S'wanee: A Paranoid Thriller (18 page)

Each morning he greeted the day with an open window so his flower-shopping bee family could buzz harmlessly in and out of his room. Before going to bed, he shut it to drown out the workers who often did nighttime landscaping and other maintenance around the Quad, pruning and clipping and gilding the campus for the perfect day ahead. He now understood the purpose of the Shapard Tower beacon: to illuminate the grounds for the workers, and after a few nights, Cody felt familiar, even secure, in its nightly glow across his bed, and he forgot about a window covering. The clean, fresh air of the Domain mixed with the contented exhaustion from his rigorous daily schedule for a nightly, pleasant buzz that helped him ignore the constant ringing in his ears and lulled him gently into an unconscious and well-deserved bliss.

That night Cody slept soundly without dreams, which was merciful, because the next morning the piercing headaches began.

“A
nybody seen Caleb?” Cody asked one night after dinner, in early October.

At first he’d been glad that booming-voiced Caleb had skipped their past few study sessions because, for the past three weeks, Cody had woken from a sound sleep each morning to an intense, jabbing pain in the front of his skull. It usually wore off after breakfast and coffee, which he drank darker now, only to return the next morning with a fresh ferocity that, at its worst, nearly immobilized him.

He thought it would pass in a few days, and when it didn’t, WebMD suggested a hay-fever-type allergic reaction to any one of the million blooming things across the Domain. Cody usually kept his window open to let in the fresh S’wanee air, but he suspected the purple flowered pendulums that dangled just outside and had recently bloomed bigger and brighter might be the culprit. Google identified them as wisteria, and sometimes poisonous. His decision to close the windows for good was further prompted one morning when two of his normally docile bee visitors aggressively stung him on the neck and arm while he dressed for class. Both died in their kamikaze mission, and from the look of their comrades crawling and knocking up against his shut window, dozens more were lining up to volunteer. The maybe-poisonous wisteria might be giving Cody a headache, but it had turned his poor bees into suicidal crackheads.

WebMD’s allergy page accurately pegged another of Cody’s current symptoms: intense, sporadic fatigue. Luckily, Cody’s fatigue mostly hit at night, which made sense, considering his hectic daily pace. But it sometimes hit so fast it overwhelmed him, and narcoleptic-like, he would fall asleep, literally, anywhere. In the past few weeks, he’d woken up on the downstairs sofa, in the laundry room, mosquito-chewed by the fire pit, and on the sticky linoleum floor of the coat closet at Wellington Lodge. He didn’t choose these sleeping places, and he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there. He usually felt the fatigue cloud gather around one a.m.—Wikipedia said some offending blooms were most potent at night—and until his allergies passed, he made a point of being in his room by then. That week, he woke up predawn on the stone edge of the Burwell Fountain and realized his strategy clearly wasn’t working.

Soon, the headache stretched into his morning classes, then lunch and his library afternoons, and ultimately through dinner. It varied in intensity, like a wave, from a dull, focused throb all the way up to unbearable spike-through-the-forehead. He welcomed the nightly fatigue, no matter where he woke up, if only to escape the drill-bore pain for a few hours.

He stopped checking WebMD with its increasingly dire diagnoses too horrible to contemplate. Migraines? Maybe. Brain tumor? Denial. He considered, and unconsidered, a trip to Dr. Quack, whose half-assed clinic and skill set might prompt a medical evacuation to a real hospital, and then Cody would have to leave this wonderful place, perhaps for good. Instead, he drained an ever-larger amount of his Tiger Bucks stipend on over-the-counter pain-killer cocktails at the Klondyke, and, perhaps owing to his Old World Bulgarian genes, stoically kept his suffering to himself.

The headaches lessened a bit during his early-morning runs out to Morgan’s Steep. The farther away he got from the wisteria, the better he seemed to feel. On Wednesday morning he had woken up with the usual throb and wondered if he should ask for a different, non-wisteria’d room. Maybe Bishop would trade with him, since a single would give him more privacy with Vail. He weighed the pros and cons of moving in with roommates in a backyard cabin as he sorted through his dirty laundry for yesterday’s T-shirt to run in, and found it not only still drenched in sweat, but also ripped down the front from the neck. It was from a Guns N’ Roses reunion tour at the Meadowlands; it had served its purpose, but he didn’t remember it ripping when he’d peeled it off after his last run. He must have been in a rush, as usual.

Far out on Tennessee Avenue, running past the ROTC drill teams, Cody felt a relief that gave him hope his headaches were trailing off. His legs were sore today, as if he’d already been running, but he relished the tradeoff as his head throbbed less with each step farther from campus. He cranked up The Strokes on his iPod shuffle and made way for the white delivery van coming from Morgan’s Steep. The two men in blue surgical scrubs nodded from the cab as they passed, and Cody made it to the end of the route, where a handful of workers did early-morning cleanup around the memorial cross.

Cody caught his breath on the edge of Morgan’s Steep, as two workers climbed from below the cliff with black garbage bags, likely full of beer bottles thrown by late-night visitors. Cody gave one of the workers a hand back to solid ground and wondered how anyone could trash this beautiful place.

Cody’s relief was short-lived, however, as it was most mornings. With each running step back toward Rebel’s Rest, his headache intensified. The pain had become so much a part of him over the past few weeks, like a new normal, that he could scarcely remember what his daily life felt like before it.

Fortunately, Cody had been able to rise above the pain and excel in his classes. He and Caleb had gotten an A- or a B+ on their problem sets together, and another was due Friday.

“Has anybody seen Caleb?” Cody repeated in the crowded dining room Thursday night, after Caleb’s second day of skipping their study sessions. Ross nodded and wiped his mouth and got up from his half-eaten dinner.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, leading Cody down the hallway into the front living room. “I meant to tell you.”

According to Ross, Caleb had decided to transfer to Georgetown, to be closer to his family, for “personal reasons.” “He didn’t want to say anything,” Ross said. “It’s a family thing. His mother has, like, emotional issues.” Caleb had been initially hesitant to go to school so far from her but had given it a shot. “We discussed it a lot before he decided to go back.”

“I’m sorry,” Cody said. “I didn’t know.”

“He didn’t like to talk about it. You know how Caleb is,” Ross said. “Sucks, ‘cause he was a great get for S’wanee. We’ll miss him.” And then Ross said, “Keep it on the down low, cool? It’s such a personal thing, but you two were friends…”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Cody nodded. “I won’t say anything.” He was going to miss the tool.

“Hey, Cody.” Ross stopped him as he headed to the library to finish the problem set on his own. “You doing okay, bud?”

“Yeah, man. I’m doing okay.”

“I mean, you feeling all right?” Ross said more quietly. “I mean, physically?”

“Yeah, I feel all right,” Cody lied.

“I’m just asking because, dude”—Ross got closer—“you’re dropping a lot on pills at the Klondyke. Burning through a ton of Tiger Bucks.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Cody said, wondering how Ross knew he was dropping a lot on pills at the Klondyke and burning through a ton of Tiger Bucks. “Just allergies.”

“We monitor that stuff, you know, through your card,” Ross explained without being asked. “If you’re having, you know, any kind of pain, you can tell me about it, and you should. We got a doctor here and everything, you know?”

“I think I’m allergic to the wisteria outside my room,” Cody said. “It gives me a headache. Maybe if I changed rooms…”

“I don’t think you need to change rooms,” Ross said quickly and then laughed. “And I don’t know anything about wisteria, but just let me know if your headaches get worse, okay? That’s what I’m here for. Seriously.”

“I will, Ross, thanks,” Cody said, knowing that he wouldn’t. He’d grown up nursing himself through sickness, and he’d spring back from this on his own, as well.

But a few days later, the pain took on a new, alarming dimension. The hot-poker-through-the-forehead spread across his skull and down the back of his neck with a savage fury that left him dizzy and occasionally gasping for breath. It plagued him every waking hour and started to unhinge him from his own personality and consciousness, leaving him zombielike.

“Dood! What the fuck is wrong with you?” Banjo demanded when Cody, his skull aflame, refused to hit the Lodge for the fourth night in a row. “You used to be fun.” Elliott was more sympathetic, even tender. “You need anything, Cody?” he asked almost daily.

Occasionally, by the end of the day, Cody’s system was so overwhelmed with the constant agony that he would dry-heave in his room with nothing to vomit up, as he hadn’t been eating. Sleep was his only relief, and he dreaded, even in his dreams, waking up.

One morning, before an English quiz on Chaucer, Cody woke early and laced up his running shoes in a panic. His windowsill was littered with dead bees, and he felt untethered from his brain, and he sprinted down Tennessee Avenue, not seeing ROTC or deer or geese or trees. With each desperate stride farther from campus, he prayed for relief, but it never came, and when he reached the memorial cross and Morgan’s Steep, the torture still owned him, and he fled down through the thicket onto the Perimeter Trail. Crazed, he tore past caves and waterfalls and through bushes, and he was wet and bleeding but kept sprinting as far from the torment as he could and later he would remember the high-pitched whistle he felt in his head right before everything went black.

•   •   •

“Well, now,” was the first thing he heard before he opened his eyes. He knew the voice.

Dean Apperson perched at his bedside in the bright pastel room. Cody was hooked to an IV drip and a beeping machine.

“Well, look who’s here,” Dean Apperson said to Ross over his shoulder. “How you doing there, buddy?” Ross asked, drawing closer.

“I’m good, man,” Cody said, knowing where he was. The headache was gone. The pain was totally gone. “What time is it?” he asked.

“Lunchtime,” Dean Apperson said. “You’ve had a nice morning nap.”

“How do you feel, Cody?” Ross asked. “How’s that headache?”

“It’s gone,” Cody said. “I don’t have a headache right now.”

“And I don’t think you will again,” Dean Apperson soothed. “Isn’t that good news?”

He explained they’d given him a shot and a drip to clear it all up. “We just had to tweak a few things,” he said. From the soreness and bruises in the crook of Cody’s arm, Dr. Quack must have poked around quite a bit to get it right.
Figures
, Cody thought, but he didn’t care, because the pain was gone.

“It might have been those vaccines. They’re live viruses, you know,” Dean Apperson continued. “Or maybe allergies or some other fleeting illness; we really don’t know.” And Cody didn’t care because he could think and breathe and the pain was gone.

“Let’s do this,” Dean Apperson said, standing up. “Rest as long as you like. Don’t worry about class today. But come back once a week for blood tests, so the doctor can monitor and make sure you don’t have any more trouble. And do tell us,” he repeated, “do tell us, Cody, if you have pain or discomfort of any kind in the future. It’s silly and unnecessary to keep it to yourself.”

Dean Apperson went to the door and turned back. “Cody,” he said, “you didn’t by chance eat any of those silly things they find in the woods, did you? The mushroom-looking things? The ‘truffles,’ the kids call them?”

“Um.” Cody paused, weighing a lie.

“I don’t need to know.” Dean Apperson waved it off. “But if you did, just don’t do it again. They’re not good for you, and they don’t do what the kids think they do. We don’t know really what they do, so find your fun in other ways, won’t you? That’s what I suggest, Cody.” And he was gone.

“Dude, just chill here today,” Ross said after Dean Apperson left. “Get your strength back. Just”—he got closer—“just keep this all to yourself, cool? Nobody needs to know, you know? It’s like a personal medical thing, you know?”

“I’ll keep it on the down low.” Cody smiled at Ross’s familiar phrase, which was his nature anyway.

“Yeah, keep it on the down low, Tiger.” Ross laughed. “You don’t want people to think there’s anything wrong with you, because, you know, there’s not. Just say you were helping me with a science project or something.”

“Your Gownsmen project?” Cody asked.

“Sure, whatever.” Ross shrugged.

“You want me to lie to them?” Cody ribbed.

“No, you don’t have to lie,” Ross said, getting up, and left it at that.

A nurse brought a loaded cheeseburger with fries and a chocolate-peanut butter milk shake on a tray. As Cody wolfed it down, he wondered who had found him on the deserted Perimeter Trail that morning and called for help. Someday he’d ask and thank them for saving him, on the down low.

C
learheaded and pain-free, Cody exploded back into his S’wanee life. He finished his econ problem set on time and on his own, got a weekend extension, courtesy of Dean Apperson, on his George Orwell essay—his English lit class was currently exploring political writings—and knew life was back to normal when he looked forward to the nightly hallway banter. (Banjo: “Shut it, maggot. I got my own shampoo now.” Elliott: “Good. Mine doesn’t work on your kind of hair anyway.” Banjo: “
What?
”)

“Hmm, I don’t know who it was,” Ross said on his way out the door when Cody asked about his Perimeter Trail Good Samaritan. “I just got a call that you were in the infirmary. Lucky you.” Ross was always in a hurry these days, like the clock was ticking, and other than breakfast and late-night study sessions at Rebel’s Rest, Cody would catch glimpses of him scudding through doors at Spencer Hall in his lab coat. Even more than most, Ross seemed energized and driven in his work, and Cody wanted to take him up on his semi-offer to be his research assistant on whatever psychology/Gownsmen project was keeping him so busy. It had to be more interesting than biology.