“It has to heat up first. We have a few minutes. Let’s do this.”
My eyes bugged as the tiny old woman put her hands under my legs and neck, lifted me up effortlessly, and carried me into her house.
“Let’s do what?” I asked.
The front room was piled floor to ceiling with beautifully bound books. In the back room, she swept everything off a cluttered work desk, then laid me down flat.
“We need to operate,” she said. “Now. Don’t give me any lip. I don’t want to hear a word.”
Operate? Here?! I could see the dust flakes in the air. Not to mention that I was lying in what smelled like spilled coffee, and maybe bacon grease.
“How close is a hospital?” I moaned.
“No time,” she said, tapping a finger to her forehead, as if trying to remember something. She turned and took a vial of gross-looking brown liquid from a nearby cabinet. She handed it to me.
“What are you waiting for? Drink it!” she screamed.
Then she smacked it away as I put it to my lips.
“Wait! Not that! The light in here is so bad. This one, I think,” she said, handing me a new vial. More nasty brown liquid. Maybe motor oil?
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t argue! Don’t worry, I used to be a surgeon. But I don’t remember a darn thing now. Well, maybe you should worry a little.” She cackled as she opened a drawer. I saw hits of light-off metal.
As I forced down the foul potion, she placed a worn leather packet onto the desk beside me, then opened it up. “This could work,” she muttered. “Worth a chance.”
Hey, wait a second! I thought, gaping at the trowel, pruning shears, spading fork, and hand plow that were inside the pack.
“You’re going to operate on me… with gardening tools?”
“Aren’t we picky? Pull up your shirt!” was the last thing I heard before I passed out.
Chapter 75
I WOKE to the gurgle of running water.
The old woman was washing something at a sink in the corner of the room. Is she doing the dishes? I thought woozily.
Then I remembered what had happened to me, and wished I hadn’t.
I glanced down at my stomach, which was covered with newspaper. Besides the gardening gear on the worktable, I made out a screwdriver and a needle and thread.
A screwdriver? Come on! I thought, quickly looking away, trying to convince myself not to blow chunks.
The tools were all splattered with blood. My blood.
“Well, what do you know?” my elderly home surgeon said. She was wiping her hands on a blood-splattered apron as she came over. “I can’t believe it. You’re actually alive.”
I realized that the room smelled like smoke. The curtains were singed, and there were broken picture frames and chunks taken out of the plaster in one wall.
“What happened?” I said. “The smoke?”
“I managed to get the bullet out of you, but it blew up right when I was trying to toss it out the window. Piece of shrapnel hit my leg. Thank fortune, it was the wooden one. How are you feeling?”
I looked down at the blood-soaked newspapers wrapped around my stomach. Besides the occasional teeth-clenching throb of agony, I actually felt a little better. Clearer in the head somehow. Being alive is fun like that.
“Like a million bucks,” I groaned. “Thank you, um… I didn’t catch your name, Doctor.”
“No doctor. Just Blaleen.”
“Thank you, eh, Blaleen,” I said. “For saving my life. For… whatever you did here.”
“Ah, don’t mention it,” she said, glancing at her wrist. “Wait a second. You haven’t seen my watch, have you? I was wearing it a…”
An expression of horror crossed her face. She turned suddenly and stared at my stomach. “Oh, dear me.”
“No,” I cried. “Please, no.”
She giggled. “Of course not. Just a little surgeon humor.”
But enough joking around, Daniel, she said, talking to me mind to mind now. You need rest. You almost died on the operating table.
You recognized me before, didn’t you? I thought back at her. What do you know about me?
I know many things, Blaleen communicated. I know you were given a human name, because you and your parents were heading to Earth.
And I know practically nothing, Blaleen. I have so many questions. Who are you? Who are you, really?
A dear friend, she replied, and held a medicine cup to my lips. Down the hatch now, Daniel.
I felt extremely tired. I glanced at the broken pictures that had fallen off the wall. My eyelids grew heavier. In one newspaper picture, a smiling young man was holding a trophy. GRAFF WINS ALL-CITY! read the headline.
Graff?! My father? My father as a young man? Why would the old woman have a picture of my-
“You’re my grandmother?” I whispered in a voice I reserved for first sightings of the Grand Canyon and such.
“That’s right, Daniel, son of Graff,” she said, and smiled down on me. “I am your grandmama.”
And then I did what I’d been doing far too often lately.
I passed out.
Chapter 76
WHEN I WOKE from my dreams of being chased through Kansas, Oklahoma, and parts of Texas by The Prayer, I almost went into shock for a second time. I’d been moved to an actual bed! With sheets that were-pinch me-clean! That even smelled nice.
I was lying there, soaking up the whole antiseptic, laundry-detergent-commercial vibe, when I sensed there was someone in the room with me.
I slowly leaned over the edge of the bed. And blinked. The cutest little brown-haired girl was sitting on the floor cross-legged. She was staring up at me.
“Hello,” I said.
“Ahhhhh!” she squealed. “It speaks!” She jumped up and ran out of the room as if she’d seen a ghost.
I sat up in the bed. I could move, apparently. Amazing.
Then I even managed to stand without falling. I was on a roll.
I heard some commotion as I stepped out of the room. Voices were coming from downstairs. And-music? Very lively and pretty. Like classical mixed up with rock and a little country and a bit of jazz.
I arrived at the top of some stairs and looked down. The lower level of the house, where my surgery had taken place, had been completely transformed. Not only was it cleaned up, but two dozen or so people were sitting, eating, talking, and laughing.
I stared at them, and at a table filled with delicious-smelling food.
Another song started to play. It was like a Mozart melody, only quicker and somehow warmer. Like maybe Bob Dylan had collaborated on it.
When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I saw that my grandmother, Blaleen, was at a kind of piano. Another ancient woman in a wheelchair was playing a small stringed instrument that looked and sounded just like a guqin, a type of ancient Chinese guitar. Seven or eight little kids running around a bunch of chairs scrambled for a seat as the glorious music suddenly stopped.
“Little ones, say hello to your great-cousin Daniel,” my grandmother said, standing as she spotted me. “Daniel X, to be precise. He doesn’t use a family name because he doesn’t have a family. Until now, that is.”
“There he is!” a pretty young woman cried as she ran up and embraced me. “By the stars, it’s true! I’m your cousin Lylah.”
For the next several minutes, people crowded around, shaking my hand, patting my back, and pinching my cheeks. Shocked eyes stared into mine and dazed smiles lit up faces. The old woman in the wheelchair rolled up to me. There were tears in her eyes as she pinched my cheek as well.
“It’s true,” she whispered happily to me. “Ya look just like your mom. Little of your dad. Lovely! Just lovely! You’re beautiful, Daniel. Tall, blond. Stunning!”
An amiable-looking, pudgy man was pinching my free cheek. “Daniel, Daniel. Pleasure to meetcha. I’m your uncle Kraffleprog. Your mom’s brother,” he said, pumping my hand. “I used to change your diaper. I called you Stinkyboy.”