Ashley Bell

“It’s a symptom,” her mother declared.

In the distance, the hospital towered over other structures, and at the sight of it, Bibi acknowledged to herself that she was more afraid than she had wanted to admit. The architecture was unexceptional, bland, and yet the closer they drew to the place, the more sinister it appeared.

“There’s always a silver lining,” she assured herself.

Her mother sounded anxious and dubious: “Is there?”

“For a writer, there always is. Everything is material. We need new material for our stories.”

Nancy accelerated through a yellow traffic light and turned off the street into the medical complex. “It’ll be what it’ll be,” she said, almost to herself, as if those words were magical, each of them an abraxas that would ward off evil.

“Please don’t say that to me again,” Bibi requested, more sharply than she intended. “Not ever again. You’re always saying it, and I don’t want to hear it anymore.”

Following an ER sign that directed them off the main loop and to the left, Nancy glanced at her daughter. “All right. Whatever you want, honey.”

Bibi at once regretted snapping at her mother. “I’m sorry. So sorry.” The first two words came out all right. But she heard the distortion in the last two, which sounded like show sharry.

As they pulled to a stop in front of the emergency entrance, Bibi admitted to herself the reason she hadn’t called 911: She possessed a writer’s well-honed understanding of story construction. Perhaps from the moment that her left hand had failed to engage the computer keyboard as she directed it, and surely from the moment the tingling had begun, she’d known where this was going, where it had to go, which was into a dark place. Every life was a story, after all, or a collection of stories, and not all of them tapered gracefully to a happy ending. She had always assumed her life would be a tale of happiness, that she would craft it as such, and during the onset of her symptoms, she had been reluctant to consider that her assumption might be naïve.

5 (#ulink_5ea66f0a-38d1-5442-9ff4-d53be36b411c)

Pet the Cat (#ulink_5ea66f0a-38d1-5442-9ff4-d53be36b411c)

ALTHOUGH SPRING HEAT HADN’T YET RELIABLY settled over the Southern California coast, Murphy Blair went to work that morning wearing sandals, boardshorts, a black T-shirt, and a blue-and-black plaid Pendleton shirt worn open, with the sleeves rolled up. His shock of sandy-brown hair was shot through with blond streaks, legitimate sun bleaching, not bottle-born, because even on low-Fahrenheit days, he found the sun for a few hours. He was walking proof that, with sufficient obsession and contempt for melanoma, a summer tan could be maintained year-round.

His shop, Pet the Cat, was on Balboa Peninsula, the land mass that sheltered Newport Harbor from the ocean, in the vicinity of the first of two piers. The name of the store referred to the motion that surfers made when they were crouched on their boards, stroking the air or water as if to smooth their way through a section.

The display windows were full of surfboards and bitchin’ shirts like Mowgli tees, Wellen tees, Billabong, Aloha, Reyn Spooner. Murph sold everything from Otis eyewear with mineral-glass lenses to Surf Siders shoes, from wetsuits to Stance socks featuring patterns based on the art of surfing champion John John Florence.

At fifty, Murph lived his work, worked to play, played to live. When he arrived at Pet the Cat, the door was unlocked, the lights were on, and Pogo was standing behind the counter, intently reading the instruction pamphlet for Search, the GPS surf watch by Rip Curl.

Glancing up at his boss, Pogo said, “I’m gonna get one of these here for damn sure.”

Three years earlier, he escaped high school with a perfect two-point grade average and foiled his parents’ attempt to force him onto a college track. He lived frugally with two other surf rats, Mike and Nate, in a studio apartment above a thrift shop in nearby Costa Mesa, and drove a primer-gray thirty-year-old Honda that looked as though it was good for nothing more than being a target car in a monster-truck demolition derby.

Sometimes an underachieving wanker took refuge in the surfing culture and remained largely or entirely womanless until he died with his last Social Security check uncashed. For two reasons, Pogo didn’t have that problem. First, he was a wave king, fearless and graceful on the board, eager to master even the huge monoliths that had come with Hurricane Marie, admired for his style and heart. He might have been a champion if he’d possessed enough ambition to participate in competitions. Second, he was so gorgeous that when he passed, women tracked him as if their heads were attached to their necks with ball-bearing swivel hinges.

“You gonna give me the usual discount on this?” Pogo asked, indicating the GPS surf watch.

Murph said, “Sure, all right.”

“Twelve weekly payments, zero interest?”

“What am I—a charity? It’s not that expensive.”

“Eight weeks?”

Murph sighed. “Okay, why not.” He pointed at the flat blank screen of the large TV on the wall behind the counter, which should have been running vintage Billabong surf videos to lend atmosphere to the shop. “Tell me that’s not on the fritz.”

“It’s not. I just sort of forgot about it. Sorry, bro.”

“Bro, huh? Do you love me like a brother, Pogo?”

“Totally, bro. My real brother, Clyde, he’s a brainiac stockbroker, might as well be from Mars.”

“His name’s Brandon. What’s with this Clyde?”

Pogo winked. “You’ll figure it out.”

Murph took a deep breath. “You want the shop to prosper?”

As he fired up the Billabong videos, Pogo said, “Sure, yeah, I want you to rule the scene, bro.”

“Then you’d help my business a lot if you went to work at some other surf shop.”

Pogo grinned. “I’d be crushed if I thought you meant that. But, see, I get your dry wit. You should do stand-up.”

“Yeah, I’m a riot.”

“No, really. Bonnie thinks you’re hilarious, too.”

“Bonnie, your nose-to-grindstone sister who works her butt off to keep that restaurant afloat? Oh. I see. Bonnie and Clyde. Anyway, she’s another brainiac. You mean you and her share a sense of humor?”

Pogo sighed. “Hey, when I say ‘brainiac,’ I don’t use the term pejoratively. I have lots in common with my twin siblings.”

“‘Pejoratively,’ huh? Sometimes you give yourself away, Pogo.” Murph’s cell phone rang, and he checked the caller ID. Nancy. He said, “What’s up, sugar?”

A chill climbed his spine and found his heart as his wife said, “I’m scared, baby. I’m afraid Bibi’s had a stroke.”

6 (#ulink_f34b545b-f2f8-5661-9d61-0273990b70dd)

The Frightening Pace of Examination (#ulink_f34b545b-f2f8-5661-9d61-0273990b70dd)

ON A TUESDAY MORNING, THE ER WASN’T AS BUSY as it would be on the 7:00-P.M.-to-3:00-A.M. shift. The night would bring those injured by drunk drivers, victims of muggers, battered wives, and all manner of aggressive or hallucinating druggies sliding along the razor’s edge of an overdose. When Bibi arrived with her mother, only five people were in the waiting room, none of them bleeding profusely.

At the moment, the triage nurse was actually an emergency-care technician named Manuel Rivera, a short, stocky man in hospital blues. He checked her pulse and took her blood pressure as he listened to her recite her symptoms.

Bibi slurred a few words, but for the most part her speech was clear. She felt better and safer, being in a hospital, until Manuel’s sweet face, almost a Buddha face, darkened with worry and he guided her to a wheelchair. With apparent urgency, he rolled her through a pair of automatic doors into the ER ahead of the other people who were waiting for treatment.

Each emergency-room bay was a cubicle with a gray vinyl-tile floor and three pale-blue walls and one glass wall that faced the hallway. Toward the head of the bed stood a heart monitor and other equipment, awaiting use.

Nancy settled in one of the two chairs for visitors, holding her and Bibi’s purses, hands clutching them as if she anticipated a robbery attempt, though it wasn’t a purse snatcher that she feared.

Manuel lowered the power bed and assisted Bibi to sit on the edge. “Unless you feel dizzy, don’t lie down yet,” he instructed.

He rolled the wheelchair into the hallway, where he met a tall athletic-looking man in scrubs, evidently a physician. The doctor wheeled before him a portable computer station designed to be used while the operator remained standing, into which he entered details regarding the preliminary diagnosis and treatment of each patient he attended.

“Are you all right, baby?” Nancy asked.