he was a general, and Teddy Bear, who carried on about how he was fighting against evil. I met Eric Bear when he was up to visit Teddy at Lakestead, so I got to know Teddy first. Compared to all the other crackpots, it was easy to like him. True, he belonged in the home, but if you just kept to the right topics of conversation he wasn’t strange at all. Not as strange as the others, in any case. And with that I’m including the personnel. I met Teddy at least three times a day. I gave him breakfast, I took him out on a walk in the afternoon, and I saw to it that he took his tablets before he went to bed. It was primarily during the walks that we talked. About everything imaginable, high and low. He told me a great deal about his family, of course—it was Teddy who got me interested in Eric. He sounded exciting. Dangerous. I liked dangerous males.
“Twenty-five thousand,” says Dr. Bee Sharm. “But, as stated, I can’t guarantee that it will be especially successful. If I were you, I would wait a few years until the fur around the knee is a little less…lively.”
But you’re not me, you little bee, I thought. Instead I said out loud, “Okay, but I’ve heard so many good things about you, Dr. Sharm, that nevertheless I’ll take the risk. Can I schedule a time for the procedure itself?”
The doctor nodded and referred me back out to reception.
Every weekend I was off and went home to Papa and Mama in Amberville. Coming into the city from Hillevie and Lakestead was such liberation that the trip back on Monday morning was sheer torture. I whined about wanting to quit. Every weekend I whined, but Papa was rock solid. Now he’d finally gotten me a job, he said, and now I had to show that I could endure. But once, out of all the times that I nagged him and tried to describe how indescribably miserable things were for me as a nurse, I happened to mention Teddy Bear’s name. And even who Teddy Bear’s mother was. That changed everything. From brushing me and my nagging aside as though I were a little fruit fly, Papa suddenly became extremely interested. At first I didn’t realize why, but later I understood. Rhinoceros Edda. A contact that led straight into Mollisan Town’s political network would open enormous opportunities for Papa. Now I would never get to quit. I cursed myself and wondered how I could have been so dense. Perhaps some of the idiots out at Lakestead were contagious? Papa drove me to the bus the following Monday himself, and he made it completely clear that I should take especially good care of Teddy.
What happened then wasn’t my fault. I don’t really know how it came about. I’m not interested in politics, I’m not interested in clever plans and long, convoluted chains of thought. Sometimes I think that’s what gets my parents to remain a couple. Each of them, in their own way, seems immensely fascinated by keeping track of such things. Figuring out that if She does this, He is going to do that, which leads to She doing that while Her Cousin does this. That kind of endless speculation in people’s futures. I don’t give a damn about what everyone’s up to; personally they can do what they want, and where it concerns the Bear twins it simply turned out as it did. I couldn’t help that both of them fell in love with me.
It was less surprising that Teddy Bear should maintain that he loved me. That was part of his disease profile, the doctors said. I didn’t really know what to do when Teddy confessed his love, so I asked the doctors for advice. They smiled with embarrassment and gave each other conspiratorial glances and asked me to excuse them but I shouldn’t take Teddy’s tokens of love seriously. It was not me, Emma Rabbit, he loved, but more what he imagined that I stood for. He had designated me as some sort of object of goodness and tenderness, security and consolation; that was what the doctors said. The only thing to do, they advised me, was, as usual, to agree with the patient. This applied to everyone who was admitted to Lakestead House. Don’t end up in any conflicts, agree with or ignore their peculiarities. So I kept on working as usual. Made Teddy’s