Chapter 51

Kadeem

“Stay with my voice.”

Kadeem’s eyes opened, but he wasn’t with Mateo. He was in a hospital room.

“You’re finding all the details you were looking for.”

Kadeem's blurred vision focused to reveal a scene of terror, as he realized he couldn’t move his legs. He couldn’t wiggle his toes. He couldn’t feel his legs.

"Ardal,” he screamed, still desperately trying to move against the paralysis that had taken over his lower limbs.

But it wasn't Ardal who walked into the room, it was Susan. Her look of pity only intensified Kadeem's nightmare. "She's not here," she uttered somberly. "Since your car accident, she hasn't been around much. The doctors say you won't walk again and...she doesn't want anything to do with an invalid."

Kadeem felt like he was entering a portal to madness as fear surged through his veins. His heart pounded wildly in his chest as he shrieked, "What are you talking

about?!"

Susan bit her lip. She reached for Kadeem’s hand and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry. Do you remember any of it?”

“I remember the accident,” Kadeem said, his voice cracking.

“You’ve been unconscious for days,” Susan said. “I’ve been so worried about you.” She puckered her face with sadness, then wiped a single tear from her eye. “I’ll have to go let the nurse know you’re awake. Your uncle will be so relieved.. Everyone will be.”

“Wait,” Kadeem said, gripping Susan’s hand so she couldn’t pull away to go. “What’s this about Ardal?”

“I shouldn’t have told you,” Susan said, frowning. “I’ve just been so angry that it tumbled out.”

Kadeem was dumbfounded. “I - I don’t believe you.” He shook his head, as though to clear the cobwebs of confusion that were building. “Ardal would never - where is she?”

Susan shrugged. “I don’t know. She hasn’t been here in a week.”

“A week,” Kadeem repeated, in disbelief.

“I’m terribly sorry, Kadeem.”

Kadeem could barely register it. None of this felt real.

Susan got up to let the medical team know he was awake.

He looked down at his legs again, the horror rising.

He poked at them, but felt nothing. He tried to sit up higher to reach over the length of his legs to feel them, but the deadweight of his legs were so heavy, he could barely move. Frantically, he began to scratch and claw at his legs - bleeding, but feeling nothing.

His brow furrowed with intense concentration as he attempted to lift one leg—even a little bit—but it was impossible. His legs were heavy, blubbery aliens - not part of him anymore. Sweat dripped down his forehead from the strain.

“Your memories are vivid. The past is coming alive again as you find the knowledge you need.”

“Ardal!”

The relief of seeing her standing in the doorway was palpable. She rushed to him, pulling him into an embrace. The emotion hit him like a ton of bricks and he had to choke back the tears.

“Susan said,” he began, before cutting himself off, because it didn’t matter. She’d been wrong. All it took was one look on Ardal’s face to know she’d been wrong. “Never mind,” he said, kissing her. Her lips were salty with tears.

“My legs,” he said, breaking apart from their kiss. “I can’t -“

“I know,” she said. “But I think I found something to help.”

Ardal reached into her pocket and pulled out a bag of mushrooms.

Surprise caught in Kadeem’s throat. “Normally, I’d make a joke about magic shrooms,” he said, forehead wrinkling.

Ardal gave a small smile. “It’s the other kind of magic,” she said. “This wasn’t easy to find. I just need to figure out how to make the tincture, and then, I pray that it works and you can walk again.”

Kadeem tried to hide his crumpling face. “You don’t want to be with an ‘invalid,’” he said, turning away.

“What? No, that’s not it. I just want you to be well, of course. If there’s something that might work - I - I had to try, Kadeem, that’s all.”

The sound of the door swinging open startled them both. Susan came in carrying a bouquet of flowers.

Ardal’s posture went ramrod straight. Immediately, the room seemed to crackle with tension.

“Oh, you’re back,” Susan said, walking nonchalantly past Ardal to sit the vase of flowers in the windowsill of the room.

Ardal’s jaw stiffened. “Don’t sound so disappointed.”

Susan chuckled. “No, I’m happy to see you, really.” Her tone sounded almost genuine, but there was a glint in her eye.

“All the mysteries revealed, all the questions answered.”

Kadeem grimaced at the smell. He’d expected the brown, thin liquid to smell earthy, or at the worst - maybe like that pungent, sweetly old feet scent mushrooms take on when they start to go south from sitting too long uneaten in the fridge.

He hadn’t expected a sickly sweet chemical smell. Maybe it was from the alcohol used to make the tincture.

Ardal, his uncle, and Susan were gathered around Kadeem’s bedside, all waiting with baited breath.

Kadeem raised the tiny bottle like a champagne glass. “Sante.”

He winced and shuddered at the taste. Then looked down at his legs. They still felt like strangers, like piles of Jello, too heavy to lift.

“When will we know,” Ardal asked, turning to Susan.

At that moment, Kadeem felt as though he was turned inside out. He wretched uncontrollably, splattering his sheets with red blood and bile.

“Oh my Goddess!” Susan sprang up from her chair and hit the call button on Kadeem’s bed.

“What’s happening?” Ardal had gone pale. Her entire body was trembling, like she might faint.

Bob rushed for the plastic bucket hospitals sometimes keep on hand for vomiting, and thrust it in Kadeem’s lap, as he continued to choke up so much blood he could barely breathe.

The call light glowed yellow, but no one answered.

Bob raced for the door, and threw it open. “Help,” he yelled. “We need help!”

Kadeem was charcoaled and his stomach pumped. The worst part, though, was the aftermath. The reeling and the continued unspooling of things between him and the woman he loved.

“You’re a lucky man,” his doctor said through her mask. “The level of poison we found in your system - it should have killed you instantly.”

Ardal looked to be in a stupor in the corner of his room.

“You stupid idiot,” Susan burst out in Ardal’s direction. “How could you be so careless!”

Ardal appeared to shrink. Rather than getting angry or defending herself, she seemed to retreat further into herself.

Before Kadeem could speak up, his uncle did.

“Hush up, Susan,” he said. “It was an honest mistake.”

“Was it? How do you know that? For all we know, she did it intentionally!”

“Bullshit,” Kadeem whispered. He should have ordered Susan out of his room, but he didn’t. She was planting seeds, and they were already taking root.

Kadeem’s brain struggled to click everything together. The neurotoxin had left things jumbled. Maybe Susan was right. Ardal looked distressed, yes, but was it so far-fetched? They’d barely spoken in months. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d had sex, or God, even really smiled or laughed together. The last six months had been an onslaught of arguing and periods of frozen, painful silence.

What had been her last words to him the night before he got in the accident?

Ah, yes. The memory hit him in the gut.

“I wish I’d never laid eyes on you.”

She didn’t say it in anger. There was no passion behind it. It was cold, instead. It was dysphoric. He envisioned her as an ice tundra of sad regret. It tore through his heart with such sharp agony, it felt visceral.

“Right back atcha, princess,” he’d said in response, before slamming the door behind him.

So, when Susan, breathless with delight, brought him a concoction of her own a day after the poisoning, he hesitated, but tried it. And when she painted herself as his savior, he believed it. Finding the feeling returning to his legs the proof he needed.

Susan continued to insist, like Iago in his ear, that Ardal couldn’t be trusted, and he bought it - even though her words and his belief in them crushed his soul, buried him in a depression so heavy, he didn’t think he’d ever get out of it.

“When I snap my fingers, you will awake, and you will carry these memories back with you.”

The sound of snapping fingers broke through Kadeem’s past, shooting him back into the 3 AM hypnosis session with Mateo.

Kadeem blinked and looked at Mateo, who was watching him studiously. He tried to hold in the enormity of emotion that threatened to drown him.

“Are you okay,” Mateo asked. “Did you find your answers?”

Kadeem slumped forward, putting his head in his hands.