Li looked at the sealed pack of Marlboros, then back at An. “It’s been eighteen years.”
“You want us to tell him the whole truth?” she said to Li, stroking what remained of the tiny statue’s battered finish with her thumb, almost affectionately. It had been chipped and marred by too many key scrapes when the chain was stuffed in a pocket or purse. Much the worse for wear now, its once smooth wood no more than a memory, just as her father was. “That he’s not really ours?”
Li closed his hand over the pack of cigarettes and drew it toward him.
“That his papers were forged by the same people who create fake documents for Chinese who sneak into the country illegally,” An continued. “That buying the adoption documents that made him ours cost our entire savings at the time, and that we’ve lived in fear of being blackmailed or having the authorities uncover the fact that we never adopted Alex legally.”
“I fear that phone call, I fear that knock on the door as much as you,” Li said, coming up just short of tearing the cellophane from the old pack of Marlboros. “But I don’t fear telling Alex the truth while that truth is still ours to control. He must hear it from us, my love.”
“You mean as opposed to a phone call or a knock on the door?”
And before Li Chin could answer An’s question, their front doorbell rang.
15
ARTIFACTS
“IS THIS ABOUT THE CT scan?” Alex asked Dr. Payne after Sam had left.
“I’m afraid it was inconclusive,” the doctor told him, not sounding very convincing. “Too much swelling to get a definitive diagnosis.”
“So I need to get another one.”
“Standard procedure.”
“Like you not telling me something. Is that standard procedure too?”
Payne sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We should wait for your parents.”
“I’m eighteen. That makes me an adult and means we don’t have to wait for anything.”
“I still think we should wait for them.”
“Well, I don’t.”
Payne nodded grudgingly. “The CT scan showed a shadow.”
*
“A shadow,” Alex repeated, wishing in that moment he’d listened to the doctor and waited for his parents. Big tough football player feeling like a little boy again. “What’s that mean?”
“Maybe nothing.”
“Maybe…”
“Probably. We just need to make sure.”
“Am I going to play football again?” Alex heard himself ask Payne, as if somebody else were posing the question. “Just tell me that.”
Payne shrugged, the gesture abandoned in mid-effort. “Let’s wait and see what the second scan shows. Try not to worry until then.”
Right, Alex thought, good luck with that.
*
For the second time in twenty-four hours, Alex eased himself onto the CT scanner’s table, the cold metal’s chill slipping right through his hospital johnny. Knowing the drill now, he made himself as comfortable as possible and waited for the technician to slide the table robotically forward into position.
“You ready, Alex?” a voice called over a speaker.
Alex nodded. The nurse had backed behind a screen, no longer visible. He realized the technician might not be able to see him.
“Ready!” he called.
“Okay, here we go.”
And the table began to move, positioning his head directly beneath the X-ray tube and over the detector panel. Alex watched the lights in the room dim and closed his eyes, trying to keep his breathing steady.
“Try to relax, Alex. Just breathe normally.”
Is it that obvious how nervous I am? Alex would’ve asked if he’d been allowed to talk.
“Time to get started,” the technician announced, and the irregular whirring sound began.
Alex closed his eyes as the machine began its work. He wished he had a happy place to go to in his mind, but he’d never needed one before and the only thing he could think of was the football field, which hadn’t proven to be so happy the night before. Think of that and all he could picture was the bone-crunching impact that had put him here.
“Stay still, Alex.”
He hadn’t realized he was moving.
“Stay still. Take a deep breath and hold it.”
Alex obliged as the table started to move through the scanner, accompanied by a humming sound that seemed to make the inside of his head feel warm. It stopped and he let his breath out before taking and holding another to avoid “artifacts” on the images, as a different technician had explained during his initial CT scan. This one would probably take about ten minutes, just like that one had. Only, he felt different this time, something fluttering inside his head as if a bird were trapped there flapping its wings.
“Seku nura fas turadi.”
“Please don’t talk.”
“Seku nura fas turadi.”
That indecipherable language again, sounding like it was coming from someone else when Alex knew it was coming from him. And then the room was suddenly filled with the machines from Alex’s daydreams, moving this way and that. But this time he was wide awake, as the horde seemed to spot him and glide over en masse.