Copyright 2010 Phil Wohl
ONE
Belinda Thompson was always a protective parent, but the swine flu pandemic pushed her over the edge. Her son, Daniel, cried the whole way to the hospital.
“I don’t want to get a shot!” he shrieked from the middle row of the family’s minivan.
She was the ever-sensitive parent, “Would you rather die?”
Seven year-old Daniel pondered the rhetorical question as if anything but the word ‘no’ would suffice.
It was a summer in which third-grader-to-be Daniel was doubling as a pin cushion, touring from doctor to doctor and being inoculated for every disease, ailment, and medical abnormality known to man. When he heard the words “swine flu” on a news program one morning - while attempting to get through a bowl of gluten- and dairy-free, organic, reduced fat and sugar, cardboard pieces drowned in soy milk – he knew that he would be going back under the needle.
As Daniel got older, he wasn’t even sure if he was lactose intolerant, or 95 percent of the things his paranoid mother concocted. He led the entire first and second grades in absenteeism in his two years at Brookside Elementary School. He felt fortunate that his new school district was cracking down on home-schooling, because he surely would have become the boy in the air-tight bubble within the confines of his new house.
The emergency room at Beach Haven Hospital was the only place that was rumored to still have the swine flu vaccine, so Daniel and his mother waited four hours for a chance to “win big” as Belinda put it.
The reality was that the hospital utilized all 100 vaccines the day it arrived, some three weeks prior to the Thompson’s excursion across town.
Mom and son started to get punchy, as the sliding doors opened and a distinguished gentleman walked in. It was a dark, cloudy day and rain was imminent. The man was wearing a long, tan trench coat and a navy blue New York Yankees hat. He walked up to the main glass window and appeared to whisper something to the receptionist. Seconds later, the door opened and the tall, bearded man looked back at Daniel before walking inside.
Daniel smiled at the man, which prompted an immediate reaction from his mother.
“What did I tell you about strange people?”
The man thought, “There’s no one stranger than you, mom.” And Daniel laughed and thought, “You can say that again.”
The man, who was now sitting on an examination table inside the emergency room, transmitted a joke, “There’s no one stranger than you, mom.”
They both laughed as Dr. Marc Levine, who was at the end of a 16- hour shift and looking like he could sleep for days, walked around the curtain and said, “What can I help you with…”
The man let his mind do the talking. “The name is Hartwell.”
“Mr. Hartwell,” Levine said as if he heard the man say the words. Hartwell again bypassed the spoken word and conveyed his
thoughts, “First, you’re going to get four pints of your freshest blood, and then you’re going to bring me a sterile needle.”
Levine quickly complied with Hartwell’s requests and returned with the blood and a packaged syringe.
“Stand there and take a deep, peaceful nap until I tell you to wake up,” Hartwell thought and Levine dozed.
“You look like you could use some rest,” Hartwell said out loud as he voraciously ingested the bags of blood and then punctured the skin of his left arm with the needle, back-filling some of his blood into the cylinder before removing it from his left arm.
Hartwell then reestablished communication with the doctor by saying, “You will fill the syringe with saline solution and then tell the receptionist to call Daniel Thompson in with his mother. Now awake and shake my hand and feel completely rested like you have slept for days.”
The doctor opened his eyes, yawned, and then stretched his arms toward the ceiling.
“Wow! I haven’t slept like that since I was an undergrad.” Dr. Levine said. “I have to go tend to Daniel Thompson right now.”
Levine left the examination area and walked over to talk to the receptionist. Seconds later, the stone-aged woman slid the glass door and announced, “Daniel Thompson.”
Belinda Thompson jumped up and ran to the window like she had won the lottery jackpot.
“Dr. Levine will see you now,” the woman said.
Belinda knew the drill, and grabbed her son’s hand to enter through the door. She was too excited to ask if they had a swine flu vaccine, preferring to let the excitement build with each step she took in the examination area.
Hartwell stood behind the curtain and continued his role as puppeteer. Once he saw Belinda Thompson, he wasted no time in removing her from the equation. The sound of her frantic voice and thoughts always gave him a splitting headache.
“Mrs. Thompson, please walk out into the waiting area and take a seat. Pick up a magazine and think only of what you are reading.”
Hartwell’s thoughts quickly turned into action as Belinda said out loud, “I think I’ll go to the waiting area and read a magazine.”
Dr. Levine was next in line for Hartwell, “Please hand me the syringe and then step behind the curtain and go back to sleep.”
Levine removed the syringe from his white lab coat, handed it to
Hartwell, and then walked behind the curtain and started to lightly snore. “I don’t like shots,” Daniel thought.
“You don’t have to be afraid, son. I would never hurt you. Just close your eyes and it will be over before you know it.”
In the middle of the communication, Hartwell had injected the boy in his neck without him even realizing it.
Hartwell said out loud, “You can open your eyes.”
Daniel opened his tightly-clenched eyes and the doctor and his mother were standing in front of him.
“The doctor told you that it wouldn’t hurt!” his mother shrieked as if a blessed event had just been completed. She then turned to the doctor and said, “Did you know that LeBron James went straight from high school to the NBA?” obviously revealing that she had picked up a copy of Sports Illustrated in the waiting area.
Dr. Levine and Belinda started walking out of the examination area as Daniel curiously looked behind the curtain to see if his new friend was standing there.
“Now, he might get a fever or not feel so well over the next few days…” the doctor explained to the mom, who had already memorized potential symptoms.
There was no one behind the curtain, but Hartwell conveyed the following message, “No need to search for me little one, for I will always be only a few steps away.”
Daniel smiled and then walked out of the hospital holding his mother's hand.
TWO
Daniel fell fast asleep upon returning home from the hospital, and then awoke almost two days later. He would usually wait for instructions from his mother, but broke protocol by heading right into the shower after brushing his teeth. Belinda Thompson would always have to coax her eight year-old son into a bath, but would rarely suggest a shower.
Hartwell’s supercharged blood was working its way through Daniel’s veins, making it difficult for mom to detect any of the anticipated flu-like symptoms.
“Daniel? Is that you in the shower?”
“Yes, mom,” Daniel replied.
“Since when do you take showers? Be careful in there. Let me get you a bath mat.”
But before mom could open the adjacent linen closet, Daniel was standing on the light blue bath mat completely dry and coifed, with a towel neatly wrapped around his waist.
Belinda walked back into the bathroom and was speechless for one of the few times in her adult life. She squinted out of confusion and said, “Weren’t you just?
???”
She had always washed him in the tub, cleaned his ears with Q-tips, and brushed his hair on the rare occasions he would sit still in the bath.
He also looked a bit more ‘toned’ than usual, but she thought that maybe it was just the dim lighting.
“How are you feeling this morning? Is the fever gone?”
She stepped closer to Daniel and placed the back of her right hand on his forehead. His forehead was cool to the touch, even after taking a shower that steamed up the vanity mirror.
“Let me make sure,” she said as she opened the mirrored cabinet and pulled out a digital thermometer. Daniel had thankfully graduated to the oral thermometer a few months earlier when Belinda read a report on the dangers of the ‘other-end’ thermometers.
She removed the thermometer from Daniel’s mouth and it read
“97.1°.”
“Must be a low-grade fever. We should probably hold you back one more day just to be safe.”
Daniel was ready to surrender even though he felt fine, until a familiar voice popped into his head.
“Go to school,” Hartwell whispered.
“Mom, it’s the first day of school and I don’t want to miss it. I feel fine,” Daniel insisted.
She felt his forehead again and said, “I am going to talk to the school nurse, and have your teacher keep an eye on you.”
Daniel smiled and thought, “Thank you!” Hartwell replied, “You’re welcome.”
Once at school, Daniel’s third-grade teacher Mrs. Williams, assigned his seat across from a boy named Andrew Brewster at a four-desk cluster near the front right of the class. But Daniel sped to the middle of the desks and switched Brewster’s name card with Nicole Phillips without being
spotted. Although the majority of his being had absolutely no desire to sit across from a girl, his instincts compelled him to swap the cards.
Mrs. Williams told the class to find their name tags and take a seat. Daniel pulled his chair out and sat down, placing his backpack under his seat.
“Look at the new kid!” Andrew Brewster exclaimed as he pointed at
Daniel. “I don’t think he can read!”
The kids in the class laughed as Mrs. Williams, an elegant middle- aged African-American woman, came over to quickly diffuse the situation.
“What seems to be the problem?” she asked Daniel, whose heart was racing and his face flushed from embarrassment.
Daniel couldn’t speak and would usually cower in a situation in which another boy, or overly-aggressive girl, confronted him.
So, Andrew Brewster filled in the blanks for the teacher, “The new kid sat in my seat,” he stated with a tone of hostility, which drew a nervous chuckle from the class. The truth was that Brewster switched the cards just before Daniel’s butt hit the chair, just as he was looking down to situate his backpack.
Mrs. Williams wasn’t having any of it on the first day of class.
“Boys, please come over here,” she said in a kind and neutral tone of voice.
On her left side was Andrew Brewster and Daniel was on her right, as they all faced the class. Mrs. Williams went on a five-minute speech about how the class was a family and how they all had to support each other.
All the while she was speaking, Andrew and Daniel stared – almost glared – at each other as if they were two boxers readying for a prize fight.
About two minutes in, Daniel heard a voice in his head other than
Hartwell’s for the first time, “You’re mine at lunch, dog meat!”
Daniel started sweating at first and then must have hit a patch of adrenaline because he said out loud, “In your dreams!”
It just so happened that Mrs. Williams was talking about growing up and hearing and learning about Dr. Martin Luther King, so Daniel’s dream comment was only fully understood by Andrew Brewster and Hartwell, who was standing in the corner of the classroom as an unnoticed, but interested observer.
“I want you boys to shake hands and start fresh,” Mrs. Williams said in a loving tone.
She brought them together and Brewster clamped down on Daniel’s hand first, displaying quite a grip for a third-grader. They were also
asked to formally introduce themselves, so Daniel grunted in pain, “Daniel Thompson.”
Brewster quietly huffed, “Andrew Brewster.”
Mrs. Williams continued as Daniel experienced intense pain until Hartwell used his internal voice, “Pain is a function of our fear. Channel your energy into your hand and the pain will certainly go away.”
Daniel looked over to the left corner of the room and saw Hartwell in his trench coat and Yankees hat sitting in the reading area in a wood rocking chair. He then smiled at Brewster and fought back enough to neutralize the death grip.
Mrs. Williams was on a roll, but she noticed that the boys had lingered a bit too long on the handshake, so she attempted to separate the clasp because neither boy would back down. She struggled and then stated in a stern tone, “That’s enough boys…” but it wasn’t until Hartwell said, “Time to let go, son,” that she was able to separate the two.
There were a bevy of instructions from the lunch lady as the class entered the lunch room for the first time. It was Daniel’s first try at lunch in the new school, but the experience was made easier by the brown bag he clenched in his right hand. His favorite sandwich had been peanut butter and jelly until his mother concocted a peanut allergy defense one day after
she noticed that his arm had broken out. Of course, subsequent tests revealed no allergy, but Belinda Thompson continued with her anti-peanut crusade, despite the knowledge that Daniel was treated for a nasty bee sting not a food allergy.
Also new to the school and the town of Beach Haven, New York, was Nicole Phillips. Nicole was a cute little blonde girl who suffered from asthma attacks when she became overly excited, or exercised too vigorously. While many doctors had cautioned her against over-exertion, her mother often told her that she would “grow out of it,” and that made her feel better.
While Daniel and Andrew were locked in their grip of death, Nicole clutched her asthma puffer with her left hand because she was sure that the excitement of the first day would surely push her over the edge.
She was upset by her family’s move from Delaware to New York simply because that was the only life she had ever known. It seemed that her mother decided to pick up and leave almost overnight, making it impossible to say goodbye to her friends in the suburban neighborhood.
She wondered in the days leading up to school if she would fit in with the ‘fast-paced’ New Yorkers her mother referred to – but, while she was
waiting on line earlier that day to get into school, she experienced a calming revelation.
“Go ask the boy at the end of the line if it is Mrs. Williams’ class,” Sharon Phillips said to her daughter.
The boy turned out to be Daniel, wearing a jacket befitting of a 40- degree day, not a 70-degree day.
She tapped Daniel on the padded shoulder, “Excuse me, is this Mrs. Williams’ class?” a shy Nicole asked as she reached for into her left pocket for her puffer.
Daniel turned around and their eyes fixed on each other – his light brown and her ocean blue eyes.
Sharon Phillips muttered to herself, “Well I’ll be…” Once Daniel was able to speak, he replied, “Yes, it is.”
And Nicole took her hand off the puffer as Daniel properly let Nicole stand in front of him on line.
Later that day at the lunchroom, Daniel looked into his brown paper bag and a square block of tofu stared him in the face. He felt like Charlie Brown looking into his Halloween bag and pronouncing, “I got a rock.”
Nicole walked up to Daniel and looked inside her bag, which housed a liverwurst sandwich.
She stated, “They give you a peanut jelly sandwich and a carton of milk if you don’t have lunch.”
Daniel grabbed both of the bags and deposited them into the garbage without being spotted. He then w
alked up to the aid standing near the doorway to the hot lunch area and said, “We don’t have our lunches.”
The burly woman rolled her eyes and talked to herself, “First day of school and these kids already forgot their lunch.” She walked inside and grabbed a few cartons of milk and a couple of PB&J sandwiches. “Here. Try to remember your lunch tomorrow. Okay?”
“Yes, ma'am,” Daniel politely replied.
He handed Nicole a sandwich and milk and walked over to the table where the rest of the class was sitting. Nicole sat on one side of the table and then Daniel walked around to the other side to sit across from her.
Andrew Brewster came out of nowhere, from the other side of the table, with a brown tray full of food and bumped Daniel off the spot. His sandwich went flying into the air, but he quickly regained his balance and flagged it down before it hit the ground. Good thing, because the ornery lunch aid never gave out seconds, or replacement sandwiches. By the time Daniel strolled back to the table, he was left to sit at the end by himself.
Hartwell was standing in the corner of the cafeteria and he conveyed a message to Daniel, “Keep your balance and fight against your anger. Now enjoy your favorite sandwich.”
Daniel smiled and looked down the table at Nicole, who stopped her conversation with Brewster to smile back at him and raise her sandwich in solidarity. He returned the friendly gesture. Meanwhile, Brewster saw Nicole looking at Daniel and burned inside, “I’m gonna’ clobber that kid at recess.”
Daniel enjoyed every bit of his sandwich and looked at his non- blotchy arm after he was done. It was also comforting to drink an entire
pint of whole mile, being that he was also purported to be lactose intolerant.