“HOW ARE WE FEELING?” Dr. Fallon asked. “How’s your voice?”
She stopped by just as I was finishing breakfast. A mirror in her hand slashed an angle of light around the room before she placed it on my desk. Then she stepped to the window to adjust the shades, reaching in her white coat to expand my view of the trees and mountain. Another cloudy morning beckoned, and over the past week, the snow on the nearby pine had evaporated to a thinner layer.
“About the same,” I said. But my voice came out clearly, without the painful crackle I was used to. I touched my throat, amazed. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“And you sound very nice,” she said. “Your parents will be thrilled. Say your Pledge of Allegiance for me, slowly.”
I didn’t care much for Dr. Fallon, but it did me no good to be openly belligerent. I worked my mouth around the familiar words of the Pledge, surprised by the breathy, melodious sound of the new voice between my ears. I could hear the Texas in my vowels, and a cultured mellowness that struck me as classy. I liked it. It wasn’t me, of course, and Althea’s voice was higher than my old one, but it was nice. At last I could have an actual conversation.
I glanced at my phone, thinking I could call Ma, but then I realized she wouldn’t recognize my new voice. This was going to complicate things.
“Where are my parents?” I asked.
“I met them on my way up and suggested they step outside for a walk,” she said. “You’ll be out there soon yourself at this rate. How do you like your P.T.?”
“It hurts.”
“Because it’s working,” she said, smiling. “Marcus is very good at what he does. Sit up a bit more.”
Even with the heaviness of my belly, it was getting easier to sit up. My muscles had a new, restless eagerness, and my appetite had improved, too.
“What’s the mirror for?” I asked.
“I want to get your face going. In a way, it’s another form of P.T.”
“My face feels fine,” I said.
“It’s about to feel better.”
Dr. Fallon cleared my breakfast tray off my desk and propped up the mirror. The sunkenness around my eyes was noticeably less, and my acne was clearing up, leaving my tan skin smoother. My hair fell in dark, limp strands around my face, clean but dull. My face now belonged more to an acquaintance than a stranger, and I turned to see the little, familiar notch in the top of my ear.
Dr. Fallon pulled over a chair as she spoke. “The truth is, Althea, your features hardly move. They’re out of practice. We’ll have to teach your facial muscles how to express your feelings again, and once we do, you’ll appreciate the way it feels. When your cheeks and eyes feel a smile, for instance, they’ll codify backward to your emotions, and you’ll feel happier. To start, close your eyes. Now try a natural smile.”
I did as she said, curious.
“Is that completely comfortable and natural?” she asked.
“Yes.”
I heard a camera click.
“Good. Now open your eyes,” the doctor said.
I did. My reflection was basically deadpan, with only the slightest quirk to my lips. By concerted effort, I widened my lips more and achieved a freakish duck face.
“That’s frightening,” I said.
She laughed. Then she guided me through a series of uncomfortable grimaces. Inside, they felt extreme, but on the mirror, they hardly showed at all. She told me to feel the pull around my ears. I used my fingers to prod my new features—eyebrows, nose, and cheeks. I broke out in a sweat.
“It’s like trying to shape a mask,” I said and shook my head. “I don’t look anything like I did before.” As spoke, I realized I meant the way Althea had looked before, in her photos.
“Nobody really looks like they do in the mirror, or in pictures, for that matter,” Dr. Fallon said. “We think we know our faces because we put on our makeup in front of a mirror, but scrutinizing each pore doesn’t show us how we really look. A mirror never captures the way we laugh unselfconsciously with our friends.”
“Film comes closer,” I said.
She regarded me curiously. “You have point. The truth is, you’re a naturally beautiful girl, but without your normal animation, it won’t show.”
“I don’t care about being beautiful,” I said.
“Then you’re very unusual,” she said. “Most women appear to be ruled by their mirrors. As your doctor, I want you to have every advantage, including your natural expressions. I’ll have Marcus add a facial component to your P.T. sessions.” She smiled. “You’ve made tremendous strides these past ten days. You’re breaking all our records for recovery.”
I lowered the mirror. “That sounds like something you say to all your patients.”
Dr. Fallon leaned back. “In your case, it happens to be true, but it also brings me to another point I wish to discuss with you.”
“What?”
She slid her manicured hand along the edge of the table. “Your rapid recovery itself is some cause for concern. I don’t mean to alarm you. All the MRIs we’ve been taking are very reassuring. But the seeding operation is a very delicate procedure, and I need you to let me know if you experience any headaches or vision problems.”
“Why?” I asked. “What could happen?”
“Sometimes the host brain decides to team up against the new cells and kill them off,” she said. “Other times the new cells keep expanding, like tumors. They don’t so much kill off the old brain as crowd it, and then they starve off the blood supply. Either way, we need to step in quickly.”
“What’s that feel like, that crowding or whatever?”
“Headaches, at first,” the doctor said. “Double vision that can progress to blindness. If patients lose their speech again, then the overall prognosis is very poor. But please don’t worry. So far, we have no indication of anything like that happening to you. I just want you to be on the alert for any symptoms and be sure to tell us promptly.”
I hardly knew what to say. She had me pretty scared. “What would you do then?”
“It involves some micro surgery. Some tweaking,” she said. “That’s why we can’t let you go home just yet. We have to watch how everything knits together.”
“Do my parents know about this?” I asked.
“I’ve explained it to them,” she said. “We don’t want any surprises here, and that’s why I want you informed, too. You’re your most important advocate.”
I studied Dr. Fallon with her perfect pale face and red lipstick. She never had a hair out of place, and it seemed like nothing ever ruffled her, but she might have trained her face to conceal her feelings. I somehow doubted my facial P.T. would include such advanced techniques.
“You said a host brain could fight back, but I thought Althea was brain dead when she came here in a coma,” I said.
The doctor regarded me with new attention and tapped a finger on the desk. “Althea didn’t have any consciousness in the traditional sense, but she wasn’t strictly brain dead. She could still breathe. It’s an important distinction.”
“But she hadn’t recovered for months. I don’t get how her brain could have anything left to fight me off now,” I said.
The doctor’s finger went still. “You’re calling Althea ‘she,’” Dr. Fallon said slowly. “Do you see yourself and Althea as two separate entities?”
My heart chugged with alarm, and I tried to recall if she’d tricked me into talking about Althea in the third person. “No,” I lied. “I just want to know how likely it is that my old cells will fight off my new ones, like you said.”
“Small,” she said. “The chances are small.”
“How small? One percent?”
“Maybe five percent,” she said. “I’d give it five to ten percent.”
Ten percent sounded big to me. This was not good. “When will I know I’m out of danger?”
“The more days that pass without symptoms, the better,” she said. “Listen, I’m sorry. I can see I’ve troubled you. Let me remind you that you are a very special case. One of a kind. You’ve already come so much farther than we had any reason to expect.”
“What makes me so special?” I asked.
“It’s a combination of factors. Your youth, your stability after your injury, your brain’s innate elasticity. Your baby matters, too, of course,” she said.
I had momentarily forgotten about the baby. “I don’t see why,” I said. “You have other patients here who aren’t pregnant.”
“True,” she said. “But their brain injuries weren’t as severe as yours, either. Your pregnancy was vital to your case. It’s a key reason why I took you on. We often think of fetuses as helpless little beings, nurtured in their mothers’ wombs, but pregnancy is a complex symbiosis, a give and take,” she said. “The hormones and nutrients that have helped your fetus develop have been circulating in your system, too.”
“Are you suggesting my baby kept me alive?”
“It was certainly a factor in why we’re both sitting here today.” She clicked the end of her pen. “Althea, your parents wouldn’t have brought you here if they didn’t trust me. I wish you could, too.”
I eyed her suspiciously. “You’ve just told me I have a ten percent chance of being attacked by my own brain.”
“Only if you don’t report any early symptoms,” she said. “That’s why we need to keep you here a little longer. Will you tell me if you have any sign of a headache, no matter how small?”
I didn’t trust her, but my only choice was to play along. “Yes,” I said.
A sound at the door made me glance over. Madeline, dressed in bright blue, gave the door a light tap. Her staticky hair was fluffier than usual, as if it had been ruffled by the wind. She reminded me of a dandelion gone to seed.
“I don’t want to intrude,” she said, looking at me curiously.
“You’re not. We’re just finishing up,” Dr. Fallon said, reaching for the mirror once more. “I want you to close your eyes again,” she said to me. “Think of something happy. Someone who makes you laugh.”
Laughing was a gift I’d had far too little of lately. I cast my memory back a couple of years, to Dubbs. We sat in the shadow of our boxcar, drawing in the smooth, cool dirt with sticks. I was teaching her to read by writing words like “poop” and “fart.” She was careful sounding out the letters, concentrating and serious, but the instant she grasped a new word, she’d shriek and collapse laughing. I’d laugh, too. I felt so powerful. So proud.
“Hold that,” the doctor said. She clicked another photo. “Now open your eyes.”
In the mirror, Althea was smiling at me. It wasn’t a big smile, but it was a genuine one, and her eyebrows arched up in delicate surprise.
Madeline sighed from the doorway and shook her head. “There she is,” she said.
“I’ll leave you the mirror,” the doctor said to me. “Remember what I said. Communication is important. Use that new voice of yours.”
“Okay,” I said.
Madeline looked at me uncertainly. “Your voice. I wasn’t sure. Is it better?”
“Yep,” I said. I pondered what to say next. “What’s for lunch?”
She pressed her lips together in a tight, happy grin. Then she nodded and let out a laugh. “I think it’s chicken. Oh, won’t your dad be thrilled?”
Diego might be thrilled, but he still wasn’t my dad. Having a voice gave me new ways I’d have to lie.