Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  “His pain medications knock him out. He gets real chatty when he hurts.”

  Jordan eyed the blond man, who even in sleep, and looking like he’d seen the hard end of a big stick, maintained his aura of superiority. It covered him like a blanket, and clung to him like his last name.

  Jordan turned back to Jillian; she looked fatigued, but stoic.

  “When did he fall?”

  “Two days ago. Within an hour of waking up. Just down the last flight. Worst of it is the cracked hip girdle.”

  Jordan winced at the thought. But Jillian just continued with the list. “He also has a tib-fib, dislocated right shoulder, bruised collarbone, two ribs with hairline fractures, and three bruised. And a nasty cut on his head, stitches compliments of me. And a strained ankle.”

  “Damn.” Jordan blinked. It sucked to be David right now.

  “Yeah. I was the only one up. I didn’t get everyone inside because of him. . .” Her eyes went to the ground, her breath in uneven expansions.

  Jordan waited for her to lift whatever had weighed her down.

  “I think some of them went hypothermic. . . . When I saw him I thought he was going to help me. But then . . . . he fell . . . he just needed so much care.”

  “Jilly. It’s okay.” He wasn’t sure what else to say. It wasn’t like he had been here to help. “You did the best you could. And you saved David.” That fact was clearly important to her, so Jordan tamped down the fiendish little thoughts rising inside him at the idea of David heading to the great beyond and dozens of other lives being saved. But he didn’t share those with Jillian.

  He also knew there was nothing more he could do for her guilt. Not now. So he tried the fine art of distraction. “Who else is up?”

  “I can tell you better who is down. We’re waiting for more to wake.” She rattled off some of the names of techs they had been working with. Some she just described: Steven, one of the guards; the two brothers in the cafeteria, the Sanders’; Mr. Miles and Mr. Moore the two high school science teachers who had helped out. “That cute blonde girl who liked you so much,” Jillian tilted her head, her mouth pulled back on one side, conveying the sorrow she just couldn’t quite hold in. “Lucy?”

  He snapped up, “Lucy Whitman?” Not that he knew her well enough to miss her, but . . . he sighed.

  Jillian’s face turned even more grim, and he knew what was coming. “The ones you didn’t mention.”

  She shook her head, but her voice left a little room for hope. “There are a few still under, but. . . Dr. Sorenson’s animal wrangler friend hit his head when he fell and died fairly quickly. Maybe it was nicer that way. Fast.”

  “Leon Peppersmith. What about Becky?”

  “Holding on, but faint.” Her hands waved uselessly, sharing with him the knot inside her. That the simple technicalities of life were still beyond her skills. “We’ve learned to recognize the signs that someone is coming out-”

  He smiled. Jillian. “Of course you have.”

  “-but she doesn’t have any of them. Her breathing is getting weaker and weaker.”

  “Ventilator?”

  “We don’t have enough to spare. . . But I got her one anyway. . . not that it’s doing her any good. You know, it’s just like the beginning. It’s always ahead of us. We can read the signs but we can’t prevent or counteract any of it.” Again the useless gestures. The breaths in.

  Then a spark. Her head snapped up, she smiled, making full eye contact and beaming in a way he hadn’t seen before. Good. Something good was coming.

  “I got you this.” She pulled several pages from her pocket. He saw the list of names, marching in precise columns.

  He blinked. Pages of names. A list of what?

  He started to ask but he caught sight of James Linder Carvell and LeAnn Jessica Lee. The back of his brain tickled. He should know –

  They were from his high school.

  Lake James.

  “Survivors?”

  She smiled and nodded. “In the order they woke up, not alphabetical. Kelly and Lindsey aren’t there. But I found ten Abellards. Jackson is your father, right?” Her eyes were wide wondering, waiting.

  He nodded, trying to stop the tears that formed.

  His Dad.

  He flipped two pages, seeing the occasional name highlighted. Jillian had done it. The lines were too precise to be anything other than machine or Jilly. All the highlights were Abellards.

  Jackson Stellman Abellard.

  It stared up at him in black and white, painting a truth he hadn’t even felt in his heart. Releasing the tears down his face. Thank you, God.

  Jillian didn’t give him any space, just beamed up at him. “I knew you’d want to see that.”

  He nodded, biting his lip. Trying to be more together, less hindered by babyrails and emotions. He used the backs of his hands to wipe at his face.

  “Ow!” He had raked the IV needle down his cheek. It hurt enough to make him wonder if he had drawn blood.

  But Jillian reached up and wiped his face, her fingers were soft and warm – and demeaning. He brushed her away. “Thank you.” The mumble was all he could muster.

  He started again, trying to learn what he had missed. “All of Lake James went under?”

  She nodded, forgetting that he had pushed her aside, “Everyone. The whole US, the world. As best as we can tell the poles swapped. That was it. The shift.”

  “Really?”

  She gestured to the prone form on the gurney next to him. “You’ll have to ask David. But that’s what he believes.”

  Jordan couldn’t help but look around the ten-by-ten tent that had been his world for four days. Even the town of Oak Ridge was nothing in the global sense, “How did we learn all this?”

  Jilly’s smile was crooked. “Not by me.” She punctuated with a sigh. “I think I’m not human really. It would explain a lot.”

  The frown pulled his features central, her phrasing was so strange. Not human?

  But she stopped him before he could begin. “The women all went under first. Even with me and David, I went first. So, logically, the women started waking up first.

  “Apparently when a real woman wakes from a coma the first thing she does is call everyone she knows. Three women woke up first. Within the hour they had made contact with forty different states and seven other countries. That doesn’t even include the ones that didn’t answer.” She looked incredulous for a moment, before that slid away to reveal guilt. “I had been awake a full day and a half by then, and hadn’t even thought to try to contact my own family.”

  Her eyes slipped to the ground. Never revealing what, if anything, she had found out about her sisters and parents. Not that he was surprised. That was just Jillian.

  The gears slipped into place. Maybe she and David did have a lot in common.

  But he didn’t have time to dwell on it.

  “Dr. Brookwood!” A tech ran into the tent, clearly out of breath, but pushing the words through anyway. “You said you wanted to be notified if anything happened to Dr. Sorenson.” Jordan could hear her breathing from eight feet away. “She’s slipping.”

  Jillian threw one last look at him before darting from the tent, stethoscope and penlight in hand. Looking like an ER doc in full mode. But she must be these days, he reasoned. He still hadn’t figured out how she had taken care of David’s breaks and dislocations all by herself.

  He motioned for the tech to come give him a hand. And she caught her breath before reaching out and steadying him so he could slide down to shaky legs. But he stood firm after the first attempt. The IV remained attached, and he began to scratch off the tape at the back of his left hand, but the tech stilled him. “We’ve been leaving them on.”

  But then he’d be stuck, tethered to the bed. And he told her so.

  She lowered the pole and handed him the half-full bag to hang onto, before turning him around and taking a safety pin to his clothing. Within moments he was strung up with his IV attached at the
back of his collar. When he glanced up he saw that the tech was wearing one the same way. “So this is the latest fashion rage?”

  “Dr. Brookwood thought it up.” She smiled. Of course they all loved Jillian. She was brilliant, she saved their lives probably. While he slept. “She’s very smart you know.”

  “Yes, I know.” But he left the tech there to share her remaining praise of Jilly with the sleeping Dr. Carter. Taking off, he followed the little blue streak, full of energy that he didn’t yet have, and brains that he never would. Her dark hair flying loose behind her a beacon he followed through the tents.

  Becky Sorenson looked like an angel. At least the kind Jillian had always imagined as a kid - rosy lips, pale skin in peaches and cream, with a cinnamon dusting of freckles. Vibrant hair in shades of red reserved only for the very lucky. Colors she herself would never possess.

  Jillian looked at the doctor lying there. She certainly didn’t look like a world class biologist. She looked like another version of Snow White. They ought to get her a bouquet and glass case and let her wait for Prince Charming. In Jillian’s estimation that part should be played by Leon Peppersmith. He was huge and handsome and sharp as a tack. And since Becky wasn’t awake to say what her preferences were, Jillian would decide for her. Although she couldn’t even force a mental image of Leon prancing a horse through the forest, looking for a princess. Possibly wearing tights.

  She almost laughed.

  And the thought disintegrated. Becky’s knight wouldn’t show. He had died of a blow to the head. Something any one of the handful of CDC docs could have fixed had they been anything other than comatose. Leon had been one of a few who had died, not due to the reversal, but to ‘other’ causes.

  At least Becky wouldn’t know that he hadn’t survived.

  Jordan nearly plowed into her as he entered the tent. She didn’t have to turn and look. The labored breathing was all his.

  It was only then that the nurse hovering over Dr. Sorenson looked up, stethoscope still in hand. “Her blood pressure is still dropping. Her pulse is uneven and fading.” She shook her head, brown curls unruly from all the work. She stepped aside, revealing that the bed next to Becky had the sheet pulled up over the face.

  “When did we lose him?” Jillian pointed.

  “About two hours ago.” The nurse looked over her shoulder at the body, her distress turning to compassion. “The crew hasn’t found a place to put him, and we need to tag him so his family can find him.”

  Jillian’s head spun. Again. Another thing her one track mind had never even been concerned with. She had been trained to do these things. Her checklist included ‘notify family’ and ‘label patient,’ but it just didn’t spring naturally into her mind the way it had for everyone else.

  The wedge that had always existed between her and society slipped a little further into the widening crack. With a nod, she checked Dr. Sorenson over for herself. Jordan slipped in beside her, remarkably steady on his feet for having just come around.

  With wide eyes Jillian faced him. “It seems the longer they stay under the harder it is to pull out. At first people were waking up left and right. Then it petered off. When you woke up . . . . well, no one else has since.” Her shoulders hunched in abject misery. “I’m afraid no one else will.” And I can’t tell you how glad I am that you did.

  The ventilator provided a steady rhythm and forced the rise and fall of Becky’s chest while Jillian and Jordan worked silently. They ran extra fluid into her.

  Becky’s heart still beat, only missing the rhythm occasionally. Mostly it was just slowing down. The powerstroke of the left ventricle had reduced to little more than a squish of fluid. The peach tones of her skin, already lacking their usual vibrance, were slipping to grays. Jillian pushed medication after medication, until Jordan’s hand on her arm stilled her.

  She listened to the infrequent lub-dub of Becky’s heart fade to just a single sound. Her head snapped up as the ventilator gave one last hiss, then stilled. Jordan stood with his hand draped over the switches he had turned to stop the machinery. The heart monitor gave one last beep, and Jordan turned it off too, before it could go into its synthetic whine, letting everyone within earshot know its patient had died.

  She felt her shirt get wet before she realized that she was crying. And threw herself at Jordan, the only remaining human being that she knew. His arms wrapped around her. “Jillian, you saved so many.”

  “But all I can do is watch. I can’t change anything.”

  His hand stroked her hair, following it all the way down to the middle of her back. Her eyes squeezed against the visions in her head, and focused where she had buried her face in the front of Jordan’s jacket. “I didn’t save any of them.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Before they fell, some of the men called their friends, they told them what was coming. Told them to get inside and lie down at the first signs of nausea. They saved people all over the world.” She shook her head against his chest, leaving smears of tears darkening the fabric. “Even here, so many were inside, on gurneys, lying on the ground. Some even had IVs run on each other. . . .” A hiccup forced its way up her throat, escaping in an embarrassing giveaway. “But I couldn’t get them all inside . . .”

  “You saved David.”

  Her breath let out. That she had done.

  His voice flowed over her again like a wave. “I told them all to get inside - to lie down.”

  She sniffed. “You saved them.”

  “But the ones who didn’t. . . well, that’s what they chose. You shouldn’t feel guilty about that.”

  She hadn’t saved anyone, really.

  She chewed at her lower lip, still not looking up at him. Taking deep breaths, she fought the feeling of being out of control. Something that she hadn’t known was so very frightening until just this moment when she admitted it.

  And her brain started ticking. Fifty three hours she had been awake. And slept only six. In small shifts, too. She’d eaten only five small meals in that time. Thank God for the IV she had worn up until this morning.

  No wonder she was so tired. The world had slipped away, and she was powerless against the changes that had come . . . that were still coming.

  So she wasn’t surprised to realize that Jordan was carrying her out of the tent, even though she didn’t know when she had passed from standing on her own feet to having her weight entirely borne by him. As she looked over his shoulder she saw the curly haired nurse tug at the sheet to Becky Sorenson’s bed, and pull it up over her face.

  Jillian squeezed her eyes to block the image, but it followed her.

  As if in reaction to the unwanted sight, she felt her brain just shut off.

  18

  She had been trying to wake up for a long time. Maybe two or three hours. It wasn’t her usual sleep. She heard sounds around her. Another person, several maybe.

  And the thread snapped - the one that had held her back from consciousness. Even though her eyes wouldn’t obey and open, and her fingers wouldn’t quite respond to her commands. She was finally truly alert. Inside her own body.

  The person next to her spoke in deep tones, but not to her. “How are you feeling?”

  “Ehhh.” Just a moan from the second voice - whoever the first person was talking to.

  “We’re glad to see you’re awake.” Becky could sense or smell the man. She knew that he had shifted, that he was looking down at her. “From this twitching, it looks like your friend will wake up here really soon, too.”

  Becky tried again to make her fingers move, her toes flex, her eyelids spring open. None of it worked as she intended. But she must have accomplished something, because smooth warm fingers glided into place, holding her hand. The deep voice spoke again. “I know you’re coming around. Just relax, it’ll come. I remember.”

  She breathed deeply, then fought pain as sharp light penetrated her vision. Her face pulled tight to counteract the intrusion.

  “That’s my girl
.” The hand continued to hold hers, to squeeze occasionally with human contact, but he spoke to the blurry voice. “Would you like some juice?”

  A bell rang, and reverberated around her skull. “Aauuuhhh.”

  She was shocked that the sound had been her own voice.

  Another voice joined in, “What can I bring?”

  “Juice. Several cups.”

  “Are these the last of them?”

  She felt the vibrations of his body movement through his hand. He had nodded. “Probably.”

  Becky worked her mouth, the feeling of age-old cotton making her wish she was still under. “Mmmmhhhh.”

  “Dr. Sorenson, can you squeeze my hand?” The voice was close, she could feel his heat and detect that he was blocking part of the light that was causing her so much pain. She pushed aside the smell of the onions he had eaten recently.

  She thought about squeezing. She could feel his fingers, but was unsure if she had actually accomplished the motion until he spoke. “All right, then.” Pause. She waited for him to flip up her eyelids and shine a penlight in them. But he didn’t. “Can you say your name?”

  “Becky.” It croaked out of her mouth like frogs escaping flashlights in the night.

  “Perfect.”

  It had been far from it, she knew. Maybe the man was a dentist - that’s how he could understand what surely was nothing more than a mumble.

  “What are you giggling about?” His voice shook revealing that he, too, was laughing.

  “You understand me.”

  He smiled. A kind, round face, with uneven teeth, and brown eyes.

  She blinked slowly, immediately blurring her vision.

  “If I sit you up will you drink this for me?”

  The cup he held up looked like . . . urine.

  She must have cringed. He spoke again. “It’s apple juice. It’s what we’ve got.”

  So she nodded. Her neck releasing loud moose noises within her skull as she moved it.

  “I’m Jack. Your RN.” He didn’t hold out his hand, and Becky figured they’d already done their handshake. In efficient movements she was sitting, the gurney creaking louder than her own bones, and he had pushed her hands around the cup, helping her bring it to her lips.