Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  Her mouth hung open but she followed him out, through the rows of mostly stationary cars and trucks, until he seated himself in the driver’s seat of one and expected her to slide into the passenger spot.

  Fine. Two can play at that game.

  And she managed to stay silent for about half the trip. Then finally it just burbled out of her. “Why are you so upset about me coming?”

  His hands visibly clenched on the steering wheel, but he explained. “The last time you went under, your vital signs started dropping.”

  “That isn’t uncommon.”

  “Yes, but yours kept slipping. That isn’t uncommon either, in patients who die in their comas. So no, I’m not real comfortable having you in the car and driving you further away from medical care.”

  She kept her mouth shut and waited out the rest of the ride. They finally arrived at the old farmhouse, where the front door opened even before they put the car in park on the gravel driveway.

  A small redhead with her hair flowing down past her shoulders came out the front door. She was in typical kid clothes, but no pigtails. And she walked with an air of intelligence and introduced herself in perfect little belle form before handing over a pile of black and white, well-worn composition books. “These were Becky’s. She left them here, because she did a lot of the frog research here. Y’all should have them.”

  It was Jordan who thanked her by name, took the books and shook hands with the hunky blond older brother, took a few minutes to learn what they did.

  Aaron was a lawyer. And Jillian resisted the urge to point out that fit the profiles of those who had survived. The lawyers were over here. Of course, one lawyer didn’t prove anything.

  Melanie sniffed and ignored her. That made sense. Jillian didn’t think she’d ever had a way with kids. Even when she’d been one. But the little girl spoke a mile a minute to Jordan. Didn’t they all?

  “Becky told me to go to the magnet school in Knoxville. I didn’t want to, but-”

  “Why not?” He was down on one knee, just below Melanie’s eye level, and Jillian watched, fascinated. She just wanted to see how it happened, because a real conversation with a child was so far out of her own scope.

  “I didn’t want to ride the short bus. I didn’t want to be different.” She sniffled again. “But now I think maybe that’s okay.”

  “If you want.”

  Her little head nodded vigorously. “I can learn to be a biologist.”

  “From what I hear, you already are.” His hand settled on the small red head, and he managed to do it without coming across as condescending.

  They said a few good-byes and Jordan made it clear that he needed to get Jillian back right away, although that was a pile of crap as far as she was concerned. But on the way back she put her head on the windshield and curled into the car door.

  Jordan’s hand was rough on her shoulder. “Don’t you dare go to sleep. Don’t even think about it.” His eyes looked out over the road but his attention was on her, she knew. “You are not going under on my watch.”

  Becky sat virtually still in the heated tent as she shuffled through the composition books she had dragged from home. The house hadn’t felt quite so cold or lifeless when she had gone back this morning, and wound up having an hour and a half all to herself. Maybe it was because she and David had been through there. Maybe because she had accepted that the house no longer answered her back.

  The notebooks, too, felt useless.

  All the creatures in them had survived. The Warblers were thriving, and in the right place. The bees were still making the weird columns in Los Angeles. All her frogs were out and hopping: in her own backyard and in McCann. And she had to wonder what the hell it was all about. Why did they mutate? And would they ever know just what the effects were? And since the shifts only happened once every 60 million years or so, there was no real scientific need to find out.

  But they did have to find out what the hell was happening to Jillian and David. Maybe there was a connection between what was happening to them and the frogs and other amphibs. The shift had taken a different toll on some species. Maybe it was doing the same to Jillian and David. And in the meantime it was taking its toll on Becky, too.

  The mirror in tent 43 revealed the blue marks under her eyes. Initially only smudges, they had bloomed to full on bruise-like shades in the last twenty-four hours. Jillian passing out at the morgue had shocked a solid ten years onto Becky’s age. Just when she thought everything had stabilized - hell, the frogs had righted themselves even - Jillian managed to scream herself into a coma.

  Luckily David had caught her. Becky had her wonderings if it was because he felt something for the dark-haired doctor or if it was because he didn’t. She couldn’t read him. And wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  Then he had slipped away in the car on the ride home. That had put another ten years and two shades of pale on her face. If she added it all up she just might need to start smoking.

  Dr. Jordan Abellard had died early.

  David Carter was under, and so was Jillian Brookwood.

  And she sat here, staring into space, because she had gotten tired of watching the clock move, sleeping in the straight-backed chairs, and fearing the ever-present slowing of the heart monitors.

  The last two were slipping away, of the four who had initially discovered the reversal.

  So she was here. The only survivor.

  The day sent sun streaming in through the pores of the tent, making the desk lamp into a simple waste of electricity. The heater worked overtime, even though hot spots formed on her jeans clad legs where patches of sun filtered down to her. But she shivered.

  Maybe when her folks showed up.

  Maybe then she’d start to right herself.

  “Becky?”

  The voice was soft and familiar even if she didn’t place it, and Becky turned to see who had approached through the open tent flap behind her, and let out the same ghastly sound that had come from Jillian’s throat at the morgue.

  Jillian Brookwood stood upright in the doorway, the straightforward expression and blue scrubs not any sort of indicator of whether Becky was having a hallucination or seeing the real person.

  Jillian didn’t respond. She couldn’t. She was being jostled by the doctors and techs who came to check out the unearthly sounds emanating from tent 43. Becky closed her mouth, having developed a sudden fear that she, too, could scream herself into a coma.

  Jillian’s frown at being jostled around and shoved aside was all too appropriate, and Becky lost the fears. Shoving the techs out of the way, she engulfed Dr. Brookwood in a too-familiar hug. “When did you wake up? You seem fine! How are you feeling? Do you want to sit down?”

  Jillian just waved away all the concerns and looked Becky in the eyes and smiled. Her grin revealing even teeth and a dimple. Her eyes nearly glowed and Becky wondered what was up.

  She was baffled as Jillian shooed the others out of the tent, closing the flap behind them, before forcing Becky to sit.

  “You’re going to think I’m crazy-”

  Becky had to interrupt. “Trust me. At this point there is no crazy.”

  “While I was under I figured it out.” Jillian’s eyes flashed: she knew something, and Becky knew that she would, too, in just a minute.

  “You are the only person I know who could ‘figure something out’ while comatose. So what did you discover?”

  Settling her hip on the desk, Jillian spoke and Becky absorbed. “During the time when everyone was under the earth shifted. It split. Not in half . . .” She gestured like slicing an orange, then waved a hand while she searched for words, which was significant in and of itself. Jillian was never at a loss for the right word. “There are two places now. Identical. Maybe two whole earths.”

  This time Jillian’s hands found purpose. She wrapped them around an imaginary ball, fingers entwined, then pulled her hands apart, leaving her fingers in place. Her motions now showed her holding one of her imagina
ry earths in each hand. She shook her head at Becky, “I don’t know where the other earth is, but I’ve been there. I think they’re actually in the same place,” her hands gestured as though the two little earths melded, “But in different . . . I don’t know the word . . . ‘realms’?”

  Becky followed and Jillian must have gauged something from her face, for her eyes scanned once then she continued. “So the people who died here, woke up there.” She gestured as though she still held small planets in her hands. “And those who died there-”

  “Woke up here.”

  “I don’t have it all worked out, but I am certain people can’t exist in both places at the same time.”

  “So in order to wake up here, they had to die there, and vice versa.” That was the logical tail, Becky knew, and in confirmation, Jillian nodded. Her thoughts turned over, and for once Jillian waited for someone else to draw their own conclusions. Becky didn’t stop to wonder why she had been granted this rare privilege. “So, on the other side there are otters? But no frogs? No honeybees?”

  Jillian shrugged, her blue scrubs revealing the sharp curve of her shoulders, and Becky realized that the doctor had lost weight. But even as thin as she was, she had shucked her jacket first thing when she’d come into the tent. And only now did Becky reach out the short distance to turn down the heat. Only now did she feel a little less cold herself.

  But Becky saw right away that Jillian wouldn’t wait for her feelings to catch up, so she tuned into Jillian’s voice, already in progress. “-don’t know about the otters but we have all the animals that were having troubles before the reversal.”

  Becky felt one eyebrow rise, “And you know this how?”

  “Because when we went back under, David and I woke up there.”

  Becky wanted to release the sigh she was holding back, but years of southern manners forced her to retain it. “Of course you did, otherwise how would you have figured that out? I bet David fell down the steps there, too, but what about-”

  Becky gasped as the air was forced out of her by way of a merciless hug from Jillian. She had blinked and missed seeing it coming - only suffered the feeling of having the wind knocked out of her.

  But Jillian didn’t apologize; she shined. “You are so much smarter than the boys. Even after I explained the whole thing, they still didn’t believe me!”

  Becky shoved aside the sinking feeling that Jillian was serious, and ignored the dance of joy. “The boys?”

  “Jordan. Landerly. David’s there now.” Jillian had answered straight up, but her brain wasn’t engaged with Becky. It was on its own track and further into the conversation than Becky was. And for a brief moment she wondered how Jillian could do that.

  But because it was Jillian, who would take the conversation and run, Becky pushed through another round of thoughts and tried to give credence to the theories. “If all the animals that were abnormal before the reversal survived both here and there, then maybe they were reacting to it. Preparing in some way.” Jillian nodded, and Becky dove in with her objection. “But where did you get your list? I don’t know if anyone had as comprehensive a list as I do.”

  Jillian’s eyes twinkled again. “We have your list. . . . well, on the other side they do. We got it yesterday. Seems a kid talked her way through to getting Landerly’s cell number and called him up posing as a biologist-”

  “Melanie?!” Becky felt her whole body lean forward, and even as the name tumbled from her mouth, she knew she’d be devastated when Jillian said ‘no’.

  But Jillian was nodding before the word was through. “She said she was Doctor Melanie Sorenson. Said she had your notebooks and that you would want the CDC to have them. That she’d found them in the house.”

  “In the house?” Everything had made sense up until that.

  “They came back a day or two ago, and yesterday afternoon Jordan and I drove out to get them.”

  Becky’s belly clenched. “Dr. Abellard? You two drove to my house? But I was there this morning!” She paused as it washed over her. She wouldn’t see Melanie ever again. She wasn’t going to slip into a coma and find the missing pieces of her family. “But I was here.”

  Again Jillian nodded, her head looking like the little bobble dogs everyone had in the back windows of their cars, what with the incessant nodding and the grin. The funny image kept Becky’s tears at bay. It helped that Jillian didn’t see how she felt and just kept talking. “We met her and your hunky older brother Aaron. They came back and he decided they should stay.”

  “Aaron.” The name rolled off her tongue in some sort of homage, but she was too mentally busy to figure it out. “Of course he’s not here, he’s a lawyer.”

  Jillian almost cackled. “You know, it took me hours to convince Abellard and Landerly that people were sorted by their occupations. And they still didn’t begin to get any of it until David woke up pissed off about being casted from hip to toe.” With a sad smile she changed the topic with no segue, but Becky followed her. “Melanie said she was going to go to that magnet school you suggested, that it didn’t matter if she had to ride the short bus.”

  With that the constriction in her chest expanded saturating every part of her. Creating pressure inside until it forced its way out in tears and sobs. But she didn’t know what she cried for. Because she was happy they were alive. Or because, no matter where they were, they were still gone from her world.

  22

  David pushed through the blackness. Struggling to find light. And knowing even as he came around just what was happening. He was coming out again. And from the feel of his twitches and jerky, involuntary hand-squeezes and such, he wasn’t broken up.

  Hal-a-fuckin’-loo-yah..

  The other side wouldn’t be so bad if he wasn’t bashed all to hell.

  He laid there, eyes still closed and lacking the control necessary to open. He didn’t push much. It never seemed to help anyway. The darkness would recede on its own terms.

  So he waited it out, feeling the air pull into his lungs a little deeper each time. His breathing and heart rate sped up bit by bit, while his consciousness rolled around in his head, waiting to solidify.

  “David?”

  The tone came through sweet and clear.

  Jillian. “Are you coming around?”

  No, honey, I thought it’d be best to hang out in the netherworld for a stretch.

  He felt rather than commanded the exasperated sigh that fled his lungs.

  And, pure as bells, Jillian laughed from somewhere over him.

  “Well, we don’t have to worry about any impostors.”

  He would have smiled, but was caught off guard by a second female voice coming from behind her. Sorenson. “With all the other problems we have, I’m glad we don’t have that one.”

  But Becky’s sarcasm was brushed aside by the slightly southern lilt of Jillian, so close. “We’re glad you made it back to us, David.”

  Was there any question that he wouldn’t?

  He cringed at the raw scrape in his throat. He could live without this wrenching process of waking up. Sound forced its way out of his mouth, but he didn’t have much time to process it, because light shined in through the miniscule slits his eyelids had formed and it burned like a mother-fucker.

  Another sound emanated from him, and he turned slightly, wincing as he went. But in a moment of clarity his consciousness congealed. No pain. No breaks. Here he was as good as new.

  David let his breath out and blinked his eyes a few times even though they felt like they were filled with sand. Jillian’s gentle hands grasped his shoulders and applied soft pressure to wake him up. Hold off on the shaking, honey, I’m coming around.

  “He’s coming around.” Her voice was a little muffled, and within the light he could make out a long, dark chocolate streak - her ponytail. She was talking over her shoulder to Becky. But the streak swung out of the glare and her face moved in closer to fill his vision. Her eyes burning like aquamarines and becoming clearer with
each moment. “We weren’t sure when you’d come out.”

  He nodded slightly, and opened his mouth to speak, but Jillian beat him to the punch. “Your vitals were getting concerning until about an hour ago. You were dropping well into the low end of normal and we were debating a few measures. But you’re here now.”

  “You, too.” He wasn’t sure why those words were the ones that came out of his cotton-filled mouth. And from her frown neither was she. But he licked his lips and worked his tongue for a moment before he explained. “Abellard put you on an IV. . . . for low heart rate. Something about your volume.”

  She nodded, absorbing and understanding what he relayed, even though he didn’t. “My blood volume. Goes with low blood pressure. Over there?”

  He nodded. Then with a few deep breaths he gathered the energy to prop himself on his elbows. He ignored Becky and Jillian while he sat up, piece by piece. They didn’t seem to take much notice of him until he was fully upright and rotating his ankles and knees, the sensation of stretching muscles flowing through him in the sweetest of ways. This beat the hell out of living in casts and popping Percocet.

  He wanted to get out and walk around. Hell, he’d have turned cartwheels if he could have. Well, maybe if it wasn’t so gay.

  “Hey, cowboy,” Jillian’s grasp wrapped around his upper arms and held him on the gurney, “don’t go anywhere without a little help.”

  He thought about waking up with the searing pain in his shoulder and hip, and that, over there, he never got out of bed at all. “Well, I only have half the practice at it that you do.”

  “Touché.” She had the grace to wince.

  With a sigh of acceptance he let Becky and Jillian brace him on either side, and he actually enjoyed the sharp pains that shot up his legs when his feet hit the ground. He looked at the small women trying to hold him upright with Lilliputian efforts. Men might have done a better job, cushioned his landing a little more, but right now neither woman seemed to notice that she was plastered, full-length, down his side. David noticed. And smiled.