Seizure (Part III)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

“I don’t see,” Amanda said, “how Dad could let you go on this trip when you have epilepsy. Let alone drive—”

“You didn’t hear a single word I said!” Tess cried, losing patience. “These are not convulsing seizures and they are not loss of consciousness seizures. Sometimes I don’t know why I even open my mouth around you.”

“If the doctor says you’re okay to drive, I’m fine with it,” Maggie told Tess.

“Assume crash positions, everyone!” Amanda remarked.

They got on the interstate and after some awkward silence passed, Maggie asked Tess to explain her condition again and Tess explained it as simply and completely as she could. In truth, had her sisters ever paid as much attention to her as they did to themselves, they should have been able to tell that even now she was keeping something colossally worse from them. She didn’t tell them about the heightened senses or the hallucinations just as she and her Dad had withheld these things from the doctor, choosing instead to roam at length on how optimistic she was about the medicine she had been prescribed. And, indeed, Maggie seemed comforted by this tale, although no amount of verbal petting was going to penetrate the rind around Amanda’s cerebral cortex.

“Tess!” Amanda waved her hand. “This is my car! I may not be allowed to drive it right now, but I still have a say in who does! I don’t think it’s safe to have an epileptic driving the car!”

“Amanda, shut your stupid mouth!” Maggie said decisively.

Amanda said nothing. They settled into their respective places in the car. After a while Tess asked Maggie a series of questions about the cooking school in Vegas and pointedly ignored her sulking sister in the backseat. Meanwhile, her hands began itching so much that she was afraid that her sisters would notice her discomfort. Fortunately, however, Maggie heedlessly walked into the jaws of her trap, extemporizing at great length about the many things she had to look forward to.

“Wait! You changed the subject!” Maggie shouted. “Tess! You sneaky minx, you!”

Maggie smiled and this time an air of amity finally seemed to be taking hold. The feeling turned out to be infectious: Amanda had already become bored with her sullen gloom—another few minutes and she would be texting her girlfriends. Maggie started fishing around in her purse for her MP3 player.

“You know, she still hasn’t explained why Dad and her were going at it today,” Amanda said, in a tone of weary acceptance. Tess, distracted by the pins and needles boring their way into her hands, couldn’t keep her thoughts straight long enough to formulate a response. Tess swallowed, looked at Maggie, and, very quickly, with the deliberateness of someone drunk trying to feign sobriety, turned her head and covered a manufactured yawn.
The stinging subsided. Tess drove on utterly taxed and struggling not to pant. They took I-65 up to “da Region” and hopped onto I-80, which would take them all the way to Las Vegas. Stopping at Arby’s for lunch, Tess skipped the salad and pressed her sisters to get her a large roast beef as she darted for the restroom. But she didn’t need to go: when she closed the stall door behind her, it was as if she had happened upon van Gogh’s toilet, and the brilliant flood of vivid colors that had been surging about her finally triumphed, she fell against the wall and wordlessly slid to the floor. Clarity overwhelmed her and seconds seemed to stretch out into hours, days, aeons. These things passed. She left the restroom and rejoined her sisters.

For the next installment, click here.