Blue Morphos in the Garden by Lis Mitchell

Author:Lis Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

* * *

Lily insists on accompanying me to the doctor. She guards me like a small brown bulldog with a suspicious stare. Only reluctantly can she be pried from my side, when the nurses call me back to take my blood pressure. Even then, she scorns the plastic Fisher-Price playset offered up by the receptionist. Instead she unfolds a medical pamphlet on urinary tract infections. “I’ll be good,” she promises before I’m led away.

My regular doctor is out of town. They shunt me off to the covering physician, a Dr. Blake. He is younger than me, and brimming over with enthusiasm. Keen, some might say. He tut-tuts over my charts. He asks me to hold out my arms and gives me objects to clench in my fist. He has me walk a length of hallway. He tests my reflexes, and then asks if I’m having any problems swallowing.

“Not yet,” I say. Not yet is the answer to nearly everything. Only my trembling hands and my mother’s early death give the game away.

Dr. Blake seems dissatisfied with my answers. He asks the same question several ways before finally giving me what he seems to think is a paternal and stern gaze. “Mrs. Karner—“

“Dawes,” I correct. “I’m not a Karner.”

“Kept your name, did you?” Dr. Blake says dubiously. I don’t bother to correct this misapprehension, although I consider waiting until old Dr. Waterhouse can return. Dr. Waterhouse knows not to ask about the state of Dash and me.

“Ms. Dawes, I need you to be honest with me. We don’t judge, you know. We’re just here to help. But it’s going to be hard for me to help you if you won’t be honest with me. We need your history unvarnished. You don’t need to edit for us.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say. I really don’t. Dr. Waterhouse has all my history. “My charts are right there, but I don’t think I’ve left anything out.”

Dr. Blake looks at me kindly. “You said you’d experienced no new symptoms of note, but you failed to mention the hallucinations.”

“The hallucinations?” I repeat, baffled. “What hallucinations?”

“I realize this must be very difficult for you. It’s hard to admit when—“

“What hallucinations are you talking about?”

He looks sheepish. “I overheard you talking with your daughter about her grandmother’s death. I know it must have been traumatic for you. I need to ask what medications you are on. We might need to adjust their dosages.”

Realization sinks in. He had overheard Lily and me talk about Gray-Granna turning into butterflies, and he had assumed that I couldn’t have seen that, I must’ve been hallucinating. Lily, of course, was only a child. Prone to flights of fancy, or maybe she’d been humoring me. That’s what he’d think.

“You seem to have misheard the context,” I explain stiffly. “I assure you I’m not hallucinating.”

A frown tugs at the corners of his mouth, but he pushes it back to cheerfully assure me that I may not think I’ve been hallucinating but…

“There are no buts.

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