The Stars Will Guide Us Back

by Rue Sparks

  Ezra crawls onto the flimsy hospital mattress and holds his husband in his arms for two more hours. At 2:51 am, the last coherent words Ezra ever hears from his husband is asking him to turn off the monitors.

  The nurse stops in to check on them, and Ezra quietly informs her that they would like some peace for the last bit of his husband’s life.

  At 4:47 am, Ezra stops his slow stroking of Jean’s hand lying between them.

  Carefully removing himself from the grasp of his husband, he quietly walks over to the duffel bag. The syringe makes no noise as he pulls it from the hidden pocket.

  James bangs his hand one more time against the clear acrylic of the vending machine before his forehead follows suit with a slightly gentler thud.

  That was my last dollar bill. Fuck. This.

  “You might as well try the slots instead,” Miranda snickers. “You’d have about the same amount of luck.”

  James peels himself off the machine in defeat. He pads over to the table, and his muscles and bones drain into the creaky plastic chair next to her like molasses. He lets his head hit the table — gently this time — and pulls his arms up to rest over the back of his head.

  “I’d probably have better luck with the slots, but I’m pretty fucking sure they aren’t allowed in hospitals, so I’m really shit out of luck.”

  Miranda pats his shoulder lightly. Hearing a crinkling, James looks up to see her sliding a bag of baked potato chips his way.

  He knew she was his favorite resident for a reason.

  “So what’s it this time?” Her question is to the point, and he puzzles on the best way to respond as he tries to open the metallic bag without the blessed food flying everywhere.

  “There’s an investigation, actually. Both the hospital, and the police. All asking the same goddamn questions.”

  Miranda doesn’t seem to be able to decide whether he is being facetious, but soldiers on anyway. “About what? You work with the almost-always-terminal cancer patients, right? Who’s gonna murder them or whatever?”

  James shrugs, finally getting the bag open. “It’s kind of the opposite, actually. Some really freaky things going on at our floor.”

  Miranda grabs the bag out of James’ hands, holding it up and to her other side. “How can you do the opposite of murder? That makes no sense. And this is a bribe, not a free lunch. Welcome to America.”

  James rolls his eyes, halfheartedly swiping for the bag out of his reach. He’s secretly glad to relay what little he’s gleaned from the chaos sweeping through his ward. “You know, I was born and raised in America. You came from London or whatever. I’m pretty sure that should be the other way around, but fine.”

  James leans back in his chair, valiantly trying to rearrange his spine back to its original, healthy position but giving up as he always does after a few loud creaks.

  “First it was this kid. The fairly typical case — diagnosed stage four, goes through chemo and radiation, is looking like he’ll be a good candidate for surgery but then he suddenly flat lines one night. They pronounce him dead, the parents see him, they send for the coroner.”

  Miranda pulls a single chip out of the bag now, waving it near his nose, like the aroma would entice him more. As if a small bag of stale chips smells like anything but mothballs.

  “And?” She sounds impatient yet still curious.

  “When the coroner comes up to take him to the morgue, the kid’s sitting up and asking about his Nintendo DS. Thinks he’s had his tonsils removed or something. Scared the shit out of her.”

  The chip pauses mid-flight, Miranda temporarily stunned enough for him to grab at it. He only manages to crack it apart, crumbs hitting the table. “Wait. He survived? How the fuck did they think he was dead?”

  James waves his hand in dismissal. “Dunno. They thought they’d made a mistake. Damn, were his parents pissed. Started yelling about suing the hospital, wanted the doctor’s medical license taken away, the works.”

  Miranda leans back, still facing James. She sets the bag of chips on the table, uninterested in teasing anymore. “Well, that’s unusual and pretty screwed up, but not unheard of.”

  James snatches the bag before Miranda can change her mind.

  “That’s not the craziest part, though. They move him to a different hospital right after that. Start him back on chemo and radiation. He seemed to be improving, super fast too. But when they did a CAT scan to evaluate him for surgery, there’s nothing. The tumors, cancer, everything is gone.”

  Miranda stares at him. He had her hooked. “Gone. As in … what?”

  James slowly opens his mouth, placing a chip on his tongue before chewing slowly. Payback.

  “G-O-N-E. Like he hadn’t had cancer at all. All the cancerous cells were gone, and there were new, absolutely normal brain cells in their place. Took part of his memory though, he didn’t remember the past few years at all.”

  Miranda shakes her head slightly, clearly trying to find a reason behind what sounded like an urban legend. “Wait, so, did he never have it then? They’re suing the hospital, so was it malpractice?”

  James shrugs, stuffing another few chips into his mouth before continuing.

  “Nope. The hospital he’d transferred to scanned him when he first came, to be sure. It was there when he got there. Then gone in a few weeks. The hospital tried to claim it was their doing, but, well, then something similar happened to another patient here.”

  James pauses to shake the crumbs from the mostly empty bag into his mouth, then starts speaking again while he searches the table for his bottle of water.

  “This patient — some sort of scientist or something — he was pretty much on his last few hours. Terminal, nothing we could do. The nurse said his husband was staying with him that last night so they left them alone. In the morning when they switched shifts, the nurse hadn’t realized why the room was shut off so she checked in on them. The husband was gone, but the patient was sitting up in bed, not at all dead and hardly dying either.”

  Miranda continues shaking her head. James doesn’t blame her. Shaking a new world view into place seemed as good a technique as any. “And the husband? When was this? Why the police?”

  “The husband is why the police are here, actually. It seems either he or someone who wanted him dead torched his house, his boat, his car, everything. No one’s seen him since that night.”

  Miranda rubs at her eyes. “That’s horrible, honestly. You cheat death and wake up to your husband dead or at least missing.”

  James shrugs. “Can’t be too upset about it. He remembers absolutely nothing. He’s basically a blank slate, complete amnesia. They’re even working on helping him remember to read and write. He somehow remembers random shit like the family and classes of random sea life but not the alphabet. You know how the brain is — however the new cells got there, they destroyed the old. Brains are strange things sometimes.”

  Miranda attempts to hide a small smile. Completely inappropriate, but you didn’t get far in the medical field without a slightly macabre sense of humor.

  “Alright, you got me beat. That is officially the weirdest hospital war story I’ve heard so far. Go ahead, keep wasting your bottom dollar in the vending machines as you wish. I won’t stop ya. Luck is about as good a thing to put your faith in as anything at this point.”

  James pauses after standing, a thought flitting in the periphery of his skull. “It’s a habit at this point. Deal with shit the same way long enough, it doesn’t even occur to you to try something else until it’s too late.”

  He grabs the empty chip bag, throwing it towards the trash bin, winces as it missed.

  Sighing, he takes the seven steps towards the failed attempt at a free throw, bends down to grab the bag, and throws it into the trash can properly.

  “Guess there’s always tomorrow.”

  Transdifferentiation, also known as lineage reprogramming, is a process in which one mature somatic cell transforms into another mature somatic cell �
� There are no known instances where adult cells change directly from one lineage to another except Turritopsis Dohrnii and in the Turritopsis Nutricula, a jellyfish that is theoretically immortal.

  -Wikipedia

  8

  Sleeping Dogs Don’t Lie

  The biting air prickles the skin on his face. Caleb saves his hands by burying them in his coat pockets, but the cold still penetrates down to his bones.

  It is a terrible start to his new job. Possibly soon to be his old job if things don’t change. His boss took him aside at the end of the day to warn him of his poor performance — as if he hadn’t known himself.

  Walking towards his subsidized apartment along the deserted street, it takes all his willpower to keep the damning thoughts at bay. He’s messed up, and now the best he can hope for is a minimum wage job serving white middle-class accountants and doctors their morning coffee. It is a dead-end, and he knows it.

  Maybe it is better to give up now.

  Rounding the corner, he jumps as a dark shape runs towards him, his mind only retroactively registering that it is behind a metal fence. The shape, a black and white, hulking pitbull, stops at the edge and stands up on his hind legs to try to reach him, his whole lower half shaking with his tail. He is panting with joy in his eyes as if he has been waiting for Caleb.

  With a worn smile, Caleb reaches his arm forward to let the dog sniff at his fingers. Its mouth closes and head tilts as he — she? — does just that. Once the dog is satisfied that he is an acceptable companion, it bumps its nose into his hand, demanding pets.

  Caleb’s smile becomes warm as he scratches behind the dog’s ears. He twists the collar around to read the name on the metal tag: Daisy.

  “Hello, Daisy,” he says, “It’s nice to meet you. You have such a beautiful smile, sweet girl.” She leans into the touch and licks his hand in return.

  And if he enters his apartment with a smile, no one else will ever know.

  His visits to Daisy on his long trek home became routine. By summer, she waits for him like clockwork at the fence. In turn he brings her dog biscuits, toys, and bits of rope they play tug of war with.

  Work gets better. Everything gets better. By fall he has a job offer one town over that promises paid time off and benefits. He is being given a second chance, and while he is overjoyed now that his future is only getting brighter, there is another bright spot in his life that he will miss.

  The day the moving truck is loaded, he knows it is time to say goodbye. He has bought a large box of peanut butter cookies meant for dogs from a local bakery, complete with a red bow on top and a card. It may have been overboard for someone who won’t understand the gesture, but Daisy meant more to him than she would ever understand anyway.

  Except Daisy isn’t in the yard. It isn’t unusual — he rarely ever sees her this time of day so he shouldn’t have been surprised. But that doesn’t move the lump forming in his throat.

  Making an impulsive decision, he decides that if Daisy can’t come to him, he’ll go to her. He rounds the corner to the building that is connected to the gated yard. It is an attached brick home, two stories with the black metal gate along the side. It isn’t cheap, even for that area, but he is filled with an overwhelming need to see his rescuer before he leaves.

  Gathering his courage, he walks up the concrete steps and knocks firmly on the door. He hears noises coming from the other side, and after what feels like minutes a stocky, white-haired older woman wearing a soft gray knit sweater opens the door.

  “Can I help you?” she asks, her voice congenial but confused.

  He flounders for a few seconds before he offers her the box. “I live in the apartment a few blocks down, but I’m moving away. I wanted to give these to your dog, as a thank you.”

  The woman shakes her head, mouth thinning. “I don’t have a dog. You must be mistaking this house with another.”

  Caleb furrows his brow, mouth gaping at the unexpected answer. It is a strange request he is making, sure, but this is unexpected.

  “Daisy isn’t your dog? Then who’s dog is she?”

  The woman’s eyes widen, and she brings her wrinkled hand to her chest. She inhales with a start, tilts her head in question. “Daisy? Whenever did you see Daisy?”

  Caleb lowers the box of biscuits, his heart pounding with fear. Did something happen to his Daisy? “I saw her yesterday, in the yard.”

  She inhales sharply and her eyes widen.

  “I’m sorry, you must be mistaken.” The lady wipes at her eyes and shakes her head with mouth quaking. “She’s been gone a long time now. My dear Daisy died four years ago.”

  9

  As for the Bees

  The beekeeper can taste the despair in the honey.

  It isn’t only that there is less of it, or that most of his hives have collapsed. Rather, the sticky, sugary syrup tastes less sweet and more like a bitter despondence. Like even his bees have given up hope.

  She has meddled with the order of things she doesn’t understand. A wish has become a maelstrom, and she doesn’t know how to stop it.

  “We’ve been out for weeks; manufacturing’s at a standstill. If we don’t get more, we’re going to have to change our formula. We can’t afford that. They’ll shut the business down for good.” He wipes the sweat from his brow and lowers his face mask to breathe inside the stuffy, sweltering building. There is a moment of static, the noise a stark contrast to the echoing bangs from when the machines still ran.

  “I don’t know what to tell ya. It’s like the damned bees flew off to hell knows where. There’s nothing there, man. No one’s got it.”

  Perhaps it isn’t too late, time a fluctuating thing that she can mend, mold like a waterway into a dam. If only she is careful.

  Dead. Dead. Drying. Dead. No fruit. No seeds. A yellowed, decaying acre, twisting winds blowing up dirt and debris along with the sharp scent of decay.

  “Another one, gone,” he says, though his wife is too far away to hear his voice in the wind. He drops the rough, dried plant from his hands, and it falls like vertigo that resounds in a closing door.

  In her haste, they have gotten away from her, hummed a gentle tenor around her ears, and ducked into paned windows, hoping to release themselves from their glass and wooden prison.

  “It’s the bees,” he says. “Or rather, the lack of them.”

  He pushes the carefully crafted folder towards his supervisor, overfull with a stack of papers from his immersive study. It has taken months of testing, cataloging, and monitoring populations. The results aren’t unexpected but carry the weight of a judge’s mallet.

  His supervisor doesn’t open the folder. Instead, he taps an uneven rhythm on the desk with his fingers.

  “And you expect us to do, what?”

  The question catches him off guard. “You didn’t ask me to figure out a solution, just to find the problem.”

  His supervisor leans forward on his elbows, bringing his face close to his own. “The economy is collapsing. Shortages of food and consumer goods across the globe. Manufacturing is shutting down. You brought me the problem. Now tell me how to fix it.”

  He gulps in precious air, knowing it isn’t the answer he wants to hear.

  “We can’t.”

  She’d been innocent in her intentions, but that doesn’t stop the wave that overcomes the world. Robert Frost was wrong, she thinks, before she takes the plunge into darkness.

  The world doesn’t end in fire or ice.

  It ends with bees and regrets.

  10

  Fire Starter

  Heated limbs reach and spark from the burning logs and hot coals, fingers playing patterns against the darkness. Lena watches them from hooded eyes, lashes low across her view as she lets the sight of the eyes, the bodies, the anguished faces in the flames blur into each other. She pulls the thick sherpa blanket tighter around her neck with one hand and tightens her grip on Ivory’s waist with the other.

  “What you thinking?” Ivor
y asks, voice quiet and muffled against the crook of Lena’s neck. It sounds loud, almost sacrilegious to disturb the near silence of the campsite this late at night. There are only the scattered remains of campfires and the sound of crickets breaking the constellation of stars above and darkness below. And Ivory as she nestles into Lena’s side. Lena swallows against the feeling of bile rising in her throat at the trust she’s being given. She expects an answer.

  “About you,” she says, though the lie sounds flat even to her own ears. Lena feels the smile against her skin, and Ivory slaps her stomach before burrowing deeper into her, twisting an arm under Lena’s shirt to encircle her curved waist.

  “Lies,” Ivory says through a laugh as she settles. “But sweet lies. What are you really thinking?”

  Lena focuses on her breathing, closing her eyes to the flames, even as the light dances through her eyelids. There has never been any running away from this, has there?

  “I’m thinking of a different fire from a different time,” Lena finally answers. She leans deeper back onto the rock they claimed, pulling Ivory with her.

  “Oh? Is this part of your epic back story that you never tell me about?”

  Lena hums as she leans her head onto Ivory’s. Her tone was light, but there is still an edge of annoyance and fear to the words. They’d argued over Lena’s inability to share her history, true, but Lena is always shocked when she hears the fear. As if I could ever leave her. She’s the best thing to ever happen to me.

  “You could say that,” Lena says. She untangles Ivory’s hand from her waist and takes the fingers in her gloved hand, tracing the knuckles, the nails. “It’s nothing I like to talk about. But you should know.”