The wolves in Sophia’s head are especially fierce today, clawing, pacing, braying so loud, it’s hard to think about anything. The bus to the clinic leaves in 35 minutes, and she can’t get out of bed. Her sheets are midnight black, and she is a pale moon, frozen in space. Finally, with ten minutes left to catch the bus, the wolves release her, padding in circles and curling in on themselves, eyes slowly closing. Sophia makes it to the bus stop with a minute to spare. Her hair is a robin’s nest and her socks don’t match.

The doctors are all young, thin, and engaging. They are very interested in everything Sophia has to say. “Wolves,” they say a lot. They like this, and enjoy saying the word, a word that does not come up very often in their line of work. “Tell us more about the wolves,” they say. Sophia has a difficult time talking about them, explaining how they crowd everything else out of her mind. How their eyes glow in the dark when she tries to sleep. How their gray fur seems to extend forever, wrapping her up in a living blanket of isolation and dark thoughts. The doctors smile at her, patient, encouraging. “They make me sad,” she finally says. The doctors nod, still smiling, and write in their black notebooks.

They have the female doctor ask her the more intimate questions. When did you have your last period? Are you on the pill? When was the last time you had sex? Did you use protection? How many sexual partners have you had in the last two years? Sophia answers truthfully. She does not care what this woman with the square glasses and tastefully tied-up hair thinks of her.

The drug is experimental, and in very early stages of testing, they tell her. They produce charts showing encouraging results in animal trials. Sophia pretends to look at the charts closely, but the wolves are waking up from their naps, yawning and stretching. She has been staring at a dot on a vector graph for three minutes. “Sophia?” the doctors say. “Sophia?”

The pills are small, half the size of her pinkie nail, and green like a rainforest frog. She is doubtful anything that tiny could make a difference, could “fix” her. But after two weeks, the wolves have faded into pencil sketches. Their howls are background noise, and though they pace furiously, angry at their new translucence, Sophia is able to look past them, look through them. After another week, they are just wisps, swirling lazily, and then they are gone. Sophia’s hair is straight and clean, and her clothes are pressed and fresh. The bus driver doesn’t even recognize her.

So, when she misses her period, she does not disclose this to the doctors during her bi-weekly visit. They smile and show her more charts. They give her a small stuffed wolf, a Disney wolf with a hat and cane. Sophia keeps taking the drug until she cannot hide her pregnancy any longer. The doctors frown and shake their heads. They whisper into one another’s ears and scratch their beards while looking at her. They squint at other charts, these printed on blue paper, that they do not show her. Finally, they take away her green pills and send her home.

She waits, but the wolves do not return. There is, however, something else. Something new. When she closes her eyes, there is a light fluttering, like a ribbon catching the breeze from a faraway fan. As the weeks go on, the fluttering becomes brighter and more liquid, a pulsing that continues even when her eyes are open. It is not as intrusive as the wolves, and she seems to be able to modulate its intensity.

Three weeks before her child is due, Sophia becomes very ill. There are now so many blue paper charts, that the doctors have put them into a binder. They make the female doctor break the news to Sophia. “The drug had a chemical reaction to the hormones generated during your pregnancy,” she says, adjusting her square glasses. “We don’t know exactly what the disease is, or how to treat it, but it has metastasized into your lungs, liver, and kidneys.” Sophia is so weak, she can barely open her eyes. She rubs her hands over her swollen stomach rhythmically, methodically, though not conscious of this action.

Everyone agrees that the baby should be delivered as soon as possible. Sophia is strapped into a bed, and a doctor applies some anesthetic to her stomach. Her abdomen is cut open, and Brady is born.

Brady’s eyes are sharp green and he has long nails. He does not cry, and his eyes dart around the room, curious. The doctors quickly sew up Sophia and undo the straps, but she is dying, the cancerous cells churning in on themselves, fucking, multiplying, coating her insides in a thin fuzz of disease. The female doctor flips through the blue charts and circles something with a red Sharpie. She sticks a small needle into Brady’s arm and withdraws a tiny amount of blood, which she injects into Sophia’s wrist.

Nothing happens for a minute. The doctors continue sopping up the blood, the machines continue to beep and whirr.

And then, Sophia opens her eyes and sits up in the bed. “May I hold my baby, please?” she asks. The doctors all stop what they’re doing and turn to her. The slack-jawed one holding Brady stumbles over and hands him to her. She cradles her arms under Brady’s backside, and he nestles into her bosom. They both close their eyes.

“Where are we?” Brady asks, inside Sophia’s head.
“This is a hospital,” Sophia answers, inside Brady’s head.
“I don’t like it here,” he says.
“I know,” she says. “We’ll be leaving here soon.”
The year is 1996.

The year is 2012.
Brady is 16 years old. He does not wake up anymore when Sophia draws his blood, even though she’s had to take more and more of it as he’s aged. Every three hours, she injects herself with a large syringe full of Brady’s blood. Always fresh — the antidote doesn’t work if it’s stored for any length of time.

Brady is home-schooled. They don’t need to watch the clock anymore. Reflexively, every three hours he holds out his arm for the needle. Sophia has gotten very good at the injections and neither of them has overly visible track marks. His curriculum is mostly focused on Greek philosophy and 19th century psychology.

Brady is dreaming of Arizona. Flat dusty plains and pink-hued shadows. He has never been there, so the dream is based partly on nature shows and partly on cartoons. He has an erection, to which Sophia pays no mind as she removes the needle from his arm. She can almost taste the dry desert air.

In the morning, Sophia wakes up when she hears Brady’s feet creaking on the floorboards in the next room.
“How did you sleep?” she asks, inside Brady’s head.
“Fine,” he says flatly, inside Sophia’s head.
“Good dreams?” she asks.
“Why don’t you tell me?” he snaps.

Sophia reads a passage from Madame Bovary for Brady to digest while he showers and brushes his teeth. She reads to herself, but uses her “teaching” inner voice, which make her thoughts louder and more difficult for Brady to ignore. “When the sun sinks down to rest, you breathe, beside the margin of a bay, the fragrant odours of the lemon-trees.” Brady tries to think about something else, like a song or a comedy routine, but Flaubert’s words blare at him, like a TV six inches from his face. He does not look at Sophia as she takes the 9AM blood.

Sophia has been seeing a man, Mark, for several months. She has not had a lover for a long time, not since Brady was born. But there is a longing, renewed lately, so while Brady is out, and with two hours to go until the next blood transfer, she invites Mark to her bedroom. “Are you sure?” Mark asks. “I’m sure,” Sophia replies.

Brady rides his bike in circles around the cul-de-sac on Jefferson Avenue, his long legs pedaling furiously. He comes here at night once in a while, when no one can see him. A high school kid from the skate park, Brady doesn’t know his name, lives in the blue house. Sometimes, the kid sits naked in front of his computer in the bedroom, with the curtain open. Brady has seen him masturbate on two occasions. But tonight, no one is going upstairs. The lights stay dark as Brady’s concentric circles become tighter and tighter and his teeth grind against one another.

Brady is riding home when Mark begins to have sex with Sophia. At first, Brady is unsure what is happening, thinks it might be something in his stomach. He pedals over to the curb, and gets off his bike to catch his breath. He dials down the frustration and longing for the skater boy that has been at the forefront of his mind, and turns up the Sophia wavelength. As he tunes her in, he feels himself being penetrated, not specifically in his ass or any orifice in particular. Just an overall feeling of being penetrated, in and out, over and over. He quickly tries to shut out Sophia’s thoughts, but it’s too loud, too present. Brady is angry at his erection, and crawls behind a juniper bush in his neighbor’s yard. He plugs up his ears in a futile gesture, and bangs his head against the damp grass. Though he doesn’t touch himself, Brady comes the same time his mother does.

Later, he does not look at Sophia as she draws the 12AM blood.

In the morning, Sophia, Brady and Mark are sitting at the dining room table. Mark has made French Toast out of English Muffins. “I hear you’re learning about Carl Jung,” Mark says to Brady. “I did my senior thesis on him in college, so let me know if I can be of any help.”

“I have to leave here,” Brady thinks, looking down at a singed bit of egg. “Leave her.” Sophia is looking at him, and he looks up and meets her eyes. “My grandfather actually heard Jung give a lecture at Yale in 1937,” Mark continues. “He said he was shorter than he was expecting.” Brady’s eyes are filled with tears, green irises flashing in the sun’s light. Sophia gives an almost imperceptibly tiny smile to Brady and nods her head slightly. He wants to look away from her, but holds his gaze, and nods back. “Though my grandfather tended to judge people based on physical stature,” Mark continues. “I think a lot of people did in those days.”

Brady is on a train headed west. His ticket is for Los Angeles, but he isn’t sure he will go that far. He is being drawn to something, but he doesn’t know exactly what or where. Sophia has given him her savings, about 2000 dollars. She is reading Madame Bovary, but not in her “teaching” tone, so he is free to tune in and out as he pleases. The words have a rhythm that is enhanced by the blur of trees and buildings that he passes. There is a tingling in his arm, as it is 3PM. Brady has a sudden panic attack, but Sophia keeps reading Flaubert from her bedroom in the same soothing tone.

By 5PM, Brady feels the connection between them fading out, like a piece of bubble gum stretched so far, the middle is a pink line, impossibly thin. Her thoughts fade into the background, and for the first time in his life, Brady has no one in his head but him. Just as the train passes an old burned-down farmhouse, the strand between them breaks.

None of the survivors could say with any certainty how the wolf got on the train. Maybe it was in with the luggage. Or maybe it crept on-board at one of the stops. A veterinarian who was on the train later said it was the largest gray wolf he’d ever seen, maybe the largest on record. It had torn through the train compartment, and killed 11 people before a conductor with a shotgun took it down. It took 16 bullets to kill the animal, and the conductor said he’d never seen anything in nature the color of the wolf’s green eyes as they closed one last time upon this world.