June, 2020, Continued

Eleanor started hyperventilating. Her baby brother was lying so still, blood still trickling down his face and into his hair. "Don't call 9-1-1. Call Chen Song. Why?" She repeated the question over and over as she fumbled Michael's hand around his phone to unlock it. 'It's Eleanor,' she typed into the text box. 'Call me. M fell. Fainted. Bleeding from eyes and ears. Said 'qi deviation'. HELP!'

Within seconds the 'read' blurb appeared and the phone vibrated. "You're faster than my parents," she muttered. The phone screen showed a notepad and a hand printing, 'show me what he's doing.' "Oh, okay," she said and turned the camera direction so it was pointing at her brother. "Oh! I'm sorry! Let me go find paper and a pen!" The hand wrote again. 'My ears work just fine.'

Feeling helpless and completely embarrassed, Eleanor was extremely happy the camera wasn't pointed at herself. Just then, Mary came running into the room, and fell, heavily, at Michael's side. "What happened? Did you call 9-1-1?"

Eleanor shook her head. "Michael said not to. He said to call Chen Song." The hand started moving on the paper again. Out loud, she read, "Your doctors can't fix this. I'm on my way. Keep him comfortable and warm. Don't move him unless he wakes up. I'll be there in about an hour."

The next forty-five minutes were torture. Michael stayed in his faint or sleep or coma or whatever state he was in. Eleanor had to talk non-stop to keep her family from calling for an ambulance or simply picking him up and taking him to the hospital. "Those doctors couldn't stop his headaches, what makes you think they know how to fix a qi deviation?" she kept insisting. Not that any of them had any idea what at 'qi deviation' was. They knew about qi, of course, in an abstract, it's-not-real kind of way.

Chen Song didn't bother knocking; he simply broke the doorknob and lock and strode into the house. He ignored the exclamations around him and the incessant questions to focus on Michael's pulse. Finally satisfied with what he learned, he pulled a small notebook from his pocket and wrote, 'He'll be fine after a good sleep and a long meditation. Where is his room?' Matthew offered to show the way. Chen Song placed one arm under Michael's shoulders, the other under his knees, and with zero strain, lifted the inert body. Mary rushed ahead to place a plastic bag under a towel on the pillow to catch any further bleeding. Once Michael was lying as comfortably as possible, Chen Song pointed to Eleanor and a chair and then waved at everyone else and the door.

"I think he wants me to stay and you all to leave," Eleanor guessed. After another ten minutes or so of bickering and insisting that they all stay to hear what happened, Chen Song was finally left alone with Eleanor and the sleeping teenager. 'Don't be scared.' the older man wrote in his notebook. 'I'm going to touch your forehead and make it so we can talk.' Eleanor nodded, even though she had no idea how touching her forehead was going to accomplish anything. There was a blueish light for a moment, and then Chen Song sat on the floor, legs criss-crossed under him. he signed.

"How do I…" Eleanor was extremely confused. She didn't know ASL, other than being able to sign the alphabet, but somehow she knew what he just 'said'.

It's a trick. There was a small flash of blue light.

"All right…. I was watching TV and he came in, and l guess he had another one of his headaches. We talked about the show for a bit, and then he fell down. He said something really strange. And then he told me to call you."

"Months, really. Since January at least. He's had all sorts of tests, but they all came back clean."

"Michael doesn't meditate!" Eleanor almost laughed at the idea. The mental image of her brother sitting in some yoga pose chanting 'ohm!' was quite hilarious. "As for his violin? You can see for yourself," she pointed a foot towards the dusty case under the bed. "I don't think he's touched it since we started this social distancing thing." Chen Song's face darkened with anger. "Chen Song… what's going on? Why did my brother faint like that? And why is he bleeding? What is a qi deviation?" Her voice was rising, becoming more than a bit shrill with each question.

The older man sighed.

"Not really. No."

"So his headaches and nosebleeds over the last months were this defense thing."

"And all he had to do to stop them was meditate?" Eleanor's voice was really high pitched from disbelief now.

Eleanor held her hand up like she was going to slap the sleeping boy. "Why didn't you do it, asshole?" Her hand slid down to wipe at her suddenly wet cheeks.

Eleanor deliberately misinterpreted 'here' to mean 'here in Concord' and not 'alive'. "I don't understand…. People fall in and out of love all the time. Break-ups happen. Why… why would he self-destruct like this." This was her little brother! The smart one, the one who had all the answers. The strong one. How he could just… forget. How could he…. She had no answers and hadn't had them for months.

Chen Song seemed to sigh. Eleanor shook her head. What do swords and sheaths have to do with my brother? Unless he's comparing them to having sex? That's… rather inappropriate. Chen Song sat still for a few moments. She giggled helplessly.

"Are you trying to say that Michael and Ming Lim are a lock and key? They only work for each other?"

Yes, that comparison will work as well. Chen Song nodded sagely.

"Rebirth is just a myth," Eleanor scoffed.

"You sound like Dumbledore," she groused.

He's a wizard from the Harry Potter books. How can he be wise? He's just a fictional character."

"Paraphrasing a bit here. So. Harry's trying to figure out if he's alive and dreaming or dead after his battle with Voldemort. He asked if it's all in his head. Dumbledore says something like just because it's in your head doesn't mean it's not real."

'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' The fictional character Hamlet said that. That doesn't mean it's not a true statement. He paused for a moment. Eleanor's face scrunched up in confusion. This drew her attention to his hands which were calmly resting on his knees.

Just because there was no such thing as a 'Jedi mind trick' as seen in those movies Michael forced him to watch did not mean that it was difficult for Chen Song to manipulate Eleanor's brain into 'remembering' a slightly different conversation. One that involved pen and paper rather than injecting his thoughts directly into her mind. One that did not include the topics of soulmates, magic, and so on. After all, he had full access to almost every Clan's cultivation secrets and over a thousand years to practice.

The young woman left her brother to his care satisfied that the older man had everything under control.

As for Michael, he woke up disoriented, and back in his fugue state. He didn't remember the conversation with his sister about that TV program nor did he remember passing out or suffering a qi deviation. Chen Song ordered him to shower, meditate, and pack his things.

'I'm taking him back to Massachusetts,' Chen Song wrote for Mary and Charles. 'He's not getting better here. And I don't want a repeat of what happened.'

"What did happen?" Mary questioned. "Why was he bleeding from his eyes? What kind of trauma causes that?"

'In Chinese medicine, we call it a qi deviation. Since Ming Lim left, Michael's mind and qi have been unbalanced. I would guess that trying to remember his friend causes this imbalance to get worse. The symptoms he's had over the last months are his body's way of trying to cope.'

"And you think that taking him back to Cambridge will heal him?"

'I have another house out in the suburbs. We'll go there. It's isolated and in a small town, so it will help keep him safe from covid. More importantly, he was never there with Ming Lim or Wang Lina, so there should be few things there to trigger his memories or cause imbalances to his qi. And I will be there to make sure he meditates and keeps his qi in balance.'

Charles and Mary disagreed with Chen Song's solution. They were overruled when Michael came down the stairs with a packed suitcase. "Mom, Dad…. It will be easier for me to study there. Less distractions, right? You know how my professors are harping on me to continue my research. Song says his place is like an hour from Boston, maybe less since there's hardly any traffic now. So if MIT opens the labs, I'll be able to get in and out easily."

Michael unpacked his suitcase and thought about how Chen Song was a master of understatements. Three bedrooms with a detached two car garage in a rural town indeed. He left out the part where the three-story (four if you included the basement), almost four thousand square foot house sat on three acres in fucking Weston and had a covered, heated, in-ground pool as well as a tennis court in the backyard. Plus it had a three car garage under the house. And the finished basement was not even included in the above mentioned square footage! His 'room' was a suite with a walk-closet that was larger than either of his rooms back in Concord, a bathroom that had a two person hot tub and a shower stall, and a study. Or den. Or whatever that room was. It had a desk set against one wall and a seventy inch TV set against the other with an eight foot long leather couch separating the two. Put in a small fridge, a microwave, and a hot plate/portable electric burner, and this 'room' could be a whole apartment!

It was certainly bigger than some of the apartments he'd been to. And his wasn't even the master suite.

Michael quickly learned the joys of online shopping and delivery services. Chen Song handed him a credit card and told him to buy whatever he needed for his research or food and clothing. When Michael balked at the price for grocery and restaurant delivery, the older man told him to ignore that. Since Michael's knowledge of cooking was almost entirely limited to pouring boiling water over instant noodles, frying eggs or pre-made hamburgers, and tearing up lettuce for a salad, the option of ordering out several nights a week was a relief. Chen Song had known how to cook simple food back when he was alive, but had not kept the skills over the millennium.

After seeing the style of food that Michael ordered, pizza, subs, and pasta several nights a week, Chen Song turned on a cooking channel and started practicing how to cook healthy foods for his protege.

As the summer marched on, Michael eased into a daily routine that was entirely based upon martial arts and cultivation. He ran, practiced with his bamboo sword, lifted weights, and so on during the day. In the evenings he learned how to control his mind and spiritual energy. There was little to differentiate one day from another.

And somehow the monotony was exactly what he needed. With no impending deadlines and the most important decision to make was to let Chen Song cook dinner or order out, his headaches mostly cleared up, and he could reduce his meditation time.

The only thing that made him realize it was one day of the week instead of another was his weekly online sessions with his psychologist. Every Thursday they met for an hour to discuss his mental state. He had met with Dr. Eileen Sturgis only a few times in person before she suggested they meet online instead due to the biotech conference covid outbreak.

With waist length, gray streaked brown hair, and owl-winged glasses, this Dr. Sturgis did not look anything like her television namesake. Nor was she slightly jovially insane like her counterpart. Their commonalities were pretty much limited to their degrees and being slightly overweight.

"Good afternoon, Michael," she greeted him pleasantly one August day. "How are you feeling today?"

"Still not crazy," he answered.

Dr. Sturgis had a soothing laugh: low and soft. "Having partial amnesia doesn't mean we think you're crazy. It just means there's something you don't want to remember. Something that hurts you very much. I'm here to help you get past the pain." She looked down at her notes. "Last time we discussed your interest in having a girlfriend or boyfriend once the pandemic is over. So… can you tell me a bit about your past lovers?"

"'Lovers' is a bit much to call them, isn't it? It kinda implies I was sleeping with them. I dated a couple people. Went on dates with a bunch more."

"You're still a virgin, then?"

"Yeah…. I never close enough to a girl to get to the point where sex was more than a 'yeah I might want to sleep with her one day' kinda thing. And the guys…. A couple asked; I said no."

"Maybe you're not really interested in men, then."

"Oh, no, I'm definitely interested in them. I enjoyed… um… fooling around with them…. I just…. I just want for there to be more than only a physical attraction." He rubbed his head sheepishly. "I sound like a girl, don't I?"

She smiled reassuringly. "Wanting to be in love with your partner before you share your bodies fully with each other is not a 'girl' thing. It simply means that you consider a romantic connection to be equal to a physical attraction. It's healthy."

"Yeah, well if all I want is an orgasm, I've got two hands and plenty of spare time," he muttered under his breath.

"Pardon? I didn't catch that."

"Nothing," he said louder.

"I know the practice is dying out in China, but would you consider allowing your parents to find you a date? The way Ming Lim's and Wang Lina's parents arranged their marriage?"

"They're married?" Michael's head started pounding. "When did they get married? They just got officially engaged in December!"

On the other side of the computer screen, Dr. Sturgis nodded slowly. This trauma induced amnesia is so strong. She brought up Ming Lim's marriage every week, and every week Michael had this same response. Shock, confusion, and what appeared to be a rapidly increasing headache given the pained look on his face and the way he was massaging his temples. "Do you have a headache?"

"Yeah, just started."

"Do you notice? You get headaches whenever Lim is mentioned. Do you think it's possible that your headaches are connected to your amnesia?"

"My headaches are connected to my fucking blood vessels in my fucking brain acting up!" he snarled. "And I don't have fucking amnesia!"

"Michael, I can play back our previous sessions if you want…. Every time I bring up Lim's and Lina's marriage, you say you don't know they were married. And you get a headache."

"They're married? When did they get married? They just got officially engaged in December!"

Dr. Sturgis frowned. She expected memory loss from session to session; she had not expected him to lose the memory so quickly. He was getting worse, not better. Luckily, she had prepared a video for him…. "Michael, I told you they were married not five minutes ago."

"No, you didn't," he whined and folded his arms across his chest.

Defensive posture, she noted and cued up the video. "Michael, we've had conversations about Lim and Lina getting married over and over. Every session I bring it up and at the next session you have forgotten it." She waited for him to make a comment, but he just glared through the screen at her. "I want you to watch this and keep an open mind." She manipulated her computer for a moment and the video started playing. Each segment of the video was dated and each segment was of the doctor telling Michael about the wedding and his reaction to that news.

When it was over, he slouched into his chair. "You made that up. Who's your editor? Bùcuò."

Dr. Sturgis's lips thinned. She had expected this response, but had hoped for better. "What does boo tsu whoa mean?"

"Bùcuò," he corrected her pronunciation. "Not bad. I mean, that's a lot of time and effort to create such a good deep fake. Apparently my parents are paying too much for these sessions if you have the money to get someone to make this shit up."

"Michael," she sighed. "I email you a copy of our video sessions within minutes of them ending. If you think this is fake, go back and watch our sessions. You'll see."

Michael rubbed at the corner of his eyes with his middle finger, almost as if he was trying to wipe away sand. "Zǒule. Tóuténg."

"And what does that mean?"

"Shénme yìsi... my fucking head hurts so I'm leaving this session so I can pop some fucking pills and get some fucking sleep."

"Watch the videos I sent you. Once your headache clears up, that is." She said the last part to a black screen; Michael had clicked out of the meeting.