Transmission

“…I heard he was sick, I hope you can’t catch it…”

“…Kevin thinks he sees planets…”

The last one was the one that hurt. It made it sound as though he were going crazy. Kevin wasn’t going crazy. At least, he didn’t think he was.

Despite his best attempts to insist that he was fine, Kevin still had to go with Hal when the medic came. Had to sit in the medic’s office while he shone lights in Kevin’s eyes and asked questions about a condition so rare he obviously had no more clue than Kevin did what was going on.

“The principal wanted to see us once I was sure you were okay,” he said. “Do you feel up to walking to his office, or should we ask him to come here?”

“I can walk,” Kevin said. “I’m fine.”

“If you say so,” Hal said.

They made their way to the principal’s office, and Kevin almost wasn’t surprised to find that his mother was there. Of course they would have called her in for a medical emergency, of course she would be there if he collapsed, but that wasn’t good, not when she was supposed to be at work.

“Kevin, are you okay?” his mother asked as soon as he arrived, turning to him and drawing him into a hug. “What happened?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” Kevin said.

“Ms. McKenzie, I’m sure we wouldn’t have called you in if it weren’t serious,” the principal said. “Kevin collapsed.”

“I’m fine now,” Kevin insisted.

It didn’t seem to make any difference how many times he said that, though.

“Plus,” the principal said, “it seems that he was pretty confused when he came around. He was talking about… well, other planets.”

“Planets,” Kevin’s mother repeated. Her voice was flat when she said that.

“Ms. Kapinski says it disrupted her class quite a bit,” the principal said. He sighed. “I’m wondering if maybe Kevin might be better off staying at home for a while.”

He said it without looking at Kevin. There was a decision being made there, and although Kevin was at the heart of it, it was clear he didn’t actually get a say.

“I don’t want to miss school,” Kevin said, looking at his mother. Surely she wouldn’t want him to either.

“I think what we have to ask,” the principal said, “is if, at this point, school is really the best thing Kevin can be doing with the time he has.”

It was probably intended to be a kind way of putting it, but all it did was remind Kevin of what the doctor had said. Six months to live. It didn’t seem like enough time for anything, let alone to have a life in. Six months’ worth of seconds, each one ticking away in a steady beat that matched the countdown in his head.

“You’re saying that there’s no point to my son being in school because he’ll be dead soon anyway?” his mother snapped back. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, of course not,” the principal said, hurriedly, raising his hands to placate her.

“That’s what it sounds like you’re saying,” Kevin’s mother said. “It sounds as though you’re freaked out by my son’s illness as much as the kids here.”

“I’m saying that it’s going to be hard to teach Kevin as this gets worse,” the principal said. “We’ll try, but… don’t you want to make the most of the time you have left?”

He said that in a gentle tone that still managed to cut right to Kevin’s heart. He was saying exactly what his mother had thought, just in gentler words. The worst part was that he was right. Kevin wasn’t going to live long enough to go to college, or get a job, or do anything that he might need school to prepare for, so why bother being there.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he said, reaching out to touch her arm.

That seemed to be enough of an argument to convince his mother, and just that told Kevin how serious this all was. On any other occasion, he would have expected her to fight. Now it seemed that the fight had been sucked out of her.

They went out to the car in silence. Kevin looked back at the school. The thought hit him that he probably wouldn’t be coming back. He hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.

“I’m sorry they called you at work,” Kevin said as they sat in the car. He could feel the tension there. His mom didn’t turn the engine on, just sat.

“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just… it was getting easy to pretend that nothing was wrong.” She sounded so sad then, so deeply hurt. Kevin had gotten used to the expression that meant she was trying to keep from crying. She wasn’t succeeding.

“Are you okay, Kevin?” she asked, even though by then, he was the one holding onto her, as tightly as he could.

“I’m… I wish I didn’t have to leave school,” Kevin said. He’d never thought he would hear himself say that. He’d never thought that anyone would say that.

“We could go back in,” his mother said. “I could tell the principal that I’m going to bring you back here tomorrow, and every day after that, until…”

She broke off.

“Until it gets too bad,” Kevin said. He screwed his eyes tightly shut. “I think maybe it’s already too bad, Mom.”

He heard her hit the dashboard, the dull thud echoing around the car.

“I know,” she said. “I know and I hate it. I hate this disease that’s taking my little boy from me.”

She cried again for a little while. In spite of his attempts to stay strong, Kevin did too. It seemed to take a long time before his mother was calm enough to say anything else.

“They said you saw… planets, Kevin?” she asked.

“I saw it,” Kevin said. How could he explain what it was like? How real it was?

His mother looked over, and now Kevin had the sense of her struggling for the right words to say. Struggling to be comforting and firm and calm, all at the same time. “You get that this isn’t real, right, honey? It’s just… it’s just the disease.”

Kevin knew that he ought to understand it, but…

“It doesn’t feel like that,” Kevin said.

“I know it doesn’t,” his mother said. “And I hate that, because it’s just a reminder that my little boy is slipping away. All of this, I wish I could make it go away.”

Kevin didn’t know what to say to that. He wished it would go away too.

“It feels real,” Kevin said, even so.

His mother was quiet for a long time. When she finally spoke, her voice had the brittle, barely holding it together quality that only arrived since the diagnosis, but now had become far too familiar.

“Maybe… maybe it’s time we took you to see that psychologist.”

CHAPTER THREE

Dr. Linda Yalestrom’s office wasn’t anywhere near as medical looking as all the others Kevin had been in recently. It was her home, for one thing, in Berkeley, with the university close enough that it seemed to back up her credentials as surely as the certificates that were neatly framed on the wall.