UnWholly (Unwind Dystology #2)(22)

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In the morning, still high from the dream, Cam pushes himself harder than he ever had before in physical therapy. He feels the burn in his muscles now rather than the strain on his healing wounds.

“You’re at the top of your game today,” Kenny tells him as he treats Cam’s joints with a repeating cycle of ice and heat to speed the healing. Kenny, Cam has learned, was a top trainer for the NFL, but the powerful friends of whom Roberta spoke hired him to train a single client, offering him top dollar.

“Money talks,” Kenny had to admit. “Besides, it’s not every day you get to be part of history in the making.”

Is that what I am? Cam thinks. Future history? He tries to imagine the name Camus Composite-Prime taught in future classrooms, but it doesn’t stick. It’s the name. It sounds too clinical, like the subject of an experiment rather than the result. He ought to shorten it. Camus ComPri. The images of race cars speeding around a bend soars through his mind. The Grand Prix. That’s it! Camus Comprix. Silent S, silent X—a name that holds as many secrets as he!

He grimaces as Kenny ices his shoulder, but today, even that pain feels good.

“Pie-marathon, no more basket!” he says, then clears his throat and allows the thought to congeal, gathering the proper words. “This marathon I’m on . . . now it’s as easy as pie. Not feeling wasted at all.”

Kenny laughs. “Didn’t I tell you it’d get easier?”

This afternoon Cam sits on the balcony with Roberta, and they’re served lunch on silver trays. Each day the foods have greater variety, but they’re always in small portions. Shrimp cocktail. Beet salad. Chicken curry with couscous. All delicious challenges to his taste buds, sparking micro-memories and forcing neural connections to accompany his acute senses of taste and smell.

“All a part of your healing,” Roberta tells him as they eat. “All a part of your growth.”

After lunch, they sit for their daily ritual before the digital tabletop, taking in images to stimulate his visual memory. The images are more complicated now. Nothing so easy as the Eiffel Tower or a fire truck. There are obscure works of art that Cam must identify—if not the actual work, then at least the artist. Scenes from plays.

“Who is the character?”

“Lady Macbeth.”

“What is she doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then make something up. Use your imagination.”

There are images of people in various walks of life, and Roberta asks Cam to imagine who they might be. What they might be thinking. Roberta doesn’t allow him to speak until he has taken a moment to find the proper words.

“Man on a train. Wondering what’s waiting at home for dinner. Probably chicken again. He’s sick of chicken.”

Then, amid the pictures strewn across the computer tabletop, Cam sees an image of a girl that catches his attention. Roberta follows his eyes to the image, and she immediately tries to wipe the image away, but Cam grabs her hand and stops her.

“No. Let me see.”

Reluctantly Roberta takes her hand from the image. Cam drags it toward him, rotates it, and enlarges it. He can tell the picture was not taken with the girl’s permission. It’s framed at an odd angle. Perhaps taken secretly. A memory flashes. This same girl. On a bus.

“That picture is not supposed to be here,” Roberta says. “Can we move on now?”

“Not yet.”

Cam can’t quite tell where the picture was taken. It’s outdoors. Dusty. The girl plays a piano under something dark and metallic that shades her. The girl is beautiful.

“Clipped wings. Broken heaven.” Cam closes his eyes, remembering Roberta’s order that he find the proper words before he speaks. “She’s like . . . an angel damaged when she fell to earth. She plays music to heal herself, but nothing can heal her brokenness.”

“Very nice,” says Roberta unconvincingly. “On to the next one.”

Roberta reaches over and tries to drag the picture away again, but Cam slides it to his corner of the table, out of her reach. “No. Stays here.”

The fact that Roberta is bothered by this just makes Cam more curious. “Who is she?”

“Nobody important.” But clearly from Roberta’s reaction she is.

“I will meet her.”

Roberta chuckles bitterly. “Very unlikely.”

“We’ll see.”

They get on with their mental exercises, but Cam’s mind stays on the girl. Someday he will find out who she is and meet her. He will learn everything he needs to know, or more accurately, unify and organize all the things that are already there in his fragmented brain. Once he does, he’ll be able to speak to this girl with confidence—and then, in his own words, and in whatever language he needs to, he’ll be able to ask her why she looks so sad, and what unfortunate twist of fate has left her in a wheelchair.





Part Two



Whollies

34 CHILDREN ABANDONED UNDER NEBRASKA’S SAFE-HAVEN LAW

by Nate Jenkins, The Associated Press

Friday, November 14, 2008

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) Nebraska officials geared up Friday for a special legislative session designed to deal with a unique “safe haven” law whose unintended consequences have allowed parents to abandon nearly three dozen children as old as 17.