No Worries

Chapter 4
Waiting For Results

Chapter Description: Chris thinks he's an 8-year old and Melanie searches for a cure. But what is at the end of that hall?

Melanie had had a very long day. First she had awoken to find her boyfriend reduced from a tall, strong, intelligent 21 year old to a little boy her brother’s age. She had to simuntaneously conceal this fact and try to fix the situation. It would take all her knowledge of chemistry to find a solution, but what else could she do. The authorites would think they were all crazy, the doctors at the hospital would be baffled, it was up to her. She spent the day at the lab testing his blood a hundred different ways, looking for the right marker. She had a pretty good idea of her parents experiments and she knew that they had been working on rejuvinating cells. The idea was to slow the aging process with a pill, but no one actually thought the aging process could be reversed. Until her parents most recent work that is. They had found that mentally the mice they tested on stayed the same but she was concerned that Chris would regress phycologically as a coping mechanism if she didn’t work fast. Always in the back of her mind though was what Chris had said, were her parents really away in Europe or was that a lie. She thought about what he said, but pushed it aside, work now, qustions later.

When Melanie showed up in the green Toyota Corona to pick up Paul and Chris at three she was greeted by an unexpected sight. Chris was smiling as he hopped into the car! "Well hello sweetie, you certainly seem, well, happy. How was your day?"

Chris nodded and with great detail decribed the rugby game he’d helped win, "And then I ran really fast, so fast Mel, you wouldn’t believe it. You know I’m a good runner. So I ran all the way to the end of the pitch and scored! It was the greatest!"

Melanie was concerned by the fact that Chris showed no concern at all about being restored. He had obviously adjusted mentally during the day and Mel decided it was best to humour him for the time being. "Well that sounds like it was fun, I’m very proud of you hon’ but now we need to do the grocery shopping, alright, then we’ll go home."

At the Foodtown Paul and Chris briefly fought over who would get to push the trolley. "No c’mon I wanna push it!" "No, you’ll go too slow, I wanna do it!" they argued. Mel stepped in and settled it by declaring that she would push it. Both boys sulked but conceeded to the grown-up. Paul announced he was going to get the milk himself and Chris said he would get it too. "Well then get the orange juice too," Mel reminded them, exasperated at their energy. One eight year-old was hard enough, but having two! What would she do now. A moment later she heard giggles and the approaching slapping noises of two sets of bare feet running on linoleum. A second later her two ’boys’ appeared around the corner racing each other back to her. Mel felt a flush of embarassment as other customers gave dissaproving looks. Mel realized the people probably thought they were her kids and grew more embarassed. "Hey you two, no running in the shop alright!" Chris looked very embarassed and beffudled for a moment and she felt bad for treating him like a child so publicly. But then he saw a stand of chocolate and started asking, "Can I get some lollies please, Melanie?" completely forgetting whatever had upset him so much. It still got to her though. "Yes have one bar each, that’s all." "Yes!" they proclaimed and grabbed their bars. Yes she could now see that her Chris had the gleaful smile only an eight-year old could have at getting some chocolate. Mel was sure that when the day had started Chris never imagined he’d soon be standing in the supermarket in a primary school uniform and bare feet demanding chocolate like a spoiled little boy.

Things continued this way for the next three days. Chris would occassionally feel self-consious about something he was doing. Feeling like he was acting like a little child. When on one occassion he started to walk down to dinner in just a pair of his underoos, he felt as though he was doing something very wrong and for a moment he flushed pink. Then as quickly as the feeling hit him it was gone. It didn’t even bother him that Paul was fully dressed, Chris padded down the stairs to dinner in his undies and didn’t give it a second thought. When he looked at himself in the mirror Chris thought he looked like a big kid. He knew that, he knew he was ’big’ and surely he was, he was a big eight-year-old. While Melanie watched ’Neighbours’ on the telly Chris was perfectly content to play with the lego blocks on the floor, down on his hands ans knees, constructing big cities and then, the best part, destroying them! He and Paul had become best mates and now slept in the same room building pillow forts and playing with their army men. Chris couldn’t remember ever having been so happy, maybe because he couldn’t remember much at all.

This all came to an end though on Saturday. Chris was climbing very high on the Pohutukawa tree. He had never been this high, but he couldn’t let his fear show. He could feel it in his tummy alright, but he wouldn’t cry or freeze, he wasn’t a sissy. Paul was on a lower branch screaming for Chris to go higher. Then he lost his grip and slipped down. He was surely going to die! But his feet clamped down on the branch and he stopped, the bark scraped his bare soles as they gripped, but luckily the last few days had toughened his feet. His hands, though, were covered in that spider web of red angry abrasions that are a common result of childhood play. Chris held back his tears but decided to go back down. It was just then that Mel came running into the yard still in a lab coat smiling and out of breath.

"You’ve gotta see this boys, come over here!" she yelled. Chris jumped down from the last branch and joined Paul in running on tippy toes carefully over the grass avoiding all the prickles. "What is it Mel?" Chris demanded.

"I’ve found the solution, the drug that can grow you back up is done, wejust need to go to the lab." Melanie told Chris. He didn’t understand of course, but she seemed happy so it had to be a good thing. Chris agreed to come with her and before he knew it they were in the car racing over to the lab. The streets seemed vaguely familiar to Chris, but then he seemed to live now with a constant sense of deja vu, as though he had a past he could almost remember, but not quite. Chris wasn’t sure why she brought all these big clothes with them and a pair of men’s trainers. Chris didn’t want to wear shoes, and Mel had said the clothes and shoes were for him. But they were all oversized. He was very uncertain about all this.

Soon they arrived at the lab and Melanie led Chris by the hand through the abandoned university campus in downtown Auckland. Classes didn’t start for a while so it was all theirs. The cold looking cement buildings were intimidating to Chris. They ran up four flights of stairs in the largest of the buildings and turned onto an abandoned corridor. It was dark, but light was showing from a room at the end of the hall. Chris still didn’t know why he was here, he felt his heart in his throat and he was sure he could feel his pulse in the tips of his fingers. His feet were hot even on the cold tiled floor. As the walked down the hall the sound of their footsteps resonated and surrounded Chris. The click-clack of a woman’s shoes and the slap-slap of a small barefoot boy. For some unknowable reason Chris was sure there was a monster in that room at the end of the hall. He knew the terror of a small boy entering the unknown.