Not on the chest x-ray. The tiny fissures she had seen on his earlier films were gone.
And so were the films.
She shook her head.
There was suddenly this veneer of organization. Protocol was being followed to the letter. Yet too much was messed up. David’s films had disappeared. Jordan was ‘dead’. Lucy was supposed to be dead, but was walking around.
And then the healing thing . . .
Her IV puncture was minor. But David’s tib-fib . . . that was huge. What if the reversal had sped up the healing process? It was hypothesized that the dinosaurs were so large because the magnetic field had been stronger seventy million years ago - the bigger field supported larger life. Would it also heal faster?
Her heart started racing beyond her standard seventy-two beats per minute. It was enough to make her want to run to the cafeteria and steal a good serrated knife and cut herself, to watch how long it took for the scar to close.
But there had to be a faster way. A better way. Just in case she was wrong.
With her lower lip between her teeth, Jillian thought for a moment, then smiled.
Feeling every step upon the cold grass, she pushed through the flap into bright day. People milled everywhere, and she grabbed a tech as he walked by. “Did you ever break a major bone?”
He shook his head.
Damn.
But she tried again.
And again, until one guy laughed. “I used to skateboard. You’d be hard pressed to find a bone I didn’t break!”
“Excellent.” She didn’t bother to explain much beyond the fact that she wanted to x-ray all of him.
He grinned and handed his tray of urine samples off to another tech passing by, glad to give up the mundane in exchange for being a guinea pig. Jillian wended her way through the tents, the tech in tow behind her. Without much ado, and throwing all of her authority around, she shoved the operator aside and shot every inch of the kid, using up film like there was no tomorrow. Handing each one off in turn, she demanded that it be processed immediately.
The first film came back as she was finishing his jaw, having saved his head for last. And knowing that she’d radiated this kid, top to toe, in the name of science.
She held the film up to the light, with the tech looking over her shoulder. There were two breaks. One clean, the other not so much. “Did you break this twice?”
He nodded, pointing. “Six years ago, and ten years ago.”
Jillian frowned, then accepted a second film as it was delivered from the tent next door where two techs were developing the x-rays as fast as they could. He had broken his left femur. It had pins, and bone scarring. She could see the old collarbone break. He even admitted to having cracked it twice in the same place, which was perfectly consistent with the level of damage.
This kid was a mess.
And it was all still there, in black and white and foggy gray.
She asked him questions, pinpointing break after break. And about to give up as she slid the last film into the envelope. “Did you ever break anything else? Anything we didn’t look at?”
He shook his head. “I think you caught them all.”
Her breath sighed out of her, she’d been so certain that she’d find something. “Well, if you think of anything, come get me. I think I’ll be in tent 43.”
With a shrug and a sad smile, he went off to find more work to do. And Jillian went back to the tent to find David, and shoes.
Now that she’d proven nothing, the cold had seeped into her feet, and through the bone up her shins. She needed to soak them in a hot bath, or at least wrap them in a foot warmer.
Was it just her and David that healed rapidly?
She slogged around the last corner, looking into the tent at the back of the person standing by the gurney and laughing with David.
Memory tugged at her brain, until the woman turned around.
And Jillian screamed.
Becky Sorenson was smiling, until the bloodcurdling noise came out of Jillian’s mouth.
Techs and physicians rushed through the still open tent flap, dragging in biting air that she didn’t - couldn’t - feel.
Becky Sorenson was staring at her, questioning the scream that Jillian only just managed to shut down.
“Are you all right?” The physician had shoved everyone else out of the way, and had his fingers on her neck, already checking her pulse. Although why he would check that, when she was clearly alive and upright, was beyond her.
Jillian pushed at him, only wanting him to go away, and beginning to believe she was truly crazy. “I’m fine. I was just startled. Becky reminded me of someone who had died, and I thought . . . well I had a shock. But I’m good, so you can go. . .”
She knew she was prattling, but she couldn’t stop.
Where was Jordan? He’d make her a flow chart and explain some of this. Or at least offer something. Was she really going insane?
At last when the extra people crowding the tent had been shoved out, Becky pushed her down into a chair. “Do you care to explain what that was really all about?”
Jillian shook her head, knowing she had held Becky’s hand while she died, just two days ago. The healing power of the reversals must be even stronger than she had thought. That was the only viable explanation she could come up with. But it was hardly a reasonable one.
She just looked up at her colleague, into Becky’s blue eyes, and asked, “Did you ever break any bones?”
“Just my finger. A long time ago.” Becky gave her that are-you-losing-your-mind? look. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Jillian buried her face in her hands and fought back tears. She couldn’t go mad. She just couldn’t. She wouldn’t survive it. The only thing she always knew to be true was that she could put pieces together. But someone had dumped her puzzle, and nothing fit.
She started with what she knew. “David fell down the steps. About four days ago. Right after he woke up. He broke his leg. But it doesn’t show on the x-ray. In fact, someone took off the cast I put on him.”
Jillian looked up just long enough to see Becky nod. She continued telling how his shoulder had healed, and how her IV mark was gone.
“Wow. You two were immune for a while, and now you super-heal?” Becky’s hands found homes on her hips and she stared at the tent ceiling, making sure the view in her retinas was nothing that would interfere with the cranking of her brain.
But Jillian had no qualms about interrupting Becky’s thinking. “No. There’s more.”
“What?”
“You’re the best.”
Becky’s brows raised.
With a sigh, Jillian let it slip out. “I held your hand two days ago while you died.”
“I’m not dead.”
“Thanks.” Her tongue was laced with dry wit, good to know she’d still have that when they locked her up. “I’m a physician, I already diagnosed that.”
“I woke up yesterday at four.” Becky shrugged. “I never died.”
Jillian felt the old familiar cold steel of a gear click in place in her head. “What day is it?”
“Thursday.”
She gulped air. It was a day earlier than she had thought. “But that’s it. You died yesterday. At . . . just before four.”
“No, I woke up.”
Jillian stood, ready to fight. “I checked your pulse. Jordan declared you dead. I watched them pull the sheet over you.”
“But I didn’t die.”
Again, click, another gear shifting. “Do you have a twin?”
Becky shook her head and looked at Jillian like she would a small child. “Did you dream it?”
The cold seeped up Jillian’s socks into her feet, this time going straight from there to her heart. Becky’s voice interrupted her thoughts again, “Because Dr. Abellard died several days ago according to the lists.”
Jillian shook her head. “The lists are messed up. Lucy Whitman is listed ‘deceased’ and she’s not. Jordan
isn’t either. And David fell down the steps.” She looked to David, beseeching, knowing that if he didn’t corroborate she’d have to check herself in to the loony bin.
Becky looked over at him, too. And much to Jillian’s relief, he nodded. “I fell down the last flight of stairs. Broke my hip and leg, dislocated my shoulder, and cracked ribs. I don’t feel any of it now. But I remember Jillian pulling on bedsheets and stuffing my shoulder back into place.”
It sure wasn’t how she’d describe it, but he did get the job done. And he smiled showing even white teeth. A smile just for her, that reached to his eyes. He knew she wasn’t nuts. And that was enough, for now.
He explained how he didn’t remember getting moved here, or the cast coming off. And Becky took the quandary upon herself, leaving the tent, and asking the people passing by how Dr. Carter had come to be in this tent.
Jillian stood and listened just behind the tent flap. Three techs told the same story. They had found David in the room upstairs, and carried him down to this tent. Down all four flights of stairs. He’d been comatose the whole time.
Becky came back in and looked from Jillian to David.
David sat fully upright for the first time. “So I never broke my leg?”
She smiled, while Jillian watched in abject horror, but unable to do anything, as her body virtually refused to listen to any of her commands.
David slid off the gurney and stood on wobbly feet. In a few minutes he let go of the gurney and walked on his own. Another fact flying in the face of all her memories. Even David remembered the fall.
Had they simply shared a dream?
Becky walked back in the tent, even though Jillian didn’t remember her stepping out again. Her face conveying that she had bad news even before she spoke the words. “They said that Jordan is at the mortuary. A few of the bodies were transported waiting for someone to sign off on them.”
Jillian shook her head. Jordan was alive yesterday.
Because she’d only slept for four hours yesterday if it was Thursday. That meant she’d seen him less than twenty-four hours ago.
Becky nodded at her. “We need to go. I’m headed there to get Leon Peppersmith’s belongings. They should go to the CDC or to his family.”
Silently Jillian agreed to the trip. Her brain telling her that if Jordan was at the mortuary he would be there working, making decisions or taking samples.
Becky waited while Jillian changed her socks and put on shoes. Then told them she already arranged a car to go see about Leon’s things. Softly she asked. “If he’s alive, then where is he?”
At the mortuary! But Jillian fought down anger, accompanied with fear and bile pressing at the back of her throat. Without a further word, she followed David and Becky to the car.
David walked with an easy swing to his stride. He clearly hadn’t broken the bones. Not four days ago. He chatted with the biologist. Somehow able to make meaningless small talk, even though he said he remembered the same things she did.
Sliding into the backseat, she listened quietly while Becky told of the woman rousing the crowd about The Ascension.
When they arrived, her feet stepped out onto the gray of the blacktop, the morgue and coroner’s office located under the small police station that served the entire town. A steel door let them inside, where they passed down a long hall and through a walk-in refrigerator door.
The air changed texture, to a created, and probably expensive, climate, that was, ironically, nearly the exact temperature as the air outside.
Jillian still couldn’t find her tongue when the coroner told Becky that they had Dr. Abellard. The fuzzy noise behind her eyes worsened. There was no way that Jordan was here. She hadn’t dreamed him alive.
Yet the coroner pulled open a door and slid out a tray.
He peeled back the sheet, revealing Jordan. Sleeping in shades of gray. Lacking the small movements that betrayed life.
Still not believing, she reached out, felt his hair. It didn’t feel right. It felt dead. He didn’t respond, as her brain told her he wouldn’t. He looked like someone had cast Jordan in wax, and laid him out here, a la Tussaud’s. But her brain knew it was deceiving itself. Even as she refused to accept, it was her own voice telling her the truth. He was gone.
Jillian felt the pressure at the edges of her vision. She saw the sparkles, right before the roaring worsened, and everything went black.
20
Jordan stood at the edge of the gurney, just on the other side of the baby rails. Jillian slept. Just caddy corner, David, too, slept the sleep of the dead. There was no eye movement, no motion whatsoever from either of them.
He had allowed himself five minutes every hour to come and check in on them. Her - if he was being honest. He had slept here in the chair last night, in case either of them came around. But he had barely roused himself each time the alarm on his watch had gone off. He had forced himself to set it for two hours, thinking that he might get into a much needed deep sleep cycle if he could stay asleep for long enough.
But from the way he had creaked this morning, and felt like he was moving through sludge all day, Jordan was sure he hadn’t had any REM.
He had talked to his Dad on the phone this morning for an hour.
Jackson Abellard had joined up with the work crew, hauling bodies, demolishing houses where people had been left to rot, and getting Lake James up and functioning again. He’d said it was sad what had happened. But that he felt truly alive for the first time since Jordan’s mother had died.
Jordan had told about his own woes: that there was no pattern to the deaths, that he was ready to give up, but Landerly felt there had to be something. So they’d been pushing, and analyzing, and finding jack.
Jackson had laughed. “It does seem random as hell. We lost the vast majority of our electricians. But for some reason we’ve got lawyers out the yin yang.”
Jordan had laughed, too. Wishing Landerly would stop beating the dead horse. Or the billions of dead horses. Wishing Becky Sorenson had lived, to go check out the frogs and report something of use to distract Landerly.
His watch beeped at him. Signaling that his brain had wandered and he’d lost track of his five minutes.
Not surprising.
He looked down at Jillian again, seeing her hand hanging loose within his own grasp. He told himself that fingers twitched first a lot of the time. That he touched her so he could feel what he might not see, not because he wanted to.
Turning to go, he reluctantly let her hand slip free of his, almost missing the finger jerking as it slid from his grasp.
Without covering the space between, he was over her bed, hovering, watching.
Waiting.
And seeing nothing.
It must have been nothing.
But still he picked up her lifeless hand, holding her fingers sandwiched between his own. Rubbing them. Hoping for a response.
And finally his breath hitched, when he felt it again.
Just a twitch.
His breath gushed out. “Jillian! Jillian!” He chided himself for calling out to her. She would come around as she chose. Not because he said something. Something she probably still couldn’t hear, or even process as her own name. Then he did it again. “Jillian, can you hear me?”
Another twitch. This time it was her whole hand, quickly grasping his, before slackening again.
He patted the side of her face. Tapped the back of her hand. Listened to her breathing. Counted eighteen breaths per minute.
She groaned.
“Have you been standing here looking at your girlfriend this whole time!?” Landerly yelled like a man half his age, even if he hobbled along with a cane at his side.
Jordan’s jaw clenched and he didn’t turn to address the man yelling at his back. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my partner.”
“Then why are you standing here making lovesick puppy eyes?”
Yup, the old man couldn’t be bothered to notice a person he was speaking direc
tly to, but he seemed to have pegged Jordan without a sideways glance. Son of a bitch. He ground his teeth and focused on the tiny quivers of Jillian’s lips. “She’s coming around.”
“Really?”
He heard the uneven footsteps. The grass was cold enough to crunch with the punctuation of his cane as Landerly made his way beside Jordan. With quick, agile fingers Landerly took her pulse, watched her eyelids as they began to show REM signs, and pulled out his stethoscope to hear her breath sounds.
Jordan spotted the cane hooked over the baby rail, looking for all the world completely unnecessary. Landerly’s feet planted apart, as though the earth might tremble beneath him and he’d need his balance. After a moment, he nodded.
Another few minutes later she began to mumble. And Jordan started speaking again. “Jillian. We’re here. Jordan and Dr. Landerly. Open your eyes. Come on-” Baby. He bit off the endearment before it slipped out.
In the space his slip provided she mumbled again.
Then again.
Jordan leaned over, smiling as her eyes slowly opened and closed. Opened and closed. They rolled, denying her the focus she was trying to achieve. And he remembered forcing back the darkness and crawling out only a few days ago himself.
Finally her eyes opened fully and stayed that way, they found him, latched on to his grin, and he watched, smiling, while recognition dawned.
Until her scream shattered his eardrums.
She looked at him like he was Satan incarnate.
And screamed again.
Then he watched in abject horror as her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out.
“What the hell?” Landerly shoved him out of the way, the strength in his arms surprising but unnecessary. Jordan was as stable as a wet noodle and shuffled easily to the side, sliding into the chair, barely looking up as Landerly’s voice cut through him again. “What did you do to her?”
Glad to know you’re so certain that I did it, old man. But he didn’t speak, only shrugged and wondered if Landerly was right.
This time it was Landerly tapping her hand and her face. None too gently from Jordan’s viewpoint, but maybe she wouldn’t scream and pass out when she saw him. He could see the twitches as she came around again. And he sent up a silent prayer of thanks, to a God he was no longer sure was there, that she hadn’t slipped right back under.
Resonance Page 35
