Home To You

It seemed the best choice. “That sounds great, Mary.”

Josh shifted the woman on the sofa and lifted her. “Lead the way.”

Chapter Three

Dark shadows surrounded her and she knew the dream was starting again. No amount of liquor could keep the demons at bay. And as the deep dark recesses parted and the fog swirled away from around her, she knew what was coming. As a spectator in a theater seat, she watched the past play out before her once again.

It started out the same every time. She was falling down the set of stairs, falling, grasping for the handrail. She’d been fine, laughing with her friend, and then had simply missed a step. Or she’d thought that was it.

Shouts sounded and people came running. One of her co-workers helped her up. But she couldn’t stand. She must have hurt her leg.

Her boss gave her the rest of the day off.

She went home and took a hot bath.

She’d thought a hot bath would help her pain, ease the aches of the fall, but it hadn’t.

Instead of getting better, she found she couldn’t get out of the tub.

Panic ensued. But in the dream the water was drowning her, pulling her down below the rim, in the tub, alone, with no help.

The water had eventually chilled and slowly her leg had started working; gradually the water released its death hold on her.

Trembling, she’d pulled herself out of the tub and managed to get to her bed.

Falling onto the soft white sheets, she thought to sleep off the scare. Of course, the dream didn’t end. Instead, she saw herself decide to get up and go to work. It was unexplainably day again. Birds were singing. A soft breeze blew in the curtained window.

Mists swirled in around her, trying to block her vision of the deceptively beautiful day. As she was back at work, jokes floated off the tongues of her friends, silly jokes about her being a klutz. Her leg had gotten better and she was back, but this day, not even a month later according to the calendar on her desk, her hand was going numb.

Her boss, Rob, was standing there, waiting on a report, saying it was about time she got some rest, when he noticed she’d stopped typing.

Her arm burned, burned from shoulder to elbow, and her fingers didn’t want to work. Flames were leaping from her arm.

Cold crept up her spine, extinguishing the flames, but not before her boss saw them.

He insisted she take the day off and go to the doctor. That was it. He didn’t try to put the flames out or comment on them, just told her to go see a physician.

He forced her toward the door, grabbing her arm, shoving at her. She stepped toward his office and right into the ER.

The three days of testing played like a video on fast-forward. And they were very true to what had really happened.

There was the doctor. Then radiology.

A spinal tap.

There were machines hooked up to her that made her muscles jump and dance. Her arms and legs looked like a caricature of Pinocchio when he danced.

And then she was sitting in the doctor’s office, those strings still on her, moving her arms and legs…until he told her the diagnosis.

The verdict.

The strings fell off.

Shock stunned her speechless.

Her grandmother appeared, in her wheelchair next to her, her voice like the teacher’s on Charlie Brown, there but indistinguishable. The only sound she could make out was that of her grandmother’s anger as she swung a stick at her and then cackled with glee.

It wasn’t thought to be hereditary, the doctor had told her—but then he didn’t know about her grandmother. He couldn’t see her grandmother laughing at her.

Why couldn’t he?

She looked from him to her grandmother and back.

They didn’t know what caused it.

She felt hysterical laughter bubbling up in her.

He asked her if she was okay then told her they needed to talk about the next steps.

But she knew there was no treatment. Just look at her horrible grandmother!

Her hateful, wheelchair-bound grandmother who loved to hit her with a stick and who taunted and tormented her mother and father until Daddy had left and Mother had finally moved to the city to try to make enough money for them to survive.

What was she going to do?

The scene changed and pictures started moving faster and faster through her mind.

She was at work, but only for a month.

She was trying to type, but crying instead.

She heard the whispers, saw the looks. It wasn’t good for business for her to be seen like that.

Just a drink to help get her through the stares, to help her forget what the doctor had told her.

She saw herself hitting the answering machine over and over, erasing messages from the doctor’s office.

Why wouldn’t they leave her alone?

She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t work.

And then Rob had let her go.

Oh, he’d been nice about it. He’d told her if she got her act together, to give him a call. She saw the smile on his face, that fake smile, painted on much like a clown’s face.

And she realized she was already changing. She wasn’t like she was before. Nice, carefree, fun-loving. No, she was changing into the monster of her past—her grandmother.

She couldn’t think about it.