Naked in School
The Vodou Physicist
Chapter 9 - Honoring a Warrior
No sooner than her MRI study had begin, Tamara showed her scientific aptitude. Dr Beauford was doing some baseline work, still using the standard MRI because the installation of the new system wasn’t quite finished, when Tamara came into his office carrying a sheaf of papers.
“Uh oh,” Beauford said warily. “What trouble am I in now?”
“We’ll see,” Tamara grinned. “The engineer working on the new MRI gave these pages to me.”
Beauford saw that they were mostly circuit schematics.
“I was asking him about the machine’s theory... how it gets pictures of inside the body...”
Earlier that day
Tamara wandered into the room with the new MRI because she heard someone inside there working.
Maybe it’s almost ready? she wondered and went in.
A man was working in an electrical panel outside the control room.
“Should you be in here?” he asked.
“I’m one of Dr Beauford’s guinea pigs—I was just in the old MRI room with him and when he finished, he told me, ‘Now go make yourself useful.’ So here I am. I thought learning about the new machine would be useful.”
“Ah. You must be Tamara. The doc said to watch out for you, you’re scary smart, but to answer your questions. What can I help you with, miss?”
“I have a basic idea about how MRIs work, they shoot radio waves into the body and some kind of detector receives a return signal and a computer turns that into a picture.”
“Exactly. But the details are the fascinating part.”
“Uh huh, I know. I understand how radio-frequency waves can be made—they’re called RF waves. If you basically just pass a current rapidly through an inductor, it generates an electromagnetic pulse. The pulse’s frequency is set by the inductor—the current, number of windings, wire size, things like that. Are those RF waves like the ones in the MRI?”
“You know about this stuff? No wonder the doc said to answer your questions. Let me go over how the MRI operates, okay?”
“Sure.”
“The technology is based on the atomic structure of the tissues that the body’s made of. Organic matter is mostly made of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen atoms, with a lot more kinds of atoms in much smaller amounts included. The hydrogen atoms occur in the highest numbers in the body and they’re in every tissue. Do you know what a hydrogen atom looks like—how we visualize it?”
“Sure, that was in the chemistry texts. That’s the simplest atom. A proton with a single electron.”
“Right. So we can think of the hydrogen proton like a tiny ball which is spinning on its axis. It carries a tiny electrical charge, so its spin gives it a small magnetic field, making it behave like a tiny magnet. Normally, the hydrogen protons in the body are spinning with their axes pointing in random directions. Okay so far?”
She nodded.
“Now the main part of an MRI machine contains these huge electromagnets, or sometimes they’re permanent magnets, which generate an extremely powerful static magnetic field, enough to affect the hydrogen protons. When a person enters the magnetic field, all the protons align their spins with the magnetic field. Now, see this helmet thing?”
“Yeah. I need to wear that ‘cause that’s what gets the signals from inside my head.”
“Exactly. Here’s what happens. When the computer program is ready to scan, it activates a circuit which shoots a momentary burst of radio-frequency energy out of the RF coil inside the helmet. That energy excites the spinning hydrogen nuclei, which causes them to slightly change their alignment. When the helmet’s RF pulse stops—it’s just a few milliseconds long—the nuclei return to their original state and realign themselves with the MRI’s magnetic field.
“When they flip back, they release the energy which they picked up from the RF pulse. Now, the RF coil in here not only transmits the RF pulse, it’s also a receiver and the coil acts as an antenna to detect the energy that the hydrogen nuclei emit when they return to their normal state. The coil’s circuitry then transmits the return signal’s source and intensity to the computer, which generates the images. The MRI has some separate electromagnets, called the gradient coils, and those magnets vary their magnetic field at different points in the body part being scanned to allow the computer to calculate the exact location of the source of the returned energy and its intensity. There are also different external RF coils used for other body parts than the head—like the shoulder, knee, wrist, ankle, elbow, for example. Make sense?”
“Sure, but you left out some important stuff. How do you account for parts of the body which have different thicknesses and densities? How do you keep the static magnetic field constant across the area you want to scan? How do you control for the depth inside the body where you want to see the organ? And people’s weights are different too, so how do you deal with that?”
“You thought of all that, did you?”
She nodded.
“I mentioned the external RF coils.” She nodded again. “Well, those are what we call the ‘patient coils.’ There are also shim coils to control for variations in the magnetic field and I mentioned the gradient coils, which are for the imaging. There are other coils involved, too. Say, since you are so interested, let me give you some specifications and schematics for the coils. That will show you what they do.”
Present time
Tamara finished explaining her visit with the MRI engineer to Beauford.
“So then I was looking at the coils here,” she pointed to a drawing. “The spine coil is built into the back of the seat...”
Beauford nodded, “Right...”
“...and look. See how the transmit and receive detectors are set up? That’s much more efficient than how the head coil is designed. Let me show you the geometry of the RF waves that both coils produce.”
She took a piece of paper and began drawing.
“Wait, Tamara. I need to get Roger here.”
He ran out and a minute later, he returned with the engineer and another man.
“Tamara, you know Roger Gordon, obviously. This is Tim Saunders, he’s our in-house engineer.”
Tamara greeted him.
Beauford said, “Let me show you what Tamara’s figured out. Tell them, dear.”
She went over her drawing and did a few rough calculations.
“I don’t know enough calculus yet to be more accurate, so this is an approximation of the efficiency increase you can get in the head coil, by using the spine coil detector design as a guide.”
Both engineers looked at her notes and Gordon whistled.
Tim exhaled in a great whoosh of breath. “Damn, she nailed that. My god. You’re only ten? God help us; what will you be able to do when you’re older?”
Gordon was thinking; then he spoke. “You know, they weren’t planning on using a head coil on the upright model. The upper part of the spine coil is for the brain, and the machine’s sides near the head contained the rest of the original head coil circuitry. When they converted this design to full superconductivity, they brought back the head coil—but it looks like they used the original design factors without considering the new design’s efficiency. That was an outstanding discovery, Tamara. You know, my company gives rewards for suggestions that improve products. I’m gonna submit this under your name, okay?”
Beauford chuckled. “Tamara, please warn me about this, next time I tell you to make yourself useful, okay?”
Miami, Florida: early December
It was now more than two months after the Alexandre family had arrived in Miami when the Defense Department official who had coordinated the family’s identity change contacted Wilson. The official wanted to schedule the award presentation with the president and phoned Wilson to see if a date in mid-January would be possible. Wilson agreed, since both Nadine and Tamara would most likely be fully mobile by then, and the dates would work with the family’s schedule. They would be flown to Washington on a Thursday, the award would be presented on Friday, they would get an official tour on Saturday, and return home Sunday. Nadine’s schedule was his greatest concern; she had almost finished her required course work in the nurse’s assistant program and would need to begin the clinical part next, so the Washington trip would work on his selected dates.
Wilson also realized that he would need to replace his Marine dress blues; his uniform had been damaged in the earthquake. On checking, he found that there was a small military base exchange store in Doral, near Miami International Airport, so he visited the store and explained his needs. That’s when he learned that enlisted Medal of Honor recipients get a uniform allowance. He was measured for the uniform at the BX store and the order was placed, along with an order for all of the medals, ribbons, and badges he had been awarded.
White House, Washington, D.C.: mid-January
On a cold, sunny Friday morning in mid-January, the Alexandre family arrived at the White House by limousine and a White House staff member escorted them inside. But instead of the usual award ceremony, typically attended by assorted dignitaries, including brass from the armed forces and politicians, press, and even prior Medal recipients, the officials at the State Department, CIA, and FBI had insisted that the ceremony be conducted in private. President Inyoue was unhappy about the idea of a small ceremony; truly “secret” ceremonies were never allowed, but an explanation of the Alexandre family situation persuaded him. The award would be announced in the Navy’s general orders, which were public, so the award was not made in secret. Only the Marines whom Wilson had saved and their families had been invited, together with only a few government dignitaries. Master Chief Gilbert Bronson’s hospital ship had been deployed to the Mediterranean, so he was unable to be there.
From the military, the Marine commandant and his deputy were to attend. From the Executive Branch, the Defense secretary and his deputy, the secretary and undersecretary of the Navy, the secretary of State, an undersecretary, and an assistant secretary, were to be there. Congress was represented by two members: Senator Carlson, who was the official who made the inquiry which resulted in the Medal’s award would attend, of course, and he also was the father-in-law of one of the Marine guests. The House representative was from the Alexandres’ congressional district.
When Wilson and his family entered a reception room in the White House, his former unit members greeted him. The two men rushed to Wilson to embrace and congratulate him.
“Hey, you lowlife grunt,” Jim Emery accused him, “you had to use an assumed name to join the Corps?” Emery had been a lance corporal in Wilson’s platoon. “Congrats on your award.”
“Thanks. Yeah, I was underage. I had to fake it to get in,” Wilson demurred.
“I see you’re lookin’ good, man. Life treat you well after Germany?” Carter Thompson asked.
At the battle, he was a private first class and had been one of the group of replacements who had joined Wilson’s company about two weeks before the battle. He was also Carlson’s son-in-law. This had been his first major engagement.
Wilson answered, “Not bad at all.”
“Man, every time I think of what coulda happened out there, I still get the willies,” Thompson told him. “You were a frikkin’ ninja out there, man, swingin’ that samurai sword of yours. And yeah, you deserve that medal. I’m glad that Dad pushed for it.”
“Thanks, buddy. Don’t put yourself down. You exposed yourself when you helped Nichols clear his M249. If we had lost that machine gun, everything would have gone to... big brown cigars,” Wilson said. “The Bronze Star with ‘V’ you got shows your courage.”
The senator came over to talk to Wilson then and Wilson thanked him for his sponsorship. After the group chatted together for a while, a woman came to Wilson and took him aside.
“The president wants to talk to you briefly.”
He met Inyoue, who greeted him and said he just wanted to get some personal insights before the ceremony and that afterwards, he and the first lady would have lunch with Wilson and his family. A woman was sitting near them while they spoke and Wilson saw that she was taking notes.
President Inyoue chuckled when he saw Wilson looking at her. “She’s my memory. I’ll use her notes for my presentation.”
Then an aide came in and coached Wilson on what to do when he was on the dais. Fifteen minutes later, the president led him to the room where the presentation was to occur.
The presentation was brief. There was an invocation by a member of the Chaplain’s Corps and then the president went to the podium. He spoke for a few minutes about Wilson’s heroism and then reminded everyone that because of an ongoing critical diplomatic situation, the news of Wilson’s award needed to be kept relatively private.
At this point, Wilson was called to the dais and the president went to him; they exchanged salutes, and the two stood side-by-side facing the audience. The Marine deputy commandant walked over to a table behind the podium and picked up the medal, holding it by the ends of its star-sprinkled navy-blue ribbon. He then walked to the front of the dais, holding the medal by its ribbon in front of him. Facing out toward the gathered group, Wilson stood on Inyoue’s right and the deputy was on his left.
The Marine commandant stepped to the podium to read the award citation.
“Attention to orders. On behalf of Congress, the president awards Staff Sergeant Wilson J. Alexandre, U.S. Marine Corps, the Medal of Honor for his conspicuous bravery and courageous actions while serving as a platoon sergeant with Alpha Platoon, Charlie Company, 8th Battalion (Anti-Terrorism), 2nd Marine Division, attached to the Combined Joint Task Force-76, during combat operations near Ganjgal, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, on March 14, 2008. After his commander was killed by enemy fire, Staff Sergeant Alexandre took command of his platoon and directed its defense, which prevented an overwhelming force of enemy from proceeding to their objective. Twice Staff Sergeant Alexandre left his covered position to bring an exposed, wounded Marine to cover for medical treatment. Even after he was seriously wounded, he kept fighting and directing the members of his unit. The effective leadership and conspicuous personal courage that Staff Sergeant Alexandre exhibited allowed his unit to achieve the blocking action assigned to his unit, resulting in the saving of hundreds of lives in the U.N. encampment and the Afghan village they were assigned to protect. Through his extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and beyond the call of duty in the face of an overwhelming and determined enemy, Staff Sergeant Alexandre reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.”
After the commandant completed the reading, the deputy commandant handed the medal by its ribbon ends to Inyoue as Wilson turned away so that the ribbon could be fastened around his neck.
The small group watching stood and applauded as Wilson turned to face the front and returned the salutes of the president, the commandant and the deputy commandant.
Following the ceremony, some of the dignitaries present gathered to congratulate Wilson and left. The State Department officials told him that they wanted to meet with him and Nadine following their lunch with the president; at this time, though, there would be a brief reception for the attendees.
When Tamara was able to speak privately with Nadine, she grabbed her arm.
“Momma, one of those men who was there when Papa got the medal is really evil. I also saw him sneaking a photo of you earlier.”
“Is he in here now?”
She looked around. “Over there, near that door. Talking to the senator.”
Nadine looked; it was the assistant secretary from the State Department.
“Can you tell why he’s evil?”
“Um, no. I can’t see anyone’s thoughts, but the evil taste increases when he looks at you.”
“When we were introduced, I also had a bad feeling about him, but I thought that he’s just not a likable person,” Nadine said. “What...”
Tamara interrupted. “Can I ‘push’ him?”
“What do you mean, dear?”
“You know, like in the hospital when they changed my name. I just made them think they entered my name wrong,” Tamara said.
“Your dad and I wondered how you did that. What can you do with that man?”
“First, I need to look into his eyes. That works best. I can... um... ‘suggest’ that he’s getting sick but if he tells why he’s evil to... yeah, his boss, he won’t be sick. Unless he tries it again. Yeah. I can do that. I know—I’ll ask him about the flag pins everyone’s wearing.”
Tamara walked over to one of Wilson’s former unit members who was standing near the assistant secretary and talking to one of the Defense officials. She tugged at his sleeve and asked him a question; then she began to walk away but made a ceremony about stopping in front of her target.
“Oh, Mr Secretary, I just thought of this. Lots of men are wearing little flag pins on their suits. Is that a kind of official rank pin?” she asked as she peered into his eyes with an intense gaze as she softly whispered a few sentences to him.
The man looked back into Tamara’s eyes and shivered, then pulled himself together. “Ah... what did you say? Oh! The pins. No, miss. They just show our patriotism and respect for our country. Is that what you wanted... ah, oh ... excuse me, I need to...”
He rushed out of the room.
Tamara went back to her mother.
“Oops,” she said, “I might have overdone it,” and giggled. “He tasted sooo rancid, ugh. I think I ‘pushed’ a bit too hard.”
Nadine shook her head in disbelief. “Manman could never have done anything like that.”
Tamara shook her head. “That you know of, Manman, I think she could have; maybe she just never tried.”
“What happens with him, now?” Nadine indicated the door that the secretary had used to leave.
“He needs to get his boss... ah.”
The door opened and the man, looking haggard, entered, ran to the secretary of State, and pulled him out of the room.
Nadine watched them with a look of amazement. “It really worked...”
Tamara nodded smugly.
“Listen, young lady...” Nadine began.
“I know, Manman, I should be really, really careful about how I ‘push’ people. I promise that I won’t do bad or evil things with it. Ayizan won’t allow it.”
Nadine sighed. “I worry about you so much...”
“I’m protected, Manman. Look into your heart and ask Papa Legba for reassurance.”
~~~~
The family had a delightful lunch with President Inyoue and his wife. They were amazed about how advanced in school that Tamara was. They discussed Nadine’s expected nurse’s assistant certification and got a personal retelling of the family’s experience during the earthquake.
After lunch, Wilson and Nadine met with the State Department and CIA officials. They left Tamara in the White House library where she delightedly perused the books under the watchful eye of a Secret Service agent.
Once again, Evan Masters represented the State Department and Wilbur Zane, the CIA.
“Mr and Mrs Alexandre,” Masters said after they all greeted each other, “I have strange and disturbing news about your Haiti connections...”
“Not more bad news, I hope,” Wilson said.
“We don’t know what to make of it. Just as your reception for your award ended—by the way, congrats again on that—Arthur Benson, the assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs from the State Department, confessed about how he has been collecting information about what the U.S. knew about Haiti, its political situation, and the plans of the political opposition, and passing the information on to the Haitian opposition. Recently Benson heard from them that they were searching for a priestess who had disappeared. They believed that she had been killed in the quake; they had seen both Cassandra’s death certificate and the autopsy report, and that a proper funeral had been conducted. But they wanted firm assurance about those reports.
“So, the Haiti opposition had asked our traitorous official for a list of all Haitians entering the country this past fall; they were looking particularly for one Jonas Bernard, who was said to have been seriously injured and had traveled to Miami for treatment. Benson was to find out the details about Mr Bernard’s arrival and where he could be found.
“We found in Benson’s possessions photos of um, Nadine and you. When he saw you at the presentation, he was startled, but he recovered and surreptitiously took your pictures; we found them on his phone but he hadn’t had the chance to send them to anyone yet. Now the strange part is that he seems to be under some weird compulsion to undo any of the damage that his spying caused. He told the FBI investigating agent that he would never consider harming your family now, that doing anything like it would be unthinkable. When the agent asked what would happen—say if he heard that you had been located—the agent said that Benson turned white and looked like he was becoming almost physically ill.
“Do you know anything of this?”
Wilson shook his head in the negative, but Nadine responded, “Remember our conversation the last time we met? About magic and non-magic and how our Haitian beliefs may seem strange to those who weren’t raised in our traditions? I mentioned to you that someone brought up in our traditions could think that a person who is skilled in manipulating a believer’s emotions could do this to them. Well, I can assure you that neither my husband nor I ‘hexed’ that gentleman, or did anything magical, psychological, or otherwise to him. It sounds to me like he had a severe attack of conscience.”
Mr Zane, the CIA agent, snorted. “Whatever. If you hadn’t humbled me so soundly back in Miami, I’d say there was a voodoo doll involved somehow. But we’ve been doing some research and we’ve learned about the possibility of the use of hypnotic suggestion in some of your rituals. It’s not deliberately done; it’s just the result of the drumming, dancing, and chanting. Not only does this happen in Vodou worship, it’s seen in some Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity services too. My agency is concerned that, under certain conditions, believers can be persuaded to become violent or perform other illegal acts.”
“Ah, Mr Zane, please let me remind you of what happens in riots. Or of the effect of an arousing speech by a highly charismatic person. Such arousal is not limited to religion,” Nadine chastised him.
“You’re right. Once again, I am admonished,” Zane remarked. “We at the agency are concerned about the stability of the current Haitian government and we were wondering if you could give us a list of your priests and priestesses who you believe are nonpolitical or have not associated with the opposition.”
“I believe I can do that,” Nadine replied. “But you won’t do anything which would cause undue interest in them or attract the attention of Vanessa’s minions?”
“Certainly not. We know how to keep a very low profile, and in this situation, as low as possible is in order. Mr Masters, I’m satisfied, so you may continue.”
“Okay, thanks. Having the same information about the Vodou clergy would be useful for State, too.” Nadine nodded agreement to him. “We know many of the Christian clergy, the Catholics and Protestants. It’s useful for the embassy to have such information to give to U.S. visitors when they ask for a clergy person for counseling or prayer services. But we’d like to learn as much as you can tell us about what you’d heard politically in the months before you left Haiti.”
Nadine and Wilson spent the next hour talking about all of their observations, their concerns about the government, and the things they had heard about the opposition. After they finished their meeting, they joined Tamara, who talked excitedly about the books she had seen.
“Some of them were rare history books,” she gushed. “They even have a first edition of the ‘Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant’ there. I had to get someone to take it out of its case and they turned the pages for me, but I want to read the whole thing. She said that modern edition copies are available.”
“Sure. You can check the university library; I’m sure a copy is there, or they can get one,” Wilson said.
“Tamara, we heard that man confessed. It seems he gets sick if he even thinks of harm coming to our family,” Nadine told her, then she briefly explained to Wilson what had happened.
“I’m sorry I didn’t mention that earlier, but it’s been such a whirlwind...” she began.
“Not to worry. Say, you were cute,” Wilson grinned. “What you told them, that ‘neither my husband nor I hexed’ him, was the absolute truth.”
“And Tamara assured me that she wouldn’t use her ability for anything bad or evil.”
Tamara just grinned and nodded.
Miami, Florida: one month later
Their Washington trip over, the Alexandres returned to their usual routine. Soon after Tamara’s eleventh birthday in February, they met with Dr Beauford. He congratulated Wilson for the award and had some updated information for them.
“We are still seeing unusual results in Tamara’s follow-up fMRIs,” Beauford began. “First, all signs of the fracture and hematoma are gone. Next, her EEGs show the same overall patterns as they had from the ship, but with even greater amplitudes. Tamara’s brain appears to be a powerhouse. When we used contrast agents to increase the MRI image resolution, we noticed a heightened blood-flow activity in the area of the amygdala and hippocampus extending back to the cerebellum whenever we showed her a slide or movie clip with strong emotional overtones. I mentioned in the past that this has been noticed in strong empaths and we’ve observed, in socially interacting with her, that Tamara is indeed quite empathic.
“The amygdala and hippocampus are structures located deep in the brain and have an important function for the processing of emotion. The amygdala is specialized for evaluating the emotional content of a person’s experience and for processing it for storage as a memory. The hippocampus is involved—actually it’s essential—for preparing memories for storage. There are two types of memory and they seem to be stored in slightly different ways. There’s episodic memory—the memory for personal experiences—and semantic memory—that stores general facts and knowledge. Those two brain regions work together to help a person interpret and analyze the emotion and memory so it can be acted on or remembered.
“The high activity of these regions, and how they’re stimulated to a greater degree when she sees images of emotional content, further establishes her empathic abilities. Then, just before you left for Washington, something quite unusual happened. The Wednesday before, we had to bring in a substitute reader for one of Tamara’s sessions. Her usual reader couldn’t be here, and the substitute reader was supposed to read various poems to her while she was in the fMRI so we could examine the blood flow in her brain while she was processing the meaning of the verses. The young man was a senior in the allied health program here.
“After only two minutes, the reader complained of a splitting headache and left. Then on the following Monday morning, I learned that on the previous Friday, the young man had confessed to a series of sexual assaults involving a few students here. Also that morning, I had been looking at the images from the beginning of Tamara’s session with that young man and noticed a sudden huge increase in blood flow beginning in her brain’s olfactory tract at the bottom of the frontal lobe, followed by responses in the piriform cortex, then the lateral hypothalamus and thalamus. They’re located in the midbrain where the amygdala and hippocampus are located; all the structures I mentioned are part of the limbic system. Two of the jobs that the limbic system performs involve memory—its storage and retrieval—and setting emotional states.
“I don’t understand what I saw, because the olfactory tract is responsible for smell, obviously. Why it became so active and triggered the entire limbic system is a complete mystery, but the effect only lasted a second, maybe two, and then returned to normal. I’ve never heard of anyone seeing a response like this, but this is a new machine and it’s incredibly sensitive. Perhaps we’re seeing a new brain function, but whatever it is, I currently have no idea. There are still lots of things about the limbic system that aren’t fully understood. I want to work with Tamara some more to see if we can identify what’s happening.”
Wilson thought he knew precisely what Beauford had seen but wasn’t about to expose Tamara’s secret.
“Could it have been a glitch or something?” he asked.
“That’s highly unlikely because of the quantity of high-resolution images that were captured.”
“Okay then,” Nadine said, “so you can tell that, apart from that time last Wednesday, everything with Tamara is still healthy?”
“Oh, yes. Totally healthy. Body and mind. She needs several more weeks of physical therapy so that her leg is 100 percent, but otherwise, she’s physically completely normal for her age. Her mind though... Let me tell you; the way she’s into the MRI theory and design... she’d love to take ours apart and reassemble it her way!”
Wilson laughed. “That’s what her dad does, but he sticks to cars and trucks!”
They all laughed.
Wilson went to work and Nadine went home. When Tamara came home from her home-school session, Nadine asked her about the incident with the substitute on that Wednesday.
“Yeah, Momma, he was... icky. You know how a full privy smells? Well, that kinda taste. I ‘pushed’ him so he’d want to leave but I was in the machine and the noise was distracting me so I couldn’t feel how hard I ‘pushed.’”
“You did it hard enough. He apparently was a sexual predator and two days later, he turned himself in.”
“Oh wow.”
“And Beauford has pictures of your brain doing that. If he can repeat it, your ability might become known and put you in danger...”
“...so be careful not to ‘push’ like that again. Right, Mom. Got it.”
“Good.”
“Momma, that’s twice now that I ‘pushed’ someone really hard. I’m feeling different things in my head now; right afterward I get a little headache, but that goes away pretty quick. But now my sensing is changing. Granmanman could see colors?”
Nadine nodded. “That’s how she described it.”
“Well, you know I can... taste ... emotions. But now, it’s almost like I can ‘hear’ people’s colors. Not emotions. Maybe it’s thoughts. Before, with Sue, I could taste a gold sound coming from her. From you too, but your taste sounds louder. I’m guessing you’re thinking of how much you love me because I see that in your eyes.
“Coming back to the apartment, I passed old Mr Green and the sound from his emotions tasted gray. When I looked at him, his eyes were vacant and he barely answered when I greeted him. Gray must be... maybe thinking hopeless thoughts. I have to think more about this and figure out what it means.”
“You certainly do, darling. Please let me know if you do get any headaches, though.”
“I will, Momma. Love you.”
Tamara went to her room. She had lots of things to think about now and wasn’t sure where to start.
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