“My name is Lily Madwhip and there’s nothing wrong with my brain.”
The old lady at the hospital check-in desk with the crazy curly hair smiles at me. “Lily, what a lovely name. Is it with one ‘L’ or two?”
What kind of question is that? If my name had one ‘L’ I’d be “LIY” and I don’t even know how to pronounce that. Unless it was “ILY”. That just makes me sound like I’m sick all the time. Here comes ILY Madwhip, the sickest girl in 5th grade! That ILY Madwhip makes me puke!
I repeat my name for her. She’s old, maybe she just doesn’t hear too well. “LI-LY.”
She nods. She’s wearing big glasses. Why are her glasses so big? They’re like twice the size of her eyes. And she’s not even keeping the glasses over them, they’re halfway down her nose. That’s probably why she has them on a chain, because they keep sliding down her nose and falling off. Can she even see? Maybe her vision is so bad she doesn’t notice she’s not seeing through her glasses. What good are they then? I hope I never need glasses. I’d probably lose them all the time.
“Yes dear, I heard you. Do you spell it with one ‘L’ or two?” she says.
Why does she keep asking me this? “Two of course.”
I watch her spell my name with three ‘L’s.
Thankfully, Mom gets off the phone with her office and takes over. “My daughter’s name is Lillian Madwhip. She’s scheduled for an MRI.”
I walk away to look at the other people in the waiting room. A blonde lady and her son are sitting by the automatic doors that go outside. The boy has a bandage over his right eye. Paschar would be able to tell me why, but Paschar isn’t here. I know what’s going to happen to the boy though. He’s going to see a doctor who’s going to take the bandage off and shine a light in his face and then make him lie down and put some drops of medicine in his eye while his mom holds him down and he screams. Then they’ll put the bandage back on.
Across from them is a man with a weasel face filling out some forms on a clipboard. I’ve never seen a weasel up close, but I know “weasel” is also a term used to describe someone with beady eyes and a long face and this guy has both so that’s a weasel face. Oh he’s looking back at me. I’m just… looking… at this plant. Wait, I don’t think that’s a real plant. I thought these plants were here to provide oxygen for people but they’re just here for decoration.
“Lily!” Mom calls, “Come here.”
The receptionist lady has a wristband for me to wear with my name spelled the long way and my birthdate and some other codes that I figure only doctors and nurses know. Mom and I sit and wait. It feels like HOURS. I try not to pay anymore attention to the other people coming and going because this is a hospital and when I look at the other people I just know all the unpleasant stuff they’re going to have done to their bodies and it’s more than I needed to know. Like ever. Ew.
My mom takes a magazine about housekeeping. That’s not actually an interest of hers, but she likes to pretend it is. She’s probably going to look at pictures of other people’s homes and then silently judge my dad for the ways our home doesn’t look like them and he’s there all the time. But he digs up all my dead pets and weeds her garden and writes dirges, so he’s not just sitting on his butt all day. I wonder if he’s sitting on his butt right now while we’re at the hospital.
I flip through a magazine about science. Some photographer got really close to monkeys and took photos of them doing monkey stuff. Apparently you can get a job just squatting in the jungle taking pictures of animals. I want a job like that. Maybe I’ll save up my money and buy a camera and start taking pictures of animals. Or I could be one of those photographers who takes pictures of crime scenes. The monkeys in this magazine story look really happy that this photographer is hanging out with them.
I glance up from my monkey article and see the weasel-faced man staring at me from the far corner of the waiting room. He looks back down at his forms, then scribbles some more stuff before taking the clipboard over to the lady with the enormous glasses. I watch him because he’s got suspicious written all over him. But then I see that in a while he’s going to be talking to some doctor in a big white coat like all doctors have and they’re going to go off to an office and talk about grown up stuff, so I start singing to myself in my head to stop knowing what’s going to happen. Weasel guy turns around and looks at me again. I imagine him with whiskers and then realize I’m staring and remind myself to blink and go back to my monkeys. I guess it’s not his fault he was born with a face like a weasel anyway.
Eventually, a big lady with really short, black hair calls us in. She’s wearing a green hospital uniform. “Mrs. Maddock, we’re ready for Lillian.”
“It’s Madwhip.” I tell her. I put my monkey science magazine back and follow Mom and the nurse through the swinging doors.
The hospital is like a maze. Halls go down other halls and there’s dead ends that are offices and closets. I bet the center of the hospital is where the minotaur lives. That’s a monster from an old story we read about in school. It lived in a giant maze and people would go in the minotaur’s maze and get lost and then it would eat them. A minotaur is like a human but with a cow for a head. Not a whole cow, just the head.
We get to a little room with a bed that they cover in paper because of germs. There’s a paper dress folded up on the table. Hospitals love paper.
“You need to change into this gown, sweety,” the nurse tells me, “and any jewelry or metal piercings need to come off.”
That’s because an MRI uses magnets. Mom told me about it before we got here. Big, powerful magnets that will rip any metal right off you. I bet if a minotaur got an MRI it would pull the metal ring out of its nose. Why do cows get nose rings anyway? Maybe it’s only the punk cows. I don’t have any jewelry or piercings, so I should be fine, but I brought a bunch of quarters in case things get bad and I have to pay to the swear jar. They’re a little sweaty from me holding them because I got no pockets. Mom holds them for me.
After the nurse leaves, I change into the paper dress and wait on the table, swinging my feet because there’s nothing else to do. Mom is quiet, probably because she’s worried about the results. She thinks they’re going to tell her my head is full of nothing but tumors, but I know that’s not going to happen because my head is NOT nothing but tumors.
“When do I get Paschar?” I ask.
Mom looks up. “If you behave yourself, when we get home we’ll discuss your toy.”
I see what she did there. She didn’t say I was getting him back when we got home, she said we’d discuss him when we got home. “You said I could have him when this is over. Not discuss him.”
“We’ll talk about it when we get home.”
I am not going to throw a tantrum. I want to… I want to start shouting about how she’s changing her promise, but I know if I start yelling she’ll use that as a reason to not return Paschar to me. This is a test. She’s trying to make me upset to justify not giving him back. I’m not going to do it. So I just stare at her and think the tantrum. Mom stares back. I imagine she’s getting the images I’m sending her with my brain and it makes me smile. She smiles back.
The lady nurse in her green uniform returns and asks my mom questions about my health including whether I’m pregnant. Then she tells me it’s time to go, so I give Mom a hug because I know she’s scared, and follow the nurse down hall after hall until we get to a huge room where a giant machine is. That must be the MRI. It looks like something out of a science fiction movie, with a table for me to lay on and get shot into another dimension through this giant metal doughnut. Or maybe it’s going to turn me INTO a doughnut. I would be the worst tasting doughnut. Probably jelly-filled too. I hate jelly-filled doughnuts.
“If you’re afraid of tight spaces, hon,” the nurse says, “it’s going to feel a little cramped. But you have to lay still. You’re going to get an injection of contrast–”
Wait, WHAT. Injection? When did needles get involved? Nobody said anything about needles!
“Can I just drink it?” I ask.
“Oh no, dear.”
Well there goes one quarter to the swear jar.
She doesn’t even remove the needle, she leaves it in my arm. I hate this nurse now. I think angry thoughts and stare at her while I lay on the bed and she wheels over some weird machine with swirly tubes coming off it that she attaches to the other end of the needle STICKING OUT OF MY ARM. Oh God I can’t even look at it, I’m going to gag.
In I go, into the metal doughnut. I hold my breath and think about Paschar. And Meredith. I wonder what she’s doing at school without me today. I hope she doesn’t burn anybody. It must be hard not being able to get angry for fear of burning stuff. I’d be burning stuff all the time. My arm feels really warm. I wonder why the lady in black was hanging out at the mall. There’s way too much stuff going on all at once. I feel like my head is going to explode.
Maybe I really do have a tumor.
The MRI machine is super noisy. It sounds like someone banging metal grocery carts around. Dad calls those bascarts because they’re like a basket and a cart, but Mom hates it when he uses that word. I call them bascarts when I want to annoy her. Oh my God, how long am I going to be in here? I thought the waiting room was a long time but at least I had the monkey science magazine to read. I wish there was something to read or watch but there’s nothing.
Finally I come out and it’s all over. I’m about ready to claw this thing out of my arm, but the nurse pulls it out for me and puts a bandage over the spot. I can see the hole they poked in me. She has me sit in a wheelchair and takes me out into the hall.
“I can walk.”
“Just relax,” she says and then stops, parks my chair off to the side and walks off into what I think is one of the dead end office rooms. Why did she leave me here instead of taking me back to the room where my clothes are? She didn’t even tell me if she was coming back. Am I supposed to do something? I don’t even know where I am right now. I feel kinda light-headed too. Oh no, they found tumors, didn’t they.
“And what are you doing here?” comes a man’s voice from behind me. I turn my head to see who it is. It’s the weasel-faced man from the waiting room. He’s looking at me and smiling. I don’t know him, so I don’t say anything. I blink so he doesn’t think I’m staring and then look back to where the lady nurse just disappeared. I can hear him walking over to me because his shoes make a clop clop sound with each step. He stops right beside me.
“Lily Madwhip,” he says.
Don’t look back. He probably heard you give your name in the waiting room.
“I’m sorry… Lillian Alexandra Madwhip.”
WHAT. Oh no, he knows my full name. No, that doesn’t really give him power over me, that’s just a thing I thought about. But how does he know my middle name? Maybe it was written down on one of the forms my mom filled out.
I can feel him looking down at me. He’s really tall and and thin but all I really notice is he’s got boots with pointy toes on because I’m not going to look up at him. I’m just going to stare at this floor and maybe he’ll think I’m asleep or something. Oh right, I just looked at him a moment ago. Maybe I have that disease where you just fall asleep suddenly. I could start snoring.
“Ohhh… you’re not supposed to talk to strangers. My name’s Felix. Do you want to know my last name? Maybe I don’t have one. Would that surprise you?”
I am a statue. I am a statue. I’m not really here.
“I know what would surprise you! What if we talked about Paschar?”
I finally look at him. He grins down at me. Even his teeth look like weasel teeth. I can’t help thinking it… his last name must be Weaselman. Felix Weaselman. How does he know–
“How do I know about Paschar?” He glances down the hall. I think he’s trying to make sure nobody’s coming. He scares me. He’s reading my mind. What am I thinking now? Potatoes. Just because. Potatoes. Read that, Felix Weaselman.
“No, I’m not a mind reader. I just know people well… and I know all their secrets.”
“Do you know where Paschar is?” I whisper. I’m afraid of speaking in full volume, I don’t know why. I almost don’t want him to hear me. I just want the nurse to come back and wheel me back to my mom. Mom knows where Paschar is.
Felix kneels down next to me and puts a hand on the arm of my wheelchair. Even his fingers look like weasels. Not like weasels, but weasel fingers. Not that weasels have fingers. I guess they do, sort of. But not like human fingers. If a weasel turned human, I think it would name itself Felix Weaselman and start terrorizing little kids at the hospital. Oh no, that must be what this is.
“I’m sorry, Lily, I don’t know where Paschar is. But I know about him. And you. You see things before they happen, don’t you?”
“Who are you?” I ask. He’s not a doctor, that’s for sure. He’s wearing a long coat with fur on the edge of it. I bet its weasel fur. Oh my god, everything about this man is weasels.
“I told you, I’m Felix. I’m like you, Lily!” he grins his weasel teeth at me. I half expect him to have a long, thin moustache and twirl it with his fingers like in cartoons. “I have a gift, just like you, and a totem that connects me to the divine.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a silver locket on a chain. I bet that thing would have ripped right through his coat if he went in the MRI. There’s a hook on the side of the piece, and he unlatches it and it opens. Inside is a photo of a boy. He’s got short brown hair like someone held a bowl over his head and just cut around the edge. He’s smiling, and his teeth kinda look weasel-ish, even for a kid.
“This is my son, Joseph. You can call him Joey.”
“Hi Joey.” I say to the boy in the locket.
Felix snaps it shut. “He can’t hear you unfortunately. He passed away some months back.” He sounds sad as he says this. Kinda like my dad when he talks about Roger. “But you know who can hear you, Lily? Raziel. He’s my connection to the divine.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s my angel. Like Paschar is for you. Why don’t you say hello to Raziel?”
I say hello to Raziel in my head. There’s no response. I look at Felix and he’s watching me really closely, like he’s expecting me to say something.
“What kind of angel is Raziel?” I ask him.
He holds the locket up to my face. “Why don’t you ask him yourself, Lily?”
Raziel, are you an angel? I ask the locket. There’s no response.
Felix stares at me. “So what did he say? What’s Raziel the angel of, Lily?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper. I feel frightened. I don’t know what’s going on or if anything Felix is telling me is true. “He’s not talking to me.” Maybe this is some secret test my mom organized to see if I really believe in angels.
Felix stands up and puts the locket back in his coat. “He doesn’t talk to me either. Not that he could. But I know he’s there! That’s my gift. I know things. Not things like Paschar knows. I can’t see the future like you. But I know everything else. I know the things people don’t want me to know. I know secrets.”
“I don’t have any secrets.” I don’t think I do anyway. I’m an open book. Honestly, I tell people all my secrets and most of the time they don’t even believe me.
Felix steps back and I realize just how close he had gotten to me that whole time. It feels like I’m suddenly in an open field with flowers. Like yellow flowers. I want to jump up from my wheelchair and run through the flowers. Freedom, that’s what it feels like. He was so close I didn’t even realize it was starting to feel like I was being crushed in a can crusher. Lily the tin can.
“No, Lily, you don’t like keeping secrets, do you?” He says. “I’m going to be honest with you too. I’m not from around here. I used to travel all over! Do you like carnivals? Have you ever been on a tilt-a-whirl? Gone to the top of a ferris wheel and looked down? I’m a mentalist. That’s a stage performer, kind of like a magician. Do you like magic?”
“Sometimes.” Who doesn’t like magic? Boring people. And scientists.
“I would use my gift of knowing people’s secrets and tell them things they had forgotten about themselves! Where they left their keys, that sort of thing. Or maybe they’d done something they didn’t want others to know about. Those were fun to reveal! Any secret, I would know it. Like where your brother Roger hid something valuable from you.”
Oh my God he knows where Roger hid my foil charizard. “Where?”
“Oh I don’t actually know that, dear. I know that your brother hid something from you, but in order to know where, I’d need to meet Roger, and unfortunately he’s not here, is he? Hmm…”
Rats. …Where the hell did my nurse go?
“Anyway,” Felix continues, “Joey, my son, was an assistant in the show. He was the most wonderful boy. You’d have loved him, really. He would have believed you about Paschar. Like your friend Jamal! He believed me about Raziel.”
The heat in my head and arm are going away. I feel a lot more clear thinking. “What happened to him?”
“You know what happened to him.” Suddenly Felix isn’t smiling anymore.
I don’t know what he’s talking about. Did he tell me and I missed it? Did I read it somewhere? No, someone told me something. He keeps staring at me. Oh, is he doing that thing I did to my mother? He’s trying to send his thoughts into my–
Meredith. Meredith happened.
“Meredith,” I say.
Felix nods. He looks like he just took a bite of a really nasty sandwich. I think he’s trying to suck his weasel teeth into his face or something.
Down the hall, I see the nurse FINALLY come around the corner with my mom. I wonder how she teleported from that dead end room to wherever she just came from. They don’t seem to notice this tall, thin, weasel-faced man hovering over me. Mom, hurry!
“I came here looking for information on her,” Felix whispers. His voice doesn’t sound so cheerful anymore. It’s almost like he wants to snarl. His teeth are clenched together and he’s saying everything through them. “But instead I found you. You don’t have to be afraid, my dear. I’m going to find Meredith. I found her once, I’ll find her again. Somebody needs to protect the rest of us from her.”
He pauses and looks over his shoulder. “Do you see somebody?” then turns and smiles at me, but it doesn’t seem like a happy smile.
There’s nobody there. The hallway is empty. I was seeing things before they happen again.
He puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll see you soon.” and then he walks off in the other direction down the hall and back into the maze where he came from.
I’m shaking and I can’t stop. Something about Felix Weaselman terrifies me. It wasn’t his weasel face either, it was like I was finally meeting somebody who IS crazy. Other kids call me Mad Lily sometimes, especially buttholes like Jeffrey Baker. But they haven’t met anyone like Felix. He was so calm and seemed normal, except for the whole part about knowing my secrets. I wonder if that’s even true. I wonder if there’s really an angel in his locket, and if so, why didn’t it speak to me?
Mom and the nurse finally show up for real a few minutes later and take me back to my clothes so I can change. I do it as fast as I can so we can get out of there. Mom had put my quarters in her purse; she gives them to me. I tell her she’s going to need to keep a couple.
In the car, she asks me how I’m feeling, if my vision is fuzzy or anything. I tell her I’m fine. I don’t tell her about Felix. I don’t tell her about Raziel. And I definitely don’t tell her about Meredith. I don’t know what I can tell her anymore. I need to think about things on my own. What I really need is to talk to Paschar, and I know if I start bringing this stuff up with her, I might not get him back. I just hope that weasel-faced guy Felix doesn’t go to my school today.
At home, Dad is in his work room. He was probably writing a dirge. He does that. Mom tells me to sit at the dining room table and wait. I wonder what we’re having for dinner. Probably something that’s going to make me want to vomit. I wonder if I can convince them to order pizza if I tell them that the medicine they injected me with made me feel funny? Mom comes back with Dad and– Paschar! Paschar where were you?
Paschar tells me he’s sorry for the things he knows I’ve had to deal with alone. He says that sometimes we face things alone because we have to in order to become stronger. He says that– you know, I feel like I’m getting a lecture from my parents. –Oh, I am. They’re talking too. but I’m not even listening to that, because I’m too busy being giddy to see Paschar again.
“Do you understand?” Dad asks me.
I don’t.
“Yes.” I tell him.
Dad hands me Paschar, and I hug him to my chest. We have a lot to talk about.