Household Gods

It wasn’t likely Nicole would ever learn the answer to that. She couldn’t afford to dwell on it. Not in front of this dangerously perceptive woman. She put on a brisk front. “Since I am here and conscious again, how do I go about getting out?” she asked.

Dr. Feldman frowned. “You’ll stay for at least another day or two. We’ll want to run more tests on you, to make sure there is no risk of a recurrence.”

“How do you propose to do that, when you don’t know what caused the trouble in the first place?” Nicole wanted to know.

The doctor looked stubborn. Nicole’s teeth clicked together. The last thing she needed was for Dr. Feldman to think she was questioning anybody’s competence. And – if Nicole hadn’t known what had happened to her, she would have been demanding tests, not complaining about them.

“All right,” she said. “I suppose you’d better. But could I have some breakfast first? And I’ll want to get on the phone, let people know I’m okay.”

“I don’t see either of those things being a problem,” Dr. Feldman said. She looked pleased with herself, now that she’d got her own way, and subtly reassured, now that Nicole was acting like what she was: a brisk young lawyer and single mother. “I’m going to order you the soft breakfast, since you’ve been on intravenous fluids since your admission. If you handle it without upset, you can have a normal lunch. Let me phone Dietary, and it should be up in half an hour or so. It’s very good to have you back with us.”

“It’s very good to be back,” Nicole said, most sincerely.

The neurologist prodded her and poked her and listened to her heart and checked her reflexes and peered into her eyes and nose and mouth and ears. “Everything seems to check out,” she said, sounding almost reluctant to admit it. “But if everything is as normal as it looks, what happened to you?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Nicole said. Breakfast came up just then, right on the half-hour: oatmeal, a medium-boiled egg, and a square of blue hospital gelatin, industrial strength like the sheets, thicker and tougher than she would ever have made at home. Nicole had no idea what flavor it was supposed to be. She didn’t care. She inhaled it. She inhaled every scrap on that white plastic plate, and would have inhaled the plate if she could have got away with it. There was only one bobble: forgetting, and trying to eat with her fingers. She covered for it quickly, picked up the spoon and dove into the oatmeal.

Dr. Feldman watched her with a good measure of bemusement. “How does that feel?” she asked.

“Wonderful!” she answered, wiping her mouth – on the napkin, at the last instant, and not on her arm. She felt like asking for another tray just like this one. But she didn’t think Dr. Feldman would let her have it. She’d been this hungry in Carnuntum, and more. She kept quiet.

Dr. Feldman said, “I’m going to set up another CAT scan and MRI and some more diagnostic procedures for you, Ms. Gunther-Perrin. While I’m doing that, you can go ahead and use the telephone.”

In the way doctors have, she spoke as if she were granting a great boon. Which she was. She had no idea how great it was. She took it all, all the technology, the tests, the telephone, completely for granted. Nicole didn’t, not anymore. How long would it be, she wondered, before the novelty palled? Dr. Feldman went out as she’d come in, brisk, bright, and competent. With a sigh of pure pleasure, Nicole picked up the phone. Its smooth plastic was cool in her hand, its shape familiar, its weight, the buzz of the dial tone as she held it to her ear.

She sat for a long while with the receiver to her ear. Number – what was the number? She held down panic. It was somewhere in her mind, unused, filed away. But she hadn’t forgotten it. Of course she hadn’t.

There. There it was, right in her fingertips. She punched in the numbers, and held her breath. If she’d remembered it wrong, or forgotten it altogether, and had to ask – they’d start doubting her sanity again. She couldn’t have that. She’d never slipped up enough to get in real trouble, back in Carnuntum. There was no way she was going to slip up here.

The first ring startled her half out of her skin. Her fingers clenched on the receiver before she dropped it.

The ringing went on. After the fourth ring, the answering machine would pick up. But just at the end of number four, the ring broke off. A breathless female voice said, “Hello?”

Nicole’s mouth twisted. She’d been expecting Frank, if she didn’t just get the machine. But of course it would be Dawn.

Well, no help for it. “Dawn?” she said. “Dawn, this is Nicole. I’m calling from the hospital.”

“Nicole!” Of all the things Nicole had expected, she hadn’t expected this rush of gratitude and relief. “I’m so glad to hear your voice. How are you?”