Elevation(22)

*

He told them everything. The relief was enormous. Myra only looked puzzled, as if she hadn’t quite taken it in, but Missy was disbelieving.

“It’s not possible. People’s bodies change when they lose weight, that’s just a fact.”

Scott hesitated, then went to where she was sitting next to Deirdre on the couch. “Give me your hand. Just for a second.”

She held it out with no hesitation. Total trust. This much can’t hurt, he told himself, and hoped it was true. He had pulled Deirdre to her feet when she’d fallen, after all, and she was all right.

He took Missy’s hand and pulled. She flew up from the couch, her hair streaming out behind her and her eyes wide. He caught her to keep her from crashing into him, lifted her, set her down, and stepped back. Her knees flexed when his hands left her and weight came back into her body. Then she stood, staring at him in amazement.

“You . . . I . . . Jesus!”

“What was it like?” Doctor Bob asked. He was sitting forward in his chair, eyes bright. “Tell me!”

“It was . . . well . . . I don’t think I can.”

“Try,” he urged.

“It was a little like being on a rollercoaster when it goes over the top of the first steep hill and starts down. My stomach went up . . .” She laughed shakily, still staring at Scott. “Everything went up!”

“I tried it with Bill,” Scott said, and nodded to where his cat was currently stretched out on the brick hearth. “He freaked out. Laddered scratches up my arm in his hurry to jump down, and Bill never scratches.”

“Anything you take hold of has no weight?” Deirdre said. “Is that really true?”

Scott thought about this. He had thought about it often, and sometimes it seemed to him that what was happening to him wasn’t a phenomenon but something like a germ, or a virus.

“Living things have no weight. To them, at least, but—”

“They have weight to you.”

“Yes.”

“But other things? Inanimate objects?”

“Once I pick them up . . . or wear them . . . no. No weight.” He shrugged.

“How can that be?” Myra asked. “How can that possibly be?” She looked at her husband. “Do you know?”

He shook his head.

“How did it start?” Deirdre asked. “What caused it?”

“No idea. I don’t even know when it started, because I wasn’t in the habit of weighing myself until the process was already under way.”

“In the kitchen you said it wasn’t safe.”

“I said it might not be. I don’t know for sure, but that sort of sudden weightlessness might screw up your heart . . . your blood-pressure . . . your brain function . . . who knows?”

“Astronauts are weightless,” Missy objected. “Or almost. I guess those circling the earth must still be subject to at least some gravitational pull. And the ones who walked on the moon, as well.”

“It isn’t just that, is it?” Deirdre said. “You’re afraid it might be contagious.”

Scott nodded. “The idea has crossed my mind.”

There was a moment of silence, while all of them tried to digest the indigestible. Then Missy said, “You have to go to a clinic! You have to be examined! Let the doctors who . . . who know about this sort of thing . . .”

She trailed off, recognizing the obvious: there were no doctors who knew about this sort of thing.

“They might be able to find a way to reverse it,” she said eventually. She turned to Ellis. “You’re a doctor. Tell him!”

“I have,” Doctor Bob said. “Many times. Scott refuses. At first I thought that was wrong of him—wrongheaded—but I’ve changed my mind. I doubt very much if this is something that can be scientifically investigated. It may stop on its own . . . even reverse itself . . . but I don’t think the best doctors in the world could understand it, let alone affect it in any way, positive or negative.”

“And I have no desire to spend the remainder of my weight-loss program in a hospital room or a government facility, being examined,” Scott said.

“Or as a public curiosity, I suppose,” Deirdre said. “I get that. Perfectly.”

Scott nodded. “So you’ll understand when I ask you to promise that what’s been said in this room has to stay in this room.”

“But what will happen to you?” Missy burst out. “What will happen to you when you have no weight left?”

“I don’t know.”

“How will you live? You can’t just . . . just . . .” She looked around wildly, as if hoping for someone to finish her thought. No one did. “You can’t just float along the ceiling!”

Scott, who had already thought of a life like that, only shrugged again.

Myra Ellis leaned forward, her hands so tightly clasped the knuckles were white. “Are you very frightened? I suppose you must be.”

“That’s the thing,” Scott said. “I’m not. I was at the very beginning, but now . . . I don’t know . . . it seems sort of okay.”

There were tears in Deirdre’s eyes, but she smiled. “I think I get that, too,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I believe you do.”