The shaking grew violent and everything around him began spinning; feeling nausea and vertigo coming on he closed his eyes, reached out with his hands to let his senses reassert some semblance of control, then he felt Pinky's huge, rough hand on his arm and he looked up at her.
She was working rapidly now and had just finished wrapping a new tape around his arm, but he could see concern in her eyes this time -- for the first time -- and suddenly he felt scared. She leaned back then and he knew she was reaching out -- but for who?
A shimmering blue sphere appeared, then a green one, but before their appearance really had a chance to register in his mind they were gone, replaced seconds later by first dozens, then literally hundreds of golden bubble-like spheres that quickly drifted down onto the bed, in milliseconds covering both Clyde and Taggart completely. He tried to keep his eyes open but they burned now, like his eyes had filled with soapy water, then it became hard to breathe. He felt the inward panic of looming suffocation and reached out with his hand...
Pinky took it, but then he felt a hot pinch on his forearm, just like the pain of an injection -- and then he remembered the Old Man's gentle laughter. He struggled to hold onto consciousness but he felt everything falling beyond and within a white-hot veil, and the last thing he was aware of was swallowing hard and, for some reason, wanting to cry.
+++++
When Tracy came into Henry's stateroom she found him lifeless on his bed and began CPR, then she remembered he had an auto-defib unit on the wall in his head and dashed for it. She opened the unit and attached the leads then fired the unit...
+++++
He opened his eyes, tried to make sense of his surroundings.
Everything looked and felt so familiar, impossibly so, and he pinched his eyes and shook his head, trying to knock the spinning cobwebs from his mind.
"It's my old bedroom," he said, "and I'm on the island." He sat up and felt the cool breeze coming in off the Pacific and realized he'd slept with his window open again, but then he saw his physics homework on the desk and groaned in defeat.
"Damn, I forgot...I didn't finish it," he said as he walked over and looked at a problem on the conservation of linear momentum that had stumped him for hours the night before. He looked at his alarm clock and sighed, then picked up his textbooks and the rest of his homework and put them in his book bag -- before he realized he hadn't showered and went off to his bathroom. He stood under the hot water trying to wash the remnants of the dream from his mind, something about his grandson living on a distant planet, and he laughed at the absurdity of the images that came to mind.
He dried off and dressed, then remembered they had a game that afternoon and that he was supposed to wear his practice jersey to classes today. 'The pep rally, Dufus! Remember?' he said to himself for the umpteenth time. He shook off the ritual pre-game jitters that always came for him while he dressed for school, then he heard his mother in the kitchen and his father down the hall in their bathroom, an ancient electric razor mowing the stubble on the old man's face again. He picked up his book bag and headed downstairs, lingering scents of hot pancakes and crisp bacon pushing aside all his worries about botched homework and the teams' rivalry with Huntington Beach High.
"Hi, Mom," he said as he bounced into her kitchen.
"Good morning, Bright-eyes. How'd you sleep?"
"Oh, you know, up-tight -- as always."
She put a plate of pancakes down on the table in front of him and he smiled as his dad came in and sat at the head of the table.
"Have a rough night, Sport?" his father said.
He shrugged.
"I could hear you tossing and turning all night, at least until I finally dropped off."
"Sorry, Pops. Big day today?"
"No, nothing out of the ordinary. Finish that problem?"
He shook his head. "No, but I got Benson for study hall this morning. I'll get it before class."
"Well, okay, but you know the deal...bad report card and you stay home for Christmas."
"I know, I know," Henry sighed.
"Speaking of," his mother interrupted. "Did you go ahead with the airline reservations yesterday?"
"I did indeed, and reservations at the Crillon, too."
Which caused her to smile as she set a platter of scrambled eggs and bacon in the table. Henry waited for his father to take some, then he put some on his mother's plate before he finished off the rest.
"Got your books ready?" his father asked as he stood and put on his jacket.
"Yessir."
"We picking up Claire?"
"Yes, if that's not a problem?"
"Well, it hasn't been for the last ten years, so let's get going..."
He kissed his mom and headed for the door, then he turned around: "You coming to the game tonight?"
"You know it!" she said enthusiastically. "I hear scouts from SC and Berkeley are going to be there tonight!"
He rolled his eyes as another wave of acid roiled his gut. "Thanks. I needed that."
"I'll see you there!" she said, blowing his father a kiss as they walked out the door.
It was just a few blocks to Claire's house, but true-to-form Edith was out there waiting with her sister and he groaned. His father pulled up in front of their house and Claire hopped in and slid across the back seat, making room for her sister but keeping a wall of books between them -- as a barricade. Henry turned around and looked at her, her beauty -- as it always did -- taking his breath away.
She'd started to look more and more like Olivia de Havilland this year -- which wasn't so surprising as the actress was some kind of second aunt once removed, or something like that -- and like de Havilland Claire was as brainy as she was beautiful. She'd taken the full SATs her sophomore year and aced them -- a solid 1600 -- and already Princeton and Yale had sent offers her way, so things were looking up.
But his score hadn't even been close. With 1480 on his first try he might make it into Berkeley or USC, but his first choice, Stanford, would probably remain out of reach -- and no one had to remind him that the Ivy Leagues would sneer at his 3.8 GPA. But football might make the difference, or so his father liked to say, and though there was some truth to the notion it left a bitter trace in his mind.
"I've got to hit study hall this morning," he said to Claire -- doing his level best to ignore Edith. "I just kept messing up the order of operations and the results don't look right."
"Oh? Let me take a look," Claire said, and after he dug the papers out of his bag he handed them over. She scanned his work and smiled. "Nope, you got it."
"What?"
"You've just to erase what you have there now and put what you had originally, then you're there."
"Always go with your first answer, Hank," his dad admonished. "And don't forget this little lesson when you retake your SATs."
He took the homework back and looked at what he'd erased. "So, the answer is 93.7?"
She nodded. "Just don't forget to put FPS down. You know how Benson loves to zing you for little goofs like that."
"And they do on the SATs, right Hank?" his father added, nailing him one more time before they got to school.
He opened her door and helped her out, taking both their book bags, then he went to the front door and leaned in. "You going to be there this afternoon?" Henry asked his father.
"I might miss the first quarter, but I'll try to be there for the kickoff. Coach say any more about letting you have a go at fullback?"
Henry nodded. "I memorized all the runs, so I'm ready."
"Well, son, this would be a good night to strut your stuff. I'll see ya there."
"Okay, Dad. Later."
He took Claire's hand and they walked in and put books in their lockers, Henry still doing his best to ignore Edith, when the first bell rang and they headed off to their classes.
+++++
Henry stood by the window, Claire's hand in his, looking at the TWA 707 waiting for them out there on the ramp, the huge Trans World maintenance hanger just across the north-south taxiway framing their view. He turned and looked around for his father -- and couldn't find him in the crowd -- until he spotted him coming out of the head and walking over to Claire's father.
Then the gate agents called the flight and boarded the first-class cabin first, so their parents waved then boarded the aircraft. When coach was called Henry made sure Edith went first, then hand-in-hand he and Claire walked out the Jetway and up to the forward boarding door, and he smiled at the stewardesses as they stepped into the cabin. Their parents were in the last row of first-class, and the three of them were in the bulkhead seat literally right behind his mom and dad. Boarding didn't take long and soon enough the doors were closed and engines began spooling up.
Edith had been pestering him for days about taking the window seat and he'd gladly given it up so long as she promised to keep to herself during the flight and Claire had, thankfully, taken the middle seat -- so a flight in relative peace was a real possibility. Still, no sooner had The Pest taken the seat did the nonstop blather started...
"All I can see is engines," she snorted.
"Good reason to close the shade and go to sleep," Henry snarled.
"I'm not sleepy!" The Pest screeched, her whining chant easily drowning out the Pratt & Whitney turbofans idling on the other side of the thin layers of metal fuselage.
"Why am I not surprised?" Henry growled, but Claire gently squeezed his hand, in effect asking him to lay off and not be so mean to her little sister.
He tapped her fingers with his, letting her know "message received" -- and while he rarely thought about such things he marveled at how fundamentally attuned they were to each other.
"I don't like this," Edith wailed.
"What don't you like?" Claire asked.
"The window. I don't want to sit here."
"Where do you want to sit?" Henry asked.
"Your seat. Now!"
