A turn to the Side

Nelly was a normal six-year-old by all accounts. She liked dolls and trucks. She likes to kiss her younger brother. And sometimes bite him. She will do her nightly prayers and slept with her stuffed bunny. 

All was right as rain until one day, Nelly could walk on the walls. 

And only the walls. 

Just a normal day when her father stirred her from sleep to get her ready for school. But unlike most mornings when Nelly's fuzzy socks will touch the cold floor and stand from her bed, Nelly fell. 

Fell straight to the floor. Now, she could feel her legs, her knees, and her toes. But she could not get up. And in fact, she could only pull herself one way and it was sideways. Before Nelly or her father knew it, she was standing on the wall!

Completely sideways in her cheetah PJs.

“Get down from there!” Her father exclaimed uselessly.

“I can't!” and she couldn't. All-day they tried. Her father tried to pull her from the walls but couldn't and every time Nelly tried to walk on the floor but she fell. 

She could only stand, walk, run, jump, dance, and slide sideways. And it was on the walls where she had the most stability.  

She tried to walk on the ceiling but couldn't seem to latch. And when she fell he body slumped against the wall. 

It is as if someone took her gravity and turned it 90 degrees. 

This perplexed everyone in her family. Toti the dog constantly barked his concern. Her father continued to yell at her to get down. And her little brother mostly giggled.

After straining his voice, he picked up his daughter who continued to be sideways to the car where he buckled her as best as he could. 

Nelly’s father practically flew the car down the highway.

Even though Nelly was scared, she was excited about the new perspective she was seeing the world through. However, in her position, she could only look at the back of their father's Subaru seat since sitting up took much strain. 

Once they have arrived at the emergency room, Nelly’s father picked up Nelly as if she was an oversized hotdog and took her inside the hospital. 

There, Nelly’s Father asked to see the doctor immediately but the nurse said “Unless she’s bleeding she’s got to wait.” 

Without saying another word, Nelly’s father releases Nellys, and too much to the Nurses’ surprise Nelly did not collapse onto the floor but immediately attached herself to the wall where she was now crawling on and scaring the other patients. 

“The doctor will be right out.” said the nurse. 

Nelly and her father were ushered into the patient room and almost as soon as the door closed behind them, the doctor walked in. 

And she nearly crossed herself at the sight of a four-year-old skipping along the walls.

Despite, the Doctor’s fears that young Nelly was the anti-christ, she examined her patient as if she were any other. 

She checked Nelly’s heartbeat, breathing, height, and weight. The latter proved a little difficult since she had to hold the scale against the wall for Nelly to step on. 

She asked Nelly a series of questions.

“When did you start walking sideways?” 

“Are you dizzy?”

“Have you tried walking on the floor?”

“Have you had weird satanic thoughts?”

“This morning, no, yes, and what's that?” replied Nelly Paitantly to the Doctor’s questions. 

The Doctor was dismayed and so wanted to give up, but then she remembered the miracle that is the human ear. 

Without skipping a beat, she pulled out her Otcoscope which Nelly likes to call the “ear telescope” and kneeled down to the floor to see into Nelly’s ear. 

The Doctor knew from her years and years of study at very smart universities that the ear is the heart of the human balance. That one is only as balanced as their ears are cleaned. And that damage to the inner ear could cause standing issues. Issues that cause someone to walk on walls? Unlikely. But the Doctor was not afraid of discovery. 

She didn't see anything in Nelly’s left year, so she climbed on top of the patient's bed to peer into Nelly’s right ear. 

At first, the Doctor didn't see anything, until she saw a small green dot. A peculiar green dot and under closer inspection she saw what looked like a bit of red on top of the green dot and a bit of brown on its side. 

It was a strange shape and a strange color. It could be weird ear wax? Or a parasite? 

The Doctor got her tweezers out but realized that the dot was too small to pick out, and she was afraid that using the cotton swab will push the little dot further in Nelly’s ear. 

The Doctor got thinking and remembered her previous patient, an 85-year-old gardener with vertigo, and quickly asked Nelly to do some exercises. 

Even though Nelly was not nauseous or dizzy, she asked Nelly to kneel and move her head. Lay down and stretch her neck. She even showed her yoga poses to help regain her gravity. 

Nothing worked.

But there was one trick left in this jaded doctor’s toolbox. 

She asked Nelly’s father to help in carrying Nelly to a table that was in the corner that she moved to the center of the room. 

Nelly could not lay on her back and was on her side on the cold table. 

The doctor asked Nelly’s father to go to the other side of the table while she stayed on the opposite. Together they grabbed the ends of the table and begin to shake. 

Nelly was amused and started to giggle. Nelly’s father was annoyed and worried and he asked the doctor what they were doing. But he said some “no-no words” in the question, so it will not be repeated here. 

The doctor replied that this is a trick used on patients with really bad balance.

The father was ready to argue until Nelly screeched. 

She grabbed her right ear almost in pain and started to shake her head. 

Nelly’s father and the doctor rushed in to help but then Nelly stopped crying and laid on her back and sat up straight and vertical for the first time that day. 

Nelly’s eyes were closed but slowly she opened them and saw her father and the Doctor stared back at her in shock. 

Nelly’s father let out a sob and immediately rushed to hug his daughter.

While in his embrace, the Doctor noticed that on Nelly’s now unclenched hand, there was a tiny little green dot. 

Without thinking the Doctor opened the door and yelled at a passing intern to get a microscope and a petri dish ASAP. 

The terrified intern ran upon the order and the doctor came back to the room and gently pricked the green dot from Nelly’s hand with a pair of tweezers. 

Without even registering the intern’s shaking hand, she grabbed the petri dish and the microscope from them and took them to the table. 

There she put the tiny green dot on the microscope’s glass and leaned to the viewfinder. 

At first, she saw nothing, but then the green dot moved. 

She zoomed in.

And in.

And some more. 

The green dot became less of a dot. And the little bit red on the dot started to look more like a…. hat?

And the little brown speck looked more like a… suitcase? 

And before the doctor could even register what she was seeing, the green dot moved and a little face with tiny glasses turned around.

She screamed. 

Nelly and her father turned around to look at the stunned doctor. 

“What is it?” the father asked. 

“It's a tiny... Alien… I think?”

Nelly lunged across the table and peered into the microscope.

“Hi, tiny alien!”

The alien waved.

“He waved!”

Her father blanched. 

The doctor barked some orders to the intern and they ran out of the office to come back with what looked like a tiny microphone. 

The Doctor knew that the intern used this microphone to make TikTok's during their break so she took it from him and neared the microphone to the telescope. 

“Ask him a question Nelly,” the doctor asked.

So Nelly did. She asked him where he was from.

And the tiny little green dot, with a red hat, black glasses, and modest brown suitcases responded. 

“Yip yip yiiy yipyiip yiip.”

The adults stood around perplexed and it was only Nelly that nodded and hummed in agreement. 

“Oh, he got lost.”

As the little alien puts it. He was lost. Very lost. 

The tiny alien was just trying to go on vacation. 

He boards a cruise asteroid on his home planet, Pluto.

The asteroid was supposed to go to the rings of Saturn but got lost going through Uranus and bouncing off of Mars and then ricocheting from the moon to then skyrocket through the Earth’s atmosphere where the asteroid burned to dust but not the green little alien that was made of sturdier stuff. And once he landed on earth he then bounced off a lot of cars hoods to then go through a six-year-old’s window and land in her ear. 

“Makes sense”’ the young intern replied. 

“Also, his name is Bob,” said Nelly.

After the Doctor and Nelly’s father recouped their sense, they concluded that the little green dot, now an alien named Bob, should find its way home. 

Nelly wasn't very happy with this. She liked walking and running on walls and having her gravity be entirely sideways and she was fond of her new friend. 

How she was able to understand the new alien perplexed everyone but Nelly who continued to talk to Bob with the tiny microphone. 

How they were going to send Bob back to Pluto was everyone’s guess. 

Nelly suggested that they shoot Bob through a straw and aim for the moon. Nelly’s father corrected Nelly’s idea on the basis of physics but then a little alien did land inside his six-year-old’s ear, so what did he know? 

The doctor insisted that she should be able to contact the media and the authorities for help, but Bob was hesitant since he was a private man. 

The debate continued and continued and continued and even got loud until a quiet voice broke through the noise. 

“There is a NASA launch tomorrow,” whispered the shy intern. 

All heads turned to him. Nelly’s father nearly rolled his eyes in frustration. 

“That’s it! The launch! We can try to get the alien…erm… Bob on the shuttle!”

Nelly clapped her hands in glee and there was even the barest of “Yip!” coming from under the microscope. 

That night, the Doctor, Nelly’s Father, Nelly, Bob the alien and the shy Intern spend hours devising their plan. 

The next morning, Nelly and her father boarded their car with a slingshot and a tiny jar with a little bob nestled in between parchments of Nelly’s favorite quilt. 

Once they got to the launch sight filled with excited spectators they met the Doctor and the Intern by the shuttle grounds. 

Before the shuttle was to launch, locals could get close to the shuttle before they will be whisked away to a safe distance where they will be able to watch the shuttle launch. 

It was at this moment, Nelly’s father leaned down close to nelly’s ear and asked “are you ready?”

With a determined nod, Nelly twisted the Jar’s lid and Bob started bouncing his way up Nelly’s arm like a graceful flea and into her ear.

Suddenly Nelly was on the ground sideways and Nelly’s father picked up Nelly and took her to the side of the shuttle gates where Nelly started to walk. 

And up she went going around the space shuttle. She didn't go far up but enough for little Bob to hop off her ear and start climbing up the rest of the shuttle. 

Nelly then started to fall but the Doctor and the Intern were prepared with a net and caught her right on time. 

The trio quickly left the grounds and met Nelly’s father by the car before anyone seemed to notice the strange behavior. 

And it was from the car-sharing a bag of McDonald's, that Nelly, her father, the Doctor, and the Intern watched the NASA shuttle take the first-ever satellite to go past pluto up into orbit. 

Despite Nelly’s eyes watering a big grin split her face as she watched her little friend go back home. 

Suddenly she felt a little kiss on her head, she looked up to see her father’s smile and at that moment she crawled onto his lap and hugged him as the last plumes of smoke faded into the sky.