The first symptoms were buried among the normal accidents of every day life.  They weren’t even what she would have called symptoms.  Everyone drops things, trips over invisible lumps on the floor or forgets where they put their car keys.  But on the day Blythe Patrick forgot two important meetings, fell off her two inch pumps while standing completely still and dropped her coffee mug while lifting it to her lips, she began to feel uneasy.

She lost her car keys the same evening and found them when her secretary said, “Bly, they’re in your hand.”

Even then she had to ask, “Which hand?”

It seemed too stupid a thing to take to a doctor.  She wouldn’t have even mentioned it to Corey, except that he happened to catch her one morning standing in the middle of their kitchen in a puddle of milk, staring at her left hand and flexing her fingers.

“What happened?” he asked.  He grabbed the kitchen Vac unit and applied its near-silent suction to the puddle.

Bly watched the milk disappear obediently into the tube.  “I dropped the milk.”

“I can see that.  You sure seem to be dropping things a lot lately.”

“I know.”  She stopped flexing her fingers and rubbed her hand absently on her hip.

Corey stuck the mop attachment on the Vac and grinned at her.  “Should I worry about you dropping the baby?”

Blythe stared at him, stricken.  She’d avoided that thought the way most people avoided the dentist.  “Of course I wouldn’t drop the baby!  My God, Corey, what a thing to say!”

“I was kidding, Bly,” he said mildly and put away the Vac.  “And you’re over-reacting.”

She was—she knew that without being told.  She told him, then, about the lost keys and the forgotten meetings and the fumbles.  He was naturally concerned and suggested she see a doctor.

“Now, you’re over-reacting,” she said.

Corey knew better than to push or preach.  No one had ever gotten Blythe Patrick to do anything by force. He shut up.  But five minutes later at the breakfast table she asked, “What if I have a lapse while I’m on the air?  What if I suddenly forget who I’m interviewing or where the field operative is reporting from?”

Corey studied her face.  “Do you think that’s likely to happen?”

“I don’t know.”  She toyed with a piece of toast.  “It hasn’t come to that, but I did forget my notes yesterday and had to wing it until someone found them and brought them to me.  And ... and later on, near the end of the broadcast, I couldn’t remember the name of the foreign minister Cass was interviewing.  I got around it okay,” she added.

“Bly, if you’re afraid it’s going to affect your work, don’t you think it’s important enough to see a doctor?”  Corey glanced at their two year old, who was dabbling happily in his cereal.  “You really are anxious about dropping Orly, aren’t you?”

She couldn’t admit that in so many words, so she didn’t answer.  She didn’t see a doctor either.  Not then.  But after a week of losing everything from her coffee mug to the disc containing the story she was working on, she asked her secretary to hunt up a good physician and download his stats to her terminal.

She forgot to look at them until she had a lapse on the name of a new independent African republic during an on-the-air interview with that republic’s ambassador to the UN.  It was Friday and after hours.  The doctor had an emergency number, but Blythe didn’t want to intrude.  She tried to copy his data to her handcomp just in case, but couldn’t remember how to do it.  She gave up, promising herself to call first thing Monday morning.

Saturday she started out to drive Orly to the mall to shop for clothes.  She loved shopping for Orly and was in a bubble of happy anticipation as they left the house.  The bubble burst when Blythe, unable to find the mall she’d been shopping at since college, ended up in the parking lot of a hospital halfway across town—with no memory of how she got there. She found a telephone, but couldn’t remember her home number.  Since it was unlisted, using the directory system was futile.  She finally got her handcomp linked to the telephone computer and sent an emergency signal to her home system.  By the time Corey answered the beeper, she was frantic.

“Come get us!” she cried, and was barely able to tell him where she was.

One week and a battery of tests later, Blythe’s doctor referred her to a specialist. 

“What’s wrong with me?” she asked.

He looked very uncomfortable.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “Your tests don’t show anything positive.”

“Well, then what sort of specialist is this?  Miscellaneous unknown ailments?”

“Dr. Cahill specializes in degenerative diseases.”

“Degenerative-?”  Blythe felt a cold, clammy horror creep up from the pit of her stomach.  “You mean like MS or Alzheimer’s?  Something like that?”

“Like that, yes, but not necessarily that.  In fact, I’m certain we can rule out multiple sclerosis altogether.  As for Alzheimer’s—Dr. Cahill is far more qualified to make a diagnosis in that area than I am.”

Blythe left the doctor’s office wishing the tests had found MS.  That, at least, had a sure cure.  Maybe it would be Alzheimer’s.  That wouldn’t be so bad either—a couple of weeks down time while the implants took hold.  She needed a vacation.     

It wasn’t Alzheimer’s.  It wasn’t AIDS.  It wasn’t anything they suspected it of being.  Dr. Grant Cahill was challenged by it, at first.  But as Blythe Patrick continued to deteriorate in a multitude of tiny, humiliating ways, he became frustrated.  And Blythe became despondent and angry in turns.

Grant Cahill preferred her anger.  He could handle that.  The day another round of CAT scans and blood panels had come up with squat, she’d yelled at him for ten minutes and thrown a medical journal at him.  But the day her legs gave out while she was lifting Orly into the bath tub, there was no yelling, no throwing, just a call from her husband begging him, quietly, to do something.  She had withdrawn into a ball of suffering and Orly, somehow imagining it was his fault, was frantic. 

That was when she took to bed.  Her vacation became a leave of absence. 

A week later, angry or not, there was no more throwing of anything.  Blythe woke up one morning and couldn’t move her arms.  She thought they’d just fallen asleep, as arms will do, then realized she could still feel them.  There was no numbness, no tingling just complete loss of muscle control in the upper arm.  

She could just make her elbows bend and her fingers grasp—and that was all.  She cried for an hour. 

Corey called Dr. Cahill.  By the time he got to their home, Blythe’s mood had swung to rage.

“Come on, doctor!” she snapped, while he checked for reflexes that weren’t there.  “I’m a lousy candidate for this!  Lousy!  Do you know what they call me at the station?  Captain Bly.  I’m supposed to be a go-getter.  The-the woman in charge.  Dr. Cahill, I can’t go get anything.  Not a bite of food, not a sip of water—nada.  Nothing.  I’m not even in charge of my own bowel movements.  Do you know what that’s like?”

Cahill wanted to be able to say “yes,” but couldn’t.  He was exhausted.  “No, of course I don’t know what it’s like.  Not from the inside, anyway.  But I’ve seen it happen before to people I care about.  And I’ve seen people pull through it before.”

“No you haven’t,” she accused.  “Because you don’t know what ‘it’ is.  ‘It’ doesn’t even have a name.  I don’t even have the comfort of dying of a disease with a god-damned name!”

“You’re far from dying, Blythe.  And we’re trying our damndest to isolate it.”

“And it’s trying to isolate me.  How long, doctor?  How long before it does that?  How long before I can’t even yell at you like this?”

“We don’t know.”

We don’t know.  It was always: We don’t know.  What’s it called?  We don’t know.  What’s it doing to me?  We don’t know.  Why do I have it?  We don’t know.

Cahill recommended she go into the hospital.  She agreed. 

Corey refused.  He wanted to take care of her himself and hire someone to come in while he was at the University.  After a long argument, Cahill convinced him  Blythe was already beyond his care.  She was in the hospital that night.

She used the hospital computer system a lot at first, until the voice-activated circuitry gave up on her increasingly slurred speech.  She tried to keep up her reading (she’d always been a voracious reader), but after a while the words refused to make sense.  She switched to Public Net television.  She never watched her own network’s news—it was too painful to see someone else anchoring the broadcast and talking about her “progress.”  She knew there wasn’t any.

The doctors continued to test her brain waves, scan her cells and sift through samples of blood and bone and tissue for clues.  Cahill told her to visualize getting well; to picture herself

running, swimming, working.  It would raise her heart rate and her hopes, he told her.  It would keep her mind and respiratory system active, he told her.  He didn’t tell her it would make her cry.

She dreamed movement in sleep and day-dreamed it waking.  Threading through the water like a dolphin, dancing with Baryshnikov, riding a horse at a flat-out, ice-smooth gallop.  She ice skated, she ran, she played with Orly, she made love to Corey, she woke up in tears.

Tears and smiles and eye movement were her language now.  She saw a paraplegic accident victim roll by in his Dowton chair one sunny afternoon and wished to trade places with him.  Then she laughed to think how desperate she must be to want to trade places with a paraplegic.  Then she slipped into a week-long depression.

She talked to God a lot since no one else could hear her anymore.  She discussed the why’s and wherefores of the disease and told Him that if she’d taken anything at all for granted ever she was sufficiently chastened and would never do it again.

Her mother had died several years before, but she talked to her, too.  She felt very close to her mother during those conversations and momentarily content, for Mom would always remind her that from every event in your life, something could be learned or gained.

The contentment evaporated when she one day envisioned Corey and Orly going on without her.  She became depressed.  If they were going to have to live without her, she might as well die and cut the loose ends.  She couldn’t stand the thought of being a loose end, a “whatever-happened-to....”.

She rebelled.  No! she thought.  I reject it!  I reject the idea that I will someday be only a dim blur in my son’s memory.  A video album clip that smiles and waves and makes funny faces for the recorder.  An archived piece of network history.  No!  I will not be that!  I will not!

In its sixth month, the degeneration stopped as mysteriously as it had begun, the slim clues suggesting (and only suggesting) a rare food-related virus.  Blythe was left in a state of siege.  She looked out at a world full of people that moved about her like actors in a movie.  She could rant and rave about the plot and the acting but the movie just went right on about its script, ignoring her.

She was on Brain Pattern monitors all the time now.  It was the only way she could communicate her needs.  When she expressed any strong emotion, the electrodes in a thin, soft headband would relay the information to the nurse’s station and Dr. Cahill’s office and brought quick response...usually.

One evening Corey came in and sat down and looked at her for a long time.  He told her she was making progress.  Grant had told him her cerebral activity seemed stronger, more concentrated.  He was hopeful she’d stopped deteriorating.  He was going to put her in physical therapy.  He wanted her to help out by concentrating on her motor functions.

Corey stared at her for while longer and held her hand.  “I hope you can hear me, honey,” he said.

She said, ‘Of course I can hear you.’  But he couldn’t hear her.  He held her hand to his lips for a moment, then left.

Progress.  She’d come to think of that as a euphemism for “not currently deceased.”  “Docspeak” she called it.  She wasn’t dead, so that was progress.  Or was it?  Maybe there was more progress to be made in death now than there was in life.

She sighed.  Physical therapy.  That meant someone moved your legs for you.  Well, at last she could still do digital therapy.  She wiggled her fingers, pretending to direct the symphony that was playing softly from the Audio Library terminal in her room. 

They theorized that classical music was soothing.  It was, but sometimes she didn’t want to be soothed.  Sometimes she wanted rock’n’roll.  And she wanted it loud enough to disturb every other patient in the wing.  Right now it felt like she was in a funeral parlor embalmed in Beethoven and the soft, sad perfume of the tea roses on the window sill.  She’d never be able to listen to Beethoven again without smelling tea roses.

Well, if they were going to start Phys Ed classes for her she supposed she really ought to be prepared.  She went jogging—once lightly around the gardens outside.  That done, she swam a dozen laps at the health club, then got bored and went ice skating. She loved ice skating.  Soaring effortlessly over the smooth, silver-blue ice, feeling the soft flutter of her costume around her legs.  Sometimes she skated alone, sometimes with a partner. 

Corey was her partner most of the time, but sometimes she skated with a tall version of Scott Hamilton.  She’d seen him in a Classic Olympic Highlights video when she was about eleven and had fallen in love.  She only made him taller because she was so tall herself and she’d always felt skating teams should be evenly matched.  It never occurred to her to make herself shorter.

When she’d finished her workout, Blythe took a hot shower.  A hot shower was one of life’s most luxurious pleasures.  It gave the entire body an irresistible wake-up call.  She had to take baths now and the nurses never got the water as hot as she liked it.  She had a fantasy that if she could just get into a hot shower, she’d be all right—it would wake up the sleeping muscles, prod the forgetful nerves. 

The musical selections ended and the TV came to life.  That meant it was 6 pm.  Dinner was usually here by now.  She wondered what was keeping it, but was quickly distracted by the program. It was a Public Net science program—her favorite. 

All right! she thought.  Where’re we going tonight?  Marianas Trench?  Mars? 

It turned out to be a special on the discovery of a previously unknown satellite of Pluto, replete with videos.  The scenes were beautiful, eerie, beckoning.  Awed, Blythe knew an overpowering desire to see them first hand.  In a second’s time she had sailed from the room, traversed the path of the Voyager satellite and arrived at the edge of the solar system.  She stood, titanic, on the surface of the tiny moon and saw the planets laid out before her like a necklace of kinetic beads. 

It was her hunger that brought her back to earth.  She snapped back into her carefully controlled habitat on a wave of hunger pangs.  She tried imaging food but that only made it worse.  She decided she’d have to flag down a nurse and signal for water.  With that goal, she spiked her mental output level and watched the tracers on the BPM screen to the left of her bed dance.

Five minutes passed, then ten.  There was no response.  She listened intently, heard nothing.  You weren’t supposed to hear things in a ward reserved for the very ill and the very rich.  She supposed she qualified on both counts.  Plus, she was a “cause celebre”—or was that a celebrity with a cause? 

Early on there had been the noise of news teams and reporters.  Now they interviewed her doctors at press conferences she never watched.  The only reporters here now were her close friends and even some of them had stopped visiting the silent place.  She didn’t blame them.  She wouldn’t know what to say to her either.

She lay in the big robotic bed trying to sort the sound of Beethoven from the smell of tea roses and attempted, once again, to flag down a nurse.  Still no response.  There must be an emergency somewhere.  Someone who needed them more than she did.  But as her hunger and thirst increased, with its attendant drop in blood-sugar levels, that became harder and harder to imagine. 

The sky outside her mammoth window was darkening now and she couldn’t quite make out the line of cypress trees at the rim of the Medical Center’s extensive gardens.  She rolled her eyes away from the window.  A water bottle sat just an arm’s length away on the bedside unit.  It might as well have been clear across the room.  She wiggled her head so she could see it better and stared at it.  It was full.

Who would have done something like that? she wondered.  She’d heard the word “psychosomatic” bandied about by some of the consulting specialists.  Did they think they could trick her into a miraculous recovery?

She chided herself for the thought.  What was she doing, becoming paranoid?  She’d already gone through the “Why-did-God-do-this-to-me-Am-I-such-an-awful-person?” stage and come out (she thought) on the other side.  Was she really ready to imagine that her doctors and nurses were conspiring against her?

The window had gone dark and the only light in the room was a small lamp on the far side of the bedside unit.  It effectively spotlit the water bottle.

Blythe felt a surge of anger.  Conspiracy or no, putting a full bottle of water in sight and out of reach of a near-paralyzed human being in a dark room, then spotlighting it was cruel and unusual neglect.  She was agitated and the BPM registered it faithfully—but there was still no response.  She felt isolated, sealed off, entombed.  The distance between her and the water became symbolic of her greatest fear—to be forgotten.  To be alone and utterly helpless.  “Cut off from the land of the living.”  She’d read that in a Holy Book somewhere—the Bible, she recalled.  It was a prophecy.  Maybe it applied to her.

Stop it, Bly!, she told herself.  You’re getting egotistical and morbid.  It’s just a bottle of water.  Someone forgot it, that’s all.  The nurses are just busy.  There are other sick people in this hospital.

But the water bottle wasn’t cooperating.  Its importance refused to diminish.  She imagined it looming against a desert sky while vultures soared and screeled over head and a hot white sun beat down on her head.

Licking parched lips, she crawled her left hand to the edge of the desert-bed.  Then slowly, agonizingly, she bent her elbow until her forearm extended toward the table top.  Awkwardly, she flopped it about until the hand landed, palm up, on the edge of the table.  She struggled to right it; watched it intently as if it was some five-legged alien creature stranded, bottom up, on a rock.

She could only get two finger’s purchase on the table top.  They pulled her aching hand another inch or two—not nearly enough to reach the goal.  She gritted her teeth and tried harder, straining every muscle that was still under her feeble control.  The water.  She had to have the water.  Had to.  Had-to-have-it.

Her eyes screwed shut.  Every sense shut down but the sense of thirst, of desire.  She was in a hot, black well of thirst; panting, primally ferocious.

Water-bottle.  Wa-ter-bot-tle.  It was a mantra, a chant.  She created a chorus of voices to chant it for her.  Wa-ter-bot-tle.  Wa-ter-bot-tle!  Wa-ter-

Her hand met something solid.  The chanting ceased.  Blythe felt the smooth curve of the bottle in her palm.  A wild cheer escaped the crowd.  She’d done it!  She’d reached the water!

Grinning madly, she opened her eyes.  Points of light danced like fire flies before them.  Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.  The fireworks were a wonderful touch.  She gazed proudly at her trophy.

The crowd was suddenly still.  There, in her hand was the water bottle.  But her hand had not moved.  It was still stranded awkwardly on the near edge of the table.

Numbly, she brought the bottle over to the edge of the bed and flopped it onto her stomach.  She pushed it up far enough to get the straw-cum-spigot into her mouth and sucked, staring all the while at the table top.

What just happened?  Had she reached the bottle, then pulled it back without realizing it?

No, that wasn’t it.  She’d felt every tortuous move her arm had made.

So what was the alternative?  Psycho-kinetic powers?  What a dime novel idea!  She tried to think of something more plausible like.....  Like that someone snuck in, slid the bottle into her hand, then snuck out again before she saw them.  Or maybe she had a guardian angel or a leprechaun or a poltergeist.

Her mom had believed in poltergeists, but she attributed them to living people.  She said they were the manifestations of a person’s extreme emotions.  Emotions like anger.  The kind of anger Blythe felt when she lost an essay contest to Maribeth Jergens.  Maribeth stole her idea and her notes, then convinced their teacher that Blythe was the plagiarist.  It hurt.  Feeling scalded, she slammed into the house and stormed her mother’s office to complain of dire injustice.  The entire top row of books leapt from her mother’s bookshelf as she passed by it.   

Mom had merely warned her about letting violent emotions get the better of her and made her pick up all the books.  God, but she hated Maribeth Jergens.

She shook her thoughts back to the present.  Poltergeists or psycho-kinesis.  Either way....

She glanced around, wondering if there was some way she could put whatever it was to the test.  Her studious activities were interrupted by the long overdue appearance of Nurse Cronfeld with her dinner tray.

“You poor dear!” the woman effused.  “You must have thought we’d all deserted you.”

The thought had crossed my mind.

“There was a really horrible accident at the Global Dynamics plant.  A lot of burn victims.  They needed every body they could get for triage.  But,” she added brightly, “I’m here now.  And here’s your dinner.”

She set the tray down on the floating bed-table and pushed a button on the bedside control console.  The table glided smoothly into place over Blythe’s lap.  She pressed a second button and the head of the bed rose.

The food was good.  Blythe gave a silent “Praise be to Allah!” that she still had a sense of taste.  Meals were definitely the one of the highpoints of her day.

She was chewing happily, if slowly, on a tiny steamed potato when the door slid open and another nurse stuck her head in the door. 

“Maggie!  We need you, stet.  Mrs. Greene’s gone into convulsions.”  And she disappeared.  So did Maggie Cronfeld, leaving a forkful of tofu loaf balanced precariously half off the plate.

Blythe swallowed the potato and watched the fork rock gently back and forth.  She had some idea of levitating it and gave that a moment’s trial.  The fork just fell over onto the tray.  So much for levitation.

The half-eaten meal mocked her.  She tried to raise her forearms to the tray.  If she could just get her hands out from underneath it....  But it was set too low and her wrists only bumped futilely along the bottom.  Biting the inside of her lip, she concentrated on one of three little potatoes left on the plate.

Come to mama, she said. then chanted it, letting the hunger dominate her senses.  She closed her eyes.  Come-to-ma-ma.  Come-to-ma-ma.  Come-to-ma-ma.

She opened them.  The potato was now sitting on the brink of the bed-table, a trail of gravy betraying its progress from the plate.

Nearly delirious with a sudden rush of adrenalin, Blythe embarked on a tortuous wriggle down the bed, stopping only when she reckoned her mouth was under the edge of the bed-table. 

Come to mama, she said and opened her mouth.  The potato obeyed.

All right, she thought, chewing her catch.  It could have been a fluke.  A minor earth tremor might have pushed the potato over the edge.  Or her wiggling might have caused it to pitch over into her mouth ... belatedly.

Well, there was only one way to find out.  She recalled the way the other two potatoes lay on the plate and fixed on one of them.  Come-to-ma-ma, she chanted, then got her loyal fans to help out.  Doing this blind was tough.  She needed the moral support.

Just as she was getting ready to open her mouth, the door to her room slid open.  She heard Nurse Cronfeld’s voice, forcedly cheery, “Sorry again, dear, I-  Oh!”

The bed table swung away, Blythe’s eyes following it mournfully.  A potato plopped onto the bed.  Nurse Cronfeld scooped it up and deposited it on the plate.

“What happened, honey?”  Firm hands eased Blythe back up to the head of the bed.  “How’d you get all scrunched down there like that?”  She checked the monitor leads to Blythe’s head band and settled her among her pillows.  “You okay?”

Blythe nodded her eyes.

“Good.  Still hungry, are we?”

She nodded again.  I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.  PK is hard work.

She finished her meal, now lukewarm, then settled back to watch an entertainment selection from the Medical Center’s extensive Video Library.  She couldn’t concentrate on it.  She found herself thinking about ways to test her new... talent.

Dr. Cahill came in just as she decided that the first thing she wanted to do was turn off the damned TV. 

“How are you doing tonight, Bly?” he asked as he checked her monitor leads.  “Have a little excitement this evening?”

Just a little, she said and watched him warily.

Dr. Torvald, one of the consultants, came in and peered over his shoulder.  “Anything?”

Grant Cahill shook his head.  “Same pattern on her chart.  Definitely not a magnetic aberration at our end.”

“What about this end?”

Again the negative gesture.  “Looks normal.  What’s not normal would appear to be Fair Lady’s BP’s.  See?  There was some really ferocious activity right about sunset and again about half an hour later.  And this odd pattern of beta activity coincident.”

Torvald nodded.  “Just before Maggie came in and found her under the tray.  What are you thinking?  Attempts at physical activity?”

“That would be the logical conclusion.”  He smiled at Blythe.  “Been working out, lady?”

She nodded her eyes.

“Great.  It’s good for you.”  He patted her shoulder.  “I can hardly wait to get you into physical therapy.”

While Cahill downloaded Blythe’s data to his handcomp, Torvald studied her silently.  She found herself wishing she could stick her tongue out at him for all the times he’d looked at her like that—as if she was an inert cadaver.  Not to mention all the times he’d talked over and around her as if she couldn’t hear. 

“It must be hell,” he murmured and looked away.

They left.

Hell?  Was it hell?  Getting here had been, but now that she was here, it was more like an odd sort of Purgatory.  Mother was right about life’s events teaching you things—but such things! Yes, she wanted to walk and run and hold her husband and her little boy.  Yes, she wanted to work again and be back on the air again—be with people again.  But she’d learned to visit places she’d never been.  And she could ice skate and ride championship jumpers and fly to any planet she could imagine.  She could go anywhere inside herself she wanted to go.  And, by God, Blythe Patrick wasn’t just a person, she was an entire Universe—an expanding Universe, it seemed.

If she learned to walk again, would she lose the ability to fly?   She worried the thought until sleep came.

Morning brought a sense of excitement.  It took Blythe back to birthdays and holidays pregnant with childish expectation of presents and parties and undiscovered treats. Her eyes kept straying to the video monitor above the foot of the bed.  What she really wanted (besides breakfast) was to be able to pick her own selections from the Video Library. 

Something with a bit more meat than the stuff they usually piped to her room.  She felt a sudden need to understand brain synapses and beta waves. 

She decided that finding the remote control for the VidLib system was the most pressing item on her morning agenda.  She was sure she’d seen one of her nurses put it somewhere, but couldn’t remember where.  There were three small drawers in the bedside unit.  They seemed a likely place to start the search.

She squiggled her head to the left.  Damn, she was slow!  She could just see the top drawer.  If the head of the bed was elevated...  She switched her focus to the control module on the wall above the bedside unit.  Which button did what?  She recalled Nurse Cronfeld’s movements at the console.  It was hard.  Her memory bore a striking resemblance to Swiss cheese—soft, pale, and full of holes.

Green.  It was the green button for the bed and the blue one for the bed-table...or was it the other way around?

She selected the green button and imaged a finger to press it.

Push-it.  Push-it.  Push-it.   

The bed table swung slowly toward her on its robotic arm.   

Wrong.  It was the blue button.  Push-it.  Push-it.  Push-it.

The bed responded.  When the bottom drawer came into view, Blythe stopped pushing the button.  This was great!  Now for those drawers.  Top first.  She stared at the drawer, her neck still straining at the angle. 

Open sesame, she said.  Op-en-se-sa-me.  Op-en-se-sa-me!

It budged—just.  She called in her fan club.  Op-en-se-sa-me!  Op-en-se-sa-me!

The drawer slid open.  No remote control.  She closed the drawer more smoothly and went to the second one.  It wasn’t there, either.  Nor was it in the third. 

Looking up from the empty bottom drawer, Blythe studied the metal casing around the TV.  She now realized there was a narrow shelf beneath the monitor.  And on the shelf sat the object of her desire.

She chastised herself for her lack of observation and fixed her senses on the remote control.  A mere flick of the wrist should send it tumbling onto the bed.

Flick-of-the-wrist!  Flick-of-the-wrist!

The little box flipped off the shelf and landed neatly between her knees.

Before she could congratulate herself, the door swished open and half of Maggie Cronfeld appeared in the gap.  The other half appeared to be holding conversation with someone in the corridor.

Blythe’s heart skipped a beat.  She extended her left arm toward her knees, fingers grasping for the remote.  No can do, she thought.  This is a job for Super Blythe!  

GOTCHA! she cried and the remote leapt into her fingers.

All of Maggie entered just as Blythe flipped a fold of blanket over her catch.  “Hi, honey!” she said, cheerful as always.

This morning Blythe actually appreciated her cheerfulness—even though she felt like mom had just caught her reading under the covers at 2 AM.

“Now who left this open?”  Maggie wondered aloud and nudged the drawer closed with her foot.  Then she leaned over and straightened the bed clothes.  “What’ve you got there, hon?”

Blythe grasped the remote control as tightly as she could and stared up into Maggie Cronfeld’s round face.  Please don’t take it away, she pleaded.  Please!

Maggie frowned.  “How did you get this?  Has someone been in this morning?”

Blythe shook her eyes “no”.

“You want to watch videos after breakfast?”

Blythe’s eyes nodded.

“Okay.  Bath first, though, then breakfast, then a video or two, then outside.  I’ve got ... an errand to run, so I’ll have Julie bathe you this morning, okay?”

Blythe indicated that was fine and relinquished the video controller into Nurse Cronfeld’s hands.

                                oOo

Grant Cahill frowned.  “The bottom drawer was open?”

Maggie nodded.  “The head of the bed was raised and she had the VidLib remote in her hands.  It almost looked like she was trying to hide it from me—the blanket was flipped over it.  I don’t know what to make of it, Grant.  Either someone is sneaking into her room-“

“Or she’s capable of more movement than she’s letting on.”  Grant finished.  “Maybe Jabir is right.  Maybe this is psychosomatic.  It wouldn’t be the first time a Super-Mom with a full time marriage, full-time family and over-time career bought the farm.”

He jabbed a light pen at the Brain Pattern monitor.  “These incidents certainly seem to coincide with the mental activity we’re seeing, but the pattern is all wrong.  Hell, the location of the activity is all wrong.  If she’s getting up and walking around, we should be seeing cerebellar output, strong alpha patterns.  This is-is ... well, according to this, she ought to be in REM sleep.” 

He moved the pen and the display went back to real-time.  “Look!  She’s doing it again!”

When they reached Blythe’s room, she was examining the VidLib remote control with clumsy concentration and seemed to be having difficulty with the keypad.  She looked up and gave them one of her silly, wobbly, heart-wrenching grins.

Nurse Cronfeld went to the window.  “The blinds,” she said.  “They’re open.  They were closed when I left.”

Dr. Cahill turned to Blythe, who was watching them with all the intensity of a stuffed toy.  “You having secret visitors, Bly?”

She shook her eyes.

“I already asked,” said Maggie.  “I got the same answer.”

“Who opened the window blinds?”

Oh, I’d love to tell you, doc, Blythe said, but I’m not sure you’d believe me.

“Did you do it, Bly?”

She gazed at him for a moment, then nodded her eyes very deliberately.

He glanced at Maggie.  “Can you show me how?”

Could she show him?  Did she want to show him?  No.  Not yet.  She was still too uncertain, too secretly delighted.  She shook her eyes “no.”

Dr. Cahill just glanced at Maggie again, patted Blythe gently on the shoulder and left.

                                oOo

“But why, doctor?  Why would she hide her recovery—if she is recovering?”

Cahill felt sorry for Corey Patrick.  How must it feel to have some jerk in a white coat imply that your wife is hiding out from you in a hospital?

“Blythe is a celebrity, Corey,” he said.  “She’s also a hard-working video journalist and an equally hard-working wife and mother.”

“Pressure.  You’re saying she succumbed to pressure.”

Grant spread his hands.  “Isn’t that possible?”

“Possible?  I suppose.  But not likely.  Blythe loved pressure.  She thrived on activity.”  He shook his head.  “I don’t know, Dr. Cahill.  I don’t know what to think.”

“Frankly, neither do I.  That’s why I’d like your permission to put Blythe under twenty-four hour electronic surveillance.”

“But, you’re already monitoring her mental activity.”

Grant nodded.  “And there’s a lot of it.  That’s why I’d like to set up a camera in her room—to find out what’s causing it.”

Corey agreed, but felt vaguely guilty during his visit to Blythe’s room.  It was hard not to blurt out the surveillance plot, then ascribe it Dr. Cahill’s concern for her, but he didn’t blurt it out.  He talked to her about Orly and showed her pictures of him at Grandma’s house and promised to bring him by as soon as he was over his flu.

Blythe listened to everything he said and squeezed his hand and cried a little with frustration at not being able to do more than waggle her eyes and make crude gestures. 

If only she could communicate.  If only-  Her eyes fell on the mechanical pencil sticking out of Corey’s professorial pocket.  If only he’d leave that lying around, she just might be able to teach herself to write.  Automatic writing, she thought and giggled.  She’d be a real hit at a séance.

In the end, Blythe got the pencil by completely unmagical means.  When Corey leaned over to kiss her goodbye, her fingers extricated it quite neatly.  He didn’t notice.

Blythe’s experiments with the pencil were disappointing to say the least.  Lifting the thing was no problem and she could easily make marks on a piece of paper (a placemat, in this case).  But marks were all they were.  She lacked whatever level of concentration was necessary to think of letters as they were written rather than as they appeared.  She finally gave up in frustration and tossed the pencil into a corner.

Frustration aside, she enjoyed her lunch outing to the gardens.  They loaded her into a greatly modified Dowton Spider chair and wheeled her out beneath the small cluster of pines near the duck pond.  She ate her lunch, then, while Nurse Trudeau day-dreamed and read, she climbed a tree and swam across the pond a dozen times.  

Pleasantly weary, she sat wrapped in the scent of warm pine sap and watched a shuttle take off from the nearby Air Park.  She’d ridden those often enough, but had never really noticed how graceful they were—lifting straight into the sky as if pulled by invisible wires.  She’d kind of taken them for granted—along with a lot of other things.

She suddenly wondered what it would be like to be a cross-continent shuttle.  To float so effortlessly above her Bayside launch pad before streaking off into the stratosphere faster than any jet had ever flown.  Blythe felt suddenly lighter.  The Spider rocked, flexing its hydraulically powered joints. 

Julie Trudeau gasped and dropped her novel.  “Oh my gosh!” she cried and jumped up to grab the chair.  She triggered her lapel com with one finger,  “Maintenance!  This is Trudeau.  I’ve got a defective DSC down here on the east lawn.  Salk Memorial Grove by the pond.  I’d like a couple of interns to bring me a new one and help transfer my patient.”

They responded immediately, but nowhere near fast enough for Nurse Trudeau.  With the ultimate in poker faces, Blythe kept the Spider flexing and jostling while the nurse locked both hands on its light frame, afraid it was going to bounce away across the lawn. Blythe nearly laughed herself senseless.

She was pensive during the ride back to her room.  What she had just done was full of possibilities.  She turned them over and over in her head as she watched a video on the development of the Dowton Spider Chair that she’d keyed in from the Video Library.

Designed in the late 1980’s by Gordon Dowton, the chair was a product of his fascination with the organic hydraulic system of the common jumping spider.  Blythe tried to grasp how the hydraulics worked—studied the variations in design introduced for different applications.  It was difficult to assimilate the details but she did gather that the joints on the model she was using worked on a system of chambers that filled with fluid as the frame was flexed by the upper body movements of the rider.

Blythe eyed the Spider sitting by the door of her room.  It was a little more bed-like than the ones she’d seen used in the video.  More padded—a little less like a jumping spider on roller skates.

She glanced back at the video.  A smiling quadriplegic in a low-slung Model III was doing a series of somersaults.  He ended his performance by standing on the bumper pads just in front the forward set of wheels.  She doubted her upscale Mark V would ever do somersaults, but it was transportation.

She put down the VidLib remote and looked at the Dowton across the room.  Come to mama, she told it.  It wiggled. 

The Blythe Patrick Fan Club chimed in.  Come-to-ma-ma.  Come-to-ma-ma, they chorused.

The Spider shivered, pivoted and rolled meekly to Blythe’s bedside.  She parallel parked it, then fastened her attention on the left guard-rail of her bed.  In a moment, she found the controls and lowered it. 

The next part was going to be tricky.  She screwed up her courage.  Just up and over, she thought.  Okay, Chorus.  Anda-one-anda-two-anda-  ‘Up-an-o-ver.  Upanover.  Upanover!

She felt her body lighten and lift.  Just like the 12:50 to Chicago, she thought.  Light as a feather.  The blankets tugged at her.  She gave them a second’s thought and flopped back onto the bed in a disorganized heap.  Blushing, she pushed the covers aside with a ‘flick-of-the-wrist’ and screwed her attention down tightly on the task at hand.

  Up-an-over, she said.  Upanover, echoed the Blythe Chorus.  Upanover!

She rose gently, steadily, every sense tuned to the buoyancy of cloud-like masses of air rolling, pushing, lifting.  She felt the sheets drag beneath her as she skimmed them and wanted to wonder how she could possibly be doing this.  She didn’t wonder.  She didn’t want to end up on the floor between the bed and the chair.

She panicked a little as she left the edge of the bed.  The BPM headband chose that moment to pull free, nearly making her lose her concentration.  She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.  Just like LaMaze, she thought and steadied.  She eased down into the Spider’s padded, form-fitting couch and felt the frame flex as it took her weight.  She was home safe.  The glee club sang a short version of the “Hallelujah Chorus.” 

Now for the straps.  It took a combination of feeble hands and coordinated thought to manage those, but she did it.  Then she pulled all her wits together and surveyed the room.  It was a large room with a wide area carpeted in a dense, slightly springy indoor/outdoor weave.  The only breakables were the two vases of roses on the window sill.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, Blythe told her loyal fans, for my next trick, I will attempt the unheard of.  I, a jelly-fish, will perambulate the room.  Abracadabra!

The Spider’s frame flexed, then went into a series of gentle springs.  Blythe relaxed and had the chorus render “That Old Black Magic.”  It had a nice rhythm for springing and seemed appropriate.  She started the chair on a forward roll, then carefully, shakily, navigated the room. 

She’d learned to ride a bike on a crisp, maple-y day in October.  She’d come sailing down her grandparent’s driveway right into a pile of fresh-raked leaves.  God bless her grandfather for never installing a Yard Vac system.

There were no leaves here, but no danger of falling either. 

She steered herself on two full circuits of the room, then rolled over to the window where she settled back, intensely satisfied, to watch the clouds float by.

                                oOo

“My God,” said Grant Cahill.  He stared at the monitor, believing nothing of what he’d just seen.

Dana Torvald’s face was a near match for his white lab coat.  “What did she just do?  What did we just see?”

Grant shook his head.  “If I had to judge from appearances, I’d say ... psycho-kinesis.”

“PK?”  Dana was incredulous.

“I know, I know.  How could I even think it?  But what are the alternatives?”

Dana shook his head.  “There are more things, Horatio....” he quoted.

“Yeah.  I guess there are.  Unless, of course, you have a better theory?”

Dana shook his head again. 

“Then I’m going with PK for now.  Let’s go see Blythe.”

She was bouncing gently in front of her BPM screen when they came in, the monitoring headband clutched in her hands and a studious expression on her face.  She scooted the Spider around so she could see them.

Grant found himself wanting to recoil.  He had to   deliberately suppress his wariness.  Feeling guilty, he smiled.  “Hello, Bly.  How are you feeling?”

She pulled a silly grin and wobbled her head.  He’d forced her hand, showing up unexpectedly, but that was life.  She was almost ready for this tete-a-tete anyway.

“That’s quite an accomplishment—getting into a Dowton all by yourself....  You did do it all by yourself, didn’t you?”

She wondered how he’d known—and he did know—but just nodded her eyes very slowly.

Grant felt relief wash over him like a cold shower.  She was still being honest—had been all along, he realized.  That was good.  He relaxed a little.  “Can you explain how you did it?”

In answer, she glanced from the headband in her hands to the monitor’s flat screen.  Then she swiveled the Spider until she was facing the BPM unit. 

“What’s she doing?” whispered Dana.

Grant shook his head.

Blythe studied the little screen intently, feeling the electrode patches in the band under the tips of her fingers.  She thought of letters the way she saw them; clear, bright and steady.  Obediently, they appeared on the monitor:  I T-H-I-N-K.  Then: I W-A-N-T.

That was it.  Just: I think.  I want.

Grant moved around Blythe to sit on the bed where he could see both her face and the display.  “How do you do that?”

After a moment’s pause, the display said:  DON’T KNOW.  JUST WANT.

“You mean you just want it and it happens?”

She considered that.  WANT VERY HARD, she answered.

“When did it start?  Do you remember when it started?”

TWO DAYS.

“Two days ago?”

YES.  The word appeared all at once.  Blythe grinned.  She was really getting the hang of this.

“It started ... just like that?” he snapped his fingers.  “Suddenly?”

YES.

“How did you find out you had it?”

That was a toughie.  THIRSTY, Blythe said.  WATER ON TABLE.  She tried to illustrate with a crude drawing on the monitor.  NOT ARTIST, she apologized.

“Jesus,” said Dana.  “Not artist.  No, Blythe, you’re not an artist.  Just a miracle.”

The world agreed.  Doctors of every stripe met with her, scientists tested her, journalists interviewed her.  She became a catalyst and willing guinea pig for emerging technology—technology that outfitted her with a custom-made Dowton Spider, named “Blythe’s Spirit” in her honor.  It carried its own onboard BPM and computer, the headband replaced by a tiny silicon implant behind Blythe’s left ear. 

She wrote a book about her experience.  And she traveled.  She was a phenom, but a carefully self-controlled one.  She was not about to become a one-woman circus.  Instead of doing the talk-show circuit, she gave lectures to physicians and workshops to their patients, trying to share her imaging process (her magic, she called it) with others coping with degenerative diseases. 

And it worked.  Other physically challenged individuals learned to harness their psyches for communication and independence before the walls of bodily dysfunction closed in.  A few achieved success on a par with Blythe’s, others could only use their BPMs to send crude Morse code to their doctors.  But they communicated.

Through it all, the world watched Blythe Patrick and applauded.  Dr. Grant Cahill watched her more closely than anyone.  More closely than even a husband who was simply overjoyed to have his wife back in his life again.

He’d been as awed and exhilarated as anyone at the beginning, but as months passed, then a year and more, the awe had been replaced by a niggling uncertainty.  As he watched Blythe interact with her family, watched her maneuver about in her Spider, watched her speak in flowing, concise amber characters, the niggle coalesced into solid concern.

At the end of a routine examination he confronted her with it.  “You haven’t been keeping up your physical therapy, Bly.”

NO TIME, said her monitor.  BESIDES, WHY DO I NEED IT?  I GET AROUND FINE JUST THE WAY I AM.

“That’s the problem.”

PROBLEM? WHAT DO YOU MEAN: PROBLEM?

Grant turned his computer display so she could see it.  “Do you know what that is?”

NO.

“It’s a graph of the rate of cellular and muscular deterioration you’ve experienced since you contracted Cahill’s disease.”  He traced the steep downward slope, the long, flat trough and the gradual upswing with a pen.

Blythe smiled.  Her face had become much more animated in the last year.  The classic ET stare was a thing of the past.    

THUMBS UP! she said.  THANKS, DOC.

“I’m not sure I had anything to do with it, Blythe.  And that’s not the point.  The point is:  The measurable deterioration hasn’t just stopped, it’s reversed itself.  You’re not as good as new, but you’ve climbed a long way back toward it.”

IS THAT BAD?

“Is that bad?  You tell me.  Are you any closer to walking than you were here?”  He pointed to the bottom of the curve.  “Are you any closer to talking?  Can you move any more of your body than you could a year ago?”

She was stunned.  Then offended.  Then outraged.  I CAN LEVITATE MY BODY, DR. CAHILL.  I CAN MOVE ANYTHING I WANT!

“Except your muscles, Bly.”

I THOUGHT I WAS A MIRACLE.

“You are a miracle.  But Bly, the miracle may have outlived its usefulness.  Your mind is strong and resourceful and it kept your body alive when it might have slipped away and died.  But now, I’m afraid it may be perpetuating your physical weakness.”

AND WHAT DO I DO?  STOP USING THE PK?  JUST CURL UP AND DIE?

“No.  Don’t stop using it.  Stop over-using it.  You’ve got muscles and bones and a voice.  Your voice made you one of the best anchorwomen in broadcast news.  Now we can only hear it on video playbacks.  It had personality.  It was you.  That BP rig has taken its place and it shouldn’t.  Hell, it can’t!  It’s not a voice, Bly.  It’s not your voice.”

YOU’RE JEALOUS! she accused him.  YOU’RE JEALOUS OF THE MAGIC.

He shook his head.  “No, Bly, I’m not.  All I’m asking is that you go back into physical therapy.  Get that body working as well as the mind does.  Think about it.”

ALL RIGHT.  FINE.  I’LL THINK ABOUT IT.

oOo

She did think about it.  Angrily at first.  Who did he think he was—practically accusing her of being lazy.  She wasn’t lazy.  She was just so damn busy. 

When the anger had spent itself, she lay in bed thinking.  Wondering if the PK might be able to help her regain real muscle control. 

Corey was grading essays in the adjoining study and probably would be for some time.  It was a perfect time to experiment. She took a deep breath.  Okay, Dr. Cahill, this one’s for you.

She slid the covers back and looked down at her body.  It wasn’t exactly wasted.  She was thin, but using the Dowton Spider had brought her muscles back from the brink of atrophy. 

So there! she thought.  Without the PK she’d never have accomplished that.  She’d have withered like a dry leaf. 

She concentrated on the right foot.  Go-toes, she said.  Go-toes.  Go-toes.  Go-toes.  The foot levitated.

She tried again.  Go-toes.  Go-toes.  The foot waved back and forth.  She frowned.  Great, but the muscles hadn’t done a damn thing.  She might as well have had Corey come in and waggle it for her.

She tried again.  And again.  And again.  An hour and a half later when Corey came in, she was sweating, frustrated and in tears.  The lights were out and she hoped he wouldn’t notice, but she should have known better.

He felt the bed shaking and put out a hand to touch her.  “Honey, what’s wrong?  Aren’t you feeling well?”

NIGHTMARE, said the bedside monitor.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

FINE.  TIRED.

After a moment of silence, he kissed her and went into the bathroom.

oOo

She didn’t go back into therapy and two weeks later Dr. Cahill cornered her again, insistent.

I DON’T HAVE TIME, she argued.

“You don’t have time to be whole again?”

WHOLE?  HOW, WHOLE?  THE PK CAN’T HELP ME WITH THE PHYSICAL

THING EXCEPT TO MANIPULATE THE MUSCLES.

“It’s done that very well.  That’s why you’ve come so far.”

I’M GLAD YOU SEE IT THAT WAY.  I NEVER UNDERSTOOD WHY YOU THOUGHT THE PK WAS USELESS.

“I never said it was useless—or even thought it.  I’m merely concerned that you’ve come to rely on it too much.  You’ve forgotten what it was like to do things without it.”

Blythe’s anger flared.  I CAN’T DO THINGS WITHOUT IT!

“Yes, you can.  There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to relearn normal psychomotor skills.”

WHAT, LIKE A BABY—START FROM SCRATCH?

“You did that with the PK.”

I NEEDED TO DO IT WITH THE PK.

“And you don’t now?  You prefer speaking through a machine to using your own voice?  You’d rather day-dream about swimming than get into the water and swim?  You like being a bystander to your own lovemaking?”

THAT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, DOCTOR.  AND MY DAY-DREAMS ARE RICHER AND MORE REAL THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE.  I’M NOT SURE I WANT TO EXCHANGE THAT FOR SO-CALLED NORMAL EXISTENCE.

“Who said anything about an exchange?  Is there some rule that says you have to give up one to have the other?”

THAT’S THE WAY IT WORKED BEFORE.  REMEMBER?

“That was different, Bly.  You know that was different.  The disease stole your body.  Your mind had to fill the gap.”

NO, DOCTOR.  YOU’RE WRONG.  I DON’T KNOW THAT WAS DIFFERENT.  I’M AFRAID, THAT’S ALL.  AFRAID OF LOSING IT.

Cahill studied her for a moment.  “Is that it?  Is that what you’re afraid of, really—losing the PK?  Losing the magic?”  He shrugged.  “I doubt that would happen.  But if it did, mightn’t that mean you don’t need it?  If you could walk again, talk again, would you need it?”

OF COURSE I NEED IT!  IT’S PART OF ME!  IT’S MY LIFE!

Cahill gazed at the top of his desk.  “Your life,” he repeated.  “You know, Blythe, we can have that implant enhanced.  It could be sending electrical messages to your muscles to help with the relearning process.”

I DON’T NEED TO RELEARN ANYTHING.  I’M FINE.  HAPPY THE WAY I AM.

Cahill shrugged and stood.  “Okay, Blythe.  Fine.  You’re happy.  I’m happy.  Corey and Orly are happy.”  He shook his head.  “I won’t bring it up again.  It’s your call.”

THANK YOU, she said and wheeled herself from the room.

He followed, watching her maneuver her Spider out into the waiting room. 

Blythe Patrick was a blinding success story.  The whole world said so.  But Grant Cahill felt like a failure.  People congratulated him every day for his part in the miracle.  (As if he had one.  What he had was a damned disease named after him.)  And every time someone shook his hand he wanted to say, “No, you don’t understand.  I didn’t save her.  I lost her.”  It reminded him of the punch line to an ancient med school gag: Oh, the surgery was a complete success, but we lost the patient.

He slumped resignedly in the doorway of his office and watched Blythe greet her husband and son. 

The little boy clutched the frame of the Spider and looked up into her face.  “Hugs, mommy?” he asked and held out his arms.

Corey Patrick went down on one knee next to his son.  “Orly, mommy can’t hug yet.  Maybe some other day.”

Cahill started to turn away, defeat clogging his throat.

“Mr. Doctor?”

He turned back.  Orly had seen him and now came to confront him with childish determination written all over his face.  “When are you going to fix mommy’s hugs?  I’m waitin’ an’ waitin’ but they’re still broke.”

Grant blinked and looked at Blythe.  “That’s up to your mommy, Orly.  You’ll have to ask her.”

                                oOo

Blythe went back into physical therapy early the next week.  She spent the following month largely in tears.  There was no sudden breakthrough, no breathless moment of discovery.  There were only agonizing sessions where progress was measured in twitches; success in feeble grunts.

One day at the end of her first month, Grant found her by the pond on the east lawn watching the interplay of clouds and birds and bright, dancing tree tops.

“What’re you up to, Bly?”

RESTING.  YOU WANT TO TAKE SOME LAPS AROUND THE POND WITH ME?

He chuckled.  “You’d beat me.... How’re you doing?”

Her face actually brightened.  The smile was no longer a gimpy, heart-breaking grimace.  LET ME SHOW YOU MY NEW MAGIC TRICK!  WATCH!

Slowly, slowly, she extended her right arm, until her hand was resting on her knee.  Her fingers curled inward and her thumb rose into a “thumbs up” gesture.

THAT’S HOW I’M DOING.  WHEN I GET MY HUGS FIXED, YOU’RE SECOND IN LINE.

He grinned and grasped her shoulder.  “That’s great, Bly!  That’s fantastic!”  He was jazzed.  More excited, he realized, than he’d been the day he’d first watched her levitate herself out of bed.  He took the hand and felt the pressure of her fingers in response.

She looked up at him, smile faltering at the edges.  Her lips moved.  She licked them, tried again.  The words came out in a raspy, reedy whisper, but it was Blythe Patrick’s voice and it was magic.

“Thanks, doc.”

copyright © 1990-2009 Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff