Tainted

by A. E. Rought

  “I’ll buzz you in,” Paul says before I can push the button on the intercom panel.

  Good. Then I don’t have to take my hand from the safety of my pocket and put it into the cold.

  A metallic click issues from the doors. I use my elbow to ease it open, then duck around the edge into the antiseptic-scented warmth of Ascension. The ever present funk still lingers here, a brooding, almost cognizant sense of something “other”. On formula days, though, it’s different, more welcoming, patient maybe. When I’m wired into the computers, hooked up to one of the IVs, Ascension Labs exudes a sense of knowing – as if, with enough visits, I will become a worshipper at this shrine of ungodly miracles.

  Paul meets me in the main hall. Act natural, I coach myself. He could be innocent. I hope he is. His clothes are rumpled, hair gone shaggy and in need of cutting: apparently his new state of normal. His fleeting smile is genuine.

  “Hey, kid,” he says. “Ready?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  We know I don’t. This is a game I play to dispel the complete surreal awkwardness of the moment. Paul, serious as always, sighs and looks like he wishes he could change things.

  “Did you get the results of Emma’s blood tests?”

  “Not yet,” he says, and polishes the lenses of his glasses. “I expect them shortly and will show you the minute they come in.”

  “Unless I’m under.”

  A slight tip of his head to the side. “Yes. Then right after.”

  Paul administers a fast-acting, short-duration sedative to make the procedure more tolerable. My father kept me conscious the first few weeks, asking questions as though I was a sentient guinea pig. Paul convinced him that my consciousness hampered the full healing effects due to my body’s subconscious responses to apprehension.

  I strip off my jacket and hang it on the rack close to the main laboratory door. My shirt comes off next and hits the counter near the bank of monitor screens. Even after weeks of this routine, Paul still has an expression akin to disbelief when he first looks at me. Then he flips into science lab geek mode, whips out my file and starts scribbling notes.

  “Subject still shows advanced healing rates, even at the end of the weekly cycle,” he mutters. “Perhaps healing is not dependent on concentration of formula in the system? What affect will it have on aging?”

  “So, should I climb up on the table, Igor?” He snorts a response. He’s not the assistant in this horror movie – Paul is the scientist. I climb onto the cold metal when he waves at the table. “Should I plug in my own leads? How about my IV?”

  “Would you like me to read you an ancient Romanian lullaby first?” Paul shoots back.

  “Hey!” I say and reach for the wires. Paul bats my hand away. “My mother read those to me, thank you.”

  “Who do you think gave her the book?” As soon as he says it, a flash of regret darkens his eyes. And reminds me why the greater part of me still yearns to trust him.

  Playful banter dies. I lie back, and cross my arms over my stomach where they are easy for Paul to coat with sticky pads, monitor wires and the IV I hardly feel when he inserts it. His face is open, the love he obviously felt for my mother not hidden. My heart kicks out a painful squeezing beat and the monitors react. Paul glances at the readout, the physical representation of the tumult of emotions bashing me from inside.

  “Relax, son,” he says, inserting the syringe with the sedative into the IV tube, and depressing the plunger. I think I smile, try to tell him it’s good that he loved Mom, but my face feels like its sliding off my skull. “See you on the other side.”

  My eyelids drop and the darkness swallows me whole.

  No, Dad! WAIT!! The pain. Guts hollowed out, filled with fire. I’m dying.

  …black…

  Mom?

  Tickling on the edge of my empty forever. A tingling.

  Dead again.

  A flutter. White heat. A girl? Electricity. Building, building, building. The flutter becomes a beat, the heat fills my forever. The girl becomes my forever. Sizzling under my skin, air in my chest, warmth in my veins, blood is the life.

  Screaming wild pulsing life.

  “Emma!” I yell. I snap to sitting, with such a jerking motion Paul grabs the end of the table to keep it from pitching over.

  “She’s not here,” he says, voice ringing with pity.

  “I know,” I groan. “I can’t help it.”

  “It’s OK.” What else could he possible say after witnessing that? The hair on Paul’s arms stands when he pulls the tape and electrodes off my skin. “Was it the same experience?”

  “Every time.” I tug my shirt over my head, and slide off the table. “It’s exactly the same every single time.”

  What will Emma feel? What will she see? How could I doom her to suffering her death and resurrection every seven days? Maybe I have become my father.

  Everything in me buzzes with energy. My hair is also standing on end. Paul hands me a comb and walks to the monitors. He rips the read-out tapes off, folds them and tucks them inside the folder. “The system will be back up to executable levels in an hour. I’m going to check the fax in my office and look for Emma’s lab reports.”

  “OK. I’m going to go find some food.”

  “I bought you a few chicken sandwiches. They’re waiting for you in the employee’s lounge.”

  Definitely not the behavior of someone guilty of something heinous. Still, after Paul saying Ascension has been compromised, I’m hesitant about touching something that’s been out left out of sight. “Is it safe?”

  “No one else has been here all day. All doors have remained locked, and I’ve been watching the surveillance feeds,” he answers from the mouth of the hallway, “and I bought the sandwiches on my way here.”

  “Thanks, Paul.”

  The lounge is not exactly comfortable. A table and four chairs, cabinets, a fridge and a microwave. In the middle of the table, with the handles tied, sits a plastic bag holding four takeout meals from an upscale healthy eatery by Paul’s house. On any other Friday, I would descend on the bag and devour them all. Today I hesitate. Questions are hard enough to swallow. Plus, I know Emma will be staring, too. I take out two sacks of sandwiches and “baked” fries, leaving the other two for Emma.

  I rest my arm atop the table when I sit, and eat with my left hand. It will slow me down, and maybe give my stomach a chance to realize its full. This way, too, I can watch the dog’s bite marks recede. Tingles burn under the surface, reds and blues fade. With one meal gone, I pull out my pocket knife and use the tiny scissors to snip the knots off the stitches. The friction leaves burning tracks in my skin. Those will heal soon, too.

  “Nice,” Jason says suddenly behind me. I spin to see him in the door. “What do you do for an encore, swallow swords?”

  “Isn’t that a circus thing?”

  “I’m pretty sure I saw someone do it at the Ren Faire,” Bree says when she comes around the corner.

  I stand, and they part for me; they both know nothing will keep me from Emma when she comes around the corner. Then Bree steps forward and swipes breadcrumbs from the front of my shirt. “Appearances,” she admonishes me.

  I don’t care.

  “What about appearances?” Emma asks when she steps into the room from the hall.

  For one brilliant moment, Daniel is here, trapped. He’s woven tight into me, threads of memory in my mind, echoes in my heartbeat. What I see is enhanced by his essence. Her curves, the freckles on her nose, the blue of her eyes. My heart batters my ribs. This close to revival, I can almost taste the way she fills my forever.

  “Emma,” I breathe. “Hey.”

  “Hi.” Her smile is enough to melt me.

  She flings both arms around my neck, and stands on tiptoe. I lean down, her breath on my lips. I can’t tease her; the need to kiss her, crush her to me is too intense. I scoop her from the floor, press her to me and kiss her like this may be our last embrace. With not knowing the
results of her blood tests, or what caused her personality splits, this just may be our last real moment.

  “Alex,” Paul’s voice comes over the intercom, “Emma’s test results are in.”

  Reluctant to let her go, I cinch her tight to my side as we traverse the halls to Paul’s office. What I always thought was cozy becomes cramped when the four of us pack into the room lined with bookcases, cabinets and computer screens. My eyes slide past the one aimed at the empty cages of the animals that grad student Katrina had been testing on.

  Bree wriggles tight up to Jason, who wraps a sheltering arm around her. Emma follows suit, her back to my chest. I drape both arms over her, pressing out the air between us.

  Paul stands on the other side of his desk, a few sheets of paper in his hand. He shakes his head as he runs a finger down a row of numbers.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  He lifts a glance to me, then drops his focus back to the pages. Anxiety, silent and oppressive, swells to fill whatever space is left in this room.

  “These test results are not helpful.” Paul says. “According to her SED Rate and other tests, there are no foreign chemicals in her system other than slightly higher residual amounts of the formula.”

  Are the results real? And if they are, is Paul thinking what I am – if her breaks with reality aren’t medicinal, they’re mental.

  Is she thinking it?

  Emma suddenly feels so small in my arms, a bird with a broken wing who may never fly right again. And I caused the worst damage when I tried to fix her hurts and threw her into the sky.

  “Does this stop the procedure?” she asks. “Crap. Is that what we call it?”

  “It was once called Prodigal when it referred to just Alex, but now maybe it’s the thing that shall not be named,” Paul says with a half-smile. “Alex and I have always operated on a ‘less said, the better’ philosophy.”

  “Ignoring it won’t make it go away,” Bree says.

  “What about the Lazarus Procedure?” Jason suggests. We all turn surprised looks at him. “What?” He says. “So I paid attention in Sunday school… We’re just lacking anything remotely resembling something holy here.”

  “We can call it that,” Paul says with a nod.

  “Cree-eepy,” Bree whispers. If my senses weren’t on high, I may not have heard it.

  Fear comes off Emma in waves. She turns her gaze to Bree; her best friend looks like she’s going to cry or start yelling. Then Emma draws in a breath and squares her shoulders.

  “At least the animals are gone, right?” Emma releases my hand. She turns a quick, conflicted look at me. “If I flip out, you can always lock me in a cage.”

  “I’m sure it won’t come to that,” Paul says. “Are you ready, Emma?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “You have some time,” he tells Em in a kind, patient voice.

  “Might as well get this over with,” she says with a shrug.

  With a nod, Paul scoops up a new folder, puts Em’s blood test results in it and grabs a fresh sheet to log the Lazarus Procedure results. “This way,” he says, and leads our group into the hall.

  Emma keeps her head high and chin up, even though her bottom lip quivers. In the lab, she stands beside the table I recently left and says, “What next?”

  “Do you have a camisole on under your sweatshirt?” Paul asks.

  “Will a tank top work?”

  “Of course.” Paul takes a sheet from the nearby pile, the fabric unfolding as he moves. He folds it awkwardly in half, then covers the length of the table. “Alex said you were having trouble with regulating your temperature. The metal is cold.”

  I hold the table steady while Emma climbs up. Then she peels her sweatshirt and long-sleeved T-shirt off too. Bree takes the shirts, busying herself folding them while Paul slides into his serious mode. He makes quick work of attaching the monitor leads and electrodes. Emma pales when Paul swabs her arm and readies the IV.

  “Take my hand,” I tell her. She nods, not bothering to hide her trembling now.

  “You’ll feel a little pinch,” Paul warns and slides the needle into her vein.

  “Just a few minutes,” I promise. I hope.

  He has the syringe in the port, ready to introduce the sedative into Emma’s IV, then Paul asks, “Ready?”

  “Yes,” Emma says. Then whispers, “Alex, please don’t leave me.”

  “I’ll be here waiting.”

  Her eyelids sink shortly after Paul pumps the drug into her IV. I brush bangs away from her face, and when the tension leaves her hand, I lay it beside her.

  “You don’t want to look,” Jason says behind me. Stubborn Bree refuses to turn away, and instead tries to watch everything, her eyes darting from monitor to monitor to IV.

  “Formula now,” Paul says, his voice slightly sing-song like he’s teaching a lecture on thwarting God and trying to make it soothing. He presses a button on the IV pump and a premeasured, preloaded dose of my red, life-sustaining serum mixes with the clear solution in the tube leading into Emma’s arm.

  “Bree,” Jason’s voice has taken a firmer edge. “Trust me. You don’t want to see what I did.”

  His girlfriend remains rigidly facing forward until the last of the red passes into Emma’s body. Paul lifts his stopwatch, fingers of the other hand on Emma’s wrist as he counts heart beats. When he reaches, “Five… four… three…” Bree spins and buries her face in Jason’s shoulder.

  “Two… one,” Paul says. I suck in a breath when he presses “execute”.

  The lights flicker above us as the system routes electricity into Emma to charge the formula. Energy crawls over my skin, buzzes in the air as the program modulates to the highest power levels, activating the chemicals. Emma’s body responds, every muscle standing in tight corded bunches, her jaw snapping shut. No convulsions this time. When the wattage output decreases, Emma’s body relaxes, and I can breathe again.

  Lights return to normal above us, the tingle leaves the air, and the program hits the final phase, shutting the electricity completely off.

  “Emma?” Bree whispers.

  “Wait,” Paul says, arms crossed as he observes. “Give her time.”

  Em’s eyes snap open and she leans to the side, coughing, gagging as if there’s water in her throat. Nothing comes up. When she can draw a breath, she wheezes, “Alex?”

  “Right here,” I place a hand on her shoulder. “I’m right here.”

  Her fingers coil around mine, a tight grip charged with electricity. Tingles dance in the air between us when she drags my arm around her. Em presses her face to my chest, breath warm on my skin before tears wet my shirt.

  “All I wanted was air,” she whimpers, “and you. When I realized I would never breathe again, all I wanted was you.”

  A strangled sound rips free of Bree, like a sob she couldn’t quite swallow. Jason holds her closer, strokes her hair. Even Paul wipes at something on his cheek and busies himself with anything that excludes looking in our direction.

  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you, Em.” My voice cracks and I don’t care.

  “You brought me back,” she says and squeezes me tighter.

  “I couldn’t let you go…” I hold her as tight as I dare. “I’m here now.”

  I can’t promise I always will be. Her mother is determined to keep some kind of wedge between us.

  Poor Paul. I’m not letting go and neither is Em. He bobs and weaves through wires and tubes to work Em free from the monitors. He even manages to remove the IV and tape a bandage over the spot. “We should probably run a neurological evaluation,” he suggests in a calm voice, “Just to be sure.”

  “Can do,” Emma says. “That cage is clean, right?”

  “You won’t be needing a cage.” He is so kind, so reassuring. Nothing like my father ever was. Nothing like a murderer, or conniver would be. “But,” he adds, “you will have to let go of Alex for a while.”

  “In a minute,” I say.

&
nbsp; I twist around her on the table until we’re face to face. Her skin glows, hair spills in waves around her face. I thread my fingers through the strands, until I can lace them behind her head. I drown in the blue of her eyes, then lean in to taste her breath. Our lips meet in a surge of electricity that jolts my heart. Emma’s my everything, and I tell her through this kiss.

  She asked for me when she woke. “When I realized I would never breathe again, all I wanted was you.” Nothing can defeat us. Not the dark my father created. Not the shadows looming over us now.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  New Year’s Eve, and tomorrow night is the Reindeer Games. I can’t sleep. Energy runs laps through my nerves and vessels, buzzes and echoes in my bones. If it wasn’t a holiday, I would go to the gym and hit the treadmill, even if it meant running into Trent.

  Tonight, I have better plans. Those that Emma set in motion when she apologized for hurting the deer.

  Snow fluffs back at me with each powdery ball I lob. A thin layer of white covers the bedroom window where Emma’s supposed to be sleeping at the Ransoms’. The light flicks on, and a silhouette darkens the frame. Emma. I feel it. For fun, I toss another snowball. The shadow disappears, the lights turn off.

  I trace Emma’s path through the house by the progression of lights going on and off. Hallway. Stairs. Living room. Kitchen. Back door.

  She’s in jeans, boots, down jacket, mittens, just like I suggested, even a white hat over her wavy hair.

  “Good,” I say and sweep her into my arms. “You got my text.”

  “Yep.” She tips her chin down and peers at me through her eyelashes. “So what’s this moonlight escapade you’re proposing?”

  “It’s not a proposal, Em.” I duck in for a quick kiss, a brush of lips, a promise of more. “You’re my prisoner.”

  She squeaks a surprised noise when I swing her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Her attempts at escaping are weak, mostly little kicks and wiggles, silenced with a swat on her butt. Then the brat hangs limp, drumming her fingers on my back while I hike around the Ransoms’ two-story house to my car, parked and running at the curb.