The Migration, page 2
I take a breath and let it out slowly but the ache is still there.
“I thought it was, you know, like a castle. Mom said there would be castles around here.” Kira stares at the tower, tugging off her mittens.
“Not here, Kiki,” I tell her. “She just meant in England.”
Her grey eyes narrow. “She said here.”
“I’ll show you a castle,” Aunt Irene says. “In the summer we can all go to Warwickshire. There’s a proper castle near where your cousins live, much older. The cement works was built in the twenties.” She grins at me conspiratorially. I like her like this.
If Mom’s around Aunt Irene is different, more careful—with Kira especially. I don’t think she’s used to kids anymore. Before Kira was born, she took a sabbatical year in Toronto and she visited us all the time. I still remember her distracted kindness, the beat-up guitar she gave me when she thought I might be musical, her encouragement even when the lessons didn’t take. She was always reading, and she infected me with her love of stories. If she was sitting at the breakfast table she’d read the ingredients on the Rice Krispies box aloud. It used to drive Dad crazy.
I keep quiet. I love the smell of damp stones and moss, the minty musk of nettles. Ivy crawls over every surface, trees and fences and brickwork. All these houses will disappear eventually and no one will miss them. For some reason it feels good to me, being in a place so close to being forgotten.
“Promise?”
A horn from a distant riverboat sounds and all at once the sky is filled with birds.
“Starlings,” Aunt Irene cries out. “Look!”
They take to the air making a fantastic noise. Where did they come from? I hadn’t seen them on the trees, or I hadn’t understood what they were. Just leaves, dead things.
Kira fumbles for my hand. There are moments like this when everything feels the way it used to. I glance at her and she smiles, a brief resurgence of her old self. The strange look in her eyes is gone and I wonder if maybe I imagined it. Still, she’s pale and a blue vein glows at her temple.
“Hey now, kiddo.” I give her hand a squeeze. “How’re you holding up?”
Her eyes are still fixed on the birds, watching the flock twist itself into complicated patterns and ghostly shapes, almost recognizable.
“Maybe it’s time to go home,” she says.
Home. I wish it were as easy as that.
2
It’s just past five when Aunt Irene pulls her Renault into the driveway. Her house—our house—stands at the eastern edge of Osney, a wedge of barely-island just outside Oxford town, circled by the Thames and its offshoot tributaries. The river footpath runs along the side of the house to the southeast, criss-crossing the waterways down to Christ Church Meadow, a popular gathering place for the students from the Colleges.
Kira’s nodded off in the back seat. She only stirs a little when Aunt Irene opens the door and unbuckles her.
“Want me to carry you upstairs?” She’s too big but I ask anyway, backsliding into how it was between us when she was younger. All the medical tests and treatments have made her wary of being touched.
“I can walk,” she yawns.
Where the Thames flows past the house, thickset men in fluorescent vests are laying sandbags down in case of another storm. “Hullo, my duck!” one of them says to Kira, his vowels slippery and rolling. She smiles shyly and offers a little wave.
“Will we sound like that one day, Soff?” she murmurs to me as Aunt Irene fiddles with the keys on the step. Kira tries on their accent: “Hulloo, me durrck!”
“Maybe. Would you want that?” Mom’s already got a lilt in her voice I don’t recognize. She’s starting to sound more and more like Aunt Irene, which I guess is how she used to sound before she moved to Toronto before I was born.
“Nuh-uh. No way.”
Inside we all struggle to find somewhere to dump our things. There are coats and backpacks hung on the knob of the banister or piled with the muddy boots next to the front door. Aunt Irene wasn’t used to having company much before us. So many things are broken in the house: the kitchen clock, half the electrical sockets. The lower right-hand corner of my bedroom window has a thick crack running through it that lets in the cold. “That’s just how it is here,” Mom says if I complain. In Toronto Dad wanted our home to be immaculate. But I like how this place seems to say, “There are more important things to be worrying about.”
Mom appears in the doorway to the kitchen. “How was it?” She looks worn down, but weirdly it makes her seem more glamorous. She has the striking features you see in certain old paintings, cheekbones made for candlelight, her hair a shade darker than mine, chocolate with hints of copper. She’s beautiful in a way that makes it difficult for people to like her, the wrong combination of fragility and hardness. But where Mom is lithe and elegant I take after Aunt Irene: square, compact shoulders and narrow hips.
“Okay,” I tell her, “but there was—”
“Nothing happened.” Kira’s glaring at me. I decide to hold off until she’s out of earshot.
“How was the Centre? Any news, Char?” Aunt Irene asks as she steps out of her mud-splattered boots.
Kira rolls her eyes. She hates people talking about her. “Going upstairs,” she announces and clumps her way up to our bedroom. We share a big room upstairs, a barely insulated extension over the garage that Aunt Irene was using as an office before we arrived. My bed is mounted on an interior balcony I have to climb a ladder to reach while Kira’s is tucked underneath, an old wire-framed twin that looks like it came from a charity shop.
Mom shrugs and makes a sign for us both to come into the kitchen where Kira won’t hear. “Nothing definitive. Not yet anyway. But Dr. Varghese wants to meet with Sophie after we visit Cherwell College tomorrow.” She glances over at me. “Would you mind terribly, Feef? She says it might help for the two of you to get to know each other.”
“Whatever’s best.” I hate visiting hospitals but I know it’ll be easier on Mom if I suck it up.
“Good girl.” Mom kisses the top of my head.
* * *
—
Aunt Irene offers to work from home the next day so she can watch Kira while Mom drives me around.
“Most of the students in Cherwell College will be ahead of you,” explains one of the teachers, Mr. Coomes, for the umpteenth time in my interview. “You’ll have to work hard if you want to catch up.” He has sharply parted hair, glossy black streaked with white like a badger’s. He reminds me of the men from Dad’s office: that clipped way of speaking, the musky smell of cologne.
I grit my teeth and smile for him. “I know. But I don’t mind the challenge.”
Mom’s quick to say how smart I am, how she doesn’t think I’ll have any difficulty with the reading load. He quirks an eyebrow at me and all I can do is nod while he shows us around. We brush past a group of uniformed girls my age who glance at me without interest. They look identical: red lipstick and too-heavy mascara. Like old-fashioned pin-up models.
Pod people, Jaina used to call kids like that.
When the tour is over Mr. Coomes hesitates before taking my outstretched hand.
“I do hope your sister feels better. Our Centre, I hear, is very good for people with her condition.” Our situation was explained before we arrived, offered as a kind of apology. I’m getting used to it. Before I can respond Mom’s taking the registration forms from him and hurrying me out into the parking lot.
“God, what an ass. I forgot how condescending people can be over here,” she says when we’re back in the car.
“He was all right.” It’s the fourth place we’ve been to but the only one willing to take me at short notice. If I don’t start now I won’t be able to take the exams in the spring and that could mean putting off university for a whole year.
“You could imagine going there?”
“The other students seemed nice,” I lie.
“There are other schools in some of the nearby towns that might have spaces open…”
“We can register tomorrow,” I tell her.
We head west along the high street, passing Brasenose College and the heavy iron gates of the exam schools. As I watch a gaggle of the older students heading toward the Bodleian Library, I feel a twinge of envy. I want that to be me next year.
* * *
—
Perched at the top of Headington Hill sits the John Radcliffe Hospital, a massive complex of grey brick and glass.
“Last stop, I promise,” says Mom as she leads me toward one of the side entrances. “We won’t be long.” From the parking lot I have a stellar view of Oxford. I can make out the spires of the Colleges in the distance to the southwest. To the north is a load of prefab pop-up wards, and beyond that, the countryside, rolling hills sketched out in yellowy green and brown.
This is the part of the day I’ve been dreading. Mom and Kira have been here once a week since we moved back in December but it’s my first visit. I wouldn’t have come if I had a choice.
The hospital has chipped blue-green walls that make you feel like you’re underwater, slightly rubberized flooring that turns your footsteps noiseless. The same depressing aura as hospitals we’d been to in Toronto. The JI2 Centre’s new wing is an annexation of the old blood donor ward. They haven’t taken down the old signs. There’s something desperate about the whole operation. All the on-duty nurses have the same burnt-out look, as if they’ve been running triple shifts. There are loads of volunteers in dark blue smocks and posters asking for more to help out at all hours.
“Something wrong?” Mom asks me.
“I guess I thought it’d be shiny and new. Space-aged.” I try not to let me disappointment show.
“They’re really good with Kira, you’ll see—and they’ve just opened a new set of wards.”
Knowing they’re expanding doesn’t calm the swimmy feeling in my stomach. It just means they haven’t found a solution yet and more kids are getting sick.
“Come on you, Dr. Varghese is waiting.”
We check in at reception and find the office we’re looking for, and a slight, dark-haired woman answers Mom’s knock. Back home I got used to meeting different kinds of doctors: the chummy ones who pretended I was their best friend, the sympathetic ones, and the ones so focused on Kira they barely saw me. I try to size up Dr. Varghese but she doesn’t match any of these. For one, she’s a good six inches shorter than I am and maybe ten years older. So, young for a doctor, and pretty too. She looks me in the eye when she introduces herself. “You must be Sophie. You know you have your mother’s eyes, you and Kira both. But then you must be used to hearing that!”
She offers us seats in her office. The room is spare except for a couple of framed photographs.
“Your mother and I thought it would be a good idea for us to meet properly. I’m your sister’s clinician—her primary carer here at the Centre. I know this must be stressful for you.”
“She’s been managing it really well, haven’t you, Feef?” Mom chimes in.
Dr. Varghese smiles. “Let’s start with what you know about your sister’s condition.”
I rap my fingers against my knee. “I know something’s wrong with her immune system. That she gets sleepy more easily and restless sometimes. That if she gets sick then JI2 can make it much worse.”
“That’s the gist of it. It took us a while to identify Juvenile Idiopathic Immunodeficiency Syndrome as a single condition because the first cases presented in different ways, as clusters of seemingly unconnected symptoms. ‘Immunodeficiency’ means the body doesn’t fight diseases and infections the way it’s supposed to, so sometimes blood doesn’t clot properly or the immune system can attack healthy cells. Health problems—even common ones—can be much more dangerous.”
“I still don’t understand what’s causing it.”
“That’s what ‘idiopathic’ means. It doesn’t seem to be a virus or a bacterium.”
“I’ve heard it’s spreading though.”
Dr. Varghese sucks in a breath. “Yes, well, that’s true. Over thirty thousand cases have been documented in Britain alone.” Mom’s eyes widen. It’s more than either of us had heard.
“What are the recovery rates?” I’m testing her. No one’s given me a straight answer so far.
“It’s too early to tell.”
I grimace.
“Patients with the condition have a statistically higher rate of mortality within the first four months of diagnosis but—listen, Sophie, the numbers never tell the whole story. They aren’t a prediction. And we’ve made some major breakthroughs in the last few weeks.”
“Like what?” I’ve read dozens of online summaries that all say the same thing: we don’t know what it is. But Dr. Varghese surprises me again. While Mom listens, nodding from time to time, she explains to me that they’ve identified a special hormone in the bloodstream of patients like Kira. “It seems to be manufactured by the thyroid, we think, in addition to thyroxin, which plays an important role in all sorts of body functions, like digestion and brain development and bone growth. The hormone interferes in some of those processes. It can disrupt body temperature, blood pressure and clotting, which is one of the reasons your sister’s immune system is compromised.” When she sees the look on my face she changes tack. “We call it a ‘juvenile’ syndrome because it only seems to affect young people. We suspect it has something to do with the changes the body goes through in puberty.”
“I’ve heard of kids older than me getting it.”
“Most of the changes in your body are over by the time you’re seventeen or eighteen but some go on after that. The prefrontal cortex, which handles all sorts of complex processes like reasoning and memory, continues to develop into your early twenties.”
“So Kira may grow out of it?” I ask hopefully.
Mom squeezes my hand again but Dr. Varghese’s smile is restrained. “We think so. But with your mother’s help—and yours as well—her condition should be manageable.”
She stands and walks toward a large cabinet and she comes back with a small plastic device that looks like a tuning fork with a screen on it. “This is a HemaPen. It’s based on insulin monitors so it’s noninvasive. We’ll use it to track Kira’s hormone levels.”
She hands it to me. It looks jury-rigged, as if it was pounded out in shop class yesterday. Heavier than I expected. She takes it back and turns it over, lightly flicking a sensor on its base. Then she slides its two prongs around either side of her index finger. “Like this. It should only take a second.” The machine makes a crackling sound and flashes green. “It’ll automatically send the results to us. I want you to keep an eye on your sister and let me know if you spot anything out of the ordinary—even if you don’t think it’s important. You may see something I can’t.”
“Sophie’s amazing with her,” Mom pipes up, nudging me with her elbow. “The best.”
* * *
—
When we get home Aunt Irene is in the kitchen starting on dinner. She doesn’t cook much and with all the flooding it’s been difficult to get fresh ingredients. All signs point to another night of pasta and red sauce.
“Go check on Kira, will you?” Mom hands me the box with the HemaPen inside. “God knows I’m not her favourite person right now.”
“I can try.”
I find her asleep in the loft. She’s an inert comma beneath the sheets, head turned away from me.
“Kira?”
She twists around, giving me the hairy eyeball when she catches sight of what I’ve got. “Will it hurt?” Not what is it. She knows what it is, or close enough. It bothers me how used to the idea of being tested she’s become.
“Just slide it between your fingers.”
She presents her palm to me so I can help her, then yanks it away when I press the button. “Ouch!”
“Are you sure it wasn’t just cold?”
“It hurt.”
She buries her head in the pillow. A minute later the HemaPen begins to crackle softly. “Anything else I should record?” I ask. There’s a logbook on her bedside table to track her symptoms.
A mumbled “nuh-uh.”
“Please? I’ll take you to the pub for pudding.”
She pulls the pillow away. “Say ‘dessert,’ Soff.”
“I like saying ‘pudding.’ ” I nudge her foot. “Now you, enough stalling, pudding or no pudding?”
“Fiiine.” She tugs at a lock of long white-blond hair. The strands look frayed at their ends. “Out of breath, um, weakness in the right leg. Tiredness…”
“Scale of one to ten?”
She tucks the hair between her teeth and slicks it to a point. “Eight.”
“Pain?”
“Hmm.” She’s fading. I write down what she’s said and put the logbook back next to the HemaPen.
The faint sound of snores. Her face has gone smooth, slack, vulnerable.
I let out a breath, suddenly unsettled by the distance I’ve travelled from Toronto to here. My eyes slide over Aunt Irene’s old shelves, still crammed so tightly with her books they creak whenever I try to prise one out. Reference tomes on the Middle Ages alongside old science fiction paperbacks like The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, which I remember reading in the ninth grade. It’s something at least. I had to leave most of my books at home.
She must have been in here during the afternoon. One book sticks out crookedly and I pull it free, glancing at the title. A Little Book for the Pestilence. It’s old and sweet-smelling like musty vanilla. The glue has weakened and a frail sheet flutters to the ground, the heading inked in a heavy, monastic-looking copperplate. In like wise, as Avicenna says in his fourth book, by the air above the bodies beneath may be infected.
The cryptic words remind me of an old copy of the I Ching that belonged to Jaina’s hippy-dippy mother. She loved crystals, burning sage and incense, ley lines and ouija boards. “Every part of the world touches every other part,” she used to tell us, clad in a long, loose-fitting skirt redolent of sandalwood. When Jaina and I were alone we’d laugh about it but we let her read our fortunes. “The gentle wind roams the earth. The superior person expands her sphere of influence as she expands her awareness,” she would intone.
