Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  He ached for the Levinsons. Art was less obvious in his grief than Maddie, but maybe more touching for that exact reason. Rolling his face into his pillow, Jordan made a half-assed attempt at self-suffocation. He should get up and brush his teeth and get dressed like every other day of his life. But unlike every other he would breathe a little harder down David’s neck, begging and praying for a resolution to this thing.

  On the one hand he wanted the problem to be the magnetic reversal. Problem solved. The bug they couldn’t find didn’t exist. Not their fault. But that would leave holes of uninhabitable space on earth. Surely all the hotspots couldn’t be in North America, right? There had to be others elsewhere, right? And at that point the problem went way out of his scope. Hell, it had been out of his scope a week ago.

  David was trying. Becky was trying. Jilly’s fingers were about bare to the bone and his own back was about to break. He could simply cry foul and give up. He and Jillian had kept sharing a room, leaving the second free as workspace. So he could just not go into the workroom again. Simply ignore all of it.

  “It’s like there’s nothing here to find.” Her voice was soft in the false darkness created by the blackout curtains. It came from over his shoulder and the rhythm and timbre told him she’d been awake for at least a while. “I’ve kicked myself a dozen times this past week for not being a pediatrician.”

  He couldn’t suppress the small laugh, and he finally rolled to face her. Somehow she was bundled under the covers with the look of a child huddled against the cold of winter. “What do you say we just leave and go set up a practice together? We’d be good.”

  “No, we’re just missing something. I know it.”

  He sat up, letting the sheet slide down him, fully awake. If Jillian thought there was a connection they were missing, if it was niggling at the corner of her brain, then he trusted that it was there.

  She sat up too, holding her head as though to keep the information from sloshing out. “There’s a numbers issue that we’re missing here.”

  Jordan’s feet hit the less than plush carpet and he started pacing, energy renewed at even this slight prospect. “We aren’t at quarantine, and we’re way too populated here. It’s too high profile to swarm down in yellow suits.”

  “No, it’s not about quarantine. It’s about numbers I saw somewhere.”

  They needed to be up and dressed and in the other room where all the numbers were lined up in neat rows and gathered on charts waiting for them. He forced a deep breath into his lungs. “I’m going to get dressed and go down and grab some food, then I’ll bring it back-”

  “No.” It was positively frantic. “You can’t leave me alone. Just keep talking to me. It’s like a word on the tip of my tongue.” She was throwing off the covers and stepping out in her shorts pajamas that sported a squinty-faced red-head and the words bad hair day. At another time it would have made him laugh.

  “Okay.” And even as he extracted himself from her grasp she re-clung to him. “What’s wrong, Jilly? Are you all right?”

  She waved her hands in front of her face. “It’s here. And if I don’t solve it people will die!”

  The starch left him. Perhaps Jillian didn’t have any answers. She just had fear and guilt the same as him. “Let me go into the bathroom and get dressed. Then we’ll go down and get breakfast.” He didn’t mention numbers again or solving anything. He didn’t really think they would.

  “I’ll change out here while you’re in there.”

  He nodded. Even in a panic, and buried under a brickload of guilt, Jillian was efficient. Closing the door behind him, Jordan allowed himself a brief measure of time where he could ignore the fact that Jilly was close to tears just beyond the wall. And that the hallway door would only open to a host of other responsibilities and problems.

  They wandered down for the continental breakfast, and were heading back, food balanced in their hands when she stopped, almost causing him to put steaming coffee down her back.

  “Room numbers.” She pointed at the numbers they were passing with each door down the hallway. “But not numbers.” With no warning she went from off to on and started back down the hall. “Not numbers.” Again she muttered, and Jordan knew that he would be the one to set down his carefully balanced breakfast and fish out the magnetic room key.

  She was passing him into their room when her head snapped up. “Room colors!”

  He nodded, his brain catching on to her excitement. As though he, too, could now see light at the end of the tunnel. He just didn’t know what was producing that light. “The Levinsons color-coordinate the bedrooms so the guests don’t have to remember anything but their color.”

  She ungraciously unloaded her food onto the side table. “All the patients were in color coordinated rooms. And if we go back and check I’ll bet they’re all at one end of the house.”

  He mentally tabbed through what he remembered of each of the patients, calling up a face, and a mental picture of the room. One blue, one pink, one purple, all at one end of the long house. “They were all in the north end. Even the new ones.”

  They nodded at each other with Jordan supplying the words. “Another physical anomaly. But then why hasn’t David found anything?”

  Heavy breathing sounded in the open doorway over his shoulder and Jordan leaped around to find David hanging in the gaping space, sucking in air even as he spoke. “David has.”

  “What?” Jordan took in the wrinkled and filthy khakis and the bags under his eyes. Whatever David had been up to he hadn’t been dressed for it.

  “There is just now a start of a reversal at the north end of the house. It’s a small spot. With a small field.”

  “Why didn’t we see it before?” Jillian walked toward David, but it was Jordan who handed over his coffee with an “I didn’t drink any of it” to a grateful David.

  “I’m used to seeing this stuff in deep layers. There’s a history of reversal here, but no one ever recorded it before. All the strata tell the story. But, right now the top layer is showing the shift, too. Not my forte, but I found it.” He took a sip of the steaming silt water and had the wherewithal to thank Jordan.

  “So why are you just telling us now?” Jillian shook her head, still looking inside, not focused on either of the men in front of her, Jordan knew the signs.

  “Because, sweetcheeks, I was up all night playing in the dirt.”

  Yup, Jordan thought to himself, that matches the appearance.

  “And I only just now found it.” He tipped up the cup, draining the last of Jordan’s coffee. “So you two can call the old doc and tell him it’s high time to move these people out! And I am now going to sleep.”

  With that, he practically rolled out of view and Jordan heard the metallic click of his door closing just a second later.

  Jillian stood stock still, thinking. “We’re missing somebody.”

  Not able to help her think, Jordan called Atlanta, but not Landerly. “Mike, it’s Jordan.”

  “All our numbers exactly match yours.” Something about the tones in his voice made Jordan sure that Mike was in the lab.

  “Yeah, I figured they’d match.” His hand went automatically through his hair, a gesture of frustration. “But I’ve got another set of info for you to run.”

  “Lay it on me, I’m going to be sitting on my assays here in a few minutes.”

  Jordan laughed. “That’s funny.”

  “What?”

  “Sitting on my assays.”

  “Oh.” He could hear the shrug in Mike’s voice, as though the thought had never occurred to him. “What do you need?”

  “I need you to do a statistical comparison of the numbers we’re getting for our people and the general population.”

  But Mike was Mike, and in a minute he got it. “What are my controls?”

  Jordan rattled off the stats, then Mike was gone, his hands no doubt resuming their usual speed as he plated samples and provided numbers for them.

  Turn
ing, he found Jillian watching him. “Was that Landerly?”

  That showed how long she had been paying attention. “No, Mike. He’s going to run a standard deviation for us. See if the reversal is lowering people’s immune systems so they get sick, or if it’s making already weak people sick.”

  He could see her absorb that in a lightning flash, and as she made eye contact with him he realized her eyes were bright. He was opening his mouth to ask, but she beat him to it. “I know what we missed.”

  “Yeah?” From the look on her face he was certain he didn’t want to hear it.

  “Eddie.”

  Becky sat on the edge of her cot. With her legs apart and her elbows balanced on her jeans-covered knees. No one was dying anymore. In fact, everyone who’d been in quarantine had stayed healthy for five whole days. And according to Jillian and Jordan things hadn’t been going anything like that before they were all moved out of town. So good news was coming. Certainly.

  And with the little blind amphibians she was picking up here, along with some seriously disturbed insects, she was certain that the environment was to blame. Amen to that, and here were the men, no longer in their yellow suits, approaching her. She just knew that they were ending the quarantine. Becky stifled a ‘Halleluiah!’

  Two of them walked up in jeans and t-shirts looking very unlike the CDC scientists they were. But then again they were in backwoods Tennessee, and not their offices in Atlanta. She hazarded a glance down at herself and thought she didn’t look very scientific herself. One of them nodded at her like he knew her, which was only confusing, until he opened his mouth. From his voice she could tell he was the one who had brought her the phone, consistently listening in on her conversations for the past three days. Briddle.

  “Quarantine’s over?” She looked up expectantly, praying for an okay to return home, and check out her own backyard.

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t wait to see his reaction. Just jumped up and started packing her things. Becky had forced herself to hold off ‘til now, because she just knew she would have entered clinical depression if she had to unpack.

  “We wanted to let you know that we’ve removed the project from Dr. Warden and University of Tennessee’s jurisdiction.”

  Her busy hands stilled. “What?” They were taking her frogs?

  “We would like to offer you the opportunity to stay with it, with the CDC. Of course, you’ll be compensated if we all survive.”

  “If we all survive?” Her mouth hung open. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

  Briddle looked perplexed. “Was it funny?”

  The man behind him shook his head and rolled his eyes. “No, it wasn’t.”

  Becky’s gaze snapped to him, recognizing the sound if not the face of the biologist who’d been working with her in the makeshift lab occasionally. “John!”

  He stepped forward taking over the conversation for the un-funny Briddle. “There’s a lot of work still to be done. You know the animal species are going to help us suss this thing out. Plus there’s enough material for about, say, a billion papers.” His lips pressed together in what was almost a smile.

  “Papers?” A job? With the CDC? Chasing frogs?

  In a few minutes Becky had voiced all those concerns. Her packing remained forgotten as she sat back on her cot, suffering a mild case of shock. She had to go with the CDC or hand over her frogs. They were government property now.

  She heard other voices outside. A sound she hadn’t heard before. The people of McCann being set free. Almost. “They can’t go home, can they?”

  “No.” John shook his head, his face unshaved for what must have been a good four days. “The government will have to relocate them.”

  “What do we do next? Do we set up a lab in Atlanta?”

  “Eventually. But right now we need to go do tests on a new location in Florida.”

  “Florida?” She said the word as though she’d never heard of the state before. Her brain really was on overload and she’d ruined her routine and hadn’t eaten any breakfast this morning because she’d been too excited.

  “Can I go home first?” That was what was making her a mess. Her mom and dad were worried, Aaron thought she was on the run from the law, and no matter what the CDC was offering her, she wouldn’t take it if it meant she didn’t get to show her family she was okay.

  “We need to head right out. They want us on site by tonight. Brookwood and Abellard are already there. And they have the same kind of magnetic anomaly.”

  “You can’t tell her that!” Briddle stood over them, looking like he was going to wire John’s mouth shut. “She hasn’t signed her paperwork; she isn’t cleared yet!”

  “She has emergency status.” John just looked up to where Briddle had planted himself in the corner of her tent. Again his face showed his dissatisfaction with the teetotaler. “Besides, she’s going to sign.”

  “You’re right, I’m in.” She stood and stretched. “But on one condition. I’m going home first. I’ll call my Mom and tell her to have everyone there so I can see them.”

  John looked up at Briddle, still not standing, not giving the man any of the respect or formality he seemed to want.

  “Oh, all right. But no talking to them about any of this, and you’re still on emergency status until we get the paperwork through.” He handed her a clipboard and she quickly read and signed everything. Basically accepting a probational position, and agreeing to defer to her superiors’ judgment of what she could and couldn’t share. But she knew what Aaron had said about government contracts. Your signature meant everything and then some. Theirs meant nothing.

  Briddle left with his precious paperwork tucked under his arm and she looked back at John. “You’ll want to come home with me. When’s our flight?”

  “They’ll put us on something this evening.” He, too, finally stood. “I need to go with you? I’m not much for carrying luggage.”

  “I have forty of the frogs from my site at my house.”

  She almost laughed as she saw his jaw drop, and re-phrased her thought. “I guess I should say ‘we’ do.”

  Jordan stilled. Standing in the doorway, his question was answered. He hadn’t told his Dad that he was coming to Lake James. But here he was on a Sunday morning and the smell of pancakes was weaving through the house he still had a key to. “Dad?”

  “Jordan!?” His father came through the opening from the kitchen, brandishing his spatula like a weapon, hope and fear both written plainly on his round face. “What are you doing here?”

  “I needed pancakes?” He shook off the burdens of the flight, and the sound still in his head of Jillian giggling and the sheen in her eyes. David was with her and they would handle the stress they were all under together. Jordan had his Dad. Not that his father spoke much.

  Case in point, his father simply grunted and pointed with the spatula to a vinyl seat at the old scarred table and brought Jordan a plate and fork while the griddle sizzled. It seemed not only did his father make pancakes on his own every Sunday morning, he made enough for Jordan who wasn’t there, and maybe even his mother, too.

  He caught his Dad up on things while the pancakes cooked, his own voice the only thing easing the sounds of his father’s rhythmic work. “We’re here to examine Eddie’s case. A team of us. But I can’t tell you much more than that.”

  He saw the nod from the back of his father’s head.

  “I just wanted to come visit.”

  Again the small nod.

  So he ate. Better than he had eaten in weeks. Fresh, hot pancakes. With syrup from the plastic bottle with the grocery store brand label across the front. Nothing fancy at all. But the kitchen and the food and the smells - it took him back.

  And something must have showed. Because when his father finally sat down he took one look at Jordan and asked, “Who’s the girl? Jillian?”

  “What?” His face lifted from his plate and his heart kicked up a notch. How had his Dad seen what he was only just
admitting to himself? And just a few days too late, too. Late enough to begin with the serious self-ass-kicking.

  “That doctor you work with. You mentioned her last time you were here.” It was more words than his Dad had strung together in years, to him at least.

  “How did you know?” He spent time cutting the pancakes and shoving another bite into his mouth to hide the expressions he was sure were giving him away.

  “I’ve seen that look. Almost identical. On my own face, when I thought your mother was going out with someone else.”

  Jordan almost laughed. If his mouth hadn’t been full, he might have. “That bad, huh?”

  “What’s this other guy like?” Mr. Abellard held the fork as though it was a laser pointer and he was giving the latest PowerPoint presentation.

  “Dad, you haven’t said this much to me in forever.”

  The older man shrugged and ate another bite of the pancakes. For a full minute Jordan was certain that he had effectively shut down the one open communication he’d had with the man in years. And it hadn’t been worth it. So he followed suit and shoveled in more food.

  But his father surprised him. “Didn’t know what to say to you.” There was a shrug, buried in the beefy shoulders and in his voice. “You went off to college. I’d never been, didn’t know what any of it was like. Didn’t have any friends who did. And ashamed because I couldn’t pay for it for you.”

  “Dad-”

  “But I know this.” He jabbed his empty fork at his son again. “I’ve heard about this Jillian. But what about the guy?”

  Jordan’s brain churned, doing the thing that probably separated him the most from his father. The constant reassessment, the continual striving for more information. “How do you know there’s another guy?”

  “No good excuse for you not to have her if there isn’t.” His Dad didn’t look up from his plate, not enough expression or anything other than the words for Jordan to realize that his father held him in higher regard than he had ever known. “So what’s he got on you?”