The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(100)
“Please,” Dorothy pleaded. “I need to finish what we’ve started.”
Dr. Shedhorn shook her head as she took Dorothy’s hands. “There’s something you need to know. Even if I could treat you right now, even if the weather was all blue skies and rainbows, I can’t. Or at least I shouldn’t. Because your partner, Louis, sent over a court order halting your medical care, pending an investigation and an audit. How he got it done so quickly, I’ll never know, but he must have a very good lawyer.”
Louise. Dorothy angered.
“Can’t you do anything? We’re not even married.”
“I’m afraid I can’t risk it. While that court order is most likely meaningless and it’s laughable that he’s trying to stop you from receiving private medical care because that’s entirely your business, if something were to go wrong while you were in my care, especially if I were to be reckless and treat you on a night like this.” Dr. Shedhorn inhaled through clenched teeth. “Dorothy, as you know, the work I’m doing is still in the early, experimental, data-gathering stages. Becoming part of a drawn-out legal battle would slow down the progress I’m making with my other patients. And that’s not even factoring in the bad PR, or the scrutiny that might follow. I fly under the radar on purpose so I can be free to help people. I have agency here and I have to protect that.”
Dorothy pulled her hands away.
“But what I can do is this,” Dr. Shedhorn said as she walked to her office and returned with a plastic prescription bottle. “These are very low doses of the light-reactive protein and neurostimulant that we use during treatment. It’s an analog of what we give you intravenously. This is not a substitute by any means, okay? But it should keep your progress from backsliding. The neurons in your brain will be mildly stimulated, but relaxed, and without optic stimulation to fire latent engrams you shouldn’t be troubled by new memories. It won’t be anything like a real treatment. This is just a stopgap, a placeholder if you will. Think of it as tapering off a mood stabilizer by taking a smaller dose. Take these once a day, twice if things get worse. They’ll keep you from losing the progress we’ve made, and it should flatten any residual mnemonic atavisms.”
Dorothy regarded the pills, then the doctor. “I have no idea what you just said.”
Dr. Shedhorn smiled. “Let’s just say it’ll keep the loose ends from fraying until we can weave them back together in a full session, okay?”
Dorothy was disappointed but nodded out of politeness.
The bottle might as well have been filled with placebos, sugar pills, wishes and kisses goodbye. The bottle looked weak and insubstantial compared to the advanced technology used in an actual session, wired in, monitored, connected to an IV, beneath an array of optics, under the doctor’s direct care. The small capsules were like finger-sized Band-Aids for her gaping chest wound.
“Thank you,” Dorothy said, even though inside she felt like screaming. Even with the weight of her disappointment she was grateful for all that Dr. Shedhorn had done for her. She hoped the doctor’s research would continue after the typhoon, unabated. She hoped she’d be able to return to Epigenesis, to resume her treatments, with or without the legal challenges of Louis and his mother. But a part of her knew that idea was folly. The treatments gave her strength of will, clarity, but in that clarity Dorothy understood that hope was less easy to sustain. Louise would fight for Annabel. She’d use Greta, the tumultuous childhood Dorothy endured, her lack of employment, and the treatments, which were so far removed from traditional medicine—she’d turn those things into weapons—she’d use Dorothy’s own history against her, and in all likelihood, Louise would win. That’s when Dorothy heard the drumbeat of the rain on the roof turn into waves of hammering as a squall had reached the city.
She didn’t blink. For once she felt at peace, at home in the storm.
Sometimes bad weather is a good thing, Dorothy thought. It tears down what’s weak and forces you to rebuild something stronger, with a lasting permanence.
She stood and went to shake the doctor’s hand.
Dr. Shedhorn gave her a hug instead. She smelled like wool and wildflowers. “It’s going to be okay, Dorothy. Now go take care of your daughter.”
* * *
Outside, Dorothy stood clutching the pills in her coat pocket as gusts of wind shredded umbrellas and tipped over garbage cans. Their contents of recycled coffee cups and fast-food wrappers swirled like angry bees from a smashed hive. Street signs and billboards wobbled. She hung on to the plastic bottle as if it were a steel railing atop the rim of a bottomless canyon and she was staring down into the void. She twitched, wanting to take the meds now, even if their efficacy was only palliative.
Dorothy walked to the nearest subway station and heard sirens wailing in the distance, cars honking impatiently in the bumper-to-bumper traffic as people fled for higher ground. Amid the chaos, Dorothy didn’t just wish for shelter, she wished for a quiet place where she could be alone. Free from worry or distraction or the possibility of interruption. A place where she could collect her scattered thoughts, gather her kaleidoscope of memories, and take the prescribed medicine without the risk of burdening those around her, or being completely vulnerable. She couldn’t go home, that was certain. She didn’t have an office anymore. While Graham and Clarke were dear to her, she felt guilty asking for more hospitality than she’d already been given, and if she lost her mind completely like her mother, Dorothy preferred to do so without company and definitely not in the presence of Annabel. She walked, holding the hood of her raincoat in place, weighing the possibility of going to a shelter for the night, or a hotel if one was available, or simply taking a train as far away as she could go. But she knew the trains would stop running soon and the power, in all likelihood, would fail. Being stranded somewhere underground, in the darkness—surrounded by strangers with only her thoughts and echoes to keep her company—seemed like a recipe for madness.