Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  He heard her voice as though it came from under glass, “Doctor Landerly?”

  “We’re here.” Landerly motioned behind him for Jordan to get up and join him at the bedside.

  Again the soft lilt of confusion, “But you’re dead.”

  Landerly thumped his chest, and Jordan would have laughed had he had it in him. “Nope, alive and hale.”

  “Jordan?”

  He stepped up. “I’m here.”

  Her breath whooshed out of her, “Oh thank God,” as she launched herself into his arms. Her face pressed into his neck, the scent of her permeating his senses, her soft breasts pressed to him as she wrapped herself around him.

  His hand stroked at her hair. Even as he realized he was giving himself away to Landerly there was nothing he could do to stop it. But he ruined it anyway. “Why did you scream?”

  She pulled back, untangling herself from him, taking the warmth with her. “You were dead.”

  “Hmm?” He heard Landerly’s voice on top of his own.

  “You were both on the ‘deceased’ list.” Her face looked so earnest. “From several days ago.”

  “You must have dreamed it. We both woke up several days ago.”

  Her head shook, in the stilted manner of someone denying, not to the world but to themselves. “I didn’t dream it.” Her eyes bored into him, and he felt as though they could see straight through to whatever was behind him. “Becky Sorenson took me to the mortuary.”

  He started to point out that Becky had died, that Jillian had been there, but she spoke again, cutting off his thoughts, again chilling him to the bone. “I saw your body.”

  “Pinch me!” Jillian held her arm out. She looked to Landerly, “that does work, right? If I feel the pain I’m not dreaming?”

  Landerly actually reached out and took what felt like a good bite out of her arm. “Ow!”

  Jordan looked at the two of them like they’d gone mad, and Jillian felt the chill wrap around her heart again. Her voice was barely a whisper as she pushed it out. “Don’t look at me like that. I can’t be crazy. You were dead.”

  “But I’m not.” He shrugged. “I woke up the day after you did. . . the first time.”

  Click. Another gear snapped into place.

  “Oh shit!”

  Landerly’s eyes snapped to her. He’d probably never heard her swear before, but she didn’t care. It was falling into place. “That’s it!”

  Both men raised their eyebrows, identical expressions on very different faces. Her tongue fluttered in her mouth, trying to form words for the abstracts in her brain. “That’s what Becky said. She said she woke up at the same time we saw her die.”

  “Okay. But she’s really dead.” Jordan squeezed her fingers.

  Only just then realizing that he had been holding her hand, Jillian yanked it away as though it burned. In essence it did. This man, who had become her best friend, maybe by default, clearly didn’t believe her.

  “None of them are dead!” She wanted to shake them, make them believe. But her brain rolled over and took charge. She had to tell them first.

  “Sit!”

  Both men scrambled to obey the authority in her voice. Jordan politely gave Landerly the chair, and hoisted himself onto the counter. When she looked to the gurney, expecting to find it empty, she started.

  David was laid out there, as still as the desert night, and trussed up like a turkey.

  But after a thought it made sense.

  David, comatose here, was still with Becky, wherever that was.

  She smiled, because when he came around, he’d corroborate her story. And she started by telling the two men that.

  “David will corroborate what?” It was Landerly, interrupting before she even started.

  She pinned him with a glare. “Everything. No more questions until I finish.”

  She explained that she had seen people who were deceased here. That those that were alive here, were dead there. “Gary Winchell. He’s a tech. He’s dead, right?”

  Jordan shrugged at her, still not putting together all the pieces she was feeding them.

  She pointed to the open flap of the tent, at the white coats scurrying by. “Well, send a tech to check the ‘deceased’ list. Because I x-rayed him head to toe this morning.”

  Jordan hopped to his feet and obediently sent for the lists.

  “I hadn’t met him until this morning. But ask around. He was a skateboarder. He’s broken every major bone in his body. Two tib-fibs on his right leg. Left collarbone, twice in the same spot. . .” Her voice failed her again. With her eyes she pleaded with Jordan. “How would I know that otherwise? You’ve been around me the whole time, how else did I learn that?”

  His gaze was steady. “To be perfectly scientific, Jillian, I haven’t been around you all the time. You were off with David a lot.”

  But just then, an out of breath tech arrived with the local binder. Jordan flipped through, stopping at Gary Winchell, and handing the book over to Landerly.

  His voice was uncertain as he probed. “So everyone who’s dead here, is alive . . . there?”

  Her shoulders sagged. “No.” The admission sounded small and hollow even to her own ears. She hated the holes in her story, wished that it all sewed up neatly and precisely. “They lost most of their elderly, too.” Her head snapped up. “And Leon Peppersmith. He’s dead there too.”

  Her jaw hurt, and she realized she was clenching it. “People are waking up there at precisely the times they die here, and dying there at precisely the times they wake up here.” She was repeating herself and getting nowhere. “David was out the whole time. He was awake here, breaking his leg, while he was comatose there. He only woke up there about nine last night.”

  The two men looked to each other with a sharp movement.

  “That’s when he went under again, isn’t it?” Her excitement sharpened in her bones.

  It was Jordan who spoke, and she could tell he tempered his response, not wanting to give in, to validate her too much. “I discovered he had slipped under shortly after nine.”

  Her voice softened. “He didn’t fall down the stairs there. Because he didn’t wake up until yesterday. So his leg isn’t broken, his shoulder never dislocated. I was trying- we were trying to figure out how he healed so quickly, but I realize now that he didn’t. He was just never injured.”

  Click.

  “Leon Peppersmith!”

  They looked at her, waiting.

  “He died in both places. But it’s because he didn’t die from the reversal. He hit his head. He lost blood, that’s what killed him.”

  Jordan again stepped into the ring. “But he did that here. So why would he have that head injury there?”

  “We were all here. But here isn’t here.”

  Oh, hell. She wasn’t making any sense now. But she plowed ahead and tried again to untangle what she was thinking and saying. “We were all here. We all went under, and things shifted. Making two parts. Some people woke up on one side and some on the other.”

  Jordan leaned toward her. “So there are two earths?”

  “Yes!”

  “Jillian, that all sounds very . . . Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

  She let out a frustrated breath.

  “Fine! Let me tell you who I met there. They’ll all be in your little ‘deceased’ list.” She jabbed her finger at it.

  “Lucy Whitman.” For a moment she pronounced the name, feeling triumphant, but then she shook her head. “That doesn’t count, I saw her name on the list before I went under. I could have conjured her.”

  She thought again. “The coroner is a Dr. Whitman. He’s Lucy’s Dad right?”

  Jordan nodded. Of course he would know that.

  But she kept talking. “He’s an older man with gray hair.”

  But who wasn’t? She saw the question mirrored in Jordan’s eyes, so she did a better job. “He had male pattern baldness, and piercing blue eyes. He has the same smile as Lucy’s. H
e’s about five feet six inches tall, short for a man. He’s medium build, mild clubbing of his fingers, and has a thick gold wedding band on his left hand, no other jewelry. . . Oh, and silver glasses.”

  She sat there on the edge of her gurney, feet dangling, feeling very self-satisfied.

  Jordan nodded. He looked to Landerly. “She did describe the man to a T.”

  Jillian looked over her shoulder. “And David is there . . . right now, he and Becky are probably wondering what happened to me, why I went back under.”

  Landerly steepled his fingers, not talking, not looking at her, letting his brain digest. It was Jordan who leaned forward and questioned her. “Do you really believe all this?”

  She nodded slowly, turning her lips inward, as though that might hold back the tears that threatened. “If I don’t believe it, then I have to accept that I’m crazy.”

  “You may have dreamed it all.” He shrugged.

  She nodded again, acceptance not coming easily. “Then I may very well be dreaming you now.”

  His smile was quick and steady, “I assure you I am quite alive.” He stood, stretching, his movement proclaiming him finished with his part of the conversation. “You aren’t dreaming this.”

  “That’s what they told me, too.” A small laugh burbled out of her, but she stopped it before it bloomed into hysteria. Tears pushed at the back of her eyes. “I don’t think I’m dreaming.”

  Jordan nodded. “It’s a shame we didn’t put an EEG on you.” His hands rested on his hips as he paced slowly.

  Her eyes opened, wide and clear, as she looked up. “But we can put one on David right now.”

  Landerly nodded. “If he is dreaming . . .”

  She shook her head vehemently, “It doesn’t prove anything one way or the other. I know. But if he isn’t . . .” She let out the sigh that had fought to escape. “When he wakes up he’ll tell you all the same things I did, then you’ll know he didn’t dream it. I’ll even leave the room so you can question him separately.”

  Landerly’s voice was smooth and modulated. “You seem very sure of yourself.”

  “I am.” Holding out her hands, palm up, she played her last card. “If he doesn’t corroborate everything, then you can lock me up.”

  In unspoken agreement, Jordan left to fetch an EEG, and Landerly stood, putting too much weight on the cane to get out of the chair. His fingers quickly probed along her jawline. She almost laughed, thinking that a massive infection would explain some serious hallucinating on her part. But she could tell he didn’t find any enlarged lymph nodes. He took her blood pressure, and listened to her heartbeat, and let out a tiny chuckle.

  “What?” As she asked it, she noticed his eyes had changed from calculating and scientific to human and warm.

  “Abellard was right. You are textbook.”

  She only nodded. Of course she was textbook. Humans varied, everyone deviated from the norm in some way or other. But not her, and this whole mess was just another convincing factor that she was less than human in some way.

  “You pass all the physical inspections, so I’m going back to the records tent. You and Abellard get something to eat and bring me some when you finish. Maybe you can help us find the sorting factor.”

  “Sorting factor?”

  He turned back. “Why those people died - or lived.”

  She couldn’t raise her voice, couldn’t find the energy to be loud and forceful to this man. But she just as much could not let him walk out uncorrected. “It’s not just dead and alive. There are three categories. Alive here. Alive there. And dead in both.”

  His back to her, he nodded, and left. As he hobbled off, looking older than he ever had before, she wondered if he really wanted to study or just didn’t want to trek the distance to the cafeteria.

  Alone in the tent with David laid out on the other bed, Jillian moved her sore muscles. Her jaw had already gotten its workout, but her legs and arms could use some good range-of-motion exercises.

  She stretched and twisted, feeling for the third time the strain of movement on long unused muscle. She began to wonder if she would feel this every time she awoke. If each time she fell asleep she would have to wonder where she would wake up.

  Before the thought could depress her, Jordan wheeled in the cart containing the EEG set up. Wires hung in wrapped loops off the side of the cart, the ends little silver snaps waiting for the corresponding pads. Jordan had two pages of the thick foam stickers with the snap backs and small sponges in the center holding conducting gel.

  When he turned his back to her she heaved herself off the bed, and grabbed the babyrail as her legs tried to buckle under her. Without seeing him move in behind her, Jillian only felt his arm slip around her waist and lift her fully upright, legs extended, and finally supporting herself. She batted his hands away and carefully walked the two feet to get to the head of David’s bed. Without a sound she began pushing away his blond hair, snapping the wires to the pads and sticking them across his head. For a moment she pushed away her own concerns, and admired the pattern that the probes made - simple, mathematical, containing no fear, concern, or disbelief.

  Within minutes the small screen was tracing a series of green lines across its face, showing the brainwave activity of a comatose David. The theta waves were low, indicating a non-dreaming state. But that didn’t mean anything. Not until he passed at least three hours – overnight would be better to prove that he hadn’t entered any REM sleep cycles, no dream phases.

  They watched silently until the lines completed their first trek across the screen, then they turned to get dinner.

  Jordan watched her while she ate. She consumed food like he had normally only seen her consume information. But he didn’t judge. He hadn’t been through what she had. Even in the simplest sense.

  He hadn’t walked the reversal long after it wasn’t safe for anyone else. He didn’t awaken before anyone else and toil to save lives. And he hadn’t slipped back under. Never mind what she claimed she had seen.

  She wasn’t speaking to him. Not in the flat-out-refusal way that a child would mete out punishment, but he could sense her withdrawal, her pain that he didn’t just blindly believe all that she said.

  The one thing she had done was convince him that she believed it. But it didn’t make sense, not the way she said. And she could have dreamed it. Hell, everyone had a dream or two that felt so real you bought into it, even after you woke up. His lips pressed together. The difference was that people who dreamed woke up. And, once confronted with some sort of evidence, they let go. He had once dreamed his puppy had died, but he woke up and was corrected by a single bark. A good lick on the face and the dream was banished.

  Here, two full hours later, Jillian still believed. And she was trying to spread the news, at least to him and Landerly.

  And she could have dreamed it. He had watched her thumb through the ‘deceased’ list when she’d been awake the first time. Jordan also knew that her brain was razor sharp. It could have memorized, somewhere in her vast subconscious, the entire list. Who knew what a brain like Jillian’s was able to catalogue? If she had once passed by that tech’s file, if it had been open, she could have absorbed every fracture, every nick on every bone.

  He watched as she carefully cut the turkey slices on her plate with the dull cafeteria knife, slicing neat squares from the ovals before her. She dunked them in gravy then chewed them, her motions as uniform as her cuts, and she never made eye contact. She was angry.

  Equivalently she’d had the answering bark. He’d talked to her, they’d touched. Landerly touched her. She had dreamed they were dead, but all the signs saying otherwise couldn’t convince her.

  And that theory. That was neat. She managed to sew it all together so it worked. One set here, one there. She could simply continue the dream when she went to sleep.

  With new eyes, he looked at her, knowing that she felt it, and that she wouldn’t return the gesture. Was she simply so smart that she could drive he
rself insane? His dream had dispersed, although the memory of the terror was still glass-clear in his adulthood. But he didn’t - couldn’t - make up ways for it to have truly happened. Jillian was smart enough that she could.

  He waited while she methodically finished the food on her plate. Wordlessly, she stood and went back into the line. If her back hadn’t been to him she would have seen his jaw unhinge.

  Maybe she’s pregnant.

  David.

  Like lightning, a bolt of deep jealousy traced a sharp path through him. He worked to push the thought back down inside, to shove it low and bury it deep. She was just eating a lot because of the stress on her system from being comatose for a good portion of the past week.

  He saw her exiting the line and coming toward him. The cafeteria plate no longer in her hands, but replaced by a paper napkin roll of plasticware, and a black plastic plate piled high with food he couldn’t identify through the steam inside the lid.

  His breath let out. Not pregnant.

  “Ready?” She looked at him, but only at the surface. And when he nodded she began walking away. Not waiting for him to get up. Not looking back to be sure he followed.

  He trailed behind, mesmerized by the soft sway of her hips, the light blue scrubs hugging the curves that were partially obscured by the jacket she had slung on. Her sneakers cut even steps in the shortest path to the records tent. In the dimming light, it was one of the few lit up like a bulb. A faint shadow marked the spot where Landerly sat just inside.

  Jillian lifted the flap and pushed her way in, the canvas falling back into place behind her so that Jordan had to open it for himself.

  Landerly was taking the plate from her, looking more like her grandfather than her boss. For the old man she had smiles and easy conversation. They were already discussing the fact that Landerly still couldn’t identify a sorting factor, other than the one that he and Jordan had already figured out. He lifted the lid from the plate and stabbed at the turkey with his fork, explaining while he cut the meat into neat, even squares. “The elderly and infirm died. The people who had any or all the markers you two found before the complete reversal hit. But a lot of young people died that I can’t account for. There’s no age or race bias . . .” His voice trailed off as he dunked the perfect cube of turkey into the little puddle of gravy Jillian had gotten him.