Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 75

I WOKE to the gurgle of running water.

The old woman was washing something at a sink in the corner of the room. Is she doing the dishes? I thought woozily.

Then I remembered what had happened to me, and wished I hadn’t.

I glanced down at my stomach, which was covered with newspaper. Besides the gardening gear on the worktable, I made out a screwdriver and a needle and thread.

A screwdriver? Come on! I thought, quickly looking away, trying to convince myself not to blow chunks.

The tools were all splattered with blood. My blood.

“Well, what do you know?” my elderly home surgeon said. She was wiping her hands on a blood-splattered apron as she came over. “I can’t believe it. You’re actually alive.”

I realized that the room smelled like smoke. The curtains were singed, and there were broken picture frames and chunks taken out of the plaster in one wall.

“What happened?” I said. “The smoke?”

“I managed to get the bullet out of you, but it blew up right when I was trying to toss it out the window. Piece of shrapnel hit my leg. Thank fortune, it was the wooden one. How are you feeling?”

I looked down at the blood-soaked newspapers wrapped around my stomach. Besides the occasional teeth-clenching throb of agony, I actually felt a little better. Clearer in the head somehow. Being alive is fun like that.

“Like a million bucks,” I groaned. “Thank you, um… I didn’t catch your name, Doctor.”

“No doctor. Just Blaleen.”

“Thank you, eh, Blaleen,” I said. “For saving my life. For… whatever you did here.”

“Ah, don’t mention it,” she said, glancing at her wrist. “Wait a second. You haven’t seen my watch, have you? I was wearing it a…”

An expression of horror crossed her face. She turned suddenly and stared at my stomach. “Oh, dear me.”

“No,” I cried. “Please, no.”

She giggled. “Of course not. Just a little surgeon humor.”

But enough joking around, Daniel, she said, talking to me mind to mind now. You need rest. You almost died on the operating table.

You recognized me before, didn’t you? I thought back at her. What do you know about me?

I know many things, Blaleen communicated. I know you were given a human name, because you and your parents were heading to Earth.

And I know practically nothing, Blaleen. I have so many questions. Who are you? Who are you, really?

A dear friend, she replied, and held a medicine cup to my lips. Down the hatch now, Daniel.

I felt extremely tired. I glanced at the broken pictures that had fallen off the wall. My eyelids grew heavier. In one newspaper picture, a smiling young man was holding a trophy. GRAFF WINS ALL-CITY! read the headline.

Graff?! My father? My father as a young man? Why would the old woman have a picture of my-

“You’re my grandmother?” I whispered in a voice I reserved for first sightings of the Grand Canyon and such.

“That’s right, Daniel, son of Graff,” she said, and smiled down on me. “I am your grandmama.”

And then I did what I’d been doing far too often lately.

I passed out.