Chapter 21: Bed-Ridden Thoughts

Jane couldn't shake the feeling she'd seen all this before as she followed the ninjas, Kenny G. and the farmers daughter. It was like déjà vu, but much less French.

"Who does she look like?" Jane's mind whirred about, helplessly. "Or, is it 'whom'?"

The farmer's daughter never introduced herself. She simply walked with a swing that would have made Count Bassie proud. She lead the rag-tag little band through a small vegetable patch, smacking one of the ninjas hands away from the ripening tomatoes, past an aging paddock with a few horses and towards the barn.

"That bitch looks just like that woman with a permanent wedgie from Dukes of Hazzard - Daisy Duke (aka Catherine Back)," Jane mumbled to herself. "I suppose if there are ninjas from Planet X and God turns out to be a naked Kenny G with a perpetual hard-on, the farmer’s daughter can be Daisy Duke." She shook her head again at the weird turn things had taken since that fateful night she decided to kill her boss. Nothing had been the same since then, nothing had made much sense.

Kenny G looked over his tanned shoulder at Jane and smiled lasciviously. Jane thought it would be great to get some sleep. She was so tired, tired all over, tired to the marrow...

###

"So, Jane - have I told you about my youngest? He's in college – a full academic scholarship – pre-med, although I don’t know why he wants to be a doctor these days. But, you know young men. They think what they want and the do what they want and it is our job to stand back and let them."

The older woman's hands held Jane's leg and pushed her knee toward her chest, her heel up to the ceiling and then back down again in one fluid motion.

"Ventura, my boy, well those damn football coaches have been sniffing around him since he set foot on that campus. They take one look at a boy like him and they see dollar signs. Ventura's a smart boy...almost a man, really. He knows they don’t care about him – they just want his body." The woman laughed a gentle laugh and took hold of Jane's other leg.

The hospital room was well lit with pale blue walls and window overlooking the parking lot. The TV was off, but a small radio played gentle rock as the physical therapist moved Jane's body through the motions her brain was no longer willing or able to.

"He's decided to play this year, but he told that dumb little man, if he has trouble with his grades, he'll quite the team. The coach didn't understand Ventura at all. He offered him extra help. How is extra help supposed to get him through pre-med? Stupid little man..." She shook her head, the tight bun moving like a metronome back and forth, keeping track of the silliness of the world.

The monitors beeped in a regular rhythm. The IV bag slowly drained into Jane as her mind made up for the lack of input from the real world.

A man in a white coat, small wire-rimmed glasses and a receding hairline walked into the room. "Hello Mrs. Leafa," he smiled at the large woman who was working Jane's arms now and humming along to an old Rod Stewart song he didn't recognize.

"Hello doctor."

"How is she today?" He read the chart in his hand, looked at the machines and proceeded to ignore Trina.

"I think she's thinking a lot in there. She's just about ready to come back to us, I think." Trina looked down at the small, pale woman whose muscles she had moved for the last few weeks. Experience told her, there was something brewing just beneath the surface, preparing to come through the fog and back to the world.

"Hmmm" was all the doctor said. He didn't dislike Trina. He found her somewhat disturbing. She was always polite, always had a smile for him and an insightful comment about each of her patients. More often then not, she was right, which was also disturbing.

He also found her size and stature, just over six and a half feet tall and not a bit ashamed of it, distressing. Samoans, he had found over the years, were an especially tricky people.

Trina waited to finish Jane's therapy as Doctor Klein looked into her eyes and noted a slight increase in pupil response. He clicked his pen and made notes and said, "Good afternoon, Mrs. Leafa," as he left.

Trina started to wipe down Jane’s legs, to get the oil off and to give her some stimulation. "Like I said, I have no idea why my Ventura wants to join the likes of him." She slapped Jane's thighs very lightly, to raise the blood and to give her skin something to react to.

"I told that man a thousand times, Laaifa, sounds like LAH-AH-EE-FAH. The best he can come up with is Leafa - sounds like a child pointing to the trees." She started to laugh again, a slow rolling laugh that followed Doctor Klein down the hall, into the next patient’s room.

###

Jane sat in the second story bunk-room, looking through an open window, down at the writhing hay pile. The little ninja band, Kenny G and the farmer’s daughter were laughing and generally reveling in all their common weirdness.

What kind of name was Farmer’s Daughter, anyway? It kept niggling at Jane’s mind. Was it something like Lot’s Wife, from the bible?

All Jane could see were arms and legs and butts poking out at all angles from the hay pile. I thick cloud of dust was rising up into the shaft of sunlight coming through the picture window at the top of the barn.

She lay back on the bed, looked up at the pine ceiling full of knots. As she started to fall asleep, patters became more and more visible on the crazy crisscross patterns on the wood. The giggle from down below faded and she could hear her own breathing as her muscles relaxed and her mind began to wonder. What a crazy life it was turning out to be.

"Strange," thought Jane, "I’ve never seen such a clean barn. Hell, it practically smells like a hospital."

Continue on to the next chapter, following Jane's plotline...
Continue on to the next chapter, following the original storyline...