Triggers

by Robert J. Sawyer

  A pristine, bright, soothing, inviting light…

  And then, just as those who’d come back from the brink said it sometimes does, his life began to flash in front of his eyes.

  A kindly female face.

  A playground.

  Childhood friends.

  A public school.

  But he didn’t remember all the graffiti, all the litter, the broken stonework, and—

  No, no, that was ridiculous. Of course he remembered it—or he wouldn’t be seeing it now.

  But…

  A knife. Blood.

  Tattered clothes.

  The air shimmering. Unbearable heat. Screams. The stench of…yes, of burning flesh.

  No, no, he’d been a good person! He had. He’d done his best always. And even with him agreeing to Counterpunch, he couldn’t be going to hell!

  A metaphoric deep breath; he had no control over his body, but it felt like he was inhaling.

  There is no hell. No heaven, either.

  But the heat. The flames. The screams.

  There is no hell!

  All of it was explicable, a natural phenomenon: just the way the brain responded to oxygen starvation.

  The images changed, the smells changed, the sounds changed. The hellish vista was replaced by a city street at night.

  Another woman’s face.

  And much more, in rapid succession: people, incidents, events.

  It was a life review flashing before him.

  But it wasn’t his life that he saw.

  CHAPTER 6

  “EEG is erratic!”

  “BP continues to fall!”

  “We’re losing him!”

  Eric Redekop lifted his head to look at his team as he continued the manual heart massage. A nurse named Ann January daubed his forehead with a cloth, picking up the sweat. “No,” he said simply. “We are not. I’m not going down in history as the surgeon who couldn’t save the president.”

  NIKKI Van Hausen looked at her hands—and an image of them covered with blood filled her mind. She shook her head, trying to dispel the grisly sight—but it came back to her even more forcefully: her hands red and dripping, and—

  My God!

  And she was holding a knife, and its blade was slick and crimson.

  More images: cutting into skin, blood welling up from the wound.

  Again: another cut, more blood. And again: another thrust, this time blood spurting.

  She sat down and looked—really looked—at her hands: the smooth pale skin, the tiny scar along the side of her right index finger from a wineglass that had broken while she was washing it, the silver ring she wore with a turquoise cabochon, the painted nails—red, yes, but not blood-red.

  But again images of her hands covered in blood came to her. And beneath the blood, peeking out here and there: gloves. Like a murderer who knew that fingerprints would otherwise be left behind.

  Her heart was pounding. “What’s happening?” she said softly, although no one was paying any attention to her. She raised her voice. “What’s happening to me?”

  That caught the interest of a doctor who was walking past her here on the fourth floor of Luther Terry Memorial Hospital. “Miss?” he said.

  “What’s happening to me?” she asked again, holding her hands in front of her face, as if he, too, could see the blood on them. But, of course, they were dry—she knew that; she could see that. And yet visions of them glistening and red kept coming to her, but—

  But her real hands were shaking, and the bloodied hands never shook; she somehow knew that.

  The doctor looked at her. “Miss, are you a patient here?”

  “No, no. Just visiting my brother, but—but something’s wrong.”

  “What’s your name?” the doctor asked.

  And she went to answer, but—

  But that wasn’t her name! And that wasn’t where she lived! And that wasn’t her hometown! Nikki felt herself teetering. She was still holding her hands up in front of her, and she fell against the doctor, her palms pressing into his chest.

  More strange thoughts poured into her head. A knife slicing through fat and muscle. Being tackled in a football game—something that had never happened to her. A funeral—oh God, a funeral for her mother, who was still alive and well.

  Her eyes had closed when she’d fallen forward, but she opened them now, looked down, and saw the doctor’s little engraved plastic name badge, “J. Sturgess, M.D.,” and she knew, even though she’d never seen him before, that the J was for Jurgen, and she suddenly also knew that M.D. didn’t stand for “Medical Doctor,” as she’d always thought, but rather for the Latin equivalent, Medicinae Doctor.

  Just then, two nurses walked by, and she heard one of them spouting medical gobbledygook. Or it should have been gobbledygook; she shouldn’t even have been able to say, a moment later, what words the nurse had used but…

  But she’d heard it clearly: “Amitriptyline.” And she knew how to spell it, and that it was a tricyclic antidepressant, and…My God!…she knew that “tricyclic” referred to the three rings of atoms in its chemical structure, and—

  Her flattened hands balled into fists and pounded into the doctor’s chest. “Make it stop!” she said. “Make it stop!”

  The doctor—Jurgen, he played golf badly, had two daughters, was divorced, loved sushi—called out to the passing nurses. “Heather, Tamara—help, please.”

  One of the nurses—it was Tamara, she knew it was Tamara—turned and took hold of Nikki’s shoulders, and the other one, Heather, picked up a wall-mounted phone and dialed four digits; if she was calling security…

  How the hell did she know all this?

  If she was calling security, she’d just tapped out 4-3-2-1.

  Nikki half turned and pushed Tamara away, not because she didn’t want help but because it welled up in her that it was wrong, wrong, wrong to touch a nurse during duty hours.

  She felt dizzy again, though, and reached out for support, finding herself grabbing Dr. Sturgess’s stethoscope, which was hanging loosely around his neck; it came free and she was suddenly falling backward. Heather surged in to catch her. “Is she stoned?” the nurse asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Sturgess, but Nikki was incensed by the suggestion.

  “I’m not stoned, damn it! What’s happening? What’s going on here? What did you do?”

  Tamara moved closer. “Security is on its way, Dr. Sturgess. They’re sending someone down from five; everyone normally on this floor is downstairs, helping guard the president.”

  The president.

  And suddenly she saw him, Jerrison, his chest split wide, and her hands plunging into his torso, seizing his heart, squeezing it…

  And that name again: Eric Redekop.

  “Make it stop!” Nikki said. She moved her hands to the top of her head and pushed down, as if she could somehow squeeze the alien thoughts out. “Make it stop!”

  “Tamara,” said Sturgess, “get some secobarbital.”

  And that, Nikki found she knew, was a sedative.

  “It’ll be okay,” Sturgess said to Nikki, his tone soothing. “It’ll be fine.”

  She looked up and saw a middle-aged white man: lean, bald, bearded, wearing green surgical garb, and—

  “Eric!” she called. “Eric!”

  He continued to close the distance but had a puzzled expression on his face.

  Sturgess turned and looked at Eric, too. “Eric! My God, how’s—” He glanced at Nikki. “How’s your, um, your special patient?”

  Eric sounded weary. “We almost lost him, but he’s stable now. Jono is closing.”

  “And you?” asked Sturgess, touching Eric’s arm briefly. “How are you?”

  “Dead,” said Eric. “Exhausted.” He shook his head. “What’s the world coming to?”

  Nikki was reeling. She’d never seen Eric before, but she knew exactly what he looked like, and—God!—even what he looked like naked. She knew him, this Eric, this man who—<
br />
  —who was born fifty years ago, on April 11, in Fort Wayne, Indiana; who has an older brother named Carl; who plays a killer game of chess; who is allergic to penicillin; and who—yes!—had just performed surgery, saving the president’s life.

  “Eric,” she said, “what’s happening to me?”

  “Miss,” he replied, “do I know you?”

  The words struck Nikki like a knife—like a scalpel. Surely he must know her, if she knew him. But he didn’t. There was no hint of recognition on his face.

  “I’m Nikki,” she said, as if that should mean something to him.

  “Hello,” Eric said, sounding bewildered.

  “I know you,” Nikki said, imploringly. “I know you, Eric.”

  “I’m sorry, um, Nikki. I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

  “Damn it,” said Nikki. “This is crazy!”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Eric asked Sturgess.

  Tamara was gesturing to someone; Nikki turned to see who. It was a uniformed security guard.

  “No,” she said. “No, I’m sorry I hit you, Jurgen.”

  Sturgess’s eyebrows went up. “How did you know my name?”

  How the hell did she know his name—or Eric’s?

  And then it came to her: she knew Jurgen’s name because Eric knew it. They were old friends, although Eric found Jurgen a tad brusque and a bit too humorless for his taste. She knew…well, everything Eric knew.

  “It’s all right,” Eric said, motioning for the guards to halt their approach. “Nurse Enright here will look after you. We’ll get you help.”

  But that was even worse: suddenly a flood of memories came to Nikki: recalcitrant patients, patients screaming obscenities, a heavyset man throwing a punch, another man breaking down and crying—a cascade of disturbed patients Eric had dealt with over the years.

  “I—I’m not like that,” Nikki stammered out.

  Eric narrowed his eyes. “Like what?”

  Christ, she was a real-estate agent, not some fucking psychic. Her sister believed in that shit, but she didn’t. This was impossible—she must be having a stroke, or hallucinations, or something.

  “Come with me,” said Heather Enright. “We’ll get you taken care of.”

  “Eric, please!” implored Nikki.

  But Eric yawned and stretched, and he and Jurgen started walking away, talking intently about the surgery Eric had just performed. She resisted Heather’s attempts to propel her in the opposite direction until Eric had turned the corner and was out of sight.

  But not out of mind.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE secretary of defense continued to study the wall-mounted deployment map; it had flickered off for a few seconds but now was back on. The aircraft carriers were mostly on station, and, as he watched, the Reagan moved a little closer to its goal.

  “Mr. Secretary,” said an analyst seated near him, looking up from her workstation, “we’ve lost the White House.”

  Peter Muilenburg frowned. “If primary comm is down, switch to aux four.”

  The analyst’s voice was anguished. “No, sir, you don’t understand. We’ve lost the White House. It’s—it’s gone. The bomb they found there just went off.”

  Muilenburg staggered backward, stumbling into a table. As he flailed to steady himself, he knocked a large binder onto the floor. His eyes stung, and he tasted vomit.

  An aide burst into the room. “Mr. Secretary, they’re asking if we should evacuate the Pentagon as a precaution.”

  Muilenburg attempted to speak but found he couldn’t. He gripped the edge of the table, trying to keep on his feet. The Oval Office, the Roosevelt Room, the Press Room, the Cabinet Room, the State Dining Room, the Lincoln Bedroom, and so much more…could they really be gone? God…

  “Mr. Secretary?” the aide said. “Should we evacuate?”

  A deep, shuddering breath; an attempt to regain his equilibrium. “Not yet,” Muilenburg replied, but it was doubtless too soft for the aide to hear. He tried again. “Not yet.” He forced himself to stand up straight. “Have them continue to sweep for bombs here, but we’ve got a job to do.” He looked again at the deployment map and found himself quaking with fury. “And no one can say they don’t have it coming.”

  BESSIE Stilwell looked down at her wrinkled hand; the skin was white, loose, and translucent. She was gently holding the hand of her adult son, which was smoother and not quite as pale.

  Bessie had often imagined a scene like this: the two of them in a hospital room, one lying in bed and the other providing comfort. But she’d always expected it to be her in the bed, waiting to die, and Mike sitting next to her, doing his duty. After all, she was eighty-seven and he was fifty-two; that was the way the scene was supposed to be cast, their parts ordained by their ages.

  But she was well, more or less. Oh, there was a constant background of aches and pains, her hearing was poor, and she used a cane to walk. But Mike should have been vigorous. Instead, he lay there, on his back, tubes in his arms, a respirator covering his nose and mouth.

  His father had made it to sixty before having the heart attack that took his life. At least the coronary Mike had suffered hadn’t killed him—although it had come close. The stress of a Washington job had doubtless been a contributing factor; he should have stayed in Mississippi.

  Mike had no family of his own—at least, not anymore; his marriage had ended over a decade ago. He was a workaholic, Jane had said when she left him—or, at least, that was the story Mike had conveyed to Bessie.

  “Thanks for coming, Mom,” Mike said, each word an effort for him.

  She nodded. “Of course, baby.”

  Baby. She had always called him that. It had been five decades since he’d been as helpless as one, and yet he was again.

  She moved over to his bed and leaned in—painfully, her back and knees hurting as she did so—and kissed him on the top of his bald head.

  “I’ll come back tomorrow,” she added.

  “Thanks,” he said again, and closed his eyes.

  Bessie regarded him for another half minute; he looked like his father had at the same age. Then she started the slow walk out of the hospital room and down the long corridor, heading toward the elevator.

  Her eyesight wasn’t as good as it used to be, but she read the signs on the doors, noting landmarks so that she could easily find Mike’s room again tomorrow; she’d gone down the wrong corridor earlier and, when every step hurt, that was the sort of thing she didn’t want to have happen again. There were a lot of people further down the corridor, but the stretch she was in now was empty. As she passed a door labeled “Observation Gallery,” the lights in the corridor suddenly went off, startling her. Emergency lighting soon came on, but she was terrified that the elevators would be off; she was on the third floor, and doubted she could manage that many stairs.

  She continued to shuffle along, and after a short time the overhead lights spluttered back to life. Up ahead, she saw the elevator door open, several people get off, and several more get on; everything seemed to be back to normal.

  She finally made it to the elevator and rode down to the lobby. To her surprise, there were uniformed hospital security guards and several men in dark blue suits there, but they seemed more interested in who was trying to come into the hospital than who was leaving. She headed out into the cool air, and—

  —and the world had changed since she’d entered earlier today. Thousands of car horns were honking, the sidewalk outside the hospital was packed with people, there was the smell of smoke in the air. A fire, perhaps? A plane crash? Reagan was only a short distance away…

  Numerous TV crews crowded the sidewalk. Near her, a reporter—a colored man wearing a tan trench coat—was holding a microphone, waiting for a signal, it seemed, from another man who was balancing a camera on his shoulder.

  It came to her that the reporter’s name was Lonny Hendricks—although why she knew that, she didn’t know. But, well, this was Washington, and stories f
rom here often got national exposure; she supposed she must have seen him on the news back in Mississippi at some point.

  She’d had trouble finding her way inside the hospital—the corridors took odd bends. But now that she was outside, she found herself feeling confident. Her hotel was that way, down New Hampshire Avenue, and—well, if she continued up there, she’d run into Dupont Circle, although…

  Although she didn’t know why she knew that, either; she hadn’t had cause to go that way yet. She supposed she must have seen it while flipping through a tourist guidebook.

  She slowly made her way over to the taxi stand, wondering what all the panic, all the commotion, all the noise, was about.

  SETH Jerrison opened his eyes. He was lying on his back, looking up at a ceiling with fluorescent tubes behind frosted panels; one of the tubes was strobing in an irritating fashion. He attempted to speak, but his throat was bone-dry.

  A face loomed in: black, perhaps fifty, gray hair, kind eyes. “Mr. President? Mr. President? Can you tell me what day it is?”

  Part of Seth recognized that this was a test of competency—but another part wanted his own questions answered. “Where am I?” he croaked out.

  “Luther Terry Memorial Hospital,” said the man.

  His throat was still parched. “Water.”

  The man looked at someone else, and a few seconds later, he had a cup of ice chips in his hand. He moved it over and tipped it so that a few went into Seth’s mouth. After they’d melted, Seth asked, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dr. Mark Griffin. I’m the CEO here.”

  Seth nodded slightly. “What happened?”

  The man lifted his eyebrows, wrinkling his forehead in the process. “You were shot, Mr. President. The bullet ruptured the pericardium—the sac that contains the heart—bruised the right atrium, and clipped the superior vena cava. A centimeter to the left and, well, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  Seth wanted to speak again, but it took him several seconds to find the strength. “Anyone else hurt?”

  “Not by gunfire. Some members of the crowd were injured in the panic that ensued—broken bones, bloody noses—but nothing life-threatening.” Griffin paused for a moment, then: “Sir, forgive us for waking you up. Normally, we’d keep you under as long as possible while you heal, but, well, you are the president, and you need to know. First let me assure you that no one was hurt—the First Lady, as you know, is in Oregon. She’s fine, and so is everyone else. But there’s been an explosion at the White House. The bomb was spotted before it went off, and they got everyone out.”