The Fifth Room

by A J Rushby

  I nod. ‘Okay, see you then.’

  In the meals area, Steen and Andrew are sitting at the dining table. Steen has a plate of food in front of him that looks like it was discarded as soon as Andrew entered the room. Andrew’s back is facing me and he has a head bundle on—his head swathed in bandages.

  ‘Um, hey,’ I say as I enter. I round the table for a better look at Andrew.

  ‘Hi,’ he says, looking up at me. He seems pretty good for someone who’s just had quite a large amount of his skull removed and his brain tampered with. It’s weird seeing him sitting there like that. Even though I know that it’s completely medically possible, it’s just … wow.

  I take a step closer to the table, realising the mood has changed from one of cautious, circling competition to excitement—a frenzied feeding of the sharks.

  ‘I saw some of your surgery. How are you feeling?’ I ask.

  ‘Like someone just took a large piece of wood and smacked me on the head with it.’

  ‘Fair enough. Do you mind if I take a closer look?’

  ‘Sure.’ He swivels in his seat so he’s closer to the edge of his chair, giving me a better view. ‘They did the right side today. The left side’s tomorrow. Then I’ll have a camera fitted once the swelling goes down a little.’

  I glance at him, trying not to look surprised he’s being so forthcoming. He seems different without Lauren around.

  I bend down so I can really see what’s going on. My eyes widen as I take in the side of his neck, which is red and swollen. ‘I didn’t think they’d tunnel the wires.’ I get in really close now. I’d just assumed the electrode wires would be on the outside of his body, not underneath his skin.

  ‘Yeah, easier to keep them in place that way. Hopefully they won’t cause an infection.’

  I take one last look, then go sit down at the table next to Steen.

  We both continue to stare straight at Andrew, mesmerised. To do this to yourself. To have someone do it to you. To be allowed to … facilitated …

  Seriously, I can’t find the words.

  ‘So,’ I finally ask him. ‘Tell us. What’s it like seeing with your brain?’

  He thinks about this for a moment. ‘Like seeing normally, but with another layer of vision on top. Did you see them asking me questions in theatre?’

  I nod.

  ‘So, what they were doing was stimulating part of my visual cortex. When I had my eyes open, I could see a dot due to the stimulus as well as everything else in that hemisphere they had in front of me. If I closed my eyes I could only see the dot. If they used several electrodes in a circular shape, I could see a circle, if they used electrodes in a square, a square would appear and so on.’

  I extrapolate this. ‘So with the camera, you’re hoping to be able to see without using your eyes at all?’

  Andrew nods. ‘We’re going to try infrared too.’

  ‘You’ll be able to see in the dark. With your eyes closed,’ Steen pipes up now. ‘That’s …’ He can’t finish his sentence.

  ‘Something else. I know. I hope so. At least, that’s the plan.’ Andrew finishes Steen’s thought for him, wincing as he does so. ‘Anyway …’ He clears his throat as the mood shifts again and we all remember we’re competing here. ‘I think I might go and see if I can find a few more painkillers. I thought the headache might get better if I tried to ignore it, but it’s only getting worse.’ He gets up from the table as he speaks. ‘I’ll see you around.’

  We both watch him go, Steen turning to me when he’s no longer in sight. ‘Your dinner’s in the microwave if you want it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I go over and warm it for a minute, turning back to Steen as I wait. ‘So are you feeling better after your nap?’

  He nods. ‘I am, actually, but I’m expecting everything else to kick off soon. There’s only so long a tied-off appendix can remain happy. Its infection-free hours are numbered.’

  The microwave dings and I pull my plate out. ‘Want me to warm yours up?’ I ask, but then see he’s already started back in on it.

  ‘You know I’m not fussy.’

  I shoot him a look. He needs to be way more careful with what he says.

  ‘Sorry. I mean I’m not fussy.’

  I sigh and bring my plate around to sit on the opposite side of the table from him now. And I’ve just taken my first mouthful of what seems to be vegetable lasagne when Steen starts talking again. This time in a lowered voice.

  ‘Hey, something … weird happened before.’

  I glance up quickly from my plate. ‘What do you mean?’

  He looks at the doorway before he speaks again. ‘I was coming to get you and when I got to the corridor, there was this trolley going into the fifth lab.’

  My fork and knife frozen in mid-air, I slowly put them down on my plate, reminding myself not to get excited. To stay calm. ‘They’re doing renovations in there. Marcus said so, remember?’

  ‘I know, but this trolley … I mean, I couldn’t see what was inside it—it was all covered up—but it had food in it. I could smell it.’

  Should I tell him what I think is going on in there? I want to. I really do. And in this moment I truly consider it. But no. It’s better for him not to know. What would he do with the information if he had it? There’s nothing to be done. So they’re lying to us about Ryan? There’s a reason for that. A reason I probably don’t want to know about, considering what I do know about Ryan. The truth is, I know very little about what’s going on in that fifth room, and Steen’s better off not knowing. The thing is, if I tell him, he’ll only drive himself crazy trying to find out what’s really going on in there. That behaviour in the car—the fake throwing up? That didn’t come out of nowhere. He’d only get himself kicked out of here in his desperate quest for information. He needs to be protected from himself.

  I shrug. ‘The workmen have to eat, I guess?’

  Steen pauses. ‘I don’t know. It just seemed … weird. Why wouldn’t they have their meals in the other area? There’s got to be a much larger meals room in the other area. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Maybe they’re working through? Trying to get the renovations done quickly?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ he finally says, staring at his plate.

  I turn back to my own plate. I take another mouthful of lasagne. But this one … this one sticks in my throat.

  TWENTY-FIVE HOURS AWAKE

  The night wears on. Everyone goes to bed except me. There’s a change of shift and I continue my round of drugs and testing and more drugs and more testing—this time without Thing One and Thing Two. The new people don’t receive fun names. We just get on with things, and I begin to see it’s going to be a long two weeks.

  It’s strange, being up at four, five, six in the morning with no sleep and feeling fine. But I do. I can’t say that I feel as if I’ve sprung out of bed at seven after having ten hours’ rest, but I feel … normal. Like it’s a normal time during a normal day. I see I’m going to have to make one lifestyle change pretty fast—I’m going to have to quit snacking around the clock, or I might not fit back in the industrial-sized elevator on the way out.

  No one appears for breakfast. I’m not sure where they are. I guess Lauren’s had her surgery and maybe Andrew has gone back early for his next round. Steen might be sleeping in and waiting to get sicker. I’m just finishing a late lunch at around one in the afternoon when Steen appears in the meals room. I pause, my last bite of salad halfway to my mouth. He really doesn’t look great. He’s sweaty. Sweaty and pale. ‘How are you feeling?’ I ask him, sticking my fork back in my bowl.

  ‘Let’s just say my appendix and I are on our way to sepsis city.’

  ‘Well, I can see who’s behind the wheel.’

  He sits down at the table with a groan.

  ‘Want some lunch?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘Just an appendectomy, thanks. One will do. Right here is fine.’ He gestures to the
table top. ‘Any world-class surgeon will do.’ He gives me a look with this and I return it. We don’t know each other, remember?

  ‘How long are you going to leave it before you inject the cells?’ I ask him. ‘How sick are you going to let yourself get?’ If he waits too long, there might be no coming back from the brink and he’ll just have to have his appendix out, leaving his research completely stalled.

  He looks at the clock on the wall. ‘Another forty-seven minutes. They’re preparing the artificial lymph cells now.’

  I’m glad he’s being sensible.

  ‘And you? How are you going?’

  I shrug. ‘Fine. I feel … normal. I seem to be eating for about three people, but I’m not sure if that’s because I’m awake all the time, bored, or it’s the medication. Thus, salad for lunch.’

  ‘Have you seen anyone else?’

  ‘No. Lauren should be around. She must just be in her lab. Andrew should have finished in surgery as well, or be finishing up soon.’

  Marcus pops his head around the door. ‘There you are. Looks like we’re having an open door policy this afternoon. I’ve just seen both Andrew and Lauren and they’ve said it’s fine if you want to come and see what’s going on in their labs.’

  Steen groans as he stands. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Hopefully I’ll stop doing that soon.’

  We follow Marcus down to Lauren’s lab first, where he knocks and, after a moment or two, the door slides open.

  There are four masked support people in the room as well as Lauren, who’s sitting at a large table in the centre of the room. She’s wearing a tank top and has her left arm encased in a tight white elastic sleeve. There’s also a yellow pump on a stand beside her running a continuous infusion of local anaesthetic into her arm via a catheter that’s been inserted just under her collarbone, a dressing covering it. The table is full of differently shaped objects. Blocks and fruit, scarves and books and cutlery. All kinds of things. Beside her is a masked computer technician who is tapping things into a laptop. As he does so, Lauren’s arm moves and I almost jump.

  It’s pretty impressive. He’s truly controlling her completely anaesthetised arm. We all watch as it slowly moves over and attempts to grasp a red block. The movements are jerky rather than smooth and it takes three goes before Lauren’s hand grasps the object, but eventually it does. I remember her comment about people with spinal cord injury and imagine the implications of this truly working on all four limbs.

  ‘Wow.’ Steen can’t help himself. He hovers in the doorway, obviously desperately wanting to run over and take a better look. So do I of course, but I hold back … there’s some weird hostile vibe coming off Lauren that makes me wonder why we’ve been invited into her lab at all.

  I glance over at Marcus. Wait. Maybe we haven’t been invited. Not by Lauren, anyway.

  He stands back, watching over our group. Hmmm … something gives me the impression he’s completely orchestrated this moment. That we’re being played off one another.

  If we are, Steen doesn’t seem to care. ‘Can I take a closer look?’

  Lauren glances up. ‘Yes.’ But I can see I’m right by the set of her jaw. We’re not truly welcome here.

  I pause, unsure about what to do, but then go over anyway, because this is too good to miss.

  ‘So this is a continuous infusion of local anaesthetic?’ Steen points to the pump.

  When Lauren doesn’t immediately reply, one of the support staff jumps in. ‘Lauren’s arm is completely numb. Here, if I pull the sleeve down a little you can see the electrode wires underneath.’ He pulls back the elastic sleeve carefully to show how it’s holding the wires fast, which are all going directly into Lauren’s skin. ‘The electrodes are implanted in her muscles. Can I show them a movement, Lauren?’

  ‘Fine,’ she says, her voice flat.

  The technician double clicks a few times and we all watch as Lauren’s arm rises in a jerky movement, then waves. Lauren gives him a narrow-eyed look. Despite the tension in the room, I almost laugh. I can think of a whole lot of gestures I’d like to program into that computer and have Lauren’s arm jump about to.

  The other person on the support staff—a woman—throws a half-full plastic syringe into a nearby bin.

  ‘You’re logging the discards,’ Marcus says. ‘Right?’

  ‘What?’ Lauren is instantly defensive. ‘No one told us to log the discards. Why would we do that?’

  ‘Because down here everything gets logged.’

  ‘But that never happens in the real …’ Lauren begins to argue, her eyes on the bin.

  ‘Everything gets logged,’ Marcus says sharply.

  Silence.

  ‘Start logging the discards,’ Lauren finally says.

  Might be time to go.

  ‘Well, um, thanks for having us,’ I say, when the following silence gets a bit much. I can’t get out of this room fast enough. ‘We should probably get moving if you’re going to see Andrew and get back to your own lab in time, Steen.’

  Lauren gives me a final, sharp-eyed look before she goes back to what she was doing before we entered.

  ‘Fascinating, isn’t it?’ Marcus says as Lauren’s lab door closes smartly behind us. ‘But wait until you see Andrew. What’s going on in his lab is beyond amazing. It’s a great group you’ve got this year.’

  Wondering about Marcus’s motivation, I try to catch Steen’s eye, but he’s too caught up in what he’s going to see next.

  We take the few steps that are needed to stand in front of Andrew’s lab and, just as before, Marcus knocks. Once again the lab door swishes open. But this time Steen and I both take a step back rather than forward.

  ‘Holy …’ Steen stops right there.

  As for me, I can’t even form one word.

  Andrew is sitting on a hospital bed in the middle of the room. He’s still bandaged, but less so than he was yesterday. Now there are wires down the left side of his neck as well as his right—both sides red and inflamed. There’s a black headband on the top of the bandages holding a small camera onto the front of his head. His eyes are taped shut.

  ‘Hi, Miri. Hi, Steen.’ He waves at us, one after the other. I realise he’s looking at us but not looking at us. His brain is seeing us. He grins. It’s obvious his experiment is going well.

  ‘That. Is. Awesome,’ is all Steen can say, in a whisper. If he feels threatened by Andrew’s success, he isn’t showing it.

  ‘Can we come in?’ This time it’s me who asks.

  ‘Sure.’ Andrew gestures. ‘I’m going to have to shut the camera off again, though. I’m getting a lot of motion sickness. We’re trying to work out a way around that now. Tracking is proving a real issue.’

  Despite looking paler than ever, Steen loses no time in going over and circling the whole hospital bed. ‘I feel so desperately uncool. Me and my sad little excuse for an experiment.’

  Andrew laughs at this, but all I can think is, I bet Lauren would have loved to hear Steen say that in her lab.

  ‘This might sound like a dumb question, but can you see in colour?’ I ask him as I walk over, inspecting him as well. ‘Or is everything grey, or black and white?’

  ‘I can see in colour, but the colours aren’t right. I don’t know yet if we’ll be able to change that.’

  ‘I think it’s amazing you’ve got this far,’ Marcus says. ‘Let alone seeing in perfect colour.’

  I nod in agreement. Part of me is fascinated by what he’s doing here and part of me is horrified that he’s been allowed to do it to himself. Before I got here, I knew that experimenting would be a roller-coaster ride, but it’s another thing to experience it in the flesh and to watch other people experiment on themselves.

  Steen looks at the clock on the wall. ‘Ugh, I’ve got to go. You know, before my appendix ruptures.’

  The three of us turn and head for the door.

  ‘Thanks, Andrew,’ I say, as I follow Steen and Marcus out. As we leave, Marcus receives a text, his phone be
eping.

  ‘That’s me,’ he says, reading it. ‘I’ll leave you here.’

  I walk up with Steen to his lab.

  ‘Well, that was something,’ he says.

  ‘What do you think it was all about, though?’ I ask.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I pause. ‘I don’t know. I get the feeling Marcus is going to start playing us off against one another.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, Lauren didn’t exactly seem to want us in her lab.’

  ‘Oh.’

  As I’d thought, Steen hadn’t noticed.

  ‘You didn’t tell her anything, did you?’ I ask him.

  ‘About?’

  I give him a look.

  ‘Of course not.’

  I consider Lauren’s behaviour for a moment longer, then shrug. ‘Okay, well, good luck with your cells.’ I start up the corridor again to go and clean up my lunch things.

  But as I go, I keep thinking about Lauren. Something was going on with her back there. Something more than just Marcus dragging us into her lab.

  TWENTY-EIGHT HOURS AWAKE

  That evening I’m in the meals room having dinner with Andrew and Steen. We’re talking about how things are going for all of us, though now that the excitement of the afternoon has died off, Andrew seems to be a little less forthcoming on the details.

  I look over at him as he reaches up to scratch a spot on his head through his bandages. He doesn’t have his camera on for some reason. My bet is they’re still trying to sort out those tracking and motion sickness issues he mentioned.

  ‘So, are you actually feeling any better after the cells?’ Andrew asks Steen.

  ‘I don’t feel any worse, which is a good sign.’

  ‘But you’ve still got to have your appendix out, right?’

  Steen nods. ‘Yes. It’s tied off, which means there’s really no coming back from that. The point is to see how long I can hold off taking it out for.’

  ‘Right,’ Andrew replies, digging his fork into his Thai curry. ‘So it’s working?’