Relief flooded through me. “I don’t guess you’d tell me which one.”
She flashed me a look of puredon’t push your luck. “You want to try the disco room again tonight?”
“Will she be there?”
“I doubt it.” The nurse hesitated, as if she might say something more. But she only repeated, “I doubt it.”
“Then, no.”
“Okay, we’ll do the strobes in here. They’re going to order sleep deprivation for you tonight,” she said. “And I’m thinking they’ll make you ride a recumbent bike around two in the morning.”
Gram stood up at that. “Ride a bike? In the middle of the night?”
The nurse nodded. “Exhaustion. Trying to induce that seizure.”
“Great,” I said.
“Sorry. Anything else?” She headed toward the door,pausing a moment to see if I would answer. I shook my head and she disappeared.
Gram walked over and rubbed my shoulder. “Don’t be blue. The seizure will happen.”
“All this time we hoped it wouldn’t, and now we’re hoping it will.” I flopped back on the bed.
“I tell you what,” Gram said. “When the nuclear person arrives, I’ll take a little walk. See if I can nose around for this Ava.”
“You’d do that?”
“Of course. Anything you want me to tell her?”
I couldn’t imagine what Gram might say.Would you like some tea with my grandson?
“No, Gram. Just tell me how she is. Remember, long brown hair. Shirt with pink flowers. Maybe. She might have changed.”
“I’ll find her,” Gram assures me. “Old ladies can walk in anywhere and act all confused while they perform their covert ops.”
I had to laugh. Gram loved spy movies.
The nuclear medicine tech, a lanky man with a bald head and lumberjack beard, arrived a while later. Gram told him she’d take a break in the cafeteria since he was there. Seizure patients weren’t allowed to be alone.
An alarm sounded in the room next door. Lucky duck. All around me, other kids had their seizures, got their scans, and went home. I was stuck.
Although Ava had gone through a seizure and was still here.
“You have anybody else taking as long as me?” I asked the technician.
He checked my IV port, rearranging the line. “It happens. The worst is when you get to the end of the weekwith nothing, check out, and then have one in the parking lot.”
Great. That better not happen to me.
“Have you been in a room with a girl named Ava? She’s a friend of mine.”
“Nope, just you this week, buddy.”
“I’m your full-time job?”
“Right now you are. Other than writing reports and looking over records.”
I stared up at the ceiling. The black bubble over the video camera displayed my warped reflection.
