“Ahhhhh!” I scream. I sit up quickly and scramble backward on my hands, spider style. My eyes do a quick inventory: flowers, grass, paper lanterns, bright sun overhead. And a few feet away is the old lady from the hospital. She’s still in her gown with her tags around her wrist, but now she’s also wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat and a cow-hide-patterned apron. She snips at things in her garden with a pair of long, thin shears.
“What’s going on? Where am I?” I gasp.
The old lady smiles and opens her arms wide. “This is the place I told you about—my house by the sea.”
“What? This is crazy—two seconds ago, I was in a restaurant and it was burning and …” I hear it. The sea. I turn around. Behind me is a two-story farmhouse overlooking a calm ocean. The waves lap the rocky shore, back and forth, back and forth, making me sleepy. Peaceful.
“For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth.” The old lady scrutinizes me. “You’ve got a spot of jelly on your cheek, dear.”
I wipe at my face. “Okay, seriously? I’m starting to freak out.”
“No need for that,” she says, and hums to herself. “The Copenhagen Interpretation. I just love them! I hear they’re Inuits?”
“I … I left my friends in the diner with the fire giants and the freaking wizard.”
“Agents of chaos,” she snaps. “Oh, these are frightening times. Are you sure you’re all right, dear?”
“I’m so tired. Just want to sleep.”
The old lady purses her lips as she flattens out the long stem of one weed, trying to figure out where to make the cut. “You could do that. There is a bed right upstairs with a window that looks out on the sea. Very good for sleeping. But I thought you were searching for that doctor, the one with the cure for what ails you.”
“Dr. X?” I murmur. Sleep sounds so nice right now. “Yeah. I’m supposed to find him. That’s what Dulcie told me.”
The old lady cuts the stem and the weed shrivels up and dies. Something else comes up right away, a blue flower. “Well, you could stay here, if you like. Get off the road. Go to the beach. Or we could make waffles. I adore waffles, do you?”
“Waffles are good,” I say.
“They didn’t have waffles in that wretched hospital. Just that damn gluey oatmeal,” she snipes.
“The thing is, I’m supposed to save the universe, ’cause it … it needs saving,” I say, but I’m so exhausted. “Maybe just a quick … nap.”
I lay my head down in the soft grass and go to sleep. At one point, I open my eyes, and I’m back in my bed at St. Jude’s, the TV showing the coyote chasing the roadrunner, the numbing hum of the respirator and feet padding down corridors filling my ears. I drift back into sleep. But in my dream, I see Gonzo and Balder back in the diner, trying to fight off the fire giants and the Wizard of Reckoning by themselves, and I think, I’m the one who got them into this mess. I can’t sleep; I have to go back.
I wake with a start. The old lady’s still tending her garden. “Feeling better, dear?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Did you make up your mind about those waffles?” she asks, examining another long vine, her scissors paused above it.
“I can’t,” I say. “I have to get back to my friends.”
The old lady lets the vine spring back and moves on to another. “Very well. Another time. Oh, my dear, I left my watering can over there. Could you bring it to me?”
“Where?”
She waves in the direction of the green fields. “Out there. You’ll find it.”
Tromping through the tall grass, I’m stopped in my tracks by the sight of a roadrunner. It’s standing there calmly, just watching me.
“Hey,” I say, inching closer. “Hey there, little fella.”
The minute I get close enough to touch it, the roadrunner takes off. It stops about a hundred yards away and looks back at me, like it’s waiting for me to come after it.
“I’ll be right back with that can!” I yell.
The old lady keeps singing her song, something about sand castles and ninjas. I chase after the roadrunner, going faster and faster, reaching my hand out to touch its feathers. My fingers close around air, and I hit the ground hard, coughing and hacking as the dirt fills my mouth like smoke.
“Cameron! Cameron!” Gonzo’s holding a wet napkin to his mouth with one hand and trying to pull me out from under the table with the other. “Come on, cabrón—move your bony ass!”