thank you."

Dr. Kristy gathered her things and left the office. I sat there chewing my thumb nail down to the quick.

Chapter 11.

After leaving the shelter, I called my dad to see if Aaron and I could stop by, but there was some sort of crisis on one of his job sites that would keep him working until well into the night. I could tell he felt bad putting me off. We hadn't spent much time together since the funeral. I suspected he was using work as a distraction from dwelling on his loss. I guess we all cope in our own way. I sent Aaron a text to cancel our plans.

At home, my brother and his friend, Trent, were hanging out in the kitchen waiting for a frozen pizza to heat up in the toaster oven. Aaron sat on top of the counter tossing an oven mitt from hand to hand. They were laughing, a noise which sounded out of place in the House of Gloom.

"Hey," Trent grunted at me when I entered through the back door.

"Hey." I was still keyed up from the Lucy situation and wasn't in the mood to socialize.

So, Aaron was going on with his life. He had the right idea. We would all miss Lony, but tears couldn't bring her back. Sleeping fifteen hours a day only put off the inevitable. We all had to move on. Faint gray shadows were still visible beneath my brother's blue eyes and his smile still held a fake, plastic-like quality, but it was a smile nonetheless. He was trying.

Up in my bedroom, I decided I would try, too. I put the morning's events out of my mind and went to work catching up on my studies. If I was going to go back to school Monday, I needed to work hard to catch up to the rest of my cla.s.s. Good thing it was still so early in the school year. I hadn't missed too many important tests or project deadlines.

I was in the middle of typing a writing a.s.signment when my cell phone rang. I rubbed my eyes, strained from staring at a computer screen in the fading evening light. I flipped on my desk lamp and checked the caller ID. Bronwyn.

"So my parents wanted me to ask you..." she said, her tone dripping with reluctance, "The topic for Youth Group this week is Placing Your Sorrow on Jesus, like about dealing with grief when you lose a loved one, and they want me to invite you to come. There will be a guest speaker from Grace Christian who'll be talking about the loss of his daughter from cancer and then a group discussion."

"I don't know, Bron," I sighed and tried my best to be polite. "You know how I am about the religious stuff. And I'm not sure I want to work on my grief issues in a room with a bunch of kids I don't know."

"Oh, you are already going to a support group meeting up at the hospital? Too bad they meet on the same night."

Ah, I get it. One or both of her parents were standing over her making her call me. This kind of thing happened a couple of times a year, usually to invite me to a Youth Group social function or to a church service they thought might be of particular interest to me. Her parents felt it was the duty of all true Christians to "shepherd non-believers into the loving arms of the Lord" or some c.r.a.p like that. As if for every person you converted you got bonus points on G.o.d's Great Scoreboard. I don't know, maybe they would win some prize when they got to heaven like a golden harp or a cloud with a view of the Grand Canyon. Being such a good friend, I decided to mess with her.

"Sure, Bron, I'd love to attend! I'll wear my leather teddy and carry a riding crop. Think a studded dog collar would be too much?"

There was a slight pause before she replied, "It's okay if you break down and cry. That's what support groups are for. I'm sure no one will fault you for getting snot all over your sleeve." I heard a murmured hiss in the background telling her to be more sensitive. I laughed.

"They say emotional trauma can cause teens to act out in inappropriate ways, but I would have given the football team b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs anyway. After all, they did beat Davenport last week."

Bronwyn made a choking sound like she swallowed a laugh and quickly covered it with a fake cough. "Well, okay, Cady, I'll talk to you tomorrow then. Bye."

I hung up the phone, my grin fading. I missed my best friend. The few times I saw her since the accident, her discomfort had been obvious. Bronwyn was great listener, but not so great at knowing what to say in awkward situations. I guess talking to me qualified as awkward now.

I opened a new window on my screen, and signed into Facebook. I'd been avoiding social media since the accident because I didn't really want to read the outpouring of sympathy from my cla.s.smates on my Facebook wall. It's not that I didn't appreciate the thoughts, I just couldn't deal with it all yet. A couple of days after the accident I posted a short thank you, and hadn't looked at it since. I wondered what the protocol was for deleting Lony's page. I could probably do it myself. She had never been very creative with pa.s.swords, and I'm sure I'd be able to hack it inside of five minutes, but was that right? Maybe Facebook has some sort of death cancellation policy where my parents could call them to delete the account.

Once Facebook loaded, I clicked over to Bronwyn's wall and left a message for her to meet me after she got off school tomorrow. It was time for me to start getting out of the house more.

That night as I was changing into my pj's for bed, Bryan phoned. Three nights in a row? He asked me about my day, and without planning to, I began telling him the story of Lucy and the ma.s.s in her lung.

"Are you sure you didn't feel a lump or something? Maybe something small enough that the doctor didn't notice?"

"I'm sure," I insisted. "It wasn't a lump at all. It was a vibration. And cold. You know, way cooler than the other skin around it. I thought I could hear it, too, but now I'm not so sure that part wasn't my imagination."

"Hmmm..." he pondered. "Maybe the ma.s.s inside the dog isn't a tumor at all, but an object. It might be radiating something, or you might have felt a magnetic pull. Were you wearing any metallic jewelry on your hands?"

"No. I didn't have jewelry on at all. Not even earrings."

"And the vet is going to let you know what she finds?"

"Yeah. Dr. Kristy promised to call right after the surgery. I thought about going out there, but I have my appointment in the afternoon."

"Ah, the therapist... You sure you don't need a ride?"

"I'm sure," I said with a smile. "Bryan, you don't have to be so nice to me just because my sister died. I mean, I appreciate your help and concern. You're about the only person I can really talk to right now, but I don't want you to go out of your way because you think you have to take care of me."

"Do you really think I'm just being nice to you because your sister died?"

The way he said it made me feel badly for even bringing it up. "I guess not. But...well...why are you being so nice to me? There are a lot of other kids in the school that you could be friends with who would be much better company than I am right now."

"I don't want other company. I want your company."

My breath caught in my chest and my brain froze for a comeback.

"I'll have my cell with me all day tomorrow," he continued. "If you want to get a hold of me during school, just text, alright? I'll talk to you soon. Sweet dreams."

I held the phone to my chest long after the line disconnected.

Chapter 12.

By the time Dr. Kristy phoned at noon the next day, I'd caught my school work up in three subjects and was feeling pretty good. Hearing the doctor's voice -a mixture of intelligence and bedside kindness, which she used even when having the most mundane of conversations -brought back my concern for the little dog.

"How is she? How's Lucy?" I asked, my voice cracking a bit.

"Lucy's going to be just fine. She's still groggy from the anesthesia, and she'll have to wear an e-collar on her neck for the next couple of weeks, but she should be up and running around in no time."

"What was it?"

"Well, there was a ma.s.s on her right lung. I was able to remove it completely. I'll have to wait for the pathology to be completed before we'll know if it was malignant or benign, but I have high hopes. Lucy is only three years old, so even if it's cancer and we have to do chemo, she has a very good chance at a normal life."

A bit of the weight resting on my shoulders lifted.

"Cady," Dr. Kristy's tone turned hesitant, "I still would like to know how you were able to feel the tumor. Mark and I are going to do some research on it. I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all. I'm curious too. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before."

"Good. I'll let you know what we come up with."

After hanging up the phone, I showered and got ready for my appointment. What did one wear to see a psychologist? Would the doctor form opinions about me based on my clothing choices? You know, some sort of fas.h.i.+on Rorschach test? I wished I knew what kind of clothes crazy people wore so I could avoid them. I decided to go as safe as possible -dark jeans, an olive-green sweater and my hair slicked back into a ponytail.

When I finished, I walked quietly down the hallway to my mother's bedroom. If she wanted to go with me to my appointment, she'd have to start getting ready. I rapped at the door softly.

"Mom?" I called. There was no answer. "Mom, are you coming to my appointment with me?"

"Wha...?" she said groggily.

I opened the door and stepped inside. "Mom, if you want to come with me to the grief therapist -" I couldn't finish my thought. Sadness dropped on me like an iron anvil falling on Wile E. Coyote in the old Looney Tunes cartoons. My palms went clammy and my pulse jumped. My heart broke in my chest all over again. I rubbed my eyes to keep the tears from spouting.

With great effort, my mother propped herself up on the edge of the bed. Her hair was a nest of tangles, greasy from lack of was.h.i.+ng. On her night stand were several prescription bottles and an empty bottle of Gray Goose vodka. Not. Good. The room stunk of neglect and depression. What was it about this room that sent me into an emotional spiral? I'd felt fine two minutes ago. Now, I couldn't get my hands to stop shaking.

"Cady, hun, can you run a bath for me?" my mom asked. She was bent at the waist with her elbows propped on her knees. She rubbed her eyes with her fists so hard I worried for her corneas.

Steeling my shoulders, I pushed through the gloom. I didn't have time today for a breakdown. Forcing one reluctant foot in front of the other, I made my way to the bathroom. I plugged the tub and turned on the hot water, dumping a heaping dose of bubble bath into the swirling water, sending the scent of cuc.u.mber and melon swirling around the room with the steam.

I sat down on the closed toilet lid. The gloom was less intense in here, but no less depressing. Dirty pajamas and underwear were balled up in a heap behind the door. The towels were soiled and spots of water dotted on the mirror. These things just didn't happen in my mother's house.