Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  He called the hospital, who said they couldn’t spare one. So he yelled until he was hoarse and a ventilator was on its way. Luckily the small local hospital was barely across the street. Within twenty minutes the techs were wheeling the thing his way, bumping it across the chewed up grass, while Jordan cringed, wondering if it would still function by the time it reached her.

  He pulled her gurney out so he could stand at the head, and lowered her a notch, then drew a deep breath before beginning the process of intubating her. He was far more stressed than usual. Jordan had done a hundred intubations, but this one counted. As he finished and let out a shaky breath, the techs hooked up the machine and her lungs started expanding with the forced air at her normal eighteen respirations per minute.

  The tent cleared out, leaving him alone with the two patients, and he wanted to feel relief. But he was closer to crying when Landerly showed up. “I figured you’d do it sooner or later.”

  Shock sent him staggering back a step. “You wouldn’t have done it?”

  A deep sigh, holding untold decisions, preceded the remark. “I don’t know. I only knew that I didn’t have to, that you would make that decision. I might still let her go.” He shrugged, old bony shoulders making points beneath his white jacket.

  “Why?!” Fury raged through him alongside the despair he had felt at his father’s bedside. But this was worse. This time he felt he should be in control. He just wasn’t.

  “I-”

  But he cut Landerly off. “Why did you hire me anyway? I thought I was this brilliant scientist and she would do all the nitpicky stuff. Then I realized she’s the brilliant scientist and the perfectionist. So why the hell am I even here!?” God, he should have been in a pediatric office. He could have made a difference there.

  Here, what had he done? Tagged along behind Jillian. Nodded acquiescence to her ideas. Charted her theories.

  His breath rushed out, his volume shrinking.

  But Landerly’s voice caught him. There was a smile in it. “I thought you would have figured that out by now.”

  But Jordan only shook his head, pacing a small section of the grass while his eyes darted everywhere revealing the scattering of his thoughts.

  This time it was Landerly who filled the space, compelled to talk to cover the harsh mechanical rhythm of the ventilator. “There were other doctors who were individually more qualified than either of you. More experience, et cetera.”

  Not helpful, old man.

  “But I put you two together thinking you would be the best team.”

  “But Jillian is just like you. Why would you need me?”

  Jordan’s gaze went to the upper corners of the tent, the glazed focus an attempt to fight off the waves of emptiness. His fists perched on his hips, as though he might physically fend something off. So he was surprised when he felt the weight of Landerly’s arm across his shoulder, the paternal gesture so out of character. “Jordan, Jillian is not just like me. She’s smarter than I ever was or ever will be. I think she thinks in the same kinds of patterns, but she’s faster and better at it than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  Jordan nodded agreement, thinking that the one thing he wanted to know still wasn’t answered.

  “And you, son, are a fool if you don’t see it.”

  Well, then, I guess I’m the fool. But he didn’t say it out loud. Just waited while the ventilator clicked and grated its way through another two mechanical breaths.

  “You’re the heart. Jillian couldn’t be what she is without you. I know you got those people in Florida talking. I’ll bet you’re the only reason that we have any data from Nevada that isn’t just a jumble of numbers. I’ll bet you’ve even listened to her think, then turned around and managed to interview everyone to find out if she was right or not. Jesus, five minutes into your interview you had me telling you things about my family and lifestyle that people who worked with me for years don’t know.”

  Defeat. That’s what was sagging in him. But he answered the absurd ideas Landerly laid out. “Sure, but anybody could do that. There’s no effort or special skill, I just-“

  “No, anybody can’t. I can’t. Jillian can’t. Most good physicians can’t. There must be special talent or someone as smart as Jillian would have figured out how to do it. Or at least fake it. And I’ll tell you something else, if you asked Jillian how she does what she does, she’d tell you the same thing: she just does it. It’s just the way her brain works.”

  That much was true. Jillian brushed off her gift as though it wasn’t exceptional or unique.

  Jordan pulled in a few sighs, finding it difficult to let his body just breathe when he was faced with the fact that Jillian just wasn’t.

  So he changed the topic, found a way to get out of the tent, if only for a few minutes. He probably would be compelled to come back after that long anyway. “Speaking of Jillian’s brain, I want to hook her up to that EEG.”

  Landerly nodded, before slowly and painfully making his way out of the tent. Jordan followed, his gait a shuffling mimic of the old man in front of him. In a moment he returned with the EEG set-up, thinking he should have brought two back and hooked David up as well. But it wasn’t like he was busy for the next ten hours or anything.

  The gurney was still pulled out, so he stood at the head of the bed, where he didn’t have to look at her motionless face. With gentle hands, he brushed her hair aside and placed the probes one after another in the appropriate spots. But as much as he wished it, there was no response from her.

  So he stepped back and flipped the switch, watching as the green lines crawled across the screen. To anyone else, they could have been anything. Lie detectors, seismographs, heart beats. But he knew what he was seeing, and he stared. For how long, he didn’t know.

  The rustle of a person coming through the tent flap finally roused him back to himself. And while he hadn’t been really ‘in there’, his brain had catalogued every passing line. He knew them all and he knew what they meant.

  Landerly’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Well?”

  “She’s almost brain dead.”

  23

  Jillian had been shivering beneath the covers of the gurney in tent 43, and finally it was getting warm. Becky, of course, had simply crawled under the blanket on the bed next to her and sunk into sleeping oblivion without a second thought.

  For Jillian it wasn’t so easy. Alone now with her thoughts, she was unable to find rest. The shifting plagued her. She had looked for answers for most of the day. Checking out that UV-vis problem that Jordan had brushed aside. And sure enough the scale was way low here. And getting lower.

  That was concerning. She had checked out the machine earlier in the day and then come back later with another sample. The machine had been just a little off, and she’d had to recalibrate.

  But if that was due to anything other than her own error, that could mean the vibrations were moving further apart. The earth wasn’t finished separating, it still had further to go. And where would she get stuck?

  When she admitted it to herself, the insomnia was a physical manifestation of her fear - of not knowing where she would wake up, or with whom.

  She was the reason Becky had insisted they stay together. Even going so far as to sleep alongside each other on the plastic coated and damned uncomfortable gurneys. So Becky would know on waking if Jillian had gone under again during the night.

  Not at this rate she wouldn’t.

  Becky had also insisted that David sleep in the tent next door and had drawn up a schedule for the techs on the night shift to check in every hour. It seemed like they were gremlins, breaking the seal that the tent flap had made against the light. Just as she would feel she was finally drifting off, resting, the light would shine right into her eyes.

  She had asked – begged - them to stop checking. Even if she went under what could they do except say ‘look, there she went’? But none of them would agree to leave her be. The second check had come just minutes ago, kicksta
rting her brain when it had finally begun to fall silent again.

  She knew they were checking on David as well, although there was every possibility that he had managed to sleep like a baby. He seemed to be able to just turn himself off and on. But then again, maybe he wasn’t doing so well tonight. He was facing bruised and broken ribs, fractures and learning to walk again on the other side. He’d rather wake up here.

  And he’d been agitated all evening. While she could quantify it, Jillian was hard pressed to name the source. Even though the steak dinner had been great and his father had been nothing but proud. Once she added that thought in, she would bet her life savings that he wasn’t sleeping either.

  Jillian tucked that thought back under her bonnet as well. At dinner she’d said something about hating that Landerly didn’t believe her, and the server had leaned over and quoted the Bible to her - warning her that her hateful thoughts went against the teachings of Jesus.

  Becky hadn’t said anything, she’d been familiar with the parable the woman had named, but David had commented on the high quantity of Jesus and God he’d seen around. More than one group thought they’d ascended. Jillian was just waiting for them to don their identical Nikes and drink the Kool-aid that would get them to the mothership. The way she figured it, Darwinian selection wasn’t just about predators selecting you out of the herd. Self-selection was as good as any, and darn cheap in light of societal costs.

  “Pssst.”

  Had someone just said ‘pssst’? No way, no one said that! She ignored the sound.

  But it came again. This time accompanied by a crack of light at the tent flap and a “Jillian, you awake?”

  Even whispered, she recognized the voice. “Coming, David.”

  Part of her didn’t want to wake Becky, the other part of her wanted to do it just to disturb the peaceful sleep she was so jealous of. But she slipped softly into her sneakers, and pulled on her jacket, before passing quietly through the tent flap to where David waited, rubbing his hands together for warmth.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” They both said it at the same time, then laughed, until they remembered to curb it. Aside from a few night shift techs, everyone else was asleep.

  David grabbed her hand, and she was grateful that he’d kept his warm. “I was thinking we might take a walk to wear ourselves out, but it’s really too cold.” She nodded agreement, and didn’t protest as he pulled her along to his tent, where he popped on the interior light at the end of the table.

  She blinked a few times, then adjusted. Finally upright, and admitting she was awake, she could feel the exhaustion in her muscles. “So, we’ll just sit up and keep each other company until we finally pass out?”

  “That’s my guess.” He shrugged, “I don’t want to go back. I’m bashed to hell over there.”

  She climbed up on the gurney, getting her feet out of the cold that pooled on the floors of the small tents, “But with physical therapy-”

  He cut her off. “I’ve had three doctors over there tell me that I’m facing at least a year of rehab. And another surgery to re-break both my hip and leg so they can be re-set.”

  Jillian cringed, but he waved her discomfort and guilt away.

  “You did an amazing job. All by yourself. But I may never walk without a limp. And that’s after all that therapy. Why do it?”

  She nodded, understanding straightforward reasoning for a problem that was anything but. “And your Dad’s here.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what to make of that.”

  She felt her head tilt, the outward manifestation of her natural curiosity.

  “We’ve never gotten along. He never accepted me; I was always inferior . . .”

  “But he was nothing but complimentary tonight. You’re the best son in the whole world.” She didn’t mean for it to come out as sarcastic as it did, but David understood. He laughed.

  “Yeah, that worries me.” She could hear the resignation in his sigh, “We’ve been so far apart for so long that . . . I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to patch things up with your Dad?”

  His shoulders shrugged. His head shook ‘no’. His mouth said “I guess.” And his hands came out, palm up, to question all of it.

  It was all she could do to stifle the laugh that bubbled low in her. And she was grateful for the lightness of it. It beat the hell out of the fear she’d been trying to sleep with. She was only sorry that her improvement had come at David’s expense. “Oh well. True, your Dad is here, but so are the Jesus freaks. And it’s not like there’s much you can do about it anyway.”

  His head turned square on to hers, and their gazes locked. “So doctor, tell me what you think is going to happen to us.”

  Just like that, it was her turn to shrug, to shake her head. “Our vital signs keep dropping lower and lower every time we go under.”

  “Abellard said something to that effect when he looked in on you right before I popped over here.”

  Good. She knew where she’d wake up if she came to over there. “I figure we keep passing back and forth until we die on one side, then we’ll be stuck on the other.”

  David didn’t respond. How could he when she had just placed their mortality squarely in front of them? Her voice was low, in response to the difficulty she was having pushing it out. “With the way our stats have been dropping recently, I don’t figure we’ll go back and forth too much more. Maybe two times. Three or four at the most.”

  He nodded. “Do you think we’ll feel it? Or we’ll never know, just realize that we keep waking up in the same place over and over?”

  Again her head shook. It was the only thing she could think of. She couldn’t just shrug a response to every question. But the same ones had been tumbling through her own head all evening. “There’s another possibility.”

  “Name it.”

  “It’s worse.” She couldn’t look at him. Instead she studied the neat, even stitching on her once white sneakers, noting how the dirt had clung, clearly outlining the threads as they marched in efficient lines across her toes. “We could get caught between. Die both places.” Again her shoulders went up, and she suppressed the thought that she would get some really buff deltoids from all this shrugging. “We have to acknowledge that we might not survive this at all.”

  Still she didn’t look at him, just waited through a few well-placed breaths until he spoke. “Any ideas why we got caught between?”

  She laughed, a short bark of disbelief. “I still can’t figure out why people ended up on one side and not the other. There are a lot of Bible thumpers over here . . . but . . .”

  “I think Becky had a good point that there was a lot of right and wrong over here. The Bible thumpers just seem to fall into that category.”

  Her brain wrapped around that for a moment, wondering whether there were a lot of shades of gray on Jordan’s side.

  In that moment, as she drew that breath in, she knew that this wasn’t the place for her. That if she could choose, she’d be there. With her job. With Jordan and Landerly. The way David would chose to be with his family here. But she couldn’t choose, so she ignored the thought, and started herself in another direction in hopes of shaking it. “I figure we got caught in between because of some weird pattern of early exposure. But I can’t figure out why Becky or Jordan or anyone from McCann doesn’t have it, too. Jordan says there are reports from about three other places in the world. Each with one person who keeps going back under.”

  “Have any of them actually died yet?”

  She knew he was looking at her, but she wasn’t ready for eye contact. “Not that I know of. But I haven’t seen Jordan in a full day now.” Maybe it would have been easier to stay in her own bed and toss and turn with her own thoughts rather than dealing with David’s.

  “What if there were another option? What if you could choose?”

  Her head snapped up, to find his blue gaze boring into hers. For some reason she felt he saw deeper than the surface of her for the first time
.

  He broke the spell by speaking. “It works because we want to stay on opposite sides.”

  That was all he said, but she could see where he was going with it. “No.” It was just a whisper. She couldn’t do it. “We don’t even know that it will work.” Fear ran through her, icing her limbs, holding her still when what she wanted was to leap from the bed and flee back to the cold gurney waiting in tent 43.

  “We may die if we do nothing.”

  “I can’t!” She started to actually move away from him, but his hand shot out, grabbed her arm, jerked at her as her feet hit the ground, preventing her flight from progressing past that first leap.

  “Then you go back and forth. But do it for me when you wake up over there.”

  “I can’t.” The anguish in her system burst forth in tears, “I can’t.”

  He wanted her to . . . what? . . . hold a pillow over his face? Squeeze his throat? Medicate him? Any way to end his life. Over there.

  “Then hire someone.” He hadn’t let go of her arm, and while he wasn’t bruising her, neither was she going to wrench free. “I’ll give you all my banking codes. You can draft yourself a check from my account and pay them.”

  “David . . .” She searched for any logical ‘no’. “I’d go to jail.”

  His gaze was steady, and should have been ice cold for what he was suggesting, but it was warm as the blue center of a hot flame. “I can get the names of some people from my Dad, it won’t be traced. You can just give them the banking codes. Let them get their own money. I’ll be very rich over there because my father has died and I’ll have more than I can spend.”

  She couldn’t fault his logic. But neither could she agree.

  Her head still shook back and forth. He slid off the bed, and stood looming over her, holding her upper arms firmly in both hands. Only then did she realize that streams of tears were pouring down her face. She couldn’t do any of it. Not go back and forth anymore, nor could she end it. He looked her square in the eyes and asked again, “Please.”