the_siobhan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_siobhan) wrote2008-11-02 01:24 am
the_siobhan) wrote2008-11-02 01:24 am
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Chapter Four of Changeling
Had to go outside and walk around the block to get my sciatica to stop complaining about being sat on for so long. That would be NaDruWaNi.
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the_axel is doing NaDruTVWaNi and theonebob is doing NaDruGuiHeNi. And NaDruMarNi has been strongly advised to cincinnatus_c_. Hee.
I staggered home from school under the weight of every text book the school owned. I sat at the dining room table and leafed through them one by one. I didn't imagine it would take me long to get caught up, none of it seemed terribly difficult. But it was so brain-achingly dull. Mr Short taught history and the textbook for his class was full of stories of skirmishes and British Lords and formal proclamations. I knew there were drunken revolutionaries and frontier towns full of prostitutes and bootleggers, but none of them dared darken the pages of an Ontario School Board textbook. And if they could turn history into something as flat and lifeless as a beached flounder the other subjects didn't stand a chance.
I was unsurprised to find out that my parents normally got home long after we got home from school. We snacked on cookies and pop and watched a lot of television. The CBC After School Special instructed us that being jealous when mom has a new baby is perfectly normal but that you will be smitten with the Love when you actually see the little nipper.
"I remember when you came home from the hospital," I told my baby sister. "You looked like a monkey." She threw a cookie at me.
My parents spent a long time upstairs once they got home. I heard them whispering in the bedroom when I went upstairs to pee. So I wasn't particularly taken by surprise when they sat me down and told me that they had received a call from somebody from my school. Or that my mother had made an appointment with one of the doctors associated with her hospital. A neurologist.
School continued to be weird. The teachers didn't seem to be sure how to deal with me at first, but they relaxed once I started getting caught up.
News of my "condition" traveled through the student body in about a day. I figured it was office staff gossiping in front of students; assuming that being young and in trouble translated to deaf and stupid. A trio of girls approached me before class one day.
"I hear you got brain damage." The speaker was thin and tough-looking, chewing her contraband gum and tossing shaggy black hair out of her eyes. Her friends were glued to her side, looking at me with an expression identical to hunger.
I closed the book I was reading. "Something like that," I said. I focused on a point in the air somewhere between the three of them. I couldn't see any of them clearly but I would know right away if one of them threw a punch. Peripheral vision is more sensitive to movement. I thought. I had no idea how I knew that.
"So you don't remember anything. You're like, retarded now." The two friends giggled.
"I don't remember anything completely. I have bits and pieces." I let the retarded comment slide.
"You don't remember me?"
"No. I don't remember you."
"You sure you don't remember me? 'Cause I'm your best friend."
I focused on her face again. Apparently this was only intended to be a mind fuck this time. All three of them were grinning at me. I could easily picture them with their tongues hanging out, lolling between double rows of fangs.
"You're my best friend?" I repeated. "So why the hell didn't you come and visit me when I was lying in bed with a brain hemorrhage? Some best friend you are."
All three of them cracked up and then the teacher came into the room and they went back to their seats.
The day of my appointment meant getting out of going to school for the day. My mother didn't go to work that day either. Instead we got on the subway together and traveled to the west end of the city where the doctor's office was located.
The subway trip took us all the way across town. As we passed through the centre of town a couple of dwarfs got on. There was no place for them to sit so they ended up standing close to where we were seated. I eyed them curiously. They were dressed in what were obviously their work clothes, pale with concrete dust. They looked strong, with short muscled limbs and thick torsos. They leaned their bearded heads together and talked in a language I couldn't parse or identify. One of them caught me looking at him and when I met his gaze he gave me a long slow wink.
The clinic was a bus ride from the station. I stared out the window at the stores and houses on the side of the road that started looking more and more familiar as we traveled. I started seeing coffee shops and restaurants and art galleries superimposed over the diners and pawn shops and smoke shops. We got off the bus in front of an old warehouse; I watched as the windows flicker back and forth from dark and grease-encrusted squares to brightly lit open panes with curtains and plants plainly visible. I stumbled as we walked to the hospital doors, my feet unable to track the path that flickered in and out of my vision.
The neurologist started out by asking me my name. I got it wrong as usual, and then quickly corrected myself. He made a note in his book.
The questions continued. They grew more general. "Who is the Prime Minister of Canada?" he asked me.
"Pierre Trudeau" I said confidently. I paused. "Unless it's Joe Clark?" The doctor looked over his glasses at me. "No, no, that hasn't happened yet," I amended. "It's still Trudeau." The doctor made another note.
After the interview the doctor took my temperature and my blood pressure and shone an light in my eyes. His nurses took blood. I was directed to hold a lead apron and stand in front of an x-ray machine. I perched in on a yellow vinyl chair while the doctor called my mother into his office. As soon as the door was closed I leaped up to lean my ear against the door. I heard the words, "Personality change?" and then my mother saying, "Oh God yes."
I was sitting back on the chair when they opened the door to call me inside. They would need to do more tests, the doctor informed me seriously. I was booked for future appointments.
We waited under a smooth purple sky for the bus that would take us home. I surreptitiously watched one of the other passengers. He had the long narrow head of an animal, his eyes set far back in the sides of his skull. Tufts of fine fawn hair emerged from his collar and cuffs. He looked tired and nervous, shuffling from one foot to the other and adjusting his knapsack over and over again. He looked hungry. I wished I had an apple to give him.
He curled into a back seat in the bus, folding quietly into himself. When we disembarked at the station he leaped easily over the other passengers and disappeared down the stairs to the trains.
I resolved to take the subway more often.
the_axel is doing NaDruTVWaNi and theonebob is doing NaDruGuiHeNi. And NaDruMarNi has been strongly advised to cincinnatus_c_. Hee.I staggered home from school under the weight of every text book the school owned. I sat at the dining room table and leafed through them one by one. I didn't imagine it would take me long to get caught up, none of it seemed terribly difficult. But it was so brain-achingly dull. Mr Short taught history and the textbook for his class was full of stories of skirmishes and British Lords and formal proclamations. I knew there were drunken revolutionaries and frontier towns full of prostitutes and bootleggers, but none of them dared darken the pages of an Ontario School Board textbook. And if they could turn history into something as flat and lifeless as a beached flounder the other subjects didn't stand a chance.
I was unsurprised to find out that my parents normally got home long after we got home from school. We snacked on cookies and pop and watched a lot of television. The CBC After School Special instructed us that being jealous when mom has a new baby is perfectly normal but that you will be smitten with the Love when you actually see the little nipper.
"I remember when you came home from the hospital," I told my baby sister. "You looked like a monkey." She threw a cookie at me.
My parents spent a long time upstairs once they got home. I heard them whispering in the bedroom when I went upstairs to pee. So I wasn't particularly taken by surprise when they sat me down and told me that they had received a call from somebody from my school. Or that my mother had made an appointment with one of the doctors associated with her hospital. A neurologist.
School continued to be weird. The teachers didn't seem to be sure how to deal with me at first, but they relaxed once I started getting caught up.
News of my "condition" traveled through the student body in about a day. I figured it was office staff gossiping in front of students; assuming that being young and in trouble translated to deaf and stupid. A trio of girls approached me before class one day.
"I hear you got brain damage." The speaker was thin and tough-looking, chewing her contraband gum and tossing shaggy black hair out of her eyes. Her friends were glued to her side, looking at me with an expression identical to hunger.
I closed the book I was reading. "Something like that," I said. I focused on a point in the air somewhere between the three of them. I couldn't see any of them clearly but I would know right away if one of them threw a punch. Peripheral vision is more sensitive to movement. I thought. I had no idea how I knew that.
"So you don't remember anything. You're like, retarded now." The two friends giggled.
"I don't remember anything completely. I have bits and pieces." I let the retarded comment slide.
"You don't remember me?"
"No. I don't remember you."
"You sure you don't remember me? 'Cause I'm your best friend."
I focused on her face again. Apparently this was only intended to be a mind fuck this time. All three of them were grinning at me. I could easily picture them with their tongues hanging out, lolling between double rows of fangs.
"You're my best friend?" I repeated. "So why the hell didn't you come and visit me when I was lying in bed with a brain hemorrhage? Some best friend you are."
All three of them cracked up and then the teacher came into the room and they went back to their seats.
The day of my appointment meant getting out of going to school for the day. My mother didn't go to work that day either. Instead we got on the subway together and traveled to the west end of the city where the doctor's office was located.
The subway trip took us all the way across town. As we passed through the centre of town a couple of dwarfs got on. There was no place for them to sit so they ended up standing close to where we were seated. I eyed them curiously. They were dressed in what were obviously their work clothes, pale with concrete dust. They looked strong, with short muscled limbs and thick torsos. They leaned their bearded heads together and talked in a language I couldn't parse or identify. One of them caught me looking at him and when I met his gaze he gave me a long slow wink.
The clinic was a bus ride from the station. I stared out the window at the stores and houses on the side of the road that started looking more and more familiar as we traveled. I started seeing coffee shops and restaurants and art galleries superimposed over the diners and pawn shops and smoke shops. We got off the bus in front of an old warehouse; I watched as the windows flicker back and forth from dark and grease-encrusted squares to brightly lit open panes with curtains and plants plainly visible. I stumbled as we walked to the hospital doors, my feet unable to track the path that flickered in and out of my vision.
The neurologist started out by asking me my name. I got it wrong as usual, and then quickly corrected myself. He made a note in his book.
The questions continued. They grew more general. "Who is the Prime Minister of Canada?" he asked me.
"Pierre Trudeau" I said confidently. I paused. "Unless it's Joe Clark?" The doctor looked over his glasses at me. "No, no, that hasn't happened yet," I amended. "It's still Trudeau." The doctor made another note.
After the interview the doctor took my temperature and my blood pressure and shone an light in my eyes. His nurses took blood. I was directed to hold a lead apron and stand in front of an x-ray machine. I perched in on a yellow vinyl chair while the doctor called my mother into his office. As soon as the door was closed I leaped up to lean my ear against the door. I heard the words, "Personality change?" and then my mother saying, "Oh God yes."
I was sitting back on the chair when they opened the door to call me inside. They would need to do more tests, the doctor informed me seriously. I was booked for future appointments.
We waited under a smooth purple sky for the bus that would take us home. I surreptitiously watched one of the other passengers. He had the long narrow head of an animal, his eyes set far back in the sides of his skull. Tufts of fine fawn hair emerged from his collar and cuffs. He looked tired and nervous, shuffling from one foot to the other and adjusting his knapsack over and over again. He looked hungry. I wished I had an apple to give him.
He curled into a back seat in the bus, folding quietly into himself. When we disembarked at the station he leaped easily over the other passengers and disappeared down the stairs to the trains.
I resolved to take the subway more often.
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I think the rules should stipulate six standard drinks before you start.
/Enjoying my first wine of the weekend, so I am participating in something.
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Firstly, the G&T's were both large & strong.
Secondly, as she alluded to in a previous post, the G&T's were not the first drinks of the day. They are what she switched to when she started drunken writing.
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/Seriously. I can barely complete an LJ comment without making a typo.
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Then I must quiver in fear at her expert typing skills.
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I clearly am not drunk enough to understand any of those.
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