When Mr. Dog Bites (30 page)

“And you’re still taking all your medication?”

“Yes.” I had to take all these mad tablets, about a gazillion of them every day. It was a major pain in the bahookie. I couldn’t even pronounce their names. Mom and the school nurse made sure I took them.

“Well, I think we’re going to wean you off most of them, Dylan.”

“What?” I said.

“We’re going to reduce how much you take,” Doc Colm said.

“Why?” Mom asked.

“Mainly because they’re not functioning as a preventative agent for the type of Tourette’s Dylan has; they’re merely suppressing the symptoms. There’s a school of thought, which I subscribe to, that suggests a prescription of such magnitude does very little for the allowance of cognitive development, and thus a move toward prevention.”

My head hurt with Doc Colm’s mental adult words.

“So are you saying you can prevent Dylan’s Tourette’s by taking him off his drugs?” Mom said.

Sorry, what? I was confused.

“Not exactly. We just want to take a different tack, try a different approach.”

“Which will stop his Tourette’s?” Mom asked.

“Well, which will calm it down, at least, but you have to remember that Tourette’s, as it stands now, is incurable, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try other means and techniques in order to radically reduce its symptoms.”

This was mind-blowing. The last doc said that I had until March. That doc’s chat with Mom had bamboozled my brain. Now Doc Colm was talking about prevention and reducing the swearing, Mr. Dog, the ticcing, the grunting, the groaning, and the shuffling.

“And that can be done?” Mom said.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. We wish to place Dylan on a new trajectory.”

“Which is?” Mom said.

“Well, we want to allow his brain to learn new habits.”

Mom looked at both of us.

“We believe that Dylan’s brain function has become so used to the tics, shouting, swearing, et cetera
that it has learned the patterns and practices of these, and so produces them involuntarily. What we aim to achieve is for Dylan’s brain to reboot itself and learn a new pattern and practice.”

“How are you going to do that?” Mom said.

I was super excited to have my brain rebooted like a computer.

“We’ve developed a new technique that we’re pioneering with a few patients. We think Dylan would be the perfect candidate—if permitted, that is.”

Mom looked confused.

“I have to tell you, Mrs. Mint, that the early results in the trials with other patients have been nothing short of astonishing.”

The two of them looked at me. Did they need me to approve this, whatever it was?

“What do you think, Dylan?” Mom said.

“Erm .
.
. I’m not too sure I understand,” I said.

“Let me explain,” Doc Colm said.

My heart was pumping. Did Doc Colm not have any idea what was going to happen to me in March? Did he miss that page when reading my case notes?

“We’re going to take a mold of your mouth and teeth,” Doc Colm said.

“Why?” I said, and I could tell that Mom wanted to ask the same question. “My teeth are A-okay. I don’t need to go to the dentist.”

“Of course not, Dylan. We believe that a lot can be understood from the teeth and mouth in controlling the tics and physical movements you make.”

“So what will happen, exactly?” Mom asked.

“We’ll make Dylan a custom mouthpiece that he’ll have to wear at all times except for at night.”

“And this will help him?” Mom said.

“We think so, yes,” Doc Colm said. “Let’s be clear, Mrs. Mint: this won’t magically cure Dylan’s Tourette’s, but we believe that it will dramatically reduce his symptoms, especially the tics.”

“Well, that’s good, Dylan. Don’t you think?” Mom said to me.

My head was about to explode with the confusion. The sweat was worse than ever. My bum was soaking. I just had to get it out.

“LYING BASTARD DICK.”

“Dylan!”

“But the other doc said that I was going to die in March.” There. I said it. I blurted it out. No going back. This was my time. My hour.

“What?” Mom said. But the look on her face was more like,
What the fuck are you saying, Dylan, you fucking head case?

Doc Colm smiled and chuckled as though he were thinking,
Wow! This eejit is even madder than I thought. This clown will need more than a bloody mouthpiece to save him.

“What are you saying, Dylan?” Mom said.

“The other doc said that in March the Tourette’s would make me cack it.”

“When was this, Dylan?” Mom asked.

“The time we went to see about the scan,” I said.

“That wasn’t
your
scan .
.
. I was with you, Dylan,” Mom said. “I was with him, doctor, and I can assure you that wasn’t what was said.”

“It was. He said something about it being so incontrovertible, and you were crying. I didn’t know what that meant, so I looked it up in the school dictionary, and then it all made sense to me.”

“No, it’s not what you think, Dylan,” Mom said.

“He also said that you had to prepare me for what’s going to happen. But he gulped before he said the words ‘what’s going to happen.’”

“You’ve got this all wrong, Dylan,” Mom said.

“But you were crying,” I said.

Mom didn’t say anything. I looked at Doc Colm.

“The other doc said that life as I know it will come to an abrupt end. I remember, Doc Colm, I remember,” I said.

Doc Colm leaned back in his chair. “Dylan, I can’t comment on these things—they’re for you and your mom to talk about—but I can assure you that Tourette’s is a non-degenerative condition, which means that it won’t progressively deteriorate over time, which means that it won’t get worse, which means it
won’t
kill you.”

“Why was Mom crying, then?”

“I think when my colleague spoke, you just picked up something incorrectly and got the wrong end of the stick.”

“But why were you crying, Mom?” I asked.

“You’ve got this so wrong, Dylan,” Mom said. She looked at Doc Colm for support, but I think the big man was wondering why Mom cried that day too. “And I can’t remember if I cried.”

“You did, and you cried on the way home and you cried when we got home and you became a bear with a dead sore head in the days after, and I thought I’d done something mega wrong and was really scared because I was going to cack it in March and you didn’t care,” I said. “How could you not remember?” My head flew from side to side and back and forth. My eyes blinked, and I was doing what the docs call “physical grimacing.” No sign of Mr. Dog, though. We stared at Mom.

“I cried because .
.
. I cried .
.
. I was crying because .
.
.”

“Mrs. Mint, if this is a personal matter .
.
.
,” Doc Colm said, just before we got to the Juicy Lucy bit. Nice one, Doc Colm.

“No, it’ll have to come out sooner or later,” Mom said.

“Would you prefer if I left you two alone?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Mom said.

And I could see her breathing in and out. The atmosphere was so thick that you would have needed a good sharp set of garden shears to cut through it. I was concentrating so much that all my tics and noises disappeared in one big whoosh. We waited and waited. Mom took one gigantic deep breath like the breath you take when you want to try to swim a full lap underwater (I’d never managed it. Amir said he had, but I wasn’t there to witness it, so it didn’t technically count). Mom came up for some air and then unloaded the big guns.

“What’s happening in March is .
.
.”

“Yes .
.
. ?”

“What’s happening is that I’m going to have a baby, Dylan.”

“A baby?”

“Two, in fact.”

“Two?”

“Twins.”

WELL, FUCK ME SIDEWAYS, as Doughnut sometimes said.

“I’m pregnant, son. You’re going to have two wee brothers or sisters, or maybe one of each,” Mom said.

I looked at Doc Colm, who looked at the wall behind Mom’s left shoulder. Mom looked at the ground, because she knew that I knew that she knew that I knew that Doc Colm didn’t know.

FUCK ME UP, DOWN, AND SIDEWAYS. That’s what I say.

“So I’m not going to cack it, then?” I asked Mom, just to be 125 percent sure.

“No, you’re not. The doctor was saying all those things about the babies, not your Tourette’s, love,” Mom said. “That’s why I was there that day in the hospital. It was my scan we were discussing, not yours.”

“And that’s why you were crying?”

“Yes.”

“So my life as I know it will
not
come to an abrupt end in March, then?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“So the reason you were crying was because you’re having a baby?”

“Two.”

“Two babies .
.
. Nick Nack Noo!”

“Yes.”

I looked at Doc Colm. “Women are strange,” I said. He laughed. “So why did I think I was dying, then?”

“I think you just misinterpreted what the doctor said, Dylan, that’s all,” Doc Colm said.

“So he was a baby doctor?”

“Sort of,” Mom said.

“But why did you take me with you that day, if it was just for lady talk?” I asked Mom.

“I needed you with me for support, and to remind me that having a baby is a beautiful thing.”

“Is that why you gave me
499 Soccer Facts to Amaze Your Mates!
?”

“I gave it to you because you wanted it.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

*

When Doc Colm was putting this yucky plaster in my mouth he didn’t need to say “Open wide,” because my gob was as wide as a hippo’s yawn. I think they call it flabbergasted. I was also chuffed to bits that I wasn’t going to cack it.

What a day!

26

Truth

I’m not really into biology; all that stuff goes over my head. Section 6.6 in our biology course confused me. My face and neck went all rosy red when the teacher spoke about willies, women’s parts, eggs, and swimming sperm. Apparently you could even count the sperm cells swimming around. Some job that would be! The class was super silent when our biology teacher spoke about all that stuff. Amir was embarrassed even though you couldn’t see it in his face; he just made these mad best-bud eyes, and I knew what he was thinking.

I may be rank rotten at biology, but I knew what was needed in order to make a baby. A man and a woman. I knew that moms needed dads to make babies. And I knew that
my
dad wasn’t in the country to make my mom’s two babies. It did go through my nut that he could have made a covert visit home, quickly made the babies, and then hightailed it back to the war zone. But the more I thought about that idea, the more it seemed major mind-boggling. There was no danger the army would let any of their men bolt home for that reason, especially someone as important as Dad. I did some detective work in my head—a bit like brain gym, though this one was more like brain-melt gym—and I came to the conclusion that Mom’s new babies were not Dad’s new babies, and Dad probably didn’t have the foggiest idea that Mom was going to have two babies. It was a wowee-zowee moment. As soon as it was crystal clear I stroked Green, rough as anything. I groaned, barked, swore, ticced, and shook. I cried my peepers out into my pillow, which became a wee bit salty soggy. I blubbed because I was going to have new wee brothers or sisters or both who didn’t belong to Dad. I felt heart sorry for Dad because I knew he would be

rage

rage

raging

that he wasn’t going to be the daddy, and his voice

would really get

loud

loud

louder

and he could quite easily

scud

scud

scud

something or someone

and it would be so terrible because he wouldn’t be able to do any of the fun dad stuff like nappy changing, babysitting, feeding, and reading bedtime stories. I also cried because if the babies didn’t come from Dad, it meant they only
half
belonged to me. I’d be like some of the insane people who go on
The
Jerry Springer Show
. I didn’t know what to do: write to tell Dad the bombshell news or wait until Mom told him straight to his face? It was like when contestants have to make a word out of jumbled letters on
Countdown.
Problemo grande.

Dylan Mint’s major dilemma.