The Phantom Limb by William Sleator, Ann Monticone Page A

you home. Grandpa’s even been helping me around the house, can you believe it?”
    He walked over to the bed. He felt a chill when he saw that there was a bigger, thicker bandage on her arm where the bruise was. Was the bruise larger anddeeper now? His mind flashed back to the little girl and her doll. Was someone purposefully enlarging the bruise while Vera was knocked out?
    Isaac sat down in a chair next to the bed. He tried to sound as calm as possible. “I got the password for the hospital computer, and I went on to look up your records. I saw … something bad. Do you think you can handle it?”
    Vera sat up straight. “Yes, I have to know.” She took a deep breath. “What did you see?”
    â€œSomebody’s written a bogus report. It says that you have bone cancer. They want to amputate your arm—the one with the bandage on it.”
    Vera’s face froze. “But that’s … that’s … How can they do that?” Her voice rose almost to a wail.
    â€œIt’s what happened to the kid who had the mirror box, and now they’ve got you. Have you seen the doctor
at all
since that day when I was here?”
    â€œCandi said that Dr. Ciano’s been in to check on me, but I’ve always been asleep.”
    â€œDon’t trust anyone, Mom,” Isaac said. “I’m going to stop them, and you’ll be safe.”
    â€œI think they took something out of my arm, where the bruise is,” Vera went on shakily. “I must have been asleep when they did it. I noticed because blood wasseeping out from under the bandage when I woke up. All Candi said, when she fixed the bandage, was that it was for a biopsy—a biopsy for bone cancer?” She sounded really scared now.
    Isaac reached out and gently touched her hand. “Mom, I’m sure you don’t have bone cancer. Somebody here is demented. They’re lying. They must have switched your biopsy results with another person who really
does
have bone cancer. Grandpa and I are going to stop them. And we have a plan—a good plan.” He wasn’t going to tell her what the plan was. She wouldn’t understand the spiral aftereffect.
    â€œOh, Ize,” Vera said. But luckily she didn’t ask him about the plan. She looked down and bit her lip, as if trying to hold back tears. “Do you remember my former roommate here, the doctor named Esther?” she asked Isaac, her voice breaking.
    â€œYes,” Isaac said.
    â€œBefore she left, she was telling me that she remembered a girl from somewhere, and it was a bad memory. Before they knocked her out and took her away, the memory came back to her,” Vera said. “And she told me.” She took a deep breath. “Years ago, Esther took a job as the doctor at a summer camp. There was a girl at the camp, about thirteen yearsold, who had a lot of problems and no friends. She wet the bed, and the other girls made fun of her for it. Then some of the other girls’ things started to go missing. They told one of the camp counselors, who sent her to Esther. Esther tried to tell the girl not to pay attention to the taunts of the other girls, but she could tell the girl’s problems were deep. She wrote a letter to the girl’s parents suggesting that the girl see a therapist after she got home from camp.”
    Isaac remembered the vision the phantom limb had shown him of the girl in a rustic bathroom, planning to start a fire, and muttering about the other girls. “What else did Esther say?” he asked her urgently.
    Sounding almost like her old self, Vera continued, “A little while later, the cabin where that girl was staying burned down. The other girls were in there when it happened. One of them got pretty badly burned. Esther had to call for an ambulance and get her to the nearest hospital. The troubled girl wasn’t in the cabin when it happened. She disappeared for hours. When they found