Title: The Sound of Silence
Title: The Sound of Silence
Author: FraidyCat
Disclaimer: I refer you to Chapter One. You'll have a good time, there.
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Chapter Three: Inside the Whirlwind
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Fear was absolute, and all-consuming.
Charlie had gone to bed with a headache, and now he was trapped in a nightmare. Every time he awoke, he saw something frightening. His father, crying and speaking incomprehensible gibberish. Asking him to smile. Strangers, asking him more questions, and putting their hands all over him. The ceiling of the house, undulating and changing as he floated somewhere beneath. More strangers, poking at him. A horrible machine they were shoving him into. He knew he would never be able to stand the confining space, and he tried again to protest, to make some sound, any sound, come out of his mouth.
Yet as terrified as he was, he could not stay awake. He opened his mouth to scream, and the next thing he knew his father was tickling his toes. Another stranger was talking to him, and Don was standing with his back to Charlie, tense and unhappy. Why? Charlie tried to remember if he had done something to make Don mad, but the stranger was making his head ache worse. He finally decided the only way to shut the guy up was to do what he asked, so he moved things. Legs, and arms. He tried to answer questions, he really did. Some of the words were in his head, they just wouldn't come out.
Mostly, it was as if someone had spilled a Scrabble® board in his brain. Disconnected letters floated at will, each looking for a mate, few of them making sense. The more he tried to string them together, the more they eluded him and the more frightened he got.
He wanted to cry, but he couldn't stay awake.
He was thirsty when an unrecognized woman offered him a teaspoon full of water, and he drank greedily, wondering why so many others gathered to watch so carefully. Several teaspoons of water later, he was given a small cup. When yet another stranger lined up an x-ray machine, aiming it at his neck, and several people gathered around a monitor to watch the live picture, Charlie understood they were watching him swallow. He was still grunting between sips, trying to form words, and now they were watching him swallow.
For the first time, something began to make sense in his addled brain. Charlie wasn't sure, but he thought he might have had a stroke.
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Fear was absolute, and all-consuming.
Don drove his father home and trailed behind him throughout the house, like a newly-whelped puppy seeking its mother. He felt entirely and completely disenfranchised, discombobulated, distressed and distended. His brother – his younger brother – had suffered a stroke. It seemed to be the only complete thought he could keep in his head: Charlie had a stroke, Charlie had a stroke, Charlie had a stroke…
He was useless to his father, and he knew it. He hovered in the doorway as Alan searched through Charlie's bedroom for a relatively clean pair of sweats, and he couldn't find the energy to help him look, or the words to ask what he should do. He lingered in a corner of the solarium while Alan wrestled the huge seascape painting off the wall and gained access to the safe behind, and he was morose and silent as he wondered if Charlie would ever remember the combination to that safe. Charlie had a stroke, he thought, as he followed his father out to the garage, and he didn't even wonder why Alan pocketed a stick of chalk before he led the way back to the house.
He could not find the will to argue when Alan planted him firmly on the couch, announced he was making lunch, and dropped a sheaf of papers on the low coffee table on his way to the kitchen. Later, Don couldn't even remember leaning over to pick one out of the collection. His heart beat loudly and heavily in his ears while he read about lifestyle changes and pharmacological intervention. Anticoagulant and antihypertensive treatments melded into increased right hemisphere activation and the parietal lobe. Aphasia recovery in the subacute stage was blurry and hard to read, until Don realized that he was crying.
He dropped the brochure from nerveless fingers, and the thought continued to echo in his mind: Charlie had a stroke.
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Fear was absolute and all-consuming.
If it wasn't, he would have dropped to the floor screaming long ago. He knew Don was upset; even in his state of automatic pilot he could tell that. He just couldn't find the words to comfort his oldest son. It was all he could do to give himself one command at a time: Find some sweats; get the Advanced Directive out of the safe; take Charlie a piece of chalk – that was important, even if he couldn't really name why; make some lunch.
In-between the staccato orders, his brain would keep wandering back to the same thought. My baby had a stroke. Every time he would argue briefly with the reality. No, strokes are not for babies; they are for old men; I will be the one to have a stroke. No, Charlie does not smoke, or have high blood pressure; he is physically active – just last week he rode his bike to campus three different times; he does not drink to excess and besides, isn't a glass of red wine supposed to be good for you? No, a man did not bury his wife and then watch his child have a stroke; God in His heaven would not do that, would He?
And though he was not the most observant or orthodox believer, still the answer broke his heart, so completely and at such a depth that the truth nearly took his breath away, every time his brain completed the circle. My baby had a stroke; and God had let that happen.