Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  Again she shook her head, and started to refuse again, but he headed her off.

  “What are you going to do? Go back and forth and maybe die? Wind up wherever you happen to be? Maybe in between, and who knows what the hell that is! I can release you over here, too . . . and stop this.”

  She heard the soft ripping of the Velcro on the tent flap behind her. A tech popped his head in, and she saw David’s gaze connect over her shoulder with whoever it was. “I guess you two are both still awake.”

  David simply nodded and started to look back at her, a certain dismissal of the young tech, but the voice came again, “Are you two okay?”

  Her nod and David’s curt ‘yes’ must have sufficed, because the tent flap softly closed behind her, and the heat from the small orange-glowing heater at her feet seeped around to envelop her again, shutting out the cold that had reached in and tickled her from the open gap.

  David’s stare returned to her face. “I don’t want to go back there. I live there on a gurney in a haze of pain and Percocet-”

  “You’ll get better!”

  “I am better. Here.” He was restraining himself from shaking her. But it wouldn’t have mattered. She could feel her heart thundering in the empty cavern of her chest. But she forced even breaths, afraid that if she passed out, she’d only shuttle herself back and forth again. Her eyes burned. Her mouth was swollen from where she’d been chewing at her lip, and her vision was glazed with tears.

  “It’s simple. And it’s what we both want.”

  She didn’t try to respond. She couldn’t have anyway, his mouth closed over hers, stopping all her protests.

  Jillian simply surrendered. She needed this. Needed to feel his hands slip from her biceps to the back of her shoulders and pull her closer. His sweater was softer than she could have believed when her fingers passed over it, feeling the hard muscle beneath. She didn’t even stop and make any quantifiable assessment of him. Just kissed him back.

  She didn’t protest as his fingers, tough and soft at the same time, pushed the tears away. “David . . .”

  He pulled away just long enough to get her to open her eyes. And when she did he shook his head. So she closed them again, and raised her mouth, never once wondering if his would meet hers.

  Jillian didn’t realize when he had backed them the two steps to the gurney, only that he had followed her shoulder blades down her back, arching her body into contact with his, and finally arriving behind her thighs, where he lifted her astride him into the heat of him, and the unmistakable arousal.

  He took one sharp look at her eyes. He knew what he was doing, and he wanted to know if she did. His hand snaked out to shut off the desk light that was now glaring in his face. With a blink they were bathed in the soft orange glow of the heater and the deep shadows that filled the spaces.

  Later she remained there, naked in his arms, untied from her existence, until the pieces started gathering and settling back into place. There were no sweet words. She wouldn’t have believed them anyway. Didn’t have any of her own to speak in return even if he lied and said it. There was just the sound of two bodies, breathing heavily out of rhythm in the blackness of the tent.

  He pulled the blankets over the both of them. Letting her drift with her own wayward thoughts while he settled in, his arms locked around her.

  They hadn’t used any sort of protection.

  But it seeped slowly through her, not causing any real alarm. She wouldn’t likely live long enough to be concerned about that. Her muscles were limp, and the darkness was saturating her thoughts. And she was grateful that she was finally going to get some sleep. Grateful that the pull of sleep was deeper than usual, not just because she was sated.

  Because she knew she’d wake up on the other side.

  His voice murmured to her while she sank away. But she made out the words. “I’m staying awake, Jillian. You go. And when you get there you can keep me here.”

  She couldn’t gather the thoughts to fight him, nor the muscle to protest. Couldn’t even really remember what her objections were. It was a simple solution to a simple problem, based on her own logical theories.

  “Do you want me to leave you there?” His breath was humid against her cheek, letting her know how close he was. But she was too far gone to gather an answer.

  She thought she said ‘yes’.

  Jordan felt Landerly’s shoulder beside him. He didn’t know if the older doctor was aware that they were touching or not. If maybe he was leaning for a little physical support, or if it was because they had been staring at Jillian’s stats for too long now. Listening only to the machinery and the sounds of crickets beyond the tent. Looking at the lines on the computers that tracked her progress, or lack thereof, while the artificial light held the dark and the night at bay. Unable to make a decision about the lifeless looking body that Landerly had started referring to as ‘Our girl’ when he wasn’t talking directly to her.

  Jillian’s hair was neat, untangled and lying behind her on the sheet. She was in blue scrubs. Jordan had talked a few of the techs out of changing her into a gown. The gowns were demeaning no matter who you were, but she was their superior, she was a doctor. She deserved the scrubs.

  She was pale, beyond pale. She didn’t look dead. Thank god. The oxygen that the machinery was forcing into her system kept her skin tone within the range of the living, if not exactly healthy-looking.

  For a moment Jordan allowed the morbid thought that the mortuary make-up person wouldn’t have to do a lot of work on her. But he squashed it as soon as it arose. They wouldn’t have to do any makeup on her. He couldn’t let it get that far.

  Landerly shifted, finally bearing all of his own weight, or supporting himself on the cane so that he didn’t lean on Jordan anymore. That probably signaled a decision.

  “Our girl hasn’t sparked a sign in hours. Her EEG looks almost brain dead. There’s no real activity.”

  It was just a statement of fact, not a manifesto to unplug her, but Jordan reacted as though it was. “So? She isn’t brain dead. Not quite. And we don’t know anything about this. We can’t make this decision. There’s no precedence . . .”

  “True.”

  Jordan felt the tension ease, seeping slowly from his system.

  “But that doesn’t mean we can justify the machinery, the cost, all of it. We may need to let her die.”

  The taught wire feeling returned, instantly solidifying in him. He had barely held back his protests about Landerly treating Jilly like a cost-benefit analysis. He shook now with the strain. “I know you care about her, so how can you think that? How can you say we should ‘let her die’?”

  “Because I do care about her. Because I see her as a person and not as . . . well, I don’t have the feelings for her that you have.”

  Jordan finally admitted it to himself. His father had seen it, had even asked him point blank. And if Landerly saw it too . . . well, the only person less observant to human feelings than Landerly was Jillian.

  And for a moment Jordan cursed her. If she could have looked at him and seen it, then she could have responded. Whatever her answer may have been. That she was crazy about him. That she lusted after him. Or maybe felt pity for him because he’d fallen in love with her and she didn’t feel anything in return. At least he would have known.

  Instead he had this - this unholy clinging to another person. She wasn’t responding to anything that went on around her, much less his feelings. And he had to admit, in light of what was happening to her, his emotions were small potatoes.

  “She’s too low. Are you going to take her off?” The voice came from behind him somewhere and he didn’t recognize it. And that was probably a good thing. He held himself back from smashing in the face of the tech who had walked in and made the remark about ending Jilly’s life as casually as if he’d been updating them on baseball scores.

  “No.” He pushed it out through clenched teeth, turning to face the tech for a brief moment, hoping his expre
ssion meant that he was not to be asked again.

  “Sorry,” The young man was tall and skinny, just gaining some peach fuzz, and he began backing away. “I didn’t realize . . .”

  Jordan managed a nod. This was probably a high school kid who was volunteering and getting training. Jordan remembered how green he’d been back then. It had been easy for him, and interesting. And he remembered the first time he’d been scolded for saying how neat something was when a patient was suffering. He’d paid attention. Maybe this kid would, too.

  “Well, are you?” Landerly’s voice broke the roar of thoughts running through his head.

  “No.” He didn’t look at the numbers. Didn’t read the printouts. Didn’t listen to the beeping of the heart monitor, as it slowly lost some of the steadiness that was the hallmark of a stable heart. And he didn’t look because he knew what it would say.

  If it had been anyone else, he would have turned it all off. He probably would have turned it off hours ago. It wasn’t that she’d been gone for so long, it was that she was entirely sustained by machines. And he knew she didn’t want that.

  24

  Jillian might not want to be sustained by machines, Jordan thought, but screw her.

  “There’s no sign of brain activity. People don’t come back from brain death.” Landerly’s voice was softer than usual. Jordan could hear where the sounds were tempered with his own sadness at the loss of Jillian. Or maybe at the loss of her brain.

  Knowing that he had to come from a place of logic, and nothing else, he fell back on the one solid argument he had. “There’s no precedence for this. So we can’t take her off. We don’t know what will happen.”

  “But-”

  There wasn’t a counterargument good enough as far as Jordan was concerned. And he had lost his fear of Landerly days ago. So he plowed right over the old man. “The only thing we know is that they took the man in Sri Lanka off his mechanics and he died nearly instantly. So we can predict that if we take her off, we’ll kill her. We need to leave her on for scientific purposes, if nothing else. So we can see what happens when one of these people gets the chance to come back through.”

  Landerly nodded, and Jordan saw his smile. “Good idea. But it would help if you could find some evidence here. Anything that justifies keeping them hooked up. I like the ‘it’s for science’ angle. I’ll have to see what the brass thinks. They get the final say.”

  Without anything further, Landerly turned and placed his weight against the cane that was constantly with him. Jordan felt the sweep of pride soak through him, it seemed the old man had been rooting for him, placing his faith in Jordan to find a good answer that would keep her alive.

  So, with renewed energy, and the constant tension of one whose fate is decided by others, he turned back to the charts and beeps, this time listening with a purpose. For a moment he just stood and counted, hearing the synthesized blips interspersed with the techs outside the tent and the bugs that lived here where it was city, but not all concrete. He didn’t have a musician’s sense of rhythm and timing, but he could count. And so he rattled off a silent ‘one-two-three-four-five-” before her heart triggered the machine to beep again. He counted to the next one and the next, getting four and six then six then five again. She was bradycardic - definitely too low, and not keeping good pacing.

  He turned to the papers, the tiny strip of green grid with the single black line that represented all the functions of her heart tracing across it. It told that she had been this way for a while. Yards of it unfolded, showing that the rhythm had declined steadily and not stepwise

  He next used the attached keypad to scroll back through the EEG stored on the computer screen. It didn’t print out unless it was commanded to. So he scrolled back to the beginning of the reading, and watched as her theta and delta waves lost their height and depth. Nothing. It slowly transformed from a linear representation of the basic workings of a human mind to flat lines. He thumbed through, his eyes occasionally skipping back to looking at Jillian herself, and not just the computerized readouts of her.

  But her chest rose and fell in an inhumanly steady beat. She didn’t twitch or move.

  And his eyes went back to where he was scrolling through the hours. The green lines passing in front of him as they had when they were recorded, only in super fast-forward.

  He almost missed it. It was beyond the middle of the night and his eyes were tired. But there it was - brain activity – a cluster of bumps and ridges. Not the kind of upper consciousness activity he would have liked to see, not like when a person worked a math problem, but something deeper. It registered mostly in her theta waves. Just a few simple bumps. But Jordan quickly highlighted the section, and typed in a few comments about the time and duration, before sending it to the printer.

  With a purpose, he got up and slapped at her hand. “Jillian, wake up, wake up.”

  But it was futile, as he had known it would be, even though he had hoped.

  He almost grabbed the printout and ran to Landerly when he decided to look one more place.

  With a few commands the computer shifted screens, to David’s readout. Jordan hadn’t been much concerned with David’s vitals or EEG. And why should he be? David was holding up much better. His vitals were low, but he didn’t yet need a respirator. They had only hooked him to an IV an hour ago.

  The lines in front of him were the same as they had looked when they hooked him up the first time, in an effort to see if he was dreaming. Before he had corroborated Jillian’s wild story.

  Jordan realized that he didn’t question her now. That she either made sense, or he was simply grateful that, while he might lose her, she wouldn’t actually be dead. It was possible he had wrapped his brain around that and latched on so tight because he wished to believe. He had noticed that neither he nor Landerly had been out spreading the theory around. There was no talk of papers or panels or meetings, just the ongoing discussion between the three of them.

  Holy shit.

  David had it, too.

  Jordan popped up and pulled the three pages from the printer, holding the first one next to the computer screen. The time was identical. And so were the bumps and ridges in the theta waves.

  They ended at the same time as well. What the hell was going on over there an hour ago?

  He highlighted and printed again, not bothering with typing this time. Jordan stood and waved at the printer. He told himself that three seconds wouldn’t make a difference in whether or not Jillian made it, but he still swore at the cheap printer. Jerking the page free even before the machine released it, he darted out to find Landerly. Seconds later he ripped through the opening of the records tent, already explaining before he had even made eye contact. Landerly’s head snapped up and Jordan knew he had read the hope there. But he also saw the cell phone pressed to the old man’s ear, and he stopped mid-word.

  He waited while Landerly waited, listening to what was being said on the other end of the line. Landerly nodded, though the listener wouldn’t see it, and did what Jordan guessed was as close as he would get to actually rolling his eyes. So Jordan held up the printouts, knowing that Landerly could look while he disagreed with whoever was talking. He pointed out the blips and bumps.

  But that only lasted a second before Landerly yanked the paper out of his hands and interrupted the person on the phone. “Listen, we have evidence of brain activity. We can’t take her off. I’m faxing it over, and you’re authorizing this.”

  Jordan smiled.

  “Goodbye.” It wasn’t friendly, more curt and resigned than anything. And Jordan was glad that he only had to deal with ‘the brass’ through Landerly. Dealing with Landerly was tough enough.

  Landerly held the pages back out. “Make copies and fax them back to Atlanta. Attention Brassard.” He nodded to Jordan. “Good work.”

  But he didn’t ask anything about what Jordan had found, didn’t examine the lines any more closely. He had turned back to his books and charts before Jordan re
alized that he had been dismissed.

  Feeling blank inside, he stepped away to photocopy his pages, walking softly, no longer at the breakneck speed he had used to get here. He was at the tent flap when Landerly’s voice caught up with him. It was almost softer than the air, and held the loss of all Landerly’s years. “Did you forge those?”

  Jordan was stunned speechless. His mouth hinged open, but no sound came out. Finally, he found his voice. “No!”

  But he was too late and Landerly spoke over him, drowning out his protest. “Never mind. Those pages are keeping her alive. I don’t want to know.”

  With utter disbelief he turned back to his boss. “They’re real. I didn’t forge them.”

  Landerly just smiled. “Don’t act so insulted. You do have a history of it, you know. I just hope that you did a good job, so they won’t discover it.”

  God, it was unpleasant to be a grown man and feel like a scolded kid. It was just the kind of kick in the pants he could do without these days. His voice was soft, not betraying his frustration. “They’re real. I swear it.”

  Landerly nodded his head. “Good. Good. Plausible deniability and all.”

  Jordan simply left. He had found a way to keep Jillian alive, and right now it didn’t matter if the doc believed him or not. Jillian had her funding.

  In a slow daze that told of the middle of nights spent sleepless and tense, he wandered over to the communications tent and looked up the numbers. He pushed buttons and sent the pages through, thinking that Jillian would have had the Atlanta fax number memorized. He promised himself she’d be glad to rattle it off when she came around.

  Without any of his previous impatience, he didn’t pay much attention to the pages chugging through the fax. He simply blinked one moment and realized the machine had gone silent, and the pages had fluttered around his feet.

  He made copies in the same daze, then shuffled back to the tent where Jillian and David slept. But as he pushed his way through the flaps he heard the moan.