Read Online Ashley Bell: A Novel by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page B

along the hallway to the elevators. Alert for any tendency of her left foot to drag, determined not to become Quasimodo with boobs, she walked with her shoulders back and her head up.
    “What about the tingling?” her mother asked. “The fifty-cell-phones-on-mute head-to-foot thing?”
    “It’s quieter. And I haven’t had that rancid taste all day.”
    “Baby, I can see your left hand’s still weak.”
    “So I’ll use the other one to scratch my butt.”
    In the elevator alcove, the doors to one of the cabs slid open. Nancy didn’t get aboard. “This is so wrong. I can’t just leave.”
    As the doors started to slide shut, Bibi blocked them. “Mom, we have to stay as normal as possible. The three of us can’t group-hug twenty-four/seven. We’ll melt down if we do.”
    When Nancy tried to speak, she couldn’t. Her mouth trembled.
    Bibi kissed her mother’s cheek. “You’re a sweetie. Now go. Eat too much. Drink too much. Live, Mom.
Live.
I sure intend to.”
    In her hospital room again, she sat at the small table by the window and used her laptop to learn about anticancer and cytotoxic drugs. Alkylating agents. Nitrosoureas. Antimetabolites. Mitotic inhibitors. At least her disease was enhancing her vocabulary.
    As the March afternoon dressed itself in scarlet to approach the evening, a nurses’ aide brought a dinner tray. Suitable reading with dinner did not include an article about the side effects of chemo. As she ate, Bibi watched amusing dog videos on YouTube.
    The bad thing happened when she got up from her chair to wash her hands. A sudden pain of migraine intensity split her skull.
    She almost dropped to her knees. She staggered, made her way onto the bed, and pressed the call button for a nurse.
    Sudden headaches could be a symptom of gliomatosis cerebri, a consequence of pressure on the brain; however, they usually occurred in the morning. The tests she’d undergone the previous day had not revealed excess cerebrospinal fluid. “No hydrocephalus,” the doctor had said. Maybe that had changed.
    Having raised the upper half of the bed, she sat with both hands clasped to her skull and imagined that she could feel the bone itself deforming with each throb. The nurse arrived, asked a few questions, and returned with aspirin plus another pill. Bibi didn’t ask about the second medication, just swallowed it with a long drink of water.
    “I’ll keep checking on you,” the nurse promised. “Now rest.”
    When the woman left, Bibi twice tried to recline, but both times she panicked when a vivid sense of falling overcame her. More than a mere feeling, it was an absolute conviction that she would tumble backward into a bottomless void, as if she were sitting on the brink of eternity. Besides, the very act of leaning backward as much as an inch or two intensified her headache. Even knowing that the inclined bed would prevent her from so much as lying full-length on her back, she made no third attempt. Sitting forward, head hung, eyes closed, she wrapped her arms around her torso as if to anchor herself.
    To her surprise, in five minutes or less, the pain began to diminish. Aspirin didn’t work that quickly. Evidently, she owed her relief to the second medication.
    When she opened her eyes, red radiance bathed everything, and she at first thought that she must be having vision problems again. Then she realized that none of the lights were on and that the room, previously brightened by only sunshine, was now illuminated by the sunset, which had melted the sky into a fire-shot river of molten glass slowly flowing west and away.
    She reached for the lamp control that was clipped to the bedrail. The oval dimmer switch felt
wrong
in her fingers, felt soft and scaly, as if she had gripped the head of a living reptile, and the pale cord wriggled in protest. She dropped the switch and watched with astonishment as her suddenly stiff-fingered hand pecked at the air like a bird pecking at a tree trunk to feed on