Chapter 29
AREZOO
The first thing Arezoo became aware of was a soft, regular beeping somewhere to her left.
The second thing was that the beeping was annoying.
The third thing was that she was not in her bed at home, because her mattress at home didn't rustle.
Why was it rustling every time she moved?
She tried to open her eyes, but they refused to obey at first, as if they had forgotten how to do it.
Perhaps she was dreaming about being awake and wanting to open her eyes, but she wasn't really awake, and that was why she couldn't actually do that.
It had happened before when she dreamt about needing to pee, and in the dream she'd gone to the bathroom, but the pressure hadn't eased, and she still needed to go and couldn't understand why.
But it wasn't the same. She didn't feel any pressure in her bladder, and her eyes just felt overly heavy. Perhaps if she concentrated and tried really hard, she would manage to open them.
There.
They opened a fraction and then closed again, because the light in the room was too bright. Still, the small glimpse was enough to confirm that this wasn't her bedroom.
The ceiling in her home was painted off-white, but this one was a different shade. A little creamier, like it was trying too hard to be soothing.
She had to find out where she was. She tried again, with more determination this time, and her eyes cooperated.
This was unmistakably a patient room, and the realization produced a powerful surge of panic, but then other details registered, and the panic subsided.
The room had a familiar smell, and it was clean, like sparkling clean, and the piece of equipment on a wheeled stand to her left was brand new.
A bag of clear fluid on a tall metal pole was on her right with a thin tube that ran down to her arm.
There was also a small table with a glass of water on it, and a chair beside the bed, and in the chair was her mother.
Soraya was hunched forward with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands.
"Maman?"
Arezoo's voice came out thin and rusty.
Soraya's head snapped up.
"Joonam!"
Jumping to her feet, her mother patted her face, her forehead, then her cheeks again, and she was kissing her all over, on her cheeks, on her temple, on her hairline, the rapid scattershot kind of kissing that Soraya had not done since Arezoo was a little girl.
She'd forgotten that her mother had ever kissed her like this, and the small wet pressure of each kiss was both startling and familiar.
Hot droplets landed on her face, and she realized that her mother was crying.
"Maman, what's wrong?"
"Nothing. Everything is good now. You are awake. You are awake. Thank the merciful Fates, you are awake." The frenzied kisses and the tears resumed.
"Maman, stop! You're making me all wet!"
"So? Nothing wrong with getting a little wet from your mother's happy tears."
Arezoo laughed or at least attempted to. It came out as more of a croak because her throat was so dry.
"Can I have some water?" she asked.
Soraya let go of her face and turned to the side table. She lifted the glass, put a bendy straw inside, and carefully brought it to Arezoo's lips.
Arezoo took a long pull.
The water was wonderfully cold.
"Slowly," her mother said. "Doctor Julian said you can have just a little when you wake up."
"Mhm." Arezoo kept sucking the water up.
"Slowly, my darling."
"Mhm."
She drank until the glass was about two-thirds empty, and then her mother eased the straw away and set the glass back down.
"When did I get here, and why? Am I sick?"
"Ruvon brought you in yesterday morning, so you've been here for about a day."
Arezoo blinked. "A day?"
"Yes, joonam. Do you think I would be crying over a two-hour nap?"
The answer to that was yes because her mother cried over everything, but it was impossible that she had slept for so long.
Thinking back to the last thing she remembered, she had a very hazy memory of Ruvon waking her up to tell her that she had a fever, and something about the doctor coming.
She did not remember Julian arriving or being taken to the clinic.
"What happened to me?"
"You started transitioning."
"No way."
It couldn't have happened so soon. It was supposed to take weeks, not three days.
Her mother brushed Arezoo's hair back from her forehead with both hands, and the familiarity of it made Arezoo's eyes sting.
"Ruvon called Doctor Julian to tell him that you were running a fever, and he came to check on you.
He suspected that you were transitioning and had Ruvon carry you to the cart.
You lost consciousness on the way, and you've been asleep ever since. "
Arezoo tried to assemble these facts into a coherent picture and found that her brain was working at a fraction of its usual speed.
"I lost consciousness?"
"Yes, joonam. We were so worried, even though Doctor Julian told us that we shouldn't be and that you were doing fine."
Arezoo's eyes welled up, but she pushed back the tears because if she started crying, her mother would start again.
"Doctor Julian examined me at the house?"
"Yes."
An alarm went off in her brain.
She had fallen asleep after making love to Ruvon, which meant that she'd been naked, and she couldn't remember the examination, let alone if she had been wearing anything at the time.
Mortification washed over her, and her hand twitched over the blanket.
She moved it and lifted the corner.
Beneath it, she was wearing a hospital gown. Pale blue, with little snaps along the shoulders. The fabric was soft against her bare skin, and she felt that she wasn't wearing anything beneath the gown.
There were also so many tubes and wires.
There was a tube in her left arm, the IV.
There was a small clip on her right index finger that was attached to a wire.
There were three sticky pads on her chest under the hospital gown, with wires that ran out from under her collar to the equipment to her left.
There was something else, lower down, that she did not want to investigate too closely with her mother in the room.
Her face was hot.
"Maman."
"Yes?"
"Did Doctor Julian do all of this?" She gestured vaguely at her hooked-up self. "Did he attach all the wires?"
Her mother didn't need translation to understand what Arezoo was asking.
"Of course he didn't. The nurse, Hildegard, was here when you arrived. She's the one who got you settled in this room. She undressed you, and she put the gown on you, and she attached all of the equipment."
If the nurse had undressed her, that meant that she had arrived dressed.
That was a huge relief. Her exhale was so long that it left her a little dizzy at the end.
Her mother sat back down in the chair and pressed the back of her wrist to her cheek to dab at her eyes.
"Where is Ruvon?" Arezoo asked.
"He went to the café with the girls to get breakfast. They've spent the night in the waiting room, refusing to go home."
"Donya and Laleh slept in the waiting room? Why?"
"Because they are your sisters and they love you and worry for you. They slept on the chairs. Ruvon finally bribed them with pastries from the café this morning, and even then it took some persuading."
The tears were no longer waiting for Arezoo's permission to spill.
She let them come because she didn't have the energy to fight them, and her mother somehow managed to keep her own eyes dry while stroking the back of her hand.
"I love them so much," Arezoo said when she could speak again. "And I love you. So much."
"I know, joonam."
"Their backs are going to be killing them."
"They are young. Their backs will recover. Mine, on the other hand, might take some time." She stretched, her back making those scary popping sounds as if it were breaking.
"Does anyone else know that I'm transitioning?"
Soraya laughed. "Everyone knows. Your aunts and cousins were here all afternoon yesterday. Kyra called four times asking for updates, and so did Drova. Laleh called her to let her know that you were transitioning."
There was a soft knock on the door, and her mother had just enough time to straighten in her chair and wipe her face with both hands before Doctor Julian came in.
"There you are." He smiled.
"Hi, doctor."
"Welcome back."
"Thank you."
"How are you feeling?"
Arezoo conducted an internal inventory. Her head felt heavy, but she didn't have a headache, and her throat was dry but not sore. Everything else felt a little off. Her bones ached, and her skin tingled as if it were being stretched too taut.
"I feel fine. A little strange."
He frowned. "Define strange."
"My bones are a little achy. It's not painful, just a little uncomfortable, and my skin feels dry and tingly and stretched out."
He nodded as if he had been expecting that. "Your body is rebuilding itself. Those aches and discomforts are normal. You are probably growing."
"Growing? Like in becoming taller?"
Soraya scoffed before Julian could answer. "Joonam. It has only been twenty-six hours. Nobody grows taller in such a short time."
"It actually happens," Julian said. "In fact, I came in to take some measurements, if that's okay with you."
"Of course."
He produced a measuring tape from his pocket.
He took her wrist and ran the tape from the joint of her thumb to the bend of her elbow.
He took the length of her forearm. He took the span of her hand.
He moved down to her foot, working under the blanket, and she let him because she was curious, and her mother held her hand very still on the blanket.
Doctor Julian recorded each measurement.
He moved up to the head of the bed and unhooked something from the wall, a flat board with markings on it, and he positioned it carefully against the top of her head. He marked a point on it with a pencil. Then he detached the board and held it against a fixed measuring strip on the wall.
"You've grown." He sounded surprised.
"How much?"
"A quarter inch."
"Is that a lot for one day? I mean, for a transitioning Dormant?"
For a human, it was practically impossible, but she was no longer human. She was on her way to becoming immortal.
Talk about surreal.
"It is, especially for females. Most don't get any taller. It's usually just the transitioning males, and not all of them."
"Does it mean anything?" her mother asked.
He shrugged. "Perhaps something about Arezoo's childhood stunted her growth. The transition to immortality fixes those kinds of things."
Soraya's expression became pained. "There was a lot of stress in our household, and being the eldest daughter, Arezoo absorbed the brunt of it to protect her sisters."
Julian nodded. "That can definitely affect growth."
Arezoo didn't care about the past and the reasons for her not reaching her full height potential. She only cared about the inches she was going to gain now.
She had always been the shortest one in her house.
Both of her sisters were taller than her, and even her mother had a couple of inches on her.
Ruvon was a head taller than she was, and when they walked together, every step of his was one and a half of hers.
He had to deliberately slow down for her or she would have been forced to speed walk to keep pace with him.
It would be wonderful to grow a few extra inches.
"How tall can I get?"
"Predicting is hard because everyone is different," Julian said. "But given that you've grown a quarter of an inch in the first twenty-four hours, you might grow two to three inches taller."
It wasn't as much as she'd hoped for, but it was still significant.
"That's great."
She couldn't wait to tell Ruvon about that.
He would be delighted for her. He didn't mind that she was short. He loved her the way she was. But whatever made her happy made him happy as well, and she loved him so much for that.
"Two to three inches," she repeated, just to say it again.
"I can't promise anything," Julian said. "But your odds are good."
"She wants to be taller," her mother said. "She hates being short even though I keep telling her that she's perfect the way she is."
"I don't hate it. I just want to be taller." Arezoo looked at the physician. "Any other changes that I should expect?"
"I suggest you take pictures," Julian said. "The changes will be gradual, so you might not notice them. It helps to have a reference photo."
She had plenty of photos from the wedding, but she'd had so much makeup on that it would be impossible to tell if anything had changed.
"Maman? Can you take a few close-ups for me?"
Her mother smiled. "We should wait for your sisters to return. They will do a much better job than I can."
Julian pocketed his tape measure and collected his tablet. "I'll come back in a couple of hours to check on you. In the meantime, Hildegard will bring you some broth and tea." He turned to her mother. "Arezoo needs to rest, so try to limit the family visits."
"I'll make sure of that," her mother said, and Arezoo had no doubt that she would guard her rest with all her considerable might.
"Thank you, doctor," Arezoo said.
"You're welcome." He smiled. "It's a bit early, and we haven't conducted the test yet, but I'm going to say this anyway. Welcome to immortality, Arezoo."
"Thank you," she said again.
"It's my pleasure."
He left, pulling the door softly shut behind him.
Arezoo lay still for a moment, but then her mother got to her feet, leaned over the bed, and started the kissing again, but it was slower this time than the rapid attack right after Arezoo's waking.
"My beautiful girl," she said. "My beautiful, beautiful girl."
"Maman."
"My tall, beautiful girl."
"I'm not tall yet."
"You are a quarter of an inch taller than you were yesterday."
Arezoo giggled, and it came out high and delighted, and for a moment she felt six years old again, lying in a different bed, with a different fever, while her mother kissed her better.
Soraya kept kissing her, on the temple, on the eyebrows, on the bridge of her nose, and on her cheeks.
"Maman, stop."
"No."
"Maman!"
"No. You will lie still and let me kiss you because you scared me half to death, and you owe me."