The Fifth Healer

30.

"How-?"

She shows me. I'm speechless, frozen in place, too shocked to get my body to engage in forward motion.

"Ainsley-" I start. "What happened to your hair?"

She stuffs the wig under her sweater, her head now as bald as Sloan's.

"Come on," she says, crawling through the tiny opening in the bushes. "Even if they can't identify me, I'm sure they don't allow lovers to roll around in the bushes. Not that we are lovers. I just mean how it looks...Hey, are you coming?"

I still can't get over my surprise enough to move forward.

"Nikolai, they're going to see you in there," she says, dropping her voice to a low, urgent hiss. "Come. On."

Indeed, I notice now the voices of the park rangers coming into range, audible but not yet understandable. I slither out behind Ainsley and stand on the sidewalk. I glance down at my clothes, discovering I look exactly like someone who's been hiding in a flowerbed the last few hours. I attempt to brush away the moist soil skid marks over my knees and chips of mulch hanging by fuzzing threads on my vest.

"Sir, were you sleeping in the bushes?"

The voice interrupts my apparently unsuccessful efforts to de-soil myself.

"Oh, sorry, you were talking to me?" I say, looking up at a park ranger with an avocado-shaped head under a wide-brimmed ranger hat.

He looks at his partner as if to say, Can you believe this guy?

"Yeah, I'm talking to you," he says, looking left and right to call attention to the lack of other people he could be speaking to. "I saw you in the bushes. It's against city policy to camp on the grounds of a memorial."

"I wasn't-"

"Here," he says, handing me a small piece of paper from a cargo pocket on his olive green pants. "That's the address and phone number for a case worker who can help you get off the streets. Don't let me find you sleeping here again tonight, you understand?"

I nod, accepting the card. "I can promise you I won't be sleeping here tonight." Or sleeping anywhere, for that matter.

"And you, too, ma'am," he says to Ainsley, unaware she's the person he and his colleagues probably received an incident report about.

"I understand," says Ainsley, giving them a tight smile.

As soon as they're on their way again, I turn to Ainsley.

"So, um-" I say, realizing I'm not sure what is the polite or appropriate way to ask.

"Sorry, did you say something?" she says.

"I was just wondering...?"

"Yes?"

"Well, I didn't expect..."

"My new haircut?"

"Right. Yes."

"Me neither. But then, I guess no one expects to be diagnosed with cancer."

"Oh my God, Ainsley. I'm so sorry. I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't. That's why I wear a wig."

It's surprising how different she looks without the wig, now stashed under her baggy sweater.

"I'm so sorry," I say again, not really sure what else you're supposed to say when you find out someone has cancer. "How long-?"

"Do I have to live?"

"Oh god, no," I say, horrified. I hadn't even gone there. Yet. "I mean, how long ago were you, you know, first diagnosed?"

"A while. Like two years."

"That's tough."

"You're telling me."

It all makes sense now. The pills in her bag. The multiple clinical trials. The anxiety about whether she'd be able to walk twenty-five miles. Cancer.

"It's a very realistic wig," I say. Then I add, "Sorry, that was a weird compliment."

"No, that's every girl's dream," she says. "Being complimented on her wig."

That's when another piece of the Ainsley puzzle falls into place: her list. She wants those experiences because her time on Earth may be running out. In fact, what were her exact words...the situation escalated? I guess if you reach the point where you're signing up for multiple clinical trials, you've got-well, you're probably long past-the point of desperation.

She starts walking back toward the memorial. I follow on the curving sidewalk.

"When you were up on top of Abe," she says, changing the subject, "I could see you from the bushes. You were cornered. And then, like, the statue moved...like he had removable LEGO hair or something. How'd you figure that out?"

I can't tell her about the tattoo. Even though a part of me feels like I should -and not just tell her about the tattoos but also my leg-since she just exposed something so personal of her own.

"Yeah...I got lucky when I was leaning on Lincoln's ear," I say. "Turns out there's a passageway down through the middle of the Lincoln statue."

"A secret passage? In the Lincoln Memorial?" she exclaims, louder than I'd prefer. I take a quick look around. A guy is walking in this general direction, but he's not nearly close enough to hear. She says, "But how'd you know? How'd you know how to find it? And that it was there?"

"Honestly, before it opened, I didn't."

"Huh," she says, but I can't tell if it's a sound that means that makes sense or I don't believe you.

Fortunately, before she can continue the interrogation, I recognize a figure. I point at them. "Hey, isn't that...?"

"Yeah, it's Niles!" she says.

"Are you going to, you know...?" I say, indicating the lump under her sweater where she stashed her wig.

"Oh! Yeah. Thanks!" she says, whipping it out and placing expertly in place.

I wasn't lying before. It is a realistic wig. I would have never believed it wasn't her biological hair unless I'd seen it come off. Her wig serves the same function I hope my prosthesis does. Being made of wood, obviously, it doesn't look like a biological leg, but I can walk like it is, and it can stay hidden beneath my trousers. I'm not ashamed or embarrassed about it-like I sense Ainsley is about her baldness, as if it's her fault she got cancer-but I haven't talked about it because I'm trying to blend in, to fly under the radar, and passing as non-disabled feels like part of that persona. In that regard, these ostentatious clothes aren't doing me any favors, but for some reason, they're what I had on when I woke up. Like my lone biological leg, this outfit is the only one I've got.