“St. Giles has an MRI machine,” she continued slowly. “They were able to take some pictures of your brain, both immediately after your injury and when they were getting ready to let Mom take you home. The initial pictures showed . . .” She stopped, glancing at Kevin.
Wearily, I rubbed my left temple and said, “You’re thinking about how you don’t want to tell me this so loudly that you might as well be shouting it. Please just say whatever it is out loud, so everyone will know it, and we can move on to whatever comes next, okay? I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”
“The initial pictures showed reduced crenulation,” said Evie. “The later pictures showed increased crenulation. It was like your injury had caused the surface of your brain to contract in preparation for expansion.”
I blinked. “Wait, what?”
“The crenulations of your brain grew deeper,” said Evie. “According to the doctor who worked on your case, it looks like the changes are permanent. We don’t know what could have caused that sort of morphological change. It’s possible that your disorientation after the incident was partially because your brain had literally reconstructed itself, and it didn’t know how to think yet. It was still relearning what it meant to be a brain.”
I lowered my hand from my temple, staring at her. I couldn’t think of what to say.
On the couch, Sam put up his hand and said, “Wait, do cuckoos not get doctor-patient privilege? Because none of this sounds like stuff you should be telling us.”
“None of this sounds like stuff you should know,” I said. “I didn’t know any of this. Why do you get to know things about me that I don’t know?” The injustice of it burned brighter than I would have thought possible.
“Mom was scared,” said Evie. “I don’t think you understand how terrifying it was when you first went down. We didn’t have another telepath we could ask to look at your actual thoughts, but your vital signs were all over the map. Sometimes you’d have so much brain activity that it overloaded the machines. Other times, you’d have no brain activity at all. If you were human, you would have been declared brain dead several times, because you were. It was like your brain was shutting down by stages. So yes, she talked to me, and maybe she told me some things you’d rather she hadn’t mentioned, but I’m not going to feel bad about that. I refuse to feel bad about that. My sister was dying.”
“Why didn’t she tell me, then? I was the one who was hurt!”
“Because she didn’t want to worry you.”
I turned.
Artie looked at me, fear and concern and quiet resignation coloring his every thought. Guess we only got to do that once, he thought, clearly enough for me to hear it, and said, “I wouldn’t have told you, if I’d known. I was scared, too. I thought . . . I didn’t know any of this, and I wouldn’t have told you, because what if it had been the last straw? What if you’d decided not to try getting better because you heard that from me? I would have kept it a secret until I was dead to make sure it didn’t hurt you.”
“Artie . . .” I reached for him, and hesitated, not sure what I was supposed to do next.
His fear dimmed, replaced by wariness. “It’s okay. I know you don’t want us to treat you like you’re broken. You’re not broken. You’re just Sarah.”
“Always have been,” I said, and finished reaching for him, wrapping my fingers solidly around his before looking back to Evie. “I wish you’d told me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“Given the pictures we have of what happened to your brain after your injury, and what happened to this cuckoo’s brain around her time of death, we think she may have killed herself in the process of planting that trap in Artie’s subconscious,” said Kevin. “Her brain started to do what yours did, and then it, well, failed. It couldn’t expand again after it contracted.”
I stared at him. “Did my biology have to get weirder?”
“We’re pretty sure you evolved from insects,” said Annie. “There are lots of insects that metamorphize during their lives. Maybe the brain thing is like that. It’s a physiological change triggered by some outside factor, and it’s perfectly normal, and she just couldn’t cut it.”
“Not helping,” I said.
“Why does she have a rack like that if she used to be a bug?” asked Sam.
Annie hit him in the arm, her amusement coloring the air around the pair of them like sunlight.
“This is all really interesting, but what does it have to do with me?” I asked.
“Sarah . . .” Evie sighed. “Do you have any idea why this cuckoo would have been willing to risk her life for the sake of hurting you?”
I didn’t. Not only did I not know, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. “She’s dead,” I said. “Does it matter?”
Kevin and Evie exchanged a look.
“I hope not,” Evie finally said. “I really, really do.”
* * *
“Come on, nerd,” shouted Elsie, gesturing for Artie to follow her down the driveway. “You can text her like the sad geek you’ve always been.”
“I hate you,” Artie called back, conversationally. “I hate you like I have hated nothing else in my life. My hatred is the sun, and you are the fields which it will burn.”
“Love you, see you in a second,” chirped Elsie. She waved to me. “Later, Sarah. See you in the morning.”
“Bye, Elsie,” I called, before turning my attention back to Artie. “Um. So.”
“Yeah,” he said. “So.”
“Are we—?”
“I don’t know.” He glanced at me, thoughts tinged with hope. “Are we?”
“We could be. I mean, if you wanted to. I mean . . .” I took a deep breath and stopped talking. I mean, I want to. I’ve wanted to for a long time.
He blinked. Why aren’t you talking out loud?
Because Evie’s right inside, and she’s listening to everything we say. She and Kevin were waiting by the front door for me to come back. They’d been willing to give me a little bit of privacy while I said goodbye to Artie and Elsie, but that was about all.
Ted and Jane were still in the barn, and probably would be for the rest of the night. There’s nothing like a cryptozoologist when there’s something to be taken apart. It’s basically Christmas morning for them, and when they have the opportunity to wallow in it, they really wallow. Evie and Kevin would be joining them once they were sure I was safely in for the night. I could hear Kevin thinking distantly of all the tests he wanted to run on the dead cuckoo’s tissues, now that they were reasonably sure she’d died of something I couldn’t catch.