The Best of Nancy Kress by Nancy Kress

having a grandmother. I demanded, like that would make this grandmother more solid, “What’s her name?”
    “Chunhua. What is the name of your grandmother?”
    “Ludmilla. Like me.” I thought a minute. “‘Fierce’ is the right word.”
    “Then we have this in common, yes?”
    But I warn’t yet ready to give him that much. “I bet my granmama is more fierce than any of your kin.”
    He smiled, a crinkling of his strange bald face, eyes almost disappearing in folds of smooth skin. “I would—what is it you say, in poker?—‘see that bet’ if I could.”
    “Why can’t you?”
    He didn’t answer, and his smile disappeared. I said, “What did your granmama do that was so fierce?”
    “She made me study. Hours every day, hours every night. All spring, all summer, all winter. When I refused, she beat me. What does yours do?”
    All at once I didn’t want to answer. Was beating better or worse? Granmama never touched me, nor any of us. Dr. Chung waited. Finally I said, “She freezes me. Looks at me like…like she wants to make a icy wind in my mind. And then that wind blows, and I can’t get away from it nohow, and then she turns her back on me.”
    “That is worse.”
    “Really? You think so?”
    “I think so.”
    A long breath went out of me, clearing out my chest. I said, “Bobby warn’t always like he is now. He taught me to fish.”
    “Do you like fishing?”
    “No.” But I liked Bobby teaching me, just the two of us laughing down by the creek, eating the picnic lunch Mama put up for us.
    A nurse, masked and gowned like on TV, came in and said, “We’re ready.”
    The last thing I remember was lying on the table, breathing in the knock-out gas, and thinking, Now at least I’m going to get a long deep sleep . Only at the very last minute I panicked some and my hand, strapped to the table, flapped around a bit. Another hand held it, strong and steady. Dr. Chung. I went under.
     

     
    When I woke, it was in a different hospital room but Dr. Chung was still there, sitting in a chair and working a tablet. He put it down.
    “Welcome back, Ms. Connors. How do you feel?”
    I put my hand to my head. A thick bandage covered part of it. Nothing hurt, but my mouth was dry, my throat was scratchy, and I had a floaty feeling. “What do you got me on? Oxycontin?”
    “No. Steroids to control swelling and a mild pain med. There are only a few nerve receptors in the skull. Tomorrow we will take you back to Blaine. Here.”
    He handed me a red knit hat.
    All at once I started to cry. I never cry, but this was so weird—waking up with something foreign in my skull, and feeling rested instead of skitterish and tired, and then this hat from this strange-looking man…. I sobbed like I was Cody, three years old with a skinned knee. I couldn’t stop sobbing. It was awful.
    Dr. Chung didn’t high-tail it out of there. He didn’t try to there-there me, or take my hand, or even look embarrassed and angry mixed together, like every other man I ever knowed when women cry. He just sat and waited, and when I finally got myself to stop, he said, “I wish you would call me ‘Dan.’”
    “No.” Crying had left me embarrassed, if not him. “It isn’t your name. Is it?”
    “No. It just seems more comfortable for Westerners.”
    “What is your damned name?”
    “It is Hai. It means ‘the ocean.’”
    “You’re nothing like any ocean.”
    “I know.” He grinned.
    “Do all Chinese names mean something?”
    “Yes. I was astonished when I found out American names do not.”
    “When was that?”
    “When I came here for graduate school.”
    I was talking too much. I never rattled on like this, especially not to Chinese men who had me cut open. It was the damn drugs they gave me, that thing for swelling or the “mild pain med.” I’d always stayed strictly away from even aspirin, ’cause of watching Mama and Bobby. Afore I could say anything, Dr. Chung said, “Your meds might induce a little