He should be celebrating, he thought to himself.
He had the thought to contact Darcy, but felt hesitant after the previous evening. After a moment of deliberation, he decided to contact her, if only to shake the odd feeling that was hounding him.
#
Although he had been afraid that she wouldn’t respond at all, she had, in fact, responded quickly. He arranged to meet her immediately after work, and took the bus straight to her apartment without stopping by his own.
He arrived at her apartment building as it was beginning to get dark. It was a tall old brick building near downtown. He was going to ring for her room, but another resident was on her way out, so he took the opportunity to go ahead into the building himself and go up to her apartment. It was appropriate, he thought, to surprise her. He was there to celebrate.
He climbed the two flights of stairs quickly and found her apartment, and knocked. She opened the door and smiled at him, looking surprised.
“You didn’t buzz in,” she said.
“Somebody else was leaving.”
“Well, come in, I’m almost ready,” she said.
He stepped in briskly, his hands shoved in his pockets. She turned and went around the corner toward the bedroom and the bathroom of the apartment.
“How was work?” she shouted to him from within.
“Fine,” he said, looking absently around her apartment.
She emerged and placed herself in front of him, her dark eyes shining at him. She wore a long dark jacket and around her neck she wore a lightweight ornamental scarf of a deep red color that brought out the subtle flush of her lips and the richness of her eyes. She wore a white knit hat, and her dark, shining hair fell comfortably about her shoulders.
“Where did you want to go?” she asked.
He put his hands on her hips, and in turn, she placed her hands lightly on his arms. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I had a good day at work. I wanted to celebrate.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s good news. And I know some places that are good for celebration.”
“I mean, I was thinking maybe we could hang out here for a while. You know, celebrate here for a little bit.”
“Well, I’m not sure what I have. I have a ton of old vodka, probably a tablespoon of Glenlivet 12… no mixers. So unless you’re down for vodka shots, we’ll probably have to go somewhere else.”
“No, I mean…” he said, pushing on her hips and making them sway.
She smiled up at him, and he suspected then that she had only been playing dumb.
“Let’s go somewhere,” she said. “I’ve been looking forward to going out.” Her hands rested firmly on his arms. They were not restraining him, but they were prepared to.
He brought her hips closer to him, and he leaned in. She pushed back on his arms respectfully but firmly.
“Look, I can’t—” she said, “I’m not going to—”
He stopped. She was looking off to the side and away, thinking about something. At last, she dropped her hands a little, down to his elbows, and held them gently.
“I was… I was really happy when you messaged me today.” She pushed him away a little so that they were looking at each other face-to-face from a comfortable distance. “I felt—I felt pretty bad after last night. I felt stupid.”
“Oh, don’t—you’re not stupid—”
“Well—I shouldn’t have said what I said. I don’t know… I have some baggage. I was raised in a religious family. We talked a lot about death.” She looked earnestly at him for a moment, and then added, with a laugh, “And Hell.”
“It’s okay.”
She grew serious again. “No, it’s not really okay. I had no right to pester you about your beliefs like that.”
“Well, okay.”
“And I was really happy when you messaged me. I wasn’t sure if you would want to talk to me again, you know? But even so, I didn’t expect to feel as happy as I did. I mean, it was weird.” She looked at him seriously, her dark eyes trying to express something to complement her words. “It was like this sense of relief, or something… it was more than just, ‘happy to hear from you.’”
Paul felt another sinking feeling, but this time one that he understood, and felt that he could manage.
“You know,” he said, “I don’t really want things to get that serious between us…”
“I know, I know, and that’s what’s so frustrating. I know how you feel, and I didn’t want things to get serious either. I’m not ready for it, and I don’t really know, you know, if you and I could make it work long-term. But it really… it kind of spooked me!”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, it’s like—you and I are in this, whatever-you-want-to-call-it, casual thing. You know it, and I know it. There’s nothing else that we want. But it was like there was something else in here”—she indicated her heart with her fingers—“that has always been in there, waiting, and today it got free. Like an animal got out of its cage on accident.”
“I really don’t understand.”
“I didn’t think you would, I guess,” she said, drawing away a little bit in resignation. “I was just really inexplicably happy, but then afterwards, I was terribly sad. It made me sad that I had felt so happy… Just—do you ever just feel sad? You know, so sad that you can’t even put it into words? And, like, when you feel it, it takes you over so much that you’re not even you anymore, you’re just this sadness?”
Paul scrunched up his lips. “Probably biological.”
“I know that it’s biological, but…” She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation, the attempt having utterly failed. She leaned back on the back end of the sofa. “I think back to when I was a little kid, and everything just sort of made sense. I think about how I used to not care who I was, I didn’t really care about being anybody, but I was most like myself then… It’s like I’ve lost something very important, something very special that I don’t even remember. And today, the happiness I felt touched on that a little bit. I knew it was wrong, I knew that it shouldn’t have touched on that, I shouldn’t have let it… but it did anyway.”
“All in your head.”
“Well, either way, even if it’s all in my head, I still have to live with it.”
Paul nodded, looking at the floor.
“I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t really make any sense. I have no excuse.”
Paul shrugged.
“Are you all right?”
Paul shrugged again.
Darcy looked at him for a long time, and he was still looking down. “Talk to me,” she said, at last.
Paul lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know what to say. I guess you have the right.”
She looked resigned—resigned to everything: her decision, his attitude, the unknown future, the mystery of experience.
At last, she threw her hands out to the side in surrender and something like humility. “Well, you can stay here as long as you want,” she said. “But I got all dressed up, so I’m going to go out.”
“You still want to go out?”
“Well—I mean, maybe it’s not a good idea to go out with each other… But yes, I’m going out.”
“All right,” he said, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
“Hey,” she said. “I like you a lot.” She reached out and gave his arm a squeeze. He hated the touch. “You know what they say. ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ It is me. It’s all about me. It has nothing to do with you. Okay? I want to know that you understand that.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding.
She smiled hopefully at him, a timid sunrise of a smile. “Okay,” she said. “I’m leaving now. Just make sure to lock the door behind you.”
And she left, just as she said she would.
Now, he was alone in the apartment. He looked around, the apartment empty except for him. He took a few aimless steps in, eventually making his way over to the gas fireplace insert. On the mantle over the fir
eplace were some decorations that he had noticed but never really examined closely. There was a matryoshka doll, separated and lined up. There was a small figurine of a porcelain cat, too small for any detailed features but only two dots of paint for eyes. There was a music box, which he picked up. He turned the crank, and as it played, he heard in his head the words of the familiar tune it played:
Somewhere over the rainbow,
Skies are blue…
He sneered in contempt and put it back on the mantle.
From outside, he heard a commotion of voices. They were in the heart of the city, and he thought nothing of it, but he went to the window, pulled back the curtain, and looked down to the street.
A car was stopped in the middle of the road, its headlights painting a beam of yellow light down the asphalt, casting a shadow from a form that lay huddled in its beam, lying still on the ground. It was a girl, and even from that distance and in the weak light of the headlights, he could make out Darcy’s deep brown hair, shining in the light like a halo around her head.
He bolted out of the apartment, throwing the door open and running down the hallway, then clambering down the stairs, swinging himself on the handle and railing. He ran out onto the street to where the body was.
Her arms were thrown out and her head tipped back, hair flaming out from it. Some of her hair was tangled about her face as though some wild animal had mauled her to death in ecstasy, the pose suggesting the motion with which she had been thrown back as though it had never ended—as though she were traveling upward, and had been frozen in time so that she would be traveling upward forever.
Paul fell to his knees next to her body, his mind racing. Examining her more closely, he saw that her hair was matted with blood and her open eyes were frozen and inert. She had the appearance of death or coma. He felt for her pulse; there was none. His throat constricted in something like revulsion.
A small crowd had gathered. The driver of the car stepped out and knelt over the body.
“Is she dead?” he asked, his voice quavering. He was an older man with light hair that was either blonde or gray—in the light, it was difficult to tell.
“No, she’s alive,” Paul said. Then he said, suddenly, “You need to help me take her where I can help her. I’m a doctor.” When he said the words, he had a peculiar disembodied sensation, as though he were watching himself, or someone else, say them.
“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance? The police?”
Paul turned on the man in electric anger, his face tight with rage. “Listen,” he said, almost growling, “I’m doing you a favor. You just hit a woman crossing the street. She’s going to die soon, I can tell you that. Now, if you want to wait for the cops, and face a manslaughter charge in court, you can do that—or you can help me help this woman and do us all some good!” He was tingling with adrenaline.
The man, his entire body quaking, said nothing more but held out his upturned hands in acquiescence, waiting for instructions from Paul.
“I’ll support her head. You help me lift her body. We’ll put her in the back. Then you take us where I tell you.”
They hoisted the body, Paul lifting carefully so as not to damage the head or spine any more than they already had been. They laid the body on the faux-leather backseat bench of the car, an older, smelly Cutlass. Then they hurriedly got into the car. Outside the windows, members of the crowd looked confused, but not concerned.
“Okay,” said Paul, putting on his seat belt, “just go straight. Take the right turn at 12th. Then I’ll tell you what to do after that.”
“Okay,” said the man, throwing the car into gear.
As the car lurched forward, Paul reached out his hand behind him to brace the body in the back seat. With his other hand, he took his cell phone out of his pocket, opened it, and made a call.
“Eric,” he said. “Are you in the lab? — Okay, good. I’m on my way. There’s something I need from you. — Well, more of a favor, I guess. I’ll be there in a few minutes; I’ll explain everything to you then. — Bye.”
#
The Cutlass pulled up in front of the institute and lurched to a stop. Paul got out of the car, went to the back, opened the door, and made to pull the body out.
“Do you need my help?” the man asked, looking back nervously.
“No, I can take it from here,” Paul said.
The man nodded in assent, and then looked out the window. “This ain’t no hospital, is it? What is this building?”
“I’m a doctor. I do research. This is a lab. Trust me.”
“Well, okay.”
Paul had managed to pull Darcy’s body out without too much trouble and now lay her head on his shoulder like a child’s. He kicked the door shut with his foot and walked toward the building. The Cutlass sat idling for a while to Paul’s great annoyance, but then it finally pulled out and gurgled away into the night.
The body grew heavy before long, and Paul barely managed to keep from dropping it as he brought it up in the elevator. As he ascended, his mind was a tangle of racing thoughts. To preserve her or to revive her was the main question. He had the technology to do both. He had been bewildered by their last conversation and was acting mostly out of a vague hope at some form of closure, or at least an understanding. He had meant exactly what he had said: that he hadn’t understood. He believed that she loved him, but he struggled to understand her reasons for leaving him. He wondered what her true feelings were, what depth of love had really been there. He wanted to know what she really thought of him altogether.
And he thought that, if he were able to revive her, that now she would have a different perspective. She said she had been plagued by sorrow—was it the consciousness of death or the fear of death that caused this? And would it be different now that she had actually experienced death?
In his case, when he had seen her body, he had ceased to believe in death altogether. The change that had overcome her was a change in the state of the matter that made up her body, the cessation of certain electrical and chemical processes called life, and the commencement or acceleration of certain kinds of decay called death, all of which were correctable and reversible. She was not dead, because he had freed himself to no longer identify her symptoms as such—she was only inert. He could teach her this if she wouldn’t already understand it. He could explain it to her in a way that might finally put her at rest.
He arrived in Eric’s lab holding the body, her head still on his shoulder, his arm hooked under her legs, drawing them up as in a fetal position.
“I need your help,” he said to Eric.
“Oh my God!” Eric exclaimed. “What the hell? Is that—is she—dead?”
“She was in an accident,” he said. “I’m going to bring her back. You need to help me.”
“What are you talking about? Is she dead?” Eric asked again.
“She was in an accident,” Paul repeated.
“She’s dead!” Eric said. “You can’t bring someone back from the dead…”
Paul laid her on a table and then turned on Eric. He loomed over him. “Her brain has stopped functioning; her heart has stopped beating; she’s lost some fluid—that’s all. If you call that death—I call it only a problem to be solved. I rejuvenate her brain matter, her loss of fluid—you reanimate what’s been repaired.”
“It’s never been done before. We’ve only successfully recovered the raw material, not reanimated—”
“Well, you’re going to do it tonight. Start getting prepped. I’ll give her the injections.”
“What about the others? This could take hours, days—”
“Obviously, we don’t have that long. She is deteriorating as we speak. I can only reverse the process and maintain her state for so long before she begins to decay again, and it wouldn’t do well for either of us to have the others walk in on this.”
“Jesus, man— take her to a hospital. I don’t want any part of this.”
“You want my help? My research? Or not?”
Eric drew back. “Are you threatening me?”
Paul knew that it was a pitiful threat, and he backed down.
“Look,” he said. “We’ve been partners for a long time. If we get in trouble for this, I’ll take the fall. But we won’t. We’ll be fine. You used to be a doctor. You know exactly what to do.”
Eric was trembling.
“Don’t take too long to decide,” Paul said. “The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be. And the greater risk we take of someone showing up.”
Eric thought deeply. “I don’t know,” he said. “I have a wife and kids…”
Paul scoffed. “Give me a break!” he said. “You’re at work all the time. Even if you went to jail… what would be the difference? Your wife and kids will be fine.”
At this, Eric looked hurt, and Paul realized that he had said more and hit harder than he had intended to. But it worked. Eric nodded, his face cast down in shame.
“Okay,” he said softly. “Let’s hurry up, then.”
The men went to work. Paul shaved her head, cleaned the wound, stitched it and bandaged it, and then prepared a series of injections. The first was actually a large amount of saline drip to replenish her fluids. The next were based on the research he had performed—designed to repair whatever systems had been damaged at her death. Since he did not have the time or the means available to diagnose the extent of her injuries and ascertain exactly what was necessary, he went with his gut. He knew that her brain had likely suffered a great deal of damage, and had also undergone some decay. The treatment he was to administer was new, and involved the direct application of certain amino acids to the brain by injection into the subarachnoid space. Using a drill, he penetrated into her skull, creating an opening just deep enough and wide enough for the application, but without any direct contact to the brain itself. Since he was working only with the rudimentary equipment available in the lab, he could not be as precise as he would have liked. He could not be positive that he had not scored her brain with the drill. But he was working quickly and efficiently, and was fairly certain that he had not inflicted any additional damage. His other treatments involved the repair of the cardiovascular system, which he also knew was damaged due to the amount of blood loss, and the likely force with which she had been struck. These were more straightforward and took less time.
The Imminent Scourge Page 3
