Quake by Auður Jónsdóttir

Author:Auður Jónsdóttir
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dottir Press
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

23

Her breath plays on my senses and becomes my own breathing. I try to ease into the sounds, but she’s speaking with such agitation that I can’t grasp what she’s saying. Her breath reeks of Camel Lights. The smell sticks to my awareness and coaxes out the unpleasant image of her lying on her back on a checkered kitchen floor, looking up at me. Did I dream that? My limbs are heavy with a soreness so acute that I’m unable to make quick movements, but the pain isn’t new to me, as if it’s been lurking just under my awareness since the first seizure and I’ve only now felt it.

Tedda pops a piece of gum in her mouth and makes a frowny face. “I know I’m letting you down—I’ll make it up to you, Saga, but they’re all here with you and you’re calm now and there’s a wrap party with the foreign crew tonight and I want to see everybody and I have to pick up the Hollywood guy. He doesn’t like to be late—you know how it is, I hope! But you can call me, if that’s worth anything. Even if it’s the middle of the night, I’ll hurry over, I promise. Promise. I just have to go now.”

Tedda gives me a solemn look, in which I recognize the aggressive love of female friends.

“It’s okay,” I mumble, confused, into a wet pillow. I must have drooled on it, which means I must have been asleep. “Tedda, wait—who is watching Ívar?”

“Bergur came and got him.”

I digest this, imagining the handoff: Ívar looking for me to say goodbye, but I’m unconscious, unable to be roused, shackled to the situation, appearing every bit an unfit parent. I feel like I’m drowning. “Was he sad about leaving?”

Tedda shakes her head. “I think he was just happy to see his pabbi,” she answers gently.

“Did Bergur have the baby seat in his car?”

“I assume so; I didn’t ask him about it,” Tedda says. “But are you okay? Do you remember what happened?”

I sit up gingerly and think for a moment. A half-familiar image of Tedda spread out on the kitchen floor bursts before my eyes. “Yes, I remember you flat on your back. Jesus Christ, Tedda! You just laid there. What happened?”

“Saga, my love, you had some sort of seizure.”

“I did? I don’t think so. I would have been the one on the floor in that case.”

“I’ve heard of things like this—a partial seizure,” Tedda says confidently, “when people seem awake but aren’t in control of what they do. They can bay like a mad dog, or they can cause some sort of ruckus in public, but they aren’t aware of what’s happening.”

“Do I bark now?” I say, trying to spin it as a joke, but I guess it’s too close to reality for Tedda to laugh. Whatever. I don’t put much stock in her diagnosis. “Where did you hear about partial seizures?” I ask, skeptical.

She frowns as she tries to remember and ventures a guess that it was at a Red Cross course.

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