{"id":3987,"date":"2016-10-20T05:00:23","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T12:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=3987"},"modified":"2016-10-18T10:53:18","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T17:53:18","slug":"mark-reads-the-wizards-dilemma-chapter-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2016\/10\/mark-reads-the-wizards-dilemma-chapter-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Wizard’s Dilemma’: Chapter 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the seventh chapter of\u00c2\u00a0The Wizard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Dilemma<\/i>, Nita and Diarine learn of a terrible fate. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For extensive talk of hospitals, death\/mortality, illness, depression, and a brief mention of bullying.<\/b><\/p>\n

The first time I spent any length of time in a hospital wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t until I was fourteen years old. It was a rough time in my life aside from the trauma of watching one of my parents nearly waste away. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d started high school, and it had been a disaster. I was bullied frequently, just as much by my own parents as I was other students. I was desperate to branch out, to find freedom, to be treated with respect and admiration, and I found that in a number of clubs and sports teams. With the exception of Cross Country and Track \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which had open practices, meaning that my mother could attend them \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I was forced to quit them all. And as my loneliness got worse, as my depression began to consume me, life struck me with a new twist:<\/p>\n

My mom had lung cancer.<\/p>\n

She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spent a lifetime smoking. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even tell you how early she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d started. As long as I could remember, she had smoked, and she had done so around us. I resented it a lot, especially once I started running, and it took a lot for my brother and I to convince our mom to stop smoking indoors. Yet all of a sudden, it was like some terrible karma had been loosed upon the world. But against who? Who was this directed against? Was this my mom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comeuppance for smoking or something worse? I struggled with the idea of a deity, even back at that age, and I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand what God was trying to tell me.<\/p>\n

And it only got more confusing. Like Nita, I had only seen hospitals from the outside. My brother was accident-prone, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never accompanied him whenever he was getting a new brace or cast for some part of his body that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d thrashed. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an eeriness to the text here in chapter seven of\u00c2\u00a0The Wizard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Dilemma<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0because\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that thing, you see? That thing where you experience something, and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never talked about it to anyone else, and then, all of a sudden, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re reading it in a book. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a unique phenomenon, and I certainly got it here.<\/p>\n

They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell you how hospitals smell. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t light them correctly on television or in movies. They never show you how dead-eyed people can be in there, even though it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s entirely understandable. Being a doctor or a nurse is a grueling, exhausting experience. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell you how you will walk past a human tragedy unfolding, and they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell you what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re supposed to do when you lock eyes with someone while they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re sobbing. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell you what it sounds like when someone dies, how the air might escape their lips, or how the wails of grief can echo inside your head for days or weeks or years.<\/p>\n

And they certainly don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell you what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like to see someone you know once they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re body has failed them. I was a mess of teenage hormones, anger, resentment, and depression at fourteen. I could barely make it from one day to the next, and adding my mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cancer and her surgery to that? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how I survived those years. Virtually no one at school knew what was happening at home then. I could have told them, but I was conflicted. With my mother out of the house, I had found a guilty freedom from. If I started telling people about her cancer, would that mean I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to start performing in response to it? I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. I had never dealt with anything remotely like this, and it all felt too complicated to me.<\/p>\n

There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one image in all of this chapter that haunts me the most:<\/p>\n

In the fourth bed, beyond the partway-pulled curtain, their mom lay under light covers, with one arm strapped to a board, and an IV running into that arm. She was in a hospital gown, and someone had tied her hair back and put it up under a paper cap. Her eyes suddenly looked sunken to Nita; it was the same tired look she had been wearing this morning, but much worse.<\/p>\n

Nothing can prepare you for this. I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever forget what it was like waiting for the hospital to call us to let us know if she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d survived the surgery to remove the cancer from her lungs. It had spread so far that they had to remove a third of one and nearly all of the second. When we stepped in the room, all my complicated feelings about my mother vanished. She changed. She was so frail in that bed, and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d always been this towering mass of anger and ire and power, and there she was, laid out on her side, her bandages pink and red around the edges, and it was like the doctors took half of her mass with her. She could barely talk and her face looked like it belonged \u00c2\u00a0to someone else.<\/p>\n

It was a shock, to say the least, and there was nothing in the world to prepare me for it. Duane has captured that here in\u00c2\u00a0The Wizard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Dilemma<\/i>, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll repeat what I said on video: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the most surreal element of the book. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d gotten so used to the complicated science of wizardry that once she put all of\u00c2\u00a0this<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0into the story, it struck me. Hard. And perhaps\u00c2\u00a0this<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0is what the titular dilemma will be. If Mrs. Callahan has the Lone Power inside of her, is that a part of the natural world or something else? Does Nita save her mother or allow the cancer to take its course?<\/p>\n

I have no idea. Death is the worst.\u00c2\u00a0Bodies<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0are the worst.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yjRNhB61E74<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

– I am now on Patreon<\/a>! There are various levels of support, from $1 up to whatever you want! You’ll get to read a private blog, extra reviews, and other such rewards. I POST A LOT OF CUTE PHOTOS, OKAY. Think of it like a private Tumblr blog that only SPECIAL PEOPLE get to read.<\/b>
\n– I have updated my list of conventions and events for the remainder of the year and much of next year.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches have been announced here.<\/a>
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0 Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"