Relativity (12 page)

“Mum, I feel really sleepy.”

“Do you want me to get a doctor?”

“Just don't leave again.”

Ethan fell asleep. His eyes shut and his lips parted. Claire looked at her son's face with a saturated wonder, that same awe she'd felt on seeing him for the first time. Doctors came and went. On the other side of the curtain, Alison's parents spoke at length to another neurologist.

Claire felt light-headed; her stomach creaked. It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn't eaten for over a day. Downstairs, she bought a sandwich from the cafeteria in the main building of the hospital campus. Two bites was all she could stomach; its texture was difficult to swallow, the tasteless bread like paste stuck inside her mouth.

Across the cafeteria, dozens of faces were lit blue by tiny screens. Claire took her cell phone out of her handbag, switched it back on, and glanced quickly at her unanswered emails. As she scrolled, the screen went black and the phone began to vibrate in her hand. She dismissed the call and flicked her phone silent. She couldn't deal with speaking to anyone right now. But they rang again. And again. Unknown number. She answered.

“Hello?”

For a second, Claire couldn't identify the voice, couldn't place that tone or pitch. She knew it—it was familiar like a radio presenter, an old forgotten friend—but her ears couldn't decode the sounds.

“Claire,” the caller said. “It's me.”

The way he said her name provoked a physical reaction, like lightning striking her nerves. Claire couldn't feel her skin. Maybe she was sleep-deprived, hallucinating. This was impossible; his timing was unbearable. After all these years, why now?

“Mark?”

“Please don't hang up. I really need to talk to you, Claire. I've been trying to get in touch with you for weeks. Figured you were probably ignoring me.” His voice was rushed and strained.

“What do you want?”

“Did you get my letter?”

She spoke softly into the phone. “I didn't read it.”

“Right,” he said. “Of course not. Anyway, I wanted to speak to you because my father has stage-four cancer.”

She waited for Mark to continue but the other end of the line went dead. “Hello? Are you still there?”

“Claire, Dad's asked to see him.”

“Ethan?” She stood up and walked her cafeteria tray to the trash. What if he'd woken up again and she wasn't by his bedside? She'd promised her son she wouldn't leave again; she needed to go back upstairs. “This isn't a good time. I can't talk now.”

“Wait, just hear me out for a second. Dad doesn't have much time left. Couple of weeks, at best. So I'm here, I'm back in Sydney. Maybe we should talk about this in person.”

“Mark, I don't know.” Claire threw the rest of her sandwich away. She hadn't seen him for almost a decade—not since the trial, not since he'd spent four years in prison—and she wanted to keep it that way. After never hearing from him again, she'd assumed Mark wanted that too. Exposing herself, following years of quarantine, had the potential to destroy her immunity to him. “I have to go.”

“How about Monday? Tuesday? Claire, please. All this time, I've left you alone because I thought that's what you needed. I've never asked you for anything before.”

She heard the urgency in his voice; it sparked an unwanted flash of sympathy. If only Claire felt nothing for Mark, if only she'd figured out how to be impartial, detached. She wished speaking to him was insignificant, that listening to his voice left her unmoved. Her sensitivity was disappointing; she hoped that by now she'd have grown more callous and cold. Despite the pain Mark caused, Claire couldn't bring herself to be cruel to him.

“Maybe Tuesday.”

“Thank you. Just let me know the time and place.”

“I really need to go now.” Claire switched her cell off without saying good-bye, and buried it in her bag. Her head felt tender, her vision sharpening as she collected herself again. She closed her eyes and sighed. It was the deepest sigh, which seemed to contain a universe, releasing twelve years in one breath.

Ω

“WHAT'S YOUR STAR SIGN?”
Alison asked. She was reading a glossy magazine, lying on her stomach on her bed, legs swinging in the air.

“I don't know,” Ethan whispered, not wanting to wake his mum, who was asleep in the chair beside him.

“When's your birthday?”

“Didn't you already memorize my clipboard?”

“Oh yeah!” Alison said brightly. “You're a Leo. See?” She showed him an image of a roaring lion. “Leos are energetic but opinionated. I'm an Aquarius. My horoscope says the sun's move through my chart means I need to take it slow.”

Ethan laughed. “That's stupid. It doesn't mean anything. Doesn't make sense.”

Alison looked up from the magazine. “Typical Leo,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Come on, it's just a bit of fun. Want me to read yours?”

“I guess.”

“Leo, you are bursting with positive energy today. You need to shake things up to ensure that you're in the right place. Tonight, you're the ultimate wingman for a friend who will need cheering up. Help them get back out there again.” She looked up. “That must be me.”

Ethan was quiet. Horoscopes were silly. He hauled himself out of bed; the floor felt cold on his feet. He walked toward the wide hospital window and looked outside. It was a clear night; the sky was almost black. Alison put the magazine down and joined him.

“Star signs are constellations,” Ethan said.

“Constellations?” Alison repeated.

“Groups of stars that make a picture. See those stars over there? In the shape of a kite? Just below those brighter ones?”

Alison searched the night sky. “Yeah.”

“That's the Southern Cross.”

“Like on the flag.”

“It's the smallest constellation. People used to use it for navigating because it points south. There are eighty-eight official constellations altogether. Signs of the zodiac are pictures in the sky like that too. Leo and Aquarius are constellations.”

Alison squinted at him. “Why do you know so much about stars?”

“My mum bought me a star map. I think they're interesting.”

“Tell me something else about them.” She put her palm against the window.

“Did you know that the heavier a star is, the more brightly it will shine?”

“Really?” Alison widened her eyes. “That's beautiful.”

“Can you see that really bright star over there? That's Sirius, the dog star. The brightest in the whole sky. It's nearly twice as heavy as the sun and twenty-five times brighter.” Ethan tilted his head. “They're all so far away. I wish we were up there. Light-years from here.”

Alison stared at Sirius. “Light-years?”

“How fast light travels in a year. So if a star is one hundred light-years away, then it takes one hundred years for the light to reach us on Earth. Delta Crucis, the faintest star in the Southern Cross, is 364 light years away.”

“Wow, 364 years,” she whispered. “The light we're looking at now is so old.”

“Yeah, really old.”

In that one sky, Ethan realized that he could see all of history connected to right now; ancient light from time and spaces he couldn't ever visit. Suddenly he felt really small. How could he ever understand what was happening now when the universe was so big it took hundreds and thousands of years for something as simple as light to get here?

Alison took Ethan by the hand. Her palm was soft and warm. They stood there together by the hospital window and Ethan pointed out the patterns of constellations in the sky. Perseus, Pegasus, Canis Major, Cetus. They all made a picture, told a story. Pinpricks of light united by their mythology; distant balls of gas fused into a sea monster, a giant dog, and a flying horse—the astral sum of their parts.

Nothing was as beautiful to Ethan as the constellations. A single star was difficult to find, but when they were grouped together they shined brighter. Each star reached out to the others, wanted to be part of a bigger group, a constellation. Every star ached to belong.

Dr. Saunders had said nonaccidental head injury had a constellation of symptoms but that word didn't fit. Ethan gazed up at that infinite stretch of space—the fixed and wandering stars, the galaxies, the known universe—searching for something. But he wasn't sure what it was.

Then he saw it. The reflection of his face in the window, mirrored against the luminous stars. The constellation Ethan. Made up of his symptoms, his ancient stars: bleeding in the brain, blood in his eyes, swelling in the brain. All those things had happened to him. They made a picture, told a story. His story.

Alison squeezed his hand as Ethan started to cry.

E
THAN WOKE UP
to find his mum asleep beside him. The elevated hospital bed was just wide enough to support them both. She was having dark blue dreams—Ethan could see them—like bubbles of midnight floating above her head. He stuck out a finger and popped one. The dream burst. Mum opened her eyes. They were exactly the same color as the sky, clear and bright; Ethan's eyes were the same. Except like the sky, they didn't have a real color: no blue pigment, just a trick of the scattering light.

After breakfast, the doctors did their rounds. Dr. Saunders entered the room with a pile of x-rays and scans. He held one up to the overhead light and pointed. “Ethan, this is your brain.”

It reminded Ethan of a piece of lettuce, with its thick stem, crinkly texture, and irregular shape—salad tossed inside his head. Dark and shiny on the transparent paper, his brain looked faraway. It didn't feel like part of his body.

Ethan waved. “Hi, brain.”

“This is the axial view. You can see both hemispheres from this angle. Here's the area of white matter, the scar, on the right side. Based on your latest MRI, there doesn't seem to be any swelling, which is good news.” The doctor put the scan down. “It also looks as though you had what we call a partial seizure. That means it arose from only one area of your brain, not both sides. And partial seizure activity only sometimes causes the sort of attack you had the other day. A generalized convulsion.”

Alison chimed in. “I have those too,” she said enthusiastically. “They're called grand mal seizures. They're French.” She placed her finger below her nose like a moustache and put on a fake French accent. “
Excusez-moi
, doctor, but I 'ad zee big bad seizure.”

Ethan smiled. It was nice to see Alison be silly again. The previous night, she'd had a fit in her bed—freezing suddenly, hips raised, wailing like an injured animal—and he'd never seen anything like that before. It looked like a horror movie, like Alison was possessed. When she finally woke up, she forgot where she was and yelled wildly at her father. Ethan had pretended to be asleep until she'd calmed down.

“In Alison's case,” Dr. Saunders said, “she has abnormal electrical activity in both halves of her brain. Left and right. We call that primary generalized epilepsy. What you experienced, Ethan, was a secondary generalized seizure immediately following a partial seizure. A burst of electrical activity in one focal area spread throughout the entire brain.”

Mum stared at the small picture of Ethan's brain, surveying every twist and turn in his gray matter. She looked like she might cry. “Is it going to happen again?” she asked the doctor. “How do we stop the seizures from coming back?”

“I can't make any guarantees that they won't recur,” Dr. Saunders said. “But I want to try two things as part of his treatment. Firstly, Ethan needs to continue taking the anticonvulsants we've been administering here in hospital. One tablet in the morning and another at night.” The doctor turned to face Ethan. “Do you think you can do that?”

Ethan looked at his mum. “Okay.”

“Good,” Dr. Saunders said. “It might make you feel queasy for a while, but we'll keep an eye on it. I've written a prescription that your mother can collect from the hospital pharmacist before you leave.”

“What's the other thing?” Ethan asked.

“I want you to come see me in my clinic. Once a week. This is the phone number,” the doctor said, handing Mum a business card. “Call my secretary and she'll make an appointment for you. Mention that you're an outpatient here and we can get you in sooner. There's usually a wait for appointments at this time of year.”

“Once a week?”

“Something unusual seems to be happening in your brain, Ethan. I'm not entirely sure what it is yet, but I'd like to find out. As I'm sure you would too.”

Mum tensed up. “Unusual? What's wrong?”

“To be honest, I don't know,” Dr. Saunders said. “Because Ethan's brain was injured so early in his life, his neurological development has been unconventional. From the diagnostics we've done here, it looks as though Ethan rewired his brain. He's using areas that aren't usually activated, probably to compensate for the injury to this lobe. Storing information in new places. This happens because of something called neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to fix itself, and it's nothing short of extraordinary. It could take some time to figure out the long-term effects of all this rewiring.”