Well, it started -- for me, it started last Thursday ... I returned home to Santa Mira from a medical convention. At first glance everything looked the same. It wasn't.
Jimmy Grimaldi knew all along what it took me until now to realize. Little Jimmy Grimaldi -- just a kid whose parents ran a fruit stand on the edge of town. Little Jimmy Grimaldi, who was found cowering in the cellar of his parents' home, shaking like the leaves on the orange trees in the back yard.
His folks thought it was nerves from school. Jimmy agreed that it was nerves, but school had nothing to do with it. He was afraid of his mother, Anna. No, more than afraid. He was terrified.
"Don't let her get me!" Jimmy kept screaming. "She's not my mother!" It took two nurses to keep Jimmy on the table until I could give him a sedative. Even after that his eyes were violently jerking in his head, and though he soon fell asleep, when his mother came to get him, Jimmy moaned when her hand touched his forehead -- moaned in true agony, as if he knew that no comfort would ever come from that hand again.
The next day Jimmy was fine. He smiled, even laughed as he apologized for the previous day's upset. It was a fine follow-up. The words, gestures, the tone of his voice ... he was Jimmy, but he wasn't. We shook hands, man to man. I looked into his calm, emotionless eyes and felt the hair on my arms stand up.
God, I need a drink. God, I wish Becky was here.
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