“If you can imagine Jasper so vividly that one day a Jasper comes to you…Well, surely then you can imagine yourself free of cancer.”
As she spoke, Ashley Bell underwent a metamorphosis, her blond hair darkening nearly to black. Her hyacinth eyes darkled as well, and her features became a mirror image of Bibi’s.
The Bibi who had been Ashley put a hand on Bibi’s brow and then reached into her head as though flesh and bone presented no obstacle, her fingertips blindly tracing the surface of the brain, the gyri and sulci, the folds and fissures. This was an intimacy beyond Bibi’s experience, and she stood breathless, for the brain was the throne of the soul. Some said that the soul did not exist, and we all wondered from time to time if the skeptics might be right, if we might be only animals. But the Bibi who had been Ashley not only traced the gyri and the sulci, peeling away the web of cancer, but she saw what her fingers felt, saw the brain in all its complexity, and Bibi saw it as well, a masterpiece of gray matter and within it a soft light that wasn’t merely the current of brain waves, but the shining and eternal essence of the girl whom Paxton loved.
When the other Bibi withdrew her hand, tangled in her fingers were black skeins of tissue, alien and foul, which could be nothing other than the hideous threads of gliomatosis cerebri. She worked her fingers, rolling the spiderweb filaments into a glistening bundle as big as a golf ball before throwing them aside. She leaned forward, embraced Bibi, and whispered, “Let’s finish this, Beebs. Close your eyes. Let’s finish this and go home.”
When Bibi opened her eyes a moment later, there was only one of her—as should always have been the case.
Alone, she moved slowly through the colossal room in a condition of purest awe, as she might have felt if she had been born and raised in a deep cavern and had come aboveground after nearly a quarter of a century to see the starry night sky for the first time.
She did as Terezin asked, imagining the entire quest onto her home computer and her laptop, though not for his benefit, only for her own, that she should never forget all that had happened. She harbored no intention of publishing the story. And she would not leave this world that she had imagined for the mother-murdering monster to use as his playground. Let him perish with it. She was no god; she was a mortal liar.
No need to walk the corridor or take the elevator, now that she understood the true nature of this place. She imagined floating like a haunting spirit down through the higher floors of the building, down-down-down into the reception hall, and a moment later she found herself there.
When she raised her eyes to the big red circle with twin bolts of stylized lightning, the inlaid stone melted as if it were wax and streamed to the floor. Around her, the white quartz walls began to lose their opacity, until they became as transparent as sheets of glass, while at the same time Room 456 appeared like a heat-veiled mirage and began rapidly to solidify, though it was without patient or visitors.
She didn’t walk but floated across the disintegrating reception-hall floor toward the hospital bed, as the transparent walls of the building could no longer hold back the sea of fog. Billowing white mist flooded across the scene, claiming forever what had been the future headquarters of Terezin, Inc., as it would claim the rest of this world that she had imagined into existence during the past four days, which for her had seemed to be only two. By the end, even the fog would cease to exist.
The bedrail was down. She climbed onto the mattress. Put her head upon the pillow. Closed her eyes.
And opened them to the sight of the four people whom she loved most in all the world.
What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?
That she was three years older than Bibi Blair. That she was the ill-fated heroine of Love Story by Erich Segal. That she never had a chance, and she broke millions of hearts in her dying.
When Bibi opened her eyes, she saw four hearts waiting to be broken. She at once gave them a reprieve by saying, “Wow. I’m not going through that again. Brain cancer sucks.”
As Bibi pulled the electro cap off her head, Nancy said, “Honey, wait, no, what’re you doing?”
“My hair’s a mess,” she said, as the EEG went into alarm mode, “and it stinks like stale sweat. I stink all over. Yuck. I can’t wait to take a shower.”